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How Natural Is Ficino's Natural Magic

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Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred Module 2: Essay 2 – Carole Taylor How 'natural' is Ficino's natural magic? Introduction Of all Ficino's work, the most pertinent to an understanding of what he termed 'natural magic' is De vita libri tres or Three Books on Life 1, particularly book three, De vita coelitus comparanda 2, which Copenhaver describes as the most important work on magic of the early modern period (Copenhaver, 1990, p.267). A number of scholars have noted the presence of theurgic elements in De vita . Kaske and Clark, for instance, stress the theurgic content of Ficono’s Neoplatonic sources (Kaske and Clark, 1989) pp.46-47), Copenhaver cites the impact of the theurgic magic of Iamblichus, Psellos and the Chaldean Oracles (Copenhaver, 1987, p.453), and Voss refers to it as 'a beginner's guide to theurgic ritual under the cloak of a manual on health' (Voss, Ficino's Natural Magic , p.2). The book only narrowly escaped being banned (Campion, 2009, p.89) and Ficino published an Apology just four months later, restating his position on magic, so it is clear that the more orthodox authorities viewed it with suspicion. However, through infusing the spiritual aims of Neoplatonic philosophy into Christianity, he seems to have reframed the idea of 'natural magic' altogether, extending it into a celestial context and emphasising the 'natural' life-giving properties of the celestial bodies. A complete spiritual and cosmological vision emerges, and perhaps a new understanding of the notion of ‘natural magic’. Natural magic At the time De Vita was published in 1489, magic was generally seen as incompatible with scripture (Campion, 2009, p.88); in particular, any practice which involved the invocation of spirits was considered heretical by the Church. Of the latter, there were two types, theurgy (high spiritual magic) and goetia (witchcraft or sorcery), both involving interaction with spiritual entities of one type or another (Copenhaver, 1990, p.273); and it was this interaction which was central to the Church's prohibition (Campion, 2009, p.94). 1 Hereafter referred to as De vita. 2 Hereafter referred to as Dvcc, except in referencing quotes when the full title Three Books on Life III has been used. 1 Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred Module 2: Essay 2 – Carole Taylor Natural magic, by contrast, was acceptable if it contained no demonic or ritual elements but focused itself on harnessing the powers believed to be implanted by God in the natural world for man’s use. Here we see the magician as natural philosopher, gaining advantage over his environment through knowledge of its constituents, in activities such as the making of medicines or prediction of the weather (Thomas, 1971, pp.302-303). We can locate this distinction in the seminal theology of Augustine and Aquinas. Because of the polarisation between incarnate and divine worlds which emerged in Christianity, the idea of a benign intermediary realm largely disappeared, save for the existence of angels and saints – the deities, daemons and spirits of Greek pagan belief became demonised, excluded from the benefic structure of God's universe as depicted in Valedes’ image of the Great Chain of Being , left (Voss, Iamblichus & Theurgy ). For example, the classical notion of calling down a divine presence to inhabit a statue was considered sinful; in addition, Augustine had condemned the idea of theurgic magic in City of God : "Who does not see that all these things are fictions of deceiving demons, unless he be a wretched slave of theirs, and an alien from the grace of the true Liberator? ... For these are the delusive appearances of that spirit who longs to entangle wretched souls in the deceptive worship of many and false gods, and to turn them aside form the true worship of the true God, by whom alone they are cleansed and healed..." (Augustine, City of God, chapter 10). Aquinas similarly warned against any practice which summoned demons or offered worship to pagan deities (Copenhaver, 1990, p.274 and 1984, pp.531-2). He also condemned 'judicial' astrology (the reading of horoscopes with a view to foretelling the future) where this acknowledged the planets as causal agents, denying free will (Campion, 2009, p.156). Theurgic magic Theurgy can be defined literally as 'divine working' or 'divine action'. It describes a ritual practice designed to invoke divine presence and achieve the goal of henosis, unity with the One. As Thomas describes it, "spiritual magic or theurgy was based on the idea that one could reach God in an ascent up the scale of creation made possible by a rigorous course of prayer, fasting and devotional preparation" (Thomas, 1971, p.320). As Proclus tells us: 2 Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred Module 2: Essay 2 – Carole Taylor "(Theurgy is) a power higher than all human wisdom embracing the blessings of divination, the purifying powers of initiation and in a word all the operations of divine possession". (Proclus, Theologia Platonica , 1.26.63, in Dodds, 1951) Theurgy is central to the work of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, later to have a significant influence on Ficino (Voss, Iamblichus and Theurgy , p.1). Iamblichus taught a form of theurgic practice which he describes in his book De Mysteriis as "ritualised cosmogony" – in other words a re-enactment of, and reconnection to, the divine source (Collins, 2010, p.17). The theurgist worked with sympathetic resonance, beginning with the divine correspondences to be found within matter and moving upwards, tracing the signatures through the levels of being until eventually reaching a point where the soul unites with the One. For Iamblichus, matter contains innate divinity and one must work with it as the beginning of the spiritual journey; through acts of religious ritual, the world becomes ordered as a reflection of its divine counterpart. Iamblichus stresses that the divine cannot be reached through contemplation alone (Voss, Iamblichus and Theurgy , p.1-4; and Shaw, 2003, pp.58-59). "The perfect efficacy of ineffable works, which are divinely performed in a way surpassing all intelligence, and the power of inexplicable symbols, which are known only to the Gods, impart theurgic union..." (Iamblichus, De Mysteriis 96-97, in Taylor, 1821). Further, the gods are not separate from us but are "coexistent with our very essence" (Voss, 'Iamblichus and Theurgy', p.4-5); in other words, the human soul contains the divine spark, and is intrinsic to the hierarchy, being, in the words of Gregory Shaw: "an agent of cosmogenesis through whom the gods express themselves in the soul’s theurgic activity, and the specific faculty of the soul in which these theurgies occur is the phantasikon , the soul’s power of imagination”. (Shaw, 2003, p.69) Iamblichus is clear about the role played by daemons in theurgic work: “By daimons, I mean the generative and creative powers of the gods in the furthest extremity of their emanations and in the last stages of division... One must assign to daimons productive powers that oversee nature and the bond uniting souls to bodies ” (Iamblichus, De mysteriis II.1, in in Taylor, 1821 [my italics]). I highlight the final words in this quote since it is a theme to which we will return – the idea of daimonic intelligence as a force uniting 'soul to body' has a parallel in Ficino's 3 Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred Module 2: Essay 2 – Carole Taylor magic. Iamblichus speaks of echelons of cosmic beings – archons, heroes, daemons, angels, archangels and gods – numbered according to sacred mathematics, able to communicate divine knowledge and accessible through prayers and offerings. Despite this polytheistic aspect, however, it is essentially a monotheistic vision – everything in the cosmos is an emanation of the One (Campion, 2009, p.88). Ficino's magic: the beneficial powers of the heavenly bodies "Using natural objects, natural magic captures the beneficial powers of the heavenly bodies to bring good health. This means of action must surely be conceded to those who use their talents lawfully, just as it is in medicine and farming...One practices agriculture, another mundiculture....Just as the farmer tempers his field to the weather to give sustenance to man, so this wise man, this priest, for the sake of man's safety tempers the lower objects of the cosmos to the higher...[Natural magic] puts natural materials in a correct relationship with natural causes". (Ficino, Three Books on Life III, in Copenhaver, 1990, p.281) Here Ficino speaks in terms of medicine and agriculture. Natural magic, he implies, is like good husbandry – a farmer wouldn't sow his crop in the snow or in poor soil; by the same token, we cannot expect good health if we do not pay attention to the 'natural causes' emanating from the ‘higher objects of the cosmos’. Thus, it is legitimate for the magician to harness this power, as the farmer harnesses the power of the sun or the rain, each at the appropriate time. As Copenhaver states, for Ficino his magic was ‘natural’ because of these innate connections between "terrestrial, celestial and higher entities” – no commerce with demons need be involved. (Copenhaver 1990, p.271). If we are to “draw down favour from the heavens”, we must align our lives to the celestial picture: 'With this in mind, agriculture prepares the field and the seed for celestial gifts and by grafting prolongs the life of the shoot and refashions it into another and better species. The doctor, the natural philosopher, and the surgeon achieve similar effects in our bodies to strengthen our own nature and to obtain more productively the nature of the universe. The philosopher who knows about natural objects and stars, whom we rightly call a Magus, does the very same things: he seasonably introduces the celestial into the earthly by particular lures just as the farmer interested in grafting brings the fresh graft onto the old stock'.
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