Natural Magic: Sympathy, Occult Qualities and Early Science

Natural magic (magia naturalis) was the medieval and early modern name for the art of producing marvellous effects by using the hidden powers of natural things, such as stones, plants, animals, magnets and the stars, without calling on demons. Its defenders, from William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus to Marsilio Ficino, Cornelius Agrippa and Giambattista della Porta, presented it as the practical summit of natural philosophy, and historians now see it as one of the roots of experimental science.

Occult Qualities and the Logic of Natural Magic§

Scholastic natural philosophy, following Aristotle, explained most properties of bodies through their manifest qualities: hot, cold, wet and dry. Some effects, however, could not be explained this way. The lodestone drew iron, the torpedo fish numbed the hand that touched it, rhubarb purged bile, and certain stones and herbs were said to cure specific diseases. Such powers were called occult (hidden) qualities, not because they were sinister but because their causes could not be perceived by the senses, only inferred from their effects.

Natural magic was the art of knowing and applying these hidden powers. Because it worked through the created properties of things, many theologians conceded that it could be licit. The danger lay in drifting from genuine natural virtues to signs, words and characters that had no natural power and could therefore only work through demons. Much of the history of natural magic is the history of arguments over where this line lay, a story also told in White Magic: A History.

Medieval Origins: Arabic Science and Scholastic Debate§

The concept took shape in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as Latin scholars absorbed Arabic works on astrology, alchemy and the properties of things. The ninth-century philosopher al-Kindī, in a treatise known in Latin as De radiis ("On Rays"), argued that everything in the world emits rays that affect everything else, so that stars, words, images and intentions all have physical effects. The Picatrix, translated in the mid-thirteenth century, applied similar ideas to astrological talismans, described in Amulets and Talismans.

The Paris theologian William of Auvergne (d. 1249) appears to have been among the first Latin authors to speak explicitly of "natural magic", which he treated as a part of natural science, though one open to abuse. Albertus Magnus discussed the properties of minerals and plants in his natural works, and a range of popular texts later circulated under his name, including the Book of Secrets and On the Marvels of the World, which offered recipes based on sympathies between things. Roger Bacon wrote about secret works of art and nature that could produce wonders without magic. Lynn Thorndike's monumental History of Magic and Experimental Science traced this literature in detail.

Sympathy, Antipathy and the World Spirit§

Natural magicians described the cosmos as a web of correspondences. Things of like nature attract one another (sympathy); things of opposed nature repel (antipathy). The peony was associated with the Moon, gold and the heliotrope with the Sun, lead with Saturn. Celestial bodies poured down their influences through a subtle spiritus mundi, a world spirit or medium between the world soul and matter, which could be concentrated in suitable materials.

In the Renaissance, these ideas were given philosophical depth by Platonism. Marsilio Ficino, in the third book of his Three Books on Life (1489), explained how a scholar might attract the beneficent spirit of the Sun or Jupiter through music, scents, colours, foods and images, while remaining cautious about talismans. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Nine Hundred Theses (1486) called magic the practical part of natural science, and his accompanying Oration praised natural magic as the "absolute consummation" of natural philosophy. D. P. Walker's classic study distinguished this "spiritual" magic from openly "demonic" magic, while showing how hard the two were to separate.

Agrippa and the Three Worlds§

Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533) placed natural magic in the first of three worlds: the elemental or natural world, the celestial world of stars and numbers, and the intellectual world of angels and divine names. The first book treats the elements, occult virtues, sympathies, fascination, poisons, suffumigations, the passions and the powers of the soul. Agrippa's scheme, explained in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and available in the catalogue as Three Books of Occult Philosophy, made natural magic the foundation for higher celestial and ceremonial operations.

Paracelsus and his followers developed the related doctrine of signatures, according to which God marked plants and minerals with visible signs of their hidden virtues: a walnut resembling a brain, a plant with spotted leaves for diseases of the lungs. Jacob Böhme's De signatura rerum (1622) turned the idea into a mystical theology, discussed in Jacob Böhme. Alchemy, treated in Western Alchemy, was closely related, since it too sought to manipulate hidden powers of matter.

Della Porta's Magia Naturalis§

The most popular book of natural magic was written by the Neapolitan polymath Giambattista della Porta (c. 1535–1615). The first edition of his Magia naturalis (1558), in four books, was published when he was young; the greatly expanded twenty-book version of 1589 was widely translated, appearing in English as Natural Magick in 1658. Della Porta defined natural magic as the practical part of natural philosophy and filled his book with an astonishing mixture: the generation of animals, alterations of metals, counterfeit gems, perfumes, distillation, cookery, invisible writing, magnetism, optics and the camera obscura.

Della Porta founded an academy in Naples devoted to the secrets of nature and was later a member of the Roman Accademia dei Lincei, alongside Galileo. He also had trouble with the Inquisition, which suspected his interests in divination and occult knowledge. His work illustrates the culture William Eamon has called the "science of secrets", in which collecting and testing recipes was both entertainment and a route to new knowledge.

Weapon-Salve, Sympathetic Powder and the Scientific Revolution§

In the seventeenth century, natural magic was tested in public controversies. The weapon-salve was an ointment applied not to a wound but to the weapon that had caused it, supposedly healing at a distance by sympathy. In England, the cleric William Foster attacked it as diabolical in Hoplocrisma-Spongus (1631), and the physician Robert Fludd defended it as natural. Sir Kenelm Digby later promoted a "powder of sympathy" in a lecture published in 1658. Such debates helped force questions about action at a distance, experiment and evidence.

Historians once saw the Scientific Revolution as a straightforward victory over magic. More recent work, including studies by Keith Hutchison, Brian Copenhaver, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, shows a more complex picture. Mechanical philosophers rejected occult qualities as explanations, yet Newton's gravity was itself attacked as an occult quality, and the habit of collecting marvels and testing secrets fed into experimental practice. Natural magic did not so much vanish as split: part became natural science, part was rejected as superstition, and part survived in the occult revival. For the place of natural magic among the other kinds of magic, see What Is Magic? and Theories of Magic.

Frequently asked questions§

What is natural magic in simple terms?§

Natural magic was the art of producing wonders through the hidden but natural properties of things, such as magnetism or the supposed virtues of stones and herbs, without involving spirits. It was considered part of natural philosophy.

Was natural magic allowed by the Church?§

Many theologians accepted that natural magic could be legitimate, since it used God-given properties of creation. But they warned that practitioners easily slipped into using words, characters and images that could only work through demons, which was forbidden.

Who wrote the most famous book on natural magic?§

Giambattista della Porta's Magia naturalis, first published in 1558 and expanded in 1589, was the best-known work. It was translated into several languages, including English in 1658 as Natural Magick.

How is natural magic related to science?§

Natural magic shared science's interest in hidden causes and practical effects, and many of its experiments in optics, magnetism and chemistry fed into early modern science. Later scientists rejected its explanations, but historians see it as one of science's precursors.

Sources and further reading§

• Natural Magick — Giambattista della Porta, 1589
• Three Books on Life — Marsilio Ficino, 1489
• Three Books of Occult Philosophy — Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, 1533
• A History of Magic and Experimental Science — Lynn Thorndike, 1923–1958
• Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella — D. P. Walker, 1958
• Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture — William Eamon, 1994
• Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 — Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, 1998
• Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment — Brian P. Copenhaver, 2015
• Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition — Frances A. Yates, 1964
• Magic in the Middle Ages — Richard Kieckhefer, 1989