House & Garden 
THE STARS AND FLOWERS 
1 here May Be More Wisdom in The Ancients’ Floral Astronomy 
l han We of a Material Age Suspect 
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
F ALL causes the remotest are stars,” says Robert Burton 
yy in “The Anatomy of Melancholy”, that charming old rag¬ 
bag of romantic learning, in which fascinating nonsense 
and shrewdly humorous wisdom are thrown together with so way¬ 
ward an art. He is discoursing on the possibility of planetary influ¬ 
ence on melancholy in general and particularly on the melancholy to 
which lovers are so notoriously subject. He will not exactly com¬ 
mit himself. "I will not here stand to discuss, obiter he says, 
“whether stars be causes or signs; or to apologize for judicial 
astrology’ ; but it is evident that his is not that wholesale scepti¬ 
cism which “will attribute no virtue at all to the heavens, or to 
sun or moon, more than he doth to their signs at an inn-keeper’s 
post, or tradesman’s shop.” 
One gathers that he is inclined to the opinion that there may 
well be “something in it”, and his open-mindedness on the question 
is one which some scholars and even men of science not given to 
credulity have retained up to the present day; even so sound a 
scholar and humanist as Dr. Richard Jarnett, for instance, who 
was convinced that astrology has a foundation of truth. Indeed, 
so many such “dreams at the dawning of philosophy” have of 
late been proved to have an essence of scientific truth that we may 
well pause before dismissing them to the lumber-room of super¬ 
stition. 
HERE is one important virtue to be urged in favor of such 
old “pseudo”-sciences: they preserved that proper attitude 
of awe and wonder before the mysterious phenomena of the 
universe, which we are in danger of losing by our familiar every¬ 
day acceptance of them. As Carlyle said, we live too much at 
ease in the midst of wonder and terror, “in the centre of Immen¬ 
sities, in the conflux of Eternities”. For example, when a few 
weeks ago M. Marconi was able for the first time in the history 
of the world to talk by wireless telephone between England and 
America, how calmly we took the astounding news! We have 
supped so full of scientific wonders that we took it for granted; 
and thus the more marvelous the Universe is demonstrated to be, 
the less sensitive we are becoming to its marvel. Instead of further 
spiritualising us, it seems in danger of doing the precise opposite. 
Our only interest in each new scientific discovery, each new 
advance towards the “Unknowable”, seems to be to what material¬ 
istic “business’ uses may we apply it. We have taken Emerson’s 
counsel to hitch our wagon to a star in a quite different way from 
what he meant by it, and we act as though the only use of the 
stars, of the celestial forces, was in the propulsion of our earthly 
wagons. 
T 
life of 
stones, 
HE old “superstitious” attitude was essentially finer, and 
tended to our thinking - more “nobly of the soul.” Accord¬ 
ing to astrology, not only human life, but all the physical 
the earth was influenced by the stars. “Colours, metals, 
plants, and animal life of all kinds were associated with 
the planets and placed under their tutelage”, and thus all existence 
was “bound with gold chains about the feet of God”. Nothing 
was isolated in the universe, but all created things were inter¬ 
dependent. 
Detached, separated, again cries out Carlyle, in his inspiring 
mysticism, “I say there is no such separation: nothing hitherto 
was ever stranded, cast aside, but all, were it only a withered leaf, 
works together with all.” Recent scientific discovery tends to 
corroborate this mystical attitude, but all too many of the “professed 
enemies to Wonder” continue to regard the most stupendous and 
mysterious facts of the universe as cold scientific facts and no more. 
The stars are just stars. 
S A correction to this prosaic attitude,—an attitude which, 
Fx. in leaving out the element of mystery that remains and must 
ever remain in “physical” life, however closely we may 
track some of its processes, leaves out the most important fact 
of all,—it is far from unprofitable for the modern botanist and 
flower lover to dip occasionally, if only for amusement, into the 
writings of those old herbalists” who linked their botany with 
astrology, and who held that there is a connection between stars 
and flowers. There would seem to be more than poetical imagery 
in Longfellow’s beautiful lines: 
“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, 
Blossom’d the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.” 
A MONG herbalists, Nicholas Culpeper was, even in his own 
1 * day (1649), regarded as something of a quack, but he 
was not alone in regarding the virtues of certain herbs as 
operative through the influences of the stars. His business was 
to consider them as curatives of disease, and he declared that “he 
that would know the reason for the operation of the herbs must 
look up as high as the stars”—a remark capable of profound and 
inspiring interpretation. And he continues, “it is essential to find 
out what planet has caused the disease and then by what planet the 
afflicted part of the body is governed. In the treatment of the 
disease the influence of the planet must be opposed by herbs under 
the influence of another planet, or in some cases by sympathy, that 
is each planet curing its own disease.” “Plants must always be 
picked according to the planet that is in ascendant.” 
Culpeper, of course, was only echoing a very ancient belief in 
the efficacy of planetary influence, beneficient or maleficient, on 
the various potencies latent in herbs and flowers. 
Shakespeare is rich in references to this magical lore. “In such 
a night, Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old 
Aeson, one recalls from the loveliest of all moon-drenched pas¬ 
sages in “The Merchant of Venice”, and “the slips of yew”, it 
will be remembered, blended in the hell-broth of Macbeth’s witches 
were “slivered in the moon’s eclipse”. 
Miss Eleanor Sinclair Rohde, in her fascinating book on “The 
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