Renaissance magic
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Author of De occulta philosophia, the Renaissance textbook that later ceremonial magicians returned to again and again.
- Dates
- 1486 – 1535
- Dating
- documented dates
- Born
- Cologne
- Died
- Grenoble
The life
Soldier, physician, lawyer, diplomat, theologian and itinerant intellectual. He knew Trithemius, and absorbed Renaissance Hermetism, Kabbalah, astrology and magic into one grand theoretical construction.
Place in the tradition
Almost every later Western ceremonial magical system owes him something. His three-part division — elemental, celestial, ceremonial — is still the shape of the subject.
a note on the record
History and later legend
The relationship between his magical commitments and his later sceptical attack on the arts and sciences remains debated.
the written record
Principal works
-
draft 1510; Book I printed 1531; complete 1533
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Divides magic into elemental or natural, celestial or mathematical, and intellectual or ceremonial, and synthesises correspondences, astrology, number, Hebrew names, angels, spirits, talismans and natural virtues.
held in the source catalogue Read at archive.org ↗
-
1530
On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Arts and Sciences
A sceptical or penitential critique of human knowledge, including the occult arts.