The Occult PhilosophyA website by Studio Esoterico CornelioIdeas and concepts
Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia, printed in its complete form in 1533, is not merely a repertory of magical practices: it is above all a system of ideas. Behind the tables of correspondences and the chapters on the hidden virtues of things lies a vision of the world inherited from Plato, the Neoplatonists, the Hermetic writings and the kabbalah, reworked by the Florentine humanists of the fifteenth century. This section gathers the key concepts of that vision: microcosm and macrocosm, the soul and the spirit of the world, the golden chain of beings, universal sympathy, the distinction between natural and demonic magic, the prisca theologia and its crisis after Casaubon's dating of 1614. Each article reconstructs the history of an idea, points to its ancient and medieval sources and follows the way Ficino, Pico, Agrippa and their successors transformed it, up to the moment when modern science changed its meaning.
Microcosm and macrocosm: the human being as a little world
From Democritus and Hildegard of Bingen to Agrippa and Fludd: the history of the idea that humanity mirrors the whole order of the universe.
Anima mundi: the soul that gives life to the universe
From Plato's Timaeus to Plotinus, from the school of Chartres to Ficino and Agrippa: how the idea of a world soul arose and changed over time.
Spiritus mundi: the subtle breath between soul and body
The Stoic pneuma, the physicians' spirits, the quintessence of Ficino and Agrippa: history of the invisible medium joining heaven and matter.
Occult virtues: why “occult” meant hidden
The magnet, poisons, inexplicable properties: the doctrine of occult qualities from Aristotle to Agrippa, Fernel and the disputes over Newton.
Magia naturalis and demonic magic: a contested boundary
Ficino, Pico, Agrippa and Della Porta tried to separate a “natural” magic from the magic of demons. The story of a fragile distinction.
Prisca theologia: the idea of an original wisdom
Plethon, Ficino and Steuco believed in a single truth revealed from the beginning and handed down by pagan sages. A history of prisca theologia.
The prisci theologi: Zoroaster, Hermes, Orpheus and the Sibyls
Who were the “ancient theologians” revered by the Renaissance? From the Chaldean Oracles to the Orphic Hymns and the floor of Siena Cathedral.
The golden chain: from Homer to the great chain of being
Zeus's golden chain in the Iliad, read by Macrobius and the Neoplatonists as a bond between heaven and earth: story of an age-old image.
Correspondences: planets, metals, plants and numbers
Seven planets, seven metals, scales of numbers: how Agrippa ordered the world in tables of correspondences between heaven, earth and the divine.
Sympathy and antipathy: the secret friendships of nature
From the Stoic sympatheia to Plotinus, from Fracastoro to Digby's powder of sympathy: the history of attractions and repulsions between things.
Christian kabbalah: from Pico to Reuchlin and Agrippa
How Christian humanists discovered Jewish mysticism and reinterpreted it: Pico, Reuchlin, Giorgi, Postel and the third book of Agrippa.
Renaissance Hermeticism and the rediscovery of Hermes
From the manuscript brought to Florence to Ficino's 1471 translation, and on to Lazzarelli, Patrizi and Bruno: how Hermes Trismegistus won Europe.
Casaubon and 1614: the end of Hermes' antiquity
How the philologist Isaac Casaubon showed in 1614 that the Corpus Hermeticum was not archaic Egyptian but of the Christian era, and what followed.
The dignity of man: Pico, Manetti and the chameleon
From the Hermetic Asclepius to Pico della Mirandola's Oratio: how the Renaissance saw man as a being free to shape his own nature.
Vis imaginativa: the power of imagination
From Avicenna to Ficino, Pomponazzi, Agrippa and Montaigne: the belief that the imagination could act upon one's own body and on others'.
The harmony of the spheres: the silent music of the cosmos
From Pythagoras to the myth of Er, from Cicero and Boethius to Kepler's Harmonices mundi: the history of the idea that the heavens make music.
The four Platonic frenzies: poetry, mysteries, prophecy, love
From Plato's Phaedrus to Ficino's letter on divine frenzy and Agrippa's third book: the four madnesses that raise the soul towards the divine.
Secrecy and the arcana: why wisdom was hidden
From Pythagorean silence to the Eleusinian mysteries, from Trithemius's letter to Agrippa and the word “esotericism”: a history of reserved knowledge.
Generous melancholy: Saturn, genius and Dürer
From the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata to Ficino's De vita, Agrippa and Dürer's Melencolia I: how black bile became the mark of genius.
Signatura rerum: nature as a book of signs
From the medieval liber naturae to Paracelsus, Croll, Della Porta and Böhme: the doctrine of signatures and the idea that nature speaks in signs.