When we consider the absolute authority that astrology exercised under the
Roman empire, we find it hard to escape a feeling of surprise. It is
difficult to think that people could ever consider astrology as the most
valuable of all arts and the queen of sciences,[1] and it is not easy for
us to imagine the moral conditions that made such a phenomenon possible,
because our state of mind to-day is very different. Little by little the
conviction has gained ground that all that can be known about the future,
at least the future of man and of human society, is conjecture. The
progress of knowledge has taught man to acquiesce in his ignorance.
In former ages it was different: forebodings and predictions found
universal credence. The ancient forms of divination, however, had fallen
somewhat into disrepute at the beginning of our era, like the rest of the
Greco-Roman religion. It was no longer thought that the eagerness or
reluctance with which the sacred hens ate their paste, or the direction of
the flight of the birds indicated coming success or disaster. Abandoned,
the Hellenic oracles were silent. Then appeared astrology, surrounded with
all the prestige of an exact science, and based upon the experience of many
centuries. It promised to ascertain the {163} occurrences of any one's life
with as much precision as the date of an eclipse. The world was drawn
towards it by an irresistible attraction. Astrology did away with, and
gradually relegated to oblivion, all the ancient methods that had been
devised to solve the enigmas of the future. Haruspicy and the augural art
were abandoned, and not even the ancient fame of the oracles could save
them from falling into irretrievable desuetude. This great chimera changed
religion as well as divination, its spirit penetrated everything. And
truly, if, as some scholars still hold, the main feature of science is the
ability to predict,[2] no branch of learning could compare with this one,
nor escape its influence.
The success of astrology was connected with that of the Oriental religions,
which lent it their support, as it in turn helped them. We have seen how it
forced itself upon Semitic paganism, how it transformed Persian Mazdaism
and even subdued the arrogance of the Egyptian sacerdotal caste.[3] Certain
mystical treatises ascribed to the old Pharaoh Nechepso and his confidant,
the priest Petosiris, nebulous and abstruse works that became, one might
say, the Bible of the new belief in the power of the stars, were translated
into Greek, undoubtedly in Alexandria, about the year 150 before our
era.[4] About the same time the Chaldean genethlialogy began to spread in
Italy, with regard to which Berosus, a priest of the god Baal, who came to
Babylon from the island of Cos, had previously succeeded in arousing the
curiosity of the Greeks. In 139 a prætor expelled the "Chaldaei" from Rome,
together with the Jews. But all the adherents of the Syrian goddess, of
whom there was quite a number in the Occident, were patrons and defenders
of these Oriental {164} prophets, and police measures were no more
successful in stopping the diffusion of their doctrines, than in the case
of the Asiatic mysteries. In the time of Pompey, the senator Nigidius
Figulus, who was an ardent occultist, expounded the barbarian uranography
in Latin. But the scholar whose authority contributed most to the final
acceptance of sidereal divination was a Syrian philosopher of encyclopedic
knowledge, Posidonius of Apamea, the teacher of Cicero.[5] The works of
that erudite and religious writer influenced the development of the entire
Roman theology more than anything else.
Under the empire, while the Semitic Baals and Mithra were triumphing,
astrology manifested its power everywhere. During that period everybody
bowed to it. The Cæsars became its fervent devotees, frequently at the
expense of the ancient cults. Tiberius neglected the gods because he
believed only in fatalism,[6] and Otho, blindly confiding in the Oriental
seer, marched against Vitellius in spite of the baneful presages that
affrighted his official clergy.[7] The most earnest scholars, Ptolemy under
the Antonines for instance, expounded the principles of that
pseudo-science, and the very best minds received them. In fact, scarcely
anybody made a distinction between astronomy and its illegitimate sister.
Literature took up this new and difficult subject, and, as early as the
time of Augustus or Tiberius, Manilius, inspired by the sidereal fatalism,
endeavored to make poetry of that dry "mathematics," as Lucretius, his
forerunner, had done with the Epicurean atomism. Even art looked there for
inspiration and depicted the stellar deities. At Rome and in the provinces
architects erected sumptuous _septizonia_ in the likeness of {165} the
seven spheres in which the planets that rule our destinies move.[8] This
Asiatic divination was first aristocratic[9]--because the obtaining of an
exact horoscope was a complicated matter, and consultations were
expensive--but it promptly became popular, especially in the urban centers
where Oriental slaves gathered in large numbers. The learned
genethlialogers of the observatories had unlicensed colleagues, who told
fortunes at street-crossings or in barnyards. Even common epitaphs, which
Rossi styles "the scum of inscriptions," have retained traces of that
belief. The custom arose of stating in epitaphs the exact length of a life
to the very hour, for the moment of birth determined that of death:
_Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet._[10]
Soon neither important nor small matters were undertaken without consulting
the astrologer. His previsions were sought not only in regard to great
public events like the conduct of a war, the founding of a city, or the
accession of a ruler, not only in case of a marriage, a journey, or a
change of domicile; but the most trifling acts of every-day life were
gravely submitted to his sagacity. People would no longer take a bath, go
to the barber, change their clothes or manicure their fingernails, without
first awaiting the propitious moment.[11] The collections of "initiatives"
([Greek: katarchai]) that have come to us contain questions that make us
smile: Will a son who is about to be born have a big nose? Will a girl just
coming into this world have gallant adventures?[12] And certain precepts
sound almost like burlesques: he who gets his hair cut while {166} the moon
is in her increase will become bald--evidently by analogy.[13]
The entire existence of states and individuals, down to the slightest
incidents, was thought to depend on the stars. The absolute control they
were supposed to exercise over everybody's daily condition, even modified
the language in every-day use and left traces in almost all idioms derived
from the Latin. If we speak of a martial, or a jovial character, or a
lunatic, we are unconsciously admitting the existence, in these heavenly
bodies (Mars, Jupiter, Luna) of their ancient qualities.
It must be acknowledged, however, that the Grecian spirit tried to combat
the folly that was taking hold of the world, and from the time of its
propagation astrology found opponents among the philosophers. The most
subtle of these adversaries was the probabilist Carneades, in the second
century before our era. The topical arguments which he advanced, were taken
up, reproduced, and developed in a thousand ways by later polemicists. For
instance, Were all the men that perish together in a battle, born at the
same moment, because they had the same fate? Or, on the other hand, do we
not observe that twins, born at the same time, have the most unlike
characters and the most different fortunes?
But dialectics are an accomplishment in which the Greeks ever excelled, and
the defenders of astrology found a reply to every objection. They
endeavored especially to establish firmly the truths of observation, upon
which rested the entire learned structure of their art: the influence of
the stars over the phenomena of nature and the characters of individuals.
Can it be {167} denied, they said, that the sun causes vegetation to appear
and to perish, and that it puts animals _en rut_ or plunges them into
lethargic sleep? Does not the movement of the tide depend on the course of
the moon? Is not the rising of certain constellations accompanied every
year by storms? And are not the physical and moral qualities of the
different races manifestly determined by the climate in which they live?
The action of the sky on the earth is undeniable, and, the sidereal
influences once admitted, all previsions based on them are legitimate. As
soon as the first principle is admitted, all corollaries are logically
derived from it.
This way of reasoning was universally considered irrefutable. Before the
advent of Christianity, which especially opposed it because of its
idolatrous character, astrology had scarcely any adversaries except those
who denied the possibility of science altogether, namely, the
neo-Academicians, who held that man could not attain certainty, and such
radical sceptics as Sextus Empiricus. Upheld by the Stoics, however, who
with very few exceptions were in favor of astrology, it can be maintained
that it emerged triumphant from the first assaults directed against it. The
only result of the objections raised to it was to modify some of its
theories. Later, the general weakening of the spirit of criticism assured
astrology an almost uncontested domination. Its adversaries did not renew
their polemics; they limited themselves to the repetition of arguments that
had been opposed, if not refuted, a hundred times, and consequently seemed
worn out. At the court of the Severi any one who should have denied the
influence of the planets upon the events of this world {168} would have
been considered more preposterous than he who would admit it to-day.
But, you will say, if the theorists did not succeed in proving the
doctrinal falsity of astrology, experience should have shown its
worthlessness. Errors must have occurred frequently and must have been
followed by cruel disillusionment. Having lost a child at the age of four
for whom a brilliant future had been predicted, the parents stigmatized in
the epitaph the "lying mathematician whose great renown deluded them."[14]
Nobody thought of denying the possibility of such errors. Manuscripts have
been preserved, wherein the makers of horoscopes themselves candidly and
learnedly explain how they were mistaken in such and such a case, because
they had not taken into account some one of the data of the problem.[15]
Manilius, in spite of his unlimited confidence in the power of reason,
hesitated at the complexity of an immense task that seemed to exceed the
capacity of human intelligence,[16] and in the second century, Vettius
Valens bitterly denounced the contemptible bunglers who claimed to be
prophets, without having had the long training necessary, and who thereby
cast odium and ridicule upon astrology, in the name of which they pretended
to operate.[17] It must be remembered that astrology, like medicine, was
not only a science ([Greek: epistêmê]), but also an art ([Greek: technê]).
This comparison, which sounds irreverent to-day, was a flattering one in
the eyes of the ancients.[18] To observe the sky was as delicate a task as
to observe the human body; to cast the horoscope of a newly born child,
just as perilous as to make a diagnosis, and to interpret the cosmic
symptoms just as hard as to {169} interpret those of our organism. In both
instances the elements were complex and the chances of error infinite. All
the examples of patients dying in spite of the physician, or on account of
him, will never keep a person who is tortured by physical pain from
appealing to him for help; and similarly those whose souls were troubled
with ambition or fear turned to the astrologer for some remedy for the
moral fever tormenting them. The calculator, who claimed to determine the
moment of death, and the medical practitioner who claimed to avert it
received the anxious patronage of people worried by this formidable issue.
Furthermore, just as marvelous cures were reported, striking predictions
were called to mind or, if need were, invented. The diviner had, as a rule,
only a restricted number of possibilities to deal with, and the calculus of
probabilities shows that he must have succeeded sometimes. Mathematics,
which he invoked, was in his favor after all, and chance frequently
corrected mischance. Moreover, did not the man who had a well-frequented
consulting-office, possess a thousand means, if he was clever, of placing
all the chances on his side, in the hazardous profession he followed, and
of reading in the stars anything he thought expedient? He observed the
earth rather than the sky, and took care not to fall into a well.
* * * * *
However, what helped most to make astrology invulnerable to the blows of
reason and of common sense, was the fact that in reality, the apparent
rigor of its calculus and its theorems notwithstanding, it was not a
science but a faith. We mean not only that {170} it implied belief in
postulates that could not be proved--the same thing might be said of almost
all of our poor human knowledge, and even our systems of physics and
cosmology in the last analysis are based upon hypotheses--but that
astrology was born and reared in the temples of Chaldea and Egypt.[19] Even
in the Occident it never forgot its sacerdotal origin and never more than
half freed itself from religion, whose offspring it was. Here lies the
connection between astrology and the Oriental religions, and I wish to draw
the reader's special attention to this point.
The Greek works and treatises on astrology that have come down to us reveal
this essential feature only very imperfectly. The Byzantines stripped this
pseudo-science, always regarded suspiciously by the church, of everything
that savored of paganism. Their process of purification can, in some
instances, be traced from manuscript to manuscript.[20] If they retained
the name of some god or hero of mythology, the only way they dared to write
it was by cryptography. They have especially preserved purely didactic
treatises, the most perfect type of which is Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos which
has been constantly quoted and commented upon; and they have reproduced
almost exclusively expurgated texts, in which the principles of various
doctrines are drily summarized. During the classic age works of a different
character were commonly read. Many "Chaldeans" interspersed their
cosmological calculations and theories with moral considerations and
mystical speculations. In the first part of a work that he names "Vision,"
([Greek: Horasis]) Critodemus, in prophetic language, represents the truths
he reveals {171} as a secure harbor of refuge from the storms of this
world, and he promises his readers to raise them to the rank of
immortals.[21] Vettius Valens, a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius, implored
them in solemn terms, not to divulge to the ignorant and impious the arcana
he was about to acquaint them with.[22] The astrologers liked to assume the
appearance of incorruptible and holy priests and to consider their calling
a sacerdotal one.[23] In fact, the two ministries sometimes combined: A
dignitary of the Mithraic clergy called himself _studiosus astrologiae_[24]
in his epitaph, and a member of a prominent family of Phrygian prelates
celebrated in verse the science of divination which enabled him to issue a
number of infallible predictions.[25]
The sacred character of astrology revealed itself in some passages that
escaped the orthodox censure and in the tone some of its followers assumed,
but we must go further and show that astrology was religious in its
principles as well as in its conclusions, the debt it owed to mathematics
and observation notwithstanding.
The fundamental dogma of astrology, as conceived by the Greeks, was that of
universal solidarity. The world is a vast organism, all the parts of which
are connected through an unceasing exchange of molecules of effluvia. The
stars, inexhaustible generators of energy, constantly act upon the earth
and man--upon man, the epitome of all nature, a "microcosm" whose every
element corresponds to some part of the starry sky. This was, in a few
words, the theory formulated by the Stoic disciples of the Chaldeans;[26]
but if we divest it of all the philosophic garments with which it has been
adorned, what do we find? The idea of {172} sympathy, a belief as old as
human society! The savage peoples also established mysterious relations
between all bodies and all the beings that inhabit the earth and the
heavens, and which to them were animated with a life of their own endowed
with latent power, but we shall speak of this later on, when taking up the
subject of magic. Even before the propagation of the Oriental religions,
popular superstition in Italy and Greece attributed a number of odd actions
to the sun, the moon, and the constellations as well.[27]
The Chaldaei, however, claimed a predominant power for the stars. In fact,
they were regarded as gods _par excellence_ by the religion of the ancient
Chaldeans in its beginnings. The sidereal religion of Babylon concentrated
deity, one might say, in the luminous moving bodies at the expense of other
natural objects, such as stones, plants, animals, which the primitive
Semitic faith considered equally divine. The stars always retained this
character, even at Rome. They were not, as to us, infinitely distant bodies
moving in space according to the inflexible laws of mechanics, and whose
chemical composition may be determined. To the Latins as to the Orientals,
they were propitious or baleful deities, whose ever-changing relations
determined the events of this world.
The sky, whose unfathomable depth had not yet been perceived, was peopled
with heroes and monsters of contrary passions, and the struggle above had
an immediate echo upon earth. By what principle have such a quality and so
great an influence been attributed to the stars? Is it for reasons derived
from their apparent motion and known through observation or experience?
Sometimes. Saturn made people {173} apathetic and irresolute, because it
moved most slowly of all the planets.[28] But in most instances purely
mythological reasons inspired the precepts of astrology. The seven planets
were associated with certain deities, Mars, Venus, or Mercury, whose
character and history are known to all. It is sufficient simply to
pronounce their names to call to mind certain personalities that may be
expected to act according to their natures, in every instance. It was
natural for Venus to favor lovers, and for Mercury to assure the success of
business transactions and dishonest deals. The same applies to the
constellations, with which a number of legends are connected: "catasterism"
or translation into the stars, became the natural conclusion of a great
many tales. The heroes of mythology, or even those of human society,
continued to live in the sky in the form of brilliant stars. There Perseus
again met Andromeda, and the Centaur Chiron, who is none other than
Sagittarius, was on terms of good fellowship with the Dioscuri.
These constellations, then, assumed to a certain extent the good and the
bad qualities of the mythical or historical beings that had been
transferred upon them. For instance, the serpent, which shines near the
northern pole, was the author of medical cures, because it was the animal
sacred to Æsculapius.[29]
The religious foundation of the rules of astrology, however, can not always
be recognized. Sometimes it is entirely forgotten, and in such cases the
rules assume the appearance of axioms, or of laws based upon long
observation of celestial phenomena. Here we have a simple aspect of
science. The process of {174} assimilation with the gods and catasterism
were known in the Orient long before they were practiced in Greece.
The traditional outlines that we reproduce on our celestial maps are the
fossil remains of a luxuriant mythological vegetation, and besides our
classic sphere the ancients knew another, the "barbarian" sphere, peopled
with a world of fantastic persons and animals. These sidereal monsters, to
whom powerful qualities were ascribed, were likewise the remnants of a
multitude of forgotten beliefs. Zoolatry was abandoned in the temples, but
people continued to regard as divine the lion, the bull, the bear, and the
fishes, which the Oriental imagination had seen in the starry vault. Old
totems of the Semitic tribes or of the Egyptian divisions lived again,
transformed into constellations. Heterogeneous elements, taken from all the
religions of the Orient, were combined in the uranography of the ancients,
and in the power ascribed to the phantoms that it evoked, vibrates in the
indistinct echo of ancient devotions that are often completely unknown to
us.[30]
Astrology, then, was religious in its origin and in its principles. It was
religious also in its close relation to the Oriental religions, especially
those of the Syrian Baals and of Mithra; finally, it was religious in the
effects that it produced. I do not mean the effects expected from a
constellation in any particular instance: as for example the power to evoke
the gods that were subject to their domination.[31] But I have in mind the
general influence those doctrines exercised upon Roman paganism.
When the Olympian gods were incorporated among the stars, when Saturn and
Jupiter became planets and {175} the celestial virgin a sign of the zodiac,
they assumed a character very different from the one they had originally
possessed. It has been shown[32] how, in Syria, the idea of an infinite
repetition of cycles of years according to which the celestial revolutions
took place, led to the conception of divine eternity, how the theory of a
fatal domination of the stars over the earth brought about that of the
omnipotence of the "lord of the heavens," and how the introduction of a
universal religion was the necessary result of the belief that the stars
exerted an influence upon the peoples of every climate. The logic of all
these consequences of the principles of astrology was plain to the Latin as
well as to the Semitic races, and caused a rapid transformation of the
ancient idolatry. As in Syria, the sun, which the astrologers called the
leader of the planetary choir, "who is established as king and leader of
the whole world,"[33] necessarily became the highest power of the Roman
pantheon.
Astrology also modified theology, by introducing into this pantheon a great
number of new gods, some of whom were singularly abstract. Thereafter man
worshiped the constellations of the firmament, particularly the twelve
signs of the zodiac, every one of which had its mythologic legend; the sky
(_Caelus_) itself, because it was considered the first cause, and was
sometimes confused with the supreme being; the four elements, the
antithesis and perpetual transmutations of which produced all tangible
phenomena, and which were often symbolized by a group of animals ready to
devour each other;[34] finally, time and its subdivisions.[35]
The calendars were religious before they were secular; their purpose was
not, primarily, to record fleeting {176} time, but to observe the
recurrence of propitious or inauspicious dates separated by periodic
intervals. It is a matter of experience that the return of certain moments
is associated with the appearance of certain phenomena; they have,
therefore, a special efficacy, and are endowed with a sacred character. By
determining periods with mathematical exactness, astrology continued to see
in them "a divine power,"[36] to use Zeno's term. Time, that regulates the
course of the stars and the transubstantiation of the elements, was
conceived of as the master of the gods and the primordial principle, and
was likened to destiny. Each part of its infinite duration brought with it
some propitious or evil movement of the sky that was anxiously observed,
and transformed the ever modified universe. The centuries, the years and
the seasons, placed into relation with the four winds and the four cardinal
points, the twelve months connected with the zodiac, the day and the night,
the twelve hours, all were personified and deified, as the authors of every
change in the universe. The allegorical figures contrived for these
abstractions by astrological paganism did not even perish with it.[37] The
symbolism it had disseminated outlived it, and until the Middle Ages these
pictures of fallen gods were reproduced indefinitely in sculpture, mosaics,
and in Christian miniatures.[38]
Thus astrology entered into all religious ideas, and the doctrines of the
destiny of the world and of man harmonized with its teachings. According to
Berosus, who is the interpreter of ancient Chaldean theories, the existence
of the universe consisted of a series of "big years," each having its
summer and its winter. Their summer took place when all the planets were in
{177} conjunction at the same point of Cancer, and brought with it a
general conflagration. On the other hand, their winter came when all the
planets were joined in Capricorn, and its result was a universal flood.
Each of these cosmic cycles, the duration of which was fixed at 432,000
years according to the most probable estimate, was an exact reproduction of
those that had preceded it. In fact, when the stars resumed exactly the
same position, they were forced to act in identically the same manner as
before. This Babylonian theory, an anticipation of that of the "eternal
return of things," which Nietzsche boasts of having discovered, enjoyed
lasting popularity during antiquity, and in various forms came down to the
Renaissance.[39] The belief that the world would be destroyed by fire, a
theory also spread abroad by the Stoics, found a new support in these
cosmic speculations.
Astrology, however, revealed the future not only of the universe, but also
of man. According to a Chaldeo-Persian doctrine, accepted by the pagan
mystics and previously pointed out by us,[40] a bitter necessity compelled
the souls that dwell in great numbers on the celestial heights, to descend
upon this earth and to animate certain bodies that are to hold them in
captivity. In descending to the earth they travel through the spheres of
the planets and receive some quality from each of these wandering stars,
according to its positions. Contrariwise, when death releases them from
their carnal prison, they return to their first habitation, providing they
have led a pious life, and if as they pass through the doors of the
superposed heavens they divest themselves of the passions and inclinations
acquired during their first journey, {178} to ascend finally, as pure
essence to the radiant abode of the gods. There they live forever among the
eternal stars, freed from the tyranny of destiny and even from the
limitations of time.
This alliance of the theorems of astronomy with their old beliefs supplied
the Chaldeans with answers to all the questions that men asked concerning
the relation of heaven and earth, the nature of God, the existence of the
world, and their own destiny. Astrology was really the first scientific
theology. Hellenistic logic arranged the Oriental doctrines properly,
combined them with the Stoic philosophy and built them up into a system of
indisputable grandeur, an ideal reconstruction of the universe, the
powerful assurance of which inspired Manilius to sublime language when he
was not exhausted by his efforts to master an ill-adapted theme.[41] The
vague and irrational notion of "sympathy" is transformed into a deep sense
of the relationship between the human soul, an igneous substance, and the
divine stars, and this feeling is strengthened by thought.[42] The
contemplation of the sky has become a communion. During the splendor of
night the mind of man became intoxicated with the light streaming from
above; born on the wings of enthusiasm, he ascended into the sacred choir
of the stars and took part in their harmonious movements. "He participates
in their immortality, and, before his appointed hour, converses with the
gods."[43] In spite of the subtle precision the Greeks always maintained in
their speculations, the feeling that permeated astrology down to the end of
paganism never belied its Oriental and religious origin. {179}
The most essential principle of astrology was that of fatalism. As the poet
says:[44]
_"Fata regunt orbem, certa stant omnia lege."_
The Chaldeans were the first to conceive the idea of an inflexible
necessity ruling the universe, instead of gods acting in the world
according to their passions, like men in society. They noticed that an
immutable law regulated the movements of the celestial bodies, and, in the
first enthusiasm of their discovery they extended its effects to all moral
and social phenomena. The postulates of astrology imply an absolute
determinism. Tyche, or deified fortune, became the irresistible mistress of
mortals and immortals alike, and was even worshiped exclusively by some
under the empire. Our deliberate will never plays more than a very limited
part in our happiness and success, but, among the pronunciamentos and in
the anarchy of the third century, blind chance seemed to play with the life
of every one according to its fancy, and it can easily be understood that
the ephemeral rulers of that period, like the masses, saw in chance the
sovereign disposer of their fates.[45]
The power of this fatalist conception during antiquity may be measured by
its long persistence, at least in the Orient, where it originated. Starting
from Babylonia,[46] it spread over the entire Hellenic world, as early as
the Alexandrian period, and towards the end of paganism a considerable part
of the efforts of the Christian apologists was directed against it.[47] But
it was destined to outlast all attacks, and to impose itself even on
Islam.[48] In Latin Europe, in spite of the anathemas of the church, the
belief remained confusedly {180} alive all through the Middle Ages that on
this earth everything happens somewhat
"Per ovra delle rote magne,
Che drizzan ciascun seme ad alcun fine
Secondo che le stella son campagne."[49]
The weapons used by the ecclesiastic writers in contending against this
sidereal fatalism were taken from the arsenal of the old Greek dialectics.
In general, they were those that all defenders of free will had used for
centuries: determinism destroys responsibility; rewards and punishments are
absurd if man acts under a necessity that compels him, if he is born a hero
or a criminal. We shall not dwell on these metaphysical discussions,[50]
but there is one argument that is more closely connected with our subject,
and therefore should be mentioned. If we live under an immutable fate, no
supplication can change its decisions; religion is unavailing, it is
useless to ask the oracles to reveal the secrets of a future which nothing
can change, and prayers, to use one of Seneca's expressions, are nothing
but "the solace of diseased minds."[51]
And, doubtless, some adepts of astrology, like the Emperor Tiberius,[52]
neglected the practice of religion, because they were convinced that fate
governed all things. Following the example set by the Stoics, they made
absolute submission to an almighty fate and joyful acceptance of the
inevitable a moral duty, and were satisfied to worship the superior power
that ruled the universe, without demanding anything in return. They
considered themselves at the mercy of even the most capricious fate, and
were like the intelligent slave who guesses the desires of his master to
satisfy them, and {181} knows how to make the hardest servitude
tolerable.[53] The masses, however, never reached that height of
resignation. They looked at astrology far more from a religious than from a
logical standpoint.[54] The planets and constellations were not only cosmic
forces, whose favorable or inauspicious action grew weaker or stronger
according to the turnings of a course established for eternity; they were
deities who saw and heard, who were glad or sad, who had a voice and sex,
who were prolific or sterile, gentle or savage, obsequious or arrogant.[55]
Their anger could therefore be soothed and their favor obtained through
rites and offerings; even the adverse stars were not unrelenting and could
be persuaded through sacrifices and supplications. The narrow and pedantic
Firmicus Maternus strongly asserts the omnipotence of fate, but at the same
time he invokes the gods and asks for their aid against the influence of
the stars. As late as the fourth century the pagans of Rome who were about
to marry, or to make a purchase, or to solicit a public office, went to the
diviner for his prognostics, at the same time praying to Fate for
prosperity in their undertaking.[56] Thus a fundamental antinomy manifested
itself all through the development of astrology, which pretended to be an
exact science, but always remained a sacerdotal theology.
Of course, the more the idea of fatalism imposed itself and spread, the
more the weight of this hopeless theory oppressed the consciousness. Man
felt himself dominated and crushed by blind forces that dragged him on as
irresistibly as they kept the celestial spheres in motion. His soul tried
to escape the oppression of this cosmic mechanism, and to leave the slavery
of {182} Ananke. But he no longer had confidence in the ceremonies of his
old religion. The new powers that had taken possession of heaven had to be
propitiated by new means. The Oriental religions themselves offered a
remedy against the evils they had created, and taught powerful and
mysterious processes for conjuring fate.[57] And side by side with
astrology we see magic, a more pernicious aberration, gaining ground.[58]
* * * * *
If, from the reading of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, we pass on to read a magic
papyrus, our first impression is that we have stepped from one end of the
intellectual world to the other. Here we find no trace of the systematic
order or severe method that distinguish the work of the scholar of
Alexandria. Of course, the doctrines of astrology are just as chimerical as
those of magic, but they are deduced with an amount of logic, entirely
wanting in works of sorcery, that compels reasoning intellects to accept
them. Recipes borrowed from medicine and popular superstition, primitive
practices rejected or abandoned by the sacerdotal rituals, beliefs
repudiated by a progressive moral religion, plagiarisms and forgeries of
literary or liturgic texts, incantations in which the gods of all barbarous
nations are invoked in unintelligible gibberish, odd and disconcerting
ceremonies--all these form a chaos in which the imagination loses itself, a
potpourri in which an arbitrary syncretism seems to have attempted to
create an inextricable confusion.
However, if we observe more closely how magic operates, we find that it
starts out from the same principles and acts along the same line of
reasoning {183} as astrology. Born during the same period in the primitive
civilizations of the Orient, both were based on a number of common
ideas.[59] Magic, like astrology, proceeded from the principle of universal
sympathy, yet it did not consider the relation existing between the stars
traversing the heavens, and physical or moral phenomena, but the relation
between whatever bodies there are. It started out from the preconceived
idea that an obscure but constant relation exists between certain things,
certain words, certain persons. This connection was established without
hesitation between dead material things and living beings, because the
primitive races ascribed a soul and existence similar to those of man, to
everything surrounding them. The distinction between the three kingdoms of
nature was unknown to them; they were "animists." The life of a person
might, therefore, be linked to that of a thing, a tree, or an animal, in
such a manner that one died if the other did, and that any damage suffered
by one was also sustained by its inseparable associate. Sometimes the
relation was founded on clearly intelligible grounds, like a resemblance
between the thing and the being, as where, to kill an enemy, one pierced a
waxen figure supposed to represent him. Or a contact, even merely passing
by, was believed to have created indestructible affinities, for instance
where the garments of an absent person were operated upon. Often, also,
these imaginary relations were founded on reasons that escape us: like the
qualities attributed by astrology to the stars, they may have been derived
from old beliefs the memory of which is lost.
Like astrology, then, magic was a science in some respects. First, like the
predictions of its sister, it {184} was partly based on
observation--observation frequently rudimentary, superficial, hasty, and
erroneous, but nevertheless important. It was an experimental discipline.
Among the great number of facts noted by the curiosity of the magicians,
there were many that received scientific indorsement later on. The
attraction of the magnet for iron was utilized by the thaumaturgi before it
was interpreted by the natural philosophers. In the vast compilations that
circulated under the venerable names of Zoroaster or Hostanes, many fertile
remarks were scattered among puerile ideas and absurd teachings, just as in
the Greek treatises on alchemy that have come down to us. The idea that
knowledge of the power of certain agents enables one to stimulate the
hidden forces of the universe into action and to obtain extraordinary
results, inspires the researches of physics to-day, just as it inspired the
claims of magic. And if astrology was a perverted astronomy, magic was
physics gone astray.
Moreover, and again like astrology, magic was a science, because it started
from the fundamental conception that order and law exist in nature, and
that the same cause always produces the same effect. An occult ceremony,
performed with the same care as an experiment in the chemical laboratory,
will always have the expected result. To know the mysterious affinities
that connect all things is sufficient to set the mechanism of the universe
into motion. But the error of the magicians consisted in establishing a
connection between phenomena that do not depend on each other at all. The
act of exposing to the light for an instant a sensitive plate in a camera,
then immersing it, according to given recipes, in appropriate liquids, and
of making {185} the picture of a relative or friend appear thereon, is a
magical operation, but based on real actions and reactions, instead of on
arbitrarily assumed sympathies and antipathies. Magic, therefore, was a
science groping in the dark, and later became "a bastard sister of
science," as Frazer puts it.
But, like astrology, magic was religious in origin, and always remained a
bastard sister of religion. Both grew up together in the temples of the
barbarian Orient. Their practices were, at first, part of the dubious
knowledge of fetichists who claimed to have control over the spirits that
peopled nature and animated everything, and who claimed that they
communicated with these spirits by means of rites known to themselves
alone. Magic has been cleverly defined as "the strategy of animism."[60]
But, just as the growing power ascribed by the Chaldeans to the sidereal
deities transformed the original astrology, so primitive sorcery assumed a
different character when the world of the gods, conceived after the image
of man, separated itself more and more from the realm of physical forces
and became a realm of its own. This gave the mystic element which always
entered the ceremonies, a new precision and development. By means of his
charms, talismans, and exorcisms, the magician now communicated with the
celestial or infernal "demons" and compelled them to obey him. But these
spirits no longer opposed him with the blind resistance of matter animated
by an uncertain kind of life; they were active and subtle beings having
intelligence and will-power. Sometimes they took revenge for the slavery
the magician attempted to impose on them and punished the audacious
operator, who feared them, although {186} invoking their aid. Thus the
incantation often assumed the shape of a prayer addressed to a power
stronger than man, and magic became a religion. Its rites developed side by
side with the canonical liturgies, and frequently encroached on them.[61]
The only barrier between them was the vague and constantly shifting
borderline that limits the neighboring domains of religion and
superstition.
* * * * *
This half scientific, half religious magic, with its books and its
professional adepts, is of Oriental origin. The old Grecian and Italian
sorcery appears to have been rather mild. Conjurations to avert
hail-storms, or formulas to draw rain, evil charms to render fields barren
or to kill cattle, love philters and rejuvenating salves, old women's
remedies, talismans against the evil eye,--all are based on popular
superstition and kept in existence by folk-lore and charlatanism. Even the
witches of Thessaly, whom people credited with the power of making the moon
descend from the sky, were botanists more than anything else, acquainted
with the marvelous virtues of medicinal plants. The terror that the
necromancers inspired was due, to a considerable extent, to the use they
made of the old belief in ghosts. They exploited the superstitious belief
in ghost-power and slipped metal tablets covered with execrations into
graves, to bring misfortune or death to some enemy. But neither in Greece
nor in Italy is there any trace of a coherent system of doctrines, of an
occult and learned discipline, nor of any sacerdotal instruction.
Originally the adepts in this dubious art were {187} despised. As late as
the period of Augustus they were generally equivocal beggar-women who plied
their miserable trade in the lowest quarters of the slums. But with the
invasion of the Oriental religions the magician began to receive more
consideration, and his condition improved.[62] He was honored, and feared
even more. During the second century scarcely anybody would have doubted
his power to call up divine apparitions, converse with the superior spirits
and even translate himself bodily into the heavens.[63]
Here the victorious progress of the Oriental religions shows itself. The
Egyptian ritual[64] originally was nothing but a collection of magical
practices, properly speaking. The religious community imposed its will upon
the gods by means of prayers or even threats. The gods were compelled to
obey the officiating priest, if the liturgy was correctly performed, and if
the incantations and the magic words were pronounced with the right
intonation. The well-informed priest had an almost unlimited power over all
supernatural beings on land, in the water, in the air, in heaven and in
hell. Nowhere was the gulf between things human and things divine smaller,
nowhere was the increasing differentiation that separated magic from
religion less advanced. Until the end of paganism they remained so closely
associated that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the texts of one
from those of the other.
The Chaldeans[65] also were past masters of sorcery, well versed in the
knowledge of presages and experts in conjuring the evils which the presages
foretold. In Mesopotamia, where they were confidential advisers of the
kings, the magicians belonged to the official {188} clergy; they invoked
the aid of the state gods in their incantations, and their sacred science
was as highly esteemed as haruspicy in Etruria. The immense prestige that
continued to surround it, assured its persistence after the fall of Nineveh
and Babylon. Its tradition was still alive under the Cæsars, and a number
of enchanters rightly or wrongly claimed to possess the ancient wisdom of
Chaldea.[66]
And the thaumaturgus, who was supposed to be the heir of the archaic
priests, assumed a wholly sacerdotal appearance at Rome. Being an inspired
sage who received confidential communications from heavenly spirits, he
gave to his life and to his appearance a dignity almost equal to that of
the philosopher. The common people soon confused the two,[67] and the
Orientalizing philosophy of the last period of paganism actually accepted
and justified all the superstitions of magic. Neo-Platonism, which
concerned itself to a large extent with demonology, leaned more and more
towards theurgy, and was finally completely absorbed by it.
But the ancients expressly distinguished, "magic," which was always under
suspicion and disapproved of, from the legitimate and honorable art for
which the name "theurgy"[68] was invented. The term "magician," ([Greek:
magos]) which applied to all performers of miracles, properly means the
priests of Mazdaism, and a well attested tradition makes the Persians[69]
the authors of the real magic, that called "black magic" by the Middle
Ages. If they did not invent it--because it is as old as humanity--they
were at least the first to place it upon a doctrinal foundation and to
assign to it a place {189} in a clearly formulated theological system. The
Mazdean dualism gave a new power to this pernicious knowledge by conferring
upon it the character that will distinguish it henceforth.
Under what influences did the Persian magic come into existence? When and
how did it spread? These are questions that are not well elucidated yet.
The intimate fusion of the religious doctrines of the Iranian conquerors
with those of the native clergy, which took place at Babylon, occurred in
this era of belief,[70] and the magicians that were established in
Mesopotamia combined their secret traditions with the rites and formulas
codified by the Chaldean sorcerers. The universal curiosity of the Greeks
soon took note of this marvelous science. Naturalist philosophers like
Democritus,[71] the great traveler, seem to have helped themselves more
than once from the treasure of observations collected by the Oriental
priests. Without a doubt they drew from these incongruous compilations, in
which truth was mingled with the absurd and reality with the fantastical,
the knowledge of some properties of plants and minerals, or of some
experiments of physics. However, the limpid Hellenic genius always turned
away from the misty speculations of magic, giving them but slight
consideration. But towards the end of the Alexandrine period the books
ascribed to the half-mythical masters of the Persian science, Zoroaster,
Hostanes and Hystaspes, were translated into Greek, and until the end of
paganism those names enjoyed a prodigious authority. At the same time the
Jews, who were acquainted with the arcana of the Irano-Chaldean doctrines
and proceedings, made some of the recipes known wherever the dispersion
brought {190} them.[72] Later, a more immediate influence was exercised
upon the Roman world by the Persian colonies of Asia Minor,[73] who
retained an obstinate faith in their ancient national beliefs.
The particular importance attributed to magic by the Mazdeans is a
necessary consequence of their dualist system, which has been treated by us
before.[74] Ormuzd, residing in the heavens of light, is opposed by his
irreconcilable adversary, Ahriman, ruler of the underworld. The one stands
for light, truth, and goodness, the other for darkness, falsehood, and
perversity. The one commands the kind spirits which protect the pious
believer, the other is master over demons whose malice causes all the evils
that afflict humanity. These opposite principles fight for the domination
of the earth, and each creates favorable or noxious animals and plants.
Everything on earth is either heavenly or infernal. Ahriman and his demons,
who surround man to tempt or hurt him,[75] are evil gods and entirely
different from those of which Ormuzd's host consists. The magician
sacrifices to them, either to avert evils they threaten, or to direct their
ire against enemies of true belief, and the impure spirits rejoice in
bloody immolations and delight in the fumes of flesh burning on the
altars.[76] Terrible acts and words attended all immolations. Plutarch[77]
mentions an example of the dark sacrifices of the Mazdeans. "In a mortar,"
he says, "they pound a certain herb called wild garlic, at the same time
invoking Hades (Ahriman), and the powers of darkness, then stirring this
herb in the blood of a slaughtered wolf, they take it away and drop it on a
spot never reached by the rays of the sun." A necromantic performance
indeed. {191}
We can imagine the new strength which such a conception of the universe
must have given to magic. It was no longer an incongruous collection of
popular superstitions and scientific observations. It became a reversed
religion: its nocturnal rites were the dreadful liturgy of the infernal
powers. There was no miracle the experienced magician might not expect to
perform with the aid of the demons, providing he know how to master them;
he would invent any atrocity in his desire to gain the favor of the evil
divinities whom crime gratified and suffering pleased. Hence the number of
impious practices performed in the dark, practices the horror of which is
equaled only by their absurdity: preparing beverages that disturbed the
senses and impaired the intellect; mixing subtle poisons extracted from
demoniac plants and corpses already in a state of putridity;[78] immolating
children in order to read the future in their quivering entrails or to
conjure up ghosts. All the satanic refinement that a perverted imagination
in a state of insanity could conceive[79] pleased the malicious evil
spirits; the more odious the monstrosity, the more assured was its
efficacy. These abominable practices were sternly suppressed by the Roman
government. Whereas, in the case of an astrologer who had committed an open
transgression, the law was satisfied with expelling him from Rome--whither
he generally soon returned,--the magician was put in the same class with
murderers and poisoners, and was subjected to the very severest punishment.
He was nailed to the cross or thrown to the wild beasts. Not only the
practice of the profession, but even the simple fact of possessing works of
sorcery made any one subject to prosecution.[80] {192}
However, there are ways of reaching an agreement with the police, and in
this case custom was stronger than law. The intermittent rigor of imperial
edicts had no more power to destroy an inveterate superstition than the
Christian polemics had to cure it. It was a recognition of its strength
when state and church united to fight it. Neither reached the root of the
evil, for they did not deny the reality of the power wielded by the
sorcerers. As long as it was admitted that malicious spirits constantly
interfered in human affairs, and that there were secret means enabling the
operator to dominate those spirits or to share in their power, magic was
indestructible. It appealed to too many human passions to remain unheard.
If, on the one hand, the desire of penetrating the mysteries of the future,
the fear of unknown misfortunes, and hope, always reviving, led the anxious
masses to seek a chimerical certainty in astrology, on the other hand, in
the case of magic, the blinding charm of the marvelous, the entreaties of
love and ambition, the bitter desire for revenge, the fascination of crime,
and the intoxication of bloodshed,--all the instincts that are not avowable
and that are satisfied in the dark, took turns in practising their
seductions. During the entire life of the Roman empire its existence
continued, and the very mystery that it was compelled to hide in increased
its prestige and almost gave it the authority of a revelation.
A curious occurrence that took place towards the end of the fifth century
at Beirut, in Syria, shows how deeply even the strongest intellects of that
period believed in the most atrocious practices of magic. One night some
students of the famous law-school of that {193} city attempted to kill a
slave in the circus, to aid the master in obtaining the favor of a woman
who scorned him. Being reported, they had to deliver up their hidden
volumes, of which those of Zoroaster and of Hostanes were found, together
with those written by the astrologer Manetho. The whole city was agitated,
and searches proved that many young men preferred the study of the illicit
science to that of Roman law. By order of the bishop a solemn auto-da-fé
was made of all this literature, in the presence of the city officials and
the clergy, and the most revolting passages were read in public, "in order
to acquaint everybody with the conceited and vain promises of the demons,"
as the pious writer of the story says.[81]
Thus the ancient traditions of magic continued to live in the Christian
Orient after the fall of paganism. They even outlived the domination of the
church. The rigorous principles of its monotheism notwithstanding, Islam
became infected with those Persian superstitions. In the Occident the evil
art resisted persecution and anathemas with the same obstinacy as in the
Orient. It remained alive in Rome all through the fifth century,[82] and
when scientific astrology in Europe went down with science itself, the old
Mazdean dualism continued to manifest itself, during the entire Middle Ages
in the ceremonies of the black mass and the worshiping of Satan, until the
dawn of the modern era.
* * * * *
Twin sisters, born of the superstitions of the learned Orient, magic and
astrology always remained the hybrid daughters of sacerdotal culture. Their
existence {194} was governed by two contrary principles, reason and faith,
and they never ceased to fluctuate between these two poles of thought. Both
were inspired by a belief in universal sympathy, according to which occult
and powerful relations exist between human beings and dead objects, all
possessing a mysterious life. The doctrine of sidereal influences, combined
with a knowledge of the immutability of the celestial revolutions, caused
astrology to formulate the first theory of absolute fatalism, whose decrees
might be known beforehand. But, besides this rigorous determinism, it
retained its childhood faith in the divine stars, whose favor could be
secured and malignity avoided through worship. In astrology the
experimental method was reduced to the completing of prognostics based on
the supposed character of the stellar gods.
Magic also remained half empirical and half religious. Like our physics, it
was based on observation, it proclaimed the constancy of the laws of
nature, and sought to conquer the latent energies of the material world in
order to bring them under the dominion of man's will. But at the same time
it recognized, in the powers that it claimed to conquer, spirits or demons
whose protection might be obtained, whose ill-will might be appeased, or
whose savage hostility might be unchained by means of immolations and
incantations.
All their aberrations notwithstanding, astrology and magic were not
entirely fruitless. Their counterfeit learning has been a genuine help to
the progress of human knowledge. Because they awakened chimerical hopes and
fallacious ambitions in the minds of their adepts, researches were
undertaken which undoubtedly {195} would never have been started or
persisted in for the sake of a disinterested love of truth. The
observations, collected with untiring patience by the Oriental priests,
caused the first physical and astronomical discoveries, and, as in the time
of the scholastics, the occult sciences led to the exact ones. But when
these understood the vanity of the astounding illusions on which astrology
and magic had subsisted, they broke up the foundation of the arts to which
they owed their birth.
* * * * *
{196}