Renaissance Magic and the Three Worlds: Agrippa's Occult Philosophy

practical and active dramatization that allows these disciplines to be realized through action. Magic encompasses these three sciences so fertile in wonders, fuses them together and translates them into action. Therefore, the ancients rightly esteemed it as the most sublime science and most worthy of every veneration. For each of these $3$ worlds there are $3$ distinct instruments to act in them: in the elementary or physical world: here the law of analogies and correspondences applies. According to the Hermetic precept indeed "what is above is like what is below and what is inferior is like what is superior". In particular since the heavens are dominated by $7$ fundamental qualities, the $7$ planets, everything in the sublunary world is ruled by these seven planets and bears the imprint of the character or sign of these planets. Those who attended the herbalism course have indeed seen the ancient doctrine of signatures and characters which is reported here not only for plants, but also for stones, perfumes, body parts, etc.... For example, Agrippa says: "the eye of the sun, similar to a radiant pupil, strengthens the brain and fortifies sight". So in summary this first part of the book is a dense list of correspondences whose purpose is to group everything that exists into related categories so as to have a key for analogies and correspondences through astrology. in the planetary world: The knowledge and powers of the planetary world, says Agrippa, are conquered through the use of mathematics: "Now as natural powers are acquired through natural things, so with abstract mathematical and celestial things we achieve celestial powers, namely motion, life, sense, discourse, omens and divination itself, all things that do not derive from nature but from art". Therefore celestial virtues are investigated with mathematics, namely with geometric figures for the body, with musical harmony for feeling and with numbers regarding the true powers of the soul. Thus appear for example the Magic Squares of which we can see a copy portrayed in Dürer in the painting on Melancholy. This doctrine of magic squares comes precisely from Abbot Trithemius - not by chance Paracelsus himself makes use of it. in the spiritual world: through the use of Hebrew, the language closest to Adam's primitive language with which Adam spoke face to face with God. In the third book therefore the use of Kabbalah appears predominantly, the way to derive the names of angels and divine spirits to obtain supernatural wisdom. Talismans, symbols to visualize or divine names to invoke. Agrippa describes various ascetic techniques, substantially centered on continuous prayer, fasting, abstinence to which are also added ecstatic techniques that involve in some way a withdrawal from the senses to enter a special state in which these visualizations become more powerful and effective. [...] if anyone withdraws from what excites the bodily senses, separates himself from the animal man and adheres to divinity, which confers upon him what he cannot seek with his own strength alone. When the spirit is totally free, so as to withdraw completely from the bonds of the limbs and the reins of the body are loosened, driven by its own stimuli, excited by the divine spirit, it understands everything and foresees the future. Then he continues describing: The Hebrew Kabbalists have received ten principal divine names, species of divinities or parts of divinity which through ten numerations called Sefirot, as through garments or instruments or exemplars of the archetype, influence and act upon all creatures beginning from the superior ones. Since such names influence first upon the nine angelic orders and upon the body of blessed souls, then through these, upon the celestial spheres, upon the planets and upon men and finally upon things of which each receives power and virtue. Then Agrippa describes an Angelic and spiritual order similar indeed to that described by Reuchlin previously and which here we can see in an engraving by Khunrath. As you can see at the center is the risen Christ in a flaming star at whose vertices are inscribed the letters of the $5$-letter name of Christ and under which is found a phoenix symbol of resurrection. This represents the deified humanity of Jesus Christ upon which the Holy Spirit descends. The Messiah represents in the Cosmos the essential Unity of God from which everything emanates, in particular you see all divine names emanate from this single divine Name which is the Name of Christ and to each divine Name is associated a Sefirah or an expression of divine Force or Mercy which is received by a particular angelic intelligence and which is reflected in a particular commandment of the Ten Commandments. Mediumship disciplined by Kabbalah. These doctrines exposed by Agrippa are partially reworked by him, but also strongly and substantially coming from and inspired by Abbot Trithemius who had recovered various books, various sources, various traditions etc... Now the point is: how had Abbot Trithemius discovered all these things? Who had taught them to him? Where had he learned all these mysteries? Partially an answer can be found in someone who materially helped him. We have already spoken of the contacts he had with Reuchlin, but Trithemius more than to Reuchlin refers to another character, a certain Libanius Gallus who came to him more or less in $1495$: "There came to me at Sponheim from France, a certain Libanius Gallus, a man famous for his erudition and no less venerable for his Christian faith and the sanctity of his customs, attracted by my fame, as he said. He had lived for some time on the island of Majorca with that hermit monk Pelagius, from whom he inherited, at his death, all his books. He had learned from him numerous mysteries of philosophy, of faith"