Chapter
3.
Some Astrological Techniques
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1.
We have discussed astrology, and in particular judicial or horoscopic
astrology, as a method of prediction, but we haven't yet gone into much detail
about its techniques. In fact,
the details and methods have undergone much change over the course of
centuries. However, in Europe, at the time of the Renaissance, the basic
procedures of that branch of predictive astrology concerned with casting
horoscopes were roughly as they are now.
The process of casting a horoscope (or "figure" or
"scheme") begins with locating the positions of various celestial
objects. For birth horoscopes (nativities
or genitures), one starts with as exact a value as one can determine of
the day, hour and minute of birth of a person, together with the longitude and
latitude of the place of birth. Using
tables calculated by astronomers for a fixed time, longitude and latitude
(different astrologers may use different tables), the positions of the planets
(taken to include the sun and moon), and perhaps certain stars, are calculated
using the local time and geographical coordinates, and located in one of the
signs of the zodiac. The sun and
moon are considered as planets for this purpose, and the sun is considered as
the most important of the planets.
2. The zodiac, which is an
imaginary band centered on the ecliptic, the yearly path of the sun
among the stars (equivalent to the earth's yearly motion around the sun), is
defined in different ways by different astrologers, but in a popular and
ancient version, the zodiac is 17o wide (or so) and is divided into
12 zones or "signs", named and symbolized according to
constellations found in them. Ancient
Egyptian astrologers used 36 decans of 10o each rather than
12 sections of 30o each, each assigned a name and symbol.
Versions of these were used by numerous astrologers during the Middle
Ages and later, but appear to play only a small role in present-day astrology
(cf. Wilhelm Gundel, Dekane und Dekanstern, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der
Sternbilder der Kulturvölker,
1936.) The "sun sign"
of a person is the zone of the zodiac in which the sun is located when a
person is born, or in some systems, conceived.
When someone is said to be a "Libra" or to have been born "with the sun in Libra", it
means the sun was in the Libra zone of the zodiac when he or she was born.
Similarly, each person has a moon sign, and since the positions in the
zodiac of all the known planets are customarily taken into consideration, one
could also speak of a "Venus sign", "Mars sign", etc.,
although this isn't often done.
3. The ascendant of
a person may be defined as the sign of the zodiac which was rising in the east
at the instant the person was born. This
is determined by the daily motion of the stars in the sky (equivalent to the
earth's rotation on its axis). The
sun sign and other planetary signs of a person are determined by the year,
month and day of birth, but for the ascendant one needs the hour and place
(determined by latitude and longitude). Most
astrologers have considered the ascendant to be at least as important a
determinant as the sun sign. Just
as the zodiac is divided into 12 signs, the apparent daily movement of the
stars is divided into 12 houses. There
are numerous ancient and modern ways of doing this.
Each house is considered to govern a different sector of human life.
Usually the zones of the houses are identified by numbers, and in one
method, these are assigned in the direction opposite to the movement of the
stars, starting from the ascendant (more precisely, from the degree of the
ecliptic which was rising at the instant of birth, which is a position in one
of the signs of the zodiac).
4. In relatively recent
times, a circular diagram has been used to record this data, with the zodiac
represented in a relatively narrow band between the outer circumference of the
circle and the circumference of an inner circle, and the houses represented as
sectors of the inner circle. The
positions of the planets are recorded in these sectors.
Formerly (apparently into the 18th century), a square diagram was used,
with the houses represented by triangles, 4 on the sides of an inner square,
and 8 upside down with respect to these, 2 for each side of an outer square.
The positions of the planets are recorded in the triangles.
In either case, casting a horoscope consists of determining and
recording this data, and the resulting diagram is called a horoscope.
Often certain angles, or approximate angles, which planets make with
each other as views from earth are noted on horoscopes.
These are called aspects, and they include conjunction,
opposition, trine, square or quartile, and sestile or sextile,
corresponding to angles of separation of 0, 180, 90 and 60 degrees.
The calculations needed to cast a horoscope are fairly complicated, and
numerous different techniques have been proposed.
5. Besides the
significance attached to planetary positions in zodiacal signs, to the
positions of planets in the houses, and to planetary aspects, there were a
number of other astrological interpretations.
A number of the these are summarized by J. D. North in his study of the
extensive role of astronomy/astrology in the works of Chaucer (J. D. North, Chaucer's
Universe (1988); Chapter 5, "Some Generall Rewles of Theorike in
Astrologie".)
6. The planets themselves
are assigned various characteristics, regardless of their positions in the
sky. Saturn, for example, is on
the whole intrinsically evil, and detailed descriptions of its (or his)
particular evils are given. The
Sun is associated with brightness, intelligence, understanding, etc.
And so on. The zodiacal
signs and constellations which determine them are also assigned various
characterics of their own. Besides
these intrinsic or essential properties of planets and signs, there are
additional accidental properties of the planets (besides the signs, houses and
aspects), due to their positions. For
example, there are the five dignities:
domiciles, exaltations, triplicities, terms and faces.
These dignities, which are of Hellenistic origin or earlier, are
explained by the Arabian astrologer Alkabucius (al-Qabisi; fl. 950 A.D.) in a
treatise (Introductorium ad scienciam astrologie judicialis) widely
used in the Middle Ages and later.
7. A domicile (or domus)
of a planet is a sign of the zodiac regarded as a home for a planet.
The domiciles of Mercury, for example, are Gemini and Virgo, with
Gemini being the gaudium of Mercury,
the sign in which it "rejoices".
Two planets have only one domicile -- there are 12 signs and 7 planets.
A sign opposite to a domicile of a planet is a detriment, which
is especially alien to the planet. An
exaltation is a sign in which a planet is especially powerful.
A sign opposite to an exaltation is a dejection. A triplicity is a triple of signs forming an
equilateral triangle in a horoscopic diagram.
The terms arise from a subdivision of each zodiacal sign into
five unequal parts, and the faces from a subdivision of each zodiacal
sign into ten equal parts (so the ecliptic is subdivided into 360 parts, the
number of days in an ancient Egyptian year).
The faces derive from the ancient Egyptian decans.
Three different ways of determining the terms are given by Ptolemy: an Egyptian, a Chaldean, and one of his own.
8. In addition to these
dignities, there were the notions of hyleg
(pronounced "high-ledge") and alcochoden (or alchocoden),
to be used in determining how long a person could be expected to live.
The hyleg was one of four specific places in the ecliptic assigned to a
person on the basis of his natal horoscope by means of complicated and
inscrutable rules. The alcochoden
was the planet which had most dignity in the place of the hyleg.
There was also an elaborate system of lunar mansions, arising
from a subdivision of the ecliptic into 27 or 28 equal parts -- the mansions
-- corresponding to the number of days in a lunar month (about 27 and a
half solar days). The moon's
status (waxing, waning, full, new, etc.) in each mansion, and its position in
the zodiac, were all involved.
9. There is more.
But this should be enough to show how complex and intricate a
discipline astrology can be. The assignment
of positions of planets and houses and aspects in horoscopes is a kind of
applied observational astronomy, in the modern sense of the word
"astronomy". An interpretation
of these positions is the special province of astrology.
A basic assumption of astrologers is that the planets exert influences
on characters and fates of individuals. The
positions of the sun, moon and other planets at birth indicate determining
influences. Each of the
houses in a person's horoscope is taken to govern some department of life.
The various dignities and virtues and powers of
the planets are taken into consideration.
The aspects are good or bad indicators, depending on which
approximate angle and which planets are involved.
10. On the basis of birth
horoscopes, astrologers make determinations of both the characters and the
fates of individuals. In addition to these nativities, there are also hour
or horary horoscopes, which are cast to show the positions of the
planets at a given time so they can be used to answer questions about what
will happen after that time. These
can be correlated in various ways with the birth horoscopes of questioners.
The result can be used for determining predictions, or
"elections", which are courses of action or non-action which
questioners are advised to follow, or "interrogations", in which the
answers to specific questions of many kinds are obtained.
And so on. Horoscopic
astrology is a complicated subject.
11. Judicial astrology is
used not only to predict the future, but also to read character.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, speaking from the standpoint of modern Islam,
says: "Human types can also be divided astrologically, here
astrology being understood in its cosmological and symbolic rather than its
predictive sense. Astrological
classifications, which are in fact related to traditional medical and physical
typologies, concern the cosmic correspondences of the various aspects of the
human soul and unveil the refraction of the archetype of man in the cosmic
mirror in such a way as to bring out the diversity of this refraction with
reference to the qualities associated with the zodiacal signs and the planets.
Traditional astrology, in a sense, concerns man on the angelic level of
his being but also unveils, if understood in its symbolic significance, a
typology of man which reveals yet another facet of the differentiation of the
human species. The correspondence
between various parts of the body as well as man's mental powers to
astrological signs and the intricate rapport created between the motion of the
heavens, various "aspects" and relations between planets and human
activity are also a means of portraying the inward link that binds man as the
microcosm to the cosmos." (Seyyed
Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, 1981, p. 178-179.)
12. An essence of some
people's reaction to judicial astrology, particularly in the face of its
complexity, is captured by Stephen Leacock: "I was born at Swanmoor,
Hants, England, on December 30, 1869. I am not aware that there was any particular conjunction of
the planets at the time, but should think it extremely likely."
(Preface to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, 1912, p. vii.)
13. I have two pieces of
now quite antiquated computer software called LodeStar and HoroScopics,
put out for astronomical hobbyists by a company called Zephyr Services. The
Lodestar program will show a diagram of the sky for any date from 9999
BC to 9999 AD, giving the locations of over 9000 stars, planets and galaxies,
and the sun and moon. The
HoroScopics program will give a birth horoscope, with houses and aspects. I don't have the source code for these programs, but it
appears that the HoroScopics program consists basically of part of the
computer code for the LodeStar program extended by some code which
graphs a horoscope instead of a diagram of the sky, and which assigns
interpretations to classes of positions of the basic planets of astrology
(including the sun and moon). Naturally,
only a part of the code for LodeStar is needed for HoroScopics,
since the influence of only a few celestial objects are needed for casting
horoscopes. This illustrates
rather vividly how astronomy, as we now understand it, is fundamental to
astrology, but is nowadays quite sharply separable from it.
14. The sun, moon and
planet signs are different for different people on account of the sun's
motions through the zodiac, which are equivalent to the earth's approximately
elliptical (nearly circular) revolutions around the sun.
The astrological houses are different for different persons on account
of the daily motions of the heavens, equivalent to the earth's rotations on
its axis. There is another motion
of the earth, the precession of the equinoxes, equivalent to a revolution in a
circle of the earth's axis around a central line, a so-called
"wobble", so that the positions of the axis trace out a right
circular cone. This causes
observers on earth to see a movement with respect to the constellations in the
zodiac of the places where the ecliptic, the central circle of the zodiac and
apparent path of the sun through the sky, crosses the celestial equator, which
is the imaginary extension of the earth's equator into the heavens.
These two places are called the spring and autumn equinoxes, and
their motion is called the precession of the equinoxes.
The precession is slow compared to human lifetimes, taking about 25920
years for a complete circuit. Taking
this motion of the earth -- or the heavens as viewed from earth -- into
account has caused many serious astrologers considerable trouble.
15. The precession of the
equinoxes may seem to moderns to be something of interest only to astronomers
and perhaps people concerned with long range calendars.
However, there is evidence that when it was first discovered, it had a
powerful effect on some people. There
was a religion in the ancient Roman world known as Mithraism which has often
attracted historians because, among other things, it was one of Christianity's
major competitors in the Roman Empire. Ernest
Renan once declared that "if Christianity had been stopped at its birth
by some mortal illness, the world would have become Mithraic."
(Ernest Renan, Marc-Aurèle
et la fin du monde antique, 1923, p. 579.)
Mithraism was one of the mystery or secret religions, and has been
difficult to interpret. For some
75 years or so, the dominant interpretation was that of Franz Cumont, who
traced it to a Roman importation of an Iranian (Persian) cult based a god
Mithra. This interpretation has
come into question. It seems now
that the Roman god Mithras may have corresponded to the Iranian god Mithra in
name only, and that Iranian names and details were attached to Mithraism
chiefly to give it an exotic and esoteric coloring.
David Ulansey has proposed that the Mithraic religion originated in an
interpretation of the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by the
Greek astronomer Hipparchus about 128 B.C.
16. A prominent
characteristic of the Mithraic religion is its basic symbol of a man killing a
bull. Roughly speaking, this
symbol is to Mithraism what the cross is to Christianity.
The symbol normally contains other items besides Mithras and a bull --
a scorpion, a dog, a snake, a raven, a lion and a cup.
In 1869, a German scholar named K. B. Stark suggested that the symbol
could be interpreted as a star map, with Mithras being identified with the
constellation named after Perseus -- who was commonly associated with Persia
-- and the bull being identified with the constellation Taurus (which, of
course, means "bull"). This
interpretation was not accepted by Cumont, but various scholars have recently
revived it. What the killing of the bull signifies, according to Ulansey, is
the heliacal setting of Taurus (last day it is visible on the horizon just
after sunset), symbolized as a killing of Taurus by the constellation just
above it -- Perseus, or Mithras. This
had been for some hundreds of years before the discovery of the precession
been associated with the spring equinox which occurred about the same time,
although by the time of Hipparchus the heliacal setting of Taurus was
occurring later
17. How could the
discovery of precession have had such a powerful effect?
As viewed from earth, regarded as fixed by most ancient astronomers,
the precession of the equinoxes can be taken as evidence for a gradual
rotation of the entire heavens, as the equinoctial points slowly move along
the celestial equator. Only a
very powerful god could move the entire heavens.
Ulansey says: "I have
argued that Mithraic iconography was a cosmological code created by a circle
of religious-minded philosophers and scientists to symbolize their possession
of secret knowledge: namely, the
knowledge of a newly discovered god so powerful that the entire cosmos was
completely under his control. It
is not difficult to understand how such knowledge could have come to form the
core of an authentic religious movement.
For the possession of carefully guarded secret knowledge concerning
such a mighty divinity would naturally have been experienced as assuring
privileged access to the favors which this god could grant, such as
deliverance from the forces of fate residing in the stars and protection for
the soul after death during its journey through the planetary spheres.
If we understand salvation to be a divinely bestowed promise of safety
in the deepest sense, both during life and after death, then the god whose
presence we have discerned beneath the veils of Mithraic iconography was well
suited to perform the role of savior."
(David Ulansey, The Origins of theMithraic Mysteries, Cosmology and
Salvation in the Ancient World, 1989, p. 125.) From this beginning, Mithraism evolved into a religion based
on an ideology of power and hierarchy, especially attractive to the military
and militant.
18. The place of
horoscopic astrology in the past is difficult to
19. In understanding the
place of astrology in the past, it has been thought useful for a long time to
distinguish between judicial astrology, as we have just described it, and natural
astrology. Hugh Dick says: "The
chief source of confusion in virtually all modern discussions of the place of
astrology [during the Renaissance] has arisen from the failure to define terms
and to distinguish between the various kinds of belief.
During the Renaissance, the two basic divisions of the pseudo science
were natural and judicial astrology. According
to the doctrines of the former, the heavenly bodies exercised certain powers
upon the earth, but not all these were what we should call occult.
To believe that the sun gives heat and the moon affects tides was to
accept the teachings of natural astrology, though before the conception of the
macro-microcosm was destroyed most believers went further than this.
Judicial astrology, on the other hand, concerned not merely the
influence of the stars but also the prognostication of events or tendencies
through knowledge gained by this study."
(from the Introduction by Hugh G. Dick to Albumazar: A Comedy (1615)
by Thomas Tomkis, edited by Dick, 1944, p. 18-19).
20. Dick quotes John Ferne,
a writer on heraldry who conveyed conventional ideas on the subject:
"The third of the Mathematicals is Astronomy or Astrologie... Astronomy (as I have been taught) comprehendeth the
revolution of the Heavens, the rising, going downe, and motion of Starres.
But Astrologie is divided into two members, the one is called naturall,
and the other superstitious [i.e., judicial].
That part which is naturall, noteth the stations of times, the courses
of the Moone
21. Dick notes that the
doctrines of the two branches of astrology overlapped, and that it is not
always easy to draw a line of demarcation between them, yet he says that to
men of the time the dichotomy was apparent.
This may be so, but the distinction needn't have been of much help in
deciding what should part of astrology should be rejected.
It wasn't possible to simply accept all natural astrology and reject
all judicial astrology. For
example, according to the doctrines of natural astrology, the heavenly bodies
exercise certain powers on the earth and its inhabitants.
These included the sun's heating and the moon's action on bodies of
water, along with influences we now longer allow, such as certain actions on
the human body which physicians had to take into account.
Now, to say that the sun heats us seems unobjectionable by any
criterion. Can we make reliable
predictions about the sun's heating? Yes,
we can. Not as reliable as we
would like, but predictions of temperature changes and precipitation as made
in today's weather reports are a useful guide.
Physicists and cosmologists also make long range predictions about the
sun's heating, on the basis of thermodynamics and the evolution of stars.
As to the moon's influence, predictions of low and high tides can be
found today in newspapers and television weather reports.
22. In these two prototypical cases, the natural and judicial components are intertwined, and both can claim successes. We no longer say that weather and tide predictions are applications of astrology, but this is what they were taken to be by most people during the Renaissance. Alleged planetary influences on the fates and fortunes of individuals, and the special branch of judicial astrology concerned with the casting of horoscopes, have not been verified in this way. This seems to be true even in the case of the reformed astrology based on planetary aspects, as recommended by Kepler, although, as we said earlier, the results of Michel Gauquelin in relatively recent years have raised some questions about the total failure of this kind of astrology. In this case, the underlying planetary influence, the natural astrology component, has not been found, nor have the predictions, the judicial component, been very successful. In the case of the sun's heat and the moon's tides, the influences, the natural component, are granted today in the form of gravitation, and meteorological and nuclear processes, and the predictions, the judicial component, are made using mathematics as well as elaborate observations.
23. Corresponding to the
distinction between judicial and natural astrology, a more general distinction
can be made between magical and naturalistic beliefs.
William Hine has argued that in studying magical and astrological
beliefs in the 17th century, and how they may have arisen out of Renaissance
ideas, we should make a distinction between magic proper, as dealt with by
certain prominent Renaissance figures, and a Renaissance naturalism
independent of magic, which is not yet the naturalism of Galileo or Francis
Bacon. Hine bases his argument on
work of Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), a prominent scientist and churchman,
friend of Descartes, who maintained a wide correspondence with other
scientists of his time. In his Quaestiones
celeberrime in Genesim, 1623, Mersenne distinguishes between magicians
and atheists, the latter corresponding to Renaissance naturalists who
were not magicians. The
naturalists or atheists deny God's role in the world and "attribute
everything to nature alone", while the magicians "worship
demons" and attribute many activities to evils.
On the one hand, Mersenne was concerned to limit the claims of
magicians without undermining the authenticity of Christian miracles, which he
felt were a guarantee of the authenticity of Christianity itself.
On the other hand, he was concerned to show that the atheists were
wrong to try to explain everything by nature alone, since, among other things,
the Christian miracles are authentic, in his view.
24. As an example,
Mersenne analyzes the work of Giulio Cesare Vanini who had been convicted of
atheism and burned at the stake in Toulouse.
Mersenne felt that the execution of Vanini was justifiable because
Vanini would not acknowledge the existence of God, nor of angels and demons.
He "attributed all things to fate, and adored Nature as the
bounteous mother and source of all being."
Vanini claimed there were people who had a natural power to cure
diseases, analogous to magnetism. Magicians
also drew analogies with magnetism, but related their powers to the influence
of angels and demons, or heavenly influences of an astrological nature.
Thus, Hines concludes, "it may well be that later scientists such
as Newton, for example, saw in attraction a representation not of a hidden
magical power, but of an occult, natural power."
(William L. Hine, "Mersenne:
naturalism and magic", in Occult and scientific mentalities in
the Renaissance, 1984, edited by Brian Vickers, p. 165-176.)
25. As to the place of
astrology in this classification, Hine says: "For both naturalists and
magicians the stars played a significant role in influencing the terrestrial
world. For the former, however,
the influence of the stars amounted to a form of determinism, providing a
source and guarantee of regularity and order in the universe ....
In contrast to the naturalist view, which emphasized natural law and
ran the risk of determinism, magic was based on a certain conception of human
freedom .... In magic the
question is not whether man's destiny is determined for him by his stars, but
whether he can discover the stellar influences on his life and take steps to
counteract them, if necessary, or direct them for his own benefit."
(Hine, ibid., p. 168.) Mersenne
mounted a considerable attack on astrology in his Quaestiones celeberrime
in Genesim.
26. There was during the
European Renaissance a kind of flowering
of astrology. In his book The
Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, A Study in Intellectual Patterns,
1972, Wayne Shumaker describes some of the most notable writings on astrology
and magic during this era. He
gives, for example, an analysis of the influential work by the physician
Marsilio Ficino, De vita coelitus comparanda, 1489 (On Guiding One's
Life by the Stars, or perhaps On Obtaining Life from the Heavens;
third part of De vita triplici). Ficino,
like all physicians of his time, was versed in astrology, and this work, by a
physician for physicians, is saturated with astrological lore.
For example, Ficino describes "how tones, or compositions of
tones, can be discovered which belong to specific heavenly bodies.
The method requires, first, that we find out the power or effects of a
star, a constellation, or even an aspect and what things are repelled by it,
or attracted. The next step is to
consider what star dominates what place and what men, and to observe the tones
and songs used there so that you will be able to use the same ones and the meanings implicit within them.....
Finally, we must study the daily positions and aspects
of the stars, and, under these, find out the speeches, songs, motions,
and leapings (saltus), together with the customs and actions, to which
men are moved by them so that we may be able to imitate these in the songs
which we will address to a given part of the sky."
(Shumaker, p. 133.) And:
"The occult virtues of things have not an elemental source but a
celestial one. Stellar and
planetary rays are alive; they shine, as it were, from the eyes of living
bodies, and offer wonderful gifts from the imaginations and minds of celestial
beings." (l.c., p. 129).
Nevertheless, Ficino was not an astrological fundamentalist, and in his
later writings pointed up a number of deficiencies in the astrological
practices of his time. Don Allen
Cameron remarks that Ficino said in later life "that he has no patience
with those who trust the stars instead of God, but in some forms of business
it is wise to consult the heavens."
(Wayne Shumaker, The Star-Crossed Renaissance, The Quarrel about
Astrology and Its Influence in England, 1941, p. 11.)
27. Ernst Cassirer
describes the work of Pietro Pomponazzi on fate, free will and predestination,
De fato, libero arbitrio et praedestinatione (1520):
[For Pomponazzi] divine foreknowledge does not necessarily conflict
with the freedom of human action .... Man
grasps the past and present according to its 'that', but grasps the future
only according to his knowledge of the
'why', because the future is not immediately given to him, but is rather only deducible
through its causes. But this
difference between an immediate and mediate, between given and deduced
knowledge, is not valid for divine knowledge.
For in divine knowledge all temporal differences, so necessary for our
conception of the world, disappear. To
know the future divine knowledge needs no mediation, no discursive succession
of the conditions by virtue of which the future comes to be."
28. As to another problem,
that of "the compatibility of divine
omnipotence with human freedom and responsibility", Cassirer says of
Pompanazzi: "Although he does not quite dare to express himself
unambiguously on this point, Pomponazzi's judgment tends unmistakably towards
a strict determinism. In his work
on natural philosophy, De naturalium effectuum admirandorum causis, the
causality of events is interpreted in a strictly astrological sense.
The world of history and the world of nature are both viewed as
necessary results of the influence of the heavenly bodies.
And elsewhere too, whenever he is speaking freely, Pomponazzi considers
Fate in the Stoic sense the relatively most satisfactory and rational
solution. What makes the
acceptance of this solution difficult are not so much logical as ethical
objections. A substantial part of
the work is dedicated to the removal of these objections.....
[W]ith an energetic blow, Pomponazzi severs the bond that had hitherto
conjoined metaphysics and ethics. In
principle, each is completely independent of the other.
Our judgment concerning the value of human life is not dependent on our
ideas concerning the continuation of life or the immortality of the human
soul; and similarly the question of the value or non-value of our actions must
be considered from a point of view other than what caused these actions.
No matter how we may decide this latter question, the ethical-practical
judgment remains free. This
freedom is what we need, not some chimerical causelessness."
(Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance
Philosophy, 1963, p. 82-83 of the translation by Mario Domandi of Individuum
und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, 1927.)
29. Eugenio Garin says
that Pomponazzi had "no doubts concerning the celestial connection, and
therefore the determination on the part of the stars, of all human
events." Pompanazzi believed
that the whole world rises and falls in successive cycles.
Pomponazzi says in De fato:
"And as we see that the earth which is now fertile will be barren,
and the great and the rich will become humble and wretched, so the course of
history is determined. We have seen the Greeks dominate the Barbarians, now the
Barbarians dominate the Greeks, and so everything goes on and changes.
So it is probable that he who is now a king will one day be a slave,
and vice versa..... If then
someone asks you, what kind of game is this?
You would be well advised to reply that it is the game of God."
Garin says: "Having
established this eternal and universal vicissitude of things, this perennial
cycle of ascent and descent, the revival of astrology with all its great
themes follows logically from it." But
Pomponazzi separated astrology and magic from the supernatural.
"What matters to Pomponazzi," Garin says, is to bring every
apparently abnormal phenomenon back into the sphere of rational interpretation
and natural causes. Not demons
nor miracles, but nervous tension, force of the imagination, powers and
qualities which are occult not because they are supernatural but because they
have not yet been understood: these are the causes of miraculous events."
(Pietro Pomponazzi, quoted by Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the
Renaissance, 1983, p. 98-101, translation of Lo Zodiaco della Vita,
1976.)
30. The most elaborate and
famous of the Renaissance compendia of magic is no doubt the De occulta
philosophia libri tres (1531) of Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim.
Shumaker describes the contents of the first of these three books,
which is concerned with "natural magic":
"It discusses the elements; the occult virtues in things;
sympathies and antipathies; the dominance of superiora over inferiora;
the powers and influences of the planets, the signs, and certain fixed stars;
how to attract 'the divinities who rule the world, and their ministers the
daemons'; poisons; fumigations; unguents and philters; rings; lights and
colors; fascination; divination and auguries; presages and prodigies;
geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy (one divinatory skill for each
of the elements); the revival of the dead; dreams; passions and their effects
on the body; the virtues of words, including proper names; incantations and
enchantments; the relations of letters in several languages (Hebrew, 'Chaldaean,'
Greek, and Latin) to signs and planets; and much else."
31. The
subject of numbers is brought up in the first book. Shumaker says that in Book
I: "... we are informed that
the order, the numbers, and the shapes of letters 'are not arranged by chance
or accident (non fortuito, nec casu) or by the caprice of men, but are
formed divinely, so that they relate to and accord with the heavenly bodies,
the divine bodies, and their virtues.' Of
all languages Hebrew is sacratissima not only in its shapes (figuris)
but also in its vowel points and accents, ;as if consisting in matter, form,
and spirit, having been produced in God's seat, which is Heaven, by the
positions of the stars.' ..... Briefly,
the letters are not, as is understood today, conventional symbols chosen from
an almost unlimited range of possibility but are so representative of the
actual structure of the universe, or its parts, that manipulations of them
have intrinsic power. The belief
requires no explanation. It is
still common among illiterate people and among children, who, if told that
'eau' means 'water,' may say, 'But it's really 'water,' isn't it?'
With what degree of seriousness I do not know, C. S. Lewis plays with a
similar idea in his cosmic trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra,
and That Hideous Strength, in which the 'Old Solar' spoken beyond the
sphere of the moon not merely expresses but contains the real nature of
things.' The 22 Hebrew character
"are like secrets or sacraments and are vehicles, as it were, of their
material referenda and of the 'essences' and powers these contain..... For this reason Origen believed that Hebrew names lost their
force when translated. 'Accordingly
the twenty-two letters are the basis of the world and of all the creatures
which exist and are named by them.'" (Shumaker, ibid., p. 135-137.)
32. Numerology is
especially developed in the second of the three books of Cornelius Agrippa,
which is concerned with "celestial magic".
Numbers, Shumaker remarks, are the basis of
the entire quadrivium of the universities: arithmetic,
astronomy, geometry and music. (This
could be misleading, since astronomical theories and observations, geometric
abstractions and diagrams, and melodic and harmonious sounds are more basic
than numbers in astronomy, geometry and music, respectively).
And Book II of Agrippa's occult philosophy opens with a praise of
mathematics and a claim that "everything which is done in terrestrial
affairs by natural energies is accomplished, led, or governed by number,
33. The mathematics of
Agrippa, like the mathematics of Fludd, is largely numerology.
Shumaker reproduces a number of elaborate drawings by Fludd and others
which illustrate such matters as cosmic harmonies and the relations of numbers
to the heavens. An example of
Agrippa's numerology reproduced by Shumaker consists of a matrix called scala
novenarii (the scale of nines) with 6 rows and 11 columns, showing
significances of the number 9. We
have such things as the names of God in 9 letters, the 9 choirs of angels and
9 angels who preside over heaven, the 9 moving sphers, the 9 orders of bad
daemons, and so on. Many numbers
are considered by Agrippa. We
learn, for example, that "the human foetus becomes a perfect body, ready
to receive a reasonable soul, on the fortieth day; women require forty days to
recover from a birth; an infant does not smile for forty days; Christ preached
forty months, was in the tomb forty hours, mounted into the sky forty hours
after his Resurrection." There
is a consideration of "geometrical
figures, musical and other sounds, and similar harmonies and proportions in
the human body and soul." We find that the geometrical figures "have
no less power than the numbers themselves."
The pentagram, which has five acute and five obtuse angles, along with
five triangles, has all the qualities of the number five, and has wonderful
force against demons. Other
regular polygons have other qualities and virtues.
We hear again about celestial harmonies, and how the "proportions,
measure, and harmony of the human body resemble those of the universe." "Every part or member of man," we are told,
"corresponds to 'some sign, some star, some intelligence, some divine
name." (Shumaker, ibid., p.
137-146.)
34.
Book III of Agrippa's Occulta philosophia is concerned with
"religious magic". There
is an extensive treatment of the names of God and their use in magic, along
cabalistic lines. God's members
are discussed, and God's ministers: spirits,
daemons, and angels, including those which govern the signs, stars, winds, the
4 elements, and those formerly called fauns, satyrs, Pans, nymphs, naiads,
nereids, dryads, muses, genii, and lemurs.
The names of these spirits and daemons are elaborated upon.
There are instructions for attracting good daemons and repelling bad
ones. There is material on the
divinity of kings, princes, and pontiffs; how the seven planets act as
instruments for bestowing virtues on man; why man has mastery over all other
living creatures; and how to carry out various purifications, expiations,
adorations, vows, sacrifices and oblations.
35. It should not be
thought that astrology enchanted all scholars during the Renaissance.
Shumaker analyzes the refutation of astrology, Disputationes
adversus astrologiam divinatricem of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1495
-- Agrippa's Occulta philosophia was 1531).
Pico seems to have started as a believer in magic who was working
toward a summa of the kind achieved by Cornelius Agrippa.
But Pico underwent a passionate about-face.
A story was told by Tycho Brahe, the astronomer and mentor of Kepler,
that Pico was moved to his attack on astrology when three Italian astrologers
predicted his death at a certain time in his 33rd year.
According to Brahe, the prediction came true even though Pico shut
himself up in his room when the time approached.
However, Shumaker says that Pico actually died at age 31. Another possible motive for the attack is Pico's admiration
for Savonarola, who regarded astrology as a superstition unworthy of
Christians.
36. Pico's treatise is
long, and is characterized by Shumaker as being full and well-informed.
Its gist is summarized by Shumaker:
"For a cosmic universe which was conceived animistically, in which
planets 'rejoiced' and were 'dejected,' 'looked at' each other with friendly
or unfriendly feeling, and varied from 'benevolence' to 'malevolence' in their
attitudes toward men, Pico wanted to substitute one in which the heavenly
bodies performed quite dispassionately and without consciousness roles
assigned them at the beginning by a Creator-God who allowed the evil initiated
by men to cause suffering but did not place in the skies forces which would
dispose them to act well or badly..... As
an example let us take Aristotle. His
soul did not come from the stars because, as he himself proved, it was
immortal and incorporeal. His
body, fit to serve his soul, did not come from the sky ... but from his
parents. As a result of the power
of choice inherent in his mind and body he elected to philosophize. His progress came from his plan and his industry, and that it
was especially great was a consequence of his teacher's doctrine and the good
fortune of his age, when a good beginning had been made and materials were at
hand to bring philosophy to perfection. He
was superior to his disciples because he had not a better star but a greater
genius, the source of which was God. Similarly,
the greatest of all philosophers, Socrates, ascribed his wisdom not to the
luminaries but to a god or daemon who kept him company."
(Shumaker, ibid., p. 16-27.)
37. However, Thorndike
says of Pico that his work against astrology on the whole "is rambling
and ineffective as far as orderly presentation and cumulative argument are
concerned." Furthermore,
Thorndike says of the first part: "This effort to give the impression that most of the
great minds of the past have condemned astrology is weak and unconvincing to
anyone at all acquainted with the past history of the subject.
Pico selects only those persons and data that support his contention,
suppressing the evidence to the contrary, or misrepresents the attitude of
other personages ..... On the whole, his citations are about as unconvincing
as those of the astrologers in favor of their art.
He had a wide, if not exhaustive, acquaintance with the past literature
germane to his theme, but the use he makes of it is that of the advocate and
dialectical disputant, almost at times that of invective, rather than that of
the impartial historian of ideas." In
general, according to Thorndike, "One cannot but feel that the importance
of Pico della Mirandola in the history of thought has often been grossly
exaggerated." (Lynn
Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 1923-1958, v.
IV, 1934, p. 532, 529-530, 485.)
38. Still, the historian
Jacob Burckhardt called Pico's piece Oratio de hominis dignitate one of
the noblest bequests of the Renaissance.
Here Pico speaks on the question of free will.
Of God, he says: "He
formed man according to a general image that contained no particularities,
and, setting him in the centre of the world, said to him: 'We have given you,
Adam, no definite place, no form proper only to you, no special inheritance,
so that you may have as your own whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts
you may choose, according to your wish and your judgment.
All other beings have received a rigidly determined nature, and will be
compelled by us to follow strictly determined laws.
You alone are bound by no limit, unless it be one prescribed by your
will, which I have given you. I
have placed you at the centre of the world, so that you may more easily look
around you and see everything that is in it.
I created you as a being neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal
nor immortal, so that you may freely make and master yourself, and take on any
form you choose for yourself. You
can degenerate to animality or be reborn towards divinity.....
Animals bring forth ... from the bodies of their mothers everything
they ought to have. The higher
spirits are, from the beginning or soon afterwards, everything they will be
for eternity. But on man, the
Father conferred, at the moment of birth, the seeds and germ of every form of
life. Those which he cultivates
will grow in him and bear fruit. If
they are the plant seeds, he will vegetate; if he follows the senses, he will
become an animal; if he cultivates the power of reason within him, he will
become a celestial creature; if he follows intelligence, he will become an
angel and a son of God.'" (Pico
della Mirandola, quoted by Ernst Cassirer in The Individual and the Cosmos
in Renaissance Philosophy (1927, 1963), p. 85-86.)
39. Here
Pico attributes magical powers to man. Only
man has no strictly determined nature and is subject to no strictly
deterministic laws, contrary to what some Stoics and astrologers have claimed.
A person can do anything he or she wants to.
This illustrates a fundamental distinction between astrology and magic,
or astrology and other kinds of magic. Magic,
generally speaking, concentrates on giving power and understanding to people,
aims which magic shares with science. Astrology
seeks to understand certain powers of nature over people, so they can
accommodate to it, or take steps to deal with it.
No astrologer or astronomer undertakes to change the stars.
40. Despite the
refutations of Pico della Mirandola and others, people continued to put stock
in astrology. Shumaker quotes
Paul Kocher (Science and Religion in Elizabethan England, 1953) who
observed that "of the six full-scale polemics published in England
against astrology in the Elizabethan age, five -- those by William Fulke, John
Calvin, William Perkins, John Chamber, and George Carleton -- came from
ecclesiastics." (Kocher,
p.202; the work by Carleton is called Astrologomania:
The Madnesse of Astrologers, 1624.)
In addition to these, Dick lists Thomas Cranmer, James Pilkington,
Roger Hutchinson, and Andrew
Willett and remarks that he could give many more. (Dick, loc. cit., p. 23-25.)
Furthermore, the State issued various proclamations and statutes
against sorcery, taken to include astrological prediction.
It was recognized that such prognostications could be a cause of
disorder in the Commonwealth. In
the same treatise in which he revealed his belief in witches, his Daemonolgies
in Forme of a Dialogue (1597), King James attacked judicial astrology.
41. But
after discussing opposition to astrology, Kocher goes on: "And who, on the other side, spoke up for astrology?
To the bewilderment of the
modern analyst, chiefly the foremost scientific men of the age ... an almost
solid front of physicians, astronomers, and other natural philosophers,
renowned for their achievements." This
seems to be overstated, since many of the natural philosophers were skeptical
about various kinds of astrology,
and tended only to think there was something in it.
This too is understandable, since scientists took it that there are
laws which are independent of human will, and of chance.
"Were a choice necessary," Shumaker says, "causation
might, after all, be better laid to physical rays emanating from planets and
stars, which at least were subject to observation, than to mystical numbers,
cabalistic verbal formulas, and devils."
(l.c., p. 54.) Physicians
in those days were especially prone to accept astrological theories. They were
a part of their standard repertoire.
42. Keith Thomas discusses
the practice, role and relations with religion of astrology in England in the
16th and 17th centuries. In connection with religion, he says: "Committed to the belief that the will was necessarily
free, the clergy therefore reasoned that it was impossible to predict future
human behaviour. If the
astrologers did so, it could only mean that they were in league with the
Devil. Charms and spells, said
Bishop Carleton [in 1624], were the Devil's rudiments, but judicial astrology
was the Devil's university. Astrologers
in tacit league with Satan deserved the fate prescribed for every other kind
of witch. They were also suspect
because of their mathematical calculations.
The memory of Roger Bacon had been much besmirched by the assumption
that mathematics was part of the black art, and it was notorious that the
Edwardian reformers had destroyed mathematical books at Oxford under the
delusion that they were conjuring books.
'Where a red letter or a mathematical diagram appeared, they were
sufficient to entitled the book to be Popish or diabolical.'
(This may account for the disappearance at this period of nearly all
the works of the fourteenth-century Merton College school of
astronomers.)"
43. "Modern
historians tend to think that few genuine Elizabethan scientists were liable
to be accused of witchcraft. Yet both John Dee and Thomas Hariot suffered from such
suspicions and in the seventeenth century John Aubrey recalled how the
Elizabethan astrologer, Thomas Allen, was maligned by the belief, 'in those
dark times', that astrologer, mathematician and conjurer were all the same
thing. During the reign of Mary,
a clergyman, William Living, was arrested by an ignorant constable who found
among his books a copy of the astronomical textbook, John de
44. Don Cameron Allen
discusses many defenders and detractors of astrology in Europe during the 250
years or so from about 1450 to 1700. Among
the early works by writers in Italy, along with those of Ficino, who was
rather ambiguous about the powers of astrology, and Pico della Mirandola, who
made a thorough and influential attack on its powers (after having published a
favorable description earlier), Allen analyzes the work of an early staunch
defender, Giovanni Pontano. In
his De fortuna (1501), Pontano was much concerned with the relationship of
chance or fortune to stellar influences.
He held that stellar influences incline us this or that way, but that
they can be overcome, for example by prudence and reason.
(This is a very old idea, going back at least to Ptolemy of
Alexandria).
45. Our fortune
comes from the stars, but reason and prudence are sometimes useful in
perfecting fortune. Allen says:
"The arch stone of Pontano's theory is his notion of the
fortunate. Nature, he says, begets certain men who are the children of
fortune and others who are not. The
fortunate man, unlike the virtuous man, does not need to follow a code of
conduct; he has only to follow his natural impulses, and he will be carried to
the highest goals. Pontano admits
that he does not know why this is so; reason can no more explain it than it
can explain why one man wins at dice and another man loses.
The fortunate are like prophets, sybils, and poets; they are agitated
by a divine power. Reason and
study have nothing to do with their successful careers; in fact, the fortunate
often lose their occult power when they try to reason or begin to study."
(Don Cameron Allen, The Star-Crossed Renaissance, The Quarrel About
Astrology and Its Influencein England, p. 42).
When a learned friar complained that Pontano had not given enough place
to providence in his views, Pontano found an answer in the stars. "God, he says, created the stars and gave them power
over everything below save the wills of men; therefore, fate is a sort of
partner of men's wills in the governing of earthly business."
(ibid., p. 43.)
46. In England, the practice of astrology reached an apex of influence and respectability during the Elizabethan and Stuart eras, that is, in the late 16th century and during the first three quarters or so of the 17th century, and yet at the same time came under attack from many quarters. In his biography of William Lilly, the leading astrologer during the middle two quarters of the 17th century, Derek Parker uses Shakespeare as a source from which we can get an idea of the place of astrology in the minds of most English people during Elizabethan times. Shakespeare makes many allusions to astrology in his plays and sonnets. For example, in Julius Caesar, Cassius says to Brutus:
"Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings."
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I.ii, 140-141.)
These lines, says Parker, have often been misunderstood.
The meaning is that there are times when men are best able to master
their fates -- which a competent astrologer could calculate for them -- and
that a man is an underling if he doesn't act at a moment when the planetary
positions are propitious for him.
To say that the fault is not in the stars of the conspirators is to say
that the planetary positions are propitious for the assassination of Caesar.
There is something compelling about this interpretation, given the
context of the whole play, and it indicates a faith in astrology, together
with a view that the stars incline but do not compel.
(Derek Parker, Familiar to All, William Lilly and Astrology in the
Seventeenth Century, 1975, p. 47-54.)
Numerous other passages from Shakespeare's writings show a similar
attitude toward astrology. Prospero, in The Tempest, says in the manner of
Cassius:
"... by my prescience
I find my zenith doth depend upon
A most auspicious star, whose influence
If I now court not but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop."
(Shakespeare, The Tempest, I.ii, 180-184.)
One
may take it that Shakespeare could expect such beliefs to be common in his
audiences.
47. Parker cites a speech
of Ulysses from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida as showing
"more vividly than any other easily accessible quotation the Elizabethan
vision of a parallel system of heavenly and earthly order, and ... of the
palpable connection between them":
"The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans check, to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture!"
(Shakespeare, The History of Troilus and Cressida, I, iii,
Parker says: "The
astrological theory fitted soundly into the Elizabethan's general conception
of the universe, with its great emphasis on order -- an emphasis which
stressed, certainly, the necessity for oder within the State, an inflexible
social order; but which reached out beyond man's life, or rather through it,
to the easily discernible order within the observable universe: the order of
the moving planets and the fixed stars, impressive by the fact that it seemed
to regulate what otherwise would easily become a chaos, but also because it
provided a paradigm by which man could learn about his place in the natural,
universal order of things..... Astrology
had too long been regarded as an immutable law for any but the strongest mind
to ignore the fact. It would have
taken as much single-minded courage for an Elizabethan positively to deny the
planets their effect on man's life as for an early Victorian to deny God his
influence." (Parker, l.c.,
p. 53-55.)
48. However, lest we think
that astrology was supported by all of Shakespeare's characters, there is the
speech of Edmund in King Lear:
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick
in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains on
necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by
spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced
obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine
thrusting on. An admirable
evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a
star. My father compounded with
my mother under the Dragon's Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so
that it follows I am rough and lecherous.
Fut! I should have been
that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my
bastardizing." (Shakespeare,
King Lear, I, ii, 115-129.) It
has been suggested, however, that this view of Edmund the Bastard toward
astrology was meant by Shakespeare to convey Edmund's rebellious and
atheistical character.
49. With an emphasis
opposite to that of Parker, we find Hugh Dick saying: "During the
sixteenth century in England judicial astrology occupied a crumbling position.
To be sure, the great mass of people, as well as many educated men,
retained varying degrees of faith in it, but the body of dissent constantly
grew more strong. Judicial
astrologers and their absurd pretensions became a favorite butt for the
satirists, and scornful allusions to "figure-flingers" and
"star-gazers" thread the whole literature of the Renaissance."
(Dick, ibid, p. 20.)
50. Dick also calls
attention to the character of the general run of astrologers in Renaissance
England: "For men in touch
with the future, they were a ragged, rascally lot, as the satirists never
failed to remark. The account of
his own life by that gifted opportunist William Lilly introduces us to a
notable set of rogues who professed astrology dyuring the early years of the
seventeenth century: Simon
Forman, purveyor of aphrodisiacs to the Countess of Essex; one Evans, a Welsh
clergyman who had fled his cure of souls to live in drunken squalor in
Gunpowder Alley .....; William Hodges, the Staffordshire crystal-gazer;
Alexander Hart, an ex-soldier, who professed to discover the proper times for
gamblers to play dice; Geoffrey Neve, once storekeeper and quack doctor;
Richard Delahay, alias Dr. Ardee, a disbarred attorney; Captain Bubb, a
convicted thief; and William Poole, gardener, bricklayer, pickpocket, and
judicial astrologer. Men of this
order had obviously sunk even beneath hypocrisy. .....
Those who respected
astrology could look only with grief and anger on the rising tide of quackery.
As Elias Ashmole wrote: 'Yet
of this sort at present are start up divers Illiterate Professors (and Women
are of the Number) who even make Astrologie the Bawd and Pander to all
manner of Iniquity, prostituting Chast Urania to be abus'd by every
adulterate interest. And
what will be the issue (I wish it may prove no Prophesie ere long Astrologie
shall be cried down as an Impostor, because it is made use of as a Stale
to all bad Practices, and a laudable Faculty to bolster up
the legerdimane of a Cheate.'"
(Dick, loc. cit., p. 36-37; the quotation by Ashmole is from Thomas
Norton, The Ordinall of Alchemy ... with annotations by Elias Ashmole,
ed. E. J, Holmyard, 1931, p. 123.)
51. Dick concludes that
for educated men in the early 17th century, mistrust of astrology was
widespread. Christian doctrine of
the time opposed it. The State
passed laws against it. The
spread of literacy told against it. Philosophers
wrote treatises against it. The unreliability of the astrologers became notorious.
Many astrologers were palpably rogues and charlatans.
Satirists wrote popular plays and essays ridiculing it.
52. The opinion of Hardin
Craig lies somewhere between those of Derek Parker and Hugh Dick (their dates
of publication are: Craig, 1935;
Dick, 1944; Parker, 1975). In the
Enchanted Glass Craig says: "We may ask to what extent astrological influences were
believed in by scholars and learned men in England in the sixteenth century.
It is a typical question and fortunately very easy to answer.
Astrology was the interpretative part of astronomy, was sanctioned by
the writings of Ptolemy and by writings attributed to Aristotle, and seems to
have held a place in the curriculum of the universities of the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance. Astrology was
tolerated if not sanctioned by the Church and was, as regards its validity as
a science, believed in by all learned men.
But there are qualifications of this statement ....."
(Hardin Craig, The Enchanted Glass, 1935, p. 33).
53. Craig discusses the
poet Sir Philip Sidney and the mathematician Robert Recorde as representative
of learned and accomplished men who looked favorably on astrology.
He also speaks of the scorn of learned people, believers in astrology
or not, for ignorant and dishonest practitioners of the art.
A number of very popular superficial works on astrology attest to what
was considered abuse of astrology, especially by medical men for whom
astrology was a part of their professional technique. There was, for example, The Shepherds Kalendar,
possibly Alexander Barclay's translation of Kalendrier des Bergers
(Paris, 1503). A translation by
R. Copland published first in 1508 ran through 15 editions by 1631.
There was The Compost of Ptholomeus (first published by R. Wyer
between about 1532 and 1540), "a wretched English translation of what
seems to have been a poor French version of the Centiloquium, or
hundred aphorisms, based on the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy and supposed to
give the 'Fruit' of the Ptolemaic teachings as applied to astrological
ends." (ibid., p. 38.)
There were numerous other items of this inferior nature, including
"one of the most celebrated books of quackery in the world, the Secreta
Secretorum". (ibid., p. 39.)
54. Craig concludes:
"This ground is familiar, but the reader should remember a
distinction probably worth making in connexion with it,--that between the
honest, well-informed, and sincere practitioners of a false science and the
dishonest, ignorant, and pretentious quacks from whose knavery the profession
suffered disgrace. The matter was
relative at any given time in the sixteenth century.
It was not only relative but changing rapidly.
Many works which were adequate expressions of the best learning of say
1550 had become the vulgar knowledge of 1580 and 1590; truer learning had
meanwhile risen to higher planes. Quackery
too underwent its changes. It
grew more mystical and bombastic; but the ancient cheap stuff, much of which
had troubled the Middle Ages, also lived on as it lives now more remotely.
Let it not be thought that quackery was then or is now usually
insincere; its insincerity was and is a variable factor.
Dr. John Dee was a frank thinker and something of a scholar; he was
much misled. Dr. Robert Fludd was
one of the most learned, most sincere, most bombastic imposters that ever
lived. He fooled himself far more
than Dr. Dee was fooled by others."
(ibid., p. 40.)
55. Among those scornful
of astrology, Craig mentions Ben Jonson (1572-1637), John Melton in his satire
The Astrologaster (1620), Samuel Butler with his portrayal of Sidrophel
in Hudibras (1663-1678), John Chamber in his Treatise against
Iudicial Astrologie (1601), George Carleton with The Madnesse
ofAstrologers (1624), and the Judiciall Astrology Judicially Condemned
(1652) of William Rowland. But
during the same time there were plenty of books in favor of the subject, aside
from the popular items of low character. For
example, there was Sir Christopher Heydon's "learned and excellent" A
Defence of Judiciall Astrologie (1603).
And dramatists like Marlowe and Shakespeare sometimes make their
characters refer to astrology with almost religious reverence.
56. Well into the 17th
century, the learned Robert Burton, whose Anatomy of Melancholy
(1621-1638) can be considered a kind of medical treatise in literary form on
what we today call depression, says about astrology:
"Natural causes are either primary and universal, or secondary and
more particular. Primary causes
are the heavens, planets, stars, etc., by their influence (as our astrologers
hold) producing this and such-like effects.
I will not here stand to discuss obiter, whether stars be
causes, or signs; or to apologize for judicial astrology.
If either Sextus Empiricus, Picus Mirandula, Sextus ab Hemings,
Pererius, Erastus, Chambers, etc., have so far prevailed with any man, that he
will attribute no virtue at all to the heavens, or to sun, or moon, more than
he doth to their signs at an innkeeper's post, or tradesman's shop, or
generally condemn all such astrological aphorisms approved by experience: I
refer him to Bellantius, Pirovanus, Marascallerus, Goclenius, Sir Christopher
Heydon, etc. If thou shalt ask me
what I think, I must answer, nam et doctis hisce erroribus versatus sum
[for I too am conversant with these learned errors], they do incline, but not
compel; no necessity at all, agunt non cogunt [they impel but do not
compel]: and so gently incline, that a wise man may resist them; sapiens
dominabitur astris [a wise
man will rule the stars]; they rule us, but God rules them."
57. "All this
(methinks) Joh. de Indagine hath comprised in brief:
Quaeris a me quantum in nobis operantur astra, etc.
'Wilt thou know how far the stars work upon us?
I say they do, but incline, and that so gently, that if we will be
ruled by reason, they have no power over us; but if we follow our own nature,
and be led by sense, they do as much in us as in brute beasts, and we are no
better.' So that, I hope, I may
justly conclude with Cajetan, Coelum est vehiculum divinae virtutis,
etc., that the heaven is God's instrument, by mediation of which He governeth
and disposeth these elementary bodies; or a great book, whose letters are the
stars (as one calls it), wherein are written many strange things for such as
can read, 'or an excellent harp, made by an eminent workman, on which he that
can but play will make most admirable music.'"
(The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621-1638), edited by Holbrook
Jackson (1932), Partition I, Section II, Member I, Subsection IV, p. 206 of v.
1 of the 1932 edition.)