Chapter 10

THOUGH ASTROLOGERS MIGHT WRANGLEwith one another over issues ranging from politics to the technicalities of their art, all belonged to the same confraternity of sorts, and occasionally suspended hostilities in a civic get-together, organized by the Society of Astrologers, called Astrological Feasts. These were apolitical, nonpartisan events in which about forty astrologers, on average, often otherwise at odds, met convivially to enjoy a good meal, “some technical gossip,” and “drown their differences” in wine. The mayor of London himself sometimes presided at these events, which were usually hosted at notable clubs or taverns—such as the White Hart in the Old Bailey, Painters’ Hall, or the Three Cranes in Chancery Lane. Lilly himself (despite his disputes with Gadbury, Booker, and Wharton) had, for the most part, an excellent rapport with most of his colleagues; though he had sided with Parliament throughout the Civil War, he established friendships across party lines. Indeed, after the war, when George Wharton was imprisoned by Cromwell and might have been hanged, Lilly’s great friend and colleague Elias Ashmole had appealed to him for help, and he graciously forgot Wharton’s former insults and successfully appealed to Bulstrode Whitelocke, now president-elect of the State Council, to intervene. It was with the staunchly Royalist Ashmole, in fact, that Lilly would form the closest bond.

Born at Lichfield on May 23, 1617, Ashmole, the son of a saddler, had studied mathematics at Oxford, law under the guidance of Sir James Pagit, Baron of the Exchequer, and had fought with the Cavaliers. During the Civil War he had met Wharton, who first introduced him to astrology, and a year later (in 1646) met Lilly through Jonas Moore, mathematical tutor to the Duke of York. It was Moore who would later persuade Charles II to build the Royal Greenwich Observatory for John Flamsteed, the first astronomer royal of the realm.

According to the contemporary diarist John Evelyn, Ashmole was “addicted to astrology.” There is no doubt that once he got a taste of it he could scarcely get enough. Over time, he became learned in all its aspects, and adept enough that (like Lilly) in fifteen minutes on average he could calculate a chart. Alchemy and magic also cast their spell. Ashmole’s mature life was utterly shaped by these interests and he was constantly on the lookout for related books and tracts. He eventually acquired the libraries of John Dee, John Napier, Simon Forman, and Lilly himself among others, which formed part of the nucleus of the great collection that later helped to make his Ashmolean Museum at Oxford a unique center for scientific and antiquarian research.

Ashmole was especially fond of elections, and in hisTheatrum Chemicum, a work mainly devoted to alchemy, he wrote in a hopeful vein: “By Elections we may Governe Order and Produce things as we please.” That of course depended on one’s skill. At times, he seemed to have the gift. In 1647, when Ashmole undertook to prepare an index for Lilly’sChristian Astrology, he elected a time he thought would make it go well: “About 10 after noon I began to make an index of this book,” he noted in his diary, “Aquarius ascending Moon applying to [a] sextile with Mercury who was Lord of the [planetary] hour / she [the Moon] being in the 7th house / Mercury descending into the 5th / Moon separating from [a] square [with] Saturn, Lord of the Ascendant, and appling to Mercury. I had been long in determining to do this but did not go about it till now. But now Moon entering Virgo and being slow in motion, and reception between Mercury and her, and he very slow, I believe I shall go through it speedily”—which (all indexers take note!) he did. In short, Mercury, as the planet of writing, was linked, at this elected time, to Saturn, by the Moon, which entered Virgo “a sign associated with attention to detail, where Mercury (writing) also rules.”

His choice for a wedding day was not so well done. But that was not for lack of trying. Ashmole’s first marriage had been a love match. For his second bride, he chose a wealthy widow twenty years his senior so he could live “in that condition I had always desired, which was that I might be enabled to live to myself and studies without being forced to take pains for a livelihood in the world.” However, several things had to fall into place for this to work out. He considered three possible times as best or most promising within a three-day period (November 14–16, 1649) for tying the knot. In the end, he opted for 8A.M. on the 16th—admittedly an “uncomfortably early hour,” as he put it, for gaieties and wedding cake. But the Moon was just then separating from a trine with Mercury, and applying to a sextile with Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter—thus giving, as he thought, “good aspects between the Moon and the benefics, Venus and Jupiter, as well as Saturn.” However, he had failed to take into account the directions, or progressions, of his own birth chart for that year, as Lilly later pointed out. The marriage was a disaster, and his wife so incorrigibly morose that he came to use the glyph of Saturn to signify her in his notes.

Astral magic was an enthusiasm of many learned men in those days. Thomas Hyde, reader of Hebrew at Queen’s College, Oxford, and later curator of the Bodleian Library, provided Ashmole in 1661 with information about fashioning sigils based on Islamic texts, and Lilly sent him an assortment, though he soon learned to craft them himself. One group, fashioned under a Saturn-Mars conjunction, was designed to rid his home of vermin, such as fleas and mice. Strategically placed throughout his house—in the kitchen, cellar, storeroom, and elsewhere—they apparently performed admirably, for he developed a “high reputation for disposing of vermin” and others came to him for help. In order to better his chances as a parliamentary candidate for Lichfield in 1678, he also cast magic sigils (in this case unsuccessfully) “for increase of honor and estimation with great men.” In truth, they could be made for any purpose. Another astrologer in the 1690s developed sigils that sold for four shillings each “for use as contraceptives by servant-girls.”

Under Charles II, Ashmole became a prominent court official, served as Windsor herald, comptroller and auditor of the excise for London, and as secretary and clerk of the Courts of Surinam for life. He was also a founding member of the Royal Society, established in 1662, and wroteThe Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, “the fruit of prolonged and industrious research.” As unofficial court astrologer, he gave coveted advice, was consulted by a number of cabinet officials, including the lord high treasurer, and even occasionally by the king himself—for example, on the timing of some of the speeches he gave to Parliament.

His own professional standards were high. Like Lilly, he regarded the office of astrologer as a priestly one by nature, and in his code of ethics emphasized a chaste and sober devotion to his art. Guido Bonatti, whom Lilly and Ashmole both revered, had insisted that clients consult him only about matters of importance; Lilly, in turn, noted that “those who take this course shall find the truth in what they enquire after; but whosoever do otherwise deceive both themselves and the artist [astrologer]; for a foolish Querent may cause a wise Respondent to err.” Yet even under the best circumstances, astrology could hardly be expected to get everything right. “The Planets and Stars are ministers not masters,” Lilly reminded his readers on one occasion. “Expect not that all accidents shall precisely happen to a day or a week.” Yet he worried that the ignorant in their zealous demand for infallibility would nevertheless deride its mistakes. No appeal to its venerable traditions would help, since most would hardly know what they were. As George Wharton—in agreement with Lilly on this—remarked, “Ptolemy may be something to eat for aught they know.” Ashmole in turn had a horror of astrological quacks—the “multitude of Pretenders that pester’d the age”—and was sure their blundering, unschooled pronouncements would ultimately subject the art to “scorne and contempt.” InTheatrum Chemicum, he warned his readers, “Trust not to all Astrologers…There are in Astrologie (I confess) shallow Brooks, through which young Tyroes may wade; but withal there are deep Fords, over which the Giants themselves must swim.”

Such warnings were inevitably lost on determined skeptics, of course, and anathema to satirists, who leapt at the chance to skewer the foibles of the craft. No one leapt with more zest than Samuel Butler, as the “scorn and contempt” that Ashmole feared came tumbling out in abundance from his pen. InHudibras, a mock-heroic poem in octosyllabic couplets, he held up to promiscuous ridicule every aspect of contemporary life, including the sectarian squabbles of the Presbyterians and Independents, popular pastimes like bear-baiting, and the pretended skill of astrologers in matters of love and war. To Butler, all astrologers were thieves, liars, vagabonds, and rogues. As a Royalist and vicarious aristocrat (sprung of humble stock), he also seemed to single out Lilly in the character of Sidrophel for his sundry “seditious” predictions during the Civil War:

Did not our great reformers use

This Sidrophel to forebode news;

To write of victories next year,

And castles taken, yet i’ the air?

Of battles fought at sea, and ships

Sunk, two years hence? the last eclipse?

A total overthrow given to the king

In Cornwall, horse and foot next spring…?

In one of the poem’s more memorable scenes, Sidrophel is consulted by the hero, Hudibras, about his prospects for wooing a widow, only to be thrashed when his pronouncements prove amiss. As summarized by the “Argument” for Part 2, Canto 3:

The Knight, with various Doubts possest,

To win the Lady goes in quest

Of Sidrophel, the Rosy-Crucian,

To know the Dest’nies’ Resolution;

With whom being met, they both chop Logick

About the Science Astrologick,

Till falling from Dispute to Fight,

The Conj’rer’s worsted by the Knight.

Butler, however, had to get around the fact that Lilly had often been right. He thought Lilly had simply been lucky in his public predictions, and had only succeeded with private clients by hiring private detectives to research their lives in advance. Thus Sidrophel has an assistant in the poem named Whachum, whose

business was to pump and wheedle,

And men with their own keys unriddle;

And make them to themselves give answers,

For which they pay the necromancers;

To fetch and carry intelligence,

Of whom, and what, and where, and whence…

So Whachum beats his dirty brains

T’advance his master’s fame and gains.

A similarly wholesale rejection of the art may be found in John Wilson’sThe Cheats, a Restoration satire in which the mere list of an astrologer’s claims was meant to elicit jeers. One rogue declares:

I resolve these ensuing astrological questions: the sick whether they shall recover or not; the party absent whether living or dead; how many husbands or children a woman shall have; whether you shall marry the desired party or whom else, whether she has her maiden-head or no, or shall be honest to you after marriage, or her portion well paid; if a man be wise or a fool; whether it be good to put on new clothes, or turn courtier this year or the next; if dreams are for good or evil; whether a child be the reputed father’s or not, or shall be fortunate or otherwise; ships at sea, whether safe or not; whether it be good to remove your dwelling or not; of law-suits which side shall have the better; and generally all astrological questions whatsoever.

That sort of satire was unremitting. The poet John Dryden had a defter touch, and made light of astrologers who sagely “predicted” past events. Again, Lilly by dint of prominence was made the butt of the joke. “Thus, Gallants, we like Lilly can foresee, / But if you ask us what our doom will be, / We by tomorrow will our Fortune cast, / As he tells all things when the Year is past.” That wasn’t Lilly’s practice, of course, as Dryden well knew, but he saw a commercial chance to exploit Lilly’s name. Doing so also gave Dryden cover, for he was an astrologer himself. He mined the subject for his plays, based hisAnnus Mirabilis in praise of the Restoration on an astrological idea, and had consulted Ashmole about his own chart. In theAnnus Mirabilis (“Year of Wonders,” 1666), Dryden alluded to the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, both marked by comets, and gave London an astrological reprieve:

The utmost malice of the stars is past,

And two dire comets which have scourged the town,

In their own plague and fire have breathed their last,

Or dimly in their sinking sockets frown.

Now frequent trines the happier lights among,

And high-raised Jove, from his dark prison freed,

Those weights took off that on his planet hung,

Will gloriously the new-laid work succeed.

When his son Charles was born, Dryden strictly noted the moment of his birth, and after casting his horoscope “observed with grief that he had been born in an evil hour.” As he explained to his wife, Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun were all “under the Earth,” that is, below the horizon, and the lord of the ascendant was squared by Saturn and Mars. When Dryden progressed the horoscope, he found recurrent dangers of a violent death in his son’s eighth, twenty-third, thirty-third, and thirty-fourth years. As it so proved. When Charles was eight, Dryden took him on holiday to the country seat of the Earl of Berkshire, who had arranged for a stag hunt to amuse his guests. To keep the child out of mischief, Dryden “set him a double lesson in Latin, with a strict injunction that he should not go out of the house.” But it happened that while young Charles was poring over his declensions, the stag under chase fled straight toward the house. As the servants hastened out to see the sport, one of them took Charles by the hand. Just as they reached the gate, the stag and dogs together clambered over an old wall, which promptly collapsed and buried Dryden’s son in debris. Charles, though badly injured, survived, only to be nearly killed again in his twenty-third year when, on a tour of Italy, he fell from a ruined tower on the Vatican grounds. Then in the thirty-third year of his life, he drowned while swimming the Thames.

ASTROLOGY ENJOYED OFFICIAL STANDINGin England longer than elsewhere, and the same King Charles II who encouraged and subsidized Butler’s satirical work was loathe to release Ashmole and other court astrologers from their private obligations to the Crown. In those days, everyone seems to have consulted someone. The astrologer Richard Saunders (whose name Benjamin Franklin would later appropriate for hisPoor Richard’s Almanac ) was consulted by Sir Walter Cope, master of the Court of Wards; John Booker by Lord Berkeley, Earl Rivers, Sir Edward Harington, Oliver Cromwell’s son-in-law, and a number of titled ladies; Ashmole by Sir Robert Howard, Sir John Hoskins (president of the Royal Society), the physician Thomas Wharton, and the linguist John Ogilby, who asked Ashmole for a propitious time to start learning Greek. The time chosen must have been a good one, for he became a celebrated translator of the Homeric tales.

The king himself was bound to the art from the start. At the time of his birth in 1630, both Venus and the Pleiades (called “Charles Waine” in the vernacular) were visible at midday, and “a noonday star” had appeared in the sky, which some took as a sign of heaven’s blessing and proof that he was born by divine right to rule. For “as soon as Born, Heaven took notice of him, and ey’d him with a Star, appearing in defiance of the Sun at Noon-day, either to note, That his life shou’d shine like a Star; or else to prove, that if it be question’d, whether Sovereigns be given us by chance, or by the hand of the Almighty, it is here manifest, that this Prince came from Heaven.” After Charles was crowned, the star was compared by Royalists to the Star of Bethlehem that had signified Christ’s birth, since the Restoration itself was seen as a kind of Resurrection, with Charles cast in the role of savior of his flock. In part for political reasons, the king embraced all this, though even before his elevation, his horoscope, drawn by Sir Kenelm Digby when the two were in exile together in France, had forecast his recovery of the throne.

The fact that Charles took astrological advice was known to Louis XIV of France, who had his own court astrologer in Jean-Baptiste Morin. Morin had originally been employed by Louis’s father, and at the dauphin’s birth had been smuggled into the chamber at Versailles to record the child’s first cry. From the chart he drew, Morin apparently predicted much that afterward transpired in the Sun King’s reign.

Born on February 23, 1583, at Villefranche, Morin had studied medicine at Aix and Avignon, earned a name for himself as a superb mathematician as well as a doctor, and in 1630 was appointed royal professor of mathematics at the Collège de France. He was quite ingenious, and one of his early achievements was to develop a reliable method for calculating longitude at sea. The elevation of the Moon, as one scholar explains, “was measured from a star whose position was known exactly, and from this the right ascension and latitude as well as its longitude and declination were obtained. It was necessary then to calculate according to tables the time when the Moon had this same position in the sky in the place for which the tables were compiled and of which the longitude was known. The difference in the time when converted into degrees would give the position of the ship.”

As an astrologer, Morin became an independent power at the French court. At one time or another he served the Bishop of Boulogne, the Duke of Luxembourg, the Duke of Effiat, and Cardinal Mazarin; developed a close, if uneasy, rapport with Cardinal Richelieu (who had his own court astrologer in Jacques Gaffarel, the royal chaplain); and elected propitious times for the Comte de Chavigny, the French secretary of state, to begin his official trips. According to theLarousse Encyclopedia of Astrology, Morin also correctly predicted the exact date of the death of King Louis XIII, and the demise of Cardinal Richelieu “to within ten hours.” Few knew the science as well as he, as amply demonstrated toward the end of his life in a massive astrological treatise calledAstrologia Gallica, orFrench Astrology, published in 1661 and sometimes compared to Lilly’sChristian Astrology as a commanding work. Here is his analysis of some aspects of a solar return:

The more the figure of the revolution, whether solar or lunar, is similar to the radical position of the signs and planets, the more efficaciously it will bring forth the significations of the geniture, whether good or evil, and especially those that will be signified by a similar direction. For that similarity is not always favorable and a promise of some great good, but it only signifies the same things as the figure of the geniture, whether good or evil. Otherwise the planets would not act in accordance with their determinations…And in particular those revolutions should be watched for in which the same degree of the ecliptic is found in the Ascendant as was in the Ascendant of the radix; for then each planet rules the same houses in the revolution as it ruled in the radix, which does not usually happen without [producing] some noticeable effect signified by the nativity, since the force of signification of the signs will also be doubled, at least in the place of the nativity and thereabouts…[On the other hand] when the Ascendants of the radix and the revolution are opposed, it is evil and disturbing, and worse still when the degrees [themselves] are opposed, especially in the case of a solar revolution. For, since the revolution either brings forth or inhibits the effect of the nativity, and it can only bring it forth from a similarity of the figures, it is plain that this contrariety of position, both of the Sun and of the whole caelum, will inhibit the radical influx and prevent it from bursting forth into action, but especially into good action, and will only bring forward ineffective efforts in connection with the good things signified by the directions in that year, with many contrarieties, damages, anxieties, sicknesses, and dangers to life. And the reason is because the signs are then determined to significations contrary to the radix.

MORIN ANDLILLY BELONGED TO A DYING BREED. After the Restoration, despite the interest of the English king, astrology was viewed by many Royalists as suspect, since, after all, it “had played an important role in spurring the Roundheads on to victory over the Cavaliers.” it was therefore “indelibly tainted with an aura of subversion,” especially since Lilly and others had helped to “democratize” some of the techniques of the trade. It was said, with horror, that every cobbler, peddler, blacksmith, and roofer claimed the power to predict. Their idle predictions—like any widely credited rumor—could also stir social unrest. As one writer points out, “to predict the weather was to predict the harvest; to predict the harvest was to predict the discontent which would follow a food shortage, and the rebellion which might follow the discontent.” The farmer inMacbeth who “hang’d himself on expectation of plenty” (because it drove the price down) was an example of how some might be swayed; another was the aptly named Sordido, in Ben Jonson’sEvery Man out o fhis Humour, who, based on a prediction in his almanac, decided to hoard his corn. So the Earl of Northampton was right enough to complain, “Pamphlets which prognosticated famine have been causes of the same; not by the malice of the planets…but by the greediness of husbandmen, who, being put in fear of such a storm…by forestallment, and…by the secret hoarding up of grain, enhance the prices in respect of scarcity.” Yet the obverse was also true. The Royalist astrologer John Gadbury argued, for example, that a better knowledge of astrology might have rescued the nation from its fate. How? Well, for one thing, the king might have seen the turmoil coming, and taken steps to prevent it. And once the war began, the Royals might have avoided battles they were doomed to lose.

Though the favor of astrology had begun to wane, few of those associated with the birth of modern science spurned it outright. The vanguard of the learned and scientific community on the whole remained convinced of its value, though some pressed for reform; but most thought there was something to it and viewed it as a discipline that had yet to be fully developed and explored. In their assessment or reassessment, their hope (in Kepler’s phrase) was not to throw out the baby with the bath. Even among skeptics, that had long been the trend. In his essayOn the Increase of Knowledge, for example, Sir Francis Bacon, the “father of modern science,” had written: “As for Astrology…I would rather have it purified than altogether rejected…The last rule (which has always been held by the wiser astrologers) is that there is no fatal necessity in the stars; but that they rather incline than compel. We will add one thing more (wherein I shall certainly seem to take part with astrology, if it were reformed); that we are certain the celestial bodies have other influences besides light and heat. Let this astrology be used with greater confidence in prediction, but more cautiously in election and, in both cases, with due moderation.” The great writer, antiquarian, and physician Sir Thomas Browne argued in hisPseudodoxia Epidemica for a “sober and regulated astrology,” even though his work is studded with appreciations of the art.

For intellectuals generally astrology remained a topic of consuming interest, and engaged figures as diverse as Samuel Hartlib, the social reformer and advocate of universal education; Anthony a Wood, the antiquarian scholar who wrote a comprehensive history of Oxford; the social philosopher John Locke (ideological mentor to our own Founding Fathers), who, not incidentally, “believed in the astrological choice of times for picking medicinal herbs”; and Robert Hooke, the physicist who discovered the law of elasticity, explained the relationship between breathing and combustion (via oxygen), and built the first Gregorian reflecting telescope. William Gilbert, who pioneered magnetic theory, scoffed at the idea that metals were ruled by the planets, but did not doubt that children were influenced by the stars at birth. And as Patrick Curry points out inProphecy and Power, Christopher Wren declared in his inaugural lecture as Gresham Professor of Astronomy in 1657 that there was “a true Astrology to be found by the inquiring Philosopher, which would be of admirable Use to Physick,” if it could be correctly ascertained.

Many founding members of the Royal Society were similarly intrigued. Robert Boyle, the father of experimental chemistry, thought there must be something to astrology, otherwise, “we know planets only to know them,” which seemed to him absurd. In an essay entitled “Of Celestial Influences or Effluviums in the Air,” he expressed his stubborn conviction that “celestial bodies (according to the angles they make upon one another, but especially with the sun or with the earth in our meridian, or with such and such other points in the heavens) may have a power to cause such…changes, and alterations…that shall at length be felt in every one of us.” When John Wilkins, a founding fellow of the Royal Society and afterward bishop of Chester, died on November 19, 1672, his colleague Hooke noted in his journal: “Dyed about 9 in the morning of a suppression of Urine…a conjunction of Saturn and Mars…Fatall Day.” William Ramsey, physician to Charles II, considered astrology indispensable to his practice though he condemned the democratization of the art.

The learned diarist John Evelyn was likewise of two minds. On December 12, 1681, he wrote: “We have had of late several comets, which though I believe appear from natural causes, and of themselves operate not, yet I cannot despise them. They may be warnings from God, as they commonly are forerunners of his animadversions.” And when a comet appeared in the winter sky of 1680, John Tillotson, later archbishop of Canterbury, wrote: “What it portends God knows: the Marquess of Dorchester and my Lord Coventry dyed soon after.” Lord Brouncker, the first president of the Royal Society, cast the horoscope of Walter Charleton, sometime president of the Royal College of Physicians, at his request. The antiquarian John Aubrey was convinced that “we are governed by the planets, as the wheels and weights move the hands of a clock,” but he fully appreciated the infinite vagaries of human personality, and the need for an astrological vocabulary to express them aright. Accordingly, when gathering the biographical data which became hisBrief Lives, he was careful, as befitted a fellow of the Royal Society, to note the exact nativity of his subjects whenever it could be found. In the course of his research, he managed to get hold of the data for Sir Kenelm Digby, Robert Burton, John Dryden, John Evelyn, Titus Oates, William Penn, Anthony a Wood, Thomas Hobbes, Walter Charleton, Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley, and Christopher Wren, among others. Most of them “had more than a passing interest in their own nativities, and ‘revolutions’ based upon them,” year to year. Aubrey ascribed his own struggles in life to “a crowd of ill directions” (progressed aspects), which he thought explained the many worldly disappointments he endured.

Jeremy Shakerley, an observational astronomer who correctly predicted the solar transit of Mercury in October 1651, embraced astrology, as did the academic astronomer Vincent Wing, who defended it as a “divine art” and produced an astrological almanac as well as horary charts. His colleague Thomas Streete, who also worked with both Hooke and Halley, devised a method of deducing longitude from the motions of the Moon, even as he toiled away on an astrological textbook, being “convinced,” according to Curry, “that astrological aspects have great force.” Well into the 18th century, the London Bills of Mortality would sometimes allude to those who had succumbed to some sudden, mysterious illness as having been “planet-struck.”

Though the first astronomer royal, John Flamsteed, doubted astrology and hated almanacs—because “the Vulgar have esteemed them as…oracles” and their predictions had often been exploited to stir up unrest—he took the precaution of choosing an auspicious time (August 10, 1675, at 3:45P.M. ) for laying the foundation stone of the famous Greenwich observatory, and placed the chart for the occasion over the door. True, he may have meant the gesture as a jest; yet three years later on July 4, 1678, he also confided to a friend, “You know I put no confidence in Astrology, yet I dare not wholly deny the inferences of the stars since they are too sensibly impressed on [us].” On the whole, he thought it best to hedge his bets. Eighteen years later he still thought it best to hedge them, for on June 30, 1696, when he attended the laying of the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Hospital, he carefully “observ[ed] the punctual time by instruments,” and noted the exact time the event took place.

In the records of the prosperous English merchant Samuel Jeake of Rye, who died in 1699, we get a glimpse of how a “split-screen” view of things might work out in a life. Jeake was the friend, or acquaintance, of Flamsteed, Halley, and others of scientific note; broadly shared their interests and followed the learned transactions of the Royal Society; and kept an astrological diary for much of his adult life. Though Jeake was skeptical of the heliocentric theories of Copernicus, supposing (as late as 1670) that “if the Earth moved round, it would be very reasonable to conclude, that a Man running towards the East should rid more ground than if he ran towards the West”—he was not dogmatic about it. He took a scientific interest in weather conditions as correlated to the phase and position of the Moon, and as a businessman, for example, was thoroughly up to date. He took care to diversify his investments, dealt in stocks, and ably navigated the price fluctuations of two of the principal commodities he traded (flax seed and hops)—all, however, with the help of horary and elective charts. In point of fact, Jeake was a man of the new age, quite in tune with the new aspirations of late Stuart England, yet every time he bumped his head, or tripped on a stair, he looked for an explanation to the stars.

“July 16, Thursday, About 11 p.m. Going into a Room by dark part…; fell down into the Cellar almost up to the middle in Water. But through the good Providence of God, did neither fall into the Well, nor dash my head against the Cellar Walls, though near both: so that I had not the least hurt. Behold the position of heaven at that instant.” At which he drew a chart: “Therein these Remarkables are to be observed. First that Saturn is just arising in Pisces a watry sign, & near the degree of the Cusp of the house of death in the Radix (as when my Leg [last January] was in danger of being broke).”

Again: “December 24 (1672), Tuesday, About 9:45 a.m. went with John Weeks junior & another in Company to Westfield. About 1:50 p.m. going over a hedge, I received a blow casually on my right Eyebrow by a Staff of one in the Company, which struck off the skin, & made the place swell & red, & afterward black for a fortnight. And it was a great Providence that the stroke did not light full in my Eye. The Sun neer the Cusp of the 8th opposite to the radical place of Mars & in square to Jupiter & Mars & in opposition of the Moon. All in Cardinal signs.”

Once more: “May 14 (1677) Monday. About 8 p.m. Coming down out of a neighbor’s Garret (where I had been to prevent a fire &c) at the bottom step, it being only a Stave; my foot slipped & I broke my left Shin, & it was a great mercy that I did not break my leg. Saturn & the Sun in conjunction in the beginning of Gemini in opposition to the Cusp of the 1st.”

All this was an attempt to give objective coherence to his life. In that regard, he could be disarmingly candid in the way he described himself: “My stature short…Complexion Melancholy, Face pale & lean, Forehead high; Eyes grey, Nose large, Teeth bad & distorted, Hair of a sad brown, & curling:…after 20 had a great quantity of it; but from thence it decayed & grew thin. My voice grew hoarse after I had the small pox. My body was always lean, my hands & feet small, I was partly left handed & partly Ambodexter [ambidextrous]. In my right hand was found [this is palmistry now] the perfect Triangle composed of the Vital [Life], Cephalic [Head], & Hapatick [Heart] Lines, all entire; but the Cephalick was broken in my left.”

At various times, Jeake worked with transits, progressions, and solar returns; was heavily influenced by the French astrologer and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Morin, explored palmistry, the magic power of numbers, talismans, and even (briefly) poltergeists. In light of his varied experience and expertise, it is odd that, like Ashmole, he did not elect to marry at a more propitious time. His analysis of the astrology of it (after the fact) is poignant, if frank:

“March 1, Tuesday. About 9:35 a.m. I was married to Mrs. Elizabeth Hartshorn at Rye by Mr. Bruce…The Sun shone out just at tying the Nuptial Knot” but “the Positure of Heaven seems not very fortunate for…Jupiter is cadent detrified & opposed by the Moon, squared by Mars, Mercury detrified in opposition to Mars & in square of the Moon. Seeming to presignify divers troubles and discontents, as Saturn in the 2nd portends variance about…money. Mars…aspected in the 5th: Death, or mischief to Children.” Alas!

AMONG LEADING ASTROLOGERS, the foremost champion of reform was John Gadbury, Lilly’s sometime antagonist. Born in 1627, he had studied mathematics at Oxford, joined a “free love” sect in his youth, was pro-Parliament during (but a Royalist after) the Civil War, and in 1652 took up astrology under the tutelage of the mathematician Nicholas Fiske. In 1659, he published hisDoctrine of Nativities, “a general treatise on natal astrology together with a set of astronomical tables that made it possible to erect and interpret a chart with no other guide.” Gadbury also published a number of almanacs but is principally remembered today for hisCollectio Geniturarum orNotable Nativities, in which 150 horoscopes (most of them of eminent persons, including himself ) are reproduced. For each horoscope, “the principal accidents of the person’s life is usually given along with comments on the natal chart and the primary directions associated with key events.” Like Aubrey, he endeavored to establish astrology as a legitimate science, according to empirical principles, in the hope that its “truth could be demonstrated through an objective study of cause and effect. ‘One real experiment,’ he declared, ‘is of greater worth and more to be valued than one hundred pompous predictions.’ ”

At the same time, being wholly traditional in some things, Gadbury regarded comets as “beacons, whose use and office is to give warning to mankind of approaching dangers.” He also followed a curious branch of received doctrine that held that horary astrologers could use a querent’s physical characteristics to validate a chart. “For if the Moles &c. of the Person enquiring, correspond exactly with the Scheme erected, the Artist may safely proceed to judgement.” The rules for this were elaborate and concerned the size, shape, color, and location of various marks:

1) Having erected your Figure, consider the sign ascending, and what part or Member in Man’s body it Rules; for the Querent hath a Mole, Mark, or Scar in that part of his body. Example, if the Sign ascending be Virgo it is on the belly; if Libra the reins; if Scorpio the Secrets, &c. 2) Then consider in the next place, in what Sign of the Twelve the Lord of the Ascendant is posited, and say the Querent hath a Mole, &c. in that Member or part of his body represented thereby. 3) Observe the place of the Moon and tell the Querent that he hath another Mole, or Scar, &c. in that part of his body that is represented by the sign she possesses. 4) Consider the Sign of the 6th, and the Sign wherein the Lord of the 6th is located; for usually in those Members represented by these Signs, the Querent is also marked. 5) When Saturn shall signify the Mark, &c. it is generally an excrescence of a darkish obscure or black color. If Jupiter it is usually a purple or blueish Mole, &c. If Mars, ’tis commonly some scar, slash, or cut, chiefly in a fiery Sign; and sometimes a reddish Mole, or spots of Gun-powder. If Sun, generally of an olive or chestnut color. If Venus, of a honey color. If Mercury, it is sometimes whitish, and other times of a pale lead color. If the Moon, ’tis often white, yet many times participates of the color of that planet she is in aspect with. 6) If the Planet and Sign representing the Mark, Mole, or Scar be Masculine, the Mars &c. is then on the right side of the body; if feminine, judge the contrary.

And so on. Though Gadbury emphasized a semimodern statistical approach, others believed, on the contrary, that astrology had strayed too far from its classical roots. In John Partridge, Gadbury’s rebellious student, they found their leading voice. Born in 1643 in Mortlake, not far from John Dee’s ancestral home, Partridge had begun life as a cobbler, taught himself Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, became interested in astrology, studied under Gadbury, and earned his medical degree at Leyden, before he published his own astrological work in 1679. In time, he became completely enamored of Ptolemy’sTetrabiblos (the arbiter of all his judgments); “spurned horary work as an Arabic invention, tainted with divination”; extolled natal astrology as a “rational form of knowledge”; and therefore had no use for Gadbury’s Baconian reforms.

In hisOpus Reformatum, orTreatise of Astrology in which the Common Errors of that Art are Modestly Exposed and Rejected (1693), Partridge set out to correct “divers Errors in the Study and Practice of Astrology, especially in that Part of it that concerns Nativities,” by a strict adherence to Ptolemaic methods, and, like Ashmole, was exasperated by the charlatans who had sullied the Art. He especially didn’t like those who dabbled in magic, who “pretended to fetch people back that are absent or run away,” or who crafted astrological sigils “to promote or prevent copulation, according to their clients desires, either out of Love or Malice to those they intend it, with abundance more of such stuff, as I could relate, that is practiced under the pretense of Astrology, by a Crew of Scandalous cheats.” He set forth his own doctrine in a series of demonstration horoscopes. One was of Oliver Cromwell “with a Table of Directions from his birth to his Death; with each arc, its true measure,” showing that he had to die when he did.

Giving Cromwell’s birth as April 25, 1599, at 1:05A.M. at Huntington, England, 52 degrees north latitude, we find: Aquarius rising, Saturn in Libra, Jupiter in Cancer, Mars in Aries, Venus in Taurus, Mercury in Taurus, Sun in Taurus, Moon in Virgo, the Dragon’s Head in Aquarius, the Dragon’s Tail in Leo. In charting a solar return for his last year of life, Partridge finds:

Saturn and Jupiter are both returned to their own Radical Places; and so is Mars and the Moon to the square of theirs; Mercury and Venus are in Taurus, where they were in the Radix, and not far from their own Radical Places. So that you see all the Planets are returned to their own places: except Mars and the Moon, and they are in square to them. Now, the use I shall make of the Revolution is this: the Moon, Mars, and Saturn are all of them Promittors [receivers of an aspect] by direction; Mars is in square to Saturn, Lord of the Radical Horoscope, who is returned to his Radical Place; and the Moon, though Hyleg [giver of life], yet she is here a Promittor also, and is going to the direct Opposition of the place of Direction, and to the Square of her own place; and besides this, Mars is going to the Mundane Parallel of the Sun. And to sum up all, we find both the Moon and Mars in violent Constellations, the Moon being with Aldebaran, of the Nature of Mars, and Mars with those Stars in the beginning of Cancer called Castor and Pollux, of the nature of Saturn. So that we may from the Sun’s return, and its Configurations compared with the Directions, conclude, That according to second Causes, it could be no less than mortal.

To confirm his diagnosis, he also looked at the secondary directions and progressions of the chart “for if all concur, we may certainly judge that nothing but a Miracle can save.” All, he found, concurred. “Under this Revolution, we find that the Ascendant by Secondary Motion was directed to the Opposition of Jupiter, the Sun under the Square of Saturn,…the Moon to the Opposition of Jupiter, the Moon to the Opposition of Mars, and that just toucheth about the time of his Sickness, all of which are ill, and show a bad year.”

A number of other example charts—that of Nostradamus, of Cardano’s unfortunate son, the renowned geographer Gemma Frisius, and so on—were likewise advanced to show the inexorable workings of fate. If Partridge’s methods seem improbably complex, they were governed by time-honored rules. Kepler, for example, would likely have drawn the same conclusion—did so, in fact, when for his own last year of life he sadly remarked an analogous pattern in his chart.

THE IDEA, still common, that the enlightened scientific establishment had uniformly rejected astrology by Newton’s day is not borne out. William Whiston, Boyle lecturer in 1707 and Newton’s successor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, for example, thought it likely that a comet had signified the biblical Flood. He also thought “an omniscient God could synchronize the regular returns of comets to bring sinners to his knees,” so that periodicity was not an argument against the meaning of the event. He therefore had no trouble believing that a comet would one day signify the destruction of the Earth by fire. In medicine, eminent doctors, such as Richard Mead, a vice president of the Royal Society who treated both Newton and Halley, linked epileptic fits, menstruation, and other conditions to “the quadratures of the Moon.”

The decline of astrology is generally ascribed to the triumph of the heliocentric hypothesis of Copernicus, to Kepler’s laws, Newton’s mechanics, the discovery of new planets such as Uranus and Neptune, and, “last but not least to the healthy skepticism of modern man.” Yet “with the exception of the discovery of the new planets,” as John West and Jan Toonder point out, “these scientific milestones in no way affected either the principles or the practice of the art.” “The astrologer himself careth not,” Sir Christopher Heydon had long since declared, “whether (as Copernicus saith) the Sun be the center of the world.” Indeed, it had made no difference in that sense to Copernicus either, or to Brahe, Dee, Galileo, Kepler, Lilly, or Morin. Again, it was said that after the appearance of “new stars” in a once-unchanging sky, or the discovery of Jupiter’s moons, astrology was belied; but astrology was a self-contained system that operated on Neoplatonic and Pythagorean terms. The known periodicity of a comet’s return, as established by Halley, was said to make nonsense of astrological prediction, since “it became harder to regard a comet in the sky as a heaven-sent warning of a particular disaster.” But not to an astrologer, who, after all, had always dealt with cyclical, or recurrent, celestial events.

Newton himself had some acquaintance with astrology. He discussed its origins in hisChronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended in 1728—in which he “assumed a relationship between the history of nations and the stars”—and thought some distant historical dates might be “rectified” or accurately determined by astrological means. According to a relative, John Conduitt, who married Newton’s niece, Newton first began to study mathematics seriously after he had trouble with some of the math in an astrology book purchased at Sturbridge Fair. He was also a closet alchemist, wrote over a million words on alembics and the philosopher’s stone, and “used astrological concepts and reasoning” in his alchemical work. For example, “he held that the best water for such work was drawn, ‘by the power of our sulphur which lieth hid in Antimony. For Antimony was called Aries by the Ancients. Because Aries is the first Zodiacal Sign in which the Sun begins to be exalted and God is exalted most of all in Antimony.’ ” The idea of gravity was also inspired (at least in part) by an astrological idea—that of action by one body on another at a distance, which Newton came to regard as “a spiritual force.”

Astrology declined not because it had “reason” to, in the Age of Reason, but because God went out of the world: that is, the Neoplatonic God of cosmic harmony and correspondence, compatible with the Christian God, in paradigm. Though Newton himself was clearly drawn to the occult, in the end the mechanical nature of the science he fostered left little room for the impalpable to breathe. “The wild dance of shadows thrown by the stars on the wall of Plato’s cave,” wrote Arthur Koestler, “was settling into a decorous and sedate Victorian waltz. All mysteries seemed to have been banished from the universe, and divinity reduced to the part of a constitutional monarch, who is kept in existence for reasons of decorum, but without real necessity and without influence on the course of affairs.”