'The earth, in roundness of a perfect ball,
Which as a point but of this mighty all
Wise Nature fixed, that permanent doth stay,
Wheras the spheres by a _diurnal sway_
Of the first Mover carried are about.'
Drayton: The Man in the Moon.
299. _crowding_, pushing. This is still a familiar word in East [150]
Anglia. Forby, in his Glossary of the East Anglian Dialect, says--'_Crowd_,
v. to push, shove, or press close. To the word, in its _common_
acceptation, _number_ seems necessary. With us, _one_ individual can
_crowd_ another.' To _crowd_ a wheelbarrow means to push it. The expression
'_crod_ in a barwe,' i. e. wheeled or pushed along in a wheelbarrow, occurs
in the Paston Letters, A.D. 1477, ed. Gairdner, iii. 215.
302. A planet is said to ascend directly, when in a direct sign; but
tortuously, when in a tortuous sign. The tortuous signs are those which
ascend most obliquely to the horizon, viz. the signs from Capricornus to
Gemini inclusive. Chaucer tells us this _himself_; see his Treatise on the
Astrolabe, part ii. sect. 28, in vol. iii. The most 'tortuous' of these are
the two middle ones, Pisces and Aries. Of these two, Aries is called the
mansion of Mars, and we may therefore suppose the ascending sign to be
Aries, the lord of which (Mars) is said to have fallen 'from his angle into
the darkest house.' The words 'angle' and 'house' are used technically. The
whole zodiacal circle was divided into twelve equal parts, or 'houses.' Of
these, four (beginning from the cardinal points) were termed 'angles,' four
others (next following them) 'succedents,' and the rest 'cadents.' It
appears that Mars was not then situate in an 'angle,' but in his 'darkest
(i. e. darker) house.' Mars had _two_ houses, Aries and Scorpio. The latter
is here meant; Aries being the ascendent sign, Scorpio was below the
horizon, and beyond the western 'angle.'
Now Scorpio was 'called the house of death, and of trauaile, of harm, and
of domage, of strife, of battaile, of guilefulnesse and falsnesse, and of
wit'; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. viii. c. 17. We may represent the
position of Mars by the following table, where _East_ represents the
_ascending_ sign, _West_ the _descending_ sign; and A., S., and C. stand
for 'angle,' 'succedent,' and 'cadent house' respectively.
_East._--Aries. Taurus. Gemini. Cancer. Leo. Virgo.
1. A. 2. S. 3. C. 4. A. 5. S. 6. C.
_West._--Libra. Scorpio. Sagittarius. Capricornus. Aquarius. Pisces.
7. A. 8. S. 9. C. 10. A. 11. S. 12. C.
Again, the 'darkest house' was sometimes considered to be the _eighth_;
though authorities varied. This again points to Scorpio.
'Nulla diuisio circuli tam pessima, tamque crudelis in omnibus, quam octaua
est.'--Aphorismi Astrologi Ludovici de Rigiis; sect. 35. I may also note
here, that in Lydgate's Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. Y 4, there is a long
passage on the evil effects of Mars in the 'house' of Scorpio.
305. The meaning of _Atazir_ has long remained undiscovered. But by the
kind help of Mr. Bensly, one of the sub-librarians of the Cambridge
University Library, I am enabled to explain it. _Atazir_ or _atacir_ is the
Spanish spelling of the Arabic _al-tasir_, influence, given at p. 351 of
Richardson's Pers. Dict., ed. 1829. It is a noun derived from _asara_, a
verb of the second conjugation, meaning to leave a mark [151] on, from the
substantive _asar_, a mark; the latter substantive is given at p. 20 of the
same work. Its use in astrology is commented upon by Dozy, who gives it in
the form _atacir_, in his Glossaire des Mots Espagnols dérivés de
l'Arabique, p. 207. It signifies the _influence_ of a star or planet upon
other stars, or upon the fortunes of men. In the present case it is clearly
used in a bad sense; we may therefore translate it by 'evil influence,'
i. e. the influence of Mars in the house of Scorpio. On this common
deterioration in the meaning of words, see Trench, Study of Words, p. 52.
The word _craft_, for example, is a very similar instance; it originally
meant _skill_, and hence, a trade, and we find _star-craft_ used in
particular to signify the science of astronomy.
307. 'Thou art in conjunction in an unfavourable position; from the
position in which thou wast favourably placed thou art moved away.' This I
take to mean that the Moon (as well as Mars) was in Scorpio; hence their
conjunction. But Scorpio was called the Moon's _depression_, being the sign
in which her influence was least favourable; she was therefore 'not well
received,' i. e., not supported by a lucky planet, or by a planet in a
lucky position. _weyved_, pushed aside.
312. 'Is there no choice as to when to fix the voyage?' The favourable
moment for commencing a voyage was one of the points on which it was
considered desirable to have an astrologer's opinion. Travelling, at that
time, was a serious matter. Yet this was only one of the many undertakings
which required, as was thought, to be begun at a favourable moment. Whole
books were written on 'elections,' i. e. favourable times for commencing
operations of all kinds. Chaucer was thinking, in particular, of the
following passage, which is written in the margins of the Ellesmere and
Hengwrt MSS.: 'Omnes concordati sunt quod elecciones sint debiles nisi in
diuitibus: habent enim isti, licet debilitentur eorum elecciones, radicem,
i. [_id est_] natiuitates eorum, que confortat omnem planetam debilem in
itinere.' The sense of which is--'For all are agreed, that "elections" are
weak, except in the case of the rich; for these, although their elections
be weakened, have a "root" of their own, that is to say, their nativities
(_or_ horoscopes); which root strengthens every planet that is of weak
influence with respect to a journey.' This is extracted, says Tyrwhitt,
from a Liber Electionum by a certain Zael; see MS. Harl. 80; MS. Bodley
1648. This is a very fair example of the jargon to be found in old books on
astrology. The old astrologers used to alter their predictions almost at
pleasure, by stating that their results depended on several causes, which
partly counteracted one another; an arrangement of which the convenience is
obvious. Thus, if the aspect of the planets at the time inquired about
appeared to be adverse to a journey, it might still be the case (they said)
that such evil aspect might be overcome by the fortunate aspect of the
inquirer's horoscope; or, conversely, an ill aspect in the horoscope could
be counteracted by a fit election of a time for action. A rich man would
probably be fitted with a fortunate [152] horoscope, or else why should he
buy one? Such horoscope depended on the aspect of the heavens at the time
of birth or 'nativity,' and, in particular, upon the 'ascendent' at that
time; i. e. upon the planets lying nearest to the point of the zodiac which
happened, at that moment, to be _ascending_, i. e. just appearing above the
horizon. So Chaucer, in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 4, (vol.
iii. 191), explains the matter, saying--'The assendent sothly, as wel in
alle nativitez as in questiouns and _elecciouns of tymes_, is a thing which
that thise Astrologiens gretly observen'; &c. The curious reader may find
much more to the same effect in the same Treatise, with directions to 'make
roots' in pt. ii. § 44.
The curious may further consult the Epitome Astrologiae of Johannes
Hispalensis. The whole of Book iv. of that work is 'De Electionibus,' and
the title of cap. xv. is 'Pro Itinere.'
Lydgate, in his Siege of Thebes, just at the beginning, describes the
astronomers as casting the horoscope of the infant Oedipus. They were
expected
'to yeue a judgement,
The roote i-take at the ascendent,
Truly sought out, by minute and degre,
The selfe houre of his natiuite,
Not foryet the heauenly mansions
Clerely searched by smale fraccions,' &c.
To take a different example, Ashmole, in his Theatrum Chemicum, 1652, says
in a note on p. 450--'Generally in all Elections the Efficacy of the Starrs
are (_sic_) used, as it were by a certaine application made thereof to
those unformed Natures that are to be wrought upon; whereby to further the
working thereof, and make them more available to our purpose.... And by
such Elections as good use may be made of the Celestiall influences, as a
Physitian doth of the variety of herbes.... But Nativities are the Radices
of Elections, and therefore we ought chiefly to looke backe upon them as
the principal Root and Foundation of all Operations; and next to them the
quality of the Thing we intend to fit must be respected, so that, by an apt
position of Heaven, and fortifying the Planets and Houses in the Nativity
of the Operator, and making them agree with the thing signified, the
impression made by that influence will abundantly augment the Operation,'
&c.; with much more to the same effect. Several passages in Norton's
Ordinall, printed in the same volume (see pp. 60, 100), shew clearly what
is meant by Chaucer in his Prologue, ll. 415-7. The Doctor could 'fortune
the ascendent of his images,' by choosing a favourable moment for the
making of charms in the form of images, when a suitable planet was in the
ascendent. Cf. Troil. ii. 74.
314. _rote_ is the astrological term for the epoch from which to reckon.
The exact moment of a nativity being known, the astrologers were supposed
to be able to calculate everything else. See the last note.