Book Review: Sun-Earth-Man

Zip Dobyns

Sun-Earth-Man by Theodor Landscheidt

Published by Urania Trust in 1989

Ted Landscheidt is a retired German judge who is challenging the scientific establishment with his astronomical-astrological theories. I found his recently published book both exciting (my normal reaction to knowledge that is really new to me) and astonishing. The amazement is how anyone managed to discover a major and previously unknown key to some of the complex cycles of earth and sky. Humans have observed the sky for thousands of years, searching for the movements in the sky which correspond to and throw light on the cycles (rhythmic changes) occurring on earth. But the key offered by Ted Landscheidt seems to be a truly new insight which “makes sense” of what seemed to be random, unpredictable phenomena.

Landscheidt discovered that Jupiter, our largest planet, seemed to play a crucial role in three different types of configurations (astrological aspects). He writes that Jupiter’s aspects to Earth and Venus exert tide-generating forces on the Sun, seeming to modulate or regulate some Sun activities. Mercury shared this tidal role but its influence was so small that forecasts could be made without including its position. The role of Mars is even smaller according to Landscheidt, and he leaves it out of his calculations. Pluto also can be ignored.

Secondly, Landscheidt says that Jupiter’s aspects to the other three gas giants, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, influence the Sun’s revolution around the Barycenter or center of mass (CM) in the solar system, and the resultant variations in the Sun’s movements in turn influence the planetary motions through feedback loops. The Sun is on the CM when Jupiter opposes Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The center of the Sun is farthest away from the CM when Jupiter forms a massive conjunction with the three big outer planets.

The third important type of Jupiter configuration involves Jupiter, the Sun and the CM. Landscheidt seems to have personally discovered the crucial role played by aspects between these three gravitational centers; Jupiter, our largest planet; the Sun, more massive that everything else in our solar system combined; and the center of mass in the whole system.

Conjunctions of Jupiter, Sun and CM occur at varying intervals, and correlate with a variety of cycles on earth. I have previously written about an article in Cycles magazine called “When the Sun goes Backward,” which described the irregular motion of the Sun about the CM or Barycenter. When the CM moves nearly parallel with the surface of the Sun or oscillates about it, there are periods of major instability which Landscheidt calls phase changes. These unstable periods may last from less than three years to more than eight years, and occur irregularly. Landscheidt lists five past episodes, going back to 1789, and says the next is coming between 2002 and 2011.

According to Landscheidt, among the cyclic changes which can be correlated with these three types of Jupiter aspects are the Sun’s rotation rate, its energetic solar eruptions, geomagnetic storms, the ozone column in earth’s atmosphere, our rainfall, temperature, the rise and fall of animal populations, economic cycles, interest rates, stock prices, gross national product, phases of general instability and historical periods of radical change and revolution.

Landscheidt’s graphs are very impressive, showing how the conjunctions of Jupiter, Sun and CM tend to occur at peaks or troughs of cycles including the numbers of lynx skins brought in by hunters, the prices of U.S. long term government bonds, U.S. stock market prices, pig iron prices, salmon catches in the north Atlantic, earth’s magnetic field rate of change, etc. What is dramatic, and I think a unique discovery by Landscheidt, is the shift at the times of the phase changes mentioned above. Where Jupiter-Sun-CM conjunctions coincided with peaks in a given cycle before a phase change, they match the troughs after the instability period and vice versa. Since the aspects can be irregular in time, until you know which ones to watch and you have the key of the phase change periods which signal reversals in the correlations between astrological aspects and earth cycles, the timing of the cycles can easily seem to be statistical artifacts or simply random.

Landscheidt includes a brief discussion of some of the theories of the new science specialty being called Chaos. One important point is the instability of “boundary” regions. The surface of the Sun (and earth and other planets) is a boundary, and Landscheidt connects the major phase changes with the periods when the CM is moving close to the boundary of the Sun. He also refers to the work of Lorenz and his “butterfly” effect which was mentioned in the previous Mutable Dilemma article on Chaos. The principle is stated as extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, so that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in New England could eventually have an effect on weather anywhere in the world. Landscheidt offers this strongly supported principle from Chaos theory to refute the scientists who claim that the planets are too small and too far away to have any effect on earth.

Landscheidt has been making forecasts since the 1970s, and has had some spectacular successes in predicting times of intense solar flares and other phenomena. Of his predicted periods of solar eruptions from January 1979 to January 1981, 27 out of 29 solar events fell in his predicted periods. Landscheidt gives the statistical probability of this match as greater than 0.00001, or less than one chance in 10,000 that the match could occur by chance. Among his current forecasts which are likely to be of interest to many people, he expects a bottom in the stock markets of the world in 1990. He thinks the German market will bottom in the spring, but that other markets may vary by a few months. Another forecast of general interest involves the climate and temperature. Though many scientists are predicting increasing heat from the “greenhouse” effect of gasses which retain heat in the atmosphere of earth, Landscheidt is predicting a colder period just ahead. Sunspot minima have been associated with increased cold in the past, including two periods called “mini ice ages” when glaciers actually advanced for some years. Landscheidt expects a period of sunspot minima after 1990, accompanied by increased cold, with a stronger minima and more intense cold which should peak in 2030. He does not expect the cold period to end until 2070. It would be interesting if the “greenhouse” gasses and the sunspot minima cancel each other and the situation stays relatively normal.

There is a certain amount of subjectivity in attempts to correlate history with any theory of cycles, whether we draw the cycles from astronomy or from other sources like Ravi Batra’s philosophical framework. Our choice of events to support our theory is always biased to some extent, but Landscheidt’s phase shift periods do coincide with some major changes in human activity, especially involving economic and political issues. I have added more events to the ones mentioned by Landscheidt. Expanding the orb allowed in the aspect would extend the time periods listed, as Landscheidt points out, but I have stayed with his narrower orb.

The first of the instability periods which is listed was between 1789 and 1793. The U.S. actually became a country at that time under our Constitution and our first President, rather than a collection of colonies. The French Revolution marked a drastic overthrow of their monarchy, while the Netherlands and Hispaniola in the Caribbean also demanded freedom from their foreign rulers.

The next phase shift from 1823 to 1828 was marked by the Monroe Doctrine and by the attempts of many countries in Central and South America to throw off the control of Spain. A British law legalized labor unions within strict limits. According to one reference, the petroleum industry began in Baku, Russia, in 1823, and the New York Stock Exchange opened as such in 1825. The world’s first steam locomotive passenger service started, and the first wire suspension bridge opened. The first overland journey to southern California began and the first commercially practical gas stove was designed. The period ended with the U.S. passing a high tariff law to tax imports and electing Andrew Jackson whose term of office could be considered the beginning of the Democratic Party.

The next phase shift from 1867 to 1870 saw the publication of Das Kapital by Karl Marx which planted the seeds for later Communism. The Dominion of Canada was formed by the union of four provinces and the U.S. acquired Alaska. The U.S. made its only attempt to impeach a president, but Johnson escaped by one vote. The first typewriter was developed, and Rockefeller began his battle to gain a monopoly over oil in the U.S. The world became smaller with the completion of the Suez Canal and the first transcontinental train track across North America. An association to promote women’s rights was started in the U.S. and the territories of Wyoming and Utah became the first to permit women to vote.

The phase shift from 1933 to 1937 saw Hitler begin his 12 year rule of Nazi Germany, and Roosevelt begin his 12 year period as President of the U.S. Roosevelt initiated a massive restructuring of the U.S. government with his New Deal, including a proliferation of government agencies. After individual citizens were ordered to turn in their gold to the U.S. government, the official price was raised. England had its only voluntary abdication of a ruling monarch. Salazar began a 37 year rule as dictator of Portugal, turning the clock backward in his country. Japan began its expansion with an invasion of China which only ended after its defeat in 1945. Mussolini, dictator in Italy, began his empire building by invading Ethiopia. Stalin began a purge of many Soviet leaders and forced peasants onto huge collective farms where millions died of starvation, while the world tried to struggle out of the depths of the Great Depression.

The phase shift from 1968 to 1972 saw Nixon change the world economy by letting the dollar float against gold rather than maintain a fixed (artificially low) dollar value for gold which was draining our gold supply. As a result of this action, other countries soon abandoned the currency equivalences which had been established in the Bretton Woods meeting in 1944 at the same time that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund had been founded. The financial world has never achieved stability since that turning point. Those momentous years also saw a man walk on the Moon, the U.S. decision to leave Vietnam, accepting our first major military defeat, and Nixon took the actions which led to Watergate, our first Presidential resignation. Simultaneously, there was student unrest around the world and the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.

The next phase shift in 2002 to 2011 could be dramatic. I expect additional major changes in the world’s power and monetary structures. Previous phase shifts marked the beginning of modern, totalitarian Communism in Marx’s book; its most ruthless phase in Stalin’s purges and destruction of Russian peasants; and we may see its final downfall during the next phase shift. The current changes in Russia under Gorbachev and the current attempt of the Chinese elders to turn the clock back, are certainly signs that atheistic brute force is not a permanent solution.

In the latter pages of Landscheidt’s book, he gets into more esoteric theories which seem less firmly established, but many readers might love his description of the “harmony of the spheres.” He associates musical chords with planetary aspects and describes the harmonics of aspects. He correlates major phase jumps which occur at very long intervals with unstable, variable weather as shown in the tree rings of very old bristlecone pine trees. The past phase jumps marking major new epochs are listed as occurring in 3839 B.C., 2916 B.C., 1369 B.C., and 1128 A.D. These dates are an example of what looks at first like random data since the intervals between the dates vary widely, but Landscheidt shows how the intervals are harmonics of a basic interval. The next epoch is scheduled for 2030 A.D., hence Landscheidt’s prediction of the sunspot minima and cold at that time.

For any readers who are interested in science and who want ammunition to offer to materialistic scientists, this is a vitally important book! After reading it, I am qualifying my language a bit. In interpreting a chart, I normally say that the planets are not “doing” anything, that the sky is a clock and the horoscope symbolizes our character. I still think the latter part of the statement is true, but I have started saying that there is some evidence that the planets modulate the Sun which in turn influences our climate and other physical variables on earth. But I still think that we are born when we fit the state of the world and that we can change our character and therefore our destiny if we are willing to make the effort.

Copyright © 1989 Los Angeles Community Church of Religious Science, Inc.

back to top