58 Wallenstein
wide of the mark. Instead he accepted the way out which Taxis had
offered him and back-calculated a corrected time of birth, six and a half
minutes later than the time he had first been given.^11 To the recipient
this might well have seemed credible, as the recorded time of half past
four had the air of an approximation quite adequate for the purposes of
the midwife and parents but not accurate enough for a horoscope. For
Kepler it provided the opportunity to bring at least some of the earlier
predictions more closely into line with the actual experiences which
Wallenstein had noted, and because the moon was thus moved into the
next position he could happily report that the more extreme character-
istics of the subject were considerably moderated.^12
That still left the problem of the further and better particulars that
Wallenstein was requesting. Kepler was not inclined to give hostages to
fortune by making new specific forecasts for a client in such an influ-
ential position in such troubled times, particularly one who had shown
himself ready to check them against actual experience and call the
forecaster to account. Deciding that attack was the best form of defence,
and hiding behind the by then totally threadbare professional pretence
that he was working on behalf of an unknown client, he reproached his
subject for his superstition and set out a comprehensive repudiation of
the idea that astrologers could in fact make precise forecasts of an indi-
vidual’s future from the stars. In fairness it should be said that this fits in
with a progressive change in Kepler’s attitude to the predictive power of
astrology, from faith in his youth to increasing scepticism with advanc-
ing age and deeper involvement in astronomy, which he described as a
wise mother having astrology as her foolish daughter.^13
Kepler’s beliefs concern us less here than Wallenstein’s, but the latter
cannot fail to have been impressed by the trenchantly stated warnings
given by the leading authority of the day. In his response of January
1625, which was three times as long as the original horoscope, Kepler
made the point not once but at least eleven times. It was, he said,
a delusion to believe that particular events could all be forecast from the
heavens, as they were seldom the impetus and almost never the only
one. The subject and others involved did many things of their own free
will which they were not compelled by the stars to do, and hence they
brought on or delayed the natural course of events so that they could
not occur with their due celestial form and timing. Nor was the individ-
ual’s free will the only thing which might intervene. Were a pregnant
woman to fall down the stairs her child might be born notwithstanding
that the stellar time was not right. Outside circumstances might frus-
trate fulfilment, as for example in 1611 when Wallenstein could not