Tag Archives: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz: Philosopher, Metaphysician.

We are forced to begin our inquiry with some degree of ambiguity. Reinhold Ebertin gives us a time of birth at 6:15 PM, local time, in Leipzig. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s father Johann Friedrich Leibniz entered the following notes in his family journal: “On Sunday 21 June [NS: 1 July] 1646, my son Gottfried Wilhelm is born into the world after six in the evening, ¼ to seven, Aquarius rising.” While we have no reason to dispute the time offered by the father (i.e., 6:45 PM), that time certainly does not yield Aquarius as the Ascendant, but rather the 20th degree of Sagittarius rather than the 14th (Ebertin’s presumably rectified time).