Johannes Kepler

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I didn't know that Kepler did hundreds of charts and studied them intensely for astrological influences on character. He concluded that astrology played a role in the individual life but the horoscope could not predict a person's nature or future with much accuracy. In some ways he seems "modern" in his focus on psychology and personality over the traditional emphasis on the chart representing one's place in the world.

He was acutely sensitive to cultural factors that impacted individual destiny, making prediction difficult. One of his examples was the comparison of his chart to his mother's. Although they had "many similar aspects", he, Johannes, was a man who valued intellect, knowledge, and ambition (with diplomacy) along with an aversion to manual labor, while his mother was illiterate, hard-working, plain-speaking, and at age 70 was imprisoned and tried for being a witch! Kepler freed his mother (acquittals were extremely rare) with a brilliant defense arguing that the accusations against her originated in the fear of aged widowed women acting independently, among other cultural and sociological factors. Naturally his intellectual gifts were employed to examine and dismiss each and every spurious charge. He allowed that his mother could be difficult and perhaps in a slight way contributed to her troubles, but that was true of Kepler and many others who did not end up so besieged.

Johannes Kepler was unable to secure a university position his entire life due to his defense of Copernicus's sun-centered astronomy and his questioning of religious dogma. He was not, however, accused of being a witch.

"The Astronomer and the Witch" by Ulinka Rublack.