transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was held until the end of
World War II. After the war, he was an instructor in the Hohenstaufen Classical High
School in Göppingen and spent his spare time on astrological research and writing.
Koch was critical of charlatanism and new systems of astrology (as someone
trained in classical studies, he was inclined to be a traditionalist). He was especially
antagonistic toward fatalism in astrology. He was very interested in colors and in sys-
tems of house division, and it is his work in the latter field that made him known in
North America. The Koch system is based on the older Regiomontanus system and is
discussed in his book Regiomontanus and the Birthplace House System(1960). Koch died
on February 25, 1970.
Sources:
Holden, James H., and Robert A. Hughes. Astrological Pioneers of America.Tempe, AZ: Ameri-
can Federation of Astrologers, 1988.
Koch, Walter A. Psychologische Farbenlehre.Halle, Germany: Carl Marhold Verlagshuchhand-
lung, 1931.
———. Regiomontanus und das Häusersystem des Geburtsortes.Göppingen, Germany: Sirivsver-
lag, 1960.
Koch, Walter A., and O. von Bressendorf. Astrologische Farbenlehre.Munich, Germany: O. W.
Barth Verlag, 1930.
KOCHUNAS, BRADLEYWAYNE
Bradley Wayne Kochunas was born July 29, 1950, in Hartford, Connecticut. He is a
graduate of Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio (B.A., religion, 1975), Miami
University in Oxford, Ohio (M.A., religion, 1985) and the University of Cincinnati
(C.A.G.S., counselor education, 1995). He first became interested in astrology in col-
lege after reading Grant Lewi’s introduction to astrology, Heaven Knows What,then
immersed himself in the voluminous writings of Dane Rudhyar, which initially shaped
his thinking about astrology.
Kochunas majored in religion in graduate school with the express purpose of
researching astrology to help it gain academic legitimacy as a field of study. His thesis
(available online at cura.free.fr/cura-en) focused upon the religious and therapeutic
dimensions within contemporary astrology, applying the hermeneutic methods of reli-
gion historian Mircea Eliade (one of the modern founders of religious studies as an
academic discipline) to the field of astrology to establish that it could be regarded as a
cosmological discipline evidencing structures of sacred space and sacred time as elabo-
rated by Eliade’s work in the phenomenology of religions.
Since 1985, his view has been greatly influenced by James Hillman, Thomas
Moore, and the other archetypal theorists. Kochunas describes astrology as providing
a framework for imagining a profound intimacy between ourselves and our world. He
views his contribution to astrology as promoting it as a discipline of the imaginal
rather than the literal: In personal communication in 2002, Kochunas said, “It is a
poetics of the Imagination, like art and religion, better suited for soulmaking than ego
building. It has value in its own right without need for validation from the dominant
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Kochunas, Bradley Wayne