ज्योतिषे विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

Appendix 23

See J. Kepler, “De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii et qui sub ejus exortum de novo iniit Trigono Igneo,” in Opera Omnia, ed. C. Frisch (1859), vol. 2, p. 636. See also J. Kepler, “De vero anno quo Aeternus Dei Filius humanam naturam . . . assumsit,” in Opera Omnia (1863), vol. 4, pp. 346ff.

Kepler was less interested in the revolution of one angle of the trigon through the whole zodiac than in the span of time which the conjunctions needed to pass through all four “elements,” particularly between conjunctions in the “fiery triplicity.” The zodiac is divided into four “elementary” trigons or triplicities in the following manner:

Fire: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius
Earth: Taurus, Virgo, Capricornus
Air: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius

Water: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

The “great conjunction” of Saturn and Jupiter, occurring every twenty years, remains about 200 years within one triplicity; it moves through all four “elements” in 800 years (more exactly: in 794 1/3 years). By means of the average of 800 years which it took the conjunction to pass from one “fiery triplicity” to the other, Kepler reconstructed history: 4000 b.c. Adam Creatio mundi
3200 Enoch Latrocinia, urbes, artes, tyrannis
2400 Noah Diluvium
1600 Moses Exitus es Aegypto. Lex
800 Isaiah Aera Graecorum, Babyloniorum, Romanorum
0 Christ Monarchia Romana. Reformatio orbis
800 a.d. Carolus Magnus Imperium Occidentis et Saracenorum 1600 Rudolphus II Vita, facta et vota nostra, qui haec disserimus As concerns the — faraway — 2,400 A.D., Kepler remarks: “Ubi tunc nos et modo Florentissima nostra Germania? Et quinam successores nostri? An et memores nostri erunt? Siquidem mundus duraverit.” (“Florentissima Germania”: this was written before the Thirty Years’ War started.)

Compare H. H. Kritzinger (Der Stern der Weisen [1911], pp. 35, 44, 59), who deals broadly with the significance of “great conjunctions,” and who adds: “The same table was repeated, with more precise data, by Riccioli in his Almagestum Novum (Tom. 1, 672-75), beginning with the verses:

Ignea Triplicitas, coniunctio Maxima dicta Saturniq. Jouisque, annis redit Octingentis.”

What is called here “great conjunction” — occurring every twenty years — has been styled in earlier times, i.e., in Sasanian and Arabian astrology, “small conjunction,” as we learn from E. S. Kennedy: [1]

After about 12 such small conjunctions the next conjunction will pull forward into the next triplicity. This event, called the shift or transit (intiqâl al-mamarr) is also known as the middle conjunction . . . Four middle conjunctions carry the phenomenon through all the triplicities and make up a big conjunction. But in order that the entire cycle recommence from a particular initial sign, taken as Capricorn, three big conjunctions are required, these making up a mighty conjunction.

A “mighty conjunction” thus corresponds to the revolution of one angle or corner of the trigon of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions — built up in sixty years (more correctly: 59.6 years) — through the whole zodiac, completed in 2,400 years (2,383 years, respectively).

For one particular reason why the “big conjunction” of 800 years should be multiplied by 3, see Oscar Marcel Hinze’s article: [2] within the frame of archaic “Gestalt-Astronomie,” it was the revolution of the trigon as a whole that “counted.” (Hinze deals also with the hexagon, i.e., the “Gestalt” of Mercury — revolution of one corner about twenty years — and with the famous “Pentagramma Veneris.”)

As concerns the role of Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions in Iran and India, cf. also D. Pingree (“Astronomy and Astrology in India and Iran,” ISIS 54 [1963], p. 244), and the forthcoming paper by B. L. van der Waerden on “the conjunction of 3,102 B.C.” — this very conjunction introduces the flood of the Mahabharata. Allegedly, there is no trace of big conjunctions in Hindu and Hellenistic astrology. Astrology, however, is not found in texts only which are recognizable as such at first glance. Apart from Greece, where we have — besides the wrestling of Kronos and Saturn at Olympia — also the Daidalia, held in the interval of sixty years — sixty-year cycles in India, or in the West Sudan, are not likely to be understood, if the scholars prefer to inhibit the trigon of the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction; this inhibition being the logical outcome of the persistent refusal to recognize Saturn and Jupiter as Saturn and Jupiter.

The decisive conjunction of 6 B.C. (that “opened” our age of Pisces) having been near zeta Piscium, it is slightly surprising to learn from Burgess (Sūrya-Siddhānta, p. 14) the following — he explains the Indian notion of nutation (also called libration): “The vernal equinox librates westwards and eastwards from the fixed point, near zeta Piscium, assumed as the commencement of the sidereal sphere,” the “libration” moving in eastern and western directions for twenty-seven degrees from this fixed point. On p. 230 he states about zeta Piscium that “it coincided in longitude with the vernal equinox in the year 572 of our era.”

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“The Sasanian Astronomical Handbook Zij-i Shâh, and the Astrological Doctrine of ‘Transit’ (Mamarr),” JAOS 78 (1958), p. 259.
“Studien zum Verständnis del archaischen Astronomie,” in Symbolon, Jahrbuch für Symbolforschung 5 (1966), pp. 162-219, esp. pp. 203ff.