t the walls, which gave the name
to the Porta Lavernalis.

[61] The goddess of eloquence, or persuasion, who had always a great
hand in the success of courtship.

[62] She was also called Cinxia Juno.

[63] She was an old Sabine deity. Some make her the same with Ceres; but
Varro imagines her to be the goddess of victory.

[64] From this distribution arose, perhaps, the scheme of our modern
astrologers, who assign the different parts of the body to the different
constellations, or signs of Zodiac: as the head to Aries, the neck to
Taurus, the shoulders to Gemini, the heart to Cancer, the breast to Leo,
and so on. The pretended issues of astrology have been always
inseparable from stellar influence, and the zodiac has ever been the
fruitful source of its solemn delusions.

[65] Some confound this goddess with Proserpine, others with Venus.

CHAPTER VIII.

JUDICIAL ASTROLOGY--ITS CHEMICAL APPLICATION TO THE PROLONGATION OF LIFE
AND HEALTH--ALCHYMICAL DELUSIONS.

The study of astrology, so flattering to human curiosity got into favour
with mankind at a very early period,--especially with the weak and
ignorant. The first account, of it we meet with is in Chaldea; and at
Rome it was known by the name of the "Babylonish calculation," against
which Horace very wisely cautioned his readers.[66] It was doubtless the
first method of divination, and probably prepared the mind of man for
all the various methods since employed of searching into futurity; a
brief view therefore of the rise of this pretended science cannot he
improper in this place, especially as the history of these absurdities
is the best method of confuting them. Others have ascribed the invention
of this deception to the Arabs;--be this as it may, Judicial
Astrology[67] has been too much used by the priests and physicians of all
nations to encrease their own power and emolument. They maintain that
the heavens are one great book, in which God has written the history of
the world; and in which every man may read his own fortune and the
transactions of his time. In this department of astrology (judicial) we
meet with all the idle conceits about the horary reign of planets, the
_doctrine of horoscopes, the distribution of the houses, the calculation
of nativities, fortunes, lucky and unlucky_ hours, and other ominous
fatalities. They assert that it had its rise from the same hands as
astronomy itself;--that while the ancient Assyrians, whose serene
u