Three Books of Occult Philosophy

Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia is the most comprehensive synthesis of Renaissance magic and among the most influential books in the history of Western esotericism. Agrippa drafted an early version in 1510 and sent it to his mentor Johannes Trithemius; he revised and greatly enlarged it over two decades, publishing the first book in 1531 and the complete work at Cologne in 1533. It follows a threefold cosmology. Book I treats natural magic: the elements, occult virtues, sympathies and antipathies, the powers of stones, plants and animals, fascination and the passions of the soul. Book II concerns celestial or mathematical magic: number symbolism, harmony, geometrical figures, planetary seals and magic squares, and astrological images. Book III addresses ceremonial or religious magic: divine names, the Kabbalah, angels and demons, the orders of spirits, the soul, prophecy and the rites by which the magician ascends to God. Agrippa drew on Ficino, Pico, Reuchlin, Trithemius, Neoplatonic and Hermetic writings, medieval image magic and Christian Kabbalah, weaving them into a single learned system. Its tables and correspondences became a quarry for later grimoires, for John Dee, for Francis Barrett’s The Magus and for the nineteenth-century Golden Dawn. Scholars still debate how far Agrippa’s sceptical declamation On the Vanity of the Sciences (1530) represents a recantation, but most now read the two works as complementary.

What it contains

• Book I: elements, occult virtues, sympathies, natural magic and the powers of the soul
• Book II: number symbolism, harmony, figures, magic squares and planetary seals
• Book III: divine names, Kabbalah, angels, demons and religious ceremonies
• Tables of correspondences for planets, signs and elements
• Hebrew alphabets, Kabbalistic tables and spirit seals
• Doctrine of the magician’s purification and ascent