TWENTY-FOURTH LETTER - March 1946
Our Connection with the Stars - Tycho's Mars

In order to complete the picture of Tycho de Brahe's nativity, we still have to describe the gestures of Mars during the prenatal development.

Figure 1 in letter 21 gives an impression of this movement of Mars. It had just entered Goat at the time of Tycho's conception and soon afterwards came into conjunction with Jupiter. Then it proceeded to Waterman, and there it performed a loop that lasted most of the time of the later embryonic development. Finally it entered Fishes where it stood at the time of birth.

Mars, as the planet of strength, answers the question: why does a human soul incarnate under the special conditions of one earthly life? Further, it shows the intermediary task of the present incarnation in the sequence of previous and future lives on Earth. Sometimes contradictions may seem to exist between two consecutive incarnations, but Mars can explain how each new stage of individualization is finally placed into the entelechy of a human being — the eternal and ever-creative spiritual entity of humanity.

Mars in Goat reveals that from the outset, the impulse to find the spirit in the appearance of the world of the senses had been active in Tycho de Brahe's incorporation into the earthly environment. This is especially expressed in the conjunction of Mars with Jupiter. Jupiter wants to penetrate Mars with its essence in the event of the conjunction between both. In our last letter, we tried to describe the essential character of Jupiter in Goat, and how in this position there appears a beautiful image of a lofty, spiritual universe that is even, in a certain way, still far removed from the conception of the average present-day individual. All this, deeply hidden in Tycho's being, had the greatest difficulty to manifest itself in his life.

This comprised about the first fourteen years of Tycho's life. Then Mars entered Waterman, which reflects itself when Tycho de Brahe was the age of 30 and took residence on the Isle of Hveen, and then it started to make a loop. (In previous letters, we indicated that the prenatal events are reflected in the later life.) This loop lasted until the time that reflects his death.

Mars in Waterman can reflect the impulse of a soul to unite that which has been separated in a certain realm of existence. Such an impulse can manifest itself in the most extraordinary manner. For instance, Mary Queen of Scots had Mars in Waterman in her nativity. She could not really achieve the realization of this Mars during her earthly life because she died too early. However, if we imagine that when this soul had entered the spiritual world, James I united England and Scotland in one kingdom, then we have an example of such a unifying impulse. In the case of Tycho de Brahe, we can find the answer to the question why he chooses a profession that seems to be so remote from his previous incarnation. In the last letter, we indicated that he was incarnated as Herzeloide, the mother of Parsifal. In the destiny of her son, which this soul could accompany from the spiritual world, she could perceive the dramatic evolution of Parsifal toward the ability of becoming a bearer of the Holy Grail. He was one who could receive the Christ Being into his whole organization through a development, however painful, of his soul forces. One might even say that in the moment when he entered the Grail Castle a second time, where his name was written on the Holy Vessel, a soul universe of great similarity with the outer universe came into existence. The splendor of the Grail Castle, which is described in the various stories, is the secret revelation of this soul universe in the one who becomes the bearer of the Holy Cup. All those holy mysteries, which in pre-Christian times had perceived the spirit in the manifestation of nature and universe, had withdrawn into the soul of humanity. The individuality of Tycho de Brahe had an opportunity to realize this change in the Herzeloide incarnation.

Therefore it seems strange that he turned to the opposite in his Tycho-incarnation, to the outer universe. But this was just his impulse, to speak in the language of Mars in Waterman, to create a union between the outer universe of the stars and that inner universe of the soul. If we want to use a more pictorial language: he knew that as Osiris was killed by Typhon, according to the legend, Isis was killed by Lucifer, and the corpse of Isis became the visible stars. As Tycho knew also of the healing and reviving force that creates the inner universe of the soul, he wanted to revive Isis again by the union between the inner and outer universe. In other words, already in the life before birth Tycho de Brahe decided to creep, as it were, into that that he had to regard as the remnants of Isis in order to spiritualize and unite them with what he knew was a creative reality in the soul of humanity. He realized that the stars were the most eloquent manifestation of nature, the uttermost opposite end of that visible universe which seemed to be the contradiction to the invisible universe in the soul. Therefore, he had decided to become not only a sage of the stars but also of the alchemy of the substances.

This is the reason why he endeavored, not without success, to establish a connection between the starry universe and human destiny along the lines of astrology. He did this in an age in which consciousness had already moved far away from such a knowledge, and yet he was able to study the stars in their courses in a manner that was absolutely akin to modern scientific research. This is also the reason why he refused to acknowledge the Copernican system of the solar universe.

Copernicus had introduced the idea of the Earth, together with the other planets, moving around the central Sun, which was fixed to its place. It had replaced the old Ptolemaic system, according to which the Earth was imagined to be fixed in the center of the solar system and the Sun with the planets moving around the Earth. Tycho de Brahe rejected the idea of Copernicus, because for him it was an impossible thought to imagine the Earth being degraded into a grain of dust circling around the Sun as its dependent vassal. He anticipated, rightly, that the introduction of the Copernican system would bring into being a conception of the starry universe as a lifeless mechanism or clockwork. This was again his deep impulse of unification; he was searching for a conception of the universe of a quality congenial to the living soul universe in human beings. He conceived a system of the solar universe in which the planets, except the Earth, are moving around the Sun, yet this Sun then describes an orbit around the Earth that is fixed in the center.

Still he could not fully realize this impulse of unification. He had the impulse, but he was unable to create ideally and scientifically a universe in which what he considered to be the two halves — the world of nature reaching out to the stars and the soul world of human beings — were one. What was the reason for this difficulty? The reflection of the event of Mars entering Fishes fell into Tycho's 56th year of life. This was just the time when he died. Therefore, although we see Mars in Fishes at the time of his birth, he did not really develop the aspect of Mars in this constellation. If he had lived it out on Earth he would have had the strength to elaborate such a Cosmos of Union. For Mars in Goat and Waterman gives the impulse of spiritual union of that which is divided in the world, and Fishes provides the capacity to realize this impulse in a Cosmos of Wisdom. Destiny decided it differently for Tycho de Brahe. He sacrificed this last aspect of Mars in Fishes. This became manifest in the fact that he could not create a sound mathematical basis for his own system of the universe, and it fell into oblivion after his death. Also, he could not convince his pupil and coworker, the famous Kepler, of the error of the Copernican system. Thus the mechanical aspect of the universe, based on the Copernican system, came into the foreground and began to dominate science more and more.

Mars in Fishes was sacrificed, but the time for the realization of Tycho's impulse had not yet come. It resurrected in the spiritual world after his death, and it gradually works into the future until this soul can incarnate again in a body and realize what had been denied in the past. As we have already pointed out in the last letter, he has inspired others who lived after him, and he still does so. To speak in the language of the stars: his inspirations come just from that constellation of Fishes, which he was not allowed to incorporate into the Earth. Both those personalities, who were spoken of in the last letter, were born into a conjunction (Frohschammer) of Saturn and Jupiter in Fishes, or into an opposition (Schelling) of these two planets respectively in Fishes, in Virgin. And we have the proof that today people who are true pupils of Tycho have also a conjunction or opposition of Saturn and Jupiter in Fishes or the opposite constellation.

Tycho inspires ideas and impulses of true union between nature and spirit. One might almost call him a spiritual monist. In the last letter we mentioned Schelling and Frohschammer as inspired by Tycho de Brahe. Schelling lived in the time of the two famous philosophers Fichte and Hegel. For a time he followed their lines of philosophy, but then he went his own way. Separating himself from Fichte's conception, he declared that philosophy must be able to prove that the laws of nature are the same as the laws in the mental realm and the reverse. The point from which the researches in both directions would have to start could be nowhere but in the infinite, in a realm of absolute identity of the ideal and the real, or of nature and the spirit. Therefore, his philosophy, which he elaborated in his later years, was called Philosophy of Identity.

Here we have quite clearly an inspiration of unification. Also in Frohschammer's philosophy we can detect this trend. He regarded the principle of imagination (phantasy) as an objective creative force in nature as well as in the mental realm.

Incidents in modern times, which are too subtle to be described here, indicate that Tycho de Brahe now goes still further in his inspiration, and that he prepares a mighty impulse of universal unification. He does not only inspire unification in a philosophical sense, he works everywhere where he can awake enthusiasm for practical and spiritual union and coordination of that in human culture, which is in danger of being atomized into senseless and even dangerous fractions.

It can be said that Tycho de Brahe has become a disciple and a teacher of the Golden Triangle. Wherever there are contradictions and opposing forces or tendencies in the cultural world of humanity, he is one of those who inspired the idea of Trinity. For into whatever garment of physical existence they may sheathe themselves, the two as polarity and contradiction are always the source of destruction and confusion in the human world. Only if the third principle steps in between the two can harmony and coordination of the resisting forces be established.

Thus the soul of the one of whom we speak is an inspirer of threefoldness, for it is the true union whether it be with regard to the social aspect of humanity or of knowledge.