Book on the Universe

DE VNIVERSIT.

and strength, does this same thing in two years. Tzedec Jupiter, where the power of magistrates and religious equity resides, in 12 years. Saturn or Sabtai Saturn, which has its name from rest, cold, slow motion, and consistency, in 30 years. The eighth sphere resists the diurnal motion with the same motion, moving the fixed stars with it at the rate of one degree in 106 years. The ninth sphere completes its course versus the poles of the world in seven thousand years, placed upon poles situated at the head of the first and seventh sign, moving the stars of the lower orb. The Primum mobile first moved sphere or tenth heaven daily snatches all things with it, ascending from the point of midnight to midday, and descending from midday to midnight, whence the ancient reasoning of the Superiors and Inferiors. Because it is necessary that all things be done under God in order, and nothing at all be done rashly, there are ten kinds of intelligences ordered above the heaven, all ordering those things toward a certain end, which, through as many intelligences impressed upon the ten orbs, are moved here as into a place. Thus, all celestial influences occur into bodies and irrational souls from those double intelligences, but through the medium of the matter of the heaven. The Primum mobile, and consequently the nine lower spheres, is divided into five parallel circles, one oblique, and two always so transverse to themselves that they always intersect one another at equal angles. Of the parallels, the first is the equator great circle equidistant from poles, dividing the sphere into two equal parts, whose poles are the poles of the world. It is divided into 360 parts, which they call degrees, as are individual circles, especially the greater ones, which are the Meridian, Equator, Horizon, and Oblique sphere, of which parts sixty thousand paces correspond to each one on the earth.