Cosmobiology

Meaning

Cosmobiology (German Kosmobiologie) is the name Reinhold Ebertin (1901–1988) gave to his system of astrology. It takes the technical core of Alfred Witte's Hamburg School (the midpoint, the planetary picture and the 90° dial) and strips away what Ebertin regarded as unproven, above all Witte's hypothetical planets beyond Neptune. The chart is drawn as a cosmogram, usually on the 90° dial, and read through the pictures formed by planets, the Node and the angles, mainly through hard aspects and with small orbs. Ebertin's chart forms put the ordinary 360° circle inside and the 90° dial outside, always with 0° Cancer at the top rather than the Ascendant on the left (pp. 13–16) [3].

The name reflects Ebertin's aim: to present astrology as the study of links between cosmic cycles and living things, including the body and health, rather than as fortune-telling.

Origin and history

Before the war. Reinhold Ebertin was the son of the astrologer Elsbeth Ebertin. He organised a congress of astrologers at Erfurt in June 1932 [1]. By his own account he proposed there that all astrological methods be treated as of equal value, so that the generally valid ones could be sifted out; when this failed, he set out to build a new approach himself (p. vii) [3]. He dated the start of his journal, known later as Kosmobiologie, to 1928 (pp. 5, 201–202) [3], and in 1938 he took over his mother's yearly Ein Blick in die Zukunft and turned it into a cosmobiological yearbook (p. vii) [3]. His monthly periodical Mensch im All printed articles on "race and astrology" in 1933–34, in step with the new regime; Howe calls it the worst offender in this respect [1]. It was one of only two German astrological periodicals still appearing in the spring of 1941 [1]. From the early 1930s Ebertin's magazines carried articles on the Hamburg School by Ludwig Rudolph and other followers of Witte, and he sold Witte's rulebook through them; the Witte publishing house stresses that Ebertin, who lived in another city, was never Witte's personal pupil [4]. The word Kosmobiologie was not his invention: the physician Fritz Wehofer, writing as Friedrich Feerhow, used it in his Die Medizinische Astrologie (1914) [7], and the Swiss astrologer Karl Ernst Krafft promoted a "cosmobiology" from the late 1920s [7][1]. Ebertin himself dated the start of cosmobiology as a field to 1928, when H. A. Strauss published the first Jahrbuch für kosmobiologische Forschung (Cosmobiological Research Yearbook), of which only two issues appeared (p. vii) [3].

The Combination of Stellar Influences. Ebertin's handbook Kombination der Gestirneinflüsse is laid out like the Hamburg School rulebook, entry by entry for each planet and for each pair of factors, but without the hypothetical planets [2][4]. Accounts of its first appearance differ. Ebertin's own list of his books gives Erfurt, 1935, followed by Aalen editions of 1945, 1950 and 1961 (p. 201) [3]. Other sources report different dates: the Witte publishing house dates it to 1938 and describes it as an 85-page duplicated booklet, the German National Library records an edition of 1940, and a book edition from Aalen is dated 1950 [4][2]. According to the Witte publishing house it also left out houses, and Witte never forgave what he saw as an appropriation of his work [4]. The English translation by Alfred G. Roosedale and Linda Kratzsch first appeared in 1960 [2]. Ebertin lists a revised and enlarged English edition (Aalen, 1972) and an English supplement (Aalen, 1970) (p. 201) [3].

After the war. The Nazi campaign against astrologers in June 1941 closed down the German movement [1]. Ebertin rebuilt his publishing house at Aalen, where Mensch im All was renamed Kosmobiologie in 1948 [7][1]. His practical manual of the 90° dial was first printed in German in 1949 and appeared several times, each time improved and enlarged; the English Applied Cosmobiology (1972) is its fourth revised and enlarged edition, expanded into a general textbook (title page; p. v) [3]. In 1949 Ebertin held the first working conference for cosmobiological research at Aalen, and in 1956 the Cosmobiological Academy Aalen was founded as a continuing association [7].

Baldur Ebertin. Reinhold's son Baldur Ebertin (1933–2020), a psychologist with a doctorate in philosophy (1960) and a licensed natural healer, practised as a psychotherapist in Aalen, ran the publishing house and the Aalen conferences (from 1981), and lectured in Europe and North America [5][7][8].

English-speaking world. Translations of Ebertin's books, published in Aalen and by the American Federation of Astrologers, appeared from 1960 onwards and were one of the routes by which midpoint work reached English-speaking astrologers [2][3]. Later English books continued the midpoint work in other directions; Harding and Harvey's Working with Astrology (1990), for example, combines midpoints with harmonics [6].

How it is used

What it keeps from Witte. Midpoints, planetary pictures, the 90° dial (which Ebertin took over from the Hamburg School [4]; he credits the idea of the 90° disc to Witte himself, p. 8 [3]) and the 45° series of aspects, and timing by transits and directions to the same pictures [3]. Ebertin's factors are the Sun, Moon and planets (he prefers to call them "bodies") plus the Midheaven, Ascendant and Moon's Node (p. 4) [3].

What it drops. Witte's eight hypothetical points. Houses: Applied Cosmobiology uses no house system for interpretation or forecasting (p. 20) [3]. Most other aspects: Ebertin gives all multiples of 45° about equal value, finds that the sextile and trine point to more passive conditions, and advises beginners to keep to the conjunction, semi-square, square, sesquiquadrate and opposition, adding other aspects only later (pp. 3, 24–25) [3]. On the dial the signs are kept in the background, since it merges the four cardinal, four fixed and four mutable signs, but Ebertin stresses that the 360° circle is the chart being read and the dial only an aid for seeing it (pp. 16, 19) [3].

The Aries Point. Applied Cosmobiology does not list the Aries Point among its factors; 0° Aries serves there as the zero of the dial and the point from which positions and half-sums are counted (pp. 11, 38, 199) [3]. See Aries Point.

Small orbs. Ebertin allows 1½° for midpoints and no more; 3° is too large. For aspects he uses 5° for the Sun, Moon, Midheaven and Ascendant, 4° for Mercury, Venus and Mars, and 3° for Jupiter to Pluto and the Node, and he rejects the traditional orbs of up to 15°. For transits and directions he allows about 1° (pp. 22–23, 27, 69, 107, 199) [3]. Other writers in the tradition use somewhat different figures.

The handbook. Each entry in The Combination of Stellar Influences describes a planet or pair from several sides: its principle, its psychological, biological and sociological correspondences, and its probable manifestations [2]. As with Witte's rulebook, the text is a starting point to be combined for each picture, not a fixed verdict; Ebertin himself says the book is a guide to interpretation, not a book of rules (pp. 28–29) [3]. Later editions number each statement (p. 27) [3].

On this site. The Midpoints panel works in the cosmobiological way: the 90° dial by default (45°, 360° and 22.5° are options), shorter-arc midpoints folded onto the dial as longitude modulo the dial, an orb slider from 0.5° to 3° (default 1.5°), and the ten planets, the Moon's Node, the Ascendant and Midheaven (only with a known birth time) and optionally the Aries Point. Like Ebertin, the site does not use the Hamburg School's hypothetical points. It offers trees, pictures, a midpoint sort, clusters and a rotating dial with a pointer.

Examples

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879, 11:30 local mean time, Ulm):

• One dial, three aspects. The Sun at 23°30′ Pisces is 83°30′ on the 90° dial. Venus/Uranus is at 24°08′ Gemini, 84°08′ on the dial. They are 0°38′ apart on the dial though 90° apart in the zodiac, so a cosmogram shows Sun = Venus/Uranus as a square contact at a glance.
• Adding the 45° series. The Sun and Neptune (7°52′ Taurus) are 44°22′ apart, a semi-square with an orb of 0°38′; Venus (16°59′ Aries) and Uranus (1°17′ Virgo) are 134°18′ apart, a sesquiquadrate with an orb of 0°42′. Neither pair lines up on the 90° dial; both do on the 45° dial.
• Nothing hypothetical. A Hamburg School chart for the same moment would add Witte's and Sieggrün's eight points; a cosmogram, like this site, uses only the real planets and the chart's own points.

See also

For the system cosmobiology grew out of, see Hamburg School.