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Chaucer's Works, Volume 5 — Notes to the Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer; ed. Walter W. Skeat · 1900

passage 133 of 421 · (133/203)

also note here, that in Lydgate's Siege of Troy, ed. 1555, fol. Y 4, there is a long passage on the evil effects of Mars in the 'house' of Scorpio.

  1. The meaning of Atazir has long remained undiscovered. But by the kind help of Mr. Bensly, one of the sub-librarians of the Cambridge University Library, I am enabled to explain it. Atazir or atacir is the Spanish spelling of the Arabic al-tasir, influence, given at p. 351 of Richardson's Pers. Dict., ed. 1829. It is a noun derived from asara, a verb of the second conjugation, meaning to leave a mark [151] on, from the substantive asar, a mark; the latter substantive is given at p. 20 of the same work. Its use in astrology is commented upon by Dozy, who gives it in the form atacir, in his Glossaire des Mots Espagnols dérivés de l'Arabique, p. 207. It signifies the influence of a star or planet upon other stars, or upon the fortunes of men. In the present case it is clearly used in a bad sense; we may therefore translate it by 'evil influence,' i. e. the influence of Mars in the house of Scorpio. On this common deterioration in the meaning of words, see Trench, Study of Words, p. 52. The word craft, for example, is a very similar instance; it originally meant skill, and hence, a trade, and we find star-craft used in particular to signify the science of astronomy.

  2. 'Thou art in conjunction in an unfavourable position; from the position in which thou wast favourably placed thou art moved away.' This I take to mean that the Moon (as well as Mars) was in Scorpio; hence their conjunction. But Scorpio was called the Moon's depression, being the sign in which her influence was least favourable; she was therefore 'not well received,' i. e., not supported by a lucky planet, or by a planet in a lucky position. weyved, pushed aside.

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Chaucer's Works, Volume 5 — Notes to the Canterbury Tales · Geoffrey Chaucer; ed. Walter W. Skeat · 1900