The seven planets and their natures in Agrippa's cosmology

In Agrippa's cosmology the seven planets are the great mediators between the divine world and the earthly one. Following Ptolemaic astronomy, he arranges them in the order known as Chaldean, from the farthest to the nearest to the Earth: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. The Sun and the Moon are counted among the planets, that is, among the wandering stars, as ancient usage required. Each possesses a nature of its own, which it impresses on the earthly things subject to it.

Qualities and characters

The natures of the planets derive largely from the Tetrabiblos of Claudius Ptolemy, the astrological treatise of the second century AD that remained an authority until the seventeenth century. Saturn is cold and dry, slow and heavy; Jupiter temperate, warm and moist, the most beneficent; Mars hot and dry, violent; the Sun hot and life-giving, prince of the planets; Venus temperate and moist; Mercury changeable, taking on the nature of the planets it joins; the Moon cold and moist, mistress of change.

From these qualities descend the characters. Saturn governs melancholy, solitude and deep meditation; Jupiter justice, prosperity and religion; Mars war and daring; the Sun dignity and kingship; Venus love and beauty; Mercury eloquence, commerce and the sciences; the Moon journeys, waters and all that waxes and wanes. These are ancient associations, which the images of the pagan gods had made familiar to all of European culture.

Saturn and the scholars

The case of Saturn is of particular interest. In medieval tradition it was the most feared planet, linked to old age, poverty and sadness. Marsilio Ficino, however, in the De vita of 1489, had partly reversed its image: Saturn was also the planet of scholars and contemplatives, who because of their secluded life were exposed to melancholy but capable of the highest speculation. Ficino himself, born under Saturn according to his own horoscope, saw in it the sign of his vocation.

Agrippa adopts this re-evaluation and develops it. For him Saturn, the highest planet, is also the nearest to the intellectual world, and therefore the most suited to raising the mind towards divine things. This idea of a noble melancholy, uniting suffering and genius, would have great influence on sixteenth-century culture, in art as in literature.

Planets, days and hours

The planets govern not only things but also time. Each day of the week takes its name from a planet, as European languages still show: in Italian lunedì comes from the Moon, martedì from Mars, mercoledì from Mercury, giovedì from Jupiter, venerdì from Venus, while Saturday and Sunday preserve in English the memory of Saturn and the Sun. Astrological tradition also divided the day into planetary hours, each governed by a heavenly body.

Besides the planets, the second book also deals with the fixed stars, the signs of the zodiac and the twenty-eight houses or mansions of the Moon, a doctrine of Arabic and Indian origin transmitted to the Latin world through the Picatrix and other texts. The whole makes up a living sky, populated by different influences, which Agrippa describes with the aim of showing its order and meaning.

The doctrine of the planets is the backbone of celestial magic. Without it the correspondences of the first book would lack foundation, and the images and squares of the second would make no sense. Today this astrology belongs to the history of ideas, yet it has left a deep mark on language, from the jovial temperament to the saturnine one and the mercurial character.