Now Scorpio was 'called the house of death, and of trauaile, of harm, and of domage, of strife, of battaile, of guilefulnesse and falsnesse, and of wit'; Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. viii. c. 17. We may represent the position of Mars by the following table, where _East_ represents the _ascending_ sign, _West_ the _descending_ sign; and A., S., and C. stand for 'angle,' 'succedent,' and 'cadent house' respectively. _East._--Aries. Taurus. Gemini. Cancer. Leo. Virgo. 1. A. 2. S. 3. C. 4. A. 5. S. 6. C. _West._--Libra. Scorpio. Sagittarius. Capricornus. Aquarius. Pisces. 7. A. 8. S. 9. C. 10. A. 11. S. 12. C. Again, the 'darkest house' was sometimes considered to be the _eighth_; though authorities varied. This again points to Scorpio. 'Nulla diuisio circuli tam pessima, tamque crudelis in omnibus, quam octaua est.'--Aphorismi Astrologi Ludovici de Rigiis; sect. 35. I may 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. 305. 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. 307. '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.