To astrological politics we owe the theory of heaven-sent rulers, instruments in the hands of Providence, and saviours of society.
Napoleon, as well as Wallenstein, believed in his star. Many passages in the older English poets are unintelligible without some knowledge of astrology.
Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe; Milton constantly refers to planetary influences; in Shakespeare's King Lear, Gloucester and Edmund represent respectively the old and the new faith.
We still contemplate and consider; we still speak of men as jovial, saturnine or mercurial; we still talk of the ascendancy of genius, or a disastrous defeat.
In French heur, malheur, heureux, malheureux, are all derived from the Latin augurium; the expression né sous une mauvaise étoile, born under an evil star, corresponds (with the change of étoile into astre) to the word malôtru, in Provençal malastrue; and son étoile palit, his star grows pale, belongs to the same class of allusions.
The Latin ex augurio appears in the Italian sciagura, sciagurato, softened into sciaura, sciaurato, wretchedness, wretched.
The influence of a particular planet has also left traces in various languages; but the French and English jovial and the English saturnine correspond to the gods who served as types in chiromancy rather than to the planets which bear the same names.
In the case of the expressions bien or mal luné, well or ill mooned, avoir un quartier de lune dans la tetê, to have the quarter of the Moon in one's head, the German mondsüchtig and the English moonstruck or lunatic, the fundamental idea lies in the strange opinions formerly (and in some cases, still) held about the Moon.
Napoleon, as well as Wallenstein, believed in his star. Many passages in the older English poets are unintelligible without some knowledge of astrology.
Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe; Milton constantly refers to planetary influences; in Shakespeare's King Lear, Gloucester and Edmund represent respectively the old and the new faith.
We still contemplate and consider; we still speak of men as jovial, saturnine or mercurial; we still talk of the ascendancy of genius, or a disastrous defeat.
In French heur, malheur, heureux, malheureux, are all derived from the Latin augurium; the expression né sous une mauvaise étoile, born under an evil star, corresponds (with the change of étoile into astre) to the word malôtru, in Provençal malastrue; and son étoile palit, his star grows pale, belongs to the same class of allusions.
The Latin ex augurio appears in the Italian sciagura, sciagurato, softened into sciaura, sciaurato, wretchedness, wretched.
The influence of a particular planet has also left traces in various languages; but the French and English jovial and the English saturnine correspond to the gods who served as types in chiromancy rather than to the planets which bear the same names.
In the case of the expressions bien or mal luné, well or ill mooned, avoir un quartier de lune dans la tetê, to have the quarter of the Moon in one's head, the German mondsüchtig and the English moonstruck or lunatic, the fundamental idea lies in the strange opinions formerly (and in some cases, still) held about the Moon.
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