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Renaissance Magic - 17/mar/2023
🕑 Added 2023-03-17 16:49:14 +0000 UTCRENAISSANCE NEOPLATONISTS
It is May 29th, 1453. You are Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, and you have just taken the city of Constantinople. You’ve been scaring the daylights out of the Christian world for a while now, but now you’ve really gone and done it. Your little jaunt through Asia Minor is causing a bunch of Greek theologians to pull up and run further west into Europe. The Catholic Church already has their hands full with a whole mess of internal conflicts. You wonder how they’re gonna handle this influx of new ideas. Sure would be a shame if you accidentally contributed to some sort of reformation. You can’t think about that right now though, you’ve got to think of a better name for your cool new city. I might suggest Istanbul.
Meanwhile, back in Christendom, a sin is being committed. A sin so grievous and dangerous that it will eventually tear Western Europe in two: people are translating the Bible into Dutch.
This may not seem like the biggest deal, but back then, the Bible wasn't something you just read. Books were expensive. You couldn't just let any muck-shoveling peasant pick up and read the Good Book. The Bible was printed in Latin and only Latin. Maybe Greek if you were special. Masses were conducted in Latin exclusively.
Is the word of God something that can even be translated? Some in the church argued, “Sure, why not? If we translate the Bible into other languages, it would probably help with conversion, right?” Others argued, “Translating the Bible into vernacular languages isn’t theologically possible. Latin is the most pure, most proper form of the word of God and that’s that.”
This was a period of explosive change for the theological landscape of Europe, a process that was accelerated by the invention of the printing press in the mid 15th century. Bookmaking is now significantly cheaper, and suddenly it’s not so easy for the church to control the production of religious knowledge.
NOMINALISM VS REALISM
What’s the relationship between a thing and its name? For a while, the medieval world was split on this question.
Nowadays, we are nominalists. When we say the word “dog”, we know that the word “dog” is just a series of noises we use to represent the animal, the word has no direct effect on the furry creature known as a dog. This was not always held to be the case. The vast majority of medieval thinkers were “realists” in how they understood words. They believed that “dog” meant “the furry animal with four legs that barks” in the same sense that one plus one equals two.
For a moment, we must put ourselves in the jingly little shoes of a medieval person. For them, this debate had widespread consequences for the nature of reality. We know humans exist, but does the category “human” exist as a privileged part of the fabric of reality? If it does, how is it defined? What is it made of? If it doesn't, how can we be humans?
Practically, if everything in the universe has a True Name, that brings up the problem of how there are many languages on earth. If dogs have a True Name, how do we know which word is the true one? This becomes a real problem if you’re the Catholic Church and you need to translate the bible. If God wants to talk about a dog, what language does She speak?
AD FONTES!
If the Renaissance had a war cry, it would be this: Ad fontes! Back to the sources! In many ways, the entire Renaissance was built on the influx of classical texts slowly being translated into Latin at the library of Baghdad. Europe always had old classical texts floating around, but the 15th century saw Europe surfing a wave of hot new translations of old classics, never-before-seen sources, and thanks to the printing press, higher circulation than ever before.
But where did this knowledge come from in the first place?
If you asked most medieval scholars, they would tell you that knowledge came from the past. Knowledge came from tradition, or legendary teachers like Socrates. This was a bit of a problem for the Church. Plato and Aristotle didn’t have much to say about Catholicism, having died long before the birth of Christ; and if you go back far enough in the tradition of Catholicism, you end up in Judaism. In other words, Christian scholar’s oldest sources of knowledge were very often not Christian.
Up until the close of the 15th century, the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) was controlled by the Umayyad Caliphate. Often, when Christians reconquered a place, they demanded conversion from the populace. For some Rabbis and Imams, conversion meant they would be able to stay with communities they had been leading for their entire lives. Rabbis who converted were known as Conversos. This meant that Iberia had a relatively large academic population of Christians who spoke Hebrew, a population that would be a rich resource for anyone engaging in a radical syncretic project.
THE RENAISSANCE NEOPLATONISTS
By the time of the Renaissance, the Christian world was awash in new theological ideas. A synthesis of Neoplatonic, Orphic, Hermetic, and Kabbalistic works would form the basis of a new school of Christian esoterica. It would be assembled by Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin. Later it would be syncretized by Heirnich Cornelius Agrippa, and extrapolated upon by John Dee.
WHAT IS CHRISTIAN CABBALA?
This section will require some clarification of terms.
Kabbalah - Literally translates to “reception” or “tradition”. Kabbalah is an esoteric method and school of thought unique to Jewish mysticism. Kabbalah spelled with a ‘k’ will refer to the original, highly specific, school of Jewish mystical thought.
Cabbala - This will refer to “Christian Cabbala”, the form of 16th century Christian occult theology which incorporates dubious interpretations of Kabbalah, along with Neoplatonic doctrine, Orphic theology, and Hermetic mysticism.
Qabalah - This refers to “Hermetic Qabalah” the late 19th century esoteric revival system developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which incorporates elements from Egyptian mythology and numerous other esoteric sources.
MARSILLIO FICINO
After yet another failed attempt to heal the schism between the eastern and western churches, fabulously wealthy Italian banker Cosimo de’ Medici decided to revive Plato’s Academy except Italian and in Florence and without Plato. He needed the most Greek-obsessed scholar he could find, so he put Marsillio Ficino in charge and gave him a stack of Greek manuscripts so large you could fit a Trojan army inside. Notably, he was the first person to translate the works of Plato into Latin. But he was also the translator of a stack of works from Porphyry, Iamblicus, and Plotinus called Hermetica.
The trouble with this influx of new philosophies and ideas is that not all of them jived with the Catholic Church. If you were the guy translating a work from Plato or Aristotle, you had to have a good argument that the text wasn’t heretical.
Ficino would come out the other end of the translating process as “A Catholic priest in 1492 with a deep and enthusiastic understanding of theologies that are almost definitely heretical.” However, he believed that Platonic philosophy was compatible with Christianity, a dubious proposition for the time: not impossible, but it would take some elbow grease. His masterwork was a book called Platonic Theology, which attempted to use Platonic ideas to logically prove the existence of the soul.
[get some about his mysticism. The divine mania and on the platonic theology]
PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA
Pico della Mirandola allegedly mastered Greek and Latin by the age of 13. In 1484 he met Marsillio Ficino and fabulously wealthy Italian banker Lorenzo De Medici, and charmed both of them. From Ficino, he gained tutelage, and from Cosimo, he gained financial support. During his time in Florence he would write the 900 Theses, a text which claimed that not only were Plato and Aristotle reconcilable, but that they were compatible with Christianity. He was quite confident in the strength of his work. In fact, he was so confident that he ended the 900 Theses with the following announcement:
“THE CONCLUSIONS will not be disputed until after the Epiphany. In the meantime they will be published in all Italian universities. And if any philosopher or theologian, even from the ends of Italy, wishes to come to Rome for the sake of debating, his lord the disputer promises to pay the travel expenses from his own funds.”
His plan was to travel to Rome, have the theses published, hold a conference defending his work, defeat every challenger with facts and logic, and ride the wave of success to theological glory. On his way to Rome he stopped in the town of Arezzo, had an affair with the wife of one of Lorenzo de Medici’s cousins, attempted to run away with her, got beaten nearly to death, thrown in prison, and then released by order of Lorenzo himself. While recovering from his wounds, he became obsessed with magic.
When it comes to magic, calling Pico an eclectic is an understatement. While recovering from his injuries, he had time to read all the fresh manuscripts flowing into Europe. Orphic, Chaldean, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, you name it. Pico threw it all into the pot, but how exactly he cooked it will take some explaining:
For Pico, and most Catholics of the time, Christianity was inevitable. All of history was leading up to Christianity being the one true religion. This was simply taken as a given, a fact of life. However, the Christianity of Pico’s day was fighting with itself, constantly in danger of fracturing. When Pico dipped into all this ancient esoterica he made two big assumptions: One, that all these different forms of esoterica were actually just the same esoterica. And two, that the secret knowledge in this ancient magical tradition could be used to fix theological arguments tearing apart the catholic church. In mysticism, he saw religious unity, and in that unity he saw peace.
PERENNIALISM
Pico was what’s called a Perennialist. He believed that all the world’s religions share a single, metaphysical truth from which all doctrine grows, they are all branches of a single tree.
Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with this idea. Religions share truths all the time. It’s a lovely idea in theory, but it tends to be applied in troublesome ways. In theory, all the world’s religious conflicts could be solved if only we all realized that they are simply different expressions of the same truth. In practice, perennialism functions by treating similarities as inherent truth, and differences as meaningless. More often than not, is a steamroller that flattens diversity of thought.
Additionally, Pico was a Catholic theologian in the 14th century. His idea of inherent truth is “accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior” Which did not go over well with Jews and Muslims. His perennial philosophy is first and foremost a tool of conversion, a way of planting Christianity into other religions rapidly and rationally (as in, in a way that can be argued logically as opposed to spiritually.)
The foundation of Pico’s radical synthesis is a theory called the Prisca Theologia. (literally “Ancient Theology”) In which he argues that God actually revealed himself to Pagans several times in the form of the Divine Logos (Mind) to guide humanity to the point where it would be ready for Jesus. Specifically, he names six historical figures as the Six Sages who gave us pre-Christian divine wisdom that was actually secretly Christian this whole time. They are: Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Agleophemus (Proclus mentions this guy. Supposedly he is the Thracian Orphic Initiator who taught Orphic secrets to Pythagoras), Pythagoras, and Plato.
PICO AND KABBALAH
(The Kabbalah chapter will be before this)
Pico getting his hands on some translated Kabbalistic texts will mark a sea change for occult history. Pico’s fascination, even admiration for Kabbalsitic theology would cement its place in occult history for better and for worse.
For Pico, Kabbalah was theological scrap that could be melted down into weapons of conversion against the Jews. In his work the Heptaplus, he literally states: “Oh, Christian brothers, I pray that you consider a little more diligently how true and sound is my exposition, when to you there will be furnished, against the stony hearts of the Hebrews, very powerful darts taken from their armaments.”
These “darts” will only be as effective as Pico’s understanding of Kabbalah. To understand how well Pico understood Kabbalah, we should take a moment to discuss Pico’s Jewish teachers.
Elia del Medigo, called The “Last Jewish Averroist” by his students, considered himself a staunch follower of Maimonides. He was a sober, down-to-earth sort with a notable distaste for Kabbalah. In fact, he became disillusioned with radical syncretism after a certain prominent student of his got beaten up and thrown in jail for sleeping with the wife of a Medici. He went so far as to write the Sefer Bechinat Ha-dath, a philosophical treatise against said student’s perennial philosophy.
Flavius Mithridates was a converso with a skill for oration, referred to by his colleagues as a “clever charlatan” who preached anti-Jewish ideas from the Pugio Fidei before the papal court. Known for the Bibliotheca Cabbalistica, a translation of over 70 kabbalistic works into Latin. Modern scholarly revisions of his works have found them to be “erratic” and it is likely that he added entirely fabricated christian elements to his translations to make his patrons happy. This is where Pico gets the majority of his Kabbalistic knowledge from.
https://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/h-orient_to_rome/Orient_to_rome.html
And finally, Yohannan Alemanno. A full-blown astral magician, mystical syncretic, and the only actual kabbalist on this list. His works include everything from a Kabbalistic commentary on the Torah, to a treatise on magically achieving eternal life, to a book of fun anecdotes about King Solomon.
Given that Picos’s Jewish teachers were an anti-kabbalist who later disavowed him, a known charlatan, and an astral magician, it is safe to say that his understanding of Kabbalah was incomplete. His work on Kabbalah would go on to influence generations of occultists.
–
JOHANNES REUCHLIN
(Entry begins on 990 of the Haanegraf dictionary)
Johannes Reuchlin doesn’t quite fit into any one box. He was unique among the renaissance occultists in that his Hebrew was reportedly quite good. This was a christian theologian studying Hebrew during a time of extraordinary antisemitism, when Jewish people and their theology was regarded with extreme suspicion at best, and outright hatred at worst. His first Cabbalistic work, De Verbo Merifico (The Wonder-working Word) was published in 1494, two years after the Alhambra decree, which resulted in the expulsion of Jews from Spain.
So, when Gershom Scholem calls Reuchlin “first great Christian scholar of Hebrew” he deserves a fair amount of credit. At the same time, Wouter Hanegraaff also points out that “There is no inherent connection between Reuchlin’s endeavors as a Hebraist and his theological writings in the field of the kabbalah.” Reuchlin could read the words, but he didn’t necessarily understand them how they were intended to be understood.
Reuchlin’s work systemized Cabbala. He took what Ficino and Pico introduced, and fit it together into a comprehensive system. The core of Reuchlin’s proposed system is what he calls “soloquia” or magically powerful divine names. While the specific content of his work is highly complex, and resists summary, Reuchlin does quite a bit of work to reinforce the centrality of language to magic.
To Reuchlin, magic, specifically his version of kabbalah-flavored magic, is the missing piece to Judaism. Reuchlin positions Cabbala as the thing that will finally “complete” Judaism. He illustrates this at great lengths in De Verbo Merifico, in which he uses Cabbalistic techniques to “complete” the tetragrammaton, adding the hebrew letter “shin” to the middle, turning the “YHWH” into “YHSWH”, claiming “Yeshua” to be the secret esoteric name of Christ.
While evocative, this did very little to impress jewish people, who generally didn’t see their religion as something in need of “completion”. It should also be noted that “YHShWH” does not actually spell Yeshua.
HEINEICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA
Mercenary, feminist, lawyer, and occultist, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa was likely the strongest wizard in European history. Not necessarily in terms of magical power, but in terms of physical bodily strength. He was also one of the most influential occult writers in history. Agrippa took every piece of esoteric history he could get his beefy hands on, and carefully assembled it into a single comprehensive system.
Born in 1486 to a family of the middle nobility in the service of the House of Hapsburg, Agrippa studied at the University of Cologne for three years before earning the title of Magister Artium. After earning his masters degree in 1508, he did the natural next move for his career and became a mercenary in the army of Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I. This likely makes him the only occultist in European history who has killed people with a sword. He was good at being a mercenary too. He did so well that he was awarded the title of ritter, or knight.
His academic career began in earnest in 1509, when he was given the opportunity to lecture on Johannes Reuchlins De Verbo Merifico at the university of Dole. It was here that he wrote his first work, De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminae sexus (On the Nobility and Excellence of the Feminine Sex) a short serious-not-serious theological treatise which used concepts from Kabbalah and Neoplatonism to prove that women were inherently divinely superior to men. It was likely written to impress his then patron Margaret of Austria, the only daughter of Maximillian I. It should be underscored how radical this was for the time. The word “feminism” would not be coined for another few centuries, but De Nobiliate is often regarded as a proto-feminist work.
He did well as an academic, enough to earn him a doctorate. However, he was forced to flee Dole in 1510 under pressure from Franciscan prior Jean Catilinet, who claimed Agrippa to be a Judaizing heretic. It was around this time that he began writing his major work, De Occulta Philosophia, a radical restoration of magic. He discussed this with his tutor, Johannes Trithemius, who told him to keep writing but to “talk about arcane secrets only with proper friends”, a lesson he promptly refused to take to heart.
After fleeing Dole, he continued to defend himself against the accusations of judaizing, claiming that his Christian faith was in no way incompatible with his appreciation for Jewish theology. Saying ‘I am a Christian, but I do not dislike Jewish Rabbis’ a downright radical sentiment for the time, especially for someone who just had to flee the country after being accused of judaizing by a powerful friar.
From 1511 to 1518, Agrippa settled in Pavia in northern Italy, and then in Metz, modern France. Here, he lectured on Neoplatonism and Hermeticism and got into more theological conflicts (this time with the Dominicans.) Additionally, in 1519, in his capacity as legal advisor to the magistrate of Metz, Agrippa defended a woman accused of witchcraft and got into serious trouble with the Inquisition.
The woman in question was accused because her mother was considered a witch, and the inquisition was arguing that the pact with the devil was passed down hereditarily. Agrippa argued that baptism was stronger than any pact with the devil, and that the woman could not be held responsible. However, he went his trademark extra mile, and implicitly accused the Inquisitor of acting against the spirit of human decency and Christianity, even implying that denial of the power of baptism was heretical. Although he did succeed in saving the woman’s life, he was forced to flee Metz.
After a period of rapid relocation, the death of his first wife, a series of new patrons, an expedition to Turkey, the death of his second wife to the plague, additional conflicts with church authorities, and a short stint in debtors prison in Brussels in 1531, Agrippa published the first book of De Occulta Philosophia. It got him in more trouble with church authorities, earning the text a denouncement from Konrad Köllin, Inquisitor of Cologne.
His last letter was published in 1533. For information on his final days, we are reliant on the recounting of his student Johan Weir. According to him, Agrippa moved to Lyon, where he was imprisoned by King Francis, but was released thanks to appeals from his friends. He died in Grenoble, and was buried, ironically, in the graveyard of a Dominican church.
The completed version of Three Books of Occult Philosophy was finally published in 1533. It is a comprehensive synthesis of the ideas of his predecessors. It focuses mainly on the work of Ficino and Reuchlin, but also contains ideas from lesser-known figures like Ludovico Lazzarelli. The texts real triumph, however, is its deft synthesis of ancient magical writings with modern esoteric discourse. Agrippa fits the three ostensibly unrelated fields of natural magic, astronomy/astrology, and ritual magic, into a single cohesive whole. The text is written with simple, accessible language, and Agrippa’s distinct dry wit.
In his dedicatory letter to Trithemius, Agrippa describes magic in his own words. To Agrippa, magic was something that the ancients considered to be the highest science, but also something that had been diluted by charlatans and false philosophers, who committed heresy and called it “magic” to disguise their superstition. Agrippa believed that magic, and all esoteric work, was an ancient, lost art in need of restoration. The point of reviving this art was to achieve a more pure form of religion. For Agrippa, a religion with no room for new ideas was by definition incomplete.
(Biographical information comes from the Haanegraaf biography published by Brill)
JOHN DEE
(We gotta talk about Paracelcus before this)
Occultist, Alchemist, Mathematician, Antiquarian, Humanist, Wife-swapper, Court Magician to Queen Elizabeth I, and quite possibly the most educated person alive at the time, John Dee represents the pinnacle of Renaissance magic and learning. He is a figure so influential, he threatens to take over an introductory text like this one.
Where other occultists languish under a lack of attention from academics, Dee is the opposite. A veritable ocean of ink has been spilled about his life and work, drowning him in poor scholarship, bizarre speculation, and outright falsehood. At the same time, the actual events of his life are what scholars could call “buckwild.” Dividing the man from the myth is difficult.
The son of a wealthy Welsh textile merchant, young John Dee was characterized by two things: an ambitious desire to be embroiled in courtly politics, and an overwhelming thirst for knowledge. At first, this did not include the occult. He spent his early days studying, hopping from prestigious college to prestigious college where he rubbed elbows with the intellectuals of Europe.
By 1550, Dee was working as an elite tutor to the children of the noble and wealthy, eventually landing as personal tutor to a young Edward VI. Dee was a devout Protestant, and the deeply Catholic Queen Mary did not seem to like him all that much. Conflict between Protestants and Catholics was intense and commonplace at this point in English history, as Henry VIII had recently disbanded every Monastery, Convent, Priory, and Friary in the country. None of this stopped Dee from proposing an ambitious plan for establishing a court library by collecting rare and valuable texts they could from the recently dissolved monasteries.
His proposal went unanswered, so he decided to do it himself, and promptly spent the next 30 years assembling the most extensive private library in England, complete with an observatory and an alchemical laboratory.
Then, a turn of luck. Queen Elizabeth I ascended to the throne. Elizabeth seemed to like Dee much more, and he was given the task of astrologically determining an auspicious day for the coronation. He was able to publish his first academic text: Propaedeumata aphoristica, which provided an improved system for determining the positions of astronomical objects.
At this point in history, the distinction between astrology and astronomy had not quite formed. Whether or not astrology was a magical heresy was still a bit of a gray area. Astronomy-astrology was regarded with suspicion, but it was also quite useful for nautical navigation. England’s globe-spanning empire was built on their ability to get huge ships across the world safely and efficiently. Dee’s work was vital to the British Empire. A phrase Dee himself coined.
Up to this point, Dee’s interest in astrology was not necessarily magical in nature. However, Dee came to believe that they were complimented by the Neoplatonic-Hermetic beliefs of the Renaissance occultists, specifically the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Francesco Giorgi, and Paracelsus.
In 1564, Dee published his first magical work: The Monas Heiroglyphica. [Do a whole spotlight on the monas here]
ASIDE: A QUICK GUIDE TO THE MONAS HIEROGLYPHICA
Far warning, this is one of the most impenetrable esoteric texts ever published.
The Monas Hieroglyphica is a short text explaining the magical and natural properties of the Monas Hieroglyph, a symbol Dee devised. Dee theorizes that The Monas Hieroglyph (MH) is an experimental, recursive, symbolic representation of the whole of reality at every scale and state. Dee implies that all of math, geometry, alchemy, cabbala, every extant branch of magic and natural philosophy, can be simulated and re-created through skillful manipulation of the MH. His contemporaries found the text incomprehensible.
As for the logic behind the MH, consider the sun. If every drawing of the sun represents the same sun, those drawings are probably going to have similarities. Dee is arguing that if every depiction of the sun can be deconstructed into a few basic elements, that gives us an almost-universal sign for “The Sun.” Dee is arguing that this ur-sign is metaphysically meaningful in some important way. Dee also extends this process to written language, as the word “sun” represents the same thing as any drawing of the sun.
Dee argues that this process of deconstruction can be applied to everything, that everything can be broken down to a small handful of essential signs and symbols, and that these symbols fit together into the MH.
This process can also be reversed. Sometimes, a drawing of a sun isn't just a sun. Sometimes, a drawing of the sun represents something like, God’s love, alchemical perfection, or imminent death by dehydration. Dee argues that the essential sign of the sun also represents those things as well. And therefore, the entirety of creation can be derived from the MH.
Consider how through mathematics alone, a skilled astronomer can predict the exact position of the stars at any given date. Dee argues that skillful manipulation of the MH can model reality in similar ways. He even makes repeated reference to alchemical laboratory equipment, making the case that one who understands the MH could perform chemical experiments with nothing more than pen and paper.
Dee’s success with the idea was limited. The MH received little attention from his contemporaries, who largely found the book to be incomprehensible. However, it serves as an excellent demonstration of Dee’s sheer intellectual prowess and ambition. A theoretical paper simulation of all reality is quite the target to aim for, and the incredible diversity and depth of the knowledge he used to assemble the idea should illustrate the caliber of thinker he was.
—
After publishing some influential texts on navigation and geometry, and spending some time in what can only be described as an Elizabethan think tank, John entered his overtly esoteric period (Haanegraaf 303). Quite a bit of ink has been spilled speculating why John became preoccupied with the occult. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with the natural philosophy of his time, perhaps he found himself stifled by employment as a tool of the British Empire. Regardless, he became fascinated with scrying. This is the obsession that would lead to his infamous conversations with the angels.
John’s goal was perfect knowledge of natural philosophy. The logic seems reasonable: When you’ve read all you can, and you’re still in the dark, why not ask the angels? As for how he asked the angels, John was largely working from the Lesser Key of Solomon. John’s exact methodology is difficult to pin down, but it appeared to be an iterative process. Try a ritual from an old book, see how it went. If it went well, keep it the same. If it didn’t go well, try mixing it up. (This is speculation, we need to read more.)
His early conversations with the angels would have resembled seances, with mediums and crystal balls and smoky mirrors in which the angels would supposedly appear.
While the first proper angelic conversation would take place in 1581, things really kicked into high gear when Dee met a wandering alchemist and medium named Edward Kelley. (No relation.) The pair meshed like clockwork. From this point on, they would perform angelic conversations nearly daily, with Dee maintaining rigorous notes.
This pattern would continue for six years, and see Dee and Kelley through several adventures across the continent and several failed attempts to procure more profitable patronage with a series of indifferent European rulers. This was routine, until that fateful day in April of 1587, when the infamous wife-swapping incident occurred.
“I, John Dee, Edward Kelley and our two wives covenanted with God and subscribed to the same, for indissoluble and inviolable unities, charity and friendship keeping between us four, and all things between us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do” (True & Faithful Relation, 20-1)
This indissoluble unity, as it were, between Dee and Kelley would prove fatal to their friendship. It was in 1589 when Dee petitioned his then-patron, one Lord Roémberk of Poland, to allow him to return home to England. During the plague of 1605, he lost several of his children and his beloved wife. He actually continued his Angelic conversations, this time with a new medium named Bartholomew Hickman. The last entry in his magical diaries is dated to December of 1607. He died two years later, in 1609.
(Brill, 302)
HOW MAGIC CHANGED IN THE ELIZABETHAN WORLD
The cosmology of the medieval world was a rigidly, ordered thing. Everything in the universe had its place in theon the divine hierarchy. At the top there was Ggod, below him were the stars and planets, then man, then below him were the plants, animals, and rocks. Everything had its place, and if there was chaos, it was the fault of man. Sin was sand in the divine clockwork.
( Great Chain of Being, from Didacus Valades, Retorica Christiana)
The goal of the magician was to climb the Great Chain of Being like a ladder, to reach the house of god and achieve unity with him.
Dee makes a few assumptions about his work: (this comes from Empire of the Angels)
- All knowledge that comes from the observation of nature is a comprehensible whole. The world is a reflection of God’s mind, and it is knowable.
- There is truth in the doctrine of CorrespondenceCorrospondence. As Above, So Below.
- The Eschaton, the second coming of christ, which will ultimately save humanity from our fall, can be accelerated by those who have been illuminated through Hhermetic magic. Through learning magic, one becomes an active player.
A big cornerstone of Dee’s work was Al-Kindi’s Stellar Rays theory. Quote: “If you were skilled in ‘catoptrics,’” Dee explains in the Propaedeumata—catoptrics is the use of mirrors—“you would be able, by art, to imprint the rays of any star much more strongly upon any matter subjected to it than nature itself does.” (Empire of the angels)
“The universe and all of its perfect harmony and regularity of its stars and planets, according to Dee, is most like a lyre.11 Natural philosophers could play this lyre, working with nature’s laws to achieve effects that the less educated might perceive as magic.”
Temple Furniture.
The Holy Table.
- http://www.esotericarchives.com/dee/hm.htm#sylk (Heptarchia Mystica)
- http://www.esotericarchives.com/dee/holytab.htm (The Holy Table)
- Heavily inspired by the Almadel, or Sememphoras.
- The key to understanding are the numbers four, seven, and twelve.
- The Seven Seals represent the seven days of creation
- The lettering around the rim is the names of angels whose names begin with the letter B (why?)
- This is also where the Heart of the table comes from (method shown in the second link, but idk why thats chosen?)
GIORDANO BRUNO
- Plagarized Ficino a lot
- Not really sure if we need to talk about him
- Repeatedly referenced as an influential hermeticisist but its unclear as to how or to what degree. Much of his magical work is untranslated.
- “Such self-aggrandizement, though typical of its author’s attempts to generate authority, did little publicly to dispel the impression that he was ‘‘unsuccessful in human relations, devoid of social tact or worldly wisdom, unpractical to an almost insane degree’’ (Singer 1950, 3” (From the Yale publication of cabala of Pegasus)
- “In later years he preached an eclectic synthesis of Monadism, Copernicanism, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and elements of various occult philosophies.”
- Saw the goal of his philosophy to be “re-union with the creator”
THE MONAS HEIROGLYPHICA
Three big ingredients:
- Alchemy
- Astrology
- Apocalypse
he Renaissance Neo-Platonic,
the historical-alchemical, the
discursive-cabalistic,
and the analytical-semiotic
Clulee has traced Dee’s central sphere of influence to a mix of primarily Geberian alchemy and notes the clear relationship of Trithemius’s commentary on the famed Tabula Smaragdina80 on the Monas.81 Another key source for Dee is the Turba Philosophorum, which he owned several copies, the works of Roger Bacon (especially the Radix Mundi and to a lesser extent the Secretum Secretorum) and nascent Paracelsian elements can also be Detected.
These elements, according to theorem XVI, exist in equal and unequal portions which will be perfected balanced through correct application of the Monas itself. Dee is never very clear on how this should happen practically but it seems that, for him, due to a geometric propensity of the relationship between lines and points, the elements too strive toward some perfect “flowing together.”
Like Pantheus in his Voarchadumia (discussed more below)
the table of correspondences on 23r and the enormously interesting cosmic map featuring the Pico inspired “Horizon Aeternitatis” on 27r are simply left untranslated with only the explanation that they are “deliberately Veiled (Where is this horizon aeternitatis)
Alchemy is meant to be proof for the power of the Monas not vice versa
The monas is intended to be a sort of proof-reading of the book of nature (Sledge 35)
“The MH cannot simply be the result of a hybritizing of alchemy and cabala and it seems we require a more over-arcing theory to get at what Dee means for the Monas to be the only component within his “cabala of being.” (40)
We are reminded of Plotinus when he says, “It must not be thought that in the Intelligible World the gods and the blessed see propositions; everything expressed there is a beautiful image.”141
Dee draws this very specific distinction between “The cabala of being” and “the cabala of what is said“
To make this point clear we can turn briefly to how Renaissance thinkers conceived of the function of Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Marsilio Ficino most succinctly states the non-discursive theory of Hieroglyphics in the Renaissance mind, “When the Egyptian priests wished to signify divine mysteries, they did not use the small characters of script, but the whole images of plants, trees, or animals; for God has knowledge of things not by way of multiple thought but like the pure and firm shape of the thing itself (sed tanquam simplicem firmamque rei formam).”183
(51-52)
For renaissance thinkers, every picture of the sun was a metaphor for the same thing.
Such icons then fall into three types:
(1). Didactic Icons – correspond to an actual thing or process. The alchemic
image of the green lion devouring the sun represents the caustic process of nitric
acid on gold. These icons are cerebral and provide smooth correspondence to
ontological entities.
(2). Revelative - correspond to “symbolic-intuitive” ideas or rarified philosophic
processes. The ouroboros, or tail-devouring snake, represents unity in difference
or the eternal process of creation and destruction. These icons provide a pictorial
link via “intuition” to a non-rational idea.
(2). Powerful – or “occult” icons carry ontological power such that their very use
can change reality. The use of a Goetic sigil can actually shape occult forces to
align with one’s will. These icons bridge the gap between image, imagination,
and reality.
Interestingly, Szőnyi points out that Dee himself calls the Monas a “gamaaea”206
(57)
Gamaaea, which stores power but does not manipulate it
As we saw above in
theorem XIII, Dee felt that the Monad has achieved perfect semiotic continuity with the
objects it represented. (59)
In effect the logic operates within three
basic parameters: Durational Memory (formation), Nesting Feedback (causation), and
Parity of Part and Whole (relation). (62)
Basically, the funamantal geometry of the universe informs the shape of the Monas. The idea is that the + shape, representing the four elements, and the number four, is actually the SAME cross. And that the shape of literally any figure can be decomposed into its constituent semiotic elements.
Dee is kinda trying to answer the question of “How does As Above So Below effect language and signs?”
Within λ, the glass vessel, during the exercise of its particular function, all air
must be excluded or it will be extremely prejudicial. The corollary of ω is the
agreeable man, ready, active, and well disposed at all times. Who, then, is not
now able to procure the sweet and salutary fruits of this Science, which, I say,
spring from the mystery of these two letters?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horapollo
https://books.google.com/books/about/Syncretism_in_the_West.html?id=HZLWAAAAMAAJ
(We definitely have to talk about Ramon Lull before this)
NOTES
Ad Fontes - Back to the source
Where does knowledge come from? Well, it comes from Hermes trismegistus.
Last quarter of the 15th century = Platonic + Orphic + Hermetic + Kabbalistic work
Assembled by Ficicno, Pico, and Reuchlin
Syncretized by Agrippa, and extrapolated by Dee and Bruno
Hermes trismegistus
1433 - 1499 Marsilio Ficino
- Published the The Corpus Hermeticum though corrupted in translation. It hit the presses in 1471
- Started to translate Plato in the 15th century
- Tried to re-establish the platonic academy
- Expanded upon and systematized Platos theory of The Mania
- “On the Divine Frenzies”
- The Abstracteo, the process by which plato’s four frenzies liberate the soul, acting as stages
- Poetic: Liberates the soul through sacred language
- Telestic: Ceremonies of ritual purification allow the soul to begin traveling
- Prophetic:
- Love: soul is re-united with god
- He further explores this in On the Platonic Theologies
- He actually cites the corpus hermeticum as an example of what he means. This is truly a Christian/Hermetic theology of salvation
- “On the Heroic Frenzy”
- Plato and Aristotle underwent the bacchic rituals
1463 - 1494 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
1447 - 1500 Lodovico Lazzarelli
- First guy to identify as a Hermeticist
- Crater Hermetis - First true work of european Hermetic Philosophy
1548 - 1600 Giordano Bruno
1455 - 1522 Reuchlin
- Ad Fontes, back to the source
- De Verbo Merofico - The Wonder-working word
- On the Art of Kabbalah
- Ficino and Pico were weirdly contemptuous of “modern” magic like solomonic or astral magic. Binding demons, ritual furniture, robes, binding sigils, etc
- Shit like the munich manual
- They seemed to view these things as an extension of the debased and backwards medieval era
- Pico was the first guy to introduce Kabbalah to western society, as part of a renovation of religion
- “No science more truly assures us of the divinity of christ than magic and kabbalah”
- “No magic is efficacious unless supported by Kabbalah”
- Pico’s works were some of the first ever put on the index prohibitorum, the catholic list of banned books
- Pico was assassinated at 31 probably
- Reuchlin studied hebrew and actually valiantly argued against the destruction of hebrew texts in an effort for mass conversion, dude was an OG
The aspiring hermetic mage would have built everything off Iamblichus’s De Mysteriis
Proclus: On Sacrifices in Magic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMREGOVqxZ4&ab_channel=ESOTERICA
Reuchlin and the Wonder-Working Word
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmhmzERU84g&ab_channel=ESOTERICA
Hermetic Philosophy, Earlies European Hermeticism - Crater Hermetis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG7U_3OA868&ab_channel=ESOTERICA
Resistance is Futile: Perennialism, Platonism, and Hegemony - 1 of 2
- Dr Dan Atrell
- Most Polemics are In Group Singaling, intended to demonstrate faith
- Not all Evangelization is colonialism
- What SHOULD be criticized is this process of Appropriation and Weaponization
- 15th Century
- Christianity is in trouble
- Eastern Christianity is being encroached upon by the Ottoman Empire
- 1453, Constantinople falls of Mehmed the 2nd and this scares the FUCK out of the christian world
- Mass exile of greek scholars fleeing to italy, beginning all their texts with em
- Tehre is no Christian Kabbalah, only a Christian Interpretation of Kabbalah
- Joseph L. Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Kabbalah in the renaissance
- Christian Perenial thought is this idea that pre-christian religion foreshadowed christianity
- The goal being to create an irrefutable system of religion that could be used to convert the world
- Perennialism: The belief that there is one metaphysical truth underlying all world religions. (or all “true” religions)
- Perennialists hold what is Universal to be significant, and what is particular to be insignificant
- Perniallism emerged as a polemical strategy to locate common denominators ebtween two similar but incomensurate belief systems
- Perennialism functions via the distinction between Exoteric and Esoteric
- Ficino Prisca Theologia
- Argues that God revealed himself as the Logos to pagans
- He gets this directly from Proclus
- The forefront of these guys was Hermes Trismegistus
- 1:26:11
- Marsillio Fincino On the Christian Religion trans. Dr. Dan Attrell
- Ficino considered jews to be valueable and worth studying, but he also considered them to not have a natural end point
- On the Spiritual Understanding:
- “In [the words fo Jeremiah,] God promises that someday He will set up a new agreement and testament, and that He will hand down a new law, different from the one which he had given to moses after he had delivered the Jews from Egypt, and that he will no longer write it on tablets, but in the minds of men, as if to say that the first one could be destroyed, not the second, and the old ceremonies ought to be maintained according to the spiritual understanding (intelligentia spiritalis) once the New Testamant is introduces. Certainly, as paul the Apostle says, when the prophet speaks of a “new agreement and testament, ” je ,eams tjat the other cam grow old and falter.”
- -
- …The divine depth of the prophetic and Christian mysteries: because it is divine, it is therefore impenetrable to human understanding. Conversely, the character of the venal and wretched Jews is entirely uncultivated and obstinate: and insatiable greed not only to preserve what is theirs, but also to earn interest; a natural love of their own people and an innate hatred for Christians.
Marsillo Ficino has a deep reverence and appreciation for Judaism as a religion, but he describes actual Jewish people as "uncultivated" and "venal." In his mind, Judaism has a sort of natural theological endpoint, as if its a seed that will inevitably sprout into Christianity. He interprets Kabbalah as "proof" that Judaism will become obsolete. His interpretation of Kabbalah is notably supersessionist and anti-Jewish, but also aggressively antisemitic. De Christiana Religione trades in some pretty awful stereotypes.
Pico de Mirandola seems to interpret Judaism as a sort of necessary root structure for Christianity. He interprets Kabbalah as evidence of some deeper truth underlying both religions, heavily implying that he thinks both Jews and Christians are doing religion wrong. Rather than supersesionism, his interpretation of Kabbalah leans into a sort of proto-theosophical stance, as if both Christianity and Judaism hold fragments of some deeper truth that must be reconstructed.
- Ficino didn’t study under jewish teachers
- Pico did
- Reuchlin did
Part 2
Prisca Theologia, the Six Sages
- Hermes Trismegistus
- Zoroaster
- Orpheus
- Agleophemus
- Pythagoras
- Plato
If the hebrews agree with us anywhere, we shall order them to stand by the ancient traditions of their fathers; if anywhere they disagree, then drawn up in Catholic legions we shall make an attack upon them. In short, whatever we detect foreign to the truth of the Gospels we shall refute to the extent of our power, while whatever we find holy and true we shall bear off from the synagogue as from a wrongful possessor to ourselves, the legitimate Israelites.
-Pico della Mirandola
Pico thought that Neoplatonists were appropriating the ideas of Christians, and not the other way around 17:46
Pico is trying to reconcile Aristotle and Plato, but his solution is very aristotelian. Ficino was a platonist. Ficino said that The One is above and outside of being. For Pico, The One IS being.
Pico is all about Averroes and merging with the Active intellect. Pico wants to annihilate himself in The One, become one with the Good. The soul merges with god.
Ficino, the soul is immortal, but goes to be with god in eternal beatitude but never fully merges.
Pico got this from Averroists like aliah del Medico
Dr. Sledge emphasizes the importance of Averroes
- Oh, Christian brothers, I pray that you consider a little more diligently how true and sound is my exposition, when to you there will be furnished, against the stony hearts of the Hbrewes, very powerful darts taken from their armaments.
- Heptaplus, 1489
- They conceived of themselves as engaging in spiritual warfare
Pico’s Jewish Teachers
Elia del Medigo
- Jewish schoolman at padua
- The Last Jewish Averroist
- Pro-Aristotle, Anti-plato, anti-Kabbalah, anti-syncretism
Flavius Mithridates
- Converso
- Preached ideas from the pugio fidei before the papal court
- (Mis)translator of 70 works of Kabbalah (This is where Pico gets his Kabbalah from)
- Pro-Platonic, Pro-Pisca Theologia, Pro-syncretism
Yohannan Alemanno
- Jewish Kabbalist and Astral Magician, Pro-syncretism
- Big Influence on Heptaplus
- Apparently there was a bit of a cottage industry of conversoes translating kabbalistic texts into latin and just kinda adding trinitarian shit for the paycheck
Wonder working word was probably the big influence on John Dee
Agrippa is getting his Kabbala from Francesco giorgi, a fransiscan, and Giorgi is getting his shit from Pico
The Last Gasp of Platonic Realism. By the time that all this was going on, the late 15th century, Nominalism had already won the day
Pico believed in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. He conceptualized magic as playing the strings between objects, and he did so with hebrew. He believed that Hebrew was the fundamentally primordial language, the language that god taught to Moses
Figura: Diagram to explain things. Very common medieval thing to try and summarize everything in a single diagram.
Joacim of Fiore, John dee calls him Joachim the prophicizer
The thing that unites the three realms is number
42:17
From the wikipedia for the problem of universals
Nominalism arose in reaction to the problem of universals, specifically accounting for the fact that some things are of the same type. For example, Fluffy and Kitzler are both cats, or, the fact that certain properties are repeatable, such as: the grass, the shirt, and Kermit the Frog are green. One wants to know by virtue of what are Fluffy and Kitzler both cats, and what makes the grass, the shirt, and Kermit green.
The Platonist answer is that all the green things are green in virtue of the existence of a universal: a single abstract thing that, in this case, is a part of all the green things. With respect to the color of the grass, the shirt and Kermit, one of their parts is identical. In this respect, the three parts are literally one. Greenness is repeatable because there is one thing that manifests itself wherever there are green things.
Nominalism denies the existence of universals. The motivation for this flows from several concerns, the first one being where they might exist. Plato famously held, on one interpretation, that there is a realm of abstract forms or universals apart from the physical world (see theory of the forms). Particular physical objects merely exemplify or instantiate the universal. But this raises the question: Where is this universal realm? One possibility is that it is outside space and time. A view sympathetic with this possibility holds that, precisely because some form is immanent in several physical objects, it must also transcend each of those physical objects; in this way, the forms are "transcendent" only insofar as they are "immanent" in many physical objects. In other words, immanence implies transcendence; they are not opposed to one another. (Nor, in this view, would there be a separate "world" or "realm" of forms that is distinct from the physical world, thus shirking much of the worry about where to locate a "universal realm".) However, naturalists assert that nothing is outside of space and time. Some Neoplatonists, such as the pagan philosopher Plotinus and the Christian philosopher Augustine, imply (anticipating conceptualism) that universals are contained within the mind of God. To complicate things, what is the nature of the instantiation or exemplification relation?
