In order to appreciate the attitude in which Paracelsus 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[41].
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, Babylonian 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 particular 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 connection, was by no means the first writer on botanical astrology. A book called ‘De virtutibus herbarum,’ erroneously attributed to Albertus Magnus, had a wide circulation from early times, being first printed in the fifteenth century. It was translated into many languages, one English version appearing about 1560 under the title ‘The boke of secretes of Albartus Magnus, of the vertues of Herbes, stones and certaine beastes.’ It does not contain very much information about plants, being mostly occupied with animals and minerals, but there are very definite references to astrology. For instance we are told that if the Marigold “be gathered, the Sunne beynge in the sygne Leo, in August, and be wrapped in the leafe of a Laurell, or baye tree, and a wolves tothe be added therto, no man shal be able to have a word to speake agaynst the bearer therof, but woordes of peace.” Concerning the Plantain we read, “The rote of this herbe is mervalous good agaynst the payne of the headde, because the signe of the Ramme is supposed to be the house of the planete Mars, which is the head of the whole worlde.”
The herbal of Bartholomæus Carrichter (1575), in which the plants are arranged according to the signs of the Zodiac, is considerably more complete and elaborate than the book to which we have just referred. It seems however impossible to discover the principle, if any, which guided the author in connecting any given herb with one sign of the Zodiac rather than another.
Much stress is laid in this herbal on the hour at which the herbs ought to be gathered, great importance being ascribed to the state of the moon at the time. We are reminded of a passage in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ where Jessica says of a bright moonlight evening—
“In such a night
Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Æson.”