Anyone studying any subject under the Sun can only understand it at the level that they themselves are operating.
This is a truth that is self evident when it comes to politics, psychology, art or science, and is equally applicable to astrology.
If you study any subject deeply you will come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people have such a superficial understanding of it that their observations are likely to be wrong.
In fact the main thing that brings astrology into further disrepute amongst academics is the ignorance and naivety of many of its “followers”.
The same thing can be said of reincarnation.
There are many narcissistic egoists that will claim to have been Cleopatra or some Egyptian Pharaoh in a previous life.
The irony seems to escape them that if they were once Napoleon and are now just some halfwit dickhead, they must have created some dreadful cosmic faux pas in their last life.
So my own knee-jerk response to anyone who claims to have been a famous person in a past life is probably unprintable.
My approach to any astrological research is one of scepticism. I don’t believe anything until its been proven to me, so I feel well qualified to check the claims made for any kind of technique, because I actually start off by trying to disprove it and will only acknowledge that there may be something in it if it actually does work in practice.
I would apply exactly the same criteria to any claims made about previous lifetimes, in fact its even more important to do that in this arena because of the sheer impossibility of substantiating any of them.
So if some writer claimed to be a reincarnation of Anne Frank, I would fold my arms and say – prove it.
Anne “was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary in which she documented life in hiding under Nazi persecution. She is a celebrated diarist who described everyday life from her family hiding place in an Amsterdam attic. One of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world’s best-known books.”
Anne’s Gemini Sun/Mercury could suggest a writer, certainly her Moon/Neptune conjunction in Leo in square to Jupiter and her Venus in Taurus would endow her with a creative and poetic imagination.
Anne died, probably of typhus in a German concentration camp in March 1945.
It’s difficult to see the suffering in her life from her chart. We could perhaps make a case for the Sun’s opposition to Saturn but this has a 7 degree orb and other than that, it’s not a particularly difficult nativity.
But maybe we should use different criterion for people who died during wartime as there were so many of them.
Certainly she had the transits to indicate her years in hiding as Saturn was conjunct her Sun and Pluto square to her Venus.
Anne’s book was first published (posthumously) in 1947 with transit Uranus conjunct her Sun.
“In 1954, Barbro Karlen was born to Christian parents in Sweden. When she was less than three years old, Barbro told her parents that her name was not Barbro, but “Anne Frank.” Barbro’s parents had no idea of who Anne Frank was, as they were unaware of the book,
Barbro relates that her parents wanted her to call them “Ma and Pa,” but Barbro knew that they were not her real parents. Barbro even told her mother that her real parents would soon come to get her and take her to her real home.
During her childhood, Barbro told her parents details of her life as Anne, which her parents thought were fantasies. In addition, Barbro had nightmares in which men ran up the stairs and kicked in the door to her family’s attic hiding place.
When she was ten, Barbro’s parents took her on a tour of the major cities in Europe, including Amsterdam, the city where the Frank family lived. During World War II, Otto Frank and his family had to go into hiding in the attic of the building where Otto had his business, for the Nazi’s had invaded the Netherlands and were persecuting Jews. The Frank family hid in this attic for about two years, until they were discovered by the Nazis, arrested and sent to concentration camps.
While in Amsterdam, her father wanted to visit the Anne Frank House. At their hotel, he took the phone off the hook and asked for a taxi to take them there.
Barbro suddenly exclaimed: “We don’t need a taxi, it’s not far to walk from here.” Barbro was so certain that it didn’t occur to her parents to object, they just meekly followed her as she walked off.
“We’ll soon be there, it’s just round the next corner,” Barbro told her parents. She herself wasn’t at all surprised when they arrived at the Anne Frank House after a ten minute walk through the twisting streets of the city.
“That’s strange,” Barbro said, when they stood in front of the steps up to the house. “It didn’t look like this before.” She looked wonderingly and her parents didn’t know what to say. They entered the house and went up the long narrow staircase. Barbro, who had been so carefree when showing them the way, suddenly went white in the face. She broke out in a cold sweat and reached for her mother’s hand. Her mother was horrified when she felt Barbro’s hand, which was as cold as ice.
When they entered the hiding place, the same terrors overcame Barbro that she had experienced so many times in her dreams. She found it hard to breathe and panic spread through her body. When they went into one of the smaller rooms, she suddenly stood still and brightened up a little.
Barbro looked at the wall in front of her and exclaimed, “Look, the pictures of the film stars are still there!” The pictures of the movie stars that Anne had clipped and affixed to the wall, which Barbro saw at that moment, made her feel happy, almost as if she had come home.
Her mother stared at the blank wall and couldn’t understand this at all. “What pictures? The wall is bare?” Barbro looked again and she saw that this was true. The wall was bare! Her mother was so confounded that she felt driven to ask one of the guides whether there had been pictures on the wall at one time.
“Oh yes,” the guide replied, “they had only been taken down temporarily to be mounted under glass so that they wouldn’t be destroyed or stolen.” Barbro’s mother didn’t know what to say.
Like Anne Frank, Barbro Karlen was a childhood writing prodigy. Barbro relates that learning to write was a great gift. As a child, she could not speak to anyone about her past life memories, but once she learned to write, she could have discourses on her writing tablet.
One day, when she was eleven or so, a family friend read a few of her compositions and realized that this was worthy prose. Barbro was asked if her casual writings could be sent to a publisher, which she agreed to.
At the age of twelve, her first book of prose was published. This book, Man on Earth, became the best-selling prose/poetry book in Swedish history. Barbro became a child celebrity, debating theology with ministers and theologians on television programs. In her teenage years, she had a total of nine books published. These books, written in her youth, have been translated into multiple languages, much like the Diary of Anne Frank.”
Fascinating, but I would still want to see a strong astrological connection.
Barbro’s chart is a lot easier than Anne’s. She has a Kite formation involving the Moon, Mercury, Neptune and Pluto. She also has an exact Venus/Jupiter conjunction.
The synastry between the two is significant. Being born at the same time of day, both have the Sun in the same area of the 11th house.
Barbara’s Mercury is closely conjunct Anne’s Sun. Her Moon is exactly opposite Anne’s Mars and her Mars is trine her Venus.
If there is anything in Barbro Karlen’s chart to suggest that she’d had those horrific experiences as a reincarnation of Anne Frank, it would have to be the Moon in Aquarius in the 8th house opposite Pluto.
So if we regressed her chart back to March 1945 when Anne died, we would expect that event to come up very strongly.
Barbro Karlen’s regressed Sun was square to her Pluto in 1945, an aspect that it would have held for the later period of her hideaway in Amsterdam, her capture by the Nazis and her death in the concentration camp.
Another significant feature would have to be the regressed Moon’s conjunction with Neptune, a chart feature that Anne had.
This chart’s regressed Venus is also closely conjunct Anne’s Sun, a significant soul link on its own.
One aspect of this approach that I am looking into is the regressed Solar return chart.
If someone is a reincarnation of another, perhaps by looking backwards to the solar return for the year in which they previously died, we might get some corroboration of this connection.
If we look at Karlen’s solar return for 1944, her minus 10th birthday, we can see features that could be pointing to her death in her last life.
The Moon is exactly on the Descendant conjunct Saturn, perhaps pointing to her incarceration.
There is a Mars/Pluto conjunction on the cusp of the 8th house suggesting a violent death.
Of course none of this can be put forward as proof of reincarnation, but if we are prepared to accept the principle, this method of Secondary Regressions does seem to work.
We can clearly identify Barbro Karlen’s Pluto as being the chart feature most likely to be involved in a previous death and her regressed Sun would only make one aspect with it unless we go back as far as the 1850s.
This aspect was the square which occurred in 1944-45 when Anne was captured and murdered by the Nazis.
When I first read about Barbro Karlen’s claims I wanted to use this article to disprove them, but having used Secondary Regressions to study them properly, I am now convinced that she was being frank about Anne.
Posted on 23rd December 2023
YOU CAN BOOK YOUR OWN PERSONAL ASTROLOGY CONSULTATION HERE
CARPE DIEM – WHEN TO SEIZE JUPITER’S BULL BY THE HORNS IN 2024
TREAT YOURSELF – REMEDIES INDIVIDUALLY TAILORED TO YOUR BIRTHCHART AND TRANSITS
PROGRESSED LIFE SUPPORT – WHEN WILL YOUR SOULMATE BE COMING ?
WHAT’S HAPPENING MAN ? USING HORARY TO ANSWER ALL YOUR QUESTIONS
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR FATE – USING ELECTIONS TO ENSURE THE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME FOR EVERY VENTURE
ANTICIPATING THE TURNING POINT IN YOUR LIFE