Astrology (1-5)

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