[It is] an old rumor about magicians, and a boast of those same [magicians], that they themselves can drive backward the Sun and Moon, and the other eyes of the world, and all the heavenly bodies, make them stand, and impel them in whatever way they will. Tibullus (book 1, elegy [2]):
Her, the sorceress, I have seen drawing the stars down from heaven; by [her] chant she cleaves the path of the swift lightning.
In Ovid, in the Epistle of Hypsipyle concerning Medea:
She strives to draw down the reluctant Moon from her course, and to hide in darkness the horses of the Sun.
Horace, Epodes, Ode 5:
…the stars charmed down by a Thessalian voice, and [she] tears the Moon from the sky.
And the last Ode [Epode 17]:
…from the pole I could tear down the Moon by my words.
More grandiloquently [than] all, Lucan (book 6, on Erichtho):
The successions of things ceased; and the day, drawn out by a long night, hung fixed; the aether obeyed not the [natural] law. The headlong world grew torpid at the chant once heard; and Jupiter, urging on with his swift axles, marvels that the impelled poles go not round.
I pass over that kind [of thing] in Seneca’s Medea and Hercules Oetaeus, in Claudian (book 2 Against Rufinus), and in many others. Petronius certainly…
(col. 1007)
…[Petronius] Arbiter, when he had brought on a witch boasting in various and portentous ways, attributes these [powers] too to her at the last:
Why do I tell of lighter things? The Moon’s image, drawn down by my chants, descends; and Phoebus [the Sun], his orb reversed, is forced, trembling, to wheel back his raging horses.
But in truth it is agreed that all wizards and witches accomplish all these and similar things not by the power of chants, herbs, and other like things, but by the work of evil demons. Then indeed, since the Sun and Moon of their own accord desire to come to rest (as was said in the previous question), the demons seem able to impede the impulse which is applied to them from without for motion. And Lactantius, expressly (book 7, chapter 17), seems to attribute to Antichrist the power of stopping the Sun: “He will hold back,” he says, “fire from descending from heaven, and [will make] the Sun stand still from its courses.”
But in very truth those unhappy spirits can do none of these things. The report about them is false and too poetical; empty and lying [is] the great boasting of the Magi and the sorcerers; and all the prodigies of Antichrist himself are counterfeit and void of all truth, as the Apostle testifies (2 Thessalonians 2:9). But the reason why a demon cannot hinder the courses of the heavens and stars is not that it could not [do] this by its own natural powers (for many of the demons are Angels who, as the common opinion holds, preside over the moving of the heavens, equal or even superior [to the rest] in power and strength of action); but, first, because, on account of [their] sin and the punishment inflicted upon them, all the wicked [spirits] are subject to all and each of the good Angels — so that, though estranged from them by [their] evil will, yet in actual fact and effectively, in matters that do not depend on anyone’s free will and that are not against the common course of nature, they avail nothing. Then, because the fixed orders and motions of the heavenly things are established and predetermined by divine providence, so that against them no force of any creature can do anything — neither change nor impede them. Nor indeed is it fitting that, in the house and region whence, for their crimes, they were cast out, they should have any further power. But if you wish [for] more, betake yourself to our [fellow Jesuit] Del Rio (book 2 of the Disquisitions, questions 10 & 11), [and] Abulensis here, question 81.