Page:The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe.djvu/92

84 : under what stars different regions belong, how the effects of the stars vary according to time as well as place, how the heavenly bodies influence the nature of events, and finally how they determine their quality, good or bad. The third and fourth books, besides taking up separately the particular effects of each planet as it enters into conjunction with each of the others, comprise chapters with such headings as the following: "de parentibus," "de fratribus," "de masculis et femellis," "de geminis," "de natis qui nutrire non possunt sed mox extinguuntur," "de dignitate," "de magisterio," "de coniugiis" "de liberis," "de amicis et inimicis," "de servis," "de perigrinatione," "de genere mortis." These two books discuss how length of years, fortune, diseases, and various qualities of body and mind may be predicted from the stars; in short, how man's entire life is ordered by the constellations. Such is the book which Bouché-Leclercq calls "science's surrender."

V. The hermetic hooks and occultism.—An account of belief in magic in the Roman Empire would be incomplete without some reference to the famous hermetic books. Hermes Trismegistus might, as deservedly as any other man—had he only been a man and not a myth—be called the father of magic, just as he used to be known as the father of Egyptian science and just as he was regarded by many as the inventor of all philosophy. In the time of Plato the Egyptian god Thoth acquired the name of Hermes from the similarity of his functions to those of the Greek god. He also came to be considered as the author of pretty much all knowledge and was given the epithet of "Thrice Great." The entire body of Egyptian occult lore