Agrippa's Cosmic Ladder: Building a World with Words in the De Occulta Philosophia

chapter 4 Agrippa’s Cosmic Ladder: Building a World with Words in the De Occulta Philosophia

Noel Putnik

In this essay I examine certain aspects of Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 1533), one of the foun- dational works in the history of western esotericism.1 To venture on a brief examination of such a highly complex work certainly exceeds the limitations of an essay, but the problem I intend to delineate, I believe, can be captured and glimpsed in its main contours. I wish to consider the ways in which the German humanist constructs and represents a common Renaissance image of the universe in his De occulta philosophia. This image is of pivotal importance for understanding Agrippa’s peculiar worldview as it provides a conceptual framework in which he develops his multilayered and heterodox thought. In other words, I deal with Agrippa’s cosmology in the context of his magical the- ory. The main conclusion of my analysis is that Agrippa’s approach to this topic is remarkably non-visual and that his symbolism is largely of verbal nature, revealing an author predominantly concerned with the nature of discursive language and the linguistic implications of magical thinking. The De occulta philosophia is the largest, most important, and most complex among the works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535). It is a summa of practically all the esoteric doctrines and magical practices ac- cessible to the author. As is well known and discussed in scholarship, this vast and diverse amount of material is organized within a tripartite structure that corresponds to the common Neoplatonic notion of a cosmic hierarchy. Thus the first book deals with natural magic corresponding to the physical realm, the second with astral or mathematical magic corresponding to the celestial realm, and the third with ceremonial or ritual magic corresponding to the in- tellectual realm of the created world.2 Each of these three parts embraces a

1 I would like to thank Professors György E. Szőnyi and Peter J. Forshaw for their invaluable help and support in writing this paper. 2 Although Agrippa was largely ignored or belittled by earlier generations of scholars, this perception changed in the second half of the twentieth century. Within the past few decades a number of works have appeared which examine the cosmological aspects of the De occulta philosophia in the larger historical context of Agrippa’s time; see, for instance,

82 Putnik number of doctrines and practices coming from different esoteric traditions – ranging from late Hellenistic Neoplatonism and Hermetism through medieval magic and Kabbalah to the doctrines of Florentine Neoplatonists and Christian Cabalists – which Cornelius Agrippa expounds and interconnects according to his hierarchical scheme. The final form and the content of this work are the result of a long and complex creative process – one should remember that the juvenile draft Agrippa presented to the abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516) in 1510 differs greatly from the final version published in 1533. The former is considerably shorter and structured differently.3 Certainly, it is extremely dif- ficult to analyze this work from the viewpoint of consistency, due to more than two decades of revising and rewriting the text, with an ever increasing body of both credited and uncredited sources Agrippa relied upon. It is often (perhaps too often) stated that this monumental synthesis is nei- ther an original contribution to the study of magic nor a practical manual. A considerable body of modern scholarship has not done justice to the Net- tesheimer’s legacy in viewing him simply as an encyclopedist and compiler who, to use Christopher I. Lehrich’s words, ‘merely collected odd bits of obscure knowledge and fantasy.’4 Following Lehrich, and some other scholars such as Vittoria Perrone Compagni and Marc Van der Poel, I maintain that behind the compilatory structure of the De occulta philosophia one can detect the work of a considerably coherent thinker and a relatively creative exegete. The weight of Agrippa’s interpretation is precisely in providing an all-encompassing cosmological and theological framework for what had reached his time as a jum- ble of heterodox philosophies, odd practices, obscure beliefs, superstition, and strange literary reminiscences.5

Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, 90–96; Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradi- tion, 146–160; Nauert, Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought, 220–259; Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels, 36–42; Szőnyi, John Dee’s Occultism, 110–120, etc. Hermann F.W. Kuhlow has dedicated his doctoral thesis to Agrippa’s cosmology and its religious implications; see Kuhlow, Die Imitatio Christi und ihre kosmologische Überfremdung. 3 The juvenile version is preserved in its original form at the University Library of Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, ms. M.ch.q.50. For a discussion on the differences between the two editions see Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia libri tres, ed. V. Perrone Compagni, 1–59. 4 Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels, 214. 5 For some of the arguments of the scholars advocating the coherence of Agrippa’s views see Van der Poel, Agrippa, the Humanist Theologian, 263–268, and Perrone Compagni, Ermetismo e Cristianesimo in Agrippa, 5–68. Coherence in some aspects, however, does not rule out the possibility of tensions and contradictions in some others, more emphasized by scholars such