macrocosm has two luminaries, the sun and moon; man has also two luminaries, the right eye representing the sun, and the left eye the moon. The macrocosm has mountains and hills, man has bones and skin. The macrocosm has heavens and stars, man has a head and ears. The macrocosm has twelve signs of the zodiac; man has them also from the lobe of the ear to the feet, which are called the fishes." This writing dates approximately from the fourth or fifth century.
The expressions macrocosm and microcosm are frequently met with in astronomical, medical, and theosophical writings of the middle ages; they are found in the works of Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, John Baptist van Helmont, and of Nicolas Culpeper. Shakespeare used one of them; Menenius says to Sicinius, "If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follow it that I am known well enough too?" (Coriolanus, ii, 1). The phrase "map of my microcosm" obviously refers to the picture of the nude man surrounded by the zodiacal signs.
This "wicked stupefaction of the mind" astrology, has been kept alive during the past two hundred years largely through the wide popularity of almanacs. From their earliest appearance these useful aids to everyday life have mingled truth with error; and through the prevailing association of astrology with the diseases of man and the means of curing them, they become the vehicles for advertising quack medicines. This feature of almanacs is said to have originated with Francis Moore, whose Vox Stellarum was founded in 1698; but I have found an advertisement of a medical nostrum in the Merlini Anglici Ephemeris of 1671; the "Elixir Proprietatis" is advertised as an "effectual medicine for griping of the guts, putrid Feavers" and other distressing maladies.
The pictorial representation of the influence of the zodiac on man's anatomy occurs as early as the year 1496, in Gregor Reisch's Margarita Philosophica, a famous encyclopædia that went through many editions. This engraving is amusingly described by Robert Southey in The Doctor: "There Homo stands, naked but not ashamed, upon the two Pisces, one foot upon each; the fish being neither in the air, nor water, nor upon the earth, but self-suspended, as it appears, in the void. Aries has alighted with two feet on Homo's head, and has sent a shaft through the forehead into his brain. Taurus has quietly seated himself across his neck. The Gemini are riding astride, a little below his right shoulder. The whole trunk is laid open, as if part of the old accursed punishment for high treason had been performed upon him. The Lion occupies the thorax as his proper domain and the Crab is in possession of the abdomen. Sagittarius, volant in the void, has just let fly an arrow.
