The Cosmos and I

One comes across Goethe in the darndest place, as I have often discovered. My husband, Rick, taught physics and had a huge library of books on the history of science, his special interest. I have been going through these books and listing the more valuable ones on Amazon for sale. A few days ago I received a request for The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton, published in 1950 by the Dutch historian of science E.J. Dijksterhuis. (First English translation, 1960.) Paging through it I came across a footnote in section 108 in which appears the poem Goethe wrote after his ascent of the Brocken in 1783:

Wär' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft,
Die Sonne könnt es nie erblicken;
Läg nicht in uns das Gottes eigne Kraft,
Wie könnt' uns Göttliches entzücken?

 The poem comes up in Professor Dijksterhuis's discussion of astrology in the ancient world. Apparently, the Babylonian legacy of "star science" was systematized by the Greeks, especially by the Old and Middle Stoa.

 Stoicism, he writes, "taught people to view the world as a living being, endowed with reason and feeling. ... Man is a microcosm, a small-scale image of the whole, which he would not be able to know if he were not essentially akin to it. It is the thought which Maniliu was aferwards to express in the verses: Quis coelum possit nisi coeli munere nosse et reperire Deum nisi qui pars ipse Deorum est." There follows the footnote reference to Goethe's poem, which, he writes "voice[s] an essential elements of [Goethe's] natural philosophy."

Persian astrologer Mashallah ibn Athari

At the end of this chapter Dijksterhuis mentions a difference of opinion that divided the minds of ancient men, namely, "whether the celestial bodies themselves actually affect events on earth by their influence or whether they merely act as omens announcing those events." Many thinkers, after all, thought it incompatible with free will and responsibility "that men's characters and fortunes should be influenced by celestial bodies," even if they were unable to give up the theory of the relation between terrestrial and celestial events, "which was universally accepted and supported by the greatest authorities."

So, where did Goethe stand on this question?

Picture credits: Information is Beautiful; Who Guides; Staff Science

Happy Birthday, Goethe!

It was on the 28th of August 1749, at the stroke of twelve noon, that I came into the world in Frankfurt on the Main. The constellation was auspicious: the Sun was in Virgo and at its culmination for the day. Jupiter and Venus looked amicably upon it, and Mercury was not hostile. Saturn and Mars maintained indifference. Only the Moon, just then becoming full, was in a position to exert averse force, because its planetary hour had begun. It did, indeed, resist my birth, which did not take place until this hour had passed.

These good aspects, which astrologers in later years taught me to value very highly, were probably responsible for my survival, for the midwife was so unskilled that I was brought into the world as good as dead, and only with great difficulty could I be made to open my eyes and see the light.

Goethe begins his autobiography with the above description of his birth. He was being somewhat fanciful, for he rejected the "metaphysical assumptions" of astrology, namely, that one's path in life was determined by the position of the planets and other stars at the moment of one's birth.

Nevertheless, he saw fate (Schicksal), an element of what he referred to as necessity (Notwendigkeit), determining one's life in an "incomprehensible way" (auf unbegreifliche Weise). Moral freedom was achieved by the individual working within the limitations imposed by necessity and thereby crafting a meaningful life. Goethe's view would seem to have much in common with the Ancients, especially the Stoics, an aspect I have not investigated much in connection with Goethe. There is a great element of willfulness in his view of the world, especially as he grew older, perhaps influenced by a resistance to enthusiasm or mysticism, as if willing something to be the case would make it so.

I suspect that Goethe's description of his birth is playing on the account in Matthew 2: 1-12 of the Three Magi who followed the star from the East to the site of where Jesus lay in the manger. They are portrayed above in a late 6th-century mosaic at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuova in Ravenna.

Even if Goethe himself rejected astrology, astrologers themselves have devoted themselves to plotting his natal chart. For a full "Astro-databank" on Goethe, go to this link, where you can find a larger image of the chart above; for Christiane here.

Poetry and Truth translation credit: Robert R. Heitner; natal chart: Astrotheme