214 Signatures and Astrology [ch. 



and his followers approached the subject of the relation 

 between plants and stars, it is necessary to realise the position 

 which Astrology had come to occupy in the Middle Ages 1 . 



It was in ancient Babylon that this pseudo-science 

 mainly took its rise. Here the five planets which we 

 now call Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Mercury, and 

 also the Sun and Moon, were identified, in certain senses, 

 with seven great Gods. The movements of these heavenly 

 bodies were supposed to represent in symbolic fashion the 

 deeds of these Gods. It was thought possible to interpret 

 the movements and relative positions of the planets and the 

 sun and moon, in a way that threw light upon the fate of 

 mankind, in so far as it depended upon the Gods in 

 question. 



Some centuries before the Christian era, Babvlonian 

 astrology began to influence the nations farther to the West. 

 In Greece, the subject took a more personal turn and it was 

 believed that the fate, not only of nations but of individuals, 

 was determined in the skies, and could be foretold from the 

 position of the planets at the time of a man's birth. At a 

 later period, speculation on the subject was carried further 

 and further, until finally not only men, but all animals, 

 vegetables and minerals were associated, either with par- 

 ticular planets, or with the constellations of the Zodiac. 



That a belief in the influence of the moon upon plants 

 dates back to very early times in western Europe, is shown 

 by the statement, in Pliny's ' Natural History,' that the 

 Druids in Britain gathered the Mistletoe for medical 

 purposes, with many rites and ceremonies, when the moon 

 was six days old. To trace the history of astrology in 

 detail is altogether beyond our province, but, as an example 

 of its universal acceptance, we may recall the reference to 

 the supreme influence of the stars in the preface of the 

 Herbarius zu Teutsch of 1485 (see p. 19). Astrological 

 ideas were familiar in Elizabethan England, and are reflected 

 in many passages in Shakespeare's plays, never perhaps 

 more charmingly than in Beatrice's laughing words — " there 

 was a star danced, and under that I was born." 



Paracelsus, though his name is so well known in this 



1 See article on 'Astrology,' The Encyclopaedia Britannica, eleventh edn. 

 Cambridge, 19 10. 



