The Magus/Book 1/Part 2/Chapter 8

ALL ftars have their peculiar natures, properties, and conditions, the feals and characters whereof they produce through their rays even in thefe inferior things, viz. in elements, in ftones, in plants, in animals, and their members whence every thing receives from an harmonious difpofition, and from its ftar fhining upon it, fome particular feal or character ftamped upon it, which is the fignificator of that ftar or harmony, containing in it a peculiar virtue, different from other virtues of the fame matter, both generically, fpecifically, and numerically. Every thing, therefore, hath its character impreffed upon it by its far for fome peculiar effect, efpecially by that ftar which doth principally govern it; and thefe characters contain in them the particular natures, virtues, and roots of their ftars, and produce the like operations upon other things on which they are reflected; and ftir up and help the influences of their ftars, whether they be planets, or fixed ftars and figures, or celeftial conftellations, viz. as often as they fhall be made in a fit matter, and in their due and accuftomed times; which the ancient wife men (confidering fuch as laboured much in finding out occult properties of things) did fet down, in writing, the images of the ftars, their figures, feals, marks, characters, fuch as Nature herfelf did defcribe by the rays of the ſtars in thefe inferior bodies: fome in ​ftones, fome in plants, fome in joints and knots of trees and their boughs, and fome in various members of animals. For the bay-tree, lote-tree, and marigold, are folary herbs, and, their roots and knots being cut, they fhew the characters of the fun; and in ftones the characters and images of celeftial things are often found. But there being fo great a diverfity of things, there is only a traditional knowledge of a few things which human underſtanding is able to reach; therefore very few of thofe things are known to us, which the ancient philofophers and chiromancers attained to, partly by reafon and partly by experience; and there yet lie hid many things in the treafury of Nature, which the diligent ftudent and wife fearcher fhall contemplate and difcover.