ANST - FW: Musing on September 24th -- The Lady and the Gambler

[j'lynn yeates]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


- -----Original Message-----
From: Ellsworth Weaver [mailto:astroweaver at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 01:45
To: 2thpix at surfari.net
Subject: Musing on September 24th -- The Lady and the Gambler


Dear Folk,

Today is the celebration of devotion to Our Lady of Ransom and the
birthday of a remarkable mathematician, gambler and astrologer.
Ladies
first.

Peter Nolasco was born in 1189 at Mas-des-Saintes-Puelle in France.
He
joined Simon de Montfort (not the founder of democracy and caller of
the first parliament but his father, the Elder) and the crusade
against
the Albigenses (see "Unto the Pure"). Peter was appointed tutor to
young king, James of Aragon, who had inherited the throne when his
dad
Pedro II was killed at the battle of Muret. Incidentally, that battle
was considered a smashing success for Simon.

Peter followed James back to Barcelona in 1215. It was there he had a
vision of the Blessed Virgin. She directed him toward a group of
noblemen, first joining together in 1192, whose purpose was to care
for
the sick and to ransom Christian captives away from the heathen
Moors.
The BVM told Peter he better help them. They needed to form an
actually
recognized order within the Church and to get some cash flowing.
Peter’s father confessor thought it was a great idea and helped out.
The first monks of the Order were the original noblemen, their
headquarters was the convent St. Eulalie of Barcelona. They were
charged to use up all funds they had or could get to rescue
prisoners.

On August 10, 1223, the Order became known as the Mercedarians and
were
given King James’ seal of approval  and Pope Gregory IX said go for
it
on January 17, 1235. August 1, 1233 is pretty special for them, too,
in
that Peter Nolasco was shown by the Blessed Virgin what the guys
should
be wearing: a white habit. Not that white was that easy to get clean
nor did it go with everyone’s complexion. Fortunately most of the
early
monks were winters and could wear that primary stuff. Encouraged them
to eat sparingly, also; we do know how big white makes most of us
look.
Anyway.

Peter was the first superior, with the title of Commander-General; he
also filled the office of Ransomer, a title given to the monk sent
into
the lands subject to the Moors to arrange for the ransom of
prisoners.
The holy founder died in 1256, seven years after having resigned his
superiorship; he was succeeded by Guillaume Le Bas.

Christopher Columbus took some members of the Order of Mercy
(Mercedarian) with him to America, where they founded a great many
convents in Latin America, throughout Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru,
Chile, and Ecuador. These formed no less than eight provinces,
whereas
they only had three in Spain and one in France. This order took a
very
active part in the conversion of the Indians.

The feast day was sort of a local one. By the 17th century it was
extended to the entire Latin Church. The actual day celebrated has
been
moved around a bunch but it has settled in to when most think Peter
had
his first visitation by the BVM, September 24. Our Lady of Ransom
became the patron saint of Barcelona. Peter got himself canonized and
became a saint. Good for him, really. Tending sick folks and getting
them out of captivity are worthwhile causes. Gunching Albigenses is
not
very nice but I doubt that Peter took time from teaching to do much
of
that.

One final note, in England the devotion to Our Lady of Ransom was
revived in modern times to obtain the rescue of England from
captivity
of the Anglican Church as Our Lady's Dowry. Mercy, mercy, mercy!

Today is also the birthday celebration of Girolamo Cardano on
September
24, 1501 in Parvia, Italy. He was a mathematician and astrologer, a
gambler and quite a guy: a soul determinded to be here.

He wrote an autobiography, De vita propria liber (The Book of My
Life),
which we still have so we know lots about him. He said that he was
born
despite several attempts at aborting him. He was the illegitimate son
of the jurist Fazio Cardano and Chiara Micheri. He was not a happy
youth. He was sick quite a bit and his folks really let him know he
wasn’t wanted. Can you imagine telling your kid that you tried to
abort
him a couple of times? Yow!

At nineteen he got away from his family by going to school, first in
Pavia and then University of Padua. He got a doctorate in medicine
and
set up shop near Padua. In 1531 he found someone to love, Lucia
Bandarini, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. He started his
studies of astrology there. He was happy.

In 1534 he took his family to Milan and got a teaching gig in Greek,
astronomy, dialectics, and math. He really started digging into math
then. They say teaching does make one a better student.  In 1539 he
wrote his first big paper: Practical Arithmetic. In 1545 he pumped
out
his big hit, Ars Magnae (The Great Art) which took the mathematics
world by a storm. He got into a pushing match with Niccolo Tartaglia
about it. It was the first major Latin work about algebra. It had
stuff
on negative roots and even square roots of negative numbers. As an
inveterate gambler, Cardano wrote a gambler's manual in which some
interesting questions on probability are considered. He loved his
piquet games.

He was still foremost a medical doctor. His rep was second only to
Andreas Vesalius. He even treated the Archbishop of Edinburgh in
1552.

Life was not all Twinkies and Yoohoo for him. His eldest son was
arrested for attempting to murder by poison his (the son’s) wife
right
after she gave birth. That landed the son in prison where he was
beheaded fifty three days later. This disgraced Cardano and his
family.
They left Milan and went to the University of Bologna where he taught
medicine. There he got in trouble again. The Inquisition accused him
of
heresy because he cast the horoscope of Jesus Christ. Resigning his
chair in Bologna he moved to Tome and became a distinguished
astrologer, receiving a pension as astrologer to the papal court. So
there!

Having cast his own horoscope and having predicted that he would live
to the age of seventy-five, Cardano committed suicide on 21
September,
1576.

What have we learned? The Blessed Mother wants us to ransom captives?
Children can be a great disappointment and so can parents? Even kids
from the worst upbringing can become shining stars? Astrologers
should
not do their own charts? How about trust a nerd to figure out a
mathematical system to beat the house?

So if you are out there casting the natal chart of a holy guy,
teaching
some young king, bathing the sores of lepers, or just predicting your
own death and you want to forward these Musings, please do. Do leave
my
name and sig. attached. And if you know of any syndicate wanting to
publish these let me know immediately.

Happy birthday to the best boss a scientist and astrologer could
have:
Robert Snyder. I -- along with many others --  am very glad you were
born. Hang in there, Sir!

Not predicting mine or any other death,

Your astrology guy,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis



=====
SmileWeavers Astrology Charts
SCA & Veteran Discounts
1748 Tierra Nueva Ln. Oceano, CA 93445 805.473.8867

Musing Archive at http://www.surfari.net/~2thpix/amuse/

Ray Clark Dickson Poetry http://www.rayclarkdickson.com/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com/

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>

iQA/AwUBOc51rs50zdvN3Vp0EQKSYwCgveHErP5IIUas52ECZ40oGfCSeIoAn1Iv
9mSAPIwiv3y+MzhG5yBj9wF0
=O8F5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.