Derek Parker > Quotes

“The technique of discovering ‘secret marks of the body’ by astrological means was fairly widely employed, and the earlier astrologer Simon Forman used it on many occasions as an aid to seducing his female clients. There must surely have been something in it, if only informed guesswork. In any case if an astrologer could tell a client that he or she had a mole on the right side of her navel and it turned out to be the case, some sort of advantage surely resulted.”
― Derek Parker, William Lilly: Astrology in the seventeenth century

“One tends to forget, when reading about the Civil War, that to a large number of Englishmen it was in the main simply a nuisance. Historians chronicle the adventures of the heroes –of those men who felt passionately on either side of the question -and analyse the political arguments and conclusions. But thousands of people simply tried to go on living their lives as though nothing serious was happening; though as the war went on this became more and more difficult. They stayed at home and without too much complaint faced the problems the war brought (dangerous to complain, whichever side one’s auditors were on); their horses were confiscated or simply stolen by the army; soldiers were quartered on them, broke their furniture, seduced their daughters and enlisted their sons.”
― Derek Parker, William Lilly: Astrology in the seventeenth century