SOURCE: "The Occult Philosophy and Magic: Henry Cornelius Agrippa," in The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, pp. 37-47.

[Yates is a respected writer and scholar of Renaissance philosophy and literature. Her works include Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972), and Astraea: The Imperial Theme (1975). Here, she posits that Agrippa's brand of magic was "really a religion, claiming access to the highest powers, and Christian since it accepts the name of Jesus as the chief of the wonder-working Names."]

The reputation of Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) has been a survival from the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which he figured prominently as a prince of black magicians and sorcerers. The black magician of the ages of superstition became, in enlightened times, the absurd charlatan unworthy of serious attention. The same process occurred in the case of John Dee with the same result, that a figure of great historical importance disappeared in clouds of nineteenth-century ridicule, from which the scholarship of the twentieth century has slowly begun to rescue him. In the case of Agrippa, his De occulta philosophia is now seen as the indispensable handbook of Renaissance 'Magia' and 'Cabala', combining the natural magic of Ficino with the Cabalist magic of Pico in one convenient compendium, and, as such, playing a very important part in the spread of Renaissance Neoplatonism with its magical core.

Charles Nauert's book on Agrippa [Agrippa and the Crisis in Renaissance Thought, 1965] has placed the study of his life and works on a scholarly footing, and the learned articles of Paola Zambelli have added new and important material. The magician begins now to appear as something of an Erasmian evangelical, combining pre-Reformation humanism with an attempt to provide a 'powerful' philosophy to accompany evangelical reform. In this attempt, Agrippa was undoubtedly inspired by Reuchlin's Christian Cabala. In fact, Agrippa's De occulta philosophia can be classed as Christian Cabala for it leads up, in the third book on the supercelestial world, to the presentation of the Name of Jesus as now all-powerful, containing all the power of the Tetragrammaton, 'as is confirmed by Hebrews and Cabalists skilled in the Divine Names'. He is quoting from Pico's Cabalist Conclusions. Christian Cabala is leading to a kind of evangelicalism, supported by the occult philosophy. His attempt to combine what he believes to be Erasmian evangelicalism with a magically powerful philosophy makes of Agrippa a reformer of a strange and interesting kind.

The picture of Agrippa now emerging is thus strangely unlike the sorcerer with his black dog hunted in the witchcrazes, and serving later as the image of the nineteenth-century idea of the necromancer. In what follows I shall attempt to outline, though briefly and inadequately, Agrippa's life and work from the new points of view.

Agrippa's interest in the occult seems to date from his earliest years at Cologne; he says that one of the first texts he studied on these subjects was the Speculum of Albertus Magnus, also a native of Cologne. The pattern of his life as a constant traveller, mysteriously in touch with groups of people in different places, is perceptible from the start. Nauert has suggested that he and his associates formed some kind of secret society. Paola Zambelli is also of the opinion that he may have been the centre of secret societies. Such affiliations are always difficult to prove; nevertheless the groups of people always ready to receive and support Agrippa in his constant travels do suggest that there may have been some kind of organisation. The groups would seem to have been concerned with alchemy, and with the investigation of Hermetic, Neoplatonic and Cabalist literature. Quite early in his life, Agrippa is reported to have been lecturing on Reuchlin.

In 1509-10, Agrippa was in Germany, visiting the learned abbot Trithemius, and it was at about this time that he wrote the first version of the De occulta philosophia. The manuscript of this version exists. It is dedicated to Trithemius, who was undoubtedly an important influence on Agrippa's studies.

At this significant time in his career, when his ideas were already sufficiently formulated for him to be writing the first version of the De occulta philosophia, Agrippa's mysterious travels took him to England.

In 1510, in which year a dedication proves that Agrippa was in England, Henry VIII had recently ascended the throne. Erasmus was in England, and the early humanist movement around Thomas More and John Colet was spreading. Agrippa was probably only in London for a few months; we do not know whether he met Erasmus there, but he was certainly in contact with John Colet, for we hear of him studying the Epistles of St Paul with Colet. A link between Agrippa and Colet may well have been Cabala, in which Colet was certainly interested. The study of Pauline epistles with Colet, shows, according to Nauert, that Agrippa was early exposed to the Biblical Christianity which characterised Colet and the Erasmian reform movement generally. Nauert suggests that there was probably a direct connection between Agrippa's biblical studies in London and his enthusiasm for occult studies, with 'cabalistic exegetical methods serving as the link between them'.

In about 1511, Agrippa went to Italy, thus gaining the Italian experience which was so important for the northern humanist. A few years earlier, in 1506-9, Erasmus had visited Italy for the first time, and it is interesting to compare the two visits. When he went to Italy, Erasmus had been in full possession of Italian humanist scholarship and had been using it for years; on his Italian visit he saw it in action in its latest form in the Venetian circle of Aldus Manutius. Similarly, Agrippa on his first visit to Italy was in full possession of the Renaissance Magia and Cabala, stemming from Ficino and Pico, and had been using them for years. Yet the Italian visit was very important for Agrippa, as it was for Erasmus, and for the same reason, namely that he was able to meet and assimilate the tradition which he already knew, as it had been further developing in Italy. For Erasmus this was the tradition of classical scholarship, now personified in Aldus and the Aldine press. For Agrippa, it was the tradition of occult philosophy, as it had developed in Italy in recent years, that he was bent on assimilating during this visit.

Agrippa in Italy studied the Hermetic tradition and Cabala with scholars who regarded themselves as heirs of Ficino and Pico. He came in contact with Cardinal Egidius of Viterbo and with Agostino Ricci, a converted Jew, who were interested in the Catholic reform movement and were using the influences of Christian Cabala in that direction. And Agrippa was also briefly in contact with Francesco Giorgi, the Christian Cabalist Friar of Venice. All these Italian Cabalists were using Cabalist books and manuscripts now available in much larger quantities in Italy and being eagerly studied by scholars.

Thus the German Cabalist reformer made contact with Italian Christian Cabalists. Francesco Giorgi's ideas, though apparently less extreme than those of Agrippa, are actually pretty close to them, though softened by a gentler Italian colouring.

The never-stationary Agrippa next appears in the northern city of Metz where the growing influence of Luther was causing turmoil. As Nauert puts it, Agrippa in Metz has moved from the exciting and vital culture of Renaissance Italy to the exciting and vital culture of northern Europe on the eve of the Reformation. Agrippa and his friends closely followed the writings of Luther. Some of these friends afterwards became Lutheran Protestants. From Metz, Agrippa moved to Geneva where he had occultist friends. Some historians of the origins of Protestantism in Geneva have regarded Agrippa and his circle of the early 1520s 'as the seed-bed of the reformed faith.'

In 1524, Agrippa went to France where he had many friends. Here he published, in 1526, one of his two famous books, the De vanitate scientiarum. This book argues that all man's knowledge is vain, all sciences empty, including the occult sciences. His other famous book, the De occulta philosophia, the handbook of Renaissance occult sciences, was already written in its first form, but was not published until 1533. Why Agrippa published first a book on the vanity of the sciences, including the occult sciences, whilst reserving for future publication his already written book on the occult sciences, is one of the many problems of his life and work.

In France he had contacts with French doctors (he was versed in medicine), humanists, scientists, alchemists, Lullists (Lullism was one of his specialities) and the like. This world of early French humanism must have been congenial to Agrippa. Under strong Erasmian influence, the new learning was making great strides; ideas about religious reform were moving; and there were powerful Hermetic influences at work. The great French scholar and Hermeticist, Lefevre d'Etaples, was in contact with Agrippa, and Rabelais mentions 'Herr Trippa'.

In 1528 Agrippa was in Antwerp, getting his books printed, including the De occulta philosophia (1533), and a reissue of the De vanitate. The publication of his books increased his fame. The imperial ambassador to the English court wrote to him that all learned men in London were praising his De vanitate and his De occulta philosophia, and urged him to take up the defence of Queen Catherine of Aragon, repudiated as his wife by the king, Henry VIII. It was said that Queen Catherine herself had wanted to have Agrippa to defend her. However, he refrained from involving himself in this controversy, unlike Francesco Giorgi, who, as we have seen, became much involved in it on the king's side. Judging by Giorgi's experience it was perhaps as a Hebrew scholar that Agrippa's advice would have been sought, for the problem necessitated appeal to Jewish law on divorce.

At about this time there is evidence of contact between Erasmus and Agrippa. Erasmus wrote to Agrippa, asking him to advise a student of the occult whom he (Erasmus) was not able to satisfy, adding that the De vanitate had caused Agrippa's name to be very well-known, though he has heard that the book is rather daring. Agrippa replied eagerly, protesting that he was an Erasmian and obedient to the Church, and asking for Erasmus's opinion of the De vanitate. Erasmus did not reply until 1533, when he praised the book but warned Agrippa to be careful, urging him not to involve him (Erasmus) in his controversies because he already had enough ill-will against him.

Though Erasmus had at first encouraged Reuchlin, whom he admired as a scholar, his views on Cabala later hardened into a strong aversion for 'Judaising' studies, an aversion not untinged with antisemitism. Erasmus particularly disliked the attempt of the occult philosophy to increase the magic in Christian ceremonies as a way to strengthen religion through the 'more powerful' philosophy. This is really the theme of the third book of Agrippa's De occulta philosophia which is on 'ceremonial magic'. The aim of the occult philosophy of reform through increasing the power of 'ceremonial magic' was diametrically opposed to reform through the Erasmian kind of 'Christian philosophy'. Yet it is possible that Agrippa himself, and perhaps some of his followers, may not have quite clearly grasped the basic difference between Agrippan and Erasmian ideas of reform.

Erasmus, Luther, Agrippa, exhibit different facets of the spiritual force which was breaking down the past and ushering in the future.

….

In [the striking De ranitate], Agrippa surveys all human intellectual effort and decides that all is empty, all man's learning is of no account, nothing can be certainly known about anything. Like the preacher in Ecclesiastes, from which he quotes, Agrippa decides that all is vanity of vanities and there is nothing new under the sun. Was he then a total sceptic? He has been treated as such by some modern scholars, but this is a mistake. Agrippa was not a sceptic, as more attentive reading of his work clearly reveals.

The first chapter begins in an atmosphere of Hermetic 'Egyptianism' with reference to 'Theut' and 'Thamus' evoking the Hermetic dialogue on Egyptian mysteries. It then states the book's theme of the uncertainty of all man's learning. The list of vain sciences includes, grammar, poetry, the art of memory, dialectic, Lullism, arithmetic, music, geometry, cosmography, architecture, astronomy, magic, Cabala, physics, metaphysics, ethics, monkish superstition, medicine, alchemy, jurisprudence. These selected titles indicate the curious scope of the work. It is not only against occult sciences, such as magic, Cabala, alchemy. It is against the sciences of number, arithmetic, geometry, architecture, astronomy. It is against physics and metaphysics and the intellectual framework of the scholastic tradition. And there is an indication in 'monkish superstition' that the author is writing at a time when the storms of Reformation are beginning to blow.

The following chapters demolish the sciences in detail, a process in which Agrippa shows a great deal of knowledge of all this range of learning. He dwells much on magic and its divisions. There is a natural magic and a mathematical magic. There is a bad magic which calls on bad demons; there is a good magic which calls on angels through Cabala. There is a natural philosophy which discusses questions such as Can there be a plurality of worlds? and What is the soul? This leads on to metaphysics and moral philosophy. By the time he reaches the one hundredth chapter, Agrippa would appear to a sixteenth-century reader to have covered practically everything. All is vain, save one thing only, namely the Word of God in the Scriptures through which we may come to know Jesus Christ. The title of the one hundredth chapter is De verbo Dei.

Agrippa is not an atheist; he is an evangelical. He frequently refers to the Epistles of St Paul, and from one of these the title of his sermon could have been taken: 'I am determined to know nothing among you save Christ Jesus.' Agrippa's evangelical convictions come out, not only in the impressive statements in the hundredth chapter, but incidentally throughout the work. In chapter 54 it is stated that only Christ can teach moral philosophy; this is an evangelical reaction against scholasticism. In chapter 97 on scholastic theology it is stated that, though formerly taught by good men, this subject has now degenerated into sophisms and is to be superseded. In the chapter on images (chapter 25) the use of images in the Church is criticised; we are to learn the truth not from these but from the Scriptures, which prohibit idolatry. All these asides throughout the book breathe the spirit of reform, the spirit of Erasmian evangelical reform. The statements of the hundredth chapter are but a summing up of this theme.

There is no other key to knowledge, says this chapter, but the Word of God. The writer of Ecclesiastes was right when he said that all learning is vanity. We must confess our ignorance and think of ourselves as asses. Then follows Agrippa's famous Praise of the Ass. Christ entered Jerusalem upon an ass. Apuleius in The Golden Ass tells how his hero was not initiated into the mysteries of Isis until he had become an ass. These Christian and Hermetic-Egyptian examples of holy ignorance sum up Agrippa's theme of the insufficiency of worldly learning. This theme is basically mystical, to be found in medieval mystical writings such as The Cloud of Unknowing which describes the negative mystical experience. And Agrippa no doubt had in mind the great philosophical statement of the theme in Nicolas of Cusa's work On learned ignorance. But the closest analogue to Agrippa's De ranitate is much nearer to him in time and belongs precisely to the movement of Erasmian evangelicalism. It is, in fact, a work by Erasmus himself, the famous Praise of Folly. Agrippa's Encomium Asini is a counterpart of the Encomium Moriae by his great contemporary.

Erasmus wrote his Praise of Folly (Encomium Moriae) when he was living in the household of Thomas More in London during that momentous visit to England from 1508 to 1513. It will be remembered that Agrippa was in London in 1510 and in contact with a member of the More circle, John Colet. There is no evidence that Agrippa met Erasmus on that visit, or knew that he was writing The Praise of Folly, but we have seen that in later years Agrippa was particularly anxious to have Erasmus's views on his own De vanitate, perhaps because he hoped that Erasmus might see a kinship between Vanity and Folly. At any rate, it is very instructive to compare the two works.

Erasmus's Folly is a woman who laughs at all the sciences, at Grammar, Rhetoric, Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics; she passes them all by; the ideas and figures and arguments of the philosophers all seem to her absurd. Though she is mainly concerned with exposing the emptiness of orthodox learning, she also mentions some occult sciences, magic and alchemy, as vain. Her distrust of learning is closely associated with her pre-Reform attitudes. She mocks at pardoners and indulgences, at the sermons of monks and friars. The Erasmian wit is very fully deployed in this brilliant work which had an immense vogue as the expression of irritation against the old order of things and the longing for reform. Folly quotes Ecclesiastes on vanity of vanities, all is vanity. She quotes St Paul on science which puffs up pride. The Christian religion, she says, is a doctrine of simplicity, and the man absorbed in the love of heavenly things can look a fool.

The moral is very close to that of Agrippa's De vanitate. After surveying all the sciences, Folly finds security only in the Gospel. In both books, the attack on the vanity of learning is also a satire on the vanity of monkish learning. Erasmus has much less than Agrippa on the vanity of the occult sciences, but he does include them. And Agrippa is not only concerned with the vanity of occult sciences but also with the emptiness of scholastic learning. The conclusion of both is that only in the simplicity of the Gospel is security.

The parallel was noted by Philip Sidney who remarks in his Defence of Poetry:

Agrippa will be as merry in showing the vanity of science as Erasmus was in the defending of folly. Neither shall any man or matter escape some touch of these smiling railers…. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise.

I suppose that this 'other foundation' would be the Gospel, alone exempt from scepticism according to both Erasmus and Agrippa.

Erasmus did not throw away his classical and patristic scholarship nor discontinue his life-work as a humanist scholar because of the Praise of Folly. Nor did Agrippa abandon the occult sciences because of his praise of the Ass. On the contrary a few years after the publication of the De vanitate he published occulta philosophia, his full-scale positive treatment of the occult philosophy.

….

I have made efforts in other books to present in some moderately lucid form the contents of [De occulta philosophia,] and I must now make the attempt again.

In the first two chapters, Agrippa lays down the outline. The universe is divided into three worlds, the elemental world, the celestial world, the intellectual world. Each world receives influences from the one above it; so that the virtue of the Creator descends through the angels in the intellectual world, to the stars in the celestial world, and thence to the elements and all things composed of them in the terrestrial world. In accordance with this outlook, Agrippa's work is divided into three books. The first book is about natural magic, or magic in the elemental world; it teaches how to arrange substances in accordance with the occult sympathies between them, so as to effect operations in natural magic. The second book is about celestial magic, or how to attract and use influences of the stars. Agrippa calls this kind of magic mathematical magic because its operations depend on number. The third book is about ceremonial magic or magic directed towards the supercelestial world of angelic spirits, beyond which is the One opifex or the creator himself.

Agrippa is summarising the disciplines of Renaissance magic; the Hermetic magic taught by Ficino, and the Cabalist magic introduced by Pico della Mirandola.

As was discovered by D. P. Walker, Ficino's magic was ultimately based on that taught by the supposed Egyptian age, Hermes Trismegistus, whom Ficino believed to be a contemporary of Moses and a prophet of Christianity [Spiritual and Demonic Magic.] Ficino describes his magic in his book De vita coelitus comparanda, the most popular and widely read of all his works. It is based very largely, as Walker showed, on the Asclepius, supposedly by Hermes Trismegistus, which describes how the Egyptians attracted celestial influences into the statues of their gods.

Ficino describes how to attract influences of the planets, by using arrangements of substances, by incantations, and by talismans inscribed with the images of the planets and supposed to contain, or attract, their virtues. It is the Ficinian magic which Agrippa teaches in his first book, though he teaches it in a much bolder way. Ficino was nervous of the magic; he was anxious to keep his magic 'natural', concerned only with elemental substances in their relations to the stars and avoiding the 'star demons', the spirits connected with the stars. It was really not possible to teach astral magic whilst avoiding the star demons, as Agrippa saw and boldly accepted the challenge.

Agrippa's second book is on celestial magic, dealing with the stars, not only through their influences on the elements, but ascending to the 'middle' celestial world to grapple with them. This involves number and the celestial magic becomes a mathematical magic. He states the necessity of mathematical disciplines for mathematical magic. The magical statues of the, Asclepius depended, he says, on number. Miraculous effects can be obtained with geometry and optics. Pythagoras taught the prime importance of number, and physics has a mathematical basis. Ficino had not discussed mathematical magic (he would have avoided it because of his avoidance of star demons), but for Agrippa 'mathematical magic' held a profound attraction.

In the third book, Agrippa boldly advances into the intellectual and angelic world, and sets out schemes for reaching angels and spirits through Cabalist magic. This depends on manipulation of Hebrew letters, which have numerical values, so this again is a kind of mathematical magic though aiming much higher. This book deals with the ceremonies of religions; it is a religious magic, and the magus who reaches this point in his studies has gone far beyond natural magic and mathematical magic. He has drawn close to the Creator himself and knows how to call upon the Names of God.

Agrippa certainly believes himself to be a Christian Cabalist, for the third book leads up to the Name of Jesus as the final mystery. Pico had said in his Cabalist Conclusions that the only name with which the Cabalist can now operate is the Name of Jesus. Agrippa repeats this, word for word. The famous magician undoubtedly believed that, like Pico della Mirandola, he could qualify as a Christian Cabalist.

In fact, I believe that Agrippa's aim is precisely that of providing the technical procedures for acquiring the more powerful and 'wonder-working' philosophy which Reuchlin had called for, a philosophy ostensibly Neoplatonic but including a magical Hermetic-Cabalist core. Constantly on Agrippa's lips in the De occulta philosophia are the names of Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, and other Neoplatonists, and, of course, 'Hermes Trismegistus'. He is expounding in matter-of-fact text-book terms the 'wonderworking' Neoplatonism which Reuchlin had desired to encourage in place of dry and barren scholasticism as the philosophy to accompany Christianity.

If one re-reads the De occulta philosophia attentively one will notice that in each of the three worlds Agrippa brings in Hebrew names and formulae. This happens in the exposition of magic in the elemental world and in the celestial world, as well as in the supercelestial world where Cabala naturally belongs. Agrippa probably believes that he is both strengthening natural magic and celestial magic by bringing them into contact with powerful Hebrew magic, and also purifying these magics, making them safe by associating them with holy Cabalist influences. Like Reuchlin (and Pico) by associating all the magics with holy influences he makes them safe. He makes sure that only good and holy angelic influences are invoked, and that the stardemons are made harmless through their help. Agrippa's occult philosophy is intended to be a very white magic. In fact it is really a religion, claiming access to the highest powers, and Christian since it accepts the name of Jesus as the chief of the wonder-working Names.

… Agrippa's outlook seems very close indeed to that of Francesco Giorgi, though in the De harmonia mundi Giorgi is slightly more cautious (he is much bolder in the Problematd). His Franciscan affiliations would no doubt have made him seem less alarming than Agrippa, the strange wanderer with no religious home.

The function of Cabala as Agrippa saw it was not only to provide the highest 'supercelestial' magic, but to guarantee the safety of the operator against demons at all levels. The fear of demons had haunted Ficino, but Cabala eliminates this fear. It is an insurance against demons, a guarantee that bold attempts after unlimited knowledge and power will not lead to damnation.

Though the genuine Hebrew Cabalist might be shocked by Agrippa's interpretation of Cabala solely as white magic, yet this interpretation served a purpose in fortifying man for intellectual and spiritual endeavour.