The Anatomy of Melancholy

In his book On the Seven Secondary Intelligences, Trithemius gives names to angels who govern particular provinces—by what authority I do not know—and assigns them separate jurisdictions. Asclepiades, a Greek; Rabbi Akiba, the Jew; Abraham Avenezra and Rabbi Azariel, Arabians, as I find them cited by Cicogna, add that these beings are not merely our governors: “From their harmony and discord flow good and evil dispositions.”

As they agree or disagree, so do we and our princes; as they stand or fall, so do we. Juno was a bitter enemy of Troy, Apollo a good friend, Jupiter neutral: “Venus favoured the Trojans; Pallas was hostile.” Some are always for us, others against us: “When one god presses us hard, another brings help.” They bring about religion, statecraft, public and private quarrels, and wars. Perhaps they delight in watching men fight, as men delight in fights between cocks, bulls and dogs, bears, and so on.

Plagues and shortages depend on them, as do our well-being and misfortune and almost all our individual affairs. For, as Anthony Rusca maintains in book 5, chapter 18, everyone has a good and a bad angel attending personally throughout life—what Iamblichus calls a daemon. These beings oversee promotions, losses, weddings, deaths, rewards and punishments, and, according to Proclus, every kind of function: “Some have generative power, others formative power,” and so forth. They are given different names according to their functions: Lares, Indigetes, Praestites, and the like.

When the Arcadians acted treacherously at the battle of Chaeronea, fought against King Philip for Greece’s liberty, they were, long afterwards, wretchedly slaughtered on the very same spot by the Roman Metellus, “the gods of Greece exacting vengeance,” as my author says. In smaller matters too, these writers hold that events turn out according to whether these good and evil guardian spirits favour or dislike us: “Those of Saturn do not agree with those of Jupiter,” and so on. A man under Saturn is unlikely ever to gain advancement.

They attribute the frequent promotion of base fellows—undeserving Gnathos and vicious parasites—while prudent, wise, virtuous and worthy men are neglected and unrewarded, to these ruling spirits or subordinate guardian spirits. According to their dispositions and the favour they show, people prosper, are governed or are overpowered. For, as Libanius supposes, in our ordinary conflicts and disputes “one guardian spirit yields and submits to another”: one spirit gives way and is overcome by another.

They attribute almost every individual event to these personal spirits; and, as Paracelsus adds, the spirits direct, teach, inspire and instruct people. No man was ever extraordinarily famous in any art or achievement, or became a great commander, without a familiar spirit to instruct him: Numa, Socrates, and many others, as Cardan illustrates in Secrets of Political Prudence, chapter 128. “Magicians indeed claim that God bestows a special grace upon them, that heavenly spirits instruct and teach them.”