It is significant of the trend of his mind that when he is discussing the periodic decline of science and letters, he suggests that it may be due to the direct action of God, punishing those who misapplied useful sciences to the destruction of men.
But his speculations were particularly compromised by his belief in astrology, which, notwithstanding the efforts of humanists like Petrarch, Aeneas Sylvius, and Pico to discredit it, retained its hold over the minds of many eminent, otherwise emancipated, thinkers throughout the period of the Renaissance.

[Footnote: Bodin was also a firm believer in sorcery.

His La Demonomanie (1578) is a monument of superstition.] Here Bodin is in the company of Machiavelli and Lord Bacon.

But not content with the doctrine of astral influence on human events, he sought another key to historical changes in the influence of numbers, reviving the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato, but working them out in a way of his own.

He enumerates the durations of the lives of many famous men, to show that they can be expressed by powers of 7 and 9, or the product of these numbers.