De astrologia

This treatise concerneth heaven and the stars, yet not the stars themselves nor heaven itself, but the auspiciall verity that from them assuredly entereth into the life of man. My discourse containeth not counsell, nor proffereth instruction how to ply this auspiciall art, but my aim is to chide those learned men who cultivate and expose unto their disciples all other studies, but neither esteem nor cultivate astrology.

Although the science is ancient, not come to us newly, but the creation of divinely favoured kings of antiquity, yet men of these daies, through ignorance, supinity, and mislike of labour, hold opinions repugnant unto theirs, and when they encounter men that make false prognostickes, they impeach the stars and contemne astrology itself, which they consider neither sound nor veridicall but a vain and idle fiction; wherein, as I think, the judge unjustly. For a wright’s unskillfullness argueth not the wright’s art in error, nor a piper’s untunefullness the art of musick devoid of sense. Rather are they ignorant of their arts, and each of these in itself rationall.

It was the Aethiopians that first delivered this doctrine unto men. The ground thereof was in part the wisdom of that nation, the Aethiopians being in all else wiser than all men; but in part also the benignity of their clime, since clear skyes and calm weather ever invest them, and they are not subjected to the vicissitudes of the yeere, but live in onely one season. Therefore when they discerned, first of all, that the moon hath not perpetually the same appearance, but carrieth a various aspect and changeth into divers figures, they accounted the thing good reason for wonder and empuzzlement. In consequence they sought and found the cause thereof, that the lustre of the moon is not her own but cometh to her from the sun.

And they determined also the course of the other stars, which we call planets or wanderers because they alone of all the stars do move; also their nature and potency, and the works that are brought to pass by each of them. Also, they ascribed names unto them, that yet were not names, as they seemed, but symboles.

All which the Aethiopians observed in the skye, and afterwards they transmitted their doctrine incompleat to the Aegyptians. And the Aegyptians, deriving from them the auspiciall art but half consummated, advanced it; and they indicated the measure of each planet’s motion, and determined the numericall extension of yeares and moneths and hours. The moneths they measured by the moon and her cycle, the year by the sun and his revolution.

And they devised other inventions much greater than these. For they divided the entire skye and the other stars that are inerrant and fixed, and do never move, into twelve segments for such as move: which they styled “houses,” although they resemble living creatures, each patterned after the figure of a different kind, whereof some are sea-monsters, some humans, some wild beasts, some volatiles, some juments.

For this reason, indeed, the Aegyptian deities are portrayed in various aspects. For it is not to be supposed that all Aegyptians were wont to draw prognosticks from all the twelve signs; but some had one sign in use, others another. The ram is reverenced by those who looked up unto Aries, fish is not eaten by those who attached signality unto Pisces, the goat is not slain by those who had knowledge of Capricorn, and the other creatures are severally venerated by other folk. Assuredly the bull too is adored in honour of the celestial Taurus, and Apis, esteemed by them an object of the uttermost sanctity, depastureth their land, and they that inhabit it vouchsafe him an oracle in token of the auspiciality of Taurus.

Not long after, the Libyans also espoused the science; for the Libyan oracle of Ammon was founded in regard of the heavens and his knowledge thereof;

whence they represent Ammon with a ram’s head.

And the Babylonians came to know all these things, even before the others, as they themselves say; but I think that the science reached them long afterward.

As for the Greeks, they learned not a whit of astrology either from the Aethiopians or from the Aegyptians. It was Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus and Calliope, that first declared these matters unto them, but not at all plainly, nor did he bring the science forth unto illucidation but unto ingannation and pious fraude, such being the humour of the man. _ For he made a harp and exposed his mystick rites in poesy and his theology in song; and the harp, that had seven chords, discoursed the harmony of the errant spheres. It was by investigating and ventilating these matters that he enchanted and enthralled all creatures; for he regarded not that harp of his nor yet concerned himselfe with other musick, but this was the mightie harp of Orpheus, and to honour these things, the Greeks set apart a station in the heavens and numerous stars are denominated Orpheus his harp.

If ever you see Orpheus pictured in mosaick stones or in pigment, he sitteth in the centre, in the simili- tude of one that sings, holding in his hands the harp, and about him stand numberless creatures, among which a bull, a man, a lion, and others after their kind. When you see these, bethink you, pray, what his song was, what his harp, and what the bull or the lion that giveth ear to him. And if you would know the originalls that I speak of, you may behold each of them in the heavens.

They say, moreover, that Tiresias, a Boeotian man, whose fame as touching prophecie is greatly cried up, declared, unto the Greeks that of the errant stars some are masle, some female, and that they do not engender like effects; wherefore they fable that Tiresias himself was bisexous and amphibious, now masle, now female.

When Atreus and Thyestes contended for the throne of their fathers, even then, it is plain, the Greeks set great store by astrologie and celestial lore; and the commonwealth of Argos determined that which ever of them was more excellent than the other in this lore should bear rule. Thereupon Thyestes indicated and made manifest unto them the Ram in the heavens, in consequence whereof they fable that Thyestes had a golden lamb. But Atreus declared the doctrine of the sun and its risings, that the sun and the First Movable do not course in the same direction, but rowle contrariwise to one another and that which now seemeth his setting, being a setting of the First Movable, is a rising of the sun. At his saying this, the men of Argos made him their king, and great renown for learning became his.

Concerning Bellerophon also I am of this opinion: that he had a volatile as horse I do not at all believe, but conceive that he pursued this wisdom and raised his thoughts on high and held conversation with the stars, and thus ascended unto heaven by means not of his horse but of his wit.

The same may be said of Phrixus, the son of Athamas, that is fabled to have ridden through the ayr upon a golden ram. And certainly of Daedalus the Athenian; although his story be strange, yet methinks it is not without relation unto astrology, but rather he practised it constantly himself and taught it unto his son.

But because Icarus was governed by youth and audacity, and sought not the attainable but let his minde carry him into the zenith, he came short of truth and defected from reason and was precipitated into a sea of unfathomable perplexities. But the Greeks tell an idle myth of him and loosely call a golfe of their sea Icarian after his name.

Doubtless Pasiphae also, hearing from Daedalus of the Bull that appeareth amongst the constellations and of Astrology itself, fell in love with the doctrine;

whence they derive the belief that Daedalus conjoined her in wedlock with the bull.

Again, there be-those who, dissecting the science into parts, have made different discoveries, some collecting the particulars of the moon, some those of Jupiter, and some those of the sun, concerning their course and motion and potency.

So Endymion established the motions of the moon, so Phaeton inferred the course of the sun; yet not strictly, but left the theory incompleat at his death. Ignorant of this, men believe that Phaeton was Helius his son, and they relate a story of him that is not at all credible. Going, say they, unto Helius, his father, he asked to drive the car of light; whiche he suffered him to do, and also instructed him in the manner of its governance. But when Phaeton mounted the car, because of youth and inexpertness he drove now close to earth, now at a vast remove; and men were being destroyed both by cold and by heat that passed endurance. Thereupon, Jupiter in wrath smote Phaeton with a great bolt of lightning. After his fall his sisters surrounding him made great dole until they transmuted themselves, and now they are trees of black poplar and distil amber over him in place of tears. These things were not so, and it consisteth not with piety to believe in them; Helius begat no son, and no son of his perished.

But the Greeks relate many other fabulosities— which I do not credit at all. For how doth it consist with piety to believe that Aeneas was the’son of Venus, Minos of Jupiter, Ascalaphus of Mars, or Autolycus of Mercury? Nay, these were each and all divinely favoured, and at their birth one of them was under the regard of Venus, another of Jupiter, another of Mars. For what powers soever are in their proper houses at the moment of birth into this life, those powers like unto parents make men answerable to them in all respects, in complexion, in figure, in workes, and in humour. So Minos became a king because Jupiter was in his ascendancy, Aeneas fair by the will of Venus, and Autolycus a theef, whose theevery came to him from Mercury.

Moreover, it is not true, neither, that Jupiter put Saturn in chaines or threw him into Tartarus or otherwise mistreated him as men credit. Nay, Saturn moveth in the extream orbe, far away from us, and his motion is sluggish and not easy to be apprehended ocularly by human kind, whence they say that he holdeth still as if fettered; and the vast abyss of the ayr is called Tartarus.

’Tis chiefly from the verses of Homer the poet and of Hesiod that we may learn that antiquity holdeth with the astrologers. When he describeth the chain of Jupiter and the kine of the Sun, which I con- ceive to be daies, and the cities that Vulcan made upon the shield, and the choir, and the vineyard... All that he hath said of Venus and of Mars his passion, is also manifestly composed from no other source than this science. Indeed, it is the conjunction of Venus and Mars that createth the poetry of Homer. And in other verses he distinguished the duties of each, saying unto Venus,

Nay, be it thine to control the delightsome duties of wedlock, and anent those of warfare,

These shall all be the care of impetuous Mars and Minerva.

Discerning all these things, the ancients had divination in very great use and counted it no parergy, but would found no cities, invest themselves with no ramparts, slay no men, wed no women, untill they had been advised in all particulars by diviners. And certainly their oracles were not aloof from astrology, but at Delphi a virgin hath the office of prophet in token of the celestial Virgin, and a serpent giveth voice beneath the tripod because a Serpent giveth light among the stars, and at Didymi also the oracle of Apollo hath its name, methinks, from the heavenly Twins.

So firmly did they believe divination a thing most sacred, that when Ulysses, wearied of wandering, took a phansie to learn the truth as touching his affaires, he went off unto Hell, not “to behold dead men and a land that is joyless,” but because he would come to speech with Tiresias. And when he was come to the place whereunto Circe directed him, and had dug his pit and slain his sheep, although many dead that were by, and amongst them his own mother, were fain to drink of the blood, he suffered none of them, not even his very mother, until he had wet the throstle of Tiresias and constrained him to deliver the prophecy, verily enduring to behold his mother’s shadow athirst.

For the Spartans, Lycurgus drew from the skye his ordering of their whole polity and made it their law never to leave their country, even to go to the wars, before the moon should be at her full, for he conceited that the potency of the moon is not the same when she waxeth and when she waneth, and that all things are subject unto her sway.

The Arcadians, however, and none but they, would have naught of this and yeelded no honour unto astrologie; and in their folly they affirm that they are older than the moon.

Whereas our forbears were so mightily enamoured of divination, among this generation there be some who say that it is an impossibility for mankind to conceive a useful purpose of astrologie. It is neither credible, say they, nor truthful, and Mars and Jupiter do not move in the skye for our sake, but are nothing at all solicitous of the affairs of men, wherewith they have naught in common, but accomplish their courses independently, through a necessitude of revolving.

And others affirm that astrologie, although not untruthful, is unprofitable, insomuch as divination will not alter that which draweth nigh by decree of the fates.

To both these opinions I may answer that although the stars do verily absolve their own course in the skye, none the less as a parergy or incidental of their motion each event among us cometh to pass. Or will you have it that although if a horse run or birds or humans move, pebbles are flung up and strawes set astir by the wind of their motion, yet the gyration of the stars bringeth naught else to pass? And that whereas from a little fire an effluxion cometh to us, although the fire burneth not for our sake at all and is not a whit sollicitous that we be warmed, yet from the stars we receive no effluxion whatever? Furthermore, astrologie is indeed impotent to convert bad into good, or to effect mutation in any of the effluents, yet is it profitable to those that employ it, in so much as the good, when they know that it is to come, delighteth them long beforehand, while the bad they accept readily, for it cometh not upon them unawares, but in vertue of contemplation and expectance is deemed easie and light. That is my opinion in the matter of astrology.