Part 3
Finally, Luna presides over the phlegm, the brain, the left eye, the right side in women and the left in men, the stomach, and the membranes; over the sight of the right eye in women and of the left in men; over fear; over quotidian fevers, epilepsy, apoplexy, fatuity, vomiting, fluxes, such as diarrhoea and menorrhagia, dropsy, and cold abscesses. She brings those deaths that occur from superpurgation and from drowning.
It would seem, from the several jurisdictions here assigned to Mercury and Luna, that those whom we call lunatics ought properly to be called Mercurials, for though the moon rules the brain, Mercury has jurisdiction, as we have seen, over mania, phrenitis, delirium, and insanity; and, strictly speaking, no one with any of these maladies ought to be called a lunatic. Lunacy in the strict sense is fatuity interrupted by lucid intervals, as we shall find further on, and this is the sense that it had in law down to the passing of the Lunacy Acts. Until these enactments, the legal meaning of a lunatic was a fatuous or demented person who had, nevertheless, intervals of lucidity; and though in common speech the meaning became generalised, and the term was used to include all insane persons, whatever the nature of their insanity, and whether it was interrupted or continuous, yet lawyers, who are always both more precise and more conservative in the application of terms than other men, continued to use the term lunacy in its strict sense till the middle of the last century.
With respect to the corporature, or the bodily configuration, which, with the corresponding mental disposition, is aspected by the several Planets, there is much misapprehension; and the true doctrine is corrupted, and attenuated to a mere remnant. We are apt to consider that a Saturnine person is taciturn, cynical, and disposed to be malevolent; that a Jovial person is good-humoured and hilarious; that a Mercurial person is restless and vagrant, not continuing in one stay; that a Martial person has a soldierly bearing; and that a Lunatic is out of his mind; and although we should not be wrong in attributing these mental dispositions to the persons so denominated, we should give them but a tithe of the mental qualities the names actually connote; and we have forgotten altogether, not only that there is a corporature, or bodily configuration, that accompanies and indicates each mental temperament, but also that there are persons of Solar and Venereal temperament as well as those that are Jovial, Saturnine, and so forth. The corporature, and the mental disposition that accompanies and is signified by it, are precise and detailed, so that the expert astrologer can tell at a glance what sort of person he has to deal with, and what Planet has jurisdiction over that person’s life, fortunes, and health.
Those, for instance, who are Saturnine, may be known by the following physical signs: they are moderately fleshy, of medium height, their countenances are long, their eyes large and black, their teeth very large; they are of dark complexion, have scanty straight black hair, thin beards, are pigeon-toed, and of truculent bearing. When well affected by the Planet, persons of such a corporature are profound thinkers, investigators of mysteries, prudent, reticent, inclined to solitude, suspicious, laborious, patient, persevering, lovers of work, eager for gain, and masterful. When ill affected by the Planet, they are sad, melancholy, austere, timid, miserly, querulous, taciturn, solitary, followers of the Black Art, suspicious, untruthful, malevolent, untrustworthy to the point of fraudulence, treacherous, and often suffer the penalties of the law for their misdeeds.
The favoured of Jupiter are, in configuration, fleshy, with rounded knees; they are of medium stature, elegant and majestic in bearing. In complexion they are rosy; their eyes are dark and rather large. They are prone to baldness, and have thick reddish beards. When well affected by the Planet, such persons are simple, just, pious, religious, faithful, humane, merciful, hilarious, gracious, open, affable, liberal, splendid, magnanimous and law-abiding. When ill affected, they have these qualities in excess. They are superstitious, sentimental, humanitarian, prodigal and vain-glorious.
The subjects of Mars are thin and well-proportioned; they are pale, with blue eyes and abundant curly hair, not only on the head but on the body. They are of middle stature, with large heads, round faces, small eyes, large nostrils, long teeth and military bearing. When well affected, they are strong, robust, brave, greedy of fame, irascible, given to hunting and games, vindictive, impatient of control, domineering, delighting in war and battles, contemptuous of danger, agile, ready, hasty, self-confident, and indifferent to religion. When ill affected, they are impious, unjust, arrogant, merciless, seditious, foolhardy, quarrelsome, brawlers, homicides, tyrants, incendiaries, robbers, thieves and bandits.
Those under the jurisdiction of Luna are tall, pale, good-looking, with light hair and eyes, and with becoming beards. When well affected, they are ingenious, subtle, sincere, open, honest and well-mannered; when ill affected, they are stupid even to fatuity, timid and restless. It is very important to know that, as might be expected, it is when the moon is waxing that they are well affected, and they are ill affected when she is on the wane. Here we see the origin of the legal doctrine, already alluded to, that a lunatic is a demented person who has lucid intervals, these intervals being when the moon is in the first two of her phases, while the periods of fatuity are the last two phases, when she is past the full, and her light is waning.
The votaries of Mercury are characterised by medium stature, a well-proportioned body, pleasing complexion, and yellow hair. They are graceful, with very small hands, feet and teeth; they have scanty beards, thin voices, and are rapid in their movements. When well affected, they are witty, studious, quick to learn, even without being taught; they are disputatious, wise, cautious, prudent, easily accommodating themselves to persons and circumstances; sociable and inquisitive. When ill affected, they are unstable, forgetful, apt to have hallucinations and to talk nonsense, liars, parasites, flatterers, deceitful, perfidious, perjurers, calumniators, forgers of wills, coiners of false money, meddlers in things that do not concern them, and dangerous counsellors.
Under the jurisdiction of Venus are those of medium stature, succulent, with delicate and fair complexions, good-looking, with crisp brown or blackish hair, dark eyes, narrow eyebrows, narrow chests, and thick thighs. When well affected, they are indolent, bland, pious, religious, merciful, peaceful, sociable, lovers of the arts of singing and of music, elegant and graceful, and given to delicacies and pleasures. They are lucky in love and in friendship, forgiving, and impatient under misfortune. When ill affected, they are timid, imprudent, effeminate, lecherous, and betrayers of women.
Lastly, the characters of those who are ruled by the Sun are a large head, a round and glowing face, large eyes, long hair which at length falls out and leaves them bald, and a sallow complexion. When well affected, they are pious, just, upright, faithful, open, chaste, worldly-wise, apt to anger, but magnanimous, honourable, splendid and magnificent, warm in friendship, and lovers of their wives and children.
It will have been noticed that the descriptions of the bodily configurations are not very definite, and we are warned by Maninius to be very careful of judging of the dominant Planet by the configuration of the body. This, he says, is a part of the science in which many fail; and it is not yet fully ascertained. The knowledge is to be attained by long experience only. Maninius had, indeed, good reason to inculcate caution in interpreting the indications obtained from Astrological lore, for he sought to clench the arguments with which he was defending Astrology from the attacks of Gassendi, by predicting the death of the sceptic upon a certain date. When the date came round in due course, Gassendi unexpectedly refused to die, and Maninius then discovered a mistake in his calculation which had led him to antedate the event. He corrected the error, revised his prediction, and fixed another and later date, beyond which Gassendi could not survive. He seems, however, to have overlooked a second time some material factor, for his opponent lived on, and laughed him to scorn, giving much occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. Maninius, unfortunately, lacked the resource of Dean Swift, who was confronted with the same difficulty by the survival of the astrologer Partridge. Swift, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, predicted that Partridge would die “on the twenty-ninth of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever”; and, when the date was past, published a circumstantial account of the death, with a confession by Partridge of the imposture of his predictions. In vain Partridge denied the facts, for Bickerstaff gave five conclusive reasons for disbelieving these protestations, and for holding that Partridge was in fact dead, and in denying the fact had carried beyond the grave his proclivity for telling lies.
When it is remembered that any Sign of the Zodiac may be in any of the Houses of Heaven; that any Planet may be in any House, and may have any aspect, sextile, quartile, trine, or opposition, towards the Ascendent and towards the other Planets; and that the various Planets have by these means their powers reinforced or attenuated in the most various degrees; and when we remember further the different powers that different Planets have over different persons and different diseases, it will easily be seen that the variations are virtually infinite, and the whole scheme far too complicated to put to practical application.
In practice, however, the calculations of the physician were narrowed down to a small number of factors. Arnaldus de Villanova, a physician of great repute in the thirteenth century, limits these as follows:—A perfect physician, he says, should constantly bear in mind eight Astrological factors; and then we are disappointed to find that he enumerates only seven. It is no doubt the want of the eighth factor that has falsified the predictions that I have ventured to make in accordance with his rules. Be that as it may, the factors that he enumerates, as necessary for the perfect physician to consider, are these:
1. The thing concerning which the inquiry is made.
2. The Sign that is in the Ascendent.
3. The Lord of it. (Whether of the Sign or of the Ascendent is not clear.)
4. The Sign that is in the House of the thing inquired about. (In the case of sickness, this may be either the first House, the House of Life; or the eighth, the House of Death; or the sixth, the House of Diseases.)
5. The Lord of it. (Again, whether of the Sign or of the House is not clear.)
6. Its (?) relation to the Ascendent.
7. Its relation to the Moon.
These are to be interpreted in the following manner:
1. The Ascendent and the Lord of it signify the sick man.
2. The middle of Heaven (the tenth House) signifies his physician.
3. The sixth House and the Lord of it signify his disease.
4. The fourth House and the Lord of it signify his physic.
The consequences are these:
If there is evil in the Ascendent, or if the Lord of the Ascendent is subject to adverse influences, the patient will do badly; but if these are propitious, he will do well.
If there should be a benevolent or propitious Lord of the tenth House, which signifies the physician, then his treatment will do the patient good; but if the Lord should be evil, then the patient will be injured by the treatment.
If there should be a powerful influence for good in the eighth House, which is the House of Death, the patient will be quickly cured; but if there should be an evil influence in this House, he will go from bad to worse.
Similarly, if there is good fortune in the fourth House, which is the House of Remedies, his medicine will do him good, but if evil fortune, the medicine will make him worse.
If the Sign in the Ascendent should be mobile, and Luna should be in a mobile Sign, such as Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn, and the Lord of the Ascendent should also be in a mobile Sign, the illness will soon terminate, either well or badly, especially if Luna is in swift motion. If, however, it happens contrarily, it signifies a long illness, especially if Luna is in a stable Sign, as Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius.
If the Lord of the Ascendent should be propitious, and free from adverse influences of other Planets, and Luna likewise, the illness will end favourably, especially if Luna and the Lord of the Ascendent should aspect favourably the Lord of the eighth House, which is the House of Death—that is, if they should be in sextile, and especially if they should be in trine, to that House.
But if Luna, or the Lord of the Ascendent, or the Lord of the House of Sickness, which is the sixth, should be combust and retrograde, or if the Lord of the Ascendent should be in the House of Death in conjunction with Mars or Saturn, both of them malevolent Planets, then there is no hope.
Also, if the moon should be in conjunction with a propitious Planet in the Ascendent, and should be moving forward and her light waxing, and both should be free from adverse influences, then the disease will be quickly cured; but if the moon should be in the House of Death, the patient cannot be saved.
And generally, whenever Luna and the Lord of the Ascendent are subject to adverse influences, it is a mortal sign, and we must fear death, or relapse, or long illness; but when they are fortunately situated, and aspected by well-disposed powers, as when Luna and the Lord are in the Ascendent, then it is a good sign, and _ad vitam_.
But if the House of Death, and the Lord of the House of Infirmity, or the Lord of the House of Death, are fortified by situation or by aspect, especially when they aspect the moon adversely, then it is a bad sign, and _ad mortem_; but when they are impeded or weakened, it is a good sign.
Now the position of the heavenly bodies in the Houses of Heaven alters from hour to hour, and a fatal disposition of them now may alter to a favourable one in a couple of hours, and _vice versâ_. Luna, which is now in the Ascendent, and therefore smiles upon the patient, will, in fourteen or fifteen hours’ time, be in the eighth House, and condemn him to death. It is manifestly of the utmost importance, therefore, to fix upon the correct hour and minute for setting up the _tabula cælestiarum_. It is to be feared, however, that in this matter astrological physicians allowed themselves a good deal of latitude. There are two fixed moments, one or other of which should be taken as that on which the scheme should be erected. One of these is the moment of birth; the other is the decumbiture.
It will be seen that the scheme of the nativity of Charles XII sets forth the year, the month, the day, hour, and minute of birth, and the scheme is erected accordingly, and admits of no doubt or variation. There was, however, a process known to Astrologers by the name of Rectification of the Nativity, a process the rules of which are difficult to discover, but the practical result was to shift the heavenly bodies from positions that were inconvenient to the Astrologer to positions more suitable to his purpose. I should never myself make an alteration of this nature, which does not seem to me quite justifiable, but, emboldened by this established astrological practice, I have ventured to make a trifling alteration in the scheme of nativity that I have placed before you as that of Charles XII. As originally erected, it referred not to the year 1682 but to the year 1594, and to the moment of birth, not of Charles XII, but of a previous King of Sweden, namely, Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, and the Bulwark of the Protestant Faith. In working it out, I found that by no ingenuity and by no artifice could I make the predictions to be drawn from this scheme of nativity fit in with the known career of that great and successful commander. They suited, however, with such surprising accuracy and appropriateness the career of his successor Charles XII that I felt it was a pity to allow myself to be fettered, in applying them to him, by a punctilio of needless scrupulosity. I did not venture to take that liberty with the facts that astrologers were accustomed to take, by altering the positions of the heavenly bodies in the Houses of Heaven; I merely altered the date by less than a century, and substituted the name of one King of Sweden for another.
In estimating the scheme of the heavens relating to the illness of a patient, it is always advisable to compare it with the scheme of his nativity. If that Planet which was Lord of the Ascendent in the nativity is favourably placed and fortunately aspected in the scheme of the decumbiture, and is neither combust nor retrograde, the patient will be strengthened and live, and _vice versâ_.
These are the considerations that should weigh with a perfect physician; but the authority I am now quoting from lived seven centuries ago, and the world was very different then from what it is now. It would appear that in those remote and benighted times there actually were physicians who were not perfect, and to temper the difficulties of astrological practice to these weaker brethren, they were taught a method of procedure that is shorter and easier, but less accurate. It will have been noticed how prominent a place is assigned to the moon in the explanations that have been given, although in setting up the scheme no separate mention was made of her, but she was just lumped in together with the other Planets, which had presumably equal value, except in as far as their power was subdued or enhanced by their position. In the modified and abbreviated scheme that was drawn up for the guidance of the general practitioner, the whole burden lay upon the moon. It was recognised that a busy practitioner could not be expected to have the correct positions of the Planets always at his fingers’ ends; but he could scarcely be ignorant of the phase in which the moon was, of whether she was waxing or waning, or even of the Sign she occupied. Consequently, except to the very expert—to the dwellers in the Harley Street and Wimpole Street of that day—the moon alone was the guide to treatment and prognosis.
I must now go back for a moment, and call your attention to certain _Facultates Naturales_ possessed by the human body, and governed by the Planets. These are the Retentrix, the Coctrix, the Expultrix, the Attractrix, the Vegatatrix and the Generatrix; and each has, of course, its corresponding complexion. Retention, for instance, is favoured by cold and drought, Digestion by heat and moisture, Expulsion by cold and moisture, and Attraction by heat and drought.
It follows, of course, that retentive medicines, given to check fluxes of any kind, should be administered either when Luna is in a sign that is cold and dry, such as Taurus, Virgo or Capricorn, or when one of these signs is in the Ascendent; and at such times retentive drugs should be not only administered but prepared, for their virtues are not in themselves, but are part of the celestial virtue communicated from the celestial bodies, from which all virtues are derived. So that retentive medicines, such as sugar of roses, diaciton and diapapaver, should be prepared as well as administered when one of these cold and dry signs is in the Ascendent, or when the moon is in one of them. If, however, we wish to reinforce the expulsive faculty, as for instance in constipation or amenorrhœa, the medicament must be prepared and administered when Luna is in Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces, or when one of them is in the Ascendent; for these Signs are cold and moist. In this case we must be careful, however; for if a purgative is given when the motion of Luna is retrograde, the expulsion will be retrograde, and instead of purgation we shall cause vomiting; but if we are so incautious and ignorant as to give purgatives when the moon is retrograde in Leo, which has an aspect to the heart and blood, we shall produce vomiting of blood.
Diseases of plethora are very dangerous when a man is taken sick upon a full moon, and diseases of wasting are most dangerous when he is taken sick upon a waning moon. Let me entreat you therefore to give physic for inanition when the moon is near the full, and for plethora when she has lost her light; and remember that a humour can scarcely be diminished but when the moon is waning, nor increased except when she is waxing.
It is very bad when, in the beginning of a sickness, the moon is in a Sign of the nature of the peccant humour, as in the hot and dry Signs Aries, Leo or Sagittarius, when the peccant humour is choler; the cold and dry Signs Taurus, Capricorn or Virgo, when it is melancholy; the hot and moist Signs Gemini, Libra or Aquarius, when it is blood; or the cold and moist signs Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces, when it is phlegm.
Naturally, when she is in a fiery Sign, it is easy to amend a disease of phlegm, but if choler abound, wait until she is in a watery Sign.
We see, therefore, how very important it is to consider the aspect of the heavens before we begin our treatment; and though it is true that patients do sometimes recover under the care of ignorant physicians who take no account of these things, yet in such cases, says my authority, the patient recovers by accident, and not by the skill of the physician.
An additional reason for studying the motion of the moon in illness is because this motion regulates the critical days. A crisis is defined as a swift and vehement motion of a disease, leading to recovery or death. Strictly speaking, those only are true crises which lead to recovery, but inaccuracy and corruption have crept into the meaning, until some authors enumerate six kinds of crisis, which I need not enumerate here; but all authorities are agreed, and their agreement seems to me to arise from everyone copying the words of his predecessor, that for a true and perfect crisis six conditions must be fulfilled.
In the first place, the crisis must be complete, that is to say, the whole of the _materia peccans_ must be evacuated; for instance, all the bile in tertian fever, and all the phlegm in quotidian fever. If the whole of the _materia peccans_ is not evacuated, it is evident that the patient may relapse.
The second condition is that none of the peccant material should remain. This is evidently quite as important as the first, that all of it should be evacuated.
The third condition is that health must be completely regained, and there must be no terrible accidents or pernecabilibus, such as running of the eyes.
The fourth condition is that the crisis must be manifest; that is to say, there must be a sensible evacuation of the _materia peccans_.
The fifth condition is that the crisis must make indication, and as to the meaning of this, I have come, after long and careful study, to the conclusions on another subject arrived at by my authority, and piously expressed by him in the words, _Deus solus cognoscit, quia habet neque caput neque caudam_.
The sixth condition is that the crisis must occur on a critical day.