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From the second sprang the absurd search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, portents, and omens.
The magi in Persia, the Brahmins in India, the Chaldae in Assyria, the magicians of Arabia, the priesthood of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and the Druids of Britain, were all members of a class which comprised astrology, omens, divination, conjuration, portents, chiromancy, and sorcery; and all united in the pursuit of enslaving mankind for the purposes of gain and power, with artfully devised schemes, and a skilful series of impostures; and we can easily imagine the influence they must have exercised over the minds of their proselytes, when we bear in mind the effect produced by similar contrivances in later days.
From this worthy precedent of Judicial Astrology, others took the hint and invented new modes of divination, such as Geomancy, Chiromancy, Onomancy, and the like; till the world by degrees became so overrun with superstition, that the least trifle was converted into a presage or presentiment; and the more so when this kind of knowledge became the business of religion; and when the substance of divine worship consisted in the ordinances of Augurs who, to make themselves necessary in the world, were obliged to keep up and quicken men's apprehensions of the wrath of God, took special care to cultivate comets, and bring it into a proverb, that "so many comets so many calamities."
Chiromancy maybe delusion or not it matters but little; here we are concerned with the great moral truth that underlies this distinction. The place that I fill in the universe will never be changed by my thought; I shall be as I was to the day of my death; but my actions will almost invariably move me forwards or backwards in the hierarchy of man.
We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun by Campanella.
We think of palmistry or chiromancy as belonging to the days of Albertus Magnus, or, if existing in our time, as given over to the gypsies; but a very distinguished person has recently shown me the line of life, and the line of fortune, on the palm of his hand, with a seeming confidence in the sanguine predictions of his career which had been drawn from them.
He was a man, furthermore, who called sorcery simply "a thing impossible," and thus addressed a writer on chiromancy: "We . . . believe that the lines of the hand have as little connection with the events of life as with the liver and stomach, notwithstanding Aristotle, who you forget was a heathen and cared as little for the Scriptures as the Gitanos, whether male or female."
Having come to the age of three years, the boy had a most beautiful countenance, with curly locks, and showed great grace in every movement, with a quickness of intelligence that was marvellous; insomuch that Maestro Giuliano del Carmine, an excellent astrologer, and with him a priest devoted to chiromancy, who were both close friends of Bartolommeo, having arrived in Vinci and lodged in Bartolommeo's house, looking at the forehead and hand of the boy, revealed to the father, both the astrologer and the chiromancer together, the greatness of his genius, and predicted that in a short time he would make extraordinary proficience in the mercurial arts, but that his life would also be very short.
On being made acquainted with reveries such as these, through the means of the press, we are inclined to doubt the justice of his encomium on the art of printing, since which discovery, he tells us, superstition has been much lessened by the reformation of religion; and necromancy, astrology, chiromancy, witchcraft, and vampyrism, have vanished from all classes of society; though some are still so weak in the present enlightened times as to believe in the prodigies of animal magnetism, and of metallic tractors.
We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'lndaginé, and of De la Chambre ; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck ; and the City of the Sun of Campanella.
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