Regulus Hess - De Quindecim Stellis: The Comprehensive Translations of Hermes on the Fifteen Fixed Stars

De Quindecim Stellis

The Comprehensive Translations of
Hermes on the Fifteen Fixed Stars

Regulus Hess

Christopher Warnock

Renaissance Astrology

Copyright 2022 Translator's Introduction, Notes on Texts and Translations Regulus Hess
Practical Commentary & Book Design
Copyright 2022 Christopher Warnock

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Fixed star sketches by Nigel Jackson

Contents

Translators Introduction

Of old they tell how Hermes Trismegistus, having received a mighty gift, dispensed it, and handed down to men the book De Quindecim Stellis . Says Cyranus: Hermes Trismegistus, a god known to all men, received from the angels a great gift of God.

The chief of those books were forty-two in number, as Clement of Alexandria records, which Egyptian hierophants bore aloft in sacred procession. These, he says, were the indispensable books of Hermes; though later Hermetic works would be composed in Greek, rather than translated. And however many there were in truth, nearly all of them perished in the succeeding centuries of turmoil, obscurantism and neglect. Yet some survived: among them was De Quindecim Stellis .

Beyond what has been said in our traditional sources, nothing is known of the early history of this work but what might be surmised by comparison with other ancient books of magic. Damigerons De lapidibus , for instance, is a compilation of gem-lore purportedly derived from an epistle sent by Evax, King of Arabia, to the Emperor Tiberius. What seems certain is that all three of these books were assembled from earlier sources descending out of the crepuscular mists of elder antiquity, and perhaps at last from the hallowed pen of the Thrice-great himself. Let us be done with speculation, however, and consider the recorded facts, which begin with the first flourishing of Islam.

For in the eighth century, at the behest of Caliph Al-Mansur, the Abbasid court astrologer Al-Naubakht was tasked with selecting an auspicious hour for the founding of Baghdad, an undertaking in which he was assisted by other wise men of note, including the Persian Jew Mashaallah. The chosen time was on July 31, 762, at 2:40 pm, after which the city was soon to become a great center of learning and culture, while the aforementioned Mashaallah would go on till his death in 815 to write numerous treatises on the stars drawn from the riches of Greek learning gathered by the conquering Mohammedans. In his writings he was particularly indebted to the Hermetic books of astrology, one of whichour De Quindecim Stellis he abridged and translated into Arabic, calling it The Four-part Book of Hermes .

A few hundred years later, in 1095, Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade, commencing a centuries-long struggle that would have the indirect result of an outpouring of Greek and Arabic writings into Christendom, including many works on astrology and magic. The Cyranides , for example, were rendered from Greek into Latin in the twelfth century; whereas De Quindecim Stellis never arrived in Europe in Greek form, but was translated from Mashaallahs Arabic during the thirteenth century, signifies its main contents, which are divided into four parts.

The book begins with a prologue containing a series of aphorisms ascribed to Hermes: this portion of the text is fragmentary and disjointed, evidently due to Mashaallahs abridgment. Next is the first part, describing the fifteen stars, which is one of the few surviving ancient accounts of the powers of the fixed stars. The second part enumerates the fifteen stones appointed to the fifteen stars, telling the physical qualities and occult virtues of each. The third part treats similarly of the fifteen herbs, some of which are accorded virtues of their own, while others are merely said to augment the powers of their corresponding stones. There are listed together with the herbs certain other mineral, vegetable and animal ingredients, of which almost nothing is said, save that they are appended for greater efficacy. Concerning these last, a comparison with other sources reveals that they were, at least in some cases, understood to have specific virtues akin to those of their respective stones and herbs. The fourth part is a list of the fifteen images and characters belonging to the fifteen stars, and suited to the foregoing operations. The work concludes with a scholium by Mashaallah on fifteen suffumigations for good and evil.

Unlike many other Latin spell-books, which were circulated in secret and subsequently lost or only partially preserved in a few imperfect manuscripts, Quadripertitus seems to have enjoyed some degree of popularity, as attested by its survival in at least thirty copies. In order to see the reason for this, it is necessary to consider the views of medieval Christian philosophy, or Scholasticism, on magic and the stars, which are oddly at variance with those usually accepted among Christians or even so-called Neo-Scholastics today.

Regarding the heavens, it was the prevailing belief that God ruled all material things below through the power of the things above, the sublunary world of the four elements being conjoined to the stars according to the model laid down by Aristotle, thus: This world necessarily has a certain continuity with the upper motions: consequently all its power and order is derived from them. To which he adds: For the originating principle of all motion is the first cause, that is, God.

It followed that the heavens worked in part by impressing their forms on the things below, as is told in the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum :

These etherial bodies are fixed in the heavenly spheres, and the seven governing planets reflect their forms in their own lights, as the eye and polished bodies reflect the forms and images of material objects, and thence they cast down their shadows towards the earth according to the decree of their Painter and Maker. Then everything in the mineral, vegetable or animal kingdom is stamped with those types of which it is capable.

Natural bodies acquire certain occult virtues resulting from their species through the influence of the heavenly bodies. And: The natural virtues of natural bodies result from their substantial forms which they acquire through the influence of the heavenly bodies; wherefore through this same influence they acquire certain active virtues.

Albertus Magnus applies this doctrine to precious stones, saying:

We find in stones virtues which are not those of any element at all, such as dispelling poison, driving away abscesses and attracting or repelling iron...It is the common judgment of all wise men that this power is the consequence of the specific form of this or that stone.

Thomas makes a similar statement:

The forms of mixtures, namely of inanimate bodies like stones, metals, minerals, in addition to the powers and activities which they share with the elements of which they are composed, have certain other more noble virtues and activities arising from specific formsfor instance, gold gladdens the heart and the sapphire stops bleeding.

While the Schoolmen thus endeavored to explain the origin of these operations according to philosophy, the same had been the object of common belief since time immemorial, and had seen a renewed popular acceptance after the eleventh-century publication of Marbodus of Rennes Liber de gemmis , a poem loosely based on Damigerons De lapidibus , describing the marvelous properties of sixty precious stones. Later medieval works, such as those of the encyclopedists Bartholomeus Anglicus, Arnoldus Saxo and Thomas Brabantinus, would rehearse such lore again and again, as a matter of common knowledge.