Agrippa in popular culture: black books, children's tales, false quotes

Agrippa's name has had a life of its own, often far removed from his books. Over the centuries it has become a synonym for a magic book, a character in children's stories, a commercial label and, in recent times, an evocative name for novels, games and websites. Tracing this popular fortune is fascinating, but it calls for caution: much of what circulates today about Agrippa is inaccurate, and some of it is pure invention.

The book called Agrippa

In several regions of France, and especially in Brittany, nineteenth-century folklorists collected beliefs about a magic book called simply «the Agrippa». According to these tales, the volume was owned by priests, who received it at ordination or inherited it, and it served to drive away spirits or to master them. It was said to be dangerous to open and liable to escape the control of anyone who did not know how to use it.

These legends have no direct link with the text of De occulta philosophia: the philosopher's name had become a common noun for any book of magic. The same thing had happened with other authors, such as Albertus Magnus, whose name ended up on the title pages of popular collections of secrets he had never written, the so-called Grand Albert and Petit Albert.

From children's books to digital poetry

A curious example comes from Struwwelpeter, the famous illustrated children's book published in 1845 by the German physician Heinrich Hoffmann. In one of the stories a giant punishes three boys who mock a black child by dipping them in an inkwell. In the German original the character is called Nikolas, but in the English translations he becomes Agrippa, a sign that the name still evoked a figure of mysterious power.

At other times the name is misleading. In 1992 the writer William Gibson published an electronic poem entitled Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), designed to erase itself after a single reading. The title, however, refers to a family photograph album of that brand, not directly to the Renaissance magician. It is a useful case for remembering that a coincidence of names is no proof of influence.

The necessary cautions

In contemporary culture Agrippa appears in novels, comics, television series and video games, almost always as a dark magician or master of forbidden arts. These portrayals usually draw on legend rather than history, and mix elements taken from the apocryphal Fourth Book, from Barrett and from nineteenth-century occultism. Anyone looking for the real Agrippa should be wary of alleged quotations that circulate without a source.

A good rule is always to check whether a sentence attributed to Agrippa really appears in his works, and in which edition. Many maxims circulating online appear neither in De occulta philosophia nor in De vanitate, and some go back to much later writers. The same applies to the so-called seals and talismans of Agrippa, often derived from nineteenth-century sources.

Agrippa's popular fortune is nonetheless a legitimate chapter of his legacy, and deserves to be studied without contempt. It shows how a difficult thinker, who wrote in Latin for a narrow public of scholars, became a shared symbol, able to speak to readers who would never have opened his books. One need only know how to tell it carefully apart from the historical author.