CHAPTER 1

19. Geronimo Cardano, the great 16th century
physician and mathematician, was a poor
astrologer.
(Figure opposite), would fall ill at the age of 55 years, 3 months and 17 days. When the King failed to oblige by dying at the age of sixteen, Cardano was forced to admit that, in the case of men with a constitutional weakness — a clear sign that they had not been adequately marked by the stars — astrologers would have to cast the horoscopes of all their associates as well. When his "environmental" theory was generally ridiculed, Cardano is said to have taken his own life at the age of 75, to prove the validity of the horoscope he had cast for himself.^ His younger compatriot, Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615), who founded the first European seat of scientific learning — the "Academy of the Mysteries of Naples" — ^had already learnt the bitter lesson of defeat. According to him, the stars merely 1 Alexandre Arnoux: Le Seigneur de I'Heure (Paris 1955).
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY
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20. Horoscope cast by Cardano for Edward VI of England. The horoscope proved to be com- pletely wrong.
caused men to have certain predispositions — astra inclinant, non necessitant. This proposition which is found in della Porta's Ccelestis Physiognomiae continues to serve astrologers as a con- venient excuse to this day.
Times were clearly changing, and the greatest prophet of the 16th century, the French physician Nostradamus (Michel de Nostre-Dame, 1503-1566) is remembered for his political^ rather than for his astrological predictions. These were typical intuitive prophecies, in the style of the ancient oracles. His mystical quatrains have been used to predict the entire future history of France, and some of his prophecies were subsequently related to explain the rise of Napoleon, and even of Mussolini, Hitler and Roosevelt. ^
To his contemporaries, Nostradamus was above all a necro- mancer, and in this field he truly excelled. Having correctly predicted the death of Henri II of France during a tournament, four years in advance, Henri's widow, Catherine de Medici,
^Nostradamus: Centuries (Lyons 1555). ^ Nostradamus: Centuries II, 41.
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