Part One

The Basics; Astrology of the ‚Babylonians‘ vs ‚Hebrew Astrology‘

In this first section of the introduction to the ‚Astrology of the Hebrews‘, how it is described especially by Friedrich Weinreb, it is necessary to lay a fundament of some basic concepts of what can be called ‚Ancient Wisdom‘. This ‚wisdom‘ is not at all limited to the so-called ‚Hebrews‘ as one distinct people of human history, but it is found to a lesser or larger degree in many, if not all of the ancient cultures of Mankind.

Here the word ‚ancient‘ does not necessarily mean actually ‚far away in past times‘, but rather something like ‚far deep down in the human sub- or unconsciousness‘ (that area where all the ‚myths‘ flow from …). That is, true ‚Ancient Wisdom‘ is a form of knowledge, which is present in every human being, but normally has to be ‚digged out‘ first nowadays, before it can be experienced consciously, because the modern world tends to work directly against it with all their fixation on one-sided rationality and purely causal explanation for developments in the measurable realm.

The word ‚Hebrew‘, too, needs to be clarified first. It is not in the first place referring to a specific ethnic group, but rather to something like a ’spiritual community‘, present throughout all times, and especially the word refers to a layer of being, too, which is present in every single individual: that layer in all of us, which stems ‚from the Other Side‘. Although of course historically the ‚Hebrew element‘ indeed is manifest for a certain period of time as an actual ethnic group; but already ‚back then‘ this group has been always open for everyone, who follows the eternal principals, too (see for example Exodus 12, 49; Numeri 15, 14-15).

Two variants of Astrology, which are seen as being opposed to each other to a certain degree, can be called ‚the Astrology of Becoming‘ and ‚the Astrology of Being‘. The ladder will be the main topic of this introduction, while the former is the one widely (more or less) known to the modern world, in the shape of daily newspaper horoscopes and of the deeper ‚esoteric‘ treatment of the zodiacal signs.

That wider known ‚Astrology of Becoming‘ is called the ‚Babylonian Astrology‘ from the point of view of this ‚Other Astrology‘, the one of ‚Being‘, the ‚Hebrew one‘.

From the Hebrew language, the name ‚Babylon‘ is pronounced ‚Babel‘ (written with the three consonant letters B-B-L) and can be translated as ‚confusion; mixture, intermingling‘. It is one symbol for ‚this chaotic world we live in‘, wherein no boundaries are kept forever and where everything flows into each other; but it is nonetheless a ‚world of organization‘, too, for in the ‚area of Babel‘ it happened according to the Bible (see Genesis 11), that Mankind united for the first time and started their unholy work on the so-called ‚Tower of Babel‘, an everlasting project, by which we human beings are trying (until nowadays) to ‚reach heaven‘, and by this: control the spread of human population, hold the whole world together by our OWN rules and ‚make ourselves a name before the Gods‘.

According to these characteristics of the mythical ‚Babel‘, the ‚Babylonian Astrology‘ has certain characteristics itself: It is called the ‚female‘ astrology; that means, this astrology is (almost) only looking at the ‚appearing‘, at ‚this side of the world‘, at the concrete, at the observable and measureable, it is a system completely based on causality; it is first and for all ‚calculating‘, searching for ‚perfect‘, definite results. By this it is quite ‚unfree‘, because according to its understanding of reality everything is (and always stays) fixed into a network of force and necessity, intermingled with everything else. That brings with it, that there is no real individuality of the single individuals, whose ‚horoscopes‘ are looked at, because only the observable ’star constellations‘ (or in a more modern understanding: the ‚measurable factors‘ in one’s life, like the ‚genes‘, or the ‚epigenetics‘ being determined by the environment and the way of being raised in this environment, and the happenings of one’s life) are determining the whole destiny. WHO it is, what inner quality that human being uniquely brings into this world from out of his/her Source on the Other Side, does not really matter for this kind of Astrology. Nevertheless, this Babylonian Astrology indeed IS quite correct, from a purely causal look at reality.

But the OTHER Astrology, which shall be presented in the following, is the ‚Hebrew‘ one, the ‚Astrology of Being‘, not of ‚Becoming‘. The word ‚Hebrew‘ comes from the hebrew word ‚Eber‘ (written with the consonant letters E-B-R), which can be translated with a wide spectrum of meanings, including ‚transitory‘; ‚one, who transcends‘; ‚one, from the other side‘ and similar.

This ‚Hebrew Astrology‘ thus is the ‚Astrology of the Eternal‘, the one looking for ‚the Other Side‘, too, and by this it is including the single individuals deliberate influence on his/her own destiny. This is expressed in the mythical language as counting with the so-called ‚hidden planets‘, too. Those ‚hidden planets‘ are not observable in the outside world, but only are traceable through the individuals uniqueness. And especially these ‚hidden planets‘ can always make the decisive difference (far reaching into this world of causality, too!) …

Some basic concepts of the Ancient Wisdom have to be established first, before it can be spoken of the actual Astrology. Namely the three principles we can call: the ‚Male-Female-Antagonism bearing the Fruit (3²+4²=5²)‘, the ‚2-to-1-Journey of Creation through Mankind‘ and the ‚1-4-Principle as the inner structure of salvation, i.e. of the looking through the manifold, seeing the hidden unity of the manifold‘ (and by this, realizing this Unity of the ‚Four‘ as being of another level of reality, not out of the ‚Four‘ itself). Without further explanations these three names cannot really be understood of course, because they use a type of ‚language‘ or wording, which is very uncommon in our society.

All of these principles are to a large part expressed in terms of ’numbers‘ and their relations to each other. This is, because in the Ancient Wisdom the numbers are understood rather as ‚values‘, than as mere ‚digits‘, it is looked firstly at their ‚quality‘ instead of purely looking at the logical ‚quantity‘ of those numbers, as we do it nowadays, only using numbers as tools to organize reality for our everyday-purposes.

On the first view it may seem to be complicated, if one is not familiar with this way of thinking. But as soon as one gets accustomed to the way of speech and to the fundamental Biblical symbolisms, it simplifies things very heavily and opens the view for broader connections and correlations within the whole of creation, including oneself and one’s relation to the surrounding world and concerning the happenings of one’s (even everyday-)life.

Those aforementioned three fundamental principles now can be explained as being connected to what is called the ‚6^th, 7^th and 8^th Day of Creation‘. For this purpose it is necessary here to give a very short overview of the Biblical ‚Seven-Day-Work of Creation‘ in its schematic essence, how Friedrich Weinreb points it out in much more depth in his basic work ‚Roots of the Bible‘ (‚Schöpfung im Wort‘ in German).

So only very briefly: The 7 ‚days‘ (or ’stages‘) of Creation are grouped in 6+1 (the six days of ‚work‘, and the 7^th being set apart, as the one day, where the Creator ‚is resting‘, representing this measurable ‚world of linear time‘ that we now live in as Mankind). And the ‚6 days of work‘ again are split in 2 x 3. These ‚two times three‘ means, that the second 3 days can be recognized as a mere repetition of the first 3 days, only on a new, a ‚higher‘ level. Thus it is a ‚duality of triads‘, from which that ‚6‘, as the ‚abstract basic pattern of creation‘, is built (and by the way, the ‚unfolding‘ of the number 3, which represents the ‚male‘, i.e. the ‚abstract‘ of this world, is the 6: 3+2+1=6).

Now: in each of the two 3-day-periods we firstly find the number 4 as the value of the actual ‚outer‘ actions of that period, since it is always 3 ‚days‘ being ‚built‘ out of 4 ‚words‘ (that is ‚actions‘) of God. Only on the final sixth day there are actually two additional ‚words‘ of God, which then sum up (with the 8 before) to 10 ‚God-actions‘ in total, which thus make the ‚concrete, experienceable scenery of creation‘ (and by the way again: the 10 is the ‚unfolding‘ of the number 4, which represents the ‚female‘, i.e. the ‚concrete‘ of this world: 4+3+2+1=10).

The ‚fulfillment‘ of a number (mathematically called its ‚potency‘) in this Ancient Wisdom then means the totality of combinations, in which the ‚containing‘ numbers can be put one next to another: 2 has as its potency 4 (2 x 2), because the only numbers contained by the 2 are the numbers 1 and 2, and those can be placed next to each other as 1×1, 1×2, 2×1, 2×2. Thus, 4 is the ‚fulfillment‘ of the 2. By this understanding it is said that: 4 (the number of the ‚female principle‘) is spiritually ‚the highest number‘ in our ‚World of Duality‘, so the 4 (respectively her derivatives, like the 40 and the 400) is the natural ’symbol of infinity‘, of ‚the whole‘ of any dualistic reality.

With that basic scheme sketched out, we can now look at the decisive three ‚days‘: the 6^th , 7^th and the coming 8^th.

The ‚Sixth Day‘: On the 6^th day of the mythical ‚creation week‘ Mankind is created. In the land of (mythical) ‚Egypt‘, later in the Biblical story, ‚Israel‘ then becomes a nation, developing out of the few descendants of Jacob (whose second name becomes ‚Israel‘ during his ’struggle with something spiritual‘; for details see Genesis 32, 24-31). And at the end of the 6^th day of the creation week Mankind leaves ‚the Garden Eden‘, the ‚Paradise‘ (which is not anymore enjoyable for Mankind, after the ‚forbidden fruit‘ has ‚opened their eyes‘ and has shown them their own ’nakedness‘); just like Israel leaves the (until recently seemingly ‚well-functioning‘) land of Egypt (after they realized, how enslaved they actually are by Pharao and his world of ‚building‘, of unlimited material development). So, in the creation week, Mankind is created firstly in the ‚womb‘ (the ‚paradise‘) of Mother Earth and then born into the outer world of actual matter and time on the 6^th day. And in the Hebrew tradition the liberation out of Egypt is basically compared to the birth-process of a child (with the ‚plagues‘ over Egypt understood as ‚labour pains‘ of the birthing mother; the people of Israel being ‚born out of Egypt‘ as ‚the firstborn Child of the Eternal‘).

With all these parallels it is reasonable to see ‚Egypt‘ as a furtherly unfolded symbol for the ‚6^th Day‘ of Creation, where now the original Duality of that sixth day of Creation for the first time is being developed ‚to the broadest extent‘ (the ‚400 years of enslavement in Egypt‘), before then the liberation OUT OF this Duality, back to the ‚Oneness‘, can be experienced.

So the 6^th Day represents the infinite ‚Split‘; the formation and/or sustainment of a World of Duality: the primeval Male-Female-Antagonism – but already containing the potential ‚Fruit‘ coming thereof (because from the beginning on there IS a prophecy of God, that there will be salvation nevertheless, namely the ’seed of the woman‘, which is going to be ‚crushing the serpents head‘; see Genesis 3, 15) … In the creation week it was the first split of Mankind in Man and Woman, then the leaving of the ‚Paradise‘ to experience this duality on every level, the beginning of the actual ‚World of Duality‘ away from the Oneness with the Creator in the ‚Paradise‘. And in Egypt later it is the already fully developed World of Duality, and with that full development of the split, it is the point now, where the ‚turn‘ has to happen, to bring everything back to its Source, to the ‚One‘ (and therefore the ‚redeemer‘ Moses is born, as a heavenly response to the lamenting and moaning of the children of Israel about their enslavement).

That antagonism ‚Male-Female‘ means many things in this traditional understanding of the fundamental dualism of all Creation: Invisible-Visible, Secret-Revelation, Abstract-Concrete, ‚Fire-Water‘, Day-Night, Light-Darkness, ‚Sun-Moon‘, Eternity-Time, Heaven and Earth, Creator and His (Act of) Creation. And much more.

And to make clear that there is not one of the two ‚being superior to the other‘, it can be looked for instance at the relation of fire and water in nature: If the fire is exceeding, it condenses the water ‚away‘ by its heat. But if the water is exceeding, it extincts the fire, suffocating it. So the two are just two extremes, each with its own strenght and weakness, depending on circumstances, not one in itself ’superiour‘ to the other.

By the way: In the Hebrew the word for ‚Heaven‘ (’sh’mayim‘) can be understood as the combination of the letter ‚Sh(in)‘, which is originally written in the form of a fire flame, and the word ‚Mayim‘, which means ‚water‘. So in the word ‚Sh’mayim‘ there is both united in Oneness, fire and water building one single entity, an equilibrium, which down here on material Earth cannot be present in the same harmonic way. That is, ‚in Heaven‘ there is always BOTH present in perfect harmony: Eternity AND Time, the Creator AND His Creation.

And that, what comes out of the ‚conversation‘ between ‚water and fire‘ here on Earth, between female and male, is the ‚Child‘, or the ‚Fruit‘: the result of the combination of the two extremes, but not just as the ’sum‘, like two numbers adding up, but as something completely new, which combines characteristics of the two ‚parents‘ in a unique way, never predictable from the human point of view, but always still detectable as stemming from these parents as the ‚fruit‘ of their coming together. Like 3+4 does not equal 5, but only the fulfillment of the 3 coming together with the fulfillment of the 4, so the fulfillment of both, the Male and the Female, equals the fulfillment of the 5, the Fruit, the Child (3²+4²=5²).

In a way, Mankind itself can be understood as the ‚Fruit‘ of the coming together of Heaven and Earth: Mankind ‚in the image and resemblance of God‘, where the Creator has come down INTO His own Creation, to bring the whole world in her diversity and manifoldness all back to the Source THROUGH this Mankind, where the Divine Breath has been ‚blewn into the nose‘ of that ‚Earth-taken‘ Human Being to make this Human Being an actual ‚Living Soul‘ by this (see Genesis 2, 7), uniting Heaven and Earth.

The ‚Seventh day‘: The 7^th day of the Biblical Creation represents OUR world of time and space, the stage ‚when God rests from his work‘, because ‚everything is very good‘ (see Genesis 1, 31; 2, 2). That ‚everything is very good‘ in our world is something, we human beings have our problems with to accept … But for the purpose of this world, she indeed is ‚very good‘: this world with all her evil and struggle, death and diseases, won’t ever let us come to a final rest, always drives us further, so that we never can think, we are ‚finish‘ already. This world reminds us by her way of being, that it is the everlasting purpose of whole creation (after being created out of the Oneness of God, then splitting into the manifold): to get united again in the perception of Mankind (‚in the image of God‘), and this Mankind is functioning for that purpose as a (potential) Oneness vis-a-vis to the manifoldness of creation, of nature. And that means, every single human being is ‚tying back‘ the whole world, which he or she perceives, out of the manifold forms of nature and culture into the oneness of the Source, which is always present deep down within him/her. Or the same said in simple numeric symbolism: ‚bringing the created world back from the 2 to the 1‘.

This whole journey through the worlds is represented by ‚the 6^th, 7^th and 8^th day of Creation‘, with the Eighth Day as the ‚Coming World‘, the promised re-established Oneness of the origin, but now with the experience of having been split into the manifoldness and having been reunited again, out of free will to connect back with the Oneness as our Source, with God, our Heavenly Father.

… and now, when we have established ‚Egypt‘ as the equivalent to the 6^th day, and ‚getting liberated out of it by Moses‘ as the transition to the 7^th day, then biblically we are coming into the ‚Wilderness/Desert‘ as the equivalent of that 7^th day, wandering through this inhospitable world (content of the biblical books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numeri and Deuteronomy) until we are finally reaching the ‚8^th day‘, the ‚Promised Land‘ Canaan/Israel (content of the biblical book of ‚Joshua‘, or in Hebrew ‚Yehoshua‘, the exact same name as the greek variant ‚Jesus‘ in the New Testament, meaning ‚Assistance of the Eternal‘).

This Promised Land is called ‚Canaan‘, as long as we still have not reached and conquered it, because it is still occupied by the ‚canaanites‘, the earlier inhabitants. And the word ‚canaan(ites)‘ is translateable as ‚business men; traders‘ … The land is only later called ‚Israel‘, when all the ‚traders‘, i.e. all the counting, calculating and business-doing, that purely rational and causal try to cope with reality, that constant looking for the personal benefit and so on, is ultimately erased and driven out from it …

The ‚Eighth Day‘: In the coming world of the so-called ‚8^th Day‘ Mankind’s reality is finally ’seen through‘ and understood, by means of the ‚1-4-principle‘, which explains the necessity of so-called ‚evil‘ in this world. The ‚1-4-principle‘ says, that ‚the Five (= the FRUIT) is not built up of 5 equal ‚Ones‘, but it is built up of one ONE and of the FOUR in opposition to this One‘. And only by this specific structure the divine ‚One‘ becomes ‚consumable, useful, enjoyable‘ as such for Mankind in this ‚World of the Four‘.

Some examples in nature are: human body (1 head, 4 extremities), human hand (1 thumb, 4 fingers), air (1 part oxygen, 4 parts nitrogen), breathing-heartbeat-relation (1 breath while 4 heartbeats)

And some examples in Scripture are: two trees in the Garden Eden (Tree of Life with the numeric value of 233 and Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with the numeric value of 932, so a relation of 233 to 932, that is 1 to 4; Genesis 2,9); one river out of the Garden splitting into 4 streams ’nourishing the whole Earth‘ (Genesis 2,10); Jacob (also called ‚Israel‘, Archfather of the people of Israel) and his 4 wifes Lea, Rahel, Zilpah and Bilhah (see for example Genesis 35, 23-26); Joseph as king of Egypt collecting 1 fifth part of all the countries harvest for the coming seven ‚poor‘ years, while 4 fifth parts remain for the everyday-usage in the common ‚good‘ years until then (Genesis 41,34);

We see in these examples, that although it is always the ‚One‘, which makes the decisive effect, this ‚One‘ alone would not be sufficient in ‚this World of the 4‘: a hand without the four fingers, only with a thumb, would be quite useless; but if the thumb would be just like the other four fingers, the hand would be only an animal’s pawn. Similarly the oxygen of our air could not be breathed in without the 4 parts of nitrogen; or in the biblical symbolisms. similarly the Archfather Israel without his 4 wifes would have been not the Archfather of the specific people of Israel developing out of his 12 sons (but the 4 wifes without their shared one husband would not have become the mothers of the people of Israel either). And similarly the ‚Tree of Life‘ in the Garden Eden would not have been an object of free decision for Mankind, to take (only) off ITS fruits, if there would not have been the other tree as temptation, the ‚forbidden one‘ of ‚knowledge of Good and Evil‘, as the ‚4 coming with the 1‘. And by the way, if Mankind would have NEVER taken from the ‚forbidden fruit‘, i.e. from ‚the 4‘ … well, then the whole biblical story would have been veeeeery short and boring, right …

On this fundament now (the knowledge of the human ‚path through the desert‘ of this seventh day, from the sixth to the eighth: ‚bearing the fruit out of the convergence of male and female, to experience that fruit as the 5‘, by this experience the ‚coming from the 2 [3²+4²] to the 1 [=5²]‘, to finally be ‚honoring the ONE above – but not WITHOUT – the Four‘) appears the whole ‚Hebrew Astrology‘.

The individual human being is now looked at as a continuum of two souls, a continuum pervading essentially the whole distance between earth and heaven (or ’sky‘, ’space‘, the realm of the stars and planets), namely the continuum of the ’neshamah‘ and the ’nephesh‘, translateable roughly as the ‚divine soul‘ and the ‚animal soul‘. The actual human body of ‚flesh and blood‘ is merely the appearence of that duality of souls in this material world, the ‚female‘ (= visible, concrete) aspect of the human being so to speak, while the soul-complex itself is the ‚male‘ (= inwardly, abstract), the hidden aspect of every human being.

Now the ‚divine soul‘ is said to be in constant contact with the Divine in Heaven, while the ‚animal soul‘ is what is attached to our sensations and bodily feelings and thoughts of our heart.

And then there is something, which is called the ‚ruach‘ (translated mostly as ’spirit‘), that mediates between the ‚divine soul‘ up there and the ‚animal soul‘ down here. But this word ‚ruach‘ is not only translateable as ’spirit‘; it equally means ‚wind, air‘, and beside this even ‚direction; movement‘. And the 12 zodiacal signs are accordingly the 12 ‚directions and movements of the spirit‘ all around us, influencing the individual human being in 12 distinct qualities, connecting the individuals two soul-parts together throughout space.

Different as in the ‚babylonian‘ system, in Hebrew Astrology the 12 zodiacal signs are divided into 3 groups, not into 4 (according to the ‚4 Elements‘ Earth/Solid, Water/Liquid, Wind/Gaseous, Fire/Heat): 4 ‚female‘ (or ‚concrete‘) signs, 3 ‚male‘ (or ‚abstract‘) signs, 5 ‚fruit’/’child‘ signs.

The female is envisioned as a ‚horizontal‘ reality, male as a ‚vertical‘ reality; and the fruit or child is envisioned consequently as the ‚hypothenusis‘, completing the male and the female lines to a triangle; compare again to the famous ‚Pythagorean Theorem‘, 3²+4²=5².

One should be clear: every human being has ALL the zodiacal signs inside him-/herself, only some of the signs are more prominent, others are less prominent; depending on the movements of the ‚planets‘ throughout the zodiacal signs (and not ONLY at the time of birth, although that specific point in time HAS a certain weight of course).

Planets are generally the ‚moving‘ aspects, which are moving on the background of the (relatively) steady, enduring star-pictures of the Zodiac. In the Hebrew tradition this relation is compared to the relation of the ‚bone skeleton‘ (which is steady, enduring) to the ‚muscles and flesh‘ (moving). Here we have the ‚male and female‘ again, also seen as represented by all the so-called ‚positive and negative commandments‘, the ‚do’s and don’t’s‘ of the Bible (numbered as 248 Do’s or ‚bones‘ and 365 Don’t’s or ‚muscles‘, summing up to the 613 ‚commandments’/recommendations in total).

As in the common, ‚babylonian‘ Astrology, the standings of the planets inside the zodiacal signs, and the planets‘ mutual relations to each other, are the decisive factors of what one specific ‚horoscope‘ exhibits. But in comparison to the ‚babylonian‘ look on it, in the ‚Hebrew Astrology‘ the relations of planets to each other (especially ‚opposition‘, ‚conjunction‘ and ’square‘) are judged differently, almost contrarily.

An opposition is judged very good, because it is an opportunity for a ‚conversation‘ (out of which ‚fruit‘ can come) of the opposing planets/principles; but it remains only something very good, as long as the person doesn’t know about it. And as soon as the person knows about it, it is said, it has ‚unfortunately become Snake‘ now, that means: the awareness has become the reason for an end of this conversing phase and leads over now to a new phase (referring to the biblical story of the beginning in the Garden, with the Serpent, the ‚Snake‘, that seduces Mankind ‚to fall‘ by promising them a certain knowledge).

A conjunction is judged as not so good (in contrary to the mutual enhancing effect of planets in conjunction, that is primarily seen in the babylonian method), because it has no dynamics. In such case it is recommended, to wait instead for the planets getting in some kind of opposition again.

A square means, that all planets in the four signs of the square are to be looked at as a ‚common potential‘; i. e. if one of the possibilities gets realized in a life situation, the others in that square always should be considered as being very likely to happen, too. So, a planet in a square constellation brings the other planets in that square with it, too, as potential opportunities, because of its ‚well-connectedness‘ with them through the square of the four zodiacal signs in which the square constellation happens to be.

With these three basic possibilities of constellation of the 7 planets you can already see many connections in the horoscope you are examining, if you know the deeper meanings of the planets and the zodiacal signs. In the following sections of this introduction we will look first at the three groups of the signs, after that at the 7 (visible) planets, and finally at the ‚hidden‘ planets, too, which are actually the most important factors for the Hebrew view on Astrology, because they can literally change EVERYTHING.