The Fault Is Not in Our Stars 59have had the forecast military appointment because there was no war
in that year. Kepler even pointed out his own errors and demolished
his apparent successes. He had forecast that the subject might become
the leader of a dissident faction but the exact opposite had apparently
happened; since the subject was a native-born Bohemian but was still
active in the military it followed that he could not have sided with the
malcontents there. Regarding the subject’s wife, true enough he had
hit the mark, but even so what had happened had its sole basis neither
in the subject’s nativity nor in his free will but depended also on the
counterpart’s nativity and free will, which he, Kepler, could neither
have seen or known, so that his accuracy here had been a matter of luck
and could not be taken as a precedent for other predictions.
Kepler did respond to the particular questions Wallenstein had asked,
but only to dismiss them outright or to use them as an opportunity to
pour scorn on the other astrologers involved. Nevertheless he consented
to calculate the planetary positions for the coming years, the so-called
revolutions, not, he emphasised, so that earthly events could be pre-
dicted from these celestial configurations, but merely to demonstrate
his own diligence. However in setting out the technical data he did also
add brief interpretative comments, which read much like horoscopes in
modern newspapers. The coming year looked very good and the next was
also favourable, but a couple of years later the prospects were more bad
than good and for the year after that they were mediocre. One year was
disposed towards important actions but also to damaging hindrances.
Another would bring honour but also conflict. Almost nothing specific
was forecast apart from recurrent gout, a safe prediction as that was the
nature of the disease and Wallenstein had already noted that he suffered
from it. Only in March 1634 did anything remarkable appear, as all five
of the then known planets made a ‘wondrous cross’, which brought to
mind his previous prediction for 1613, ‘and the terrible disturbances in
the land threatened at that time’. Some commentators have used the
March 1634 date and the reference to ‘terrible disturbances’ to suggest
either or both that Kepler had correctly forecast Wallenstein’s death
in February of that year or that Wallenstein’s actions in his last weeks
were influenced by fear of some imminent predicted fate. This is simply
wrong, as the disturbances were specifically stated to be those threat-
ened for around 1613, not twenty years later. Furthermore, although
Kepler’s wording here was particularly Delphic, he certainly did not
imply that this was the end for his subject, for whom he had previously
predicted death at 70, that is in about 1653. On the contrary, having
laboriously calculated these revolutions for a full decade he concluded