The Fault Is Not in Our Stars 53great weight on every word’.^2 As this view has frequently been repeated
the evidence upon which it is based needs to be examined.
In 1608 the 24-year-old Wallenstein and a former comrade in arms,
Lieutenant Gerhard Taxis, decided to have their horoscopes cast by the
emperor’s own astrologer, the famous mathematician and astronomer
Johannes Kepler. Taxis, who made the arrangement, then went abroad,
but on his return six years later he wrote several times to Kepler point-
ing out that while Wallenstein had long since received his analysis
he himself had not. The pressing terms Taxis used to persuade Kepler
to complete his horoscope indicate his own serious interest in astrol-
ogy, and he might well have been the moving spirit in the first joint
approach.^3
Kepler’s horoscope for Wallenstein proved to be typical of the genre,
containing a number of points which were relatively accurate and some
others which were quite wrong, but in the main comprising observa-
tions sufficiently general for the subject to discover as much of himself
as he cared to within them.^4 He was not particularly keen to undertake
the commission as he was busy with important scientific observations,
but payment of official salaries was notoriously erratic so that the fee
was probably welcome. As Wallenstein was young, unimportant and not
even rich in 1608 it is unlikely that Kepler felt it necessary to exercise
more than his normal professional diligence or to do much surreptitious
background research before preparing the horoscope. According to con-
vention he was not supposed to know the identity of his subject, but he
had two contacts from whom he may have gleaned a little information,
Taxis and the Prague doctor who made the introduction. Whatever the
sources Kepler used, his mention of problems having arisen between
the subject’s eleventh and thirteenth years must have suggested to
Wallenstein the death of his parents, and he may well have seen refer-
ence to difficulties with scholars in the following years as alluding to
his escapades at Altdorf, while Kepler’s identification of a serious illness
in the subject’s twenty-first year was accurate enough although a year
out. These details from the horoscope are a standard part of the fortune-
teller’s art, using known or likely events from the past to build confi-
dence in the predictions for the future.
The most striking of Kepler’s specific forecasts was that his subject
would make an advantageous marriage to a widow, not beautiful but
rich, in his thirty-third year. This was not wildly unlikely, as many
young noblemen of modest means had aspirations of that kind. Even
so Wallenstein was impressed, later writing alongside this passage
that he had indeed made the anticipated marriage, and to just such a