Nine Books on the Nature of Things

Leaving these matters and returning to the monstrous signs of evil ascendants, you should know that not all monstrous signs arise from the ascendant alone. They often also arise from the stars of the human mind, which continually, at every moment, rise and fall with phantasy, estimation or imagination, just as in the upper firmament. Thus from the fear or terror of pregnant women are born many monsters, or children marked in the womb with monstrous signs. Their chief cause is fear, terror and desire, which arouse imagination. When a pregnant woman begins to imagine, her heaven revolves with its own motion just like the upper firmament, the ascendants rising or setting at every moment. After the pattern of the greater firmament, the stars of the microcosm too are moved by imagination, until an impact occurs through which the stars impart the influence and impression of imagination to the pregnant woman, as when someone impresses a seal or stamps a coin. Hence these signs and birthmarks are called impressions of the lower stars. Many have tried to philosophise at length about them and judge people reliably from them, which nevertheless cannot be done. Yet they adhere to and are impressed upon offspring according to the frequency or violence with which the mother’s stars act upon the foetus, or because the mother’s desire is not satisfied. For if a mother desires a certain food and cannot obtain it, and the stars are, as it were, suffocated within themselves and die down, that desire accompanies the child throughout life, so that the child can never adequately satisfy it. The same applies to other matters, which we shall not investigate at greater length here.