The Occult PhilosophyA website by Studio Esoterico CornelioThe three books
The De occulta philosophia of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, printed in full at Cologne in 1533, is one of the great encyclopaedias of Renaissance magical thought. This section works through its contents book by book. It begins with the architecture of the three worlds, elemental, celestial and intellectual, which supports the whole work. The first book, devoted to natural magic, deals with the elements, occult qualities, sympathy and antipathy, fascination, and the animals and stones described after Pliny and the medieval lapidaries. The second, celestial or mathematical magic, opens with the numbers from one to twelve and their scales, then moves on to harmony, geometric figures, the planets, astrological images and the planetary squares. The third, ceremonial magic, addresses religion, divine names, Kabbalah, angelic hierarchies, the soul, the furies and prophecy. The picture is completed by Agrippa's sources, from Ficino to Pico, from Reuchlin to Pliny, and by the history of the so-called Fourth Book, which is not his. The ideas are told as a history of thought, not as practices.
Agrippa's three worlds: elemental, celestial and intellectual
How Cornelius Agrippa arranged the De occulta philosophia around three worlds and three magics, natural, celestial and ceremonial, from physics to theology.
From the 1510 manuscript to the Cologne edition of 1533
The long making of the De occulta philosophia: the first draft dedicated to Trithemius, the revisions, the 1531 edition and the complete one of 1533.
The four elements and their qualities in the first book
Fire, air, water and earth in the De occulta philosophia: the primary qualities, the three orders of elements and their presence in heaven, angels and man.
Occult virtues and the soul of the world
Why does the magnet attract iron? Agrippa explains occult qualities through divine ideas, the soul of the world and the spirit joining heaven and earth.
Sympathy and antipathy: the friendships and enmities of nature
The vine and the elm, the lion and the cock, the magnet and the diamond: natural sympathies and antipathies Agrippa gathered from Pliny and the philosophers.
Fascination: the gaze that binds in the first book
Agrippa on fascination: the spirit leaving through the eyes, the ancient sources from Plutarch to Pliny, and the theory of love of Marsilio Ficino.
Animals, plants and stones: Agrippa's bestiary and lapidary
Solar lions, lunar stones, planetary metals: how Agrippa built his catalogues of nature from Pliny, Albertus Magnus and the medieval lapidaries.
The numbers from one to twelve in the second book
Unity, duality, trinity and beyond: the meaning Agrippa gives to the numbers from one to twelve, between Pythagoras, the Bible and the Church Fathers.
The scales of numbers: Agrippa's tables of correspondences
The scales of numbers in the second book: tables linking each number to God, angels, planets, stones, human limbs and hell, a model for later occultism.
Harmony and music: the cosmos as a chord
The music of the spheres, Pythagoras and the hammers, David's harp: how Agrippa's second book links musical harmony to the planets and the human soul.
Circle, pentagon and human body: the geometry of the second book
Geometric figures in Agrippa's second book: the perfect circle, the pentagon, the triangle and man inscribed in figures, from Vitruvius to the 1533 edition.
The seven planets and their natures in Agrippa's cosmology
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon in the De occulta philosophia: qualities, temperaments and astrological sources from Ptolemy to Ficino.
Astrological images: from the Picatrix to the second book
Images of planets, signs and decans in Agrippa's second book: Arabic sources, the Picatrix, Thabit ibn Qurra and the doubts of medieval theologians.
The planetary squares: the numerical tables of the seven planets
The planetary tables of the second book: number squares from three to nine, their sums, their Arabic origins and the square in Dürer's Melencolia I.
Religion and ceremonial magic: the opening of the third book
The third book of the De occulta philosophia: why for Agrippa the highest magic requires religion, the distinction from goetia and the aim of the ascent.
Divine names and Christian Kabbalah in the third book
The Tetragrammaton, the ten sefirot and the names of God: how Agrippa took up Jewish Kabbalah through Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin.
Seraphim, thrones and archangels: Agrippa's angelic hierarchies
The nine angelic choirs of Pseudo-Dionysius, the angels of the planets and the three guardians of man: the doctrine of spirits in Agrippa's third book.
The soul, the divine furies and prophecy according to Agrippa
Mind, reason and idolum: the human soul in Agrippa's third book, Plato's four furies, the melancholy of genius and the forms of prophecy.
Agrippa's sources: Ficino, Pico, Reuchlin and Pliny
The books behind the De occulta philosophia: Ficino's Platonism, Pico's magic and Kabbalah, Reuchlin's divine names and the encyclopaedia of Pliny.
The so-called Fourth Book: an apocryphon under Agrippa's name
The Liber quartus attributed to Agrippa: when it appeared, why Johann Weyer declared it false, and how it fed the black legend of the magus of Cologne.