Page:True fortune teller, or, Universal book of fate (1).pdf/8

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

8

The Ecliptic Line, is a line imagined to go along in the midst of the Zodiac as a girdle, out of which the Sun never goes; but the Moon and other planets are sometimes on the one side, and sometimes on the other side, which is called their latitudes, only the fixed stars alter not their latitudes, whether great or small; but the longtitude of a star is the arch, or parts of the ecliptic in degrees, between the beginning of Aries, and the circle which passeth through the body of Aries, and the circle which passeth through the body of the stars; where note, that all the circles of the sphere, or heavens, whether they are large or small, have 360 degrees allowed to each of them.

Colours are said to be two great movable circles, crossing each other at the poles of the world, one cutting the equinox at the beginning of Aries, Cancer, and Capricorn, and so dividing the globe into four equal parts.

Horizon is a great circle passing through the pole of the world, and the poles of the horizon, called the Zenith and Nadir (which are two points, one directly over our heads, the other directly under our feet), on which the Sun is always just at noon, and to go directly North and South, the meridian is changed; but to go to East and West, it is changed to sixty miles, either way makes one degree, or four minutes of time difference under the equinox, viz., sixty miles eastward, it is noon four minutes sooner, and sixty miles westward, four minutes later.

Tropics are supposed to be two lesser circles, parallel with the equinoctial, and distant from it on either side 23 degrees 31 minutes each; the ecliptic line touches the tropics of Cancer on