The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 529, titled:
Midpoints in Astrology: Historical Origins
With Chris Brennan
Episode originally released on March 26, 2026
Original episode URL:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/2026/03/26/midpoints-in-astrology-historical-origins/
—
Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
—
Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released April 2nd, 2026
Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
—
CHRIS BRENNAN: In the late 20th century, a new technique called midpoints exploded into the astrological community and was adopted by a number of leading astrologers. But the origins surrounding the technique in history have been shrouded in mystery because there are a number of different speculations about when and how it was originated and how it was popularized. So some people, for example, there are some myths that trace it back saying that the technique goes back to the 13th century astrologer Guido Bonatti or even to the 2nd century astrologer Claudius Ptolemy. Other astrologers believe that it was invented from scratch by the Uranian astrologer Alfred Witte in the 1920s or in the early 20th century.
So I’ve been researching this topic, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about for 20 years, and I finally did a research project to figure it out. And it turns out that none of the speculations that people have had up to this point are true, but instead that the technique actually dates back to the 17th century with a couple of students of the famous astrologer Placidus, who’s known for the system of house division that came to be named after him.
So what I wanna do in this episode is I wanna present my research and I wanna set the record straight and trace the lineage of the midpoint technique from its origins in the 17th century through its popularization among German astrologers in the early 20th century all the way until contemporary times. So that’s my goal today, and yeah. So there’s a lot of different pieces of this that I’m gonna present, but we’ll see how it goes.
All right. So first things first, what is a midpoint from a technical standpoint? The definition is that a midpoint is halfway between two points in a chart or two planets in a chart. So for example, I’ll share a diagram where let’s say that we have Mercury at 10 degrees of Scorpio, and we have Jupiter at 20 degrees of Capricorn. So there’s 70 degrees between those two planets, and therefore the middle point or the midway point between the two of them is at about 15 degrees of Sagittarius. So 35 degrees from one, and 35 degrees from the other, and you end up right at 15 degrees of Sagittarius.
So the premise with midpoints is that the midpoint somehow combines the meaning or the influence of the two planets at that midway point, and especially if there’s a third planet that happens to fall at the midpoint, then it mixes together the meaning of all three. So for example, if in our diagram, Venus was at 15 degrees of Sagittarius, then Venus would be at the midway point between Jupiter and Mercury, which then has an effect, it’s thought, of combining the meanings of those three planets in different ways.
So midpoints can be done either by natal placement or through transits or directions; there’s actually lots of different ways that they can be used. And in modern times, in the late 20th century, they were promoted by a number of leading astrologers such as Robert Hand, Noel Tyl. It even led to the invention of new techniques, such as the midpoint composite chart which I did an episode interviewing John Townley, one of the early originators of that technique, years ago as an early episode of The Astrology Podcast. So it was a really prominent technique in the late 20th century, and it’s become a little bit less so. I used to use it a lot when I was doing modern astrology early in my studies, especially being influenced by Hand and Noel Tyl. But one of the things that I noticed when I got into traditional astrology and ancient astrology is that the technique doesn’t really exist in ancient or traditional astrology. It’s actually notably absent when you go back prior to the 20th century in terms of astrological texts. And as a result of that, there’s been a mystery for quite some time about where it came from. And one of the things that’s always confused that or confused me for the past 20 years and created a mystery surrounding this is that one of the popularizers of the technique, Reinhold Ebertin, who wrote a book called The Combination of Stellar Influences in 1940, which was translated into English in 1960 and then influenced people like Rob Hand and Noel Tyl – in the introduction to that book, one of the things Ebertin says as he’s tracing the origin of the technique is that he attributes it to the 13th century astrologer Guido Bonatti. And he says that Guido Bonatti mentions it in his text. But the problem with that is about 20 years ago in 2006, 2007, Benjamin Dykes translated all of Guido Bonatti’s work from the 13th century from Latin into English. And one of the things that was found during the course of that translation is that Bonatti doesn’t talk about midpoints at all. So it became really clear that Ebertin – it was kind of an open question of what did that mean? Was Ebertin mistaken? Did that mean that the technique had accidentally been invented by like, reading something in Bonatti that they then inspired the midpoint technique, or was it just a completely like, mistaken reading or something like that? It’s been a mystery for about 20 years.
So I finally – recently I was watching a lecture by Jenn Zahrt who gave a lecture on astrology in Germany in the early 20th century that she gave for the Washington State Astrological Association not that long ago, just a few weeks ago I think. And one of the things that she pointed out was that she said that Alfred Witte, who was the founder of the Uranian school of astrology or the Hamburg school of astrology learned the technique from an earlier astrologer named Albert Kniepf. And this got me on a whole research trip to finally research that and figure out where the technique actually came from and how it originated. And I was able to trace it back further. And one of the starting points for figuring this out was my friend, Scott Silverman – I was talking to him about it, and he has a background in Uranian astrology and in the Hamburg school. He pointed out that part of the issue is that the astrologer Guido Bonatti was commonly confused with another astrologer named Antonio Francesco de Bonattis. So Bonattis and Bonatti’s names got confused in some of the German literature of the mid-20th century. And as a result of that, when sometimes they were referring to this Italian astrologer from the 17th century, they’re accidentally mistaking him with an astrologer from the 13th century, Guido Bonatti, who was the more famous astrologer.
So that led me on a whole trek, and it turned out that a lot of this ground had already been researched by another German astrologer named Koch, who was the promoter and who the Koch system of houses is named after. He had done a lot of really important work in the mid-20th century on the history of house division and other things like that. But he had already traced this history back to its originators years ago prior to the 1980s. There’s a collection of papers I found where he traces this back. So I think the history is a little bit more worked out in the German-speaking world at this point possibly, but part of my goal here is to clarify it in the English-speaking world. And after spending the past several weeks researching that, I’ve kind of unraveled all of it. So that’s what I wanna get into now.
Let’s take it back to the beginning, because it turns out when I traced all of the threads and verified everything, that it all goes back to the year 1650 and the work of the famous Italian astrologer Placidus de Titis. And one of the things that’s really important about Placidus – so Placidus is the astrologer that the most common of system of quadrant house division in modern times is named after. And Placidus was writing in a period in the mid-1600s, specifically publishing in 1650; he published a book called Physiomathematica. And Placidus was writing in a time when astrology was under attack from both sides. It was under attack from the Catholic Church, which kept issuing papal bulls trying to outlaw astrology and banned books, especially in the middle of the Inquisition. And astrology was also under attack by the scientific revolution where the entire cosmology of how the cosmos was thought to be arranged for centuries was suddenly being broken down and completely reconceptualized in a way that seemed to have negative implications for how astrology had been thought to work up to that point. So in steps Placidus, who was an Italian monk of the Olivetan order, and he was a brilliant mathematician and academic. And he wanted to justify astrology from a scientific standpoint, partially to help get around some of the Christian attacks on astrology as well as some of the scientific attacks. And Placidus was really focused and ended up especially creating a new form of house division, but he created it partially based on what he thought was reconstructing Ptolemy’s approach to house division. And nowadays, contemporary historians don’t actually think that he did reconstruct Ptolemy’s system of house division, but instead, he developed or introduced something new sort of based on like, a misinterpretation of Ptolemy or based on an interpretation of what Ptolemy was doing. And he created a complex and advanced highly complex system of house division that then took off in subsequent centuries, especially in the English-speaking world.
So he published this text in 1650. He also published a book of tables in 1657 to help astrologers calculate the technique. But when he died in 1668, his work was really dense and somewhat incomplete, and also very highly controversial. So one of the things that he did in the book, one of the techniques that he really championed was the idea of parallels, and especially the idea of mundane parallels, which is focusing on planets being at equal proportional distances from the angles such as like, the Midheaven, for example. So let me share a diagram to show this idea of mundane parallels.
All right. So imagine, if you’re listening to the audio version, you’ve got a chart, and you have the Midheaven degree – the meridian – up at the top of the chart. And let’s say the Sun is over to the right of the Midheaven, about 32 degrees away. And let’s say Jupiter is over to the left of the Midheaven, also 32 degrees away. So this would be called a parallel or a mundane parallel, because both of the planets have a similar connection to the Midheaven degree based on just the positions. Like, when it comes to parallels, parallels have partially to do with declinations. Let me show you another example.
So with parallels, especially zodiacal parallels, which is another type of parallel, you have planets when they’re at the same declination, which is north or south of the celestial equator. So for example, if you had Mercury and Venus at the same distance north of the celestial equator, they would be in a parallel according to declination. Or there’s also the concept of contraparallel, where let’s say you have one planet that’s a certain distance above the celestial equator, and then you have another planet that’s the same distance below the celestial equator; then they would be considered to be in parallel as a result of having the equal but opposite declination.
So these concepts of like, declination and parallels were floating around a little bit, but Placidus was particularly interested in them and particularly interested in the idea of mundane parallels. So to some extent, some of these were like, a little bit inspired by earlier concepts where for example, Ptolemy explicitly defines sign-based relationships by their equal distances from the solstices or the equinoxes. And this is the idea of antiscia and contra-antiscia. So the idea of antiscia is like, focused on let’s say the summer solstice, which is around zero degrees of Cancer in the tropical zodiac. If you had Mars at 10 degrees of Taurus and you had Venus at 20 degrees of Leo, then they would be considered to be in an antiscia or in antiscia signs, because those signs have equal amounts of light basically relative to the solstice, the days associated with those degrees. Or you have contra-antiscia, which focuses instead on the equinoxes rather than the solstices. So you have the equinox in Aries, the spring equinox in the tropical zodiac, which is the first day of spring, and that’s at zero degrees of Aries. And if you had let’s say Mercury at 25 degrees of Capricorn and Saturn at five degrees of Gemini, those would be considered to be in a contra-antiscia, especially by sign, relative to the spring equinox.
So that’s the closest approximation you can get actually to a midpoint, as far as I can find in the Hellenistic astrological tradition is this notion of antiscia and contra-antiscia. But it’s really fixed on those specific degrees of the equinoxes and the solstices and also in the Hellenistic tradition, it tends to be extended somewhat to the entire signs and this notion of like, commanding and obeying signs and other concepts like that that Ptolemy talks about as well as other astrologers.
So some of that later on ends up informing a little bit some of Placidus’s work when it comes to parallels and parallels of declination. And that was, to some extent, some of Placidus’s innovation, this focus on parallels.
So but he publishes his work, and it needs some work. So what happens basically is about some years after Placidus publishes his work, about 25 years later in 1675, there’s two students of Placidus named Francesco Brunacci and Francesco Maria Onorati, who kind of feared that their teacher’s work would be lost. So they decided to edit and expand and republish Placidus’s work and create this definitive second edition, which is the 1675 Milan edition of Placidus’s work Physiomathematica. So they publish this in 1675, and one of the things that’s important in addition to republishing Placidus’s work to help get it out there and promote it more is they also added like, an appendix or they added some additional chapters at the very end of the work as an addition. And what seems to have happened is that these two students took inspiration from Placidus’s use of parallels, and they introduced the concept of what we know today as the midpoint technique or, as they called it, equidistances. So this is in a Latin text; it’s in the late 17th century. But by this time, and this is it – this is basically the invention of midpoints is these two students of Placidus around the year 1675. And it’s really interesting reading their work; it was written in Latin. And one of the things about publishing in the 17th century is that it was really dangerous, because especially in Italy because the church was coming down really hard on astrologers and the Inquisition was banning books. And indeed, Placidus’s book would be banned not very long after this. All of Placidus’s works would be banned not too long after this.
So as a result of that, and knowing the danger of publishing on astrology, these two students of Placidus adopted pen names. Basically, they published the book under a fake name by scrambling the letters of their name to create an anagram or an alias. So for example, Francesco Brunacci created an anagram, an alias, and published the book under the name Cursinius Francobacci, whereas his friend Francesco Maria Onorati used the synonym Africano Scirotha Romano. So the appendix, basically, is credited to the two of them under their fake names.
So in this appendix, I got a hold of it and I was reading through it, and it’s really, really interesting. It’s a really interesting piece of astrological history because the two of them just seem really excited to introduce this as a new technique and a new concept, this idea of what we know of today as midpoints, but they call equidistances. So one of the quotes that was about their like, excitement, is that early on, they say,
“Meanwhile, we arranged new canons which had escaped Placidus, and a little later, new familiarities were made obvious to us.” Familiarity is like, the concept or the name for aspects at that time. And they continue, saying, “concerning which we are entreated with such frequency that to satisfy those demanding them, we deliberately super add them to the new edition of Placidian philosophy with premature zeal.”
So they’re kind of like, acknowledging that they’re adding in this material to the end of Placidus’s work because they’re so excited about it and how well the technique is working in their personal experience that they’re excited to get it out there even though it’s a little premature. And it turns out that what it was is it was excerpts from a book that they were working on that they were gonna call Italian Astrology. And they took some chapters and excerpts on midpoints directly from that manuscript they were working on, and they put it as an appendix, as some additional material at the end of Placidus’s work or the second edition of Placidus’s work. And we’ll circle back around to that later, but they – one of the things I noted as I was reading through this is that they say that they found them as an explanatory factor. So – and this is really interesting to me – they say, “Having already refashioned the method of the Part of Fortune, we undertake to uncover a new world in astrological matters.” So this is how they’re presenting the midpoint doctrine, as a new world in astrological matters. So they continue – “For seeing many events – and indeed the greatest ones – not rarely occurring in nativities and in the vicissitudes of mundane affairs while devoid of the traditional aspects of the stars, the suspicion came to mind that something was still missing.”
So I think this is really interesting, because they’re framing it as if sometimes there are events that happened that didn’t have a good rationale or a good explanation just based on standard aspects, but so they started to suspect that there was something missing. And this is where they introduce the midpoint technique.
So I think that’s really interesting, because that’s – it’s kind of suspiciously like how Alfred Witte and the Hamburg astrologers would later describe how they came up with some of their techniques. But right here, these Italian originators of the midpoint technique, that’s part of how they’re framing the introduction of this new technique in their work, and they’re very conscious about that – like, about their excitement and about this being a new technique. So they called them equidistances in Latin, and here’s a quote. So they say, “Hence it is right that the planets placed in proportional illumination to each other towards the Sun also have an equal mode of influencing and mix their qualities with the luminary, so that this proportion – which it has pleased us to call ‘equidistance’ – is like a certain parallel or antiscion of two planets toward a luminary, which functions in the capacity of the equator or meridian or horizon, for the middle itself remains and is intercepted between two planets equidistant from it.”
So and then they continue later, and they say essentially that a midpoint mixes itself with the other two planets. So they say, “Any planet intercepted between two others mixes itself with them.” So you know, it’s really interesting, because they’re building on some of the earlier concepts that they’re aware of that are almost they’re seeing as precursor concepts, like the idea of doing mundane parallels, which is why they mention the meridian, or antiscia, for example, that focuses on the equinoxes and the solstices as the sort of “midpoint degree.” But they’re now generalizing this idea and saying that any two planets or points can have a midpoint in a chart and that it mixes together something about the nature of the two planets with their midpoint.
They also have an important definition where they say, “But there is an equidistance in the zodiac consisting of an equal number of zodiacal degrees’ distance between three planets, of which the middle one is intercepted between the other two and is equally distant on both sides and communicates with the virtue or the power of each, even if it touches the ray aspect or the bodily orb of neither. But when they all touch each other in the orb of their activity, it is properly called a besiegement, and the strongest equidistance.”
And that’s one of the things that becomes really interesting that they do really early on in this text is they try to justify the notion of midpoints based on some earlier traditional concepts. So on the one hand, they’re like, very conscious that this is an innovation and a new technique that they’re excited to introduce, and they even say with like, “premature zeal,” because they’re so excited about how it’s working in their practice.
But they also actually interestingly attempt to justify it based on some earlier techniques and traditional concepts in addition to the ones we’ve already mentioned previously. So for example, one of the ways they attempt to justify it early on is they say that the sextile and the square are essentially midpoints of the trine and the opposition. So for example, they’re saying that like, a trine is 120 degrees, whereas a sextile is halfway between that at 60 degrees. Or they say that, you know, an opposition is 180 degrees, and the sort of halfway or midpoint between that, the equidistance, is the square at 90 degrees. So they’re kind of trying to justify it within the context of traditional aspect doctrine theory in a way. And then another way that they try to justify it within the context of traditional doctrines is they mention a few times the concept of besiegement and talk about that as almost being like, an idealized midpoint involving three planets.
So besiegement in the medieval tradition, which is called enclosure in the Hellenistic tradition, can occur bodily or by ray. But the sort of idealized form through the bodily conjunction is when you have two planets – like, let’s say two malefics – on either side of a conjunction of a third planet which is in between the two of the malefics. And this is thought to be a negative condition. There’s also a positive version of besiegement, which is like, two benefics on either side of a third planet which is a positive form of besiegement or enclosure.
So they’re saying that besiegement is sort of like an idealized form of a midpoint if, for example, you had let’s say you had Venus at one degree of a sign and Jupiter at three degrees of a sign, and Mercury at two degrees of a sign, then that would be a positive bodily enclosure or besiegement, but it would also be a midpoint because the third planet would literally be right in the middle of the other two. So it’s interesting how they’re trying to take some of these early concepts and treat them almost like, as precursors to this notion of midpoints.
So they also, of course, have already mentioned parallels of region and of declination. And I actually have a quote about that, because I wanted to read the quote about aspects because I thought it was interesting how they framed it. They say, “Therefore as we considered that the square radiation is the halfway point between the conjunction and the opposition and likewise the sextile is the middle of the trine, it seemed that the distance between two planets – even if they are not joined by a traditional aspect – is of no light strength. We also saw that the ancients and good authors accurately weighed the besiegement or enclosure of one planet by two others, which seems to suggest something of this matter. And the reckoning of the parallels of region and of declination persuades us of this no lightly, since this true doctrine of Placidus and Almansor consists in the force of proportional light.”
So they’re drawing some of these concepts of like, proportional light and declination and everything else, and they’re using these as justifications and jumping off points for a new technique. So it’s really interesting as a historical study, because we can see the evolution of a technique and how it evolved out of precursor techniques, but then these two astrologers, these two students of Placidus, are deciding to take it to another step or take it another step further and sort of like, generalize something that was used in a more limited or specific context up to that point.
So they’re trying to justify it, but they’re also consciously innovating and introducing a new technique quite deliberately. They also justify it in the context of mundane electional astrology as well as natal astrology. They ground it in empirical observations. So for example, they mention a period of unusually pleasant weather in December when the Sun was at the midpoint of Jupiter and Venus, and they thought that that was like, an explanatory thing that explained what they were observing in terms of the usually warm weather. Or they had another observation in decumbature charts, which is a type of inceptional or electional chart, when the Moon was at the Mars-Saturn midpoint as a really bad indication for sickness in a specific instance that they had observed.
So they’re justifying it in all these different branches of astrology and talking about their empirical work and observations about it. And they’re partially drawing on an earlier tradition where there were hints of this, but the technique really didn’t exist up to this point. I have to be clear about that. It didn’t exist in Guido Bonatti. And some people sometimes cite the text of Ptolemy, like a passage from book three, I think chapter 10 of Ptolemy as evidence of midpoints. This sometimes gets cited especially in the German astrological literature. But this is a mistaken interpretation that comes from a flawed translation from Philip Melanchthon from centuries earlier. And in the recent critical editions of Ptolemy’s text, I consulted with Levente Laszlo, who is the translator of the Horoi Project which is translating a lot of ancient Greek astrological texts through his website on Patreon; he’s crowdfunding the translation of all these ancient texts, and Levente has done a PhD on ancient Greco-Roman astrology. So I was talking with him about this, and he re-translated the passage for me, and it doesn’t talk about midpoints at all. So I could have a section going into that, but I would just like to maybe mention it in passing for the purpose of time here that although Ptolemy is sometimes cited as having mentioned midpoints in one passage, that passage up to this point has been a mistranslation and doesn’t say anything about midpoints. And if it had, we would have seen other references to midpoints prior to the 17th century. But instead, the closest thing you get is like, the doctrine of antiscia or contra-antiscia or other things like that, which are not really generalizing the concept of midpoints yet. It doesn’t get generalized until this point.
And one of the things I’ll say – because this comes up over and over again in historical studies – that if an ancient author had mentioned a technique, then usually you would see other instances of that technique getting used by other later astrologers. But we don’t see midpoints being used outside of that supposed passage of Ptolemy by any other astrologers until like, the 17th century. And when you see things like that, that’s usually a sign that you have to be cautious that something about the interpretation might be off, which in that instance was resulting from a mistaken translation of that passage.
So anyway. Back to the 17th century. These two authors excitedly publish this work on midpoints as this appendix to Placidus, and they plan to publish their results in a whole book that was gonna be titled Italian Astrology, which is interesting because that’s kind of like how Morinus titled his book, basically – like, French astrology. But unfortunately, what happened is that the Inquisition banned all of Placidus’s works in the year 1687, which was not too long after they published that appendix in 1675. So all of Placidus’s works get banned by the Inquisition, and that includes this second edition of Physiomathematica that has this appendix introducing the midpoint technique as a concept.
So basically, the church found Placidus’s attempts to make astrology scientific unconvincing, and as a result of that, not only are Placidus’s works banned, but those two students of Placidus realize that it’s too dangerous to publish their planned book, Italian Astrology, so they have to scrap the project and they never end up publishing that text. Otherwise, if they had and if midpoints – or if Placidus’s work hadn’t been banned at this point, then the technique of midpoints actually probably would have been more widespread or become more common knowledge prior to its popularization in Germany in the early 20th century.
So as a result of that, like, Brunacci, one of the students of Placidus, shifted into focusing on astronomy and cartography. And he’s actually known today for this really beautiful celestial map that ironically was published in the year 1787, which was the same year that Placidus’s works were banned, which then puts an end to his ability to publish his big astrological text as well.
So it’s really sad, basically, that at this point, like, the concept of midpoints then functionally gets suppressed by the Catholic Church at this point in history. So Placidus’s works are banned, and interestingly, this kind of suppresses the widespread adoption of Placidus’s techniques, including his system of house division, in Catholic regions like Italy and France. However, Placidus’s works being banned by the Catholic Church and by the pope acted as this ironically a powerful endorsement of Placidus in Protestant England where they had a different approach going on in terms of Christianity. So as a result of that or partially as a result of that, English astrologers eagerly secured and translated Placidus’s works. And for example, John Partridge heavily promoted Placidus’s teachings in his book Opus Reformatorium in 1693. But I was looking through this, and while he does talk about parallels, I don’t think he talks about equidistances in this world. He may have been drawing on the original book of Placidus rather than the second edition by the students, although if there’s somebody that knows more about John Partridge and knows if I’m wrong about that and if he did mention the equidistances, let me know, because I’d love to know more about that.
There was a later translation by Manoah Sibley of Placidus’s works, and this and another book by John Cooper helped to cement Placidus’s quadrant house system as the sort of default in the English-speaking world. And Sibley’s translation was published in 1789, titled Astronomy and Elementary Philosophy. But even though he did translate from the second edition of Placidus, I think he removed the additional material on midpoints from the two students which was contained in the appendices at the end. And as far as I can tell, I don’t think that material made it in there, otherwise there would have been an earlier introduction of this notion of equidistances or midpoints to the English-speaking world at that point. So as far as I can tell, that’s the case, but if anybody knows differently, certainly let me know.
Okay, so interestingly, in the year 1687, the same year that all of Placidus’s works get banned, there’s another book that is published by another Italian astrologer named Antonio Francesco de Bonattis, and he publishes a work titled Universal Natural Astrosophie – that’s the English translation of the Latin term Universa Astrosophia Naturalis. So what’s interesting is that he reads the second edition of Placidus and the appendix by Placidus’s students that introduced midpoints, and he actually mentions it in his book in chapter 11, which is titled “Of Mundane Parallels and Equidistances.” And what’s interesting is like, he picks up on and he realizes that they’re using pen names or pseudonyms, so he refers to the theory – he attributes it to a certain “uncertain author,” and he seems to express some light skepticism about the technique, saying that while he hasn’t personally verified it through experience, he says, “Experience has not yet taught me that this should be observed.” But then he admits that the logic is theoretically sound and “hardly against probability.”
So he kind of concedes that by analogy to how mundane parallels work, for example in Placidus, which is the big technique he promotes, that these zodiacal midpoints could produce “effective results,” especially if the planets share the same zodiacal sign. And it seems like the impression I get is that he respects the Placidian framework deeply, but he kind of draws the line a little bit at some of the newer midpoint theories that are published by his students. And his attitude is kind of like that it makes theoretical sense, and I won’t say that it’s wrong, but I haven’t seen it work in practice myself, so I’m gonna hold off on fully endorsing it essentially until he has a better idea of the data.
So one of the things that’s interesting about this reference in passing that Bonattis makes – and this is the guy that later German astrologers would conflate with Guido Bonatti, who’s the earlier astrologer from the 13th century – is that this author successfully navigated the Inquisition and the censors and was able to keep his book off of the banned book list by being basically extremely careful. And he published a sort of like, sanitized, philosophically compliant defense of the idea of celestial influences. And this was important because it was right at the time when the Inquisition was outlawing one of the most famous astrologers, which is Placidus. So as a result of that, his successfully navigating that, Bonattis’s work survived. And this is the book that then gets passed on eventually to the early 20th century when some of the German astrologers of the early 20th century and the revival of astrology in Germany pick it up, basically. And I think this is how partially how the midpoint technique survived into the 20th century was through Bonattis’s work.
So one of the things is that’s interesting that he was able to navigate very carefully some of the censorship that was occurring at the time, and we’ll see that come up again later with some of the German astrologers because they popularized the midpoint technique in the 1910s and 1920s and 1930s, but then the Nazis come to power and start censoring and banning astrology works. And some of those German astrologers then that are promoting midpoints have to deal with similar censorship issues as well as similar issues in terms of getting around the authorities at the time and continuing to do astrology by being careful about how they’re framing it and trying to make it scientifically – or at least look scientifically – respectable. So that’ll be a recurring theme that we’ll explore here in just a little bit.
But after this point, in the 18th century, astrology kind of dies out in Europe or goes dormant or underground for the most part in terms of mainstream usage and practitioners and everything else. And we go into this low point in terms of the history of astrology in Europe especially. So this is the traditional like, break for the most part between ancient and traditional astrology versus the modern astrology that gets revived in the early 20th century.
Okay, so that’s basically the end of part one, and this could be the entire video, but that’s where midpoints functionally get invented is by the two students of Placidus in the mid- to late 17th century. But then part two is gonna be the recovery and popularization of the technique of midpoints, because the fact that it was suppressed by the Catholic Church meant that they never published their full book that would have incorporated all of their work on midpoints, and therefore it doesn’t become widely known as a technique. The only book that really kind of survives at that point for the most part is Bonattis’s work, which mentions it in passing at one point in the context of rectification.
All right, so midpoints originate then with the Italians in the 17th century and with the students of Placidus, but then how did they become popularized in modern times? And it turns out for that, you have to turn to Germany in the early 20th century. So astrology had basically gone dormant in Europe until the late 19th century and early 20th century where it starts being revived in different countries, and Germany is one of those countries where it starts being revived in – especially in the first decade or two of the century. So for our purposes, a really crucial figure is an astrologer named Albert Kniepf, who was born in 1853 and lived ‘til 1924. And he becomes a really crucial link, because he was reading classic astrological texts from the Hellenistic and Renaissance period, and he seems to have been the person that rediscovered midpoints either through the second edition of Placidus, or through the reference to it in the work on rectification by Bonattis in the 17th century. And then Albert Kniepf becomes a crucial teacher to several important astrologers in Germany around the year 1911. So he becomes a teacher to Elsbeth Ebertin, who becomes a really famous astrologer that I did an entire episode on with Jenn Zahrt before on The Astrology Podcast, so you should check out if you’re interested in this period. He becomes the teacher and supposedly another astrologer named Frank Glahn claims that he learned midpoints from Albert Kniepf, and Glahn also says in a later paper from 1940 that another important astrologer named Albert Witte learned midpoints from Albert Kniepf, which would have been around this period when Albert Kniepf was living in Hamburg and teaching astrology there. And this other figure, Alfred Witte, also lived in Hamburg and studied with Kniepf for some period of time before World War I.
So this is where our story on midpoints picks up in the modern period, because Alfred Witte learns about midpoints from Kniepf evidently, and then he’s sent off to World War I, which occurs from 1914 to 1918. And then when Witte returns, he starts publishing papers between 1919 and 1924 on what he calls sensitive points and planetary pictures, and this includes discussions about midpoints, and he’s especially really into midpoint technique and promoting that as a major concept and theory.
So Alfred Witte ends up creating a new approach to astrology that’s really unique and different that’s called the Hamburg school in Germany, or in the US it came to be known as Uranian astrology. So this involves midpoints, a thing that he calls planetary pictures that I’m not gonna get into, the use of dials and other techniques like solar arcs are heavily emphasized, although I read later that solar arcs may have been another technique that Witte learned from Albert Kniepf, although certainly Witte’s the one who ends up promoting it and becoming responsible for its promotion in the 20th century. And the other thing that Witte introduces is the concept of hypothetical planets where he thought that there were other planets out there that would be discovered, and he tried to anticipate where those planets would be astrologically and what they would mean.
So Alfred Witte’s Hamburg school of astrology becomes popular in the 1920s and influential, influencing some German astrologers, but it also became very controversial especially due to Witte’s use of hypothetical planets. And we could do a whole thing, but that should probably be a whole separate episode. But basically, Witte did – I believe – did believe that these were planets that would be discovered, actual planetary bodies that were out there, and it was occurring in the context of a time period where lots of astronomers were searching for other planets out there. But none of Witte’s planets were ever actually discovered, and in fact, in 1930 when Pluto was discovered and it didn’t match with any of the four hypothetical planets that Witte had introduced, this basically created additional controversy.
So in my research – I did a bunch of research on this, and like, sorting out the history of the hypothetical planets and things like that that I’ll probably gloss over today, but if people would like a separate episode on that, let me know at some point.
All right, so there’s a lot of controversy. So Witte’s system is influencing different astrologers, and one of the astrologers that it influences is Reinhold Ebertin. And Ebertin was born in 1901; he’s the son of the then famous astrologer Elsbeth Ebertin who became really famous especially by the 1920s. And Reinhold Ebertin becomes active especially in the late 1920s; he starts publishing a magazine in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, and some of Witte’s students and people from the Hamburg school are publishing articles there on Uranian astrology. And eventually, Reinhold Ebertin creates… He takes some inspiration from some of Witte’s techniques, including midpoints and solar arcs and some other things like that, and especially the focus on midpoints, and Ebertin ends up creating a new school of astrology called cosmobiology. And one of the things about cosmobiology is that he ends up putting more of a psychological slant on midpoints and a medical slant on them, but also he ends up rejecting the hypothetical planets of Alfred Witte. And part of the reason for that probably is like, when Pluto was discovered in 1930 and the fact that it didn’t match any of Witte’s hypothetical planets for some of the astrologers at the time, that would have been a really negative indication about the plausibility of those planets. And there were additional accusations in the 1920s, for example, that Witte had taken some of the planets from predictions that earlier astronomers had made without necessarily giving them credit.
So there was a lot of drama surrounding it, and it split the community and it became very acrimonious in the 1920s and 1930s. And as a result of that, there were astrologers like Ebertin who drew some inspiration from some of Witte’s technical approaches, but they ended up rejecting other parts of the system that seemed too far out there or too implausible.
So this is the point where – so we end up having two schools. You have the Hamburg school and the Uranian astrologers, and then you have the cosmobiology school starting in the 1930s with Reinhold Ebertin. And unfortunately, eventually Ebertin publishes a book, The Combination of Stellar Influences, in 1940, and this book and especially its 1950 edition becomes the book that’s translated into English in 1960 and becomes part of the reason that midpoints became such a common technique in the second half of the 20th century. So it was partially through the promotion of the Uranian astrologers that were doing their own promotions and translations and publishing of the technique, but then also Ebertin becomes a major source of the promotion of the technique in the late 20th century as well through cosmobiology and the cosmobiology school. And then later astrologers – for example, like, Rob Hand would be influenced by both of those schools, and in his book Horoscope Symbols he’d give some delineations for midpoints. I think that book is from 1981. Or later Noel Tyl would be heavily influenced by Ebertin and Ebertin’s book, and he would write some of his own delineations or what he said was like, update some of Ebertin’s delineations for midpoints, both in a book in 1994 titled Synthesis and Counseling in Astrology as well as in another book on solar arcs in 2001 that also contained midpoint delineations at the end.
So midpoints become popularized in the 20th century as the result of these two astrologers, essentially through the work of Alfred Witte and especially his students through the Hamburg school and Uranian astrology, but then also through the work of Reinhold Ebertin and the school of cosmobiology. So unfortunately, though, there’s a dark side to this story because this great flourishing of astrology is taking place in the 1920s where astrology has been revived and astrologers are starting to have conferences – like, literally some of the first astrological conferences. They are putting together associations. They are publishing like, lots of texts and magazines. And one of my impressions is just it was an incredibly vibrant time in the astrological community. But then of course in the background, there’s some really dark political events developing where we start to see the rise of Hitler, for example. In 1923, Elsbeth Ebertin makes a prediction about the rise of Hitler, which becomes very, very notable and prominent in retrospect. And then in 19 – that was in 1923 – and then in 1933, Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany and very quickly starts taking over the entire government. And essentially from 1933 forward, the Nazis take over Germany.
And during the 1930s, the Nazis start to crack down on astrology basically. And there were attempts from the astrologers to like, get around this and to still be able to practice astrology, but it starts becoming increasingly more and more difficult as the 1930s go on. And one of the things that happened, for example, is Witte’s book, the rule book for planetary pictures, which outlines his midpoints as well as his hypothetical planets, it actually gets banned I believe in 1936. So 1936, that book had been published in 1928, and yeah, and in 1936, the rule book is banned by the Nazis and they treat it as subversive. And I think this was partially actually due to the use of phrases like – in some of his delineations – of like, “lost battle” and “incapable leader,” which the Nazis viewed as subversive, so they ended up banning the book.
And then things continued to get more and more difficult and tighter and tighter until eventually there’s a really important turning point in 1941, where up to this point the astrologers had continued to be able to practice astrology to some extent. But then on May 10th, 1941, one of Hitler’s closest deputies, Rudolf Hess, does this surprise flight to Scotland without permission from Hitler in an attempt supposedly to strike up a peace deal with the British. And when this is discovered the very next day, Hitler and the Nazis basically decide to blame astrology for Hess’s defection. And Hess did have astrological interests, and did have an astrologer that worked for him as like, a secretary. But the details surrounding his flight are still somewhat murky, including the motivations and the astrological background behind it. There is actually some interesting astrology, because there was this Taurus stellium that was very close that lined up at that time in May of 1941. And the electional chart for Hess leaving is actually very interesting from an electional standpoint, because there’s some like, positive things in it with all these planets aligning in Taurus – like, a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction – but then Mars is exactly squaring that Taurus stellium from Aquarius, which really ruins the electional chart. And basically Hess flies to Scotland and then immediately gets imprisoned for the rest of his life by the British and eventually by the Allies until he dies mysteriously I think in like, the 1980s.
So why this is important for our story is that after Hess’s flight, the Nazis immediately blame it on the astrologers, and a month later on June 9th, 1941, they start rounding up all of the astrologers in Germany, and they ban astrology. They confiscate the books and the papers and the magazines of the astrologers. And in some instances, the astrologers are actually sent away to concentration camps, and there are a number of astrologers who were sent to concentration camps and died in concentration camps at this time. For our purposes, one of them that was notable is that Alfred Witte is arrested right away when they start rounding up the astrologers. And then they let him go at one point while they’re deciding what to do about him, but then he ends up committing suicide about a month later, and he leaves a note explicitly saying that he’s only doing this because he doesn’t want to be sent away to a concentration camp. So it’s an incredibly tragic and sad end to his story.
And then Reinhold Ebertin is also arrested. He ends up getting released, but all of the astrologers have to sign papers basically saying that they won’t continue to do astrology after that point. So from this point forward from 1941 forward, astrology becomes completely suppressed in Germany for the rest of the war. And what’s crazy is that Reinhold Ebertin had just published Combination of Stellar Influences with his interpretation of the midpoints in 1940. And he may have only printed a very small print run on about like, 200 copies possibly printed on cards, and supposedly he says in an autobiography that only about 20 copies had been sold. But then this event happens with Hess, and the Nazis ban astrology, and they destroy all of his copies of Combination of Stellar Influences. So the book almost doesn’t survive World War II. But then he says that two copies of the book basically survived. So I’ll circle back around to that, but basically, astrology gets outlawed in Germany from 1941 forward. Witte ends up committing suicide. Some astrologers are sent to concentration camps; others can’t practice. All of the Hamburg school has all of their books destroyed, even though they’d just recently published an edition of their rule book for planetary pictures. Ebertin has his work in astrology destroyed and suppressed. And even Elsbeth Ebertin ends up dying in an allied bombing raid in 1944. So that was a major astrologer dying during World War II.
So what ends up happening, though, is eventually the war ends in 1945, and very quickly the astrologers in Germany start to rebuild. And both the Hamburg school as well as the Ebertin school start to rebuild relatively quickly, and they start to publish their works. And Reinhold Ebertin publishes what would become the main version of a Combination of Stellar Influences that would become so influential in the year 1950 – so just five years after the war ends. And similarly, the students of Witte get together, and they end up putting together a new version of Witte’s rule book for planetary pictures that contains his midpoint theories that includes the hypothetical planets. And Witte’s four hypothetical planets are merged with four others by his associate and his student Sieggrun to create the sort of like, standard list from that point forward.
So after that, midpoints start to become more widespread. And in 1960, an English translation of Ebertin’s book A Combination of Stellar Influences is published, and this popularizes the technique in the English-speaking world especially in addition to some of the work that’s being done by the Uranian astrologers promoting the technique as well in other ways. And eventually, you know, midpoints become mentioned by a lot of leading astrologers. Like Rob Hand, for example, has delineations of midpoints in his book Horoscope Symbols in 1981, or Noel Tyl has two books where he has extensive use of midpoints that are inspired especially by Ebertin. So then essentially the technique becomes popularized at that point in the late 20th century.
All right, so to kind of summarize our story and what we learned here and my conclusions from doing this research is that midpoints are functionally introduced as we know them today in 1675 by two students of Placidus who were drawing inspiration from earlier techniques but who were also very conscious that they were introducing something new and innovative. And that technique almost didn’t survive because it got suppressed by the Catholic Church, but it just barely survived possibly in just a reference through a later astrologer named Bonattis. And that text may have been what influenced the astrologers in Germany in the early 20th century.
But to clarify that thing again, it turns out that Bonattis from the 17th century is the one that had the reference to midpoints, and midpoints are not mentioned in the 13th century astrologer Guido Bonatti.
So then in the early 20th century, the first astrologer as far as I can tell who started using midpoints was Albert Kniepf, and he may have been either influenced by the text of Bonattis that mentions them in passing, or he may have read the second edition of Placidus’s works that contained the introduction to midpoints by Placidus’s students. Then Albert Kniepf influences and teaches a number of astrologers, including Alfred Witte and Frank Glahn, both of which would go on to start writing about midpoints certainly in the 1920s. And midpoints especially become promoted and the primary proponent of them becomes Alfred Witte as part of his Hamburg astrology school and approach, which later became known as Uranian astrology.
Then Witte’s work with midpoints influences Reinhold Ebertin, who ends up founding the cosmobiology school of astrology. But Ebertin does some work putting more of a psychological spin on midpoints as well as a medical spin, and he removes the trans-Neptunian planets or the hypothetical planets of the Hamburg astrology school. And then this creates a couple of different streams in which midpoints were then promoted and popularized by those two schools, by the Hamburg school and the cosmobiology school, during the course of the 20th century, eventually becoming pretty popular by the ‘70s and ‘80s and 1990s.
So they almost got suppressed, though, during the course of astrology getting suppressed under Nazi Germany, and some of the works involving those midpoints were almost destroyed entirely. So for me, I was struck by the fact that the midpoint doctrine went through functionally two different periods of suppression, one by the Catholic Church and the Inquisition in the 1700s in the 17th century – the 1600s, I should say – and then a second one during the 1930s and 1940s under the Nazis in Germany. So it’s not that either of those groups was actively trying to specifically suppress midpoints, but it was part of astrology being suppressed in general. And so the technique ends up accidentally getting suppressed both times.
So as a result of that, there’s something interesting about that history and that’s why I wanted to introduce and outline it in its entirety just to document where this technique comes from, especially because as I said, it became the launching off point for a number of other techniques, including things like composite charts which have become a frequently used tool by astrologers today who look into like, relationship astrology. And a composite chart is like an extrapolation of midpoints between two natal charts.
So where does that leave us? So you know, midpoints – I wanted to document this history as a historian of astrology because I’d always been curious about that and I finally wanted to sit down and like, work all of this out. I myself haven’t really used midpoints that much in like, 20 years since I got into ancient astrology, because they weren’t really used in ancient astrology and so I’m kind of ambivalent in terms of whether I use them or not. I don’t really have a strong opinion. But I did want to work out this history, this recent history, in order to sort that out and in order to clarify some of the murky mythology surrounding midpoints and their history, and I hope I’ve been able to accomplish that today and that other historians or other practitioners can build on that history and that historical reconstruction that I’ve come up with here.
So like I said, a lot of this was already figured out by Walter Koch, the German astrologer and historian who promoted the Koch system of houses or what’s known as the Koch system of houses; already had some references to some of this in some of his books, at least one that was published in 1981. So some of this history may already be known about in certain sectors of the German-speaking world. But in the English-speaking world, there was still a lot of murkiness surrounding it, especially because of Reinhold Ebertin’s statement that Bonatti used midpoints in The Combination of Stellar Influences, which was not a true statement.
So I hope I’ve clarified some of this history. I wanna give a thanks and a shoutout to several different people. One of the main ones is Jenn Zahrt, because she was the one that pointed out to me that Albert Kniepf had been the one who taught midpoints to Alfred Witte. And she had also – she has a library, this amazing library, it’s an astrology library and institute called the CAELi Institute in Olympia, Washington. It’s called the Celestial Arts Education Library, and she recently launched a Patreon where you can support this library and in exchange, you can sometimes get access to if there’s an article in like, an obscure publication that you need a scan of. You can get a scan of that from her as part of your membership of this library. So even if you don’t live there physically to read the books, you can still both support that work to build a library as well as get some benefit from it. So people can find out more information about that at CAELi.institute, or just search for on Google the Celestial Arts Education Library, and you should be able to find it. But she sent me a scan of some German conference proceedings that I couldn’t find anywhere and couldn’t get ahold of. So that was really crucial in reconstructing some of this history, as well as the work that she’s done on Elsbeth Ebertin and astrology in German in the early 20th century has been amazing. So I wanted to give a shoutout to her. And check out that other episode that her and I did on the astrologer Elsbeth Ebertin for a little bit more on that if you’d like.
I also wanna give a shoutout to my friend Scott Silverman, who has a background in Uranian astrology. And he was the one actually that initially clarified for me the link between Bonattis and that the astrologer that Ebertin was calling Bonatti was actually the 17th century astrologer Bonattis. And then I was able to research and clarify and work that out, and that helped to like, fix and clarify this entire history. So shoutout to Scott Silverman for that, as well as for answering some of my questions about Uranian astrology at different points as I was researching its origins and the concepts underlying it and different things like that. So thanks a lot to Scott.
I also wanna give a shoutout to Philip Graves, who also runs a library in the UK; it’s probably the biggest astrological library in the world. And Philip specifically collects scans of not just books, but also scans of conference proceedings and astrology journal articles. And he sent me several scans of different German astrological periodicals from like, the 1920s and 1930s that were super helpful in reconstructing parts of this history. And Philip also has an amazing article on his website where he clarifies the publication history of Reinhold Ebertin’s work, The Combination of Stellar Influences, because there was a whole thing there about the book was said to be published in 1940, but then real copies of it don’t become clear until 1950. And then Philip was able to straighten that out for me and for everybody that what happened was he did a small print run on like, cards in 1940, but then it wasn’t really fully published in book form until around 1950. So you can find out Philip Graves’s website is called Astro Learn, and I would recommend checking it out because Philip also will offer things like that for out-of-print books or ones that aren’t in copyright anymore; he can scan a copy of like, an article for you if there’s an old journal you’re trying to research, and Philip’s help reconstructing some of this has been super valuable. So I just wanted to give a shoutout to him and recommend that people take advantage of some of the offerings that he has through his website, because having astrological libraries is really important. And trying to research and piece together this history has really shown me that even though nowadays we think that we have like, scans of all of these things or you can find a PDF online, you really can’t for so many things. And it’s only these astrological librarians that build these specialized collections of obscure astrological works and preserve them that we’re able to draw on; they do really important work in terms of allowing us to preserve and reconstruct some of this history. So Philip and Jenn Zahrt especially deserve a lot of recognition for that, and a lot of support for their work. So please check out their websites, and I’ll probably put some links to them for this episode.
I also wanted to – like I said, shoutout to Walter Koch who had established the Bonattis and Brunacci thing in the 20th century. And also shoutout to Michael Feist from Witte Verlag Publishing who has written some important histories of the Uranian school that I drew on from articles that are posted on his website as well.
All right. So I think that’s it for this episode. So that is in the broad outlines what I understand to be the history of the development and popularization of the midpoint technique. There’s a number of interesting subtopics that I also ended up researching here, including like, the origins of the trans-Neptunian planets in the Hamburg school and some of the debates and issues surrounding those was one major subtopic, and then another subtopic was the practice and eventual suppression of astrology in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. So at some point, I might do separate topics on that; I’m still trying to decide. But if anybody would like me to go into those topics more at some point, let me know. But otherwise, I think that’s it for this episode. So thanks so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and I’ll see you again next time.
[END CREDITS]
If you’re a fan of the podcast and you wanna get access to bonus content, then become a patron through my page on Patreon where you can get early access to new episodes, attend live recordings and webinars, access the monthly electional astrology podcast, The Secret Astrology Podcast that’s only available to patrons, or you can even get your name listed in the credits. Find out more at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.
Special thanks to the patrons on our Producers tier, including patrons Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issa Sabah, Jeanne Marie Kaplan, Melissa DeLano, Sonny Bazbaz, Kwatsi Alibaruho, Annie Newman, Ginger Sadlier, Berlynn West, and Nicki Crawford.
If you’re looking for good dates to do things this year, then be sure to check out our 2026 Electional Astrology Report, which is a guide to the most fortunate dates in 2026. You can get it at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/2026Report.
If you’re really looking to take your studies of astrology to the next level, then consider signing up for my Hellenistic Astrology course, which is an online course in ancient astrology where I take people from basic concepts up through intermediate and advanced techniques for reading birth charts. There’s over a hundred hours of video lectures, plus live webinars and Q&A sessions each month. And at the end of the course, you get a certificate of completion saying that you studied with me. Find out more information at TheAstrologySchool.com.
If you’re looking to get an astrological consultation, then check out the new consultations page on the podcast website where I have a list of astrologers I recommend for birth chart readings and other types of consultations. You can find that at TheAstrologyPodcast.com/Consultations.
The astrology software we use and recommend here on the podcast is called Solar Fire for Windows, and you can get a 15% discount on it by using the promo code ‘AP15’ at the website Alabe.com.
For Mac users, we recommend the program called Astro Gold for Mac OS, and you can use the promo code ‘ASTROPODCAST15’ to get a 15% discount at their website, which is AstroGold.io.
And shoutout to our sponsors for this episode, including the Northwest Astrology Conference, which is happening in Seattle and being livestreamed online May 21st through the 25th, 2026. Find out more information at NORWAC.net. As well as the United Astrology Conference, which is happening in Chicago this year September 3rd through the 9th, 2026. Find out more information about that at UACAstrology.com.