Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter XXIV — What Things Are Lunary, or Under the Power of the Moon · 2 of 2 · tr. Henry Morley; L. W. de Laurence ed.
Chapter XXIV, Section 1b
But most Lunary of all is the two-horned beetle, horned after the manner of a bull, which digs under cow-dung and there remains for the space of twenty-eight days (in which time the Moon measures the whole Zodiac), and in the twenty-ninth day, when it thinks there will be a conjunction of their brightness, it opens the dung and casts it into water, from whence then come beetles.
Amongst fish, these are Lunary: Ælurus, whose eyes are changed according to the course of the Moon, and whatsoever observes the motion of the Moon, as the tortoise, the echeneis, crabs, oysters, cockles and frogs.
§ Ask Guru about this passage →Themes
Animismcosmology
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage explicitly attributes consciousness and action to animals like tortoises, echeneis, crabs, oysters, cockles, and frogs based on their observation of the Moon.
All passages →Cosmic Sympathycosmology
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The text establishes a direct causal link between celestial movements (Moon's conjunction) and animal behavior (beetles emerging from dung).
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