Seraphim, thrones and archangels: Agrippa's angelic hierarchies

No part of the De occulta philosophia is as crowded as the third book. Seraphim and cherubim appear in it, thrones and dominions, archangels and guardian angels, but also demons, heroes and the souls of the dead. Agrippa describes them as inhabitants of the intellectual world, intermediaries between God and the visible cosmos. His angelology is a mosaic of Christian, Neoplatonic and Jewish sources, seeking to bring order to a multitude of spirits handed down by centuries of theology.

The nine choirs of Pseudo-Dionysius

The foundation is the Celestial Hierarchy attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the disciple of Saint Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. In fact the work was written around 500 by an anonymous author influenced by Proclus, but throughout the Middle Ages it enjoyed an almost apostolic authority. It describes nine angelic choirs, divided into three hierarchies of three: seraphim, cherubim and thrones; dominions, virtues and powers; principalities, archangels and angels.

Agrippa takes up this structure and links it to the physical cosmos. Each of the nine choirs is associated with one of the celestial spheres, from the primum mobile to the heaven of the fixed stars, and down through the seven planets; the angels of the last choir correspond to the sphere of the Moon. By then linking the choirs to the ten sefirot of Kabbalah, Agrippa builds a complex correspondence between Christian theology, Ptolemaic cosmology and Jewish mysticism.

The angels of the planets

Alongside the choirs, the third book deals with the angels that tradition set over the planets and the parts of the world. Names such as Michael, Gabriel and Raphael come from the Bible and from the apocryphal Book of Tobit; others derive from Jewish texts and medieval treatises. Agrippa's master, Trithemius, had written in 1508 the De septem secundeis, in which he described seven angels who, in his view, governed the history of the world in turn.

Agrippa also reports the names of the angels of the zodiac signs, of the cardinal points and of the elements. These are learned lists, the fruit of compiling different sources, which show the Renaissance taste for classification. In his vision nothing in the cosmos is without a spiritual guide, and the whole of nature is traversed by intelligences carrying out the divine will.

The genius and the guardian angels

One of the most singular chapters concerns the spirits assigned to each person. Agrippa maintains that everyone receives three guardians: a holy one, who comes directly from God and guides the rational soul; one linked to birth, the genius, determined by the disposition of the heavens; and one linked to the profession and way of life chosen. This doctrine fuses the Christian guardian angel with the daimon of the Platonic tradition, the one Socrates speaks of in the Apology.

Finally, the third book also deals with evil spirits, which Agrippa arranges in nine degrees, in symmetry with the angelic choirs. He speaks of them in order to describe them and to warn, reaffirming the condemnation of all dealings with them. The symmetry between the celestial and infernal hierarchies reflects the period's obsession with order, even in evil.

Agrippa's angelology had a wide influence on later esoteric literature, but it should be read as part of the theology of its time. For a man of the early sixteenth century, speaking of angels did not mean conjuring up fantastic figures, but describing an aspect of reality recognised by the Church and by philosophy. Thomas Aquinas himself had devoted some of his subtlest questions to the angels.