“I will not stand here to discuss _obiter_, whether there be causes and
signs; or to apologize for judicial astrology,” writes Burton, and so
plunges into the question of Planetary influence. But first a word of
warning to the effect that while it is the fashion to roughly dismiss
what some are loosely prone to dismiss as “the olden time” as a period
when there was striking unanimity of beliefs, any thoughtful man will
be prepared to accept something altogether different and to hold that
there always were disbelievers, some active, many passive, and that at
no period of history was there any unanimous belief. So with astrology
then. To be sure, reading Aristotle’s _Secret of Secrets_ we find much
that is astrological, Alexander being advised “not to rise up or sit
down or eat or drink or do anything without consulting a man skilled
in the art of astronomy,” and all that kind of thing. Still, even with
that, when the power of monarchs is remembered, there is ground for
suspicion that the astrologers, trading in mysteries, may have thought
to rule the all powerful one with the rod of superstition. Brains
versus brute force, as it were. I have always had my suspicions as
to the sincerity of the professors of astrology, present as well as
past. Even Aristotle I would rather believe had a little bit of the
rogue in him, rather than the fool. Otherwise, how think you would
a man with his cultural and intellectual attainments have squared
his constellatory precautions with his belief in necessity? For if,
according to the stars, such and such was the fate of a man, why worry?
My guess is that Aristotle knew the human credulity and superstitious
fears of the dull witted Alexander and traded on them to his own
security. Thus, in the advice offered to Alexander by Aristotle, the
monarch is warned against the taking of medicines, against suffering
bleeding, against conducting his wars without the guidance of the
astrologers. There was wisdom and there was safety in the advice,
I think, safety both for the philosopher and for the king. As to
disbelievers in general, they were not wanting, as we shall see.
It seems to me that we will be fairly safe, in the long run, to
remember that man in the mass was, in Burton’s day, pretty much as he
is today, intellectually and morally and mystically. You will see that
today there are no slight traces of superstitious beliefs and people
are plentiful who pet their dogmas as Titania caressed the donkey’s
head. To be sure we pride ourselves on our material advancement with
our airplanes, automobiles, radios, phonographs, newspapers, steam
radiators, wireless, poison gas and all that sort of thing, but it
would be interesting to know how many in this day and age, make a very
comfortable living casting horoscopes, telling fortunes, who peer into
the future with crystals, get messages from the beyond with the aid
of ouija boards, who read characters and who foretell destinies by
handwriting, who set up as palmist experts. Still, while a man five
hundred years from now might draw strange conclusions while trying to
reconstruct our social life from the advertisements in certain books
and papers devoted to theosophy and the occult, he would be far from
the truth, as we know.
So we bear that in mind when we read in Burton of Paracelsus who held
that “a physician without the knowledge of the stars can neither
understand the cause or cure of any disease, ... of gout nor so much
as a toothache, except he see the peculiar geniture and scheme of
the party affected.” And remembering that there were disbelievers in
all days for all things, we recall that Cicero made an attack upon
divination, and those who pretended to predict the future, and rejected
the contentions of the Chaldeans who held that at the moment of a
man’s birth, not only his personality, but the events of his life were
determined by the position of the stars and planets. For Cicero saw
that while many were born at the some moment as Homer, there was but
one Homer, and, like the true logician that he was, asked whether it
was reasonable to believe that all the men who perished at Cannae were
born at the some moment. Then there was Favorinus who bluntly denounced
all horoscope readers as tricksters and mountebanks, and suggested that
the utter folly of astrology was shown by the self-evident fact that
while astrologers had admitted on challenge that twins were not similar
in disposition because they were not born at the same precise moment,
yet it was quite manifest that the divinity men could by no means
measure the position of the stars with any exactness, and, further,
that there were, probably, stars which men could not see because of
their distance of position, but yet which must influence, if planetary
influence was admitted.
Nevertheless, in Burton’s day as well as in the days long before his
time, which he passes in review, we find diviners pretending to great
and wonderful powers, and in all countries making a lean or fat living.
There is a host of them, Burton tells us, divining by the elements, by
the air, by fire, by water, by earth, by evil spirits, by images and
figures, by entrails of birds, by entrails of beasts, and fishes, by
herbs, by dreams, by numbers, by names, by the navel, by marks on the
belly, by the hands, by the feet, by asses’ heads, by ashes, by smoke,
by the burning of incense, by the melting of wax in water, by looking
glasses, by crystals, by stars, by shadows, by dice, by the lees of
wine (modernized into tea leaves and still practiced by thousands of
old women in the British Isles), by meal or flour. Each of these, be it
said, had its high sounding name to impress the ignorant, Gyromancy,
or Sciomancy, or Dactylomancy. As for Oneirocriticism, or the art of
interpreting dreams, that is, of all, the most popular superstition
perhaps.
Burton has something to say on Cheiromancy, or, as we would have it
today, on palmistry, and quotes authorities, then, as if he could use
his time to better purpose, brushes it aside with, “I am over tedious
in these toys, which, howsoever, in some men’s too severe censures,
they may be held absurd and ridiculous, I am the bolder to insert,
as not borrowed from circumforeanean Rogues and Gipsies, but out of
the writing of worthy philosophers and physicians, yet living some of
them, and religious professors in famous universities, who are able to
patronize that which they have said, and vindicate themselves from all
cavillers and ignorant persons.”
As in a thick forest, when we march, though we think we are on the
straight road, it is well to stop now and again to consult the compass,
or failing that, to climb a tree and correct our course by the stars
or the sun, so it is well to halt a moment in Burton’s wonderful maze.
What he is doing is following out his chart step by step, trying to see
if there is any truth in the supposition that the melancholy of man is
induced by circumstances over which he has no control, or, if it is a
something “wished upon him” as we would say, if there is any way to
offset the evil by following any occult school. Only one ray of helpful
light has been seen thus far and that is that “sometimes a strong
conceit or apprehension ... will produce real effects.”
But it is time, he considers, to pass to man himself, after thoroughly
exhausting all considerations of outward influence, so he takes up the
question of heredity.