13. This sort of divination is said to have been introduced by the Persians. Varro says there are four kinds of divination, namely, by earth, air, water, fire; hence geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy.
14. Divini (sooth-sayers) are so called as if they were Deo pleni (full of God); for they pretend that they are full of divinity and they guess men’s future by a deceitful cleverness.
There are two sorts of [this] divination, skill and frenzy.
16. Arioli (sooth-sayers) are so named because they utter their execrable prayers at the altars (aras) of idols and make funeral offerings, and because of their solemn observances they receive responses from demons.
23. The genethliaci are so named because of their observance of natal days. They lay out men’s nativities according to the twelve constellations of heaven, and by the course of the stars endeavor to foretell the characters, deeds, and fortunes of the new-born, that is, under what sign each has been born, and what result it has for the life of him who is born.
25. At first the interpreters of the stars were called magi, as is read of those who announced the birth of Christ in the Gospel; later they had only the name of mathematici.
26. A knowledge of this art was granted up to the time of the Gospel, that when Christ was born no one after that should read the nativity of anyone from heaven.
30. To these belong also the ligatures, with their accursed remedies, which medical science condemns, whether in charms or in signs or in suspending and binding articles.
31. In all these the demonic art has arisen from a pestilential association of men and bad angels. Whence all must be avoided by Christians and rejected and condemned with thorough-going malediction.
Chapter 10. On the heathen.