Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Demon Seals, originally drafted in the early 16th century (modern English translation and interpretation by Lupus Nensén).
Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy: Of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
(The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy must be first by the...)
The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy must be first by the reader set aside from the triplicate works of Heinrich Agrippa, the famous Three Books of the same, by virtue of its manufacture- generally considered not to have been penned by Agrippa himself but rather by others influenced by his work. Running the gamut from celestial notations to summoning in a sense not normally seen until a century later, this fourth book is no less a genuine grimoire than any of the texts dubiously ascribed to Moses, Solomon, Adam, Hermes, and other major figures within Renaissance magick. Its pages contain a great deal of occult lore, especially with regards to the classification of, and sigils made for, various spiritual entities- both divine and infernal, as well as those natural forces usually classed aside from both of the same.
(Long considered an authoritative sourcebook on the practi...)
Long considered an authoritative sourcebook on the practices and beliefs of Western Esotericism, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, first published in 1533, is an exhaustive compendium of ritual magic, astrology, kabbalah, angelology, ceremonial procedures, spells, and divination practices gathered from contemporary Eurpoean sources. Written from a scholarly perspective, rather than that of a mystagogue, Agrippa?s approach at the time was intellectual and philosophical, containing many approaches and analyses compiled from over 200 sources. These were synthesized into Agrippa's own unique thesis on the nature of the world, science, and magic.
(Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa is best known for his three bo...)
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa is best known for his three books of Occult Philosophy. Living in the 16th century, Agrippa was a true Renaissance man, and this text shows his full philosophical capabilities on display. Pointing to the trope of the heroine and the divine feminine, Agrippa decries his "giddy age" and condemns the abuse of women in legal and social affairs, using multiple spiritual traditions to point to their actual philosophical equality.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist, who is best known for his masterpiece "De Occulta Philosophia libri III". Agrippa was the main expounder of the occult philosophy, which is the knowledge of the hidden causes of things and is finalized to their manipulation by magic.
Background
Ethnicity:
Agrippa’s surname and epithet indicate both his birthplace (Cologne was formerly Colonia Agrippina) and the origin of his family (Nettesheim, a village near Cologne); his given names suggest a Dutch or Flemish influence.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was born on September 14, 1486, in Cologne, Germany. His father, Heinrich von Nettesheim, was a citizen of Cologne. There is no information and nothing is known of his mother. Agrippa inflated his family's nobility from around 1526, leading early biographers to conclude that the title "von" indicated nobility or knighthood.
Education
Agrippa enrolled at the University of Cologne on 22 July 1499. While there he studied law, medicine, magic sciences, and theology - particularly under Peter Ravenna. He graduated in 1502 with a degree of Magister artium.
The degree in medicine, which he claimed to have earned was ruled out by Prost, who also raised serious doubts about his doctorates in Canon and Civil Law (in utroque iure). However, it`s been suggested that they might have been obtained during the two periods of his life about which we have very little information: 1502–1507 and 1511–1518. Agrippa came into contact with the school of Albertus Magnus at Cologne, where it was still a living tradition and where he pursed his interest in natural philosophy, encountering the Historia naturalis (Natural History) of Pliny the Elder for the first time.
Andreas Canter, the city poet of Cologne, probably introduced him to Lullism—later, Agrippa wrote a long commentary, printed at Cologne in 1531, on Lull’s Ars magna (Great Art). During his youthful studies, Agrippa also established personal relationships with those German humanists who shared his interest in ancient wisdom. He spent a short period in Paris, where he might have been a student.
After studying at the University of Cologne, Agrippa undertook a mysterious journey to Spain between 1508 and 1509, seemingly engaged in a military mission, serving in the army of Emperor Maximilian I for several years. At the age of twenty he made his first trip to Paris in 1509 to study; he then went, again in military service, to Catalonia, and finally to Dole, where he gave lectures at the University of Dôle in Burgundy on Johann Reuchlin’s De verbo mirifico. This academic appointment had been supported by the chancellor of the university, Archbishop Antoine de Vergy. Agrippa’s teaching on Christian kabbalah attracted considerable interest among the members of the university and of the local Parlement, and he joined the collegium of theologians. Unfortunately, not everyone had a benevolent attitude to what sounded like an attempt to spread the “most criminal, condemned and prohibited art of kabbalah” in Christian schools.
In 1510 he spent a short time in London where he stayed with John Colet, the friend of Erasmus, and then he returned to Cologne, where he held theological disputations and introduced him to the study of St. Paul’s epistles.
Returning to Germany, in the winter of 1510 Agrippa went to the monastery of St. Jacob at Würzburg to meet Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim. Over the course of a few intense days, the famous abbot and his young visitor discussed a topic of mutual interest: natural magic and its role in contemporary culture. The meeting had a crucial impact on Agrippa. He quickly finished a compendium on magic, which he had been working on for some time. The first draft of De occulta philosophia was dedicated to Trithemius, who received the manuscript shortly before 8 April 1510 and generously praised Agrippa’s commitment. The book circulated in manuscript, as evidence from Agrippa’s correspondence shows; but he continued to assemble materials in order to revise this first draft. This aim was achieved only twenty years later.
From 1511 to 1518, Agrippa was in Italy, serving Maximilian, but his military duties did not prevent him from pursuing his philosophical interests. He lectured on Plato’s Symposium (Convivium) and on the Hermetic Pimander (that is, the Corpus Hermeticum) at the University of Pavia, in 1512 and 1515 respectively. He probably believed that he might be able to achieve his academic ambitions there, but his fervent expectations were soon disappointed. After the defeat of the Swiss and Imperial troops at Marignano (13–14 September 1515), he was forced to quit teaching and to abandon Pavia. He then sought patronage at the court of William IX Paleologus, Marquis of Monferrato, to whom he promptly dedicated two little works, De homine (On Humankind) and De triplici ratione cognoscendi Deum (On the Threefold Way of Knowing God), gathering together some notes and materials he had already organized or perhaps even prepared for press, in Pavia. Both works attest to the importance of Agrippa’s contact with early sixteenth-century Italian culture. During his stay in Italy, he joined a network of friends and correspondents, who allowed him to deepen his knowledge of Neoplatonic and Hermetic literature, to sharpen his acquaintance with kabbalistic texts, and to broaden and update his bibliographical information. For a time he was in Turin, where he lectured on theological topics.
In the following years, Agrippa was in Metz (1518–1520), as the city orator and advocate (advocatus), in Geneva (1521–1523), where he practiced medicine, and, finally in Freiburg (until 1524), as the city physician. Throughout this period, he came into contact with a number of humanists who were engaging with the new religious ideas circulating at the time. Therefore, his reputation as an “occult philosopher” assumed more complex aspects. His De originali peccato declamatio (Declamation on Original Sin), written in 1518 but not printed until 1529, puzzled the dedicatee, Dietrich Wichwael, Bishop of Cyrene, and Agrippa’s friend Claude Dieudonné with regard to his interpretation of Adam’s sin as consisting in the sexual act. In Metz, he was involved in the debate on St. Anne’s triple marriage, expressing his passionate support for Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ criticism of the popular legend that attributed three husbands and three daughters to her.
In De Beatissimae Annae monogamia ac unico puerperio (On St. Anne’s Monogamy and Sole Childbirth, printed in Cologne, 1534), he gave a fierce reply to the accusations of heresy leveled at Lefèvre (and at himself) by three conservative monks. The defense was vehement and strongly sarcastic: no wonder Lefèvre d’Étaples reacted anxiously to Agrippa’s promise to become his ally. Meanwhile, Agrippa had successfully defended a woman of Woippy who was accused of being a witch, saving her from the stake. Thanks to these courageous positions and his intense relationships with pre-Reform circles, Agrippa was gradually assuming a by no means secondary role in the general movement against the scholastic tradition. He won the esteem of many scholars (some of them would later on join the Reformation), but, at the same time, attracted the particular attention of the religious authorities.
In spring of 1524 Agrippa moved to Lyon to take up the office of physician to the French king’s mother, Louise of Savoy. He tried to win the favor of the king’s sister, Marguerite d’Alençon, by dedicating to her his declamation De sacramento matrimonii (On the Sacrament of Marriage, 1526) in parallel Latin and French versions. Unfortunately, it was a blunder and a terrible failure. The princess (who had recently been widowed) was already hostile to the Erasmian “spirit”, which Agrippa referred to in order to claim the lawfulness and benefit of second marriages. Furthermore, ecclesiastical authorities were able to recognize the influence of some Erasmus’ condemned works on Agrippa’s positive attitude towards marriage, as well as the link which connected it to the treatise De sacro coniugio (On Holy Wedlock) of the Franciscan François Lambert, who had fled to Strasbourg after joining the Reformation. Agrippa’s position at court was becoming worse.
His friendships, his sympathies for the work of humanist Reformers, his more and more aggressive theses - in 1526 he reworked an earlier oration or letter, Dehortatio gentilis theologiae (Dissuasion from Pagan Theology), in which he criticized contemporaries for their excessive curiosity about Hermetic theology and their disregard for Christian education - were raising doubts his religious orthodoxy. His correspondence with the Duke of Bourbon, who had betrayed the French Crown in order to side with the Emperor, called into question his political loyalties, and he was suspected of involvement in a plot. His refusal to furnish an astrological prognostication for François I and his incautious remarks about Louise’s superstition, which a friend passed on to her, sparked off her open hostility. Agrippa was stripped of his pension and forbidden to leave France. In the midst of such dramatic misadventures, he wrote his De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum. It was a biting commentary on all human sciences and arts and a fierce attack on the moral and social assumptions of his day. Agrippa subjected the work to later revisions and enlargements, right up to the moment of publication, in 1530.
When, at last, he was allowed to leave France, Agrippa accepted the office of archivist and imperial historiographer at the court of Margaret of Austria, governor of the Low Countries, in Antwerp. He finally dedicated himself to publishing his writings. In 1529 a collection of his short treatises was printed in Antwerp by Michael Hillenius, and in 1530 another Antwerp printer, Johannes Graphaeus, brought out De vanitate. In 1531, Graphaeus also printed the enlarged version of Book I of De occulta philosophia, dedicated to Hermann von Wied, Archbishop Elector of Cologne (1477–1552), and the table of contents for Book II and III. Both De vanitate and De occulta philosophiacirculated widely, thanks to further editions (in Antwerp, Cologne, and Paris), and once more Agrippa found himself in trouble with the religious authorities.
The Louvain theologians, questioned by Margaret of Austria herself, condemned De vanitate as scandalous, impious and heretical, and so did the Sorbonne with respect to the Paris edition. The Parlement at Mechelin was informed of the Louvain professors’ judgment, and required Agrippa to answer their accusations. He replied with two fearless writings, refuting, point by point, the criticisms in his Apologia(Defense) and accusing, in turn, his opponents of ignorance and bad faith in his Querela(Complaint). These events obviously put an end to Agrippa’s career at Margaret’s court, and he was once again seeking a new protector. Hermann von Wied, who was both interested in occult sciences and sympathized with moderate religious reform, offered him protection and, in June 1532, brought him into his own household.
Eventually, Agrippa was able to deliver the complete, final version of De occulta philosophia to the Cologne printer Johannes Soter, who in November was already typesetting it. Shortly before Christmas, however, the Dominican inquisitor Conrad Köllin denounced the book as heretical and blasphemous, getting the city’s Senate to suspend the printing. Agrippa’s impassioned and controversial appeal to the Cologne Senate did not succeed in resolving the impasse. It was, instead, the forceful intervention of Hermann which enabled De occulta philosophia to appear, even though accompanied by an appendix including the chapters of De vanitate which criticized magic.
We are not informed about the last years of Agrippa’s life, because his correspondence stops in July 1533. He was perhaps the author of a self-defense, Dialogus de vanitate scientiarum et ruina Christianae religionis (Dialogue on the Vanity of the Sciences and the Ruin of Christian Religion), fictitiously attributed to Godoschalcus Moncordius, an otherwise unknown Cistercian monk, and printed, in all probability, by Johannes Soter in 1534.
On 22 February 1534, from Bonn, Agrippa addressed a legal memorandum to the Parliament of the Low Countries. According to his pupil Johannes Wier (1515–1565), Agrippa was in Bonn until 1535. He then returned to France, where he was arrested on the order of François I. Shortly after his release, he died in Grenoble in 1535 or, at the latest, in 1536.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa is considered as the most influential writer of renaissance esoterica. His famous work titled De occulta philosophia appeared in three books. Written from 1509 to 1510 (he would have been 23 at the time), it circulated widely in manuscript form, and was eventually printed in 1533. Without doubt, this book for a long time remains at the top of any required reading list for those, who is interested in Western magic and esoteric traditions. Actually, all of Agrippa’s writings are clearly defined moments in a broader philosophical, religious, and moral meditation on the social significance of learning in his own time. In addition, Agrippa composed his texts by gathering a wide range of concepts and quotations from ancient and contemporary sources, which were removed from their original context and re-composed in a new explanatory structure.
Agrippa was a devout Christian, who sincerely believed in the compatibility of the biblical revelation and Hermetic wisdom, saw faith in Jesus Christ as the only way towards true and certain knowledge, and defended an inclusive understanding of Christianity as the culmination of an ancient wisdom tradition inspired by the divine Logos and originating in very ancient times.
Views
Today Agrippa’s importance is considered to lie in the social criticism that is embodied in his works on magic as well as in his polemic against the vanity and uncertainty of science. He has his De occulta and De incertitudine to thank not only for his fame but also for the doubt cast upon his having been a scientist. For a long time historians lumped him together with Reuchlin and even with Ramón Lull, for he attempted to combine Neoplatonic mysticism and magic—subject to nature—with Renaissance skepticism. Recent historical investigation does not support this view, however, and assigns him a central place in the history of ideas of the Middle Ages; he is seen as characterizing the main line of intellectual development from Nicholas of Cusa to Sebastian Franck. Modern opinion evaluates him on the basis of his Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic influences—primarily in the De occulta philosophia—without insisting on his skepticism.
The basic idea of Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia is that from the void God had created several worlds, three of which constitute the All: the domain of the elements, the heavenly world of the stars, and the intelligible cosmos of the angels. These and the things existing in them are endowed with the spiritus mundi (the soul, the fifth element, the quinta essentia in the sense of the Aristotelian “ether”), which is set above the four classical elements. This spirit of the world represents the all-germinating force (comparable to the “germ-form” of the Stoics). At the center of these three worlds is man, who, because he is a microcosm and thus represents a mirror image of the macrocosm, can obtain knowledge of everything. The effectiveness of magic, according to Agrippa, is based on the connection of the three worlds. Only the human spirit can uncover the hidden forces present in matter, and by the latter’s aid man can also call on greater forces to serve him. What Agrippa meant by this becomes evident in his small work De triplici ratione cogno- scendi Deum (1516), in which the role of the cabala as intermediary step in his system signifies that true knowledge is to be found only in the love of God.
Although Agrippa was an admirer of Luther, he understood the verhum Dei as a Catholic; in one letter to Melancthon he called Luther the invincible heretic. Although this aspect of his thought is often neglected, it occupies the key position in his polemic on the arts and sciences, De incertitudine. This work gives emphasis to the tension between the verhum Dei and human knowledge, without providing any basis for the skepticism of which Agrippa has often been accused. Rather, at the beginning of the era of natural science, it is one of the first testimonials to knowledge of the limits of human understanding. Incertitudo here means a real uncertainty of existence, based on the concept of the human being as a created entity.
The question of why the otherwise critical Agrippa published nearly simultaneously two such opposing works as De occulta philosophia and De incertitudine remains open. In the former he appears to follow the metaphysical and speculative tradition of natural philosophy, while in the latter he attempts to overcome the magic of the verbum mirificum. There is no satisfactory explanation for this, a fact of which even Agrippa himself was aware. With a Faustian restlessness (he is considered the historical prototype of Goethe’s Faust) he always returns to this theme in his letters; posterity has often considered this a fault in his character. Such a conflict is representative of Agrippa’s age, however, and demonstrates a point of view widely held in Germany during the Renaissance.
Quotations:
"Magic is a faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound contemplation of most secret things, together with the nature, power, quality, substance and virtues thereof, as also the knowledge of whole Nature, and it doth instruct us concerning the differing and agreement of things amongst themselves, whence it produceth its wonderful effects, by uniting the virtues of things through the application of them one to the other." (Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic)
"I confess that Magic teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes. But those things which are for the profit of men -- for the turning away of evil events, for the destroying of sorceries, for the curing of diseases, for the exterminating of phantasms, for the preserving of life, honor, or fortune -- may be done without offense to God or injury to religion, because they are, as profitable, so necessary." (Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic)
"So requisite is the use of Astrology to the Arts of Divination, as it were the Key that opens the door of all their Mysteries." (The Vanity of Arts and Sciences)
"Natural Magick therefore is that, which considering well the strength and force of Natural and Celestial beings, and with great curiosity labouring to discover their affections, produces into open Act the hidden and concealed powers of Nature." (The Vanity of Arts and Sciences)
"Natural Magick is taken to be nothing else, but the chief power of all the natural Sciences; which therefore they call the top and perfection of Natural Philosophy, and which is indeed the active part of the same; which by the assistance of natural forces and faculties, through their mutual & opportune application, performs those things that are above Human Reason." (The Vanity of Arts and Sciences)
"But to proceed; as in order and place, so also in matter of her Creation, Woman far excells Man. things receive their value from the matter they are made of, and the excellent skill of their maker: Pots of common clay must not contend with China-dishes, nor pewter utensils vye dignity with those of silver.... Woman was not composed of any inanimate or vile dirt, but of a more refined and purified substance, enlivened and actuated by a Rational Soul, whose operations speak it a beam, or bright ray of Divinity." (Female Pre-eminence, or, The Dignity and Excellency of that Sex above the Male)
"Almighty God, to whose efficacious Word all things owe their original, abounding in his own glorious Essence with infinite goodness and fecundity, did in the beginning Create Man after his own likeness, Male and Female, created he them; the true distinction of which Sexes, consists merely in the different site of those parts of the body, wherein Generation necessarily requires a Diversity: for both Male and Female he impartially endued with the same, and altogether indifferent form of Soul, the Woman being possess'd of no less excellent Faculties of Mind, Reason, and Speech, than the Man, and equally with him aspiring to those Regions of Bliss and Glory, where there shall be no exception of Sex." (Female Pre-eminence, or, The Dignty and Excellency of that Sex above the Male)
"Only for you, children of doctrine and learning, have we written this work. Examine this book, ponder the meaning we have dispersed in various places and gathered again; what we have concealed in one place we have disclosed in another, that it may be understood by your wisdom." (De Occulta Philosophia)
"It is requisite that we should here say something of Magick, which is so linked to Astrology, as being her near Kinswoman, that whoever professes Magick without Astrology, does nothing, but is altogether out of the way." (The Vanity of Arts and Sciences)
"All these delusions of Divination have their root and foundation from Astrology. For whether the lineaments of the body, countenance, or hand be inspected, whether dream or vision be seen, whether marking of entrails or mad inspiration be consulted, there must be a Celestial Figure first erected, by the means of whole indications, together with the conjectures of Signs and Similitudes, they endeavour to find out the truth of what is desired." (The Vanity of Arts and Sciences)
"Bees are a good omen to Kings, for they signify an obsequious people." (Of Occult Philosophy)
"A Bat meeting any one running away, signifies an evasion: for although she have no wings, yet she flies." (Of Occult Philosophy)
Membership
In Paris (around 1506) Agrippa founded a secret society whose members were sworn to help each other advance through astrology, magic, the Cabbala, and alchemy. With some French friends, he formed a sodalitium, a sort of secret circle or initiatory brotherhood, which, according the collection of letters from and to Agrippa, included Charles de Bovelles (c. 1479–1533), Symphorien Champier (c. 1471–1539), Germain de Brie (c. 1489–1538), Germain de Ganay (d. 1520), the portraitist at the French court Jean Perréal (c. 1455–1530), and an unknown Italian friend, Landulfus.
Personality
Agrippa’s personality and curriculum vitae are still open to dispute, as is the authorship of his works. He has been described as an “honest, fearless, and generous man, . . . but somewhat vainglorious . . . , whereby he himself several times spoiled his chances at success” and also as a scientific swindler.
Connections
Agrippa married three times. His first wife, who came from Pavia and was married to him in 1514, died in 1518 in Metz. They had a son, Theodoricus, who was born in 1515 and died in 1522. Six children were born to his second wife, Jeanne Loyse Tissie, whom he married in Geneva in 1521; she died in 1528. A third union, apparently unhappy, took place the following year.
Father:
Heinrich von Nettesheim
Second wife:
Jeanne Loyse Tissie
Son:
Theodoricus
mentor:
Peter Ravenna
Ravenna taught Agrippa at the University of Cologne.
Friend:
John Colet
In 1510 Agrippa spent a short time in London where he stayed with John Colet.
While in Wurzburg, Agrippa met Johannes Trithemius, the abbot of St. Jacob’s monastery, and this was probably the most important meeting of Agrippa’s life, for Trithemius encouraged him to finish the De occulta philosophia.
Hermann von Wied, who was both interested in occult sciences and sympathized with moderate religious reform, offered Agrippa protection and, in June 1532, brought him into his own household.
References
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia libri III) is Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's study of occult philosophy, acknowledged as a significant contribution to the Renaissance philosophical discussion concerning the powers of ritual magic and its relationship with religion. The three books deal with Elemental, Celestial and Intellectual magic. The books outline the four elements, astrology, kabbalah, numbers, angels, God's names, the virtues and relationships with each other as well as methods of utilizing these relationships and laws in medicine, scrying, alchemy, ceremonies, origins of what are from the Hebrew, Greek, and Chaldean context. These arguments were common amongst other hermetic philosophers at the time and before. In fact, Agrippa's interpretation of magic is similar to the authors Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Johann Reuchlin's synthesis of magic and religion and emphasize an exploration of nature. Unlike many grimoires of the time, before and past, these books are more scholarly and intellectual than mysterious and foreboding. These books are often read as authoritative by those interested in the occult even today. Three Books of Occult Philosophy helped perpetuate the belief in modern popular culture that the Knights Templar practiced witchcraft. It was one of the first literary works to transform the accusation of idolatry against the Order, to magic use.
The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy
This is the first modern study of Agrippa's occult philosophy as a coherent part of his intellectual work. By demonstrating his sophistication, it challenges traditional interpretations of Agrippa as an intellectual dilettante, and uses modern theory and philosophy to elucidate the intricacies of his thought. It also argues for a new, interdisciplinary approach to magic and its place within early modern culture, using a transhistorical conversational model to understand and interpret the texts. The analysis walks the reader through the text of De occulta philosophia, Agrippa's 1533 masterpiece, explicating the often hidden structure and argument of the work. This volume will especially interest early modern intellectual historians, historians of religions, and scholars interested in the history of linguistic philosophy.
Cornelius Agrippa, the Humanist Theologian and His Declamations (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History)
This study, based on a fresh reading of the entire correspondence, the surviving orations, declamations and other relevant treatises, contains an innovative interpretation of the philosophical and theological thought of Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-1535). The first chapters contain a close study of his controversy with the scholastic theologians, which Agrippa carried on throughout his life, particularly with the theologians of Louvain University. Detailed analyses of Agrippa's declamations are included in the second part of the book. The chapter on the humanist declamation offers a new approach to the interpretation of rhetorical texts in the heyday of learned humanism in Northern Europe; in this context, special attention is paid to Agrippa's indebtedness to Erasmus. Throughout the book, Agrippa emerges as an important intermediary between scholasticism and humanism, and a strong opponent of the professional theologians of his time.
