The Discarded Image - Astrology (Part 1)

With the festivities of the U.S. Presidential Inauguration just days away, I thought it might be helpful to reflect upon a lesson on joviality I learned from C. S. Lewis. I'm weaving together threads from both The Discarded Image and A Preface to Paradise Lost so I must start with the former book...

In his chapter on "The Heavens" from The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval & Renaissance Literature (this chapter alone is worth the price of the book), Lewis raises a topic by name considered taboo by most modern evangelicals: astrology.

In doing so, Lewis carefully explains "The statement that the Medieval Church frowned upon this discipline is often taken in a sense that makes it untrue" citing three offshoots against which she did fight: (1) lucrative astrological predictions, (2) astrological determinism and (3) anything even suggesting the worship of the planets; "planetolatry" (pp 103-104).

Having said that, Lewis further explains that "the old language (of the medieval age) continually suggests a sort of continuity between merely physical events and our most spiritual aspirations. If (in whatever sense) the soul comes from heaven, our appetite for beatitude is itself an instance of "kindly enclyning" for the "kindly stede"" (p 94).

So that when I stumbled upon Shakespeare's Benedick (frustrated that he cannot write a sonnet to his beloved Beatrice) declaring

...I was not born under a rhyming planet...

-Much Ado About Nothing, 5.2.40-41

And also Beatrice explains her own personality

No sure my lord my mother cried, but then a star danced, and under that was I born

Ibid, 2.1.327-329

I see a speck of evidence that this astrological influence of which Lewis speaks wasn't lost during the Renaissance, or at least not lost by Shakespeare in 1600.

Lewis summarizes why a renaissance/medieval man might connect his poetic handicap or disposition to a planet from the Heavens:

All power, movement and efficacy descend from God to the Primum Mobile and cause it to rotate...The rotation of the Primum Mobile causes that of the Stellatum, which causes that of the sphere of Saturn, and so on, down to the the last moving sphere, that of the Moon...from east to west...Besides movement, the spheres transmit (to the Earth) what are called Influences - the subject matter of Astrology.

But to what extent are the Influences transmitted?:

On the physical side the influence of the spheres is unquestioned. Celestial bodies affect terrestrial bodies, including those of men. And by affecting our bodies they can, but need not, affect our reason and will. They can because our higher faculties certainly receive something (accipiunt) from our lower. They need not because any alteration of our imaginative power produced in this way generates, not a necessity, but only a propensity, to act thus and thus. The propensity can be resisted; hence the wise man will over-rule the stars. But more often it will not be resisted, for most men are not wise; hence, like actuarial predictions, astrological predictions about the behavior of large masses of men will often be verified.

To be continued...