Athansius Kircher was a Jesuit scholar who lived between 1602 and 1680. He was born in Germany and lived there and in France, until in 1633 the Austrian Emperor called him to Vienna to succeed Kepler as mathematician of the Habsburg court. On the way there Kircher’s ship was blown off course and he ended up in Rome, where he spent the rest of his life. He published 40 books on various subjects in the fields of Egyptology, geology and medicine.

The transmission of Arab and Persian astrology took place from as early as the middle of the 12th century. John of Seville, to name only one of the early scholars dedicated to support the survival of original source material, translated the works of famous astrologers like Alkindi, Albumasar, Messahala or Thebit ibn Qurra straight from the Arabic into Latin. Nevertheless it should take until the 16th century before the first astrological works were printed and published in the vernacular.