Astrology in Communist Poland
By Rafał T. Prinke
Modern interest in astrology, revived in Victorian England, slowly spread to the Continent during the early decades of the 20th century[1]. In Poland, first symptoms of it appeared in esoteric magazines and press announcements shortly before 1920 but it began to flourish only ten years later with the foundation of three astrological societies in Warsaw (1927), Toruń (1929) and Bydgoszcz (1929). They published specialised periodicals discussing theory and practice but with much space devoted to commentaries of current political events in the light of astrology[2]. The outbreak of World War II marked the end of public astrological activity, which had already been forbidden in the Third Reich. Franciszek Augustyn Prengel (1899-1945), the moving spirit of the Polish Astrological Society in Bydgoszcz, was sought out and arrested at the very beginning of German occupation, as his publica-tions on the horoscopes of Hitler and other Nazi leaders had certainly been noticed. He was sent to the Concentration Camp in Dachau, where he died only about a month before American troops liberated it[3]. The chairman of the homonymous society in Warsaw, Jan Starża-Dzierżbicki (1883-1943), con-tinued his activities in the underground but was arrested in 1943 and “found dead” in his prison cell[4]. The president of the Astrological Society Toruń, Alfred Ulkan (1881-c1950), being of German nationality survived the war, even though his earlier activities were investigated by the Gestapo. In 1945 he was forced to leave Poland, like most other Germans living there, and ended up in the Soviet Sector. He kept writing petitions to the Polish authorities asking to be allowed to return, as he had not joined the Nazi Party (unlike his close friend and collaborator Ernst Tiede) and his Polish friends sup-ported his efforts. Apparently, he committed suicide on the very day when the consent for his repatri-ation was issued[5].
When the war ended, the surviving esotericists made some attempts at reconstructing their earlier net-works but these were soon thwarted by the newly established Communist authorities. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s all such activities were banned and the few people who continued their esoteric work in informal private circles were regularly infiltrated by the Secret Police and closely invigilated, often arrested and/or recruited as their informers[6]. Most surprisingly, the Catholic Church in Poland, usu-ally perceived as the arch-enemy of the young Communist state, sometimes collaborated with the Se-cret Police to trace and eradicate the threat of esotericism[7]. Although astrology was not of primary interest to those groups, they included two active astrologers who had learned their art before the war and gained high reputation in the decades following it, namely Robert Walter (1908-1981) and Leszek Szuman (1903-1986). The former was an influential anthroposophist and homeopathic practitioner, while the latter investigated parapsychology and prophesies. They corresponded with each other for many years on astrology and various other topics[8].
In 1957 the Society for Polish-Indian Friendship was founded by the Communist regime, along with similar associations for other Third World counties, which the Soviet Block hoped to convert to their side of the Cold War. Unlike those others, the Indian Society proved to be successful and gradually attracted people interested in theosophy and yoga, so that by the end of the 1960s it became the semi-official forum for Eastern esotericism, New Age and hippie culture. Those interested in such areas as parapsychology or astrology had to wait for the change of the ruling elite in 1970, when the official Marxist view of the world was no longer enforced with such radical severity as before. At about the same time the popularity of dowsing suddenly increased and in 1973 the Great Poland Association of Dowsers in Poznań was founded at the initiative of Jan Ignacy Łuczak (1934-2016), who was also its president for many years to follow. The society quickly became an umbrella organisation for various alternative activities, including astrology. A similar Association of Radiesthesians was formed in War-saw in 1976 (in 1984 renamed to Psychotronic Society, with 24 branches across Poland), with the re-nowned investigator of psychic phenomena Lech Emfazy Stefański (1928-210) as its first chairman, and in 1982 the Pomeranian Psychotronic Society was established in Szczecin with the astrologer Leszek Szuman as its first president. They were allowed to publish books and periodicals “for internal use” but in practice anyone could purchase them directly from those organisations. Their printed out-put was quite huge and included diverse esoteric topics, even though every publication had to be accepted by state censors.
In 1978 a separate Association of Astrologers was founded in Poznań. The initiative came from a local businessman and philanthropist Witold Bońkowski (b. 1940), who managed to gather both older astro-logers, who had learned the art before the war, and younger aspirants from the New Age generation. Most of the original members were also academics, scientists, lawyers or artists and the group was rather elitist, with membership never exceeding thirty members. In 1980 they started publishing a yearbook entitled Problems of Astrology, which appeared regularly throughout the decade. Every volume had about 250 pages and consisted of articles on all aspects of astrology, including its history, techniques and statistical tests of its validity[9].

At the beginning of 1980 one of the vice-presidents Leszek Weres (b. 1945) was expelled after he had founded a Circle of Astrology Lovers in a local cultural centre, which was perceived as a potential rival. To show solidarity with him, another vice-president Rafał T. Prinke (b. 1955) also withdrew from the Association and they started working together on a book about astrology.
Access to Western publications from within a Communist country like Poland was practically impossible at the time, as one could not even have foreign money, not to mention sending it abroad to order books. However, as Leszek Weres was a scholar of political sciences, he had received a scho-larship in the USA a short time earlier and brought back a real load of astrology books, so they both were soon well oriented in the current state of the art in the West and ready to import it to Poland on a large scale. In the same year 1980 they started running courses of astrology, first in Poznań, then also in other cities. The courses consisted of twelve two hours’ lectures and ended with an exam and a proper diploma. Those in Warsaw gathered especially large audiences of over a hundred people per course so that the Association of Radiesthesians there created a separate Astrology Section to recruit course graduates as fee-paying members.
Such activities did not escape the keen “all seeing eye” of the Secret Police. Leszek Weres was espe-cially suspect because of his foreign contacts, former stay in the USA and his participation in the in-ternational team of peace negotiators in Vietnam. Now when the archives of the Secret Police became accessible, it could be confirmed that they not only wired his telephone but rented a flat next to his and taped whatever was going on there. Interestingly, his file bears the code name “Fortune Teller” and in the reports there is much about his interest in astrology but in a rather dismissive tone[10].
In August 1981, while working on the planned book, Weres and Prinke had the partly finished prac-tical sections of it mimeographed “for internal use”. Ironically, it was done at the copying facilities of the Polish Academy of Sciences and had its imprint, thus suggesting it was scientific material. The volume of about 200 pages, entitled The Starry Primer, had been distributed as course materials for two years until the actual book was published[11]. Those two years also coincided with the dark period of the Martial Law in Poland and it often happened that the lecturers returning by train to Poznań had to spend nights at the railway station because of the curfew.
Through various private contacts of Leszek Weres a large publishing house accepted the offer and signed the contract to publish the book. Curiously enough, it was owned by the regional headquarters of the Communist Party, financing its activities. The publication process took a long time but that was rather standard when editing, illustrations, typesetting, correcting etc. were all done in the traditional way, so the book was eventually released in July 1983. The final product appeared in two volumes of B-5 size, nicely illustrated throughout with black and white diagrams and images, created especially for it, and with 16 colour images at the back of each volume. The book was entitled The Mandala of Life: Astrology – Myths and Reality and a lengthy preface was provided by Jerzy Prokopiuk, a res-pected philosopher and translator, who introduced the work of Carl Gustav Jung to Poland and who was privately an avid anthroposophist and a pupil of Robert Walter mentioned above. The content covered the whole field, starting with the history of astrology, explanation of its basic principles and horoscope construction, techniques of prediction, Indian and Chinese systems, psychological inter-pretations, and finally a lengthy defence of the veracity of astrology[12]. It became an instant success and the original printrun of 20,000 copies was immediately followed by the second one of 150,000 copies which was incredibly large for the Polish book market and yet sold out very quickly.


Thus interest in astrology in Poland exploded instantly on an unprecedented scale. The courses run by Prinke and Weres became even more popular, as many readers of The Mandala of Life wanted to start practicing astrology themselves. To make it possible, the Astrology Section of the Psychotronic Socie-ty in Warsaw published “for internal use” (and possibly pirated) a photocopied facsimile of The American Ephemeris for the whole of the 20th century in 1500 copies, as well as the Tables of Houses for relevant latitudes, while Rafał T. Prinke wrote Vademecum of the Polish Astrologer with detailed explanation of various astrological calculations and all the necessary tables, which was published in two slim booklets by the Radiesthetic Association in Bydgoszcz in 1986[13].
The Mandala of Life brought the astrolo-gical revolution not only to Poland, but it was also widely distributed in Czechos-lovakia through Polish Cultural Centres and a partial Russian translation was publi-shed in Moscow as a samiz-dat[14]. There was a Serbo-Croatian translation underway but had not been finished because of the Balkan war. In Poland, some Communist propagandists and ideological authorities publicly criticized the publication of the book and the sudden spread of supersti-tions but could not stop it nor even express their attitude too strongly, as The Mandala was legally published by a publishing hou-se owned by the Party itself.
When the political situation in Poland changed in 1989, there were already thou-sands of practising astrologers, bearing certificates and diplomas from the courses run by Weres and Prinke. In the new capi-talist situation, the book market was soon flooded by dozens of new astrology books but the immense success of The Mandala of Life has never been repeated – and in the 1990s it had three more editions (all in one volume) by three different publishers.
Notes
[1] On the spread of modern astrology see the relevant sections in: Ellic Howe, Astrology and the Third Reich (Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Thorsons Publishers, 1984); Patrick Curry, A con-fusion of prophets (North Pomfret, VT: Trafalgar Square, 1992); Kocku von Stuckrad, Geschichte der Astrologie (München: C.H.Beck, 2007).
[2] Rafał T. Prinke, “Krótki zarys dziejów astrologii w Polsce,” Problemy Astrologii 1 (1980): 97-138; Rafał T. Prinke, “NAUKOWOŚĆ. Pretensje do naukowości w dyskursie polskich astrologów okresu międzywojennego,” in Polskie tradycje ezoteryczne 1890-1939, ed. Mariusz Dobkowski and Tadeusz Cegielski, Światło i Ciemność (Gdańsk-Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego / Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2020), 79-99.
[3] Prinke, “Krótki zarys.”; Stanisław Kłys, “Wspomnienie o Franciszku Augustynie Prenglu,” ibid.2 (1981): 8-9; Izabela Trzcińska, “Franciszek Augustyn Prengel i astrologowie międzywojnia,” in Polskie tradycje ezoteryczne 1890–1939, ed. Monika Rzeczycka and Izabela Trzcińska, Światło i Ciemność (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2019), 187-196; Rafał T. Prinke, “Political astrology and nationalisms in 1930s Poland,” in Occultism and Politics in East-Central Europe (4th CEENASWE Conference)(Prague2021).
[4] Prinke, “Political astrology and nationalisms in 1930s Poland.”
[5] Tadeusz Petrykowski, Toruń niewiarygodny, Biblioteczka Toruńska, 9 (Toruń: Toruńskie Towar-zystwo Kultury, 1983), 66-68.
[6] Zbigniew Łagosz, Karolina Maria Kotowska (Hess), and Tomasz Krok, “Komunistyczny aparat represji wobec ezoteryków i ugrupowań ezoterycznych – zagadnienia metodologiczno-źródłozna-wcze,” Przegląd Religioznawczy, no. 1 (287) (2023): 203-218
[7] Tomasz Krok, Antymasońska komórka Episkopatu Polski (1946-1952), 2 ed. (Łomianki: LTW, 2017).
[8] Piotr Gibaszewski, “Astrologia w Polsce w XX wieku: Od elitaryzmu do egalitaryzmu,” Nomos 59-60 (2007): 121-135; Zbigniew Łagosz, “Robert Walter’s struggle with the UB: the unknown story,” Studia Religiologica 46, no. 4 (2013): 293-306; Zbigniew Łagosz, “Aparat represji wobec Roberta Waltera i jego działalności na kanwie masonerii ezoterycznej rytu Memphis-Misraim,” Hermaion 4 (2015): 173-187
[9] Problemy Astrologii, ed. by Witold Bońkowski, 1980-1989, comprising eight volumes, with the last two as double years.
[10] Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, call numbers: IPN Po 00206/149, IPN Po 08/2304, IPN Po 08/1078, IPN Po 186/1006, IPN Po 06/297.
[11] Leszek Weres and Rafał T. Prinke, Gwiezdny elementarz: Wstęp do astrologii humanistycznej (Poznań: Ośrodek Informacji Naukowej PAN, 1981).
[12] Rafał T. Prinke and Leszek Weres, Mandala życia: Astrologia – mity i rzeczywistoś, 2 vols. (Poz-nań: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1983).
[13] Rafał T. Prinke, Vademecum polskiego astrologa, 2 vols. (Bydgoszcz: Stowarzyszenie Radieste-tów w Bydgoszczy, 1986). Two other, much expanded editions were later published in the 1990s.
[14] Р. Принке and Л. Верес, Мандала жизни [астрология – мифы и реальность] (Москва: [тираж не указан], 1986). Another edition appeared in Minsk in 1996.
References
Curry, Patrick. A confusion of prophets. North Pomfret, VT: Trafalgar Square, 1992.
Gibaszewski, Piotr. “Astrologia w Polsce w XX wieku: Od elitaryzmu do egalitaryzmu.” Nomos 59-60 (2007): 121-135.
Howe, Ellic. Astrology and the Third Reich. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire: Thorsons Publi-shers, 1984.
Kłys, Stanisław. “Wspomnienie o Franciszku Augustynie Prenglu.” Problemy Astrologii 2 (1981): 8–9.
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Łagosz, Zbigniew. “Aparat represji wobec Roberta Waltera i jego działalności na kanwie masonerii ezoterycznej rytu Memphis-Misraim.” Hermaion 4 (2015): 173-187.
Łagosz, Zbigniew. “Robert Walter’s struggle with the UB: the unknown story.” Studia Religiologica 46, no. 4 (2013): 293–306.
Łagosz, Zbigniew, Karolina Maria Kotowska (Hess), and Tomasz Krok. “Komunistyczny aparat represji wobec ezoteryków i ugrupowań ezoterycznych – zagadnienia metodologiczno-źródłoznaw-cze.” Przegląd Religioznawczy, no. 1 (287) (2023): 203–218.
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Prinke, Rafał T.. “NAUKOWOŚĆ. Pretensje do naukowości w dyskursie polskich astrologów okresu międzywojennego.” In Polskie tradycje ezoteryczne 1890–1939, edited by Mariusz Dobkowski and Tadeusz Cegielski. Światło i Ciemność, 79-99. Gdańsk-Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego / Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2020.
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Prinke, Rafał T., and Leszek Weres. Mandala życia: Astrologia – mity i rzeczywistoś. 2 vols Poznań: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1983.
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Trzcińska, Izabela. “Franciszek Augustyn Prengel i astrologowie międzywojnia.” In Polskie tradycje ezoteryczne 1890–1939, edited by Monika Rzeczycka and Izabela Trzcińska. Światło i Ciemność, 187–196. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2019.
Weres, Leszek, and Rafał T. Prinke. Gwiezdny elementarz: Wstęp do astrologii humanistycznej. Poznań: Ośrodek Informacji Naukowej PAN, 1981.
Принке, Р., and Л. Верес. Мандала жизни [астрология – мифы и реальность]. Москва: [тираж не указан], 1986.
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