V. Of Astronomical Geomancy— Gerard Cremonensisf 1 1 14-87 ')

Gerard of Cremona was pehaps one of the greatest trans-
lators of the twelfth century having been responsible for
translating into Latin the Almagest of Ptolemy (the most
influential book on astrology of the age) works by Aristotle,
Euclid, Galen, Avicenna, and many more. Working at Toledo
he is credited by his pupils with translating most of the Greek
and Arabic texts available in the middle ages, a total of 71
different texts, some of immense size. Critics have suggested
that our present text was translated by Gerard of Sabbionetta,
a town near Cremona, but this seems unlikely.

The Astronomical Geomancy offers a different system of
geomancy to that outlined by Agrippa in the first treatise
in this volume. Although the points are generated in the same
manner, the figures are immediately translated into their
planetary or zodiacal equivalents and placed into a horoscope.

The bulk of the treatise is devoted to questions of the
different astrological Houses and their intepretation according
to the geomantically generated planets and signs occupying
that house.