Insight Editions · No. 389
Astrology and Reincarnation
Reading Past and Future Lives in the Horoscope
Manly P. Hall
Hall's short PRS book on karmic astrology: the twelve nidanas as signs, the 12th house as the past life, Emperor Julian as Alexander reborn, and karma working through each sign in turn.
A study guide to Astrology and Reincarnation by Manly P. Hall (Philosophical Research Society, second edition, 1980). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
The natal chart is read as a karmic statement: the 12th house and preceding signs show the previous life, the 2nd house the next, and the whole nativity is "a bill rendered" that self-discipline can pay off.
SCOPE
A preface and three essays. One gives Tibetan and Western rules for reading past and future lives, one tests them on Emperor Julian as a reborn Alexander the Great, and one explains how karma works through the twelve signs.
KEY FIGURES
Emperor Julian the Apostate; Alexander the Great; Thomas Taylor; Libanius; D. G. Hogarth; Bessie Leo; Francis Bacon; the Buddha.
BEST FOR
Students of esoteric astrology who want Hall's rules for karmic chart reading, and readers curious how Theosophical-era astrology tied rebirth to the zodiac.
The Book on One Page
A slim book in four parts that turns the horoscope into a record of past lives and a map of karma still to be worked out.
Hall's starting claim is historical. The nations that built astrology, the Brahmans, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Druids and Greeks, also taught rebirth, so the two doctrines belong together. From that he builds a working method. The 12th house and the sign before the Ascendant describe the previous life. The 2nd house points to the next. The chart as a whole is a karmic account that the native can settle by conduct.
The nativity, Hall writes, is "a statement of indebtedness, a bill rendered to each of us when we are born." The book's three essays explain how to read that bill, test the method on one famous case, and show how each sign pays off the karma of the sign before it.
| Ch | Title | One-line payload |
|---|---|---|
| Preface | Preface | The South Node, Saturn and afflictions mark karma; the stars impel but do not compel. |
| I | How to Read Your Past and Future Lives | The Tibetan nidanas and six worlds, the 12th and 2nd houses, and a past-life reading for each rising sign. |
| II | Astrology and Reincarnation | Julian the Apostate's chart, rotated to its 12th house, is read as Alexander the Great's. |
| III | Astrology and Karma: How We Make Our Own Fate | Karma is compensation, astrology is its mechanism, and each sign carries the previous sign's debts. |
Read the chapters as Hall's rules and his one worked example. Chapter I supplies the method, Chapter II applies it, and Chapter III gives the moral reasoning behind both. The value lies in seeing a coherent symbolic system; the evidence for it is a separate question, taken up in the CRITICAL LENS boxes.
Preface
Hall sets out the karmic markers in a chart and insists from the first page that they are pressures to be met, not sentences to be served.
Hall opens with the indicators astrologers already use for karma. The South Node of the Moon is widely held to show karmic patterns. Some practitioners prefer a chart for conception over the birth chart, though Hall works with the moment of birth. He quotes Bessie Leo, who reasoned that astrology falls under Saturn, "the planet of justice," and asked whether it is just "for one man to be born with a good horoscope and another with a bad one, if there be not some pre-existing cause."
An afflicted Mars or Saturn marks karma to be transmuted. The cusp of the 2nd house hints at what is coming. "Because the stars impel but do not compel, a lifetime devoted to self-discipline and unselfish dedication to the common good releases the positive aspects of the various planetary bodies." Afflictions, he adds, "strongly impel toward greater thoughtfulness and increasing skill."
Hall then widens the frame. The reliefs at Borobudur picture the Buddha's many earlier lives. Lord Bacon gets a nod as a Western sympathiser. The sixty-year cycles of Eastern calendars show that the old astronomers thought in long recurring periods, which suits a doctrine of many lives.
A hard placement is a pressure toward skill. Hall's whole book rests on this: the chart sets the terms, conduct decides the outcome.
"Reincarnation is a rational hypothesis as a basis for thought."
BESSIE LEO, ASTROLOGICAL ESSAYSBessie Leo's argument from justice assumes the conclusion: it only works if the universe must be fair to individuals. Unequal birth charts are equally consistent with chance, and the Preface never considers that option.
How to Read Your Past and Future Lives
Hall combines a Tibetan scheme of twelve causes and six worlds with Western house rules to give a step-by-step past-life reading.
The method comes, Hall says, from Tibetan astrologer-priests who ask three questions. Where does the soul stand among the nidanas, the chain of causes that brings rebirth? On which plane of consciousness did it live before? What details of that life explain the karma at work now? A further chart for the moment of death can estimate the soul's future state.
The Bhava Chakra, the wheel of transmigration painted at a Sikkim monastery, gives the nidanas. Hall maps its twelve images to the twelve signs. The Sun's sign gives the nidana; the Ascendant gives its subdivision.
| Sign | Nidana | Image | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | Unconscious will | Blind man | Soul passing from death to rebirth |
| Taurus | Conformation | Potter and pots | Shaping mind and body |
| Gemini | Conscious will | Monkey | Rise of conscious experience |
| Cancer | Self-consciousness | Ship with people and animals | Rise of individuality |
| Leo | Sense development | Empty house | Sensory perception |
| Virgo | Contact | Marriage | Senses fixed on outer objects |
| Libra | Feeling | Arrow in the eye | Illusions of pain and pleasure |
| Scorpio | Desire | Man drinking wine | Gratification |
| Sagittarius | Indulgence | Gathering fruit | Attachment to possessions |
| Capricorn | Maturity | (no image given) | Material life at its fullest |
| Aquarius | Compensation | Birth of a son | Paying debts to nature |
| Pisces | Decay | Corpse carried to the grave | Release from the material state |
A Pisces Sun means a life of detachment, closing a cycle. A Scorpio Sun exists "to experience the consequences of greed, personality, and possession."
The plane of origin comes from the six worlds (lokas) of the wheel, each tied to a planet. Take the stronger luminary, find the ruler of its decanate, and that planet names the world the soul came from.
| World | Planet |
|---|---|
| Gods | Jupiter |
| Titans | Mars |
| Humans | Mercury |
| Animals | Venus |
| Hungry ghosts | Moon |
| Hells | Saturn |
The Western rules follow. The cusp of the 12th house describes the previous life, and the cusp of the 2nd house the next. Angular houses show the present, succedent houses the future, and cadent houses the past.
Hall then gives a reading for each rising sign, always through the sign before it:
- Aries. Comes from a Piscean life of limitation, so this life feels like release.
- Taurus. Carries the militant fire of Aries beneath an artistic surface.
- Virgo. Brings "subconscious repentance" for a domineering Leo life and an urge to serve the world it once ruled.
- Capricorn. Feels the large Jupiter projects of a Sagittarian past cut short, and so prepares the Aquarian revolt that follows.
- Pisces. Gathers "the loose ends of unfinished business" before a fresh start.
The reading is meant to be cumulative. Each sign in turn adds its lesson to those before, so a chart is read as one point in a long sequence rather than a fresh start. Hall's summary is plain: "We learn from the past, we labor in the present, and we build for the future."
Two special cases close the chapter. The same sign on the 12th and 1st cusps means a "continued existence," a life cut short, such as a young man killed in war, now resumed. An intercepted sign in the 1st house brings next-life events forward into this one, a reward of good karma.
Angular houses show the present, succedent the future, cadent the past.
- Sun sign: which nidana, or stage of the great cycle.
- Stronger luminary's decanate ruler: which world the soul came from.
- 12th-house cusp and planets: the place, time and conditions of the last life.
The Bhava Chakra is a Buddhist teaching aid about dependent origination in every moment. Its link to the zodiac is Hall's own mapping, not Tibetan doctrine, and he gives no source for the "secret formulas." The sign readings also project modern stereotypes, for instance calling the American temperament superficially Mercurial over a "Taurian hangover."
Astrology and Reincarnation
One worked case: the chart of Emperor Julian, turned to its 12th house, read as the life of Alexander the Great.
Flavius Claudius Julian, the Apostate, was born at Constantinople on 6 November 331. He honoured Mercury as lord of his birth, so Hall gives him Gemini rising. Raised a Christian, he turned to the old philosophy, admiring Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, and was initiated at Ephesus at about twenty and later at Eleusis. His rhetoric teacher Libanius said he took repose only in "the change of employment." He was "pontiff, author, diviner, judge, general of the army." The chart shows a grand trine in water signs joining the Sun, Moon, chart ruler and lord of the midheaven, which Hall reads as his devotion to the mysteries.
The Platonist Thomas Taylor had written that Julian believed himself to have been Alexander the Great. No reliable chart exists for Alexander. Following Hogarth, Hall places his birth in 356 BC, probably October, so a Libra Sun, and reads the portraits as typically Taurean.
Hall then applies Chapter I. The Moon is the stronger luminary, in the second decan of Cancer, which is ruled by Scorpio and therefore Mars: a martial previous life. Mars sits in Julian's 10th house of kingship. A Libra Sun for Alexander fits the rule that the sign before Julian's Scorpio Sun gives the previous Sun sign. Taurus on Julian's 12th cusp fits Alexander's look.
Rotated so the 12th house becomes the Ascendant, Julian's chart is read as Alexander's. Capricorn falls on the new midheaven, a sign tied to India, the goal of his campaigns. Mars and Uranus in the new 11th suggest ambition and sudden change. Sagittarius on the new 8th and Venus placed there point to death through feasting and poison. Jupiter in the 5th fits a life of pleasure.
Taylor saw Julian's "grandeur" in his writings and wrote that "we may safely credit what he asserted of himself, that he was formerly Alexander the Great."
Hall ends by suggesting that readers turn Julian's chart the other way, to the 2nd house, and work out his next life for themselves.
The case is circular. Alexander's chart is built partly from the result Hall wants, a Libra Sun and Taurus rising, and then that agreement is offered as confirmation. Julian's own ascendant is inferred from his devotion to Mercury. Parallels such as "both died young, far from home" fit many soldiers. Nothing here could fail.
Astrology and Karma: How We Make Our Own Fate
Hall's fullest statement of the ethics behind the method: karma is lawful compensation, the chart is its ledger, and each sign settles the account of the one before it.
Hall opens with Bacon: "There is no fatal necessity in the stars." He then attacks the modern "freedom fetish." The modern belief that we are "born free and equal," owing no authority beyond our desires, has, he complains, worn away even "the merit system" through "the equality complex." Against it he sets cause and effect as one of the seven great laws, found in the Golden Rule across some forty nations and in the Buddha's image: "Effect follows cause as the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the oxen."
The materialist, Hall says, dismisses astrology as "a sort of astral theology," old orthodoxy under a new name. Hall replies that no one can show the universe to be "one vast accident," and that cosmic order offends mainly because it wounds egotism. The ancients, by contrast, held all creation to be ensouled by a divine will and purpose.
Karma is compensation, not fate. It is a debt that must be paid. Forgiveness of sins cannot cancel it, because the law operates whatever we believe. Hall lists three factors: good karma, bad karma and the action we take now. "Philosophy teaches us to be modest in success (good karma), patient in adversity (bad karma), and constructive in all action."
"Astrology is the mechanism which administers the law of karma." At the first breath the soul is bound to the planetary pattern that matches its merit. The influences are neutral in themselves. A good nature answers to a planet's positive vibration and a poor one to its negative side. The chart cannot say which response the native will choose. It can only show the terms of the account, which is why Hall says the karmic elements can be read "to some degree" and no further.
The signs alternate, so each sign both works out and rebels against the karma of the one before it:
| Sign | Inherits from | How it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Aries | Pisces | Struggle against inner weakness; disappointment |
| Taurus | Aries | Locked-in ambition; success without contentment |
| Gemini | Taurus | Emotional drives under an intellectual surface |
| Cancer | Gemini | Sympathies do the thinking |
| Leo | Cancer | Urge to reform; "infallibility complex" |
| Virgo | Leo | Responsibility thrust upon it; money problems |
| Libra | Virgo | A climbing sign; honour followed by disaster |
| Scorpio | Libra | Emotional control; justice distorted |
| Sagittarius | Scorpio | Open promoter in revolt against Scorpio secrecy |
| Capricorn | Sagittarius | High aims held back by a "crystallized personality" |
| Aquarius | Capricorn | Fixed views inside a life of revolt; few close friends |
| Pisces | All signs | Ties off the cycle for a new start |
The rule for the reader follows. Learn your karma from the signs before your Sun and Ascendant, then use self-discipline to turn their pressures into strength.
"The nativity is a statement of indebtedness, a bill rendered to each of us when we are born."
HALL ON THE NATIVITYHall's practical rule is to treat every hard placement as unfinished business and answer it with conduct, not resentment or fatalism.
Hall offers karma as freedom, yet his sign portraits are close to verdicts: Gemini natives "frequently" lack integrity; Napoleon and Hitler illustrate Libra. Attributing station in life to past-life merit can excuse inequality, and his scorn for "the equality complex" points that way. As with the rest of the book, no test is proposed that could show the scheme wrong.
What the Book Adds Up To
A compact system for reading rebirth in the chart, with a sound ethic attached to an unprovable mechanism.
Master Takeaways
- The chart is a karmic ledger. Hall calls the nativity "a bill rendered" at birth (Ch III).
- The stars impel, they do not compel. Self-discipline releases a planet's positive side (Preface).
- Look one step back. The 12th house and the sign before the Sun and Ascendant describe the previous life (Ch I).
- Look one step forward. The 2nd house points to the next life (Ch I).
- Karma is compensation, not fatalism. It is a debt paid by conduct, and belief cannot cancel it (Ch III).
- Modest, patient, constructive. This is Hall's three-part response to good karma, bad karma and present action (Ch III).
- Sun gives the nidana, Ascendant its subdivision. (Ch I)
- The stronger luminary's decanate ruler names the world of origin. (Ch I)
- Angular, succedent, cadent. Present, future, past (Ch I).
- Same sign on the 12th and 1st cusps means an interrupted life resumed (Ch I).
- An intercepted sign in the 1st brings next-life events forward (Ch I).
- Afflicted Mars and Saturn are karma to be transmuted, not punishments (Preface).
- Each sign rebels against and works out the last. (Ch III)
- Positive signs set causes; negative signs meet effects. (Ch III)
- Pisces closes the cycle by gathering loose ends (Ch I, Ch III).
- Turning the chart to its 12th house is Hall's technique for reading the past life (Ch II).
- Julian as Alexander is the book's single worked case (Ch II).
Frameworks & mental models
| Framework | What it says | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Twelve nidanas as signs | The Sun's sign shows the soul's stage in the great cycle | Ch I |
| Six worlds and planets | The decanate ruler of the stronger luminary gives the world of origin | Ch I |
| Three-life houses | 12th past, 1st present, 2nd next | Ch I |
| Chart rotation | Turn the 12th house to the Ascendant to read the past life | Ch II |
| Three factors of karma | Good, bad and present action, met with modesty, patience and constructive effort | Ch III |
| Sign succession | Each sign inherits and resists the previous sign's karma | Ch III |
The ethic is humane and practical: hardship is a call to self-discipline, success a call to modesty, and no placement is final. The machinery is another matter. The Tibetan-zodiac mapping is unsourced, the Julian case is circular, and the sign portraits slide into stereotype and blame. The book gives rules but no way to check them, so it is best read as a symbolic language for reflection rather than a method for finding facts about past lives.
Who's who
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Julian the Apostate | Roman emperor (b. 331), Neoplatonist initiate; the book's test case |
| Alexander the Great | Macedonian king (b. 356 BC); Julian's supposed previous life |
| Thomas Taylor | English Platonist who reported Julian's belief that he was Alexander |
| Libanius | Rhetorician who described Julian's work habits |
| D. G. Hogarth | Historian whose account Hall uses to date Alexander's birth |
| Bessie Leo | Theosophical astrologer quoted on Saturn and justice |
| Francis Bacon | Quoted: "no fatal necessity in the stars" |
| The Buddha | Quoted on cause and effect; earlier lives shown at Borobudur |
Connect it
- Model risk. The Julian case shows how a model fitted to its own inputs "confirms" itself, the same failure a bank's model validation team looks for in back-tests that reuse training data.
- Legacy debt. Hall's picture of each sign inheriting and resisting the last one's karma resembles technical debt in enterprise architecture: each new platform reacts against the old one's limits while still carrying its obligations.