The Centiloquy
The One Hundred Aphorisms of Claudius Ptolemy
Ptolemy's Centiloquy
"A day and hour are not to be elected until the quality of the object proposed shall be known."
"In the election of days and hours, make use of the malefics, to the same moderate extent as the skillful physician would use poisons in order to perform cures."
"In their generation and corruption forms are influenced by the celestial forms, of which the framers of talismans consequently avail themselves, by observing the ingresses of the stars thereupon."
"A sagacious mind improves the operation of the heavens, as a skillful farmer, by cultivation, improves nature."
"The mingled influences of the stars can be understood by no one who has not previously acquired knowledge of the combinations and varieties existing in nature."
"It is advantageous to make choice of days and hours at a time well constituted by the nativity. Should the time be adverse, the choice will in no respect avail, however favorable an issue it may chance to promise."
"A skillful person, acquainted with the nature of the stars, is enabled to avert many of their effects, and to prepare himself for those effects before they arrive."
"A mind apt in knowledge will discover truth more readily than one practiced in the highest branches of science."
"Whosoever may be adapted to any particular event or pursuit, will assuredly have the star indicative thereof very potent in his nativity."
"When an enquirer shall make mature search into an expected event, there will be found no material difference between the event itself and his idea of it."
"Judgment must be regulated by thyself, as well as by the science; for it is not possible that particular forms of events should be declared by any person, however scientific; since the understanding conceives only a certain general idea of some sensible event, and not its particular form. It is, therefore, necessary for him who practices herein to adopt inference. They only who are inspired by the deity can predict particulars."