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Page:Colson - The Week (1926, IA weekessayonorigi0000fhco).djvu/58

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on this theory that the astrological world based its practice. If we look through the seven volumes of Kroll's Catalogue of the Codices of Greek Astrologers, enumerating many hundreds of treatises, we shall find not unfrequently titles and occasionally more or less complete documents, which shew clearly that the week is mapped out in 168 hours, with different influences ascribed to them. The details, many of which are exceedingly fantastic, will be better left till we enquire what the week meant in fact for the general public, which so universally adopted it. But the general theory evidently is that while every hour is attributed to a planet, which is called its 'controller,'[1] the whole day is under the 'regent,'[2] which controls its first hour. These two influences modify each other. In the 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd hours of any given day the 'regent' and 'controller' are identical: in the others they are different. Thus to take 'Saturn's day' with which the series begins, in the four hours mentioned, the unlucky planet will be the sole influence and all our actions will be liable to misfortune. Jupiter and Venus, on the other hand, are beneficent, so these same hours on Thursday and Friday will be fortunate. But let us take the 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd on Saturday, or the 7th, 14th, 21st on Thursday. In the first case we have Saturn as 'regent' and Jupiter as 'controller': in the second case the reverse of

  1. διέπων.
  2. πολεύων.