Page:Tycho brahe.djvu/176

152 or twenty-one, when Venus comes in sextile aspect with Jupiter about the medium cœli, or in his thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year, or, if not married before, in his forty-seventh year, when the moon reaches the seventh house. But all this depends more on man's free will than on the stars. It does not seem that he will have many children, as Saturn is master of the fifth house, and is in a sterile sign, but if he has any, they will be healthy and long-lived. His friends will be "solar people," such as kings and princes, because the sun is ruler of the eleventh house, where pars fortunæ is placed. His enemies will be "jovial and mercurial people," because Jupiter is unluckily placed in the twelfth house, and Mercury ruling the twelfth is in the seventh, but the latter planet assumes the nature of Mars, which is in its sign. His enemies will, therefore, be ecclesiastics and warriors, but he will defeat them, because Venus, the ruling planet, is much higher in the sky than Mars, and is in the apogee of its excentric; but he must beware of captivity or exile on account of the position of Mercury, which is also injured by being in quadrature with Saturn. There is nothing to indicate a violent death, and the prince will die from natural causes, but Venus shows that he will cause his own death by immoderate sensuality.

Finally, Tycho ends this dissertation by saying that all this is not irrevocably settled, but may be modified by many causes. God is, besides, the origin of all, and the giver of life and all good things, and He disposes freely of everything according to His own judgment. He alone is therefore to be implored that He may rule our life, grant us prosperity, and avert evil.

The reader will pardon this long digression, but judicial astrology has played so important a part in the history of