Robert Schmidt was a child prodigy who excelled academically from an early age. While still in high school, he won a scholarship to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT is a private research university traditionally known for research and education in science and technology, biology, economics, linguistics, and management. MIT is often ranked among the top universities in the world.

Schmidt had a phenomenal memory that enabled him to study well, but he did not see this gift as a characteristic of true intelligence. He wanted to learn to think. For that reason, he decided not to attend MIT, but St. John's College in Anapolis. The college's pitch was that students there could "really learn to think" through a curriculum of studying ancient texts in their original languages (their "Great Books Program"), including ancient Greek. There, Schmidt immersed himself in the world of ancient languages (he also learned German), mathematics, and philosophy.

He was very impressed by one of the teachers there, Jacob Klein, who had a nuanced and original view of Plato's philosophy, which greatly influenced Schmidt's later work and his astrological textual analysis.

It was also there that he met his wife, Ellen Black, whom he married on September 11, 1971. Schmidt decided to leave St. John's College without a degree as a kind of protest against the rituals and fuss of the academic world, something that a number of teachers also wanted nothing to do with. 

As a result, Schmidt was unable to teach at Kepler College, for which he wrote course material for Demetra George. He continued as an independent scientist/academic, and in 1980 he and his wife began a translation project of ancient mathematical texts. Around this time, Ellen became interested in astrology and encouraged her husband to explore it as well.

Schmidt then became friends with Michael Erlewine, who asked him and his wife to work at Matrix Software, where they were employed for two years. In 1992 they (re)met Robert Hand and after the UAC (United Astrology Conference) in 1993 they decided to start a translation project. The Hindsight project was born. 

The goal of Project Hindsight was to have classic texts in the field of astrology translated by astrologers, rather than by historians and academics who want nothing to do with astrology as a field of knowledge. Translations by academics have often proved useless when it comes to astrological content because they have no knowledge of astrology. With the occasional exception. In retrospect, it was hoped that this would lead to a kind of astrological renaissance, just as the rediscovery of the Greek philosophers at the end of the Middle Ages led to a renaissance in Western culture. In all, some thirty astrological texts were translated from Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin. 

Deciphering them has provided amazing insights into the how and why of astrology. They clarify the use of ancient astrological concepts, techniques, and views and reveal their core. For some of these techniques, it is only now becoming clear exactly how they were used, and often only vague and obscure fragments remain. The Greek astrological tradition seems to have played a fundamental role in the development of astrology and horoscopes.

The three Roberts worked together from 1993/1994 until about 2000, when Zoller and Hand left the project. Schmidt then stopped his seminars, workshops, and translations because he realized that there was a rather impressive philosophical system underlying Hellenistic astrology. From that moment on, he set himself the goal of restoring Hellenistic astrology and this "system". This became his life's work and in November 2011 he began to publish his basic course teaching the 'System of Hermes' (as he called it). Unfortunately, this work remained unfinished (four volumes were published). Schmidt died on December 6, 2018, just over two weeks shy of his 68th birthday. 

When he became involved in Project Hindsight, Schmidt was not (yet) an astrologer, so he approached astrological texts as a linguist and as a philosopher. While writing an article for the Texas Law Review in 1999, he realized that the legal metaphors used in Hellenistic astrological texts should be taken literally. For example, the term "witness" for a planet that, through a configuration with another planet, "testifies" about that other planet. That is, Greek astrology used terminology from other fields of knowledge to clarify its principles and premises.

We know this method under the term paradigm, derived from para deikma, "to show something by putting something else next to it”, like a metaphor. Schmidt's premise was that astrological texts should be understood based on the premises of the writers, not the way we think about these subjects today. Schmidt found many such paradigms in the ancient texts: a grammatical paradigm (the horoscope literally as the spoken word from heaven), a legal paradigm (the horoscope as a courtroom proceeding), a nautical paradigm (the horoscope and life as a voyage on a ship), and many others.

It also turned out that Greek concepts of fate (tuchē, anankē, heimarmenē, and the like) were instrumental in deciphering the how and why of basic astrological principles. For example, Schmidt's analysis of the meanings of the 12 Topical Places based on these fate concepts, and how their themes and meanings can be constructed on that basis, is unparalleled. See Chapter 7 for this analysis.

Since there is no explanation in the surviving Greek texts as to why the astrological techniques were used, the only clue to understanding and deciphering them is the jargon, the words, the technical language, the naming and terminology of the techniques or concepts themselves. As a result, it soon became clear to Schmidt that Hellenistic astrology was a subtle language game that actually used a horoscope as a grammatical construct, a linguistic model. Almost as a kind of 'language-speech model', a 'figure of speech'.

This typical use of language thus refers both to an astronomical/astrological phenomenon and at the same time to a specific underlying paradigm, an underlying philosophical concept. Both could be used to regroup and classify the Hellenistic astrological material. This is the restoration, the restorative work, that Schmidt has done, and which was also necessary to understand what the Hellenistic astrologers did and meant. For their texts give us no concrete information about the underlying ideas, no definitions of the jargon. Schmidt's starting point was that Hellenistic astrology was not only a coherent but also a highly integrated and subtle astrological-philosophical system. A philosophically rational construct based not on empiricism but on an underlying philosophy.

Schmidt made us astrologers aware that our current astrological conceptual system is a distillation of Latin terms or translations of them. And the Greeks did not translate extant astrological texts, but were in the extraordinary position of inventing their own words for the various astrological principles. All the basic astrological factors we use today are rooted in the Greek source: the specific words for Planets, Images, Topical Places, Configurations, etc., were all conceived in Greek astrology. Restoring and re-examining astrology in the language in which it was first described in its original terms by its "inventors" is the restoration that Schmidt has taken upon himself.

Latin astrological jargon has become quite meaningless. It reveals little of what the term actually denotes or means. Ask any passerby what an aspect is or what retrograde means, and they will look at you in bewilderment. Ask anyone what a witness is, or testimony, or what walking backwards means, and anyone can explain it to you. So, Schmidt goal was to translate Greek terms as figuratively as possible and to add new terms to the existing jargon of astrology.

His approach can be summarized as follows: How does Hellenistic astrology define itself, as astrology, through its terminology? The starting points (always) are: what word is used for a particular astrological concept, an astrological factor, or some horoscope component? And how is that word used and treated in the extant texts? 

Schmidt: “We must indeed make every effort to first understand the texts on their own terms and out of their own presuppositions and not impose our modern thinking on them. So my [approach] is to examine the tradition and pinpoint exactly, as exactly as I'm able, what ancient astrologers meant by the concepts and techniques and then carefully trace the genealogy of these concepts and techniques as they go from one language to another up until modern times.” 

Robert Zoller another participant in the early years of Project Hindsight, agreed with him: “The complete study of astrology, therefore, consists of not merely digging up the writings of the ancients and assiduously studying them, but penetrating their inner meaning and re-discovering their perceptual mode. We must ultimately see the world as the ancients did if we are to understand their metaphysics.” 

Today we have a legacy of Latin and Arabic astrological jargon, with many layers of translation in between: Spanish, French, German, English for concepts like Aspects, Images, Configurations, etc. Also transliterations, untranslated terminology: alcocoden, almuten, hyleg, firdaria, etc. Our technical astrological language consists mostly of Latin(ised) translations from Arabic, which in turn often comes from Persian and other linguistic fields, other semantic fields, which themselves were translations from Greek. It is a bit like ‘The heavens are speaking, but in what kind of dialect?’

The Greek astrologers were in the enviable position of having created/designed/conceived the technical astrological language from scratch, without having to rely on translations. Schmidt: “They deliberately chose these words, this technical language.” 

The Greek terminology seems to be deliberately open to multiple interpretations, ambiguous, sometimes cryptic. A specific term for a particular horoscope component refers to multiple levels of meaning. It turns out to be a suggestive and rich terminology, full of "charged" and "loaded" words in terms of layers of deeper meanings.

A good example is the word phase, from phasis. We still use this term to refer to the different phases of the planets, especially the phases of the moon. The word phasis then has two possible roots: phēmi = to speak (literally: 'to say'), 'I say'; and pheinō = 'to make appear'. Phasis then is a speaking and an appearing at the same time. 'A speaking that appears' or 'an appearance that speaks'. This is pure oracular language, like the writing on the wall. A planet appears in a certain way and in doing so it expresses something, it says something. A wonderful rendering of a somewhat obscure deeper etymology of an astrological principle. Quite enlightening.

Schmidt's work is overflowing with such gems, found in his magnum opus, Definitions and Foundations. This book is based on the only text that gives definitions of the astrological jargon used by the Greek astrologers, but which they nowhere defined.

Just try to make any sense out of the following comment by Vettius Valens in Book 2: "For if [Aphrodite] is in a tropical zōidion or does business in zōidia with two bodies, especially at night, it makes those people polygamous and promiscuous, and especially if it is so that Hermes is with her, and even more so if it turns out that Ares testifies.”

Tropical zōidion? Doing business? A Zōidion with two bodies? Why especially at night? Hermes with her? What does Ares testifying means? What in the world (or rather, what in Heaven) does all this mean? 

The reformulation of this kind of jargon has given astrology a depth that would have remained undiscovered without Schmidt's work.

In his work, Schmidt formulates assumptions, insights, and a fresh look at our astrological teachings based on his understanding and interpretation of the texts. Sometimes these are conjectures and constructions. Sometimes they are simply logical conclusions from the use of words in Greek astrological terminology, of which Schmidt has developed a thorough knowledge. His insights are fundamental and illuminating, based on texts that are not available or accessible to everyone. This is sometimes provocative and challenging. Schmidt received a lot of criticism because he corrected the foundations of contemporary astrological knowledge on many points. He wanted to ground it in the astrological system of which it was a part and from which it came. Greek was the language in which the astrological tools of the later Western astrological tradition were first formulated and defined. This was done in Hellenistic astrology.

In July 2016, Schmidt wrote on the Project Hindsight website: "For about twenty years I have been talking about the highly systematic nature of Greek astrology. To me, this was an almost certain sign that there was a guiding intelligence behind the initial development of this astrology, which means that it must have been the work of one man or a small group of men pursuing a common program. We here at Project Hindsight - myself, Robert Schmidt, and my wife, Ellen Black - believe we have found that man. He was the famous Greek polymath Eudoxus of Cnidus, who did indeed have a large following of students.

... I have said that there is strong evidence that Eudoxus of Cnidus was the progenitor of Greek astrology. According to legend, it originated with Hermes Trismegistus. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that the Hermes Trismegistus mentioned in the astrological tradition was a pseudonym for Eudoxus himself.

... We must therefore seriously consider the possibility that Eudoxus of Cnidus was also the author/translator of the dialogues in the Corpus Hermeticum, which consist of dialogues between men who consider themselves to be servants of a god, in this case the 'divine spirit' Nous".

Almost all of the astrological principles used in Hellenistic astrology are not found in earlier traditions, they are not found in Babylonian and Egyptian astrological traditions.

The following are missing:

• The association of the horizon, especially the Ascendant, with the 12 houses.
• No concepts explaining the principles of interpretation of astrological classifications.
• No concept of sects (difference between diurnal and nocturnal horoscopes).
• No sect related rejoicing conditions (i.e. places where planets rejoice).
• No (further) qualification of planets as benefic or malefic.
• No grouping of images: not by sex, not by elements.
• No indication of good and bad "places", what we now call houses. 
• No angular triads 🡲.
• No way of relating planets to each other, so no definitions of aspects and configurations, no lots.
• No concepts relating to rulership, i.e. planets linked to images: no domiciles, no exaltations, no triplicities/trigons.
• No concepts relating planets to parts of signs, i.e. separate parts (portions), decanates, and confines.
• No concept of the joys of planets in houses.
• No thema mundi - explanatory model of all the concepts developed in Greek astrology and used in the radix. 
• No period lords to time events.

And in the absence of all this, there were no astrological interpretations available or capable of being generated about the life of the person born in its totality, nor about individual subjects in the life of the person.

In short, before Eudoxus there was no astrology as we use it today and as we find it in Greek texts.

It is difficult to comprehend, clarify, and convey the scope and enormous impact of the work of the Schmidt's.

Through Schmidt's translations and thorough knowledge of the Greek language, Western metaphysics and philosophy, Hellenistic astrology was indeed rediscovered and revived. Prior to Schmidt's publications, little to nothing was known about it. His work has revealed the great importance of this astrology. It is the foundation of the entire Western astrological tradition. If it weren't for Schmidt, Hellenistic astrology would not exist as a separate discipline, and the roots of Western astrology would still be shrouded in darkness.

To inform readers less familiar with his work, AstroFocus is launching a section explaining Greek philosophical astrology. The section begins with a question. For example, why are the sun and the moon called "plectrums" in some texts? Such questions call for research into the deeper background of astrological concepts.

A fitting tribute to Schmidt, because such textual and etymological research of astrological jargon is entirely in his spirit.