Little Question Two of Principal Question Five
Whether images can in some manner be transferred superstitiously into heaven
It is asked whether such images could have been transferred into heaven in some reasonable manner and not vainly and superstitiously.
Or thus: whether such images were transferred and attributed to the stars in heaven in some reasonable and non-superstitious manner.
To this it is answered that five causes are found for the transference of such images into heaven.
The first cause is assigned by the poets. For the poets fashion the Ram in heaven in honor of Jupiter, whom they say had the horns of a ram upon his head.
They likewise place the Bull in heaven in honor of Jupiter, because, according to the fable, he was changed into a bull when he carried Europa across.
They also established Castor and Pollux after death among the best-known signs, as the sign Gemini; the Lion in honor of Hercules, who killed it most valiantly in Greece; and Capricorn on account of a certain goat, the nurse of Jupiter.
And so concerning the fables of others, as is evident in the book on the forty-eight images of heaven.
Idolaters and gentiles, however, transferred images of this kind into heaven by reason of the honor or praise of certain virtuous human beings, or of animals on account of certain notable deeds or singular benefits which they performed in the inferior world. Because of these things they transferred human beings among the gods or goddesses and animals among the stars of heaven, as Isidore says in Book VIII of the Etymologies.
Hence also, as William of Paris relates, the superstition of the gentiles believed that upright and strenuous human beings in this life ascended after death to the beings above, into certain sidereal dwellings or corresponding stars, while evil persons descended to the infernal regions.
Therefore, when they looked upon the brightly starred heaven, they asked: “Where is the dwelling of Hercules? In what star does Hector live? Where does this or that person live?” and so forth.
For this reason the stars were distributed by the gentile poets and idolaters according to the aforesaid images in honor and deification of famous human beings, whom they call their gods.
This manner of transference is entirely vain and superstitious.
The second manner of transferring specifically the aforesaid twelve images of the Zodiac among the stars could have been for expressing by way of likeness the state of the Sun or a property of the air or season which happens for the most part when the Sun is in this or that part of the Zodiac.
For example, they could have placed Cancer in the fourth part of the twelve signs of the Zodiac because, when the Sun comes to that sign in the month of July, it goes backward in the manner of a crab and makes the days shorter; for this animal directs its movement toward either side.
Likewise, they could have called the sixth of the twelve parts of the Zodiac Virgo, because in those days during which the Sun runs through it, the earth, exhausted by the heat of the Sun, bears nothing.
The following part can be called Libra because, when the Sun is at the beginning of that part, there is equality of day and night.
They could have called the final parts of the Zodiac Aquarius and Pisces because, when the Sun is there in wintertime, rains occur more frequently; and so concerning similar cases.
Nevertheless, according to this manner, the nature commonly attributed to the twelve signs cannot be derived.
The reason is that otherwise that part which is called Cancer ought to be called hot and dry, because when the Sun is there the air is such for the most part. Yet the same sign, with respect to inhabitants beneath the pole, beneath the equinoctial, or in another part beyond the equinoctial, would possess one complexion or another with respect to this or that region.
Therefore, proceeding really and physically, the natures of the signs or twelve parts of the Zodiac, if any nature is found in them, must be derived from the fixed stars which are in them and alongside them on either side toward the south and north.
Nevertheless, however this may be, this manner of transferring the signs is not superstitious unless it is extended farther than it ought to be. This would occur, for example, if someone believed that, because a person was born with Cancer in the ascendant, he would be a backward and duplicitous human being in his customs. Every such claim would be superstitious.
The third cause or original occasion for transferring such images among the stars could have been a certain conformity in the position of the stars in particular aggregations. Thus even now country people call one cluster of stars a wagon and another a hen with her chicks. This is not superstitious.
The fourth cause of a transference of this kind could have been that the ancient philosophers, considering certain congregations of stars, inferred from the observation of effects that a particular cluster of stars possessed a particular nature and property.
For example, it was experienced that someone who had the image of an ape in the ascendant when he was born acquired a face similar to that animal.
But this is false.
For I take, by way of example, the assemblage of stars which is called the Bear and, in Greek, arctos, and I argue thus.
It is naturally impossible for the nature of that cluster of stars to be known. Therefore, the proposition is established.
The consequence is valid, and the antecedent is proved because the given nature of a fixed star cannot be known except from some aspect of a planet existing in the same degree of the Zodiac with it. But this can in no way be known. Therefore.
The reason is that every passage of a semicircle between the poles of the Zodiac through the degree of a star comprises several fixed stars, and it cannot be known to which of them the aforesaid effect belonged. Therefore.
The fifth and final cause of this superstition could have been that spirit of error whose greatest care, according to Blessed Augustine, is to introduce harmful opinions among human beings, especially concerning astral fates: namely, that these or those configurations of the stars are causes or signs of such future effects.
He suggested that so many configurations, so many aspects, so many relations, so many images, so many positions, so many dispositions, and so many variations of the stars should be observed in that beautiful work of God, heaven, that scarcely any effect—even a chance effect—can newly happen without its trace afterward being able, as it were, to be found there.
From this it is easy for astrologers afterward to reduce and color the effects which happen to the stars, as though those effects had shone forth from them. But they can predict nothing certain before the event.
This cunning rival of human salvation, the devil, who in earlier times suggested to lost human beings various divinatory arts—such as geomancy, magic, and necromancy—also suggested to human beings this practice of divination from the stars.
He perceived that such a divinatory art could be rendered more plausible than the aforesaid arts, because human beings commonly experience that the stars act in many ways upon these inferior things.
It is therefore very dangerous to involve oneself in that practice or art of judgments, especially according to the traditions of the ancients, who occupied themselves with the stars not as investigators of truth but as diviners from the stars.
These things are from Lord Henry of Hesse upon Genesis.