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Liber XII · Hermeticism

Liber XII · Hermeticism · Chapter I: Astral Magic

Ficino's Three Books on Life (De vita): Melancholy and the Stars

Ficino's Three Books on Life (De vita libri tres, 1489): scholars' melancholy, long life, drawing planetary influence through music, images and medicine.

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De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life), published in Florence in 1489, is a medical and philosophical treatise by Marsilio Ficino that teaches scholars how to protect their health, prolong their lives and draw beneficial influences from the heavens. Its third book, De vita coelitus comparanda ("On obtaining life from the heavens"), explains how music, scents, foods, medicines and astrological images can attract the favour of the Sun, Jupiter and Venus. Grounded in Neoplatonic philosophy rather than in demons, it became the founding text of Renaissance "natural magic" and one of the most widely printed books of its age.

How the Three Books on Life Came to Be§

The three books were not conceived as a single work. The first, De vita sana ("On a healthy life"), was written around 1480. The second, De vita longa ("On a long life"), was completed in 1489. The third, De vita coelitus comparanda, began as a commentary on a treatise of Plotinus (Enneads IV.3.11) that Ficino wrote while translating the Enneads of Plotinus, and grew into an independent book. Ficino gathered the three and published them together in Florence in December 1489, with a dedication to Lorenzo de' Medici.

Ficino was well placed to write such a work. The son of a physician to Cosimo de' Medici, he had trained in medicine before devoting himself to Plato, and he was ordained a priest in 1473. He combined three professions, he said, as healer of bodies, of souls and, through philosophy, of minds. The book reflects all three. For his life and broader work, see Marsilio Ficino.

Book One: Melancholy and the Scholar's Health§

The first book addresses the literati, men devoted to learning, and argues that they are more vulnerable to illness than other people. Using the medical theory of the four humours inherited from Galen and Hippocrates, Ficino explains that study dries and cools the body and consumes the subtle vital spirits, producing an excess of black bile, or melancholy. Astrologically, contemplatives belong to Saturn, the cold, slow and distant planet, and to Mercury, the planet of learning.

Yet melancholy was not only a disease. Following a famous passage from a work attributed to Aristotle, Problems XXX.1, which asks why outstanding men in philosophy, politics and the arts are melancholic, Ficino presented the melancholic temperament as the condition of genius. Properly balanced, black bile allows the mind to concentrate and rise to the contemplation of higher things; out of balance it brings depression and illness. Ficino, who had Saturn rising in his horoscope, wrote of the problem with personal feeling. His remedies are dietary and practical: regular hours of sleep and study, walks in pleasant places, moderate wine, music, cheerful company and foods and medicines thought to restore the spirits.

This rehabilitation of melancholy had a long history in Renaissance art and literature, reflected in Albrecht Dürer's engraving Melencolia I (1514) and Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

Book Two: Prolonging Life in Old Age§

The second book offers advice on extending life for the elderly, again framed for scholars. It recommends a careful diet, the warmth of the sun, gentle exercise, the company of the young and the use of fragrances, gold and certain precious substances believed to strengthen the vital spirit. Ficino discusses the "elixir" of the alchemists in cautious terms and draws on the medical authorities of antiquity and the Arabic tradition. The tone is that of a physician's regimen, combining reasonable advice about rest and diet with the remedies of fifteenth-century pharmacy.

Book Three: Drawing Life from the Heavens§

The third book is the source of the work's fame. Ficino begins from the Neoplatonic image of the cosmos as a living being, animated by a World Soul. Between the World Soul and the body of the world lies a subtle "cosmic spirit" (spiritus mundi), carried above all by the rays of the stars. The human being has a corresponding spirit, a fine vapour produced from the blood, linking soul and body. Because like attracts like, a person can make his own spirit receptive to particular celestial influences by surrounding himself with things that share their nature.

Planetary Remedies and Correspondences§

Ficino advises those who need vigour and cheerfulness to turn to the three benign "Graces": the Sun, Jupiter and Venus. Solar things include gold, saffron, cinnamon, the laurel, honey and the colours gold and yellow; Venusian things include roses, sweet fruits and green; Jupiter brings temperance and health. One may attract their influence by using these substances in food and medicine, wearing their colours, choosing appropriate times and places, and being in bright, airy surroundings. These lists are an early systematic statement of the planetary correspondences later expanded by Agrippa.

Music and Song§

Music held a special place. Because sound is made of moving air, like spirit itself, Ficino held that it is the most powerful means of affecting the spirit. Songs composed in the character of a planet, sung at the right time and with the right words, could align the singer's spirit with that planet. Ficino himself sang Orphic hymns to the accompaniment of a lyre. Scholars still debate what this music sounded like; no notation survives.

Talismanic Images§

The most controversial chapters of Book III discuss images engraved on stones or metals under particular constellations. Ficino reports the views of Arabic and Hermetic authors, including the passage in the Asclepius on Egyptian statues animated by divine powers, and draws on the Picatrix and on Proclus. His own position is hesitant: he suggests that any power of such images comes chiefly from the material and the timing rather than from the figure carved, and he warns against anything that would involve demons. The book offers descriptions of these images, not a working manual, and he repeatedly states his submission to the Church.

Controversy and Ficino's Apology§

The book immediately caused concern. Ficino learned that churchmen in Rome had accused him of practising magic and astrology, and in 1489 he wrote an Apologia defending the work. He distinguished two kinds of magic: a forbidden one that seeks the help of demons, and a natural one that applies natural things to natural bodies, as a farmer grafts or a physician prescribes. Friends in Rome, among them the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro, are said to have spoken on his behalf, and the matter passed without formal proceedings.

The distinction between demonic and natural magic was not new, but Ficino gave it a philosophical foundation in Neoplatonism, and it framed the subsequent debate. Historians since D. P. Walker have noted that Ficino's "spiritual magic" sat on an uncertain border: the planetary songs could be read as prayers addressed to celestial intelligences, and critics would later argue that such practices inevitably involved demons.

Influence of De vita on Renaissance Magic§

De vita was a bestseller, printed in about thirty editions by the mid-seventeenth century and translated into Italian, French and German. It shaped natural magic as a learned discipline, distinct from both popular sorcery and ritual conjuration. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa drew heavily on it in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy; Tommaso Campanella performed planetary rituals in its spirit for Pope Urban VIII around 1628; and its lists of planetary substances lie behind much later astral magic and the use of amulets and talismans.

Modern interest was revived by Aby Warburg's circle, by D. P. Walker's Spiritual and Demonic Magic (1958) and by Frances Yates, who placed Ficino at the head of a Hermetic tradition. The critical edition and English translation by Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (1989) made the full text accessible. Scholars today read the book both as an important document in the history of medicine and psychology and as a central text in the history of Western esotericism.

Frequently asked questions§

What is Ficino's Three Books on Life about?§

It is a guide to health for scholars. Book I treats the melancholy that afflicts students, Book II the prolonging of life in old age, and Book III the drawing of beneficial influences from the stars through food, medicine, colours, scents, music and images.

Is De vita a book of magic?§

It contains a theory of "natural magic" based on the sympathies between heavenly bodies and earthly things, especially in Book III. Ficino framed this as medicine and natural philosophy and explicitly rejected magic involving demons.

He followed the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, which observed that outstanding people are often melancholic, and the astrological association of contemplation with Saturn. For him melancholy was a danger to health but also the temperament that enabled deep thought.

Was Ficino condemned by the Church?§

No. Some churchmen raised concerns about the book, and Ficino responded with an Apology explaining that his magic was natural rather than demonic. With the support of friends in Rome, the matter went no further.

Sources and further reading§