A Sad Tale of a Beautiful Prediction

Most astrologers know the name “Naibod”.

“Naiboc arc” is usually an option, in astrosoftware, when we try to calculate primary directions.

What happens is: primary directions transform arcs of great circles into time, to determine the time certain events would happen in the native’s life.

In short: astrology works within the ancient model of the Cosmos, that is, taking into account the apparent motion of the sky in relation to Earth.

A birth chart is a snapshot, a picture of that sky at a certain time and at a particular location, when/where someone is born.

This chart shows potentials in the life; possibilities and impossibilities in the life of the person who was born (or so these weirdos that believe in astrology say).

The thing is, the sky never stops.

If we assume there is some relation between what happens down here and what is shown up there, it’s not unreasonable to suppose, that its motion is also informative.

The birth chart shows if; the techniques derived from it show when.

Primary directions means watching as things in the chart, by primary motion (the general apparent motion of the sky), change their position and hit other points. When they do, we get the distance they travelled — which, in a sphere, is measured in arcs, not straight lines — and convert it into time.

Which brings the question: how do we convert it?

Ptolemy, if we really squeeze the Tetrabiblos for meaning, seems to advocate the one degree of arc / one year of life correspondence.

Naibod, however, proposed a more symbolically sound approach:

We are using the primary motion; it is the motion that seems to carry the sky around us once each day. What makes the days and nights (and one of the major and most basic symbols of the astrologer’s toolkit) is the Sun.

Then, instead of taking one degree, we take the Sun’s daily motion (not the sky’s: the distance the Sun travels, during one day, in relation to the Celestial Sphere.).

If you think of it, it must be a bit less than a degree, because the Zodiac (the course of the Sun along the year) has, as every circle does, 360 degrees, but the year has 365 days.

And it is: 59 minutes, eight seconds, and one-third of a second (A degree has 60 minutes of arc). This is the arc of Naibod.

(Quick ad: if you liked this explanation, I taught a course about celestial mechanics and uploaded the classes here).

But… who is Naibod?

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Valentin Naboth was born in 1523, in the small town of Calau, Germany.

He studied in the University of Wittemberg, which had such teachers as the great astrologer and Father of the Protestant Reformation, Philipp Melanchthon (The “Aquinas of the Reformation”); and Erasmus Reinhold, the famous astronomy/astrology/mathematics teacher.

Naibod’s arc is explained in his Enarratio elementorum astrologiae, based on Reinhold’s tables. The book is a general assessment of astrological works from the “Arabs” and Ptolemy.

He signed his works as Valentinus Nabodus.

He moved to Padua, Italy, in which he lived out until his death.

Now, the sad part comes.

According to Tommaso Campanella (Dominican friar, astrologer, poet, friend of Galileo’s and Pope Urban VIII’s; I will write about him someday), in his book Astrologicorum Libri VI (“Six astrological books”), says that Naibod, while studying his own birth chart (maybe using primary directions? I have no idea), judged that in a certain day he had a high risk of death.

In order to avoid that, he stored food and water, and shut himself inside his own house.

Unfortunately, a gang of criminals were passing by, saw the house, thought it was empty and broke in to rob it.

Finding Naibod hidden inside it, they stabbed him to death.

As Tommaso Campanella says, “the fates conduct the willing, and drag the unwilling” (Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt).

A very sad ending, but, let’s give him the credit: his prediction was spot-on.

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