Commentary on the First and Second Chapters of the Thirtieth Book of the Natural History of Gaius Plinius Secundus

which some call ephemeral: if three, a tertian: if four, a quartan. It must be weighed further, more carefully and attentively, that figures arising from numbers also have and retain the powers of the numbers, as the Mages report: on account of this, the pentagon, by the force of the quinary, is said to have a wonderful virtue against demons. By the force of the ternary number, the Delta, which is a triangular figure, is said to have most powerful forces. Thus the Egyptians testify that the square figure is the confirmation of all celestial bodies and demons, because it is the most straight of all figures, containing four right angles: and it is the first description of a surface, having length and breadth. For the Arab philosophers called the Cross the strength of the celestial bodies, because their strength would result from the straightness of the angles and rays, and the stars would be most strong when they obtain the four corners in the figure of the sky. Rufinus also narrates in his sacred History that the Cross was included among the sacred letters by the Egyptian priests, the power of which portended the hope of salvation to men believing in Christ our Savior. Furthermore, to execute the institutes of Magic, of natural Magic, I say. The Mages certainly report that characters, from the rays of the celestial bodies, have bright and wonderful gifts, by a certain occult property, with the figures adhering to them. For this reason, Astrologers figure the characters of the signs and stars, and so do the Mages. They have, moreover, figures according to the forms of the fixed stars. There are also other characters for the Mages, which I knowingly pass over. The Mages assert, however, that these characters receive their power from the soul of the world, and that the world itself is endowed with a soul, into which opinion not only philosophers but even poets go and plant their feet; wherefore Lucanus sang:

Balanced by the air, which sustains the Orb in the void,
And the diverse members of nature constructed of form.
This work constructed of the body of the immense world,
Of air and fire, of earth, and of the lying sea,
The Divine power of the soul rules, and by a sacred path