It turns out that there were dueling horoscopes concerning Martin Luther. The counter-Luther forces based their chart on a birth year of 1483, while Philip Melanchthon, Luther's great Reformist confederate, sought to make Luther’s reforming mission contingent on the year 1484, a date representing "a great conjunction of planets, calculated generations in advance, ... expected to herald a new epoch in Oriental religion.” Melanchthon, “inclined toward drastic astrological intervention” in the controversy over Luther’s birthdate, went so far as to consult with Luther's mother.
Luther himself was averse to all astrology, a feeling “deeply rooted in his religious faith,” which led him into “forthright disagreement” with Melanchthon. As he wrote in a letter of August 1540: “No one will ever persuade me — neither Paul, nor an angel from Heaven, nor even Philipp — to believe in the predictions of astrology, which are so often mistaken that nothing is more uncertain. For if they forecast correctly even two or three times, they mark it; if they are wrong, they conceal it.” In the same connection he wrote of astrologers: "Es ist ein dreck mit irer kunst.”
The essay emerged from Warburg's preoccupation with astrology and superstition during World War I, especially as these two "pagan" inheritances influenced Allied "media coverage" of German atrocities. Apparently astrology still has cachet among the media, as can be seen in an article in Vanity Fair concerning predictions to be found in Donald Trump's horoscope. I have not yet read the piece, but it can be found here. I predict many dueling horoscopes going forward. By the way, Trump was born on June 14, 1946, during an eclipse, certainly a propitious event, depending on your point of view.
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