Lucky and unlucky days played a very important part in the conduct of life. Cromwell’s lucky day was the 3rd of September. Thursday was an unlucky day for Henry VIII. and his children. Every change of moon brought an unlucky day; there were also certain unlucky days in every month. Lord Burghley, who despised these observances as a rule, kept three days in the year as especially unlucky. The reasons why he considered them unlucky mark a great gulf between his time and ours. The first Monday in April was one, because on that day Cain was born and Abel was killed. The second Monday in August was another, because then Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. The remaining day was the last Monday in December, because at that time Judas Iscariot was born. How these days were discovered, and why they should be unlucky for all time to follow, are questions which it is impossible to answer.
Almanacks containing lists of lucky and unlucky days were in great request, and continued until quite recently. They were consulted by everybody before entering upon any kind of work.
The autobiography of William Lilly is valuable for its unconscious exposure of fraud, impudence, credulity, and superstition. He lived throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century. It was an age in which the so-called science of astrology flourished exceedingly. The astrologer not only cast nativities and foretold in general terms the future of a man, but also condescended to answer questions concerning doubtful points, as in matters of love; found lucky days for the commencement of any business or enterprise; discovered thefts and thieves; practised physic without preliminary training, and compelled, by means of the crystal ball or some other magic, spirits and angels to perform their bidding. In all these pretensions and powers Lilly firmly believed; yet he was unable to prove them by making the spirits, his servants, obey him in great things—such as the rescue of King Charles and the triumph of his cause. Moreover, in his simple chat about his brethren of the fraternity he is quite unable to see how he gives away the whole of his own pretensions by exposing their weakness and their failures. Thus one of them “sets a figure” about himself. He learns from this figure that he is to be a Lord or great man within two years. Alas! in two years he was in Newgate Prison. Another time he set his figure, and learned that he was to be a great man within a year. But in that year he advanced not one whit. And being consulted by a friend about to undertake a voyage, he learned by astrology that it would be a fortunate adventure. Unhappily it proved the reverse, for the adventurer was taken prisoner by pirates and lost his all. He set down four or five other judgments, in every one of which he was wrong. Lilly, however, sees in these failures no reflection on the “science” at all. Another of them, Evans, a clergyman who had to give up his benefice on account of some scandal, lived by giving judgment on things lost; he was “much addicted to debauchery,” very abusive and quarrelsome; he made and sold antimonial cups, and he was in correspondence with an angel named Salmon, whom he ordered to fetch and carry for him. His portrait, if it is genuine, represents a face like a dog’s—the most ill-favoured, ill-conditioned, repulsive face imaginable. Another, Alexander Hart, used his wonderful powers for finding lucky days for young gentlemen about to gamble. Lilly does not seem to have grasped the elementary fact that any one actually possessing magical powers would certainly use them for his own enrichment. And there was Captain Bubb, who “resolved horary questions astrologically.” He, however, was found out and put into pillory. There was one Jeffrey Neve, who brought Lilly two hundred “verified questions,” desiring him to correct them for publication, but of the first forty, thirty were untrue. There was Dr. Ardee, who declared that an angel had offered him a lease of life for one thousand years; yet the poor man died at fourscore.