Book review: Astrology and the seventeenth-century mind: William Lilly and the language of the stars

'Just what was William Lilly so good at?' asks Ann Geneva near the start of this interesting book. It is a question well worth the asking, for William Lilly's almanacs were one of the publishing phenomena of the Civil War period, selling in their tens of thousands to a public anxious for signs of what was to come, and supported by a parliament well aware of the value of works which declared that the heavens proclaimed the downfall of the king. In the war for hearts and minds, Lilly was parliament's secret weapon, 'the first astrological republican'. Moreover, not only did he write his predictions in an accessible way, he also explained his methods, breaking the magicians' code. He even issued a manual, Christian Astrology, in 1647. Lilly's combination of evangelicalism and predictive success did more than anything to popularize the arcane craft of astrology.