The second variety of images is a little less improper, but still detestable. In it certain names are exorcized by the inscription of characters. Such are the four rings of Solomon and the nine candelabra and the three figures of spirits who are called the princes of the four quarters of the world, and the Almandel of Solomon, the seven names from the book Uraharum,[2305] the fifteen from The Institutes of Raziel, and so on. “Far from us be this sort also,” says our author, “for it is open to the suspicion that beneath the names in unknown tongues may lie hidden something contrary to the purity of the Catholic Faith.”
Good astronomical images.
The third variety of images, in which the author sees no harm but much good, and which he has called “the sublimest part of astronomy,”[2306] are purely astronomical images which derive their virtue from the configurations of the sky but admit no other inscription of characters, and neither exorcisms, invocations, nor suffumigations.[2307] In a later chapter,[2308] however, he permits in addition to astronomical figures and symbols the engraving of certain simple words and images of objects of obvious meaning, such as a scorpion and the word Destruatur upon an image intended to drive scorpions away.
The question of free will.
Meanwhile, between these two chapters upon astronomical images, the author returns in four chapters to the other sub-divisions of astrology, mainly with the purpose of investigating whether revolutions, nativities, interrogations, and elections are incompatible with freedom of the human will,—a question upon which he has already touched a little in previous chapters. He maintains the usual position that the celestial influences make impressions according to the fitness of matter to receive them, and that man by using his intellect can to a considerable degree be master of his fate. As usual he cites Ptolemy’s dictum that “the astrologer can avert much evil from the operation of the stars, if he knows the nature of the influence to be exerted upon him and can prepare himself beforehand to receive it.”[2309]
And elections.
Therefore the author regards election of favorable hours as an admission alike of freedom of the will and of astrological influence, and affirms that “in entering upon great undertakings, it is rashness, not freedom of the will, to despise election of the hour.”[2310] Moreover, he asserts that “all philosophers are agreed in this, that when we know the hour of impregnation of any woman, we thereby know the history of the foetus until it breathes and comes forth from the womb and until death.”[2311] Hence one should choose the moment of conception as carefully as the hour for a surgical operation,—a passage paralleled by Albert’s account elsewhere of the care exercised by Nectanebus as to the hour of his intercourse with Olympias.
Free will and nativities.
Despite what he has just said about tracing the history of the foetus until death, the author regards the doctrine of nativities as in large measure inconsistent with freedom of the will.[2312] After the mental and moral faculties have sufficiently developed, he believes in freedom of choice, and so holds that the casting of horoscopes, especially in regard to moral characteristics, infringes upon free will. Even when such a matter as length of life is predicted from the constellations for an individual, he contends that it does not mean that one must live that long, but that one’s natural term of life cannot be prolonged beyond that point.
Revolutions.