He takes the argument no further, but does not seem to be intending to denigrate astrology, for he goes on to misquote Plato in support of the theory that the planets control nature and the human body. The heavenly bodies, he argues, heat the atmosphere, which in turn heats water - which forms a fundamental part of all animal bodies - and so must affect every living thing. He lists the planets and their qualities and humours, and puts forward some theories about how the principles were discovered, not only suggesting practical but symbolic reasons. The ancients, he suggests, discovered that Saturn was a 'cold' planet because when the Sun was cooler than usual it was in Cancer and in conjunction with Saturn in the same sign. But he also pointed out that Saturn was said to carry a scythe because a man who did so 'did more execution when receding than advancing'. Venus was said to have committed adultery with Mars because when those two planets were close together, Mars took away some of Venus' good influences.
It has been suggested that Henry II's interest in astrology, fostered by his tutor William of Conches and by his father Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, was sufficient to make him the patron of Abenezra (1092-1167), a Jew from Toledo, who came to England in 1158 to lecture in London and Oxford. He was also a poet:
The planets and stars in their courses
Made way when I first saw the light;
If I were a seller of candles
The Sun it would shine all the night.
I try to succeed, but I cannot,
For the heavenly spheres oppose;
If I took to winding-sheet sewing,
Then no-one would die, I suppose.
Abenezra seems to have had a pleasant sense of humour as well as considerable fame as an astrologer-writer (his De nativitatibus was reprinted in the 15th and 16th centuries). He lectured not only in England but all over Europe, and may briefly have occupied the chair of astrology at the university of Bologna.