"Astrology" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The figures on the chemist's bottles are the signs denoting the seven planets, which the alchemist formerly employed in common with the astrologer. See a curious article entitled Astrology and Alchemy in the Quarterly Review, Vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... beyond their legitimate application was a source of confusion in the early ages of science. Most of the superstitions of primitive religion, of astrology, and of alchemy, arose from this source. A good example is the extension of the metaphor in the words generation and corruption: words in constant use in scientific works until the nineteenth century began. Generation is the production of a substance that before was not, and corruption ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... native of Tuscany, and one of the Roberti family. His name in literature was so considerable that Filippo Villani thought it worth while to write his life. Petrarch wrote his funeral eulogy, and alludes to Dionisio's power of reading futurity by the stars. But Petrarch had not a grain of faith in astrology; on the contrary, he has himself recorded that he derided it. After having obtained, with some difficulty, the permission of Cardinal Colonna, he took leave of his friends at Avignon, and set out for Marseilles. Embarking there in a ship ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... subconscious faculties and to release in some way his subliminal clairvoyance. Among such methods, those most often employed are, as we all know, cards, coffee-grounds, pins, the lines of the hand, crystal globes, astrology, and so on. They possess no importance in themselves, no intrinsic virtue, and are worth exactly what the medium who uses them is worth. As ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the other. Presently King Sharrkan called to her and said, "O Queen, the glory of thine age, this merchant hath described thee as being learned and accomplished; and he claimeth that thou art skilled in all branches of knowledge, even to astrology: so let us hear something of all this he hath mentioned, and favour us with a short discourse on such subjects." She replied, saying: "O King, to hear is to obey.[FN259] The first subjects whereof I will treat are the art of government and the duties of Kings and what behoveth governors of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... time the father of Crysostom died, leaving his great fortune to his son, who had just finished his studies in astrology and other learned subjects in the University of Salamanca. Crysostom returned home together with his friend and companion Ambrosio, and both became very well liked in the village. There Crysostom saw Marcela and fell deeply in love with her, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... apprehended. The stars are in human thought a symbol for the silent forces of destiny, really embodied in forms beyond our apprehension; for who shall say what actual being may or may not correspond to that potentiality of life or sensation which is all that the external world can be to our science? When astrology invented the horoscope it made an absurdly premature translation of celestial hieroglyphics into that language of universal destiny which in the end they may be made to speak. The perfect astronomer, when he understood ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... boy's agency, except Caleb Powell. That worthy knew the young man, and believed that there was nothing marvellous or superstitious about the "manifestations." Desirous of being esteemed learned, he laid claim to a knowledge of astrology, and when the "witchcraft" was the town talk he gave out that he could develope the whole mystery. The consequence was that he was suspected of dealing in the black art, and was accused, tried, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... strangely enough, an occult science forgotten in our day—that of astrology—supported Catherine at this moment, as it did, in fact, throughout her life; for, as she witnessed the minute fulfilment of the prophecies of those who practised the art, her belief in it ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... and intermarry with each other. Again, there are Bairagi Bhats who beg from Bairagis, and keep the genealogies of the temple-priests and their successors. Yet another class are the Dasaundhis or Jasondhis, who sing songs in honour of Devi, play on musical instruments and practise astrology. These rank below the cultivating castes and sometimes admit members of such castes who have taken ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Astrology is well in its place, but this place is second- [5] ary. Necromancy has no foundation,—in fact, no intelligence; and the belief that it has, deceives itself. Whatever simulates power and Truth in matter, does this as a lie declaring itself, that mortals' faith in matter may have the effect ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... (literally 'release') for a philologist (na cabdac[a]str[a]bhiratasya mokshas), nor for one that delights in catching (men) in the world, nor for one addicted to food and dress, nor for one pleased with a fine house. By means of prodigies, omens, astrology, palmistry, teaching, and talking let him not seek alms ... he best knows salvation who (cares for naught)' ... (such are the verses). Let him neither harm nor do good to anything.... Avoidance of disagreeable conduct, jealousy, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Paris, he went to Italy, where he gained the patronage of the Emperor Friedrich II. He was learned in Greek and in Arabic, and an excellent mathematician, but he bewildered himself with alchemy and astrology; and, though he died unmolested in his own country, in 1290 his fame remained in no good odor. Dante describes him among those whose faces were turned backward, because they had refused ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... idolatry of Aristotle. He preached the direct study of nature, observation, and experiment with the subsequent application of deduction, and especially of mathematical deduction, to experiment and observation. With all that, he believed in astrology; for those who are in advance of their time none the less belong to it: but he ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... order of nobility, who had no need, by the assumption of superior learning, to fence themselves round from the approaches of the vulgar. The little true science possessed by the Aztec priest supplied him with a key to unlock the mysteries of the heavens, and the false system of astrology which he built upon it gave him credit as a being who had something of divinity in his own nature. But the Inca noble was divine by birth. The illusory study of astrology, so captivating to the unenlightened mind, engaged no share of ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... the people are ineradicable. One among those instincts, so foolishly styled "superstition," runs in the blood of the populace, and tinges no less the intellects of better educated folk. More than one French statesman has been known to consult the fortune-teller's cards. For sceptical minds, astrology, in French, so oddly termed astrologie judiciare, is nothing more than a cunning device for making a profit out of one of the strongest of all the instincts of human nature—to wit, curiosity. The sceptical mind consequently denies that there is any connection between human ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... satellite bright enough to be visible was supposed to watch over a single individual on the surface. Like their brothers on Terra, the native astronomers could trace their science back to a form of astrology; and Kinton often told them jokingly that he felt no urge to risk a physical encounter with his ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... profane the temples, by smoking their pipes, and taking refreshments, and even by gambling, within the consecrated precincts. The priests are shameless impostors. They practise the mountebank sciences of astrology, divination, necromancy, and animal magnetism, and keep for sale a liquid, which, they pretend, will confer immortality on ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Peers and Deputies will rally around me. I have a friend in Turkey—the Grand Vizier of the Mussulmans: he was a Protestant once—Lord Brougham by name. I have sent to him to legislate for us: he is wise in the law, and astrology, and all sciences; he shall aid my Ministers in their councils. I have written to him by the post. There shall be no more infamous mad-houses in France, where poor souls shiver ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Confucius are no less addicted to astrology than the bonzes. It is indeed the malady ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the king was blessed with a very beautiful daughter; she was the fairest maiden in the whole land of Israel. Her father observed the stars, to discover by astrology who was destined to be her mate in life and wed her, when lo! he saw that his future son-in-law would be the poorest man in the nation. Now, what did Solomon do? He built a high tower by the sea, and surrounded it on all sides with inaccessible walls; ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... escaped from the burning flames of the lusts of the flesh, his only thought has been for the salvation of mankind. Once upon a time there was a certain heretic, called Rokutsuponji, a reader of auguries, cunning in astrology and in the healing art. It happened, one day, that this heretic, being in company with Buddha, entered a forest, which was full of dead men's skulls. Buddha, taking up one of the skulls and tapping it thus" (here the preacher tapped the reading-desk with his ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... schools Logic Astronomy and astrology Medicine and surgery King Buddha-dasa a physician Botany Geometry Lightning conductors Notice of a remarkable passage in ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... opinion in the French camp. Independently of military grounds, a great deal was said about certain letters from Robert, King of Naples, "a mighty necromancer and full of mighty wisdom, it was reported, who, after having several times cast their horoscopes, had discovered, by astrology and from experience, that, if his cousin, the King of France, were to fight the King of England, the former would ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... government. A peculiarity of theirs, of which Sparta is the only modern example, was the dual system of two kings reigning in one city. As a result probably of their sea-going taste, the study of the stars became a characteristic pursuit, and this race made great advances both in astronomy and astrology. ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... Count and Countess D'Antraigues Horticultural Speculation of the Marquis de Chabannes Supply of London with Vegetables Shropshire and Welsh Girls Neglect of Public Cleanliness Cleanliness an Incentive of Virtue Mortlake Tomb of Partridge Pretensions of Astrology Doctrines of Fatality examined Free-Will and Necessity discussed Success of Predictions referable to the Doctrine of Chances Art of Fortune-Telling illustrated Tomb and Character of Alderman Barber Union and Multiplication of the Human ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... a persecutor of Lord Clarendon. With great parts, he always hurt himself and his friends; with romantic bravery, he was always an unsuccessful commander. He spoke for the Test Act, though a Roman Catholic; and addicted himself to astrology on the birthday of true philosophy." Besides his youthful correspondence with Sir K. Digby on the subject of religion already mentioned, he was the author of an Apologie (1643, Thomason Tracts, E. 34 (32)), justifying his support of the king's cause; of Elvira ... a comedy (1667), printed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... archdeacon, "if that be your motive, you would have done as well not to put yourself out of breath climbing my staircase. I do not believe in Medicine. I do not believe in Astrology." ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... to have been crushed, as it were, by their own discoveries. They stopped short. They gave way again to the primeval fear of Nature. They sank into planet-worship. They invented, it would seem, that fantastic pseudo-science of astrology, which lay for ages after as an incubus on the human intellect and conscience. They became the magicians and quacks of the old world; and mankind owed them thenceforth nothing but evil. Among the Greeks and Romans, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Bishop Martensen tells us how the readers of SCHELLING were surprised and enraptured by a wealth of new expressions and new turns of speech in their mother tongue. But all these belonged to Behmen, or were fashioned on the model of his symbolical language. As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy, and all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will always take sides with the author of The Serious Call, and The Spirit of Prayer, and The Spirit of Love, and The Way to Divine Knowledge, in the disputed matter of ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... to the royal ear; but what use or merit could recommend to the statesman or the scholar the uncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves? The history and geography of the world were familiar to his memory: the lives of the heroes of the East, perhaps of the West, [6] excited his emulation: his skill in astrology is excused by the folly of the times, and supposes some rudiments of mathematical science; and a profane taste for the arts is betrayed in his liberal invitation and reward of the painters of Italy. [7] But the influence of religion ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... what I have to say," returned the king, graciously taking my arm and leading me to a window overlooking the river. "I hear from De Grammont that the Abbe du Boise is a firm believer in the teachings of astrology. I want you to arrange, without letting any one know that my finger is in the pie, to take Lilly to see the Abbe, or the Abbe to see Lilly. I'll whisper a word in your ear. The stars will tell our friend, the Abbe, a ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... easy to see that there would be little or no demand for the kind of knowledge classified in the West under the head of science. In so far as any demand existed, it did so, at any rate at first, only because it subserved vital needs. Thus, astronomy, or more properly astrology, was studied in order that the calendar might be regulated, and so the routine of agriculture correctly followed, for on that depended the people's daily rice, or rather, in the beginning, the various fruits and kinds of flesh which constituted their means of sustentation before their now universal ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... brothers, for instance, was very fond of astronomy. He had his observatory on a lofty tower, which stood pretty clear of the others, towards the north and east. But hitherto, his astronomy, as he had called it, had been more of the character of astrology. Often, too, he might have been seen directing a heaven-searching telescope to catch the rapid transit of a fiery shooting-star, belonging altogether to the earthly atmosphere, and not to the serene heavens. He had to learn that the signs of the air are not the signs of the skies. Nay, once, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... It was revised by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, and has since been the universal system for the Western civilized world. Having reached their limit of fact in regard to the movement of the heavenly bodies, their imagination related the stars to human conduct, and astrology became an essential outcome. It was easy to believe that the heavenly bodies, which, apparently, had such great influence in the rise of the river and in the movement of the tides, would have either ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... average European knew something about the universe of sun, moon, planets, and stars, but it was scarcely more than the ancient Greeks had known, and its chief use was to foretell the future. This practical aspect of astronomy was a curious ancient misconception, which now passes under the name of astrology. It was popularly believed prior to the sixteenth century that every heavenly body exerted a direct and arbitrary influence upon human character and events, [Footnote: Disease was attributed to planetary ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... said Berry, "if you don't believe me, call in a consulting engineer. I've worked the blinking thing out three times. I admit the answers were entirely different, but that's not my fault. I never did like astrology. I tell you the beastly chest holds twenty-seven thousand point nine double eight recurring cubic inches of air. Some other fool can reduce that to rods, and there you are. I'm fed up with it. Thanks to the machinations of that congenital idiot ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... judgment, and depend on it: And he brought over so many to a submission to his opinion, that I never knew any man equal to him in the art of governing parties, and of making himself the head of them. He was as to religion a Deist at best: He had the dotage of Astrology in him to a high degree: He told me, that a Dutch doctor had from the stars foretold him the whole series of his life. But that which was before him, when he told me this, proved false, if he told me true: For he said, he was yet to be a greater man than he ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... returning, as he might have done, to the court, retreated into the most obscure corners of the metropolis; and again changing his name and dress, gave himself out as a German doctor named Bendo, who professed to find out inscrutable secrets, and to apply infallible remedies; to know, by astrology, all the past, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 1: A reference doubtless to the power of the stars to influence the destiny of man, with which subject astrology concerns itself. Compare— ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... the abrupt transition—of familiar beliefs of old Egypt; of the Ka, or Double, by whose existence the survival of the soul was possible, even its return into manifested, physical life; of the astrology, or influence of the heavenly bodies upon all sublunar activities; of terrific forms of other life, known to the ancient worship of Atlantis, great Potencies that might be invoked by ritual and ceremonial, and of their lesser ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... regard to the gods, and matters of religion, he discovered much indifference; being greatly addicted to astrology, and fully persuaded that all things were governed by fate. Yet he was extremely afraid of lightning, and when the sky was in a disturbed state, always wore a laurel crown on his head; because it ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... learned tutor had to instruct me in navigation. Nothing was too high or too low for him. Had any persons wished to have taken lessons in judicial astrology, Mr Riprapton would not have refused the pupil. Plausible ignorance will always beat awkward knowledge, when the ignorant, which is generally the case, make up the mass ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... zeal to the study of letters and the sciences. He gave his nights to mathematics and music, which he called the two adorable sisters, the harmonious daughters of Number and Imagination. He was versed in medicine and astrology. He was suspected of practising magic, and it seemed true that he wrought metamorphoses ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the East, constituting the "learned" class, as the Druids in the West: the custodiers of religion and the rites connected therewith, and who gave themselves up to the study of sciences of a recondite character, but with a human interest, such as astrology and magic, and who were held in great reverence by, and exercised a great ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... said, "In the Rigveda, in the Yajurveda, in the Atharvans and the Samans, in the Puranas and the Upanishads, as also in the treatises on Astrology, O Arjuna, in the Sankhya scriptures, in the Yoga scriptures, and in the treatises also on the Science of Life, many are the names that have been mentioned by the great Rishis. Some of those names are derivable from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a medley of religion, history, and astrology, and in its explanations of customs may be compared to the Aitia of Callimachus. For information about religious rites, and for derivations of names (e.g. Agnalia, i. 317-332), he would have recourse to Varro; for history, to Livy ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... conchology, biology, morphology, phrenology, physiology, osteology, histology, zoology, entomology, bacteriology, ornithology, pathology, psychology, cosmology, eschatology, demonology, mythology, theology, astrology, archeology, geology, meteorology, mineralogy, chronology, genealogy, ethnology, anthropology, criminology, technology, doxology, anthology, trilogy, philology, etymology, terminology, neologism, phraseology, tautology, analogy, eulogy, apology, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... origin; and hence, we conclude, come their strange animal names, and the strange myths about them which appear in all ancient poetry. These names, in turn, have curiously affected human beliefs. Astrology is based on the opinion that a man's character and fate are determined by the stars under which he is born. And the nature of these stars is deduced from their names, so that the bear should have been found in the horoscope ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... knowing that by her own wisdom she must ultimately combat the intrigues of the Hierarchy. Bear in mind that in old Egypt the science of Astronomy began and was developed to an extraordinary height; and that Astrology followed Astronomy in its progress. And it is possible that in the later developments of science with regard to light rays, we may yet find that Astrology is on a scientific basis. Our next wave of scientific thought may deal with this. I shall have something special to call ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... suggested by a series of ideas which lead the recipient of them to expect that the series will be continued. Then he will not perceive if the series is broken. In the Renaissance period no degree of illumination sufficed to resist the delusion of astrology, because it was supported by a passionate fantasy and a vehement desire to know the future, and because it was confirmed by antiquity, the authority of whose opinions was overwhelmingly suggested by all the faiths and prejudices ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... loquent of tongue, eloquent of speech, sweet spoken of phrase; and every day she increased in beauty and loveliness and stature and perfect grace. And when she reached the age of fourteen she was well read in science and she had perused the annals of the past and she had mastered astrology and geomancy and she wrote with caligraphic pen all the seven handwritings and she was mistress of metres and modes of poetry and still she grew in grace of speech. Now as her age reached her fourteenth year her sire the Sultan chose for her ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 697-707) that the university was regularly organized. Branch schools were also established in the several provinces. In the university there were departments for Chinese literature, for medicine, for astronomy and almanac-making, and for astrology. Under the first head were included the art of writing the Chinese characters, the practice of composition, the study of the Chinese classics, and the reading of books of Chinese history. In like manner the training of the students in medicine chiefly consisted in making them ...
— Japan • David Murray
... parts, the concinnitas. Schiller alone of our authors has it. But we are fast mending; and by following shadows so long we have been led at last to the substance. Our past literature is to us what astrology was to science,—false but ennobling, and conducting us to the true language of the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but evil I will not prophecy to her. Watch and pray! Much may be done by effectual prayer. Human means, fleshly arms, are vain. There is an enemy in the house of life,' [here she quitted her palmistry for the language of astrology;] 'there is a frightful danger at hand, both for your wife and your child. Already on that dark ocean, over which we are all sailing, I can see dimly the point at which the enemy's course shall ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... is conscious of a discord, and seeks for the cause of it not in himself, as he should, but outside himself—hence the war with what he does not understand. In the middle ages alchemy was gradually in a natural, peaceful way changing into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy; the monks did not understand, saw a conflict and fought against it. Just such a belligerent Spanish monk was ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the age reposed a deep confidence in the vain predictions of judicial astrology, and Leicester, though exempt from the general control of superstition, was not in this respect superior to his time, but, on the contrary, was remarkable for the encouragement which he gave to the professors of this pretended science. Indeed, the wish to pry into futurity, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... people, and endeavouring to spoil their market. But these wise men are no more; their knowledge is deposited in the dead archives of literature; and probably had there been no Gypsies, with them would have died the belief in chiromancy, as is the case with respect to astrology, necromancy, oneirocritica, and the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... from monstrous births in man and the animals are worthy of forming a class by themselves, insomuch the more as it is the part of their divinatory science with which, up to the present time, we are best acquainted. The development that their astrology had given to 'genethliaque,' or the art of horoscopes of births, had led them early to attribute great importance to all the teratologic facts which were there produced. They claimed that an experience of 470,000 years of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... that the flea is their marriage-temple, and bids her forbear to kill it lest she thereby commit murder, suicide, and sacrilege all in one. Donne's figures are scholastic and smell of the lamp. He ransacked cosmography, astrology, alchemy, optics, the canon law, and the divinity of the schoolmen for ink-horn terms and similes. He was in verse what Browne was in prose. He loved to play with distinctions, hyperboles, paradoxes, the very casuistry and dialectics of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... love them. I'd like to talk to you about reincarnation and astronomy, of which I know something, and even astrology and the survival of the dead and lots of other things. But I have got to make my way in the world, and I've no time. You think me a heavy bore and an old fogey because I won't go to parties to which lots of those nice fellows ask me. Do you suppose I shouldn't like the parties and all the ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... in knowing what was past, and foretelling what was to come, by the assistance of astrology: and the virtue of his remedies principally consisted in giving present relief to unfortunate young women in all manner of diseases, and all kinds of accidents incident to the fair sex, either from too unbounded charity to their neighbours, or too ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... vein flows on with a blended clearness and energy, which has commanded the warm encomium of Campbell, and which prompted the diligent study of Pope. There is more courage required in attacking the follies than the vices of an age, and Hall shews a peculiar daring when he derides the vulgar forms of astrology and alchymy which were then prevalent, and the wretched fustian which infected the language both of literature and the stage. Whatever be the merits or defects of Hall's satires, the world is indebted to him as the founder of a school ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... no sublime appearance when he was brought before Mr. Marshal, nor could all his astrology avail upon this occasion. The evidence of the pawnbroker was so positive as to the fact of his having sold to him the dog-collar, that there was no resource left for Bampfylde but an appeal to Mr. Hill's mercy. He fell on his knees, and confessed that it was he who stole the dog, which ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... possible to acquire the knowledge this world is designed to give. This fact was so amply illustrated in a recent experience of the writer:—A friend had been studying occultism for a number of years but had not studied astrology. ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... government to the rank and dignity of a science by making it appeal to the reason instead of the fear and superstition of the people. The governments of the past, basing their claims upon divine right, bear about the same relation to democracy that astrology and alchemy do to the modern sciences of astronomy and chemistry. The old political order everywhere represented itself as superimposed on man from above, and, thus clothed with a sort of divine sanction, it ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... or at any rate taught, Delsarte, Physical Culture, Dress-Reform, the Blue-glass Cure, Scientific Physiognomy, Phrenology, Cheiromancy, Astrology, Vegetarianism, Edenic Diet, Single Tax, Evolution, Mental Healing, Christian Science, Spiritualism, Theosophy, and Hypnotism. All these metamorphoses of thought had Mrs. S. Cora Grubb passed through, and was not yet a finished butterfly. Some of the ideas she had left far behind, ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... their honour, and worshipped them as deities. Historical records of astronomy carry us back several thousand years. During the greater part of this time, and until a comparatively recent period, astronomy was associated with astrology—a science which originated from a desire on the part of mankind to penetrate the future, and which was based upon the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies upon human and terrestrial affairs. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... inaccessible to the human faculties. They amount to a denial, not merely of its truth, but of its very possibility. They place it among the dreams of the past—with the fables of the Genii, or the follies of Alchemy, or the phantoms of Astrology. They intimate, in no ambiguous terms, not only that Catholicism is effete, and Christianity itself dead or dying, but that Theology of every kind, even the simplest and purest form of Theism, must ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... extraordinary development of the feudal system, the separation of castes, convents of men and women, religious congregations regulated by discipline more or less severe, complicated divisions of time connected with the calendars, the zodiacs, and the astrology of the enlightened nations of Asia—all these phenomena in America belong to one region only, the long and narrow Alpine band extending from the thirtieth degree of north latitude to the twenty-fifth degree ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... written treasures. They lay piled one upon another, covered with dust, mildewed, and worm-eaten. Hubert, in the prosecution of his purpose, did not fail to examine the neglected documents; and he had reason to rejoice at his labours, when he found amongst the rolls a learned treatise on astrology, a science which he himself had studied with unwearied industry and ardour. His joy and astonishment, however, were not complete, until he found himself master of a decaying parchment, which, in almost obsolete characters, expounded to his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... not only is easy but hath something not common, it is more pleasing to them that make it; and this happens, when their knowledge is greater than that of the vulgar, as suppose they are well skilled in points of astrology or logic. For not only in action and serious matters, but also in discourse, every one hath a natural disposition to be ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... may be traced in the three or four first chapters of the work; but farther consideration induced the author to lay his purpose aside. It appeared, on mature consideration, that astrology, though its influence was once received and admitted by Bacon himself, does not now retain influence over the general mind sufficient even to constitute the mainspring of a romance. Besides, it occurred that to do justice to such ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... instance, with Hesperus, the moon's harbinger and comrade. But amid all those stars there is one—not Hesperus—which has always had from my childhood a mysterious fascination for me. Knowing as little of astrology as I do of astronomy, when I gaze upon that star I become credulously superstitious, and fancy it has an influence on my life. Have you, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the old gentleman. "I have consulted the book of Fate with rare and wonderful success. I am versed in the great sciences of astrology and astronomy. In my house here, I have every description of apparatus for observing the course and motion of the planets. Six months ago, I derived from this source, the knowledge that precisely as the clock struck five this afternoon a stranger would present himself - the destined husband ...
— The Lamplighter • Charles Dickens
... with the marvellous; the world was filled with prodigies, with strange gods, beckoning chimeras and credulous crowds. Belief in the supernatural was absolute; the occult sciences, astrology, magic, divination, all had their adepts. In Greece there were oracles at every turn, and with them prophets who taught the art of adultery and how to construe the past. On the banks of the Rhine there were girls who were regarded as divinities, and in Gaul ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... looking into the limpid grey waters of the lakes, striving hard to guess why, when the sea rose in tides, they were still. More than ever, too, did the starry skies fill him with contemplation and wonder, as he dwelt on the scraps alike of astronomy, astrology, and devotion which he had gathered from his oracle in the hermitage, and longed more and more for the time to return when he should again meet his teacher, his saint, and ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... placed beside them. Behind this party stood Giovanni Joungevello, an Italian minstrel, much in favour with Anne Boleyn, and Domingo Lamellino, or Lamelyn—as he was familiarly termed—a Lombard, who pretended to some knowledge of chirurgery, astrology, and alchemy, and who was a constant attendant on Henry. At the head of the bench, on the right of the table, sat Will Sommers. The jester was not partaking of the repast, but was chatting with Simon Quanden, the chief cook, a good-humoured personage, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the other hand, the efforts of the Jews were not without success. The baptism of the pious Olga marks an era in Russian Christianity, the beginning of the "Judaizing heresy," which centuries of persecution only strengthened. In 1425, Zacharias of Kiev, who is reputed to have "studied astrology, necromancy, and various other magic arts," converted the priest Dionis, the Archbishop Aleksey, and, through the latter, many more clergymen of Novgorod, Moscow, and Pskov. Aleksey became a devout Jew. He called himself Abraham and his wife Sarah. Yet, strange to say, he retained the favor ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... into the country; and here Alfonso confest to his friend that, since he had been at Rome, he had devoted himself to the science of astrology, divination, and other like things, which he had formerly held in abhorrence, having been of opinion that they could only be acquired by accursed means and by the help of evil spirits. "But since the day," he continued, "when I made acquaintance with the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... still pursued, for the elixir vitae, or water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it. From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Cherokee, the man who understood the Cherokee best, who made the most correct and melodious Cherokee verses, who comprehended most accurately the effect of the Cherokee particles, would generally be a superior man to him who was destitute of these accomplishments. If astrology were taught at our Universities, the young man who cast nativities best would generally turn out a superior man. If alchymy were taught, the young man who showed most activity in the pursuit of the philosopher's stone would generally ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... American Freemason, Dr. Mackey,[39] there was, besides the divine Cabala of the children of Seth, the magical Cabala of the children of Cain, which descended to the Sabeists, or star-worshippers, of Chaldea, adepts in astrology and necromancy. Sorcery, as we know, had been practised by the Canaanites before the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites; Egypt India, and Greece also had their soothsayers and diviners. In spite of the imprecations against sorcery contained in the law of Moses, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... had not learned to generalize, and sometimes with conjectures which had hardy any relation to a fixed principle or a scientific object. Long after the reign of David, these wise men had not distinguished the study of the stars from the dreams of astrology. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with the rest, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... a comet, or any other unusual appearance in the heavenly regions, was the precursor of calamities to mankind, or to those at least who witnessed it; the belief in the veracity of the oracles of Delphi or Dodona; the reliance on astrology, or on the weather-prophecies in almanacs, were doubtless inductions supposed to be grounded on experience:(113) and faith in such delusions seems quite capable of holding out against a great multitude ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... called by Moliere a minor comedy, but which may be rather considered as a piece of framework for the introduction of scenic pageantry, and which is only distinguished by some satirical shafts directed against the now obsolete folly of judicial astrology, we hasten to notice a masterpiece of Moliere's art in "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme." This piece was written to please the court and gentry, at the expense of the nouveaux riches, who, rendered wealthy by the sudden acquisition of immense fortune, become desirous to emulate such as have been ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... youth he had abandoned the world, and all the scripture had passed under his eyes. At eighteen years he knew all the sutra and the doctrines of Shaka (Sakyamuni), and books whether exoteric or esoteric. Moreover he understood thoroughly astrology and almanacs, the poetry of Morokoshi (China) and Nippon, and instrumental music. Truly once heard he knew ten times, so clever he was." It was to this Saint, in his eighty-second year, that the ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... brain at least, if not in heart —recognizing some isolated examples of such phenomena, admitted their truth while refusing to consider them as radiating from a common centre. Each of these was, then, bent on constructing a science out of a simple fact. Hence arose demonology, judicial astrology, the black arts, in short, every form of divination founded on circumstances that were essentially transient, because they varied according to men's temperament, and to conditions that are still ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... beloved friend and brother, I remember yet the former friendship we had together when we were schoolfellows and students in the university at Wittenburg; whereas you first studied physic, astronomy, astrology, geometry, and cosmography, I, to the contrary, you know, studied divinity, notwithstanding now in any of your own studies I am sure I have proceeded farther than yourself; for since I began I have never erred, for, might I speak it without affecting mine own praise, my calendars ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... that the earliest worship of the woman and child was much simpler than was that which came to prevail in later ages, at a time when every religious conception was closely veiled beneath a mixture of astrology and mythology. After the planets came to be regarded as active agencies in reproduction, and powerful in directing all mundane affairs, the Virgin of the Sphere while she represented Nature was also the constellation which appeared above the horizon at the winter ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... history, medicine, ethics, philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, poetry, and music; each shared the studious attention of the monks, and a curious "Liber de Astronomia" taught them the rudiments of that sublime science, but which they were too apt to confound with its offspring, astrology, as we may infer, was the case with the monks of Canterbury, for their library contained a "Liber de Astroloebus," and ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... celestial bodies, men naturally considered them as small; and, concluding that they were comparatively near, assigned to them in consequence a permanent connection with terrestrial affairs. Thus arose the quaint and erroneous beliefs of astrology, according to which the events which took place upon our earth were considered to depend upon the various positions in which the planets, for instance, found themselves from ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... which have the greatest effect upon our destiny. As a proof, I will relate to you the following circumstance. You are aware," continued the duke, "that the cardinal de Richelieu, the author of our good fortune, spite of the superiority of his mind, believed in judicial astrology. When his own immediate line became extinct by the unexpected death of his family and relatives, he wished to ascertain what would be the fate of those children belonging to his sister, whom he had adopted as the successors of his name, arms, and ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... whole affair is unreal. But I have known men of great intellectual powers who seemed to have no difficulty either in conceiving them, or, at any rate, in imagining how they could conceive them; and, therefore, four-dimensioned geometry comes under my notion of science. So I think astrology is a science, in so far as it professes to reason logically from principles established by just inductive methods. To prevent misunderstanding, perhaps I had better add that I do not believe one whit in astrology; but no more do I believe in Ptolemaic astronomy, ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... subject? Examples may serve in this as a warning and also for imitation. The contemplation of the world began from the noblest spectacle that the human senses present to us, and that our understanding can bear to follow in their vast reach; and it ended- in astrology. Morality began with the noblest attribute of human nature, the development and cultivation of which give a prospect of infinite utility; and ended- in fanaticism or superstition. So it is with all crude attempts where the principal part of the business depends ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... for this. Astrology was his passion, and the planetary conjunctions seemed then to be in favor of submission. The man was superstitious, with all his clear-sighted ability, and permitted himself to be governed by influences which have long since lost their ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Hipparchus and the Greek astronomers of the Alexandrian school, shaking off the vagaries of magic and divination, placed astronomy on a scientific basis, though the reaction of the Middle Ages caused even such a great astronomer as Tycho Brahe himself to revert for a time to the practice of astrology. ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... occultist, and the Rev. Robert Montgomery. [55] An artist of undoubted genius, Varley usually got fair prices for his pictures, but the expenses of a numerous family kept him miserably poor. Then he took to "judicial astrology," and eventually made it a kind of second profession. Curious to say, some of his predictions came true, and thanks to this freak of fate he obtained more fame from his horoscopes than from his canvasses. He "prognosticated," says Burton, "that I was to become ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... cultivation of the ground: landmarks, slaves, and agricultural labourers—Scenes of pastoral life: fishing, hunting—Archaic literature; positive sciences: arithmetic and geometry, astronomy and astrology, the science of foretelling the future—The physician; magic and its influence on ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the ne plus ultra of human wisdom. Time was when the alchemists thought they possessed the ne plus ultra of human knowledge, and that wisdom would die with them; yet their knowledge is now to chemistry what astrology is to astronomy. It is a superstition on whose claims no scientist would dare to risk his reputation. Now chemistry is the ne plus ultra of human wisdom, and every man is a fool who does not hold the key to the secret chambers of its hidden treasures! But how ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... pass, I know not;* but by ancient and modern example it is evident, that no great accident befalls a city or province, but it is presaged by divination, or prodigy, or astrology, or some way or other. I shall here ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... right, whose name was John Booker, and who, like himself, was a proficient in astrology, was so buried in calculation, that he did not raise his eyes from the paper on the approach of the strangers. He was a stout man, with homely but thoughtful features, and though not more than a year older than Lilly, looked ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in the traditions of ASTROLOGY, some pretty and apt divisions of men's natures,'—so in the discussions which occur on this same point in Lear, where this part of philosophy comes under a more particular consideration, and the great ministry which ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... India, assembled by the king, composed the Sindhind. Further on[23] he states, upon the authority of the historian Mo[h.]ammed ibn 'Al[i] 'Abd[i], that by order of Al-Man[s.][u]r many works of science and astrology were translated into Arabic, notably the Sindhind (Siddh[a]nta). Concerning the meaning and spelling of this name there is considerable diversity of opinion. Colebrooke[24] first pointed out the connection between Siddh[a]nta and Sindhind. He ascribes to the word the ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... course of nature of which the Psalmist had said, that all things served God, and continued this day as at the beginning, for God had given them a law which could not be broken. They believed in magic, and astrology, and a hundred other dreams, which all began from secret disbelief that God made the heaven and the earth; till they fancied that the Devil could and would teach men the secrets of nature, and the way to be rich and great, if they would but sell ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... accompanying statement are the best-known of the eight who were present,—men whose testimony in a court of law would be accepted without question. Dr. Frank Collins is, or was, President of the Osteopaths' Association, a Spiritualist, student of Astrology and mystical subjects, and a member of the Council of the California Psychical Research Society. Dr. J. C. Anthony is a well and favorably known physician, who has practised here for many years, also ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... their fall. The desire for power to pry into hidden things, and more especially events to come, is inherent in the human race, and has always been considered as of no ordinary importance, and rendered the supposed possessors objects of reverence and fear. The belief in astrology, or the power to read in the stars the knowledge of futurity, from time immemorial has been considered as the most difficult of attainment, and important in its results. And by the aid of a little supernatural machinery, both magicians and astrologers exercised the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... establishing propositions; rejecting superfluous causes, and drawing right conclusions. There were those having a knowledge of the science of words (grammar), of prosody, of Nirukta; those again that were conversant with astrology and learned in the properties of matter and the fruits of sacrificial rites, possessing a knowledge of causes and effects, capable of understanding the cries of birds and monkeys, well-read in large treatises, and skilled in various sciences. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... Rumanika then, at my suggestions, gave Nnanaji the revolving pistol I first gave him, but not without a sharp rebuke for his having had the audacity to beg a gun of me in consideration of his being a sportsman. We then went into a discourse on astrology, when the intelligent Rumanika asked me if the same sun we saw one day appeared again, or whether fresh suns came every day, and whether or not the moon made different faces, to laugh at us mortals ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... astrology to find lucky times to commence undertakings. Falling stars are considered to be the opening of heaven, and anything asked for at that moment will be granted. Thunders are the rumbling which S. Elias makes with his car. Amulets are worn, especially near the Turkish border. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... leather there's stuff here that will please you. No rubbish, you see; a man's room, a little quaint as to furniture, and the telephone and electric fan are the only anachronisms, a concession to the spirit of modern life. Here I have worked out some most abstruse problems in astrology. A capital place to ponder the mysteries. If anything on that tray ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... Astrology, after all, may have been something more than a brilliant heathenism. No wonder that Amos of the text, having heard these two anthems of the stars, put down the stout rough staff of the herdsman and took into his brown hand and cut and knotted fingers ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Books of hexameter verse. The poem should rather be called Astrology, as Astronomy is treated only in Book I. He is proud of being the first writer on this subject in Latin literature. Aclose study of Lucretius is obvious from several passages: he often imitates Vergil, and in the legends (e.g. of ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... mediaeval animistic belief is that in "elementals"—the spirits which personify the primordial forces of Nature, and are symbolised by the four elements, immanent in which they were supposed to exist, and through which they were held to manifest their powers. And astrology, it must be remembered, is essentially a systematised animism. The stars, to the ancients, were not material bodies like the earth, but spiritual beings. PLATO (427-347 B.C.) speaks of them as "gods". Mediaeval thought did not regard them in quite this way. But for those who believed in astrology, ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... of three invisible things, but the manifestation of God {627} in the Word and a communication of the substance of God in the Spirit." This is no new rationalism coming in but a reversion to an obsolete heresy, that of Paul of Samosata. It does not surprise us to find Servetus lecturing on astrology. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... speak here of those who throw themselves upon fortune because they have been happy before, as if there were something permanent therein. Their argument from the past to the future has just as slight a foundation as the principles of astrology and of other kinds of divination. They overlook the fact that there is usually an ebb and flow in fortune, una marea, as Italians playing basset are wont to call it. With regard to this they make their own particular observations, which I would, nevertheless, counsel none to ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... very far, your Majesties," protested the Astrologer, wriggling uncomfortably. "I—I did very little at it. And, even before it was decreed that all enchanters and sorcerers should either leave the Kingdom or take up some other profession, I had discovered that astrology was ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the classics, none of the grotesquenesses of chivalry, none of the allegory of the middle ages; there is no sectarianism either of politics or religion, no miser, no witch,—no common witch,—no astrology—nothing impermanent of however long duration; but he stands like the yew tree in Lorton vale, which has known so many ages that it belongs to none in particular; a living image of endless self-reproduction, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... counteracts, the wave of the air and the wave of the waters. He who is ignorant of electric law is ignorant of hydraulic law; for the one intermixes with the other. It is true there is no study more difficult nor more obscure; it verges on empiricism, just as astronomy verges on astrology; and yet without this study there is no navigation. Having said this much we will ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... showed his acquaintance with theology, a branch of learning always studied by him with delight. So also with regard to philosophy. Astrologers found him well versed in their science, for he somewhat lent faith to astrology, and employed it on certain private occasions. Musicians in like manner perceived his mastery of music, wherein he much delighted. The same was true about sculpture and painting: both of these arts he understood completely, and showed great ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... class of priests, those who have been successful in life are either placed in mosques or private families, waiting for advancement; but a greater number are nominally attached to colleges, and live by the practice of astrology, fortune-telling, the sale of charms, talismans, &c. They who are not possessed of the requisite ingenuity to subsist by the credulity of others, take charge of an inferior school, or write letters, and draw up marriage and other engagements, for ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... pain. They were from the nature of the case proselytizing societies, for they were rising into power; nor were they local, but vagrant, restless, intrusive, and encroaching. Their pretensions to supernatural knowledge brought them into easy connection with magic and astrology, which are as attractive to the wealthy and luxurious as the more vulgar ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... however, the serious question whether Wallenstein would accept his dismissal. His huge and ever-growing army was absolutely under his control. His influence over the troops was extraordinary. A firm believer in astrology, he asserted that the stars promised him certain success, and his followers believed him. Tall and thin, dark and solemn, silent and grim, wearing a scarlet cloak and a long, blood-red feather in his hat, he was declared by popular superstition to be in league ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... civilised country Logotheti's servants might have supposed that he retired to this solitude to practise necromancy or study astrology, or to celebrate the Black Mass. But his matter-of-fact Frenchmen merely said that he was 'an original'; they even said so with a certain pride, as if there might be bad copies of him extant somewhere, which they ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... Christian Herlin, professor of mathematics at the school of Strasburg, and Nicholas Prugner, who, after preaching the reformation at Mulhouse and at Benfeld, occupied himself at Strasburg with mechanics and astrology. These three learned men began this work, but did not terminate it; it was resumed in the year 1570 by a pupil of Herlin, named Conrad Dasypodius of Strasburg, where he was a professor of mathematics. Dasypodius drew the design of the clock, but ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... gentleman travelling from Dublin, named 'Master Richard Fitzgerald,' who joined Lord Altham and his household in drinking the healths of the 'lady in the straw,' and the long expected heir, in the customary groaning drink. It does not appear that Master Fitzgerald was learned in astrology, or practised any branch of the 'Black art,' or that he used any spell with reference to the infant more potent than these hearty libations and sincere good wishes for his future prosperity. Next day, before leaving the hospitable mansion, the little hero of this tale was presented ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... in good and bad angels that attend upon every person[144]. They build sumptuous temples, in which they have images of vast size. They are very religious, sparing in their diet, much given to divination, and addicted to the study of astrology. The country is exceedingly fertile, and abounds in gold, silver, and other metals. The memorable services of the subjects are recorded that they may be read to the kings. When the king of Siam takes the field, he is able to set on foot a force of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... features of this old Chaldaean religion which were destined to exert a wide-spread and potent influence upon the minds of men. Out of the Sabaean Semitic element grew astrology, the pretended art of forecasting events by the aspect of the stars, which was most elaborately and ingeniously developed, until the fame of the Chaldaean astrologers was spread throughout the ancient world, while the spell of that art held in thraldom ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... of mystery and longing for knowledge which produced the Bacchanalian clubs accorded a warm reception to astrology and made men listen with eagerness to those who could tell their fortunes or guide their lives by means of the stars. We do not know when the bearers of this knowledge first arrived in Rome, but Cato, in his Farm Almanac, our earliest piece of prose literature, in giving rules for ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... poetry, was the book which came out, timidly and anonymously, in the end of 1579, or the beginning of 1580, under the borrowed title of the Shepherd's Calendar, a name familiar in those days as that of an early medley of astrology and homely receipts from time to time reprinted, which was the Moore's or Zadkiel's almanac of the time. It was not published ostensibly by Spenser himself, though it is inscribed to Philip Sidney in a copy of verses signed with Spenser's ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Jew, who honored the Sabbath, had a very rich neighbor, who was a firm believer in astrology. He was told by one of the professional astrologers that his wealth would become Joseph's. He therefore sold his estate, and bought with the proceeds a large diamond, which he sewed in his turban, saying, "Joseph can never obtain this." It so happened, however, that while standing ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... it signify? You don't want me to believe in astrology. What does it matter what flames in the heavens—when men ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... troubadours; the romances of chivalry; and finally the novels of this and the past century. For nearly four thousand years fiction has delighted and moulded mankind. It has survived, too, when all else has died. The Chaldean books of astrology are lost to the moderns; but the story of the Idumean has reached us unimpaired. The lawgivers of Judah are no more, and the race of Abraham wanders over the earth; but the simple tale of Ruth preserves the memory of their customs, and keeps alive ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... year Bredon vicar of Thornton a profound divine, but absolutely the most polite person for nativities in that age, strictly adhering to Ptolemy, which he well understood; he had a hand in composing Sir Christopher Heydon's defence of judicial astrology, being that time his chaplain; he was so given over to tobacco and drink, that when he had no tobacco, he would cut the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... The moderns use a "Kura'h," or oblong die, upon whose sides the dots, odd and even, are marked; and these dice are hand-thrown to form the e figure. By way of complication Geomancy is mixed up with astrology and then it becomes a most complicated kind of ariolation and an endless study. "Napoleon's Book of Fate," a chap-book which appeared some years ago, was Geomancy in its simplest and most ignorant shape. For the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... because the return of Tiberius from Rhodes to Rome occurred at this time. [-11-] As for him he was so extremely well versed in the art of divination by the stars, having with him Thrasyllus, who was a past master of all astrology, that he had understood accurately what was fated both for himself and for them. And the story goes that once in Rhodes he was about to push Thrasyllus from the walls, because the latter was the only one aware of all he had in mind; observing, however, that his intended victim looked ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... its magnificently painted windows, adorned the upper part of the city. The number seven was a magic number in Brussels, and was supposed at that epoch, during which astronomy was in its infancy and astrology in its prime, to denote the seven planets which governed all things terrestrial by their aspects and influences. Seven noble families, springing from seven ancient castles, supplied the stock from which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gods of the heathen. Whether as conquerors or as corrupted guardians of the human race, they seek the same ends,—to divert worship from the true God, and by the destruction of man, to contrive a solace for their own perdition. They are the inventors of astrology, sooth-saying, divination, necromancy, and black magic; they were once the ministers of God, and still have a presentiment of his acts, so that they can sometimes speak truly of the future by means of oracles and magicians, claiming the while ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... A diagram of the heavens by which astrologers calculated nativities. Dryden resembled Chaucer in his belief in astrology. ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... languid and inactive character," and to make other damaging admissions that detract from the excellence of the elaborate portrait he has drawn of him. There was something fantastical in his favorite pursuits,—astrology, alchemy, antiquities, alphabet-making, and the like,—which the men of an iron age viewed with a contempt that probably had much to do with giving him that character which he has in history, contemporary opinion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the doctors awake by telling them that they have not yet shaken off astrology and the doctrine of signatures, as is shown by the form of their prescriptions, and their use of nitrate of silver, which turns epileptics into Ethiopians. If that is not enough, they must be given over to the scourgers, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... attached to the end of the "Works" until it was rejected by Apollonius Rhodius: doubtless it continued the same theme of how to live, showing how man can avoid disasters by attending to the omens to be drawn from birds. It is possible that the "Astronomy" or "Astrology" (as Plutarch calls it) was in turn appended to the "Divination". It certainly gave some account of the principal constellations, their dates of rising and setting, and the legends connected with them, and probably showed how these influenced human affairs or might be used as guides. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... to 'demonstrations' which scarcely rise to the level of presumptions, but, rather, of presumption. There is an accumulation of popular dogmatism that is very likely doomed within a century to be swept into the same oblivion with the 'Christian Astrology,' of William Lilly and the 'Ars Magna' of Raymond Lully—a mass of rubbish that is waiting for another Caliph Omar and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the present day had its origin in the Astronomical Ephemerides called forth by the needs of predictions of celestial motions both on the part of the astronomer and the citizen. So long as astrology had a firm hold on the minds of men, the positions of the planets were looked to with great interest. The theories of Ptolemy, although founded on a radically false system, nevertheless sufficed to predict the position of the sun, moon, and planets, with ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... wish of his guardians, at the Jesuit college of Olmutz, and soon changed his faith. In Italy, where he next studied, he made great advances in mathematics, law, languages, and the delusive science of astrology, in which he was a firm believer ever afterward. On his return to Germany, he fought in the imperial army against the Turks, who invaded Hungary. He had considerable estates in Bohemia, which were increased by his marriage, in 1606, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Ellangowan, on the very night the heir was born. Our hero, Guy Mannering, entering into the simple humour of Mr. Bertram, his host, agreed to calculate the infant's horoscope by the stars, having in early youth studied with an old clergyman who had a firm belief in astrology. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... Aryans, Medians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, and other nations (including our own, as did not Lilly predict the execution of Charles I., the plague, the great fire of London, and other events) was astrology practised. The Egyptians peopled the constellation of the Zodiac (the first open book for mankind to read), with Genii, and one of the twelve Zodiacal signs was Aries (the Ram). The ram is of the same species as the goat, and the god Pan was the Goat god, as we know. The astrologers, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Germain l'Auxerrois, she was at the expense of building another, which was the Hotel de Soissons, near the church of St. Eustache. When it was known to be Laurence de Saint Germain, Bishop of Nazareth, who had attended her upon her death-bed, people infatuated with astrology averred that ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... man cared nothing for the pantheon and all its mythology, he was therefore without his superstitions. He might still tremble at signs and portents, at comets, at dreams, and at the unpropitious behaviour of birds and beasts. He might believe in astrology and resort to its professors, called the "Chaldaeans." On the other hand he might laugh at such things. It was all a matter of temperament. It certainly was not every man who dared to act like one of the Roman admirals. When it was reported that the omens were unpropitious to an imminent battle ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... fit periods walks through Aries, Howe'er our earthly motion varies; And twice a year he'll cut the equator, As if there had been no such matter. Some wits have wonder'd what analogy There is 'twixt cobbling and astrology; How Partridge made his optics rise From a shoe-sole to reach the skies. A list the cobbler's temples ties, To keep the hair out of his eyes; From whence 'tis plain, the diadem That princes wear derives from them: And therefore ...
— English Satires • Various |
