Cardano's Revolutionary Psychological Astrology and the Luther Controversy

and realized through techniques such as:

• frequent prayer;
• emptying oneself of thoughts;
• recourse to particular gems;
• appropriate astral positions

PLANETS AS CENTERS OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS UNCONSCIOUSLY INFLUENCE MAN

The planets in Cardano are the centers of these soul currents of the world soul that influence individual particular souls and therefore can be attracted, empowered, hindered, etc... and they unconsciously influence man who, however, as a whole enjoys psychic autonomy from the influences of the stars dictated by his own will, his own consciousness, etc...

For this reason Cardano sees the planets in zodiacal signs and their aspects as elementary ingredients of a much more complex picture that the astrologer must know how to understand, being primarily a psychologist. Cardano places strong emphasis on this aspect of astrology. Consider that the idea of psychological and character astrology did not exist before Cardano; astrology served exclusively to determine future or past facts and events of the individual. Cardano instead uses astrology as a means to penetrate the psychic and soul labyrinths of people and understand the mechanisms of consciousness.

The planets are only centers of influence that move the forces of consciousness; it is up to the astrologer who, knowing the psychic mechanisms, knows how to interpret these movements and the effects they will produce. To understand these mechanisms it becomes fundamental to do considerable practice on horoscopes and personalities whose details of events and psychic mechanisms are known, for which Cardano first establishes the idea of a collection of horoscopes of famous people on which astrologers can practice.

Astrology for Cardano becomes a means for self-knowledge and knowledge of others. A means to read in the configuration of the Centers of Consciousness of the World Soul one's own soul.

COUNTER-REFORMATION AND ATTEMPT TO SALVAGE ASTROLOGY

Let us now return to the astrological situation at Cardano's time. At the time, Cardano was among the first to understand that Astrology could not continue on the path undertaken. Cardano identifies some problems that deeply threaten astrological practice:

• The lack of deontological ethics: this leads Cardano to formulate a real ethical code for the astrologer
• The lack of psychological analysis: many astrologers believed they could mechanically interpret the horoscope leaving aside intuitions and man's higher faculties. Conversely, Cardano knows that horoscope analysis was based precisely on Panpsychism. The horoscope serves to help the psyche rise and psychically tune in with the subject in question.
• The lack of reliable texts: to which Cardano compensates by translating and commenting on Ptolemy's Quadripartite. One of the classics of interpretation and astrological practice.

Above all, however, what worries Cardano beyond all limits is the instrumentalization made of astrology in confessional wars.

At the origin of the actual astrological debate centered on Martin Luther's chart was Johannes Lichtenberger's Prognosticatio published in 1488 in which the astrologer Lichtenberger found himself having to interpret for November 5, 1484, an extremely rare configuration estimated as very powerful, capable of governing several following years. To the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, already notable according to the rules of Mundane Astrology, were added in Scorpio two other planets like Mercury and Venus that conjuncted it on the day of the lunation in Scorpio which was also an eclipse and to which Mars opposed at the end of Aries.

This conjunction was inserted within an astrological context in which one of the "three Arab judges," Abu-Masar, in his book on Great Conjunctions declared the future arrival of the "little prophet," a religious reformer coming from a nation of the sign of Scorpio. Abu-Masar's position, together with the physical description of the little prophet, is taken up by the pontifical astrologer Paulus von Middelburg in 1486 who in his writing declares that the little prophet would be born in 1503 and would leave his native country in 1522.

Middelburg's work was then taken up by Lichtenberger whose book had better fortune being published in no less than ten thousand copies in 1499. In this prognostic, Lichtenberger affirmed that after 1485 a religious of great sanctity would arrive, that some privileges of the nobles should be eliminated, that a series of false prophets would agitate Christianity, but that then a "little prophet" would enter the scene who would initiate a good reform and improvement in the Church.

After the arrival of the religious of great sanctity, Girolamo Savonarola, the arrival of the "little prophet" was now expected. After 1522 and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, people began to wonder if by chance Martin Luther was not the "little prophet" destined to reform the Catholic Church.

Luther himself resolved the problem by stating in a preface to the German translation of Lichtenberger's prognostic that: "The foundations of Lichtenberger's astral art corrected [...] the signs of heaven certainly do not lie."

Since Martin Luther's birth year was uncertain between 1483 and 1484, Luther, on the advice of the astrologer and friend Melanchthon, decided to accept 1484 as his birth date, thus endorsing the association with the "little prophet."

This obviously brought the confessional battle to the astrological plane, placing in opposition on the same chart two great astrologers of the time: Philip Melanchthon, Luther's friend, and Luca Gaurico, the astrologer who had predicted to the then unknown Alessandro Farnese his future election as pope.

On one side we have Melanchthon's interpretation of Luther's horoscope: "I myself prefer another nativity, and so does Carion, although it is unpleasant because of Mars's position and the conjunction in the houses at 5°, in which a great conjunction with the ascendant is present. Moreover, at whatever hour he was born, this admirable conjunction in Scorpio cannot fail to produce a most combative man."

To this was opposed the astrological reply provided by Gaurico in his Tractatus Astrologicus of 1552 which, correcting the birth time, places the...