The Fault Is Not in Our Stars 57I intend to be in Vienna within fourteen days. N.B. Also what nation
or profession will my secret or public enemies come from.^9Nothing in this letter and the related correspondence from Taxis sug-
gests that Wallenstein had made any other approach to Kepler in the
intervening years, so the question is what prompted him to do so in
- One obvious possibility is that the dramatic change in his stand-
ing and circumstances had reminded him of the old horoscope with its
hints, albeit brief and guarded ones, of great things. An easy inference
from his letter is that he had also consulted other astrologers, indeed
several, but who had sought out whom is an open question. Kepler may
have let slip that he had previously cast the horoscope of the man eve-
ryone was talking about, but even without such a hint it is not improb-
able that the multifarious petitioners struggling to catch the attention
of this powerful newcomer included impecunious astrologers, some of
whom may have prepared unsolicited forecasts for him in the hope of a
full commission or even a post in his entourage. Had the impetus come
from Wallenstein it seems more likely that he would have referred in
the first instance to Kepler, who had not only already prepared him a
horoscope but was also the acknowledged top man in the field. What
he did with the forecasts from the others speaks for itself; he referred
them to Kepler.
Mann’s view that Wallenstein had ‘absolute faith in Kepler’s deduc-
tions’ stemmed largely from his supposedly asking ‘whether, on the
basis of this and that happening at a date earlier or later than antici-
pated, it were not with hindsight possible to correct the minutes and
hour of his birth, especially as “clocks do not at all times go right”’. In
fact it was not Wallenstein who asked this but Taxis; the quotation is
from the latter’s letter to Kepler of 16 December 1624 but there is no
comparable point in the instructions from Wallenstein. As noted above,
Taxis had his own interest in astrology, and Kepler himself had provided
the cue in the original horoscope, where he began: ‘Provided that this
lord was born at the reported time, day and hour, then it may with truth
be said ...’.^10
Kepler was clearly embarrassed by the request to recalculate
Wallenstein’s horoscope. The unknown young Bohemian nobleman
who had commissioned the original work could have been briefly dis-
missed, perhaps not even favoured with a reply, but the rich and power-
ful military governor of Bohemia was a different matter. Kepler had to
say something – but what? For the sake of his professional reputation
he could not simply admit that his previous prognostications were far