Jünger - At the Time Wall 2.4-2.8
Chapter 2.4-2.8: Measurable Time and Fated Time
I have also translated the first part - Strange Birds - of At the Time Wall. You can find it here.
MEASURABLE TIME AND FATED TIME
A non-Astrologer’s Thoughts about Astrology
4
The extent to which Astrology has penetrated daily life justifies the supposition that something more than a simple fashion is here asserting itself. We find astrological predictions and advice not only in popular calendars and as fixed sections in the daily and weekly newspapers, but also in advertisements. Even someone who does not really give any credence to astrological types and prognoses cannot deny that they are increasingly being paid attention to and, as such, exercise an effect. Today, almost everyone knows his star sign and, with that, an aspect of his nature[1], which until recently was unknown to most, which meant little or nothing to him.
This intrusion is not met without resistance. The objections to astrology are as ancient as stargazing itself. First it was theologians who took offence at it, then philosophers, and now natural scientists succeed them. In their establishments the same essay against the “Nonsense of Astrology” is repeated time and again, laying out and proving that Astrology is neither a matter of science nor even of a logically serious relationship.
We have here, even more clearly than in colour theory, two positions which cannot be reconciled. But what would it mean to say that chess is not a science? Would its combinations be less ingenious? Chess is, in this respect, similar to Astrology, as it belongs neither to the sciences nor to the arts. It is simply a game, and has, as such, brought countless people enjoyment. It also resembles astrology in the fact that its figures are types constrained to defined movements.
In astrology, the mantic character, fortune-telling and -interpretation are also present. That reminds one of other games, such as spinning wheels of fortune, like roulette, or of others in which one try to predict the future from signs that have been thrown or cast. The same was also practised in ancient times with letters (Buchstaben)[2], which explains not only their name, but also the word “lesen” (read)[3]. As Tacitus says, sticks engraved with runes were thrown and collected, in a similar way to what is still today or until recently was in China commonly practised. Other similar phenomena are auguries, the observation of bird migrations and their interpretation.
Astrology is distinguished from these games and oracles in that it is not only equipped with a system of fields and signs, but in that these signs also possess their own period, and in that they depart, return, and determine time in a definite, calculable manner. We see here the turning of the great wheel in the familiar way that gives men a sense of a centre, of familiar refuge. There is still a vault above them. The fixed and mobile signs return here, and in a mathematically calculable way. This combination of a fleeting moment of destiny with the unwavering march of the cosmic clock gives astrology its peculiar charm, which has allowed it to outlast all other divinatory arts and operations. The interpretation of constellations, requiring high intellectual capacities, also plays a part in this.
The constellation of one’s horoscope does not arise, as in chess, from a series of combinatorial inferences but from the fixing of the celestial wheel at one’s time and place of birth. Human existence is thus related to a movement that is independent of the will and other factors such as race and heritage, and is only linked to them by one’s location and hour of entry into the world. Not this world and its things, but the stars, determine one’s true house. A new wheel begins its prescribed course in the midst of an immense orbit. One’s horoscope is considered an image of the cosmic clock, from which the law by which “he set out” is to be determined.
Gazing at the starry sky is not only formative and uplifting but also reveals to men the limits of their knowledge and power. Numerous words of our greatest figures, which have become quotes, testify to this. In this respect, stargazing is numinous in the best sense. The fact that it is also considered ominous is in accordance with human nature, as is the fact that the attraction astrology exerts on the masses is based on this second valuation. For men, their existence (Da-Sein) has always been more important than their essence (So-Sein): the line of destiny, its length, its fortune and misfortune more than the actual substance of fate, which gives everything meaning. Power matters more to him than insight, wealth more than character, the length of life more than its content, appearance more than inalienable being.
Hence it is that those who have wanted to help men to achieve self-realization, who wanted to lead them to their essence[4], have always reaped ingratitude, while the multitude visited fortune-tellers.