Alfred Witte. The Man as the Receiver of the Cosmic Influences

Alfred Witte was a professional surveyor/engineer and astrologer/astronomer who is credited with formulating the basis of what are today called "Uranian Astrology" and "Cosmobiology". Some of the techniques that Witte used in his earlier writings had been used by astrologers before him, yet those techniques lay in obscurity for centuries as other astrological paradigms predominated, and research has led to still further clarification and refinement today.

A centuries-long trend of working with house systems coincided with a number of attempts to find a valid system that put the Ascendant at the first-house cusp and the Meridian at the 10th; this was so problematic that one system after another was developed and discarded. Witte's techniques were sorted and filtered out, one by one, as they were tested for efficacy.

According to a 1924 article by Wilhelm Hartmann, Hamburg School astrologer, professor of astronomy, and superintendent of the Nuremberg Planetarium (Witte, p 279), "Hamburg School Astrology" was first publicly presented as a coherent system at the Second Astrological Congress in Leipzig in 1923 by Friedrich Sieggrün (Witte, 1975, p 298). It is this same Sieggrün who did much to perpetuate the development of Hamburg School techniques through his own publications, including the first known ephemerides of four Transneptunians further beyond those discovered by Alfred Witte.

Witte himself rejected Sieggrün's planets and sought only to validate the first four, named Cupido, Hades, Zeus, and Kronos; perhaps he had already experienced enough resistance from the mindset of the 1920s to his own discoveries, so that presenting four more was too much for him at the time.

Some of Witte's early writings from 1913 indicate that he was studying concepts and techniques of Kepler, including the synchronicity of the color spectrum and the musical scale with the celestial location and composition of the planets. He describes his findings in the first few articles in an anthology published by Rudolph/Witte-Verlag entitled Der Mensch (Witte, 1975, pp 17-25).

Witte emphasized the mathematical interrelationships among the planets above sign or house placement considerations and used the term Planetary Pictures to describe those interrelationships. In an article first published in 1924, Witte (1975, p 165) stated that a planetary picture is formed by three planets, where one of them stands in the middle, at the halfsum (midpoint) of the other two. At the same time, Witte temporarily worked with what he referred to as "sensitive points", which implied the incorporation of a fourth (usually directed or transiting) planetary factor, and research with these was carried on by a number of his students, yet eventually dropped in favor of the far more significant mathematical relationships such as midpoints and angular clusters (the latter of which are in essence much the same as traditional "aspects" or harmonic relationships).

It is most significant for astrology today that Witte (1975, p 255) himself ultimately recommended the trimming away of superfluous techniques, including his experimental "sensitive points" in an information-packed article, praised by master Hamburg astrologer Ludwig Rudolph as one of Witte's master works. (Note that some American astrologers quite erroneously equate sensitive points with the much broader term "planetary picture") (Brummund 2001a). In this article, "Zum Artikel 'Unbekannte Geburtzeit'", written sometime after 1922, Witte summarized the techniques of Hamburg School astrology at that point, and referred to sign rulerships, sensitive points, planetary dignities and detriments, and other non-planetary factors, as redundant techniques to be set aside in favor of the more pertinent, essential, and informative mathematical interrelationships among the planets (i.e. midpoints, and certain angular relationships validating some of the traditional "aspects").

It is this path that has been taken up and developed by leading modern Uranian Astrologers such as Ruth Brummund, author of the Brummund Rulebook, a major Uranian reference text, recently translated into English. [Note that some Uranians not aware of Witte's later comments, or of recent research prioritizing the numerous techniques experimented with, still unknowingly teach and use the old sensitive points (calling them planetary pictures), antiscia, rulerships, and other historical techniques of dubious value.]

Along with Witte's remarkable contribution of the ephemerides for the first four Transneptunians, he wrote of these as though they were very real planets, and stressed that they were not likely to be found by means of the conventional telescope due to their distance from our Sun and the assumption that the colors of the sunlight they reflect to our Earth are either too close to the color of the night sky, or within the ultraviolet sector, so that they are not readily visible; this combined with the likelihood that their composition is of very low density further delays and complicates their detection (Witte, 1975, pp 220-222). Recent research on the formation of proto-planets may begin to explain the nature of the Witte's and of Sieggrün's Transneptunians.

It should also be pointed out that Witte was well aware of the search by LeVerrier and other astronomers for Pluto and further planets beyond Neptune (Witte, 1975, p 23); and Witte was mocked when Pluto's existence was ascertained, while Witte's planets were yet to be verified by conventional means, and were rejected as failed attempts to sight Pluto. In addition, it was assumed that Pluto's distance from the Sun was so close to that of Cupido's that they could not possibly both exist, and Witte was likewise ridiculed for this.

However, new discoveries once again vindicate Witte, for while Pluto is a small, dense physical body, many astronomers now believe that it is not a part of the harmonic sequence of planets in accord with Newton's laws, but likely a comet or centaur that fell into orbit beyond Neptune in a relatively recent period, or only one of several small regional planetoids with eccentric orbits.Alfred Witte would be delighted to know that the idea of Transneptunian planets is today no longer considered wild speculation; and those who have utilized Witte's Transneptunians (assessed by him via precise observation and analysis) in astrological work are content to be no longer casually dismissed as "unscientific".

How exactly Witte made his Transneptunian discoveries is still somewhat mysterious. Historical Hamburg School documents recently obtained from Ruth Brummund indicate that Witte regularly studied the night sky with a telescope in his room, and that he worked with a sort of pre-computer-age calculating device. Witte, being a professional surveyor/engineer was quite capable at mathematics, yet at the same time, he was what many would describe as a genius; and like other geniuses and inventors, crossed the boundaries beyond establishment science into the realm of metaphysics in attempts to search for explanations for the realities he encountered.

These are the comments Alfred Witte wrote in 1924 and 1925 about the nature and visibility of the Transneptunians: "The outgoing emanations of the Sun have, at the distance of Neptune, such a low level of density that their vibratory rate reflects as a greenish-blue color. The greater the distance from the Sun, the finer and smaller these swirling emanations are, according to the law of capillarity (ed.: which, according to Witte, accounted for the correspondence between the color spectrum and planetary distance from the Sun). (Witte 1975, p 220). "Of the etheric rays which surround the Sun, the smallest particles radiate outward from the midpoint of our solar system so that, at the distance of Cupido the low-density mass corresponds with a light blue color. At the next step of the sequence these emanations should consist of even finer particles, and thus at the distance of Hades resemble an indigo blue color" (Witte 1975, p 220),

and "Though it is possible that the conjectured planet Cupido, in spite of the faintness of its reflected light, might be sighted with the telescope; one cannot count on sighting the following planet Hades with the telescope, since its indigo blue color is obscured by the color of the evening sky. The colors of the next two planets, Zeus and Kronos, reflect the vibratory rates of the colors violet-blue and lavender-grey to us on Earth. Only through photographic exposures made with plates which record ultraviolet rays would one be able to visibly verify these Transneptunian planets ascertained by mathematical calculations." (Witte 1975, p 222)

What Witte did not suspect is that today we have the technology to detect planetary bodies in these regions, and that at the dawn of the 21st century, information from the Transneptunian regions is being relayed to the Earth, bit by bit, which may confirm or clarify Witte's observations. Today's astronomical discoveries indicate that the Transneptunians are likely of increasingly gaseous and subtle composition as we move outward from our Sun. There are also indicators that the outermost Transneptunians are likely to reflect additional light from a neighboring solar system.