“Be opposite all planets of good luck
To my proceeding.”
And once more, in “Hamlet” (i. 1), Marcellus, speaking of the season of our Saviour’s birth, says, “then no planets strike.”
That diseases, too, are dependent upon planetary influence is referred to in “Timon of Athens” (iv. 3):
“Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o’er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one.”
“Fiery Trigon” was a term in the old judicial astrology, when the three upper planets met in a fiery sign—a phenomenon which was supposed to indicate rage and contention. It is mentioned in “2 Henry IV.” (ii. 4):
“P. Hen. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! what says the almanac to that?
Poins. And, look, whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping to his master’s old tables.”
Dr. Nash, in his notes to Butler’s “Hudibras,” says: “The twelve signs in astrology are divided into four trigons or triplicities, each denominated from the connatural element; so they are three fiery [signs], three airy, three watery, and three earthy:”
- Fiery—Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.
- Airy—Gemini, Libra, Aquarius.
- Watery—Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.
- Earthly—Taurus, Virgo, Capricornus.
Thus, when the three superior planets met in Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius, they formed a fiery trigon; when in Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces, a watery one.