The Section for Emic understandings of Magic

This section is intended to encompass views on magic as it is understood by esotericists or magicians themselves (i.e. emic).

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1. The nature of magic according to Henry Cornelius Agrippa as set forth in his Philosophia Occulta (especially Book 1, Chapter 2):

The following short survey is intended to give an outline of Agrippa’s conception of Magic.

According to Agrippa magic is a knowledge and science about the hidden operations and secret things in nature. Magic can unravel the hidden sympathies and antipathies which exist between things and produce effects by knowing theses sympathies and antipathies. Magic is thereby also an art by which one is able to manipulate nature.

Magic is regarded as the most sacred and sublime science, because it is the synthesis of natural philosophy, mathematical philosophy and theological philosophy thus covering all the three worlds of existence in one unity. Magic is thereby a sort of total or complete knowledge covering the entirety of cosmos.

The three parts of magic:

1. Natural philosophy is about things in the material world. It seeks to understand them through an understanding of their causes, effects, spatial and temporal dimensions and their parts and unity.

2. Mathematical philosophy is about the quantity of material things in three dimensions, motion and the celestial bodies which include the science of astrology.

3. Theology is about the nature of god, man’s inner nature and the angles. It is furthermore about religion, ceremonies, rituals and subtle mysteries.

No work can be done without an understanding of the nature of magic and its operations as the unity of natural, mathematical and theological philosophy.

The holy knowledge of magic is very ancient and has been transmitted through history in somewhat the following way:

‘It was, as we find, brought to light by most sage Authours [authors], and most famous Writers; amongst which principally Zamolxis and Zoroaster were so famous, that many believed they were the inventors of this Science. Their track [footsteps] Abbaris the Hyperborean, Charmondas, Damigeron, Eudoxus, Hermippus followed: there were also other eminent, choice men, as Mercurius Tresmegistus [Trismegistus], Porphyrius [Porphyry], Iamblicus [Iamblichus], Plotinus, Proclus, Dardanus, Orpheus the Thracian, Gog the Grecian, Germa the Babilonian [Babylonian], Apollonius of Tyana, Osthanes also wrote excellently in this Art; whose Books being as it were lost, Democritus of Abdera recovered, and set forth with his own Commentaries. Besides Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Plato, and many other renowned Philosophers travelled far by Sea to learn this Art: and being returned, published it with wonderfull devoutness, esteeming of it as a great secret. Also it is well known that Pythagoras, and Plato went to the Prophets of Memphis to learn it, and travelled through almost all Syria, Egypt, Judea, and the Schools of the Caldeans [Chaldaeans], that they might not be ignorant of the most sacred Memorials, and Records of Magick, as also that they might be furnished with Divine things.’ (Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy vol. 1 chap. 2).

The idea that true knowledge belonged to a distant past was a central idea to renaissance humanism. In The writings of Ficino and Pico, which Agrippa had read, we for example find the idea of a ‘prisca theologia’ or original pure knowledge given to man in a distant past by great sages.

Tim Rudbøg, Oct. 2006

 

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