CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SAN MARCOS
THESIS SIGNATURE PAGE
THESIS SUBMITTED FOR PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
MASTER OF ARTS
IN
LITERATURE AND WRITING STUDIES
THESIS TITLE: 'De magia naturali' - On Natural Magic. by Jacques Lerevre d' Etaples:
Coincidence of Opposites. the Trinity and prisca theologia.
AUTHOR: Kathryn LaFevers Evans
DATE OF SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE: April 27. 2006
THE THESIS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE AND WRITING STUDIES.
Dr. Oliver Berghof THESIS COMMITTEE CHAIR
Dr. Peter Arnade THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER f-GNATURE
Dr. THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER SIGNATURE DATE
De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic,
by Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples:
Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and
prisca theologia
© 2006 by
Kathryn LaFevers Evans
CSUSM Thesis Advisor, Professor Oliver Berghof
Committee Member Professor Peter Arnade
July 2006 THESIS ABSTRACT
The life of Catholic reformer Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, 1455-
1536, spanned the threshold between Medieval and Renaissance eras.
Like other humanists, Lefevre synthesized philosophical, theological and scientific theories and practices - of such is his unpublished treatise De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic. I elucidate Lefevre's focus on universal mystical metaphors of divine union, in order to offer a simpler view into the evolution of his writings. Engaging historic-intellectual background in critical analysis of Book II, I address the conflicting political, religious, and academic opinions of natural magic, demonstrating that current Academia is poised to expand the historical, "theoretical" treatment of natural magic to engage it as a phenomenological, "practical" human experience.
In De Magia naturali, Book II, Lefevre decloaks mythology, philosophy, astrology, literature and religion to a scientific theory, practice and experience of number as Idea. He reveals how the limit of metaphorical imagery is duality, the binary Coincidence of Opposites, symbolized by the number 2. The magic in Lefevre's number mysticism is human experience of numerical ascension from man to God, achieved through the number 3, the love-nexus re-uniting 2 into One, duality into unity. Renaissance humanists conceived of this prisca theologia, pristine or ancient theology, as embodied in the Christian Trinity through the Spirit of Christ. Current Academia is responsible to teach this wisdom tradition from a multicultural, interdisciplinary worldview, as I posit the humanists intended.
Number Mysticism; Numerical Ascension; Christian Kabbalah;
Renaissance Humanism; Theology; Mythology; Literary Theory_ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank my teachers: Charles, Celeste & Austin; my parents; Thesis Committee, Professors Oliver Berghof & Peter
Arnade; and Medieval Curator Consuelo Dutschke, of Columbia
Rare Book & Manuscript Library - all of whom have taught me that a childlike heart is the best place to learn.
My family's endurance of the thesis process has been stellar, particularly that of my husband without whom this endeavor would not have been undertaken. Dr. Berghof, of UC
Irvine and of CSU San Marcos Literature & Writing Studies
Department, has been an inspiration whose depth can only be measured in Silence. Scholar Dr. Arnade of CSUSM History
Department has listened with patient enthusiasm. Dr. Dutschke has been an exemplary academic colleague. Appreciation to
Professor Jason van Boom, Ph.D. student at Graduate Theological
Union, for Latin consultation as the thesis process ended when
I most needed scholarly camaraderie.
I honor the LTWR Faculty, Staff and fellow grad students for caring like a family. Lastly, I thank the Book of Nature, expressed in the literary disciplines through something sacred:
Words. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION 1
1. Historical Context and Humanism
2. Justification through Christ the Spirit 15
3. Ascension, Intellect and Love 20
II. TRADITION OF MASTERS & LEGACY IN LANGUAGE 30
1. Italian Background and Contemporary Foreground
2. History and Summary of De Magia naturali 43
3. Snapshot in Time of the Tradition 53
III. METHODOLOGY & BOOK II ON CHRISTIAN KABBALAH 55
1. Stigma of the Non-Christian
2. Book II on Kabbalah 61
3. Network of Christian Kabbalists 76
IV. EQUALITY & UNITY OF THE BINARY 110
1. Primal Metaphors & Myth
2. Experience & History, Metaphorical & Literal 129
3. Poets, Philosophers, & Mythological Beings 140
V. PRIMARY SOURCES & CONCLUDING REMARKS 150
VI. WORKS CITED & WORKS CONSULTED 162 I. INTRODUCTION
1. Historical Context and Humanism
Renaissance Catholic reformer Jean Jacques Lefevre, known as
Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, was born around 1455 of humble parentage
in the small fishing village of Etaples in the Northeastern province
of Picardy, France. 1 His lifetime, 1455-1536, spanned the threshold
between the European Medieval and Renaissance eras. After the
Valois-Hapsburg Wars resumed in the early 1520's, many homes in the
Northeast of France were burned, as well as churches and the records
in them. Consequently, little is known of his youth, although it may be conjectured that as a young boy he was singled-out by local
clergy as exemplary in intellectual potential, and as was customary,
Lefevre was later sent to the University of Paris.
Living at the threshold between Medieval and Renaissance world-views, in essence between pagan and modern worlds, Lefevre and other humanists synthesized many philosophical, theological and
scientific theories and practices. Exemplary among Lefevre's
teachings is his unpublished treatise De Magia naturali, On Natural
Magic. 2 Providing historical and intellectual backgrounds, and
engaging in critical analysis of Book II as informed by numerous
texts, this thesis addresses the conflicting political, religious,
and academic opinions of natural magic in Lefevre's time and in our
I Historical dates and facts on Lefevre d'Etaples not otherwise cited are from Scott R. Clark's Chronology of the Medieval and Reformation Church, referenced in Works Cited. 20lomouc, universitni Knihovna, ms M I 119, ff. 174-342; Book II begins on f. 198; all further references are cited per Evans transcription-translation work-in-progress pagination, ego Book II begins with page 50, cited "Ch. 1 11:50, f. 198". 2
own. The goals are to demonstrate: that Lefevre never did abandon natural magic, the practical half of philosophYi and that current
Academia is ready to expand the historical, "theoretical" treatment
of natural magic to engage it as an experiential, "practical" human
universal.
In the title of De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 10, Lefevre
employs the umbrella term, "Priscae velatae Theologiae" or "Ancient veils of Theology" (Evans II:SO, f. 213). Throughout Book II,
Lefevre unveils or decloaks mythology, philosophy, astrology,
literature and religion to reveal a scientific theory, practice and
experience of number as Idea. He reveals how the limit of the
metaphorical imagery in disciplines is duality, the binary
Coincidence of Opposites, symbolized by the number 2. The magic in
Lefevre'S number mysticism is based on human experience of numerical
ascension from man to God inherited through a tradition of masters
and achieved through the number 3 - identified in Chapter 1 as
Venusian love-nexus - reuniting exilic binary into the One, duality
into unity (Evans 11:51, f. 199v).
Renaissance humanists conceived of this prisca theologia,
pristine or ancient theology, as embodied in the Christian Trinity
through the Spirit of Christ. Theirs was a mystical vision of
universal Holy Spirit beyond dualistic boundaries. Current Academia
has the tools to study and teach this tradition, demonstrated in the
topic of Lefevre'S Book II, which he calls "Pythagorean philosophy",
and which he equates to "Cabala" and prophetic teachings (Evans Ch.
1 11:50, f. 19Si Ch. 14 II:S9-90, f. 217-21Sv). As such, Book II can 3 be categorized as Christian Kabbalah, a springboard for this and future study of the text.
The primal architectural metaphor in Christian Kabbalah or prisca theologia is the exilic Fall from One to 2. Exile is expressed mythically as lover below exiled from Beloved above, allegorically in the story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the
Garden of Eden, and metaphorically in Jesus' birth as the Son of
God. The final Christian salvation from exile is expressed
sacrificially through Jesus' crucifixion when he becomes Christ, the
Spirit that unites God and man, completing ascension to the Trinity.
Likewise, magic resolves exile anagogically in number mysticism
through the mysteries of relationship between above and below, between superior and inferior numbers. Lefevre equates that final
Christian sacrifice into salvation with the thoughts of pre
Christian philosophers, the words of pre-Christian myths passed down
through the oral tradition by the poets of Classical Antiquity, and
the actions of pre-Christian magicians or magi: identical in both
Negative and Positive theology; identical in both theoretical and practical philosophy - delivering Christianity onto the same Ground
of Silence as pagan magic.
In "The Revival of Lullism at Paris, 1499-1516," Joseph M.
Victor reminds us that, always a devotee of Christ, always a lover
of Catholicism, Lefevre cherished the teachings of the Spanish mystic Raymond Lull, who described the universe as a ladder of
beings - stones, plants, animals, man, angels, God a giant
collection of symbols that led to the divine (Victor online). For
the metaphorical scaffolding of Book II itself, Lefevre employs the 4 descending and ascending chains of the numerical, celestial and
angelic spheres, on which man ascends to the divine. The Coincidence
of Opposites is the tension that drives Book II of the treatise On
Natural Magic, and this before Lefevre had read the Church
sanctioned Nicholas of Cusa. Augustin Renaudet, in Prereforme et
Humanisme a Paris: Pendant les Premieres Guerres d'Italie (1494-
1517), dates Lefevre's studies of Cusa during the first decade and a
half of the sixteenth century (661). Rather than Cusa, Lefevre
therefore cites many-another proponent of number mysticism, each of
whom either expounds or metaphorically embodies a common theory of
genesis through a Coincidence of Opposites, and a common practice of
ascension to unity through a Trinitarian relationship intrinsic in
the binary itself.
Reproduced below, with permission from San Diego State
University Special Collections, are several pages of the 1230 CE
Sphaera of Johannes de Sacro Bosco, published in 1527 with a
prefatory epistle and commentary by Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples. These
images illustrate the prevalent ptolemaic world-view of the era,
while portraying its precariousness through the personified
discourse between science and myth.
In these anthropocentric, geocentric depictions, the celestial
spheres are under the purview of both the astronomer Ptolemy and
Urania, the muse of astronomy and astrology. She foretells the
future from the position of the stars, and is associated with
universal love and the Holy Spirit (·Urania" Wikipedia). This male
female binary of Ptolemy and Urania embodies the architectural
principle of Coincidence of Opposites - Earth below, celestial above 5 - yet is paradoxically indefinite as to which gender holds the superior position.
The planets Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn orbit Earth on spheres ascending to the eighth sphere of the
Constellations and unmoving stars, then beyond. This unmoving ground is termed "Aplanes" in Book II Chapter 7, and this celestial ground that exists beyond is also termed "the Ground of Silence" in Chapter
14 (Evans 11:68, f. 207; 11:90, f. 218v). Depicted in the first illustration under the image of the world is the higher soul resting upon this celestial Ground.
These celestial, planetary spheres become the personified binaries or Coincidence of Opposites in Lefevre's Book II, out of whom, through the Trinitarian relationship between them, the chains for ascension to divine union are woven. The treatise is thus mythopoetic, and should be studied primarily as a sacred text. The fact that Lefevre published Sphaera in 1527, writing a prefatory epistle and commentary on it at that time, supports my argument that
Lefevre never did abandon the world-view and teachings of the 1493
De Magia naturali. Modern scholars have repeatedly asserted that he did. I posit that the key, the cipher for interpreting not only this treatise, but also the entirety of Lefevre's teachings, is found in
Book II's prisca theologia of Coincidence of Opposites and the
Trinity. PAIUSUS Vmt apud ShnO'DmlC~m. ! f " "1
Horu«I 'Veto o~tquus ~ iIlibf dd'igmbuur per lmel qw~imttcb& 1.1 bcMtma:iddcm& fU~. cuf9Atiammr tb&cd 9 Renaissance humanist Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples lived at a· time of creative expression in Europe. In 1441, Thomas a Kempis published
Imitatio Christi, The Imitation of Christ, exemplifying the devotio moderna. In 1450, Pope Nicholas V founded the Vatican Libary.
Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452. In 1453, the Hundred Years' War ended. Constantinople fell to the Turks, leading to an increasing westward migration of Greek-speaking intellectuals some of whom brought manuscripts with them. Around 1454, the first printing press operated at Mainz. Born also around 1455 was the German humanist
Johannes Reuchlin. Italian humanist Count Giovanni pico Della
Mirandola (Pico) was born in 1463, and Michelangelo was born in
1475. War between France and the Hapsburgs broke out in 1477. In
1478 Lorenzo de Medici rose to ruler of Florence: Lorenzo the
Magnificent, patron of the arts and of Marsilio Ficino's Platonic
Academy.
William A. Christian Jr. explains, in Local Religion in
Sixteenth-Century Spain, that the practice of Christianity
transformed in part during the sixteenth century from one of personal vows made to the saints and Mary to one of personal devotion directed to Christ - a movement known as devotio moderna, modern devotion. A central ingredient in both modes of practice was
the fact that this was personal religion, direct contact with the
divine, accomplished without clerical intervention. Lay devotion
spread on ordinary feet - person to person, belonging to the people
and imbedded in the landscape. Devotes of the divine experienced
visions, rapture and ecstasy. At times when human intervention
seemed necessary to a successful outcome of prayer, traveling 10 magicians competed directly with priests for the power to intercede with God on behalf of their fellow laymen. Priests accused magicians of forming pacts with the devil. The Spanish Inquisition acted against this modern practice of Christian devotion among Catholics peasants, magicians and clergy alike - as well as against conversos,
Jewish converts to Christianity (19-20, 29-32, 55, 90).
Despite the creative expression for which the Renaissance is known, throughout Europe during this volatile time between the
Medieval and Renaissance eras, freedom of thought, speech and action was curtailed among the educated as well as among the population at
large. According to Henry Kamen in The Spanish Inquisition: A
Historical Revision, from the 1480's on, book burnings by the
Spanish Inquisition were common (308). Lefevre d'Etaples attended
the University of Paris (la Sorbonne) , receiving a Master of Arts
degree in 1480.
During the 1490's, burning of the conversos themselves peaked.
Mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila focused on the interior religion
of union with God, but many were denounced as heretics. village
religion, the freedom to practice traditions, folklore, and beliefs
in a landscape shared by all faiths, no longer belonged to the
people. Convivencia in Spain - where Christian, Jewish and Muslim
faiths coexisted and intermingled - was officially eradicated in
attempts to control avenues of access to God and to promote
political solidarity (Kamen 308). Political oppression of interior
religion, whether of layman or intellectual, crossed all borders of
the contiguous European countries and citystates. 11
According to Eugene F. Rice Jr. in "The De Magia Naturali of
Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples," Lefevre's whereabouts between 1480 and
1490 are unknown (20). Returning to Paris in 1490, the Renaissance humanist Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples became a professor of philosophy at the College du Cardinale Lemoine, a residential college of the
University of Paris. Rice, in "Humanism in France," reports that he treasured Thomas a Kempis' point in Imitatio Christi, on which humanists and mystics agree, that it is more important to love the
Trinity than to argue fine points in the relationship of the Persons
(Rabil 2; 113).
The clash between politicized or state religion and interior religion is one based in man-made law rather than in natural law.
The Trinitarian ritual of the Eucharist, where the Holy Spirit unites Father and Son in the body of Christ, draws grace downwards
to the congregation. Inverted salus, inverted salvation, happens when the beneficence of grace through sacrificial blood is replaced with politically driven persecution. Mystic-minded thinkers such as
Lefevre performed a Trinitarian ascesis - exercise or discipline
for ascending upwards to God. The mystical, practical exercises
grounded Father and Son in love, eliciting in humankind an ethical
choice of moral freedom.
The Renaissance humanist anthropocentric vision of man as the
intermediary circuit joining heaven and earth, through which Spirit
is drawn, was not only to be taken theoretically, but also to be
exercised practically. In using what some would consider an abstract
mathematical concept, a triangle representing the number 3,
humanists described the practical relationship of the Trinity, with 12 man as the conduit of love, and love as the basis of creation. As
John Bossy explains in Christianity in the West: 1400-1700, Christ
the man was central. In Bossy's way of describing the Trinity,
Spirit becomes flesh (73, 101).
Werner L. Gundersheimer writes in French Humanism: 1470-1600
that French humanists studied questions specific to cognition,
ethics and faith, attempting to reorganize university education and
studies. Occamist criticism, narrowed by modern philosophers into
the study of formal logic, constricted the study of past
intellectuals and theology, prompting humanist research into the
thought of past histories and the pursuit of mysticism among all
classes of society (65-9).
"Humanism" as used in this thesis, comprises Aristotelianism,
Neoplatonism, and also Christian Kabbalah. Renaissance humanism is, most basically, the study of human culture, particularly man's
intellectual activities. Humanism revived and imitated literary and
educational ideals of ancient Greek and Latin thought through a
cultural and educational program (Pico, Wallis Introduction xii xiii)
PaulO. Kristeller's essay "Renaissance Humanism and Classical
Antiquity" provides more detailed descriptions of Renaissance
humanism. Activities humanists engaged in included the collecting of
ancient texts and the discovery of important unknown manuscripts,
the practice and development of textual criticism and commentary,
editing for dissemination via the newly-invented printing press, the
imitation of ancient authors in new writings, and transformation of
the vernacular after the Latin model. Humanist Greek studies were 13 facilitated through Byzantine scholars who moved to the West, teaching their language and literature. The study of Greek became established in universities. The Greek New Testament and the Hebrew
Old Testament impacted theological scholarship, resulting in vernacular versions of the Bible such as Lefevre's [Louvain and]
Antwerp edition[s] (Rabil 1: 5-28).
Lefevre is best known as early translator of the Bible into
French, yet also wrote many commentaries on ecclesiastical works, editing and publishing numerous scientific works as well. He is lauded among European and American Catholics, Protestants and scholars, each from their own perspective on his work as it pertains to their areas of expertise.
In his essay "Humanism in France" Eugene F. Rice summarizes that, like their Italian contemporaries, Lefevre and other French humanists restored Aristotle's philosophy, and emphasized Plato,
late antique Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism, as well as Hermetic writings (attributed to Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus), and Kabbalah
(Rabil 2: 109-10). While in Rome, on his Italian journey of 1491-2
discussed below in Chapter II Section 1, Lefevre sought out Ermolao
Barbaro, who acquainted him with Christian Aristotelianism, the path
to further synthesis of knowledge (Gundersheimer 70) .
According to Kristeller, humanist patristic scholarship
provided a Christian philosophy and eloquence, as well as a
Christian vision of antiquity and a pristine theology that
reconciled pagan religious thought with Christian. Humanists
searched for manuscripts in monastic and cathedral libraries, and
scrutinized the legends entwined with biographies. The union of 14 wisdom and piety with eloquence was the humanist religious program, justifying the studia humanitatis. Humanists developed the idea of the dignity of man: man as the link between macrocosm and microcosm, with moral freedom to turn toward the good (Rabil 1: 5-28).
Kristeller's essay "Humanism and Moral Philosophy" begins with the clarification that moral philosophy "was considered part of the studia humanitatis and was therefore closely associated with the humanist movement" (Rabil 3: 271). 15 2. Justification through Christ the Spirit
Despite political censorship, interior religion flourished during what Frank L. Borchardt calls the enchanted years surrounding
1500. Direct contact between French, German and Italian intellectuals fostered the distillation of techniques for mystical union with God into a plausibly Christian format. He explains in
"The Magus as Renaissance Man" that through appropriation of the
Negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius (called via negativa and considered a passive receiving), Positive theology techniques handed down through pagan magi (considered an active taking) were rendered acceptable to Christians as grace from God: flesh was stitched to
Spirit; magic was transformed into Christian mysticism. Furthermore, the culmination of mystical techniques through negation leading to transcendence was called "faith," enabling numerical ascension on threads of love to miracle (Borchardt online) .
During the Reformation, the sixteenth-century Trinity of the
Father, the Word, and the Spirit also inspired several heretical
sects who elaborated indirectly upon the doctrine of a radical
Saxon, Thomas Muentzer. A theologian of the Holy Ghost or Spirit,
Muentzer framed his message in the language of unity. He believed in
the Oneness of Spirit, that 2-ness was the opposite of Oneness, and
that holiness entailed the swallowing of the parts by the whole.
This radical German Christianity of the 1520's and 30's was perhaps
a seed for that in England of the 1640's and 50's (Bossy 91, 107,
110). Like Lefevre in this regard, the doctrine of Coincidence of
Opposites was prevalent among these practitioners of Spirit also. 16
Justification by faith, and the notion of absolute brotherhood endemic in Medieval Christianity, had already been embraced by the
1470's restitution of primitive Christianity. God the Father, and son as Word, has been said to collapse inevitably into a confrontation with the issue of Spirit. various tributaries of
"brethren" or the "Brotherhood" propounding peace and love (or otherwise) through the Holy Spirit found refuge in Bohemia and
Moravia. Bossy captures the propensity of Spirit to threaten organized Christianity as "a kind of spirit of permanent revolution"
(104-8). His elaboration that freeing Spirit meant that scriptural words were outer coverings of an inner meaning to be discerned is what Lefevre's De Magia naturali ultimately addresses. Spirit being the seed, vehicle and goal of this treatise, De Magia naturali is thus understood as a product of the times. Perhaps not coincidentally, the single extant complete manuscript copy ended up in Czechoslovakia.
In 1505, the Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius expressed in a letter that the basis of occult knowledge rests in the mystery of the Trinity. His technique for ascension to the Trinity was by faith, through the study of number leading to understanding of the 3 and the One. Trithemius was not the first to record these themes, for they circulated among the intellectuals of the time (Borchardt online). Philip Edgcumbe Hughes in Lefevre: Pioneer of
Ecclesiastical Renewal in France comments that many learned
Christiformity, becoming Christlike through faith, through the writings of Nicholas of Cusa, a German mystic born in 1400 (31-2). 17
Cusa's mysticism of Positive theology becomes a central theme of
Lefevre's spirituality (44-7).
Lawrence H. Bond, in his essay "Nicholas of Cusa and the
Reconstruction of Theology: the Centrality of Christology in the
Coincidence of Opposites," though not mentioning number mysticism directly, explains the mechanics of it via the doctrine of reconciliation: between the dialectic, between and encompassing object and subject, is the paradox of Christ's person; the epistemological basis of all theology is Christology, which provides the only true knowledge of God. The terms "Christology" or
"Christocentric view of the universe" describe Cusan metaphysics.
Cusa clarifies the only valid dialectic and the epistemological given as that of Coincidence of Opposites. 3 Cusa stipulates that a reform of epistemology must precede the reconstruction of methodology (81-4).
This observation supports my argument that Lefevre's marrying of his methodology to this epistemology, the embodying of this
Trinitarian epistemology within his methodology, is Lefevre's legacy to the Academy that has been overlooked. In other words, a marrying of the practical experiential with the theoretical historical is the next reconstruction needed in Academia. Bond stipulates that this technique (the mechanics of Christology) is "descriptive rather than logical, declarative rather than academic" (94).
3 Capitalized throughout to accentuate its fundamental importance to the thesis. 18
Cusa holds that God cannot be the object of knowledge since he operates as subject on our Intellect. 4 He concludes that the object of knowledge must necessarily be ignorance (83).
That type of ignorance can be called duality. Cusa therefore unifies the Father-son/subject-object/unity-duality binary into one
Trinitarian whole, which is only subjectively experiential through
Christ or Spirit. Bond clarifies this in Cusa's means of knowing God through negation - also called Negative theology - explaining knowing as reconciliation received in faith through Christ as nexus of both Infinite and finite, knowledge and ignorance. Coincidence is the theologian's method (85, 87). The subject's Intellect is the culmination, Lefevre concurs, of the theologian's method and where this faith and intuition occur. In this regard, Bond reiterates the problem of confusing logical and linguistic distinctions (84, 87).
This I call simply an issue of semantics, the issue that silenced
Lefevre's De Magia naturali for 500 years: the Church's refusal to recognize the reconciliation of magic with mysticism in Intellect as knowledge of faith in Christ's Spirit by a sacrifice into grace.
Relative to mysticism versus magic, Bossy pinpoints that it is never the wholly other that is the object of persecution, but
specifically that which is most alike. What fueled the wrath against one's neighbor in the later Middle Ages was the doctrine of the
limited good, where there was only so much to go around, wherefore
some had to be evil and undeserving. Magic - witchcraft - like the
sexual act, was deemed intrinsically shameful and evil, an offense
against holiness (36-7). The semantic interpretation generally
4 Imagination, Reason, and Intellect capitalized throughout to accentuate that these were named the ascending methodology Lefevre employed in teaching. 19 accepted, and that of the Church, was the historical literal sense, whereas Lefevre's methodology unified opposites through the paradoxical language of metaphor, disclosing anagogical or mystical
Spiritual meaning. 20 3. Ascension, Intellect and Love
Throughout the Renaissance the interrelatedness of the three major intellectual traditions of Aristotelianism, humanism, and
Neoplatonism typified the synthesizing nature of its culture.
Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples' epistemology and methodology - a hierarchical, philosophical theology in ascending order of
Imagination, Reason, and Intellect - mirrored these three traditions and will serve to explain their interpretations here.
For an academic program of studies, Kent Emery Jr. reports in
"Mysticism and the Coincidence of opposites in Sixteenth- and
Seventeenth-Century France" that Lefevre recommended beginning with
Aristotle's natural philosophy and physics, as they engage the
Imaginative mode and require many words; proceeding to Scripture and the Fathers, as the humanists did, since those engage the rational mode of Reason through modest sermon; and culminating in the
Neoplatonist Intellectual mode with the study of Pythagoras, who teaches in Silence (Emery online) .
Lefevre, whose De Magia naturali concerns itself with knitting together the heavenly and the earthly, surmounted the potentially heretical claiming of man's power to achieve union with God through numerical ascension by equating his final vehicle - Intellect - with faith. Intellect was perceived by Lefevre as the faculty of intuition and vision. Through Intellection, faith corrected Reason
(Rice, "Lefevre d'Etaples and the Medieval Christian Mystics" 101-
2) . 21
At one extreme, Aristotle represented the life of studies, in that through contemplating the world the student ascends to knowledge of heavenly things. At the other extreme, Pythagoras represented the death of studies, in that he fulfilled their goal of leading the student to the Silence beyond the binary of life and death, beyond the Coincidence of Opposites. Between the paradox of the Infinity of God and the nothingness of man lay the fertile ground of receiving in mystical Silence - divine essence, the will of God, pure love (Emery online) .
This circumscribed the relationships within the Trinity: the
All of the Father, the nothing of man the Son, ascending as Christ
Incarnate through the love of the Father for the Son - the Holy
Spirit. The goal of prisca theologia and of mystica theologia,
(mystical theology) that of union with God in divine love is at the heart of personal religion. Via the ascending continuum in the human mind of Imagination, Reason, and Intellect, Lefevre applied
Aristotelianism, humanism, and Neoplatonism in order to guide his students to wisdom. His epistemology was reflected in his teaching methodology, which demonstrates my point that Academia should engage the experiential, practical modes along with the theoretical.
Like Pythagoras, Gundersheimer tells us that Lefevre traveled widely from the time of his adolescence in search of -the honey of the Fathers." He collected manuscripts from numerous monasteries and convents, written by visionary monks and nuns expounding on their experiences of God. Hildegard of Bingen, Hilary, and Nemesius of
Emesa were among those he resurrected and published. The latter had developed the themes of the dignity of man, of man as the link 22 between macrocosm and microcosm, and of freedom of the will in De natura hominis (a Greek work of the late fourth century). According to Gundersheimer, the politically safe haven of the Christian
Fathers and mystics justified humanist affinity with pagan philosophers, whom the indisputable Fathers themselves brought forward. An example Gundersheimer provides is that in 1512 Lefevre published the Epistles of St. Paul, considered by some the first
Protestant book. In the teachings of the Fathers, Lefevre found pietas et doctrina, piety and doctrine, the religious and moral insight required to raise man's mind to God. The Fathers inspired
Lefevre and his followers to reform theological teaching through a humanist cultural program grounded in the simplicity of love (70,
84, 166-7, 176, 179).
In Rice's Introduction to The Prefatory Epistles, Lefevre's
Commentary on the Catholic Epistles is quoted:
"The true Christian does not love only Christians of his
own kind but will love also Indians, Ethiopians, Asians
and Africans, and those who live in islands beyond the
sea and in lands which for so many centuries have been
unknown until discovered in our own day." (XXIII)
Rice pinpoints the key to Lefevre's doctrine of justification, which leads to salvation for all, as the reconciliation of Aristotle and Paul in an ideal pietas, piety or compassion (XXII). This key of ideal pietas I posit is embodied in the humility of sacrifice to the middle term - the number 3 as love-nexus between lover and Beloved - in the prisca theologia of his 1493 De Magia naturali Book II. This treatise, as the fulcrum between Lefevre'S textbook, Introduction to 23
Aristotle's Metaphysics written in 1490, and his publications subsequent to the De Magia, is thus also the nexus marrying pagan and Christian teachings. I posit that specifically Book II on
Pythagorean philosophy or Christian Kabbalah holds the key for interpreting not only this treatise, but also the entirety of
Lefevre's teachings.
Teaching at the College du Cardinale Lemoine until 1508,
Lefevre brought the discipline of mathematics back into University studies. Rice, in "Humanism in France," calls mathematics the pinnacle of his teachings, as a path to understanding scriptural mysteries (Rabil 2: 110, 113). Lefevre expressed mythological archetypes through writings on Images such as numbers, geometric shapes, and divine names, in a mythopoetic style that has declined in Academia with secularization.
The pUblications in 1509 and 1513 of Quincuplex Psalterium or
Fivefold Psalter, and pUblication in 1512 of Paul's Epistles with commentary, marked Lefevre as a heretic. Lefevre concluded that the
Scriptures told of justification by faith alone, near to the time when Luther identified that doctrine. Erasmus, another famed academic, was a companion of Lefevre'S in Paris, althouth their paths parted (Reformation Histories) .
Rice's compilation of The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques
Lefevre d'Etaples and Related Texts, I feel, is an invaluable source of clues concerning censure for heresy. I note them here in support of my position that, contrary to what previous scholars have asserted, Lefevre never did renounce the magic philosophies of his earlier writings. Epistle 26 from Guillaume de la Mare's Sylvae, 24 singing the praises of illustrious gentlemen, is a poem published in
1513 honoring Lefevre. I interpret it as revealing specifically that the unpublished De Magia naturali was nevertheless known and publicly praised among his contemporaries. I conjecture that the author published the poem in 1513 in response to Lefevre's recent censure. Concurrently, Guillaume de la Mare also dismissed the verity of his Sylvas in a letter to the Bishop, calling them juvenile. In denouncing the rationality of his own work, I conclude that the author is simply acting out of self-preservation (85-6).
In Epistle 38 to Jacobo Ramirez de Guzman, 1503/4, Lefevre includes pico della Mirandola alongside the martyrs, in that their teachings were misunderstood. Not long after the De Magia was written, pico died suspiciously of a sudden illness (Lynn Thorndike,
A History of Magic and Experimental Science: Vol's III and IV,
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 4: 520). Lefevre seems to be asking the reader again to judge for himself whether or not pagan teachings can be reconciled with Christian teachings. In the letter he uses as example of paganism serpents, pythons and insane rituals
(117-20). Yet contradictorily, close to that time Lefevre was preparing to write the Kabbalistic Quincuplex Psalterium in which he has much to say about dragons, serpents and all of the abyss. In the commentary to Psalm 148 he claims that the subterranean meaning of dragons sent forth from the cave is the Spirit between heaven and earth (230-32). Therefore in the 1509 Quincuplex Psalterium, Lefevre was still propounding the doctrine of Christ as Spirit uniting heaven and earth, still marrying pagan and Christian teachings in
Christian Kabbalah. 25
Coincidental clues, regarding responses to censorship, in
Prefatory Epistles from the date of 1512 are that: Lefevre's alleged opinion of natural magic turns from positive to negative; he denounces his property in Etaples; and on pages 287-90 Rice tells of an anonymous supplementary biography appearing in 1512 and published through Trithemius, cataloging and praising Lefevre's works.
Rice's Introduction to his edition of Lefevre's Prefatory
Epistles also provides a thorough yet succinct summary of Lefevre's life and works. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to recap everythi~g'o1 import in Lefevre's life, but I wish to include a very relevant paragraph of Rice's that is so succinct there is no room for paraphrase:
Between 1508 and 1520 Lefevre continued his
scholarly work at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des Pres,
under the patronage of the abbot, Guillaume Bri90nnet,
bishop of Lodeve and subsequently of Meaux. In the
spring of 1521 Bri90nnet called him to Meaux to help him
put into effect a comprehensive program of diocesan
reform. On May I, 1523 he made him his vicar-general in
spiritualibus. Lefevre's chief contribution was a French
translation of the New Testament and Psalms. The
fortuitous coincidence of this experiment in reform with
the first penetration of Lutheranism in France focused
the attention of the faculty of theology on his
exegetical works. In 1523 a committee of theologians
detected eleven errors in his commentary on the Gospels.
When the Parlement of Paris summoned him to appear 26
before it on suspicion of heresy, he fled to Strasbourg
in the late summer of 1525. Recalled by Francis I in
1526 and appointed librarian of the royal collection,
then at Blois, and tutor of the king's children, Lefevre
finished translating the Bible under royal protection
and published it in a single volume at Antwerp in 1530.
He passed his last years in tranquil retirement at the
court of Marguerite d'Angouleme, queen of Navarre (XIII-
XIV) .
In the prefatory epistle to Introduction to Aristotle's
Metaphysics, Lefevre praises Aristotle for the same wisdom he cherishes in Book II: geometric reckoning, mathematical computation, are the mirror and measure of justice (Lefevre). The Spiritual reckoning to justice that is justification, then, Lefevre decloaks through number mysticism. In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 2,
Lefevre names the Jove-Venus ternary of love as the virtue or vigor that couples with the quaternary to compute the 12 signs of the zodiac and the 12 judges who are the form of justice through whom all are counted saved (Evans II:52-55, ff. 199-201v).
Also in the prefatory epistle to Introduction to Aristotle's
Metaphysics, Lefevre cites the tradition of masters that he equally lauds in De Magia naturali, as an unbroken chain from Egyptian priests and Chaldean magi to the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, conveying wisdom concordant with Christian theology (Lefevre). The
Jove-Venus ternary of love, the Trinitarian prisca theologia through
Coincidence of Opposites, is the marriage nexus between pagan and 27
Christian to which Lefevre always returns, the key to all of his writings.
Convinced that divine wisdom was best taught through the simple words of the medieval mystics to whom God had spoken directly, Lefevre revived French study of the Spanish mystic Raymond
Lull (Victor online). This revival of Lullism in Paris propagated the Christian mystic's metaphor of lover and Beloved as expression of man's relationship with God - the continuity of Lefevre's essential focus on the Coincidence of opposites as path to divine union.
In 1491 he read Lull's Contemplations. Lull brought Lefevre beyond Occamism, which cleared his way to the doctrine of divine
love (Gundersheimer 70). As mentioned above, Lull described the universe as a ladder of beings - stones, plants, animals, man, angels, God a giant collection of symbols that led to the divine
(Victor online). At a monastery in Padua, Lefevre copied a manuscript of Lull's Book of the Lover and the Beloved (Hughes 12).
Lull's words relating nature and man to God that Lefevre
copied are exemplified in a quote from that book: "The birds hymned
the dawn, and the Lover, who is the dawn, awakened. And the birds
ended their song, and the Lover died in the dawn for his Beloved"
(Peers 41). In this love poem to God, the principle of Coincidence
of opposites central to my thesis is dramatized in birth-death
imagery, as if enacting the genesis of creation and the sacrificial
act of re-union with, or return to, the divine.
Teachings of the Christian Mystics, edited by Andrew Harvey,
supplies these words from one of St. Paul's Epistles that Lefevre 28 published exemplifying aequalitas, equality: "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one of another" (27).
Gregory of Nyssa was another whose words he published, and which we can read in the above collection: "Do not be surprised that we should speak of the Godhead as being at the same time both unified and differentiated. Using riddles, as it were, we envisage a strange and paradoxical diversity-in-unity and unity-in-diversity" (49).
Words of Pseudo-Dionysius, a sixth century Syrian monk whom Lefevre praised, speak of divine Silence: "Trinity!! ... Lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest highest peak of mystic
Scripture, where the mysteries of God's word lie simple, absolute and unchangeable in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence"
(50). Thus, many of the pagan themes expounded in the Florentine
Platonic Academy Lefevre also received through Church Fathers such as these.
Lefevre also copied some of Hildegard von Bingen's writings.
Matthew Fox explains, in Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, that
an Illumination titled, "Egg of the Universe" in Scivias, depicts one of her visions of unity: "By this supreme instrument in the
figure of an egg, and which is the universe, invisible and eternal
things are manifested. [ ... J Oh Holy Spirit, you are the mighty way in which every thing that is in the heavens, on the earth, and
under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with
relatedness" (48-9). Hildegard describes "The Cosmic Wheel" with
Christ in the center and spokes resembling the hexagram Star of
David, another vision depicted in an Illumination about unity in De 29 operatione Dei: "[ ... J Love appearing in a human form, the Love of our heavenly Father" (54-5).
Hildegard praises the devotees who aided her in writing out and depicting her visions: "[ ... J and he faithfully heard and loved all the words of these visions without tiring, since they were sweeter than honey and honeycomb; and so through the grace of God, and with the help of these venerable men, the writing of this book was finished" (Flanagan 88). In copying some of Hildegard's work,
Lefevre was a vital link for transmitting wisdom through the humanist tradition of masters.
Guy Bedouelle reiterates in Lefevred'Etaples et l'Intelligence des Ecritures that in the latter part of his life,
Lefevre's only goal was to convey the sweetness of Scripture to the humble to nourish them (16). After reading Reuchlin's works on
Kabbalah, he treated explicitly in the 1509 Quincuplex Psalterium the Kabbalistic theme of number mysticism associated with sacred names, dear to him in De Magia naturali Book II (37). Lefevre remarked of Psalm LXXII: "Jeshua nomen benedictum regis nostri et
salvatoris omnium, et Deo incarnato ineffabile factum effabile"
(86). "The blessed name of Jesus our king and savior of all, and the name of God incarnated, makes the ineffable effable." 30 II. TRADITION OF MASTERS & LEGACY IN LANGUAGE
1. Italian Background and Contemporary Foreground
As for Christian Brotherhood and convivencia, in 1492 the
Inquisition expelled Jews from Spain, and Christopher columbus discovered the New World (Kamen 20; Clark). By 1493, Pope Alexander
VI had divided the New World between Spain and portugal, and by
1494, King Charles VIII of France went to war against Italy
(Renaudet 150). During the Italian Wars, under Emperor Charles V
Spanish troops intervened in Italy against the French (Kamen 308)
It was just before the wars began - around 1493 - that Lefevre, inspired by Ficino and Pico of the Florentine Academy, wrote his treatise De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic (Renaudet 150).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Augustin Renaudet,
Honorary Professor of Le College de France, wrote his definitive history of pre-Reform humanism at Paris. It is from Prereforme et
Humanisme a Paris: Pendant les Premieres Guerres d'Italie (1494-
1517) that I translate and paraphrase the story of Lefevre's Italian
journey, which functions here as background history for De Magia naturali.
In 1491, Lefevre read the two first books of Lull's
Contemplations, which provided the inspiration to travel to Italy.
Many other University Parisians, such as Robert Gaguin, Charles
Fernand and Jean Cordier, had already crossed the mountains before him. Distancing himself from scholasticism, Lefevre intended to visit the schools of philosophy to initiate himself into the 31 methodology of the Italian professors, particularly the
Aristoteltian rationalism of Barbaro and the Platonic mysticism of
pico (134-136).
Lefevre left France in the cold winter of 1491-2, accompanied by Guillaume Gontier as secretary and copyist. He traversed the mountainous Region Piemont in northwestern Italy and the Alps of
Lombardie. Perhaps bypassing Venice, Lefevre arrived in Florence where Marsilio Ficino and the Florentine humanists restored Plato's philosophy. Following the Neoplatonic model, Ficino founded a
religious metaphysics on the idea of a ladder of beings, emanations
of God - the supreme unity and intelligence - descending by degrees
to multiple, insensible matter. From the middle of this cosmic
hierarchy, the rational soul of man can ascend to God by the way of
a dialectic of love. Thus, Ficino revived the spirit of the Gnostics
(136-139). Through a tradition of masters then, reaching from the
Gnostics to Plato and the Neoplatonic tradition, to the Florentine
humanists, Lefevre inherited the dialectic of love. I assert that
this dialectic of love is the Coincidence of opposites and
Trinitarian prisca theologia of which Lefevre writes in De Magia
naturali Book II.
Lefevre recognized in Ficino his own vision of intellectual
and mystical synthesis. pico at this time was publishing On Being
and the One, preliminary thoughts of a synthesis between the
doctrines of Aristotle and Plato (Bedouelle 15). Hugh Ross
Williamson writes in Lorenzo the Magnificent that Ficino and Pico of
the Florentine Platonic Academy fused Christian, Greek, Hebrew,
Orphic and Kabbalistic teachings in their quest for unity based on 32 their theory of vestiges'of the Trinity. A triad of the Graces, for instance - Beauty, Chastity, Desire - were perceived as a giving in emanatio (emanation), a receiving in raptio or conversio (rapture or conversion), and a drawing up in returning, remeatio (return).
Revealing the Neoplatonic triad through this embodiment of the dialectic, the Graces are then changed through the experience of
Venus' initiation of the Primavera to - Beauty, Love, Desire (142,
145). Venus here represents the One.
This reflects the Coincidence of Opposites described herein - the All of God (Beauty) opposite the nothing of man (Desire or
Longing) - with Divine Love, or Holy Spirit as the third or middle element completing the Trinity. As in Botticelli's Primavera, painted for Lorenzo, Lefevre's De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 1 portrays Mercury as longing and Venus as love-nexus between the Moon and Mercury (Evans II:50-51, f. 198-199v). Pagan becomes Christian
Kabbalah fully in Chapters 14-17, where Lefevre asserts that the numbers to the mystery of the magi and the numbers to the mystery of
the prophets are the same. These chapters explain that the letter
"s" sounded in the middle of the Tetragrammaton, or the number "300"
counted in the middle of the numbers ascribed to the Tetragrammaton,
completes the name Jesus through which mediating love-nexus,
enjoined by Spirit, man is redeemed (Evans II:89-97, ff. 217-221)
Williamson quotes Ficino: "'the Trinity was regarded by the
Pythagorean philosophers as the measure of all things, the reason
being, I surmise, that God governs things by threes and that the
things themselves also are determined by threes,'" and "'The Trinity
has left its mark on every part of Divine Creation'" (142, 145). 33
These are the lines of inquiry Renaissance humanists followed that led them to the belief in what Emery points out as a prisca theologia. Specifically through Kabbalah and the Judaic mystical tradition they traced religious truth and philosophical wisdom to their source in God's communications with Adam and Moses. Egyptian priests and Chaldean magi were supposed to have passed on divine mysteries to the philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato and
Aristotle (Emery online) .
Again paraphrasing Renaudet, erudite syncretism pleased the poetic intelligence of Marsilio Ficino. Under the protection of
Lorenzo de Medici, this doctrine embellished the elegant and noble life that the Florentine humanists led. Ficino's country horne next to the Caregio, facing the royal villa built by Cosimo de Medici, was where the members of the Platonic Academy that he founded met.
Inscriptions of moral and religious character ornamented the walls of the grand salon where Ficino worked and presided over the reunions. One remarked with pleasure the resemblances between his character and that of Plato. As before in the gardens of the
Platonic Academy, at Careggi one supported moral, metaphysical or literary controversies; sometimes a banquet gathered familiars with master. with dinner over, the master would discourse on an obscure theory of the Platonic system (140-1).
Renaudet surmises that in Florence Lefevre could thus hear
Ficino expounding on his doctrines; he could assist at some of the
Academy's meetings, get to know these professors, savants, priests and doctors who met at Careggi. Perhaps Lefevre heard Cristoforo
Landino, the teacher who had tried to demonstrate that Vergil, in 34 recounting the voyages of the Aeneid, described a man who fought against vices and arrived finally at the contemplation of God. For three years already, under the guidance of Pico della Mirandola,
Lefevre had studied the philosophers. Concluding his studies in 1491 at pico's Studio, these lessons, inspired by a method in contrast to the scholastics, provided Lefevre with elegant and precise models of teaching (141).
Lefevre best loved Pico's thinking and character among the
Florentine savants, who, despite his 1480's imprisonment at Vicennes and the censures of the Inquisition, continued his efforts to reconcile antique philosophy with Christian dogma and modern doctrines. pico recognized the accepted three worlds - intelligence, celestial bodies, and matter - yet with man free to model himself after any of the diverse elements of his nature. Like Ficino,
though, for Pico philosophic speculation was founded on divine love
(142-3). Simplified here then is the Lullian ladder of beings, which
spans architecturally the Coincidence of opposites embodied as divine Intellect or intelligence and man as Fallen matter, with
celestial or divine love the intermediating ground: a dialectic of
love.
Renaudet reports that not only did Pico frequent the Platonic
Academy, he also often went to the convent of San Marco, where
Girolamo Savonarola preached. Pico's patron Lorenzo de Medici feared
this friar, though, who alluded to Lorenzo's rulership as corrupt
tyranny. In April 1492, Lefevre may not have yet left Tuscany when
Lorenzo the Magnificent fell ill and died, amid dark premonitions of
those closest to him (142-4). 35 In Rome Lefevre at last met Ermolao Barbaro and he questioned him on the art of explaining Aristotle. An erudite more than a thinker, Barbaro revealed the riches of Aristotelianism, and gave
Lefevre a copy of the anti-Platonic Dialectic that had been copied by Georges de Trebizonde. Renaudet unfortunately provides no information as to Lefevre's return journey itself, though he does continue that, back at Paris, Lefevre taught an interpretation of
Aristotle that harmonized with the thinking of Ficino and pico. He taught that in all of Aristotle's philosophy of sensible nature there existed secret correspondences with divine things, opening the way to hidden knowledge of the sub-sensory intelligible world, and without which this philosophy lacks life. For Lefevre and his
Florentine associates, a rational theory of the world was incomplete without the soul (145-9).
At this point in Prereforme et Humanisme a Paris, Renaudet perhaps exposes his own bias against magic in discussing censorship of Lefevre's time and his treatise on magic: usuperstitions of the ancients, combined with those of the Arabs formed a system at once theoretical and practical where astrology supplemented magic" (149).
After little more than a 150-word summary of Lefevre's De Magia naturali, Renaudet concludes that Lefevre probably cast aside the science of horoscopes, and that he probably didn't believe in astrology (151, 153). Like Ficino, though, he did admit planetary influences, and like Pico, Reuchlin and the Kabbalists he did admit the marvelous properties of numbers (151).
As foreground for De Magia naturali, I provide viewpoints on
Kabbalah from more recent sources, such as Janet Berenson-Perkins' 36
Kabbalah Decoder. Sacred numerology called gematria, a specific aspect of Jewish Kabbalah developed between the seventh and eleventh centuries CE, I consider in this thesis as interpreted by
Renaissance Neoplatonists, and as transformed by them into an aspect of Christian Kabbalah (94).
As Renaissance Neoplatonists practiced it, Kabbalah intertwined with Christianity in the mystical technique of numerical ascension. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life, 10 sefirot or cosmic tree, depicts genesis descending or emanating, and man returning to God in ascension, within an anthropomorphic Image symbolizing the
Coincidence of Opposites and the Trinitarian prisca theologia. As an interior religion, the natural magic of Christian Kabbalah is embedded in the human body. Viewed from above as if looking down onto the crown of the head, that sefirotic Image is seen as a hexagram, a central topic of sacred geometry and sacred numerology.
Formed of two interlocking triangles, one descending from above, one ascending from below, the hexagram is a geometric Image of man's union with the divine.
Again, the primal myth embedded in the human body and depicted anthropomorphically in the cosmic tree or 10 sefirot is exilic, where lover below must ascend via divine love or Holy Spirit to reunite with Beloved above. In the system Pico endorsed, man has the free will to ascend to Plato's the Good. Trinitarian Spirit, the dialectic of love, is the key Christian Kabbalists chose to use.
Pythagoras originated Grecian numerology, believing that the universe was expressible in numbers. Fascination with sacred geometry goes hand in hand with sacred numerology and sacred names. 37 Illustrating how the prisca theologia as practiced by humanists is brought forward in time through an unbroken chain of masters, Jacob
Boehme, a seventeenth-century German Christian Kabbalist, made the theoretical descriptions of his predecessors more accessible through diagrams (Berenson-Perkins 12, 94).
Boehme described his visionary experience: ~I saw the Being of all Beings, the Ground and the Abyss, also the birth of the Holy
Trinity, the origin and the first state of the world and of all creatures" (Law 8). Boehme's first figure, the equilateral triangle, symbolizes the ~Trinity Unmanifest", ~Nothing and All", ~Alpha and
Omega", ~the Eternal Beginning and the Eternal End", ~Mysterium
Magnum" - ~the Great Mystery." The culmination to Boehme's Clavis or
The Key is depicted in the Judaic hexagram Star of David as Image of final union of the 2 triangles into One (Boehme 56-7, 52-3, 80-1).
To demonstrate further that there is a perennial unbroken chain of teachers of prisca theologia, I mention Leonora Leet's 1999 publication, The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah: Recovering the Key to Hebraic Sacred Science. Leet writes, ~But associating the four days of creation needed to manifest the hexagram form with the four cosmic worlds of the Kabbalah leading to the manifestation of the physical world will call for a radical reinterpretation of the biblical account" (228). The first chapter of Lefevre's Book II concurs regarding the quaternary being the foundation for the rest of manifest creation (Evans 11:50, f. 198). Leet draws the beautiful geometric forms depicting genesis. The story unfolds again with a precise and comprehensive scholarly astuteness. 38
Pertaining to literature in particular, Georges Dumezil, structuralist, philologist and historian of religions, wrote a magnum opus, a great work, during the early 1900's. My the et Epopee or Myth and Epic brought the knowledge forward into our time of an
Indo-European civilization, based on the intimate relationship between languages spoken from India to England. This linguistic hypothesis is supported by a body of mythological-religious stories common to all Indo-European peoples. More fascinating still is his extrapolation that these peoples shared a common perception of the world through a common mode of thought, that of thinking in 3 terms
(Dumezil, Grisward Introduction). This is an essential thesis point,
since I extrapolate that all humans think in 3's, highlighting the
importance of the Renaissance humanists' Trinitarian prisca
theologia as a key for decloaking metaphorical imagery in mythology.
Georges Dumezil's Archaic Roman Religion is an encyclopedic
resource for use in studying both Lefevre's De Magia naturali and his subsequent Quincuplex Psalterium. The difficulty of translating
the De Magia naturali is revealed in Dumezil's descriptions of the
correlations between the Indo-Iranian and Italo-Celtic languages. He
quotes Joseph Vendryes:
"What is striking is that a rather large number of words
appear in this list of concepts which are connected with
religion, and especially with the liturgy or worship,
with sacrifice. Reviewing these words, adding certain
others to them, and grouping the whole by categories,
one does not merely establish one of the most ancient
elements of Italo-Celtic vocabulary; one also 39
establishes the existence of common religious traditions
in the languages of India and Iran and in the two
Western languages." (1: Trans. Philip Krapp 80)
This reiterates the importance of engaging current mythological studies through an experiential key such as prisca theologia, along with teaching the historical multicultural roots of
Christianity.
Dumezil gives specific examples of identical words and their connotations, one example being "I believe", and its substantive ,.;,...... correlative "faith", which cover the whole field of relations between gods and men (1: 81). Huston Smith's semantic interpretation of faith as beliefs in the mind is a linguistically correct one
("Finding Wisdom in the Western Tradition"). Despite semantics one must attempt translation of De Magia naturali; and perhaps having little experience in the beaten path of Vergilian translation, for
instance, is an advantage to the translator striving for humanity's common ground in Lefevre'S treatise on prisca theologia.
The editor of Dante, Cristoforo Landino, recorded some of the
Platonic Academy's sessions, including those when Vergil was discussed as a philosopher whose allegorical teachings were in harmony with Plato's. It was pondered in what way the meaning beneath the surface of the text became obvious (Williamson 135)
Another commonality between Archaic Roman Religion and De
Magia naturali, in this instance provided by Dumezil, is that
abstractions were elevated to personifications as paired divinities:
ritual theological couples, where the female expressed one essential mode of action of the male. "The elevation of abstractions, 40 desirable qualities, or powerful forces, virtutes and utilitates
(Cic. Leg. 2.28), to the rank of divinities was a game of language and thought in which all the ancient Indo-European societies
indulged" (1: 49; 2: 397). This supports my translation of "vires" as "vigors" rather than "virtues," since the active connotation of the word vigor perhaps better captures the original meaning of the
female-male essential mode of action (Evans Ch. 4 II:59, f. 203v);
Ch. 7 II:67, f. 207v). The process that Dumezil describes in
"abstractions as a game of language and thought," is what I suggest bringing more deeply into Academia through the study of religion as mythology, decloaking it within Literature's treatment of sacred
texts.
Mircea Eliade, in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,
speaks to Huston Smith's, and Plato's, point about student
experience being the goal of teaching:
At this point we wish to emphasize the following
fact: Although the shamanic experience proper could be
evaluated as a mystical experience by virtue of the
cosmological concept of the three communicating zones,
this cosmological concept does not belong exclusively to
the ideology of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism,
nor, in fact, of any other shamanism. It is a
universally disseminated idea connected with the belief
in the possibility of direct communication with the sky.
On the macrocosmic plane this communication is figured
by the Axis (Tree, Mountain, Pillar, etc.); on the
microscopic plane it is figured by the central pillar of 41
the house or the upper opening on the tent - which means
that every human habitation is projected to the "Center
of the World," or that every altar, tent or house makes
possible a break-through in plane and hence ascent to
the sky. [ ... J The shamans did not create the
cosmology, the mythology, and the theology of their
respective tribes; they only interiorized it,
"experienced" it, and used it as the itinerary for their
ecstatic journeys. (274-6)
R. Labat asserts, In "Chapter 2. Mesopotamia," that the magic and divination of Sumero-Akkadian thought [assimilated into
Renaissance Neoplatonism as wisdom of the Chaldean priests} was not the expression of a primitive mentality. Well-developed intellectually, Mesopotamian magic was not synonymous with primitive black magic. Incantations were based on elements common to most forms of magic, such as "the constraining force of knots, [ ... } attraction or repulsion by specifics, the purifying action of water, the dissolving power of fire, [and} the power of occult forces"
(Taton ed., Ancient and Medieval Science 69-70).
Lefevre understood this same natural magic as a prisca
theologia in harmony with Christianity, its technique of numerical ascension being synonymous with the journey of the Christian mystic:
[. .J and its goal is the same: a brief and rapturous
moment of contemplation in which the mind sees God face
to face. [ ... J those who properly understand how the
inferior world is coupled in love to the heavenly, will
recognize that the fundamental link between them, the 42
nexus from which flows all the harmony in the universe,
is Jesus Christ. And they will recognize that magic is
ultimately reducible to the Christian sacrament whereby
man puts on Christ and emerges reformed and repaired by
love - amore divino reformatus atque recuperatus. (Rice,
"The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples" 27-
8)
Lefevre's De Magia naturali thus reveals a Renaissance humanist who reached beyond political and intellectual boundaries through writings expressive of the humanly universal mystical experience of union with God in divine love. 43 2. History and Summary of De Magia naturali
In the long wake of Pope Innocent VIII's Papal Bull of 1484 against sorcerers, Lefevre chose not to publish his treatise On
Natural Magic, possibly specifically in light of the debate against astrology during the Spring of 1493 in Lyon (Bedouelle 36-7). Simon de Phares, condemned, appealed to the Parlement of Paris who transferred proceedings to the Sorbonne. The Doctors condemned those often called mathematicians, Chaldeans or astrologers, declaring mortal punishment for any Christian concurring with them. The
Faculty seized, condemned and burned forty volumes of de Phares
(Renaudet 152-3). De Phares himself was imprisoned in Lyon, then in
Paris (Bedouelle 37) .
pico's sudden death at 31 may also have deterred Lefevre from publishing his treatise. Lynn Thorndike, in A History of Magic and
Experimental Science: Vol's III and IV, Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries, evokes our suspicion over the circumstances of pico's death, quoting Sidonius: "'And another whose name I suppress was more miserably captured and mulcted of his fame.' [ ... J Peril of
life and death is about all that one gets from the pursuit of magic"
(4: 520). In his funeral sermon, Savonarola regretted that pico had not renounced the world in time, "declaring his conviction that
pico's early death was an unexpectedly severe punishment from God because he had delayed to put this purpose into effect" (Hughes 33) .
What is remarkable is that, despite Lefevre's notoriety, this
one treatise has been read by perhaps only a handful of modern
scholars. There is an alleged edition, or at least Book II, studied 44 philologically at l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE) of the
Sorbonne. I believe it is yet unpublished. Possibly due to America's current political reputation I received no response from their librarian regarding the edition. Likewise, I received no response to repeated correspondences with libraries and individual scholars in the Czech Republic, where the only extant copy of the complete manuscript is held. There is an alleged copy in some form held by a
German databank, "Alcuin," although access is restricted and it appears from the superscript markings that the databank merely lists
De Magia naturali but does not hold a copy of it.
Guy Bedouelle has noted that what is implicit in De Magia naturali is made explicit in Lefevre's Quincuplex Psalterium, a
facsimile edition of which has been published. Yet the availability of this more in-depth study of natural magic within the context of
Biblical Psalms does not explain the persisting disinterest in the
shorter treatise, which contains the seed of Lefevre's inspiration.
Lefevre's De Magia naturali has been left virtually untouched primarily because of its physical obscurity. There is sparse
reference to it in the critical work available on Lefevre, with
Columbia's Kristeller, Rice and Penham, and Europe's Mandosio, Brach
and Pierozzi being perhaps the only modern scholars to have read the
treatise. The single extant manuscript in six books of De Magia naturali is held by the Czech Republic's Knihovna Univerziti. The
University of Columbia graciously gave me permission to work on that manuscript in the form of a microfilm copy housed there through the
generosity of Professor PaulO. Kristeller. The Olomouc manuscript
was not catalogued until after the middle of the twentieth century, 45 when Kristeller happened upon it in the course of cataloguing
Medieval/Renaissance Latin manuscripts throughout European libraries. Kristeller had anticipated a critical edition by Penham, though, as I confirmed through Penham's son, the elder Penham passed away before engaging in the project.
The Vatican Library holds a 1568 manuscript copy of the first four books of De Magia naturali in the Queen Christina collection, and the Bibliotheque Royale in Brussels holds a fragment of the treatise. Looking at the first few pages of all three manuscripts, one is drawn to the conclusion that they appear to have come from the same prime manuscript. I have therefore decided to work from the complete 1538 Olomouc manuscript, itself perhaps the extant prime.
Undoubtedly the most important specific research find came during my final recheck of resources on Lefevre's De Magia naturali.
WorldCat had of course always listed the Longinus compilation, which includes a De magia naturali for instance. No new works by that name came up under these standard searches when I re-checked. For years, nothing whatsoever came up on a Google search for De Magia naturali.
However, in re-checking Google before preparing the final thesis, I was pleasantly surprised. Apparently due to the popularity of the music group Melek-Tha, Google had learned that the search for their dark ambient music CD De Magia Naturali Daemonica was frequent.
In learning to display the title of their CD, Google
inadvertantly picked up a class that was offered at EPHE, Ecole
Pratique des Hautes Etudes of the Sorbonne. That 2002-3 philology class was taught by Jean-Marc Mandosio, who allegedly collaborated with Jean-Pierre Brach on an edition and commentary of Jacques 46
Lefevre d'Etaples' De Magia naturali. I was enthusiastic to contact their librarian regarding accessibility of the alleged French edition. My first attempt at correspondence got no reply, but I plan to continue this pursuit. There was another seminar taught by
Mandosio in 2004-5 on Book II, which verifies the correctness of my decision to begin work on the De Magia with that key book.
Google then also picked up an article by Pierozzi and
Mandosio, in the revue Chrysopreia entitled, UL'interpretation alchimique de deux travaux d'Hercule dans Ie De Magia naturali de
Lefevre d'Etaples," which I was able to get through interlibrary loan. Although other sources such as Rice's essay include information on the De Magia, I will translate and paraphrase this article's account on pages 191-263 of Chrysopreia Volume V:
The complete manuscript MI 119 of the university library in
Olomouc, Czech Republic, dated 1538, is entitled Jacobi Fabri
Stapulensis Magici naturalis liber primus ad clarissimum virum
Germanum Ganaium regium senatore. Pierozzi chose the Olomouc manuscript for this essay's study since it is the only complete copy in six books, and (aside from the Belgian fragment) is the oldest.
The manuscript in the Vatican Library, 1115 Reginense, seems to have been copied around 1568-9 in Crackow by the Hungarian humanist Andreas Dudith, also with his annotations. Rice had pointed out that Dudith made his copy from an original undoubtedly brought to Crackow by Jon Schilling, who frequented the Parisian milieu of
Ganay and Lefevre d'Etaples between 1504 and 1512. 47
Latin manuscript 10875 of the Bibliotheque royale de Belgique holds a fragment written in Gothic cursive, probably between 1496-
1501.
A fourth fragment I had not previously heard of, Latin manuscript 7454 of la Bibliotheque nationale de France, is an anonymous calligraphy copy on paper of Book I.
Lefevre dedicated many books to his patron Germain de Ganay up until 1503, for all magic, natural or demonic, was condemned outright in 1504. This is an important event to bear in mind regarding the epistles I mention in support of my postulation that
Lefevre never did abandon magic. Pierozzi, like Rice, dates the writing of De Magia naturali between Fall of 1492 and Fall of 1495, since Book III Chapter 18 mentions Roland, the firstborn of Charles
VIII and Anne of Bretagne who was short-lived. Pierozzi in this essay dates the De Magia at 1494, rather than Renaudet's 1493 which
I've followed.
The first chapter of Book I presents a definition of magic, wherein the magi practice a discipline of natural philosophy that utilizes the secret effects of nature. Lefevre adopts pico's formula of magic operations as the marriage of the world. The key to exploring and manipulating nature is the sympathetic relationship between the active celestial and the passive terrestrial. A sexual
analogy is employed, with superior world as masculine, and inferior world as receptive feminine.
For Lefevre, the foundation of all magical operations is the
sympathetic relationship that exploits the friendship or opposition
between living beings. His magic includes occult artifices such as 48 ligatures and·incantations. The terms I find in Book II or use regarding it that correlate with these terms of pierozzi's are: exercises, Coincidence of Opposites, binding chains, and the poets' songs. As I have done, Pierozzi notes the influence of Ficino and pico throughout Lefevre's De Magia naturali.
In Book I, Lefevre examines in detail the various correspondences between the signs of the zodiac, the four elements and the four humors. He uses the Chaldean Image of the celestial realm seen as a Great Animal, with the zodiacal body parts influencing terrestrial bodies; the celestial agent, the terrestrial patient.
Lefevre claims that if the friendships between things were known, even miracles would cease to astound. He posits that natural magic is an operation~l wisdom that exploits the principle scientific knowledge attained in astrology, medicine and alchemy.
This I term Lefevre's decloaking of disciplines. He enjoins those who want to learn in depth, to read not only Latin authors, but also
Chaldean and Indian authors.
Pierozzi notes the element of dialogue in Book II, as I have, considering the mystical significance of numbers and referring continually to teachings of the Pythagoreans, Chaldeans and
Kabbalists. While writing the De Magia, Lefevre discovered the work of Odo of Morimond, a twelfth century specialist in number mysticism. Subsequently, Lefevre formulated the correlations between mathematics, music and astrology with the same arguments as those in
Book II. 49
Pierozzi and Mandosio's translation on pages 200-1, of the paragraph on the Pythagorean Silence that I have also found as a key passage in Chapter 14, is more of a paraphrase than my own translation, which strives to capture the poetic idiom that itself embodies the mystical teachings it imparts. As a result of the translation choices, Pierozzi and Mandosio have a slightly different interpretation than myself of Lefevre's intended meaning, emphasizing the distinction Lefevre makes between sacred numerology and sacred names, whereas I emphasize his correlation of them and the point of the passage, which is negation or sacrifice onto the
Ground of Silence (Evans 11:90, f. 218v). This highlights the importance of mUltiple published editions to provide a breadth of possible interpretations and a depth of understanding for future scholars studying the De Magia naturali.
Pierozzi does however concur that modern Kabbalah becomes an essential key for mystical exegesis of Scriptures. Although, the authors perhaps overlook the essence of the link between De Magia naturali and Quincuplex Psalterium, since Lefevre does employ in the latter for instance Scriptural exegesis that includes the sacred
Hebrew alphabet alongside sacred numerology - a complete system of gematria. This I find clear proof of in Quincuplex Psalterium pages
170-203, Psalm 118 (119). Lefevre divides this long Psalm into 22
Spiritual Meditations, each ascribed a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, its name, what it signifies (quality), and its number.
Pierozzi singles out another passage wherein Abraham is said to have been granted the potency to engender his descendants through the number of his name, which is the quinary or 5. I had also 50 written on the importance in Book II of the 5th element; the quintessential Spirit that elicits God's grace into the world.
The text that Pierozzi considers the source of Lefevre's
Kabbalistic Book II, acknowledging Copenhaver, is pico's
Conclusiones, wherein he finds the same type of Kabbalistic exegesis of the Old Testament and the Trinity. Lefevre and pico see in
Kabbalah a method of exegesis suited to confirm Christian theology as in accord with the truths of ancient theologians.
In Book III, Lefevre returns to more classic astrological theory, reviewing the constellations while recalling specific mythological characters associated with them. The Triangle, for example, by analogy with the Trinity stimulates scientific and artistic capacities in human beings. He examines the properties of the planets that dominate each constellation and the influences that they exert on the vegetal and animal world. Lefevre's decloaking of mythology according to what I would call a mystical-metaphorical interpretation, Pierozzi designates as an alchemical-metaphorical interpretation. These ideas concur, confirming my assertion that De
Magia naturali is a useful treatise for convincing scholars to decloak mythology mystically, Spiritually - anagogically.
Pierozzi's summary also points to Books III & IV specifically as fertile ground for critical analysis of mythology in terms of mysticism, Spirit. In Book IV, Greco-Roman mythological divinities are aligned with the 12 signs of the zodiac according to named temples or houses. Pierozzi and Mandosio chose to write this alchemical-metaphorical essay on Lefevre's two chapters (one from each of Books III & IV) treating the exploits of Hercules. The 51 authors find Book III Chapter 6 and Book IV Chapter 18, of alchemical and astrological motifs, interlaced with allegorical and symbolic Images. Beyond the scope of this thesis, I will only comment further that their essay addresses such charged Images (to
Christianity and Judaism) as the golden apples in the Garden of the
Hesperides and the dragon, the serpent. Hercules is symbolic of the operations [exercises] the alchemist [Magus/Maga] employs in his/her alchemical [mystical-magical] practice. The serpent-spirit is like a flame that burns eternally.
The bulk of the collaborative article is Mandosio's translation and commentary on those two chapters, which at the time of writing in the mid-1990's were the ony two chapters he had read of the treatise. Mandosio concludes that Lefevre is the forgotten precurser to the birth of a veritable alchemical mythological tradition found in Augurelli's 1515 Chrysopreia, and in Bracesco's
1542 II Legno della vita and 1544 L'Esposizione di Geber filosofo.
He surmises, as I did, that Lefevre's De Magia naturali was known through a confidential distribution. These sources and observations
strongly support my thesis. Mandosio notes numerous other Primary
Sources than what I've compiled below that Lefevre may have had occasion to read before writing this treatise. I include Mandosio's mention of Manilius' Astronomica, pico's Conclusiones and Ficino's
De Amore in the listing below.
Concluding my translation and paraphrase of Pierozzi and
Mandosio's essay, "L'interpretation alchimique de deux travaux d'Hercule dans Ie De Magia naturali de Lefevre d'jtaples" on pages
191-263 of Chrysopreia Volume V: 52
Book V is a series of tables on the passage of diverse celestial figures through each sign of the zodiac. Book VI presents tables of the degrees in the function of which the constellations, through the diverse signs of the zodiac, produce extraordinary effects on the life of the whole universe. Lefevre concludes his treatise with an examination of the reciprocal rapport of attraction and repulsion, which the celestial figures embody in their diverse aspects.
The above summation sentence of Pierozzi and Mandosio confirms my assessment of the central key in De Magia naturali as the
Coincidence of Opposites. 53 3. Snapshot in Time of the Tradition
Lefevre's life and work has only recently come to the attention of u.s. scholars who focus on mysticism, tracing the
tradition of masters through Medieval and Renaissance eras and
suggesting their influence on subsequent theologians and philosophers. In a 1980's article, Kent Emery, Jr. asserts that
Lefevre's teachings contributed to the evolution of l'ecole
abstraite, the abstract school, an indigenous French school of
Spirituality the influence of which, Emery claims, reached to the philosophy of Hegel.
In the absence of a published critical edition of De Magia naturali, Emery is missing the puzzle piece that places Lefevre's
awareness of and commitment to the principle of Coincidence of
Opposites and ascension not only with his 1491 studies of Lull, but
also directly from Pico's teachings at that time on Christian
Kabbalah. Lacking that information, Emery places Lefevre's
contribution to this tradition after his turn-of-the-century studies
of Cusa. As mentioned above, Renaudet dates Lefevre's studies of
Nicholas of Cusa during the first decade and a half of the sixteenth
century (661). Thus because of De Magia naturali's physical
obscurity, Lefevre has not been counted among the Christian
Kabbalists of his day. My work on the treatise sheds light on
Lefevre's role in propagating the prisca theologia in abstract form.
Gershom Scholem in Kabbalah suggests further research to
substantiate that, along with heirarchical metaphors, philosophical
speculation on sacred Names came through the Christian Platonic 54 tradition via the De Divisione Naturae of John Scotus Erigena (48).
This comment directly ties in Lefevre's writings, since he followed the tradition of masters that included Raymond Lull and Erigena.
Importantly, Emery emphasizes that Lefevre reinforced teachings, aside from those of Lull and Cusanus, of mystic Church Fathers such as St. Bonaventure and the Victorines, which were then later legitimized by Lefevre'S students Josse Clichtove and Charles de
Bovelles, then by the Capuchin Benet of Canfield, then Laurent de
Paris who expressed prisca theologia as the Palace of Divine Love, then by the Capuchin Joseph du Tremblay (Emery online) .
This clearly direct inheritance, which Emery traces over just a few hundred years, inclines one to accept the legitimacy of the
Renaissance humanists' claim to have rediscovered an ancient prisca
theologia through an unbroken chain of teachers. This thesis further
substantiates that the tradition of masters is unbroken even up to
today's Academy. To illustrate the impact Renaissance humanists had on future thought, I again cite Emery's article in Journal of the
History of Ideas, "modern historians recognize an indigenous French
school of spirituality, which one authority calls 'l'ecole
abstraite.'" Of the founder Benet of Canfield, and his contemporary
Laurent de Paris, Emery says, "For both, the principle of the
coincidence of opposites is central" (Emery online) . 55 III. METHODOLOGY & BOOK II ON CHRISTIAN KABBALAH
1. Stigma of the Non-Christian
It seems that modern theologians and scholars before Emery's
time would categorize De Magia naturali, even sight unseen, as an erroneous early work that he outgrew and regretted. This seems to be due to the persistence of the stigma associated with natural magic,
and, more importantly, due to the persistent misunderstanding of
Lefevre's interpretation of it. Lefevre's public repudiation of natural magic seems to me to be rather simply in compliance with
religious censorship, expressed to avoid persecution as a heretic.
Paul J. W. Miller's Introduction to the translation of pico's
On the Dignity of Man, a book that includes On Being and the One and
Heptaplus is somewhat biased, yet otherwise provides a good summary
of pico's humanist epistemology and methodology. Miller negates what
I posit as Lefevre's, and pico's, decloaking of religions to a
universal prisca theologia in such comments as, ~Pico treats the
qabbalah with more respect than it perhaps deserves." Although,
Miller is justified in concluding that the humanists' methodology
was to utilize tools from other sources in a Christian Biblical
exegesis (Pico xi). That was a goal of Renaissance Academia, though
our current goal in the Academy should include critical analysis
from outside the confines of Christianity, since mysticism and
shamanism are universally human.
What Miller presents as the humanists' misinformation, ~A
sacred religious truth was presented by these thinkers in 56 allegorical form, hidden under mythological fables" (ix), I posit as truth in the sense that human myths can be interpreted in mystical terms according to how all humans think and perceive. Lefevre believed so, including in De Magia naturali many examples of his mystical-metaphorical reading of mythology, astrological or otherwise. Treatment above of Pierozzi and Mandosio's essay on a chapter in each of Books III & IV addresses Lefevre's interpretations of Hercules and the serpent. Through number mysticism in Book II, besides the planetary Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, Lefevre decloaks such mythological characters as Phoebus,
Minos, Cacus and Rhadamanthys, Cybele, Narcissus, Phillide and
Flora, and Daedalus - some of whom will be addressed herein. I point out vehemently that Lefevre's anagogical decloaking of mythology according to mystical-Spiritual metaphors is an essential and timely key for current literary theory.
Miller's Introduction demonstrates just how pico [and thus
Lefevre] reconciled St. Thomas' distinction between God and
creatures, and Aristotle's God with Plato's Good, in that the humanists equated the highest principle of each with God as
existence or being itself, juxtaposed to its opposite in creatures who merely participate in existence or being (xxi-iii). Philosophies
and theologies were thus decloaked into the binary Coincidence of
Opposites, sometimes simplified as the All of God and the nothing of man.
Following Aristotle's injunction that man can actualize
virtues through habituation, Pico asserted man's moral freedom
[which Lefevre then taught as freedom to moral choice] (xv). Like 57
Pythagoras and Plato, they propounded an active participation on the part of their students for the ethical choice between good and evil
(xvi). The Images or Forms and Names employed in this tradition as it passed from teacher to student were intended for use in practical exercises, or Positive theologies. The Christian challenge was to demonstrate how these were reconciled with the Negative theology of receiving grace through Christ.
One of pico's fundamental theses is that his universal concord between philosophies and religions "is embodied in the collaboration of man's free moral choice with a return to God which we do not make, but receive" (xvii). Herein is Lefevre's severing, or receiving through sacrifice, of Pythagorean number mysticism at the point where it becomes the One who alone descends on the Ground of
Silence.
Voluntque Cabalam litterariam in numerorum secretam
philosophiam Magicumque traducere. Hinc pendet secreta
pythagore philosophia. Hinc arcana numerorum singula in
solo silentio discenda.
And they will the written Cabala to conduct them across
into the secret philosophy and magic of numbers. From
here Pythagorean philosophy hangs severed. From here the
mystery of numbers descends alone on the Ground of
Silence. (Evans Ch. 14 II:90, f. 218v)
Both Pico and Lefevre thus equate magic with Christian mysticism. Retelling their propagation of this prisca theologia of aequalitas, equality, is the fulcrum on which this thesis is balanced. That scholars belonging to a particular religious 58 tradition such as Catholicism or Judaism retell the ancient, pristine theology as slanted toward their own religion is what I protest. I posit that these Renaissance humanists were not Christian
Fundamentalists, but instead practiced their open-minded humanist creed of the study of human culture, particularly that of man's intellectual activities. Miller concurs, in that he finds
The permanent interest and value of pico's view of
nature comes from his seeing the physical order as a
translation of philosophical and religious truth. In
this way, physics, philosophy, and Scripture literally
say the same things in different languages. (xii)
It is the humanists' exegesis of religion along with the anagogical critique of these disciplines into a metaphorical language of Images that leads me to insist that their prisca theologia be studied under the broad discipline of Literature as the mythology of sacred texts. Mythology embodies archetypal human Ideas through Images just as prisca theologia does. More importantly, prisca theologia is a language of Images that can inform our study of mythology in a way intended by the Renaissance humanists. Lefevre in Book II, for instance, interprets both Ovid and Vergil in terms of his "Pythagorean philosophy" or number mysticism (Evans Ch. 2
II:53, f. 200v; Ch. 3 II:57, f. 202v; Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203).
I suggest that Lefevre's conviction to ground the subjective, abstract mystical experiences not only in metaphor, but also in objective action, is the step that caused many scholars to overlook a key to his thinking. Unlike the mystic poets cloistered in monasteries and convents, Lefevre lived in the secular working 59 world. His ardor, which found him traveling often, served the humanist purpose of recovering and publishing the writings of pagan and Christian mystics whose mode of expression was poetic.
Lefevre further grounded subjective, metaphorical abstractions
in the world through his rigorous teaching at the College du
Cardinale of the University of Paris. The teachings embodied his
epistemological convictions: Lefevre began teaching his students with Imagination through study of Aristotle's many words, proceeding
to Reason through study of Scripture and the Church Fathers, and
ascending to Silence in Intellect through study of authors such as
Pythagoras or Nicolas of Cusa. Established in the world of publishing and teaching, he was diligently engaged in climbing up
the Spiritual ladder with his students through words that were
perpetually inclined towards Silence.
Revealing through two choice words of subjective abstraction
acceptable in his day exactly what was the highest rung of this
concrete ladder to the divine, Lefevre equated Intellect with
intuition and faith. An important lesson of this teaching technique
is that for Lefevre and other abstract thinkers such as Pythagoras,
Cusa and the Kabbalists, abstract symbolism itself was a technique
they could utilize to ascend to union with God, whereas those with
other modes of thinking needed to hear abstractions expressed
through metaphor to access their meaning. Lefevre correlated the
metaphors of Scripture, the metaphors within writings of the Church
Fathers and pagan poets, with abstractions of Pythagoras such as
those which Reuchlin later summarizes in On the Art of the Kabbalah: 60 De Arte Cabalistica: uThis is Pythagoras in a nutshell. Two is the first number; one is the basis of number" (155).
Of the Church Fathers, Lefevre also valued Cusa's teaching of this coincidentia oppositorum, the Coincidence of Opposites.
Lefevre's keen intent on sharing these intuitions, this faith, with his Catholic students and the Christian public at large, with the seeming ease of leaving behind their prior Kabbalistic, magic,
Pythagorean and Chaldean garments, I posit has been misinterpreted as an evolution beyond erroneous teachings.
Quite the opposite may be more accurate: that the seed for much of Lefevre's later writings lies hidden in De Magia naturali hidden because of its physical obscurity and not because its metaphors lack clarity. The treatise is neither greater nor lesser than his later writings, but may be more succinct regarding his vision of man's relationship with God, which is the reason I am endeavoring a complete transcription alongside all of his other works, and adding the uncommon dimension of translation into
English, to be followed or accompanied by a critical edition of the
treatise. Relative to that project, I will engage Quincuplex
Psalterium as Christian Kabbalah. Quincuplex Psalterium is both a
resource for my work on De Magia naturali and a subsequently written
support to my postulations. 61 2. Book II on Kabbalah
Akin to pico della Mirandola's principle of universal accord,
Book II of the De Magia is a typical humanist synthesis of metaphorical systems of expression: that of Neoplatonism and
Ficino's macrocosm of the planets within the microcosm of man; of angelology; of Pythagorean philosophy and numerical ascension; of
Pico's Christian Kabbalah and genesis; and of the poets'
anthropomorphic male-female metaphors for union in divine love.
The primal exilic metaphor of the Fall from One to 2 that
forms the scaffolding of Book II, and which is the Coincidence of
Opposites, always followed by an ascension in return, leads one to
agree with Lefevre's categorizing of Book II as Pythagorean philosophy or Christian Kabbalah. That is substantiated in the
Kabbalah's system of the 10 sefirot depicting emanation of divine
attributes down from Keter, the Crown or God, into creation. The
Kabbalist's technique then effects ascension from Malkhut, Kingdom
or Presence, back upwards towards Keter, and beyond to the En Sof,
Infinity or unfathomable depth. The En Sof then, equates with the
Ground of Silence in Book II, the "severed beyond" that numerical
ascension sacrifices one into.
De Magia naturali Book II follows this formula of numerical
ascension: through contemplation of the Coincidence of Opposites
expressed metaphorically as anthropomorphic relationship of the 2
into union with the One, man can apprehend the Trinity, which
precedes the mUltiplicity of genesis. The unchanging constant in
Lefevre'S writings may be simply this consistent and systematic 62
intent on ascent to the divine, with numerical ascension essentially
the only magic and mysticism of which he writes.
As Rice has noted regarding De Magia naturali Book II, he
cherishes in particular numerical ascension, following the tradition of masters of number mysticism, which includes Pythagoras, the magi
and the Kabbalists ("The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefevre
d'Etaples" 26-7). I posit that Lefevre's metaphysical thinking in
abstract mathematical symbols requires a metaphorical-mythological
clothing akin to that used by mystic poets, and that his synthesis
of multicultural metaphors has a logic that is simpler and perhaps more profound than one might think at first glance.
Lefevre divides natural philosophy into two divisions:
philosophy, the theoretical science; and natural magic, the
practical science. This magic works through attractions and
repulsions that knit together heavenly and earthly things (Rice,
"The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples" 21-2).
Drawing upon the authority of contemporary religious and
scholarly writers, I hope to elucidate Lefevre's focus on
multicultural mystical symbolism of divine union in order to offer a
simpler, less contradictory, view into the evolution of his
writings. This particular treatise is the fulcrum point between
Lefevre's early work on Aristotle and his subsequent confinement to
Christian themes, the fulcrum between pagan and Christian. Lefevre's
epistemology and methodology never changed, but the cloth he dressed
them in and his sources of authority did, because of political
pressure in the guise of religion. 63
Lefevre, though, did find that Christian teachings clearly expressed his own religious experiences and convictions. This arranged marriage to Christianity did, after all, prove to be a marriage of love. For example, in De Magia naturali, Lefevre relates that God delights in the number 3, and associates the triangle with the Trinity: "From the triangle all things come; it is the beginning, middle and end. [. .J It inspires love of justice and equity, for the equilateral triangle is the figure of aequalitasll
(Rice, "The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples" 24).
Lefevre's Ideal of the triangle as expressing Trinity, aequalitas,
is thus also a metaphor for the freedom to moral choice, an ideal of perfection that Lefevre strove for even within the imperfections of his working world. Through sacred geometry and number mysticism
then, Lefevre married Christianity to Kabbalah.
Lefevre, in Book II, honors the ancient tradition of masters
from whom he inherited the principle of Coincidence of opposites and number mysticism in general. Rice summarizes that, in Book II,
Lefevre refers to number mysticism as Pythagorean philosophy. He had
inherited Ficino's teaching of the propagation of mathematical
philosophy by Hermes Trismegistus, Zalmoxis, Zoroaster, Pythagoras,
the Egyptian magi, Plato and the Kabbalists - numerical ascension
being the most ancient teaching of the magi. In the language of
Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism, Lefevre wrote that numbers and
figures best express the love and harmony linking creation to the
divine paradigm. He wrote on emanation from the One, and of the
mental technique of using arithmetical-geometrical symbolism to
ascend golden chains to a vision of the One and of the Trinity. The 64
correspondences Lefevre draws reflect the harmony of natural magic, which he now understood as a prisca theologia of Christianity ("The
De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples" 26-7, n.28). These
observations support my arguments that Academia ought to engage
humanity's esoteric, phenomenological tradition that crosses
historical and cultural boundaries. As importantly, Rice himself
here provides support for my assertion that Lefevre, although active
in the working world, was indeed a mystic.
D.P. Walker explains, in Spiritual and Demonic Magic from
Ficino to Campanella, that natural magic was the term used for
describing numerical correspondence between positions of heavenly
bodies and musical intervals, belonging to a cosmological theory
that the whole universe is constructed on musical proportions (81).
Yet Rice's assessment of the astrology and magic of which
Lefevre and other Renaissance humanists wrote is ultimately a
negative one:
The assumption of a sympathetic relationship
between things heavenly and earthly, the one agent, the
other patient, was for Lefevre - as it had been for his
ancient and medieval predecessors - the guiding
principle of natural magic. The basic analogy is sexual.
The celestial bodies are masculine; the world is
feminine, passively receptive to heavenly influence. The
mundus inferior is as straitly linked to the superior
mundus as Juno, the female principle, is joined to
Jupiter, the male. Between the two worlds the attentive
magician discerns a dense and subtle network of 65
correspondences and "secret" effects, simple in
principle, enormously complex in detail.
The secret effects Lefevre attributed to the
constellations will sufficiently illustrate the
anecdotal absurdity of his method. [. .J
The shape of a constellation also determines the
character of its influence. Lefevre found in Deloton,
the Triangle, an especially congenial subject for a
fanciful essay packed with historical exempla,
quotations from the poets, and Christian analogies. [ .
• J A detailed system of correspondences between parts of
the body and signs of the zodiac relates the inferius
animal, the human body, to the magnum animal, the sky.
[. .J Around this fundamental correspondence, Lefevre
embroidered - with a perfectly conventional and
stereotyped ingenuity - a host of others, connecting
with the planets and signs of the zodiac the four
elements, the four humors, and the secret properties of
plants and animals, colors, stones and drugs. (24-5)
In a twist that I can't help but see as intelligently
intentional, Rice concludes his lO-page synopsis of Lefevre's 350- page treatise with a hint as to where Lefevre really stood with magic. He begins the concluding paragraph explaining how Lefevre'S opinion of magic was a high one, then Rice explains how on the other hand Lefevre later published "the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones
Petri apostoli, a work whose most frequently quoted and illustrated 66 episodes were Peter's disputes with Simon Magus" (28). Rice shows us
the paradox of contradiction that Lefevre presents publicly:
[ ••• J he publicly repudiated his earlier views and
attacked even natural magic as a dangerous delusion.
After pointing out that the Recognitiones Petri contains
"apostolic doctrine," Lefevre emphasized what he took to
be the chief profit to be got from it: we should all
especially admire this book "because it attacks every
sort of vanity. To begin with, it refutes the deceptions
of magic, so that no one may henceforth find refuge from
his own errors under the cover of magic of any sorti I
say of any sort, because no magic is good magic. It is
nonsense to believe that any magic is natural or good,
for natural magic is a wicked deception practiced by men
who seek to hide their crimes under a respectable name."
The shift is typical of his intellectual development,
and parallels his growing disenchantment with Hermes
Trismegistus, Pythagoras and the Platonici, a shift the
easier to make because virtually all the ideas he had
come to disapprove of when they were called "magical"
seemed to him as admirable as ever when he found them in
the Dionysian corpus, the Fathers of the church, Ramon
Lull or Cusanus. (28-9)
Rice thus inadvertently supports my argument that Lefevre
never did abandon the Christian Kabbalists' Trinitarian natural
magic. I feel that in these closing remarks Rice may have actually
meant to elicit that very inquiry, since the paradox in Lefevre's 67 positions really is too obvious to ignore. An example is found in
the 1510 title to a Trinitarian work by Richard of St. Victor that
apparently Lefevre had published by Henricus Stephanus in 1510. The
descriptive title of the commentary to the work reads thus, followed
by my translation:
Metaphysica(m) & humani sensus transcendentem apicem sed
rationali modo complectens intelligentiam, quod opus ad
dei trini honorem et piarum mentium exercitationem.
Foeliciter prodeat in lucem.
Metaphysics and the transcendent apex of human
sensation, but embracing the intellect by means of
reason, which work to the threefold god I'm honoring, is
the exercise of pious minds. [The Trinity} Felicitously
appearing in the light. (Richard, title)
Miller's summary of Pico's overarching philosophy expresses
the premise on which Lefevre's natural magic worked, and the premise
about creation I adopt in this thesis:
For one thing, Pico had a philosophic view of the world,
including man, according to which each part of the world
is wholly present in every other part. It follows that a
truth about anyone part immediately reverberates
through the whole, and discloses truth about every other
part. (x)
Miller points out that the key to Pico's Scriptural exegesis
is revealed in Heptaplus, Septiform Narration of the Six Days of
Creation, pico's principle being to identify within Biblical
doctrines truths of science and philosophy (xi). This observation 68
reveals that humanists interpreted creation through the number mysticism of Genesis. A sixfold genesis is exactly where Lefevre begins De Magia naturali Book II. Chapter 1 delineates the flow from unity - the first and absolute principle from which all other principles form of the binary - the principle of alterity and the number of power (Evans 11:50, f. 198). In this juxtaposition of
unity and binary - One and 2 - Lefevre portrays the Coincidence of
Opposites as the relationship from which the sixfold genesis of
creation ensues.
Lefevre continues building the scaffolding on which number mysticism rests, stating that after the binary is the ternary number
longing, the unborn nearest to nature itself (Evans Ch. 1 11:50, f.
198). This means that, still within the unmanifest nature of God,
Spirit is nearest of the 3 to manifest nature. The ternary thus
embodies the resultant middle element formed between the Coincidence
of Opposites of Father and Son, and is itself the Trinitarian
longing, breath or Spirit for reunification of the exiled binary
with unity. The Holy Spirit of Christ is thus shown to be the
binding love-nexus that moves the parts into reunification with the
whole.
After the ternary, the quaternary number connection is
perfected as vapor (Evans Ch. 1 11:50, f. 198). The quaternary, like
vapor, is thus a perfect unmanifest foundation, which supports
manifest creation. The quinary number of action extends out from
that womb, accompanied by the senary to the end of creation (Evans
Ch. 1 11:50, f. 198). The given end or completion of creation, later
designated as the septenary rest, would thus be Kabbalah's Malkhut 69 or Kingdom (Evans Ch. 16 II:94, f. 220v). By beginning with a septiform narration of the six days of creation, Lefevre thus reveals in the first chapter of Book II, that the natural magic of number mysticism is identical to Biblical Scripture.
Of great interest for future study of Book II as Kabbalah is that Lefevre first depicts a septiform creation, just as the Image of the 10 sefirot is sometimes depicted as the truncated version of the cosmic tree, the version comprised of only 7 spheres. They are sometimes correlated with the Hindu Chakra system, as well as with the ptolemaic system of 7 planets. Before the treatise concludes, however, Lefevre discusses all 10 numbers. In Pearl Epstein's analysis of Kabbalah as detailed below, she concurs with my interpretation of the cosmic tree as anthropomorphic, representing man's nervous system joining Heaven and Earth, and the ascension of man's Spirit through the internal spheres back up to God (Kabbalah:
The Way of the Jewish Mystic 69-72) .
I assert that a fundamental purpose of Lefevre's Book II would have been to discern the process of genesis through number mysticism, natural magic, which would lead in return up ultimately to the Trinity within unity. Miller reminds us that, "This
Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy at all, but a cultural and educational program" (xiii). Lefevre would have intended On Natural
Magic Book II, at least in part, as a number mysticism or numerical ascension exercise manual for students. The reason humanists placed such an emphasis on the practical half of philosophy is that they believed in God's continual accessibility to humans through our very body. Theirs was an anthropomorphic religion that conceived of 70 divine union as a reality literally within each human. Miller
explains thus:
The natural world, in this sort of interpretation,
is a physical embodiment or model of philosophic and
religious truth, not a mere symbol or metaphor of a
supernatural order: nature actually embodies God's
goodness and wisdom. The parallel between one part of
nature and another, between man and nature, or between
man and God, is not a poetic fiction but a real
isomorphism or identity of structure. (xii)
In pico's "First Proem" to Heptaplus, he mentions another work
in progress on the Psalms of David, wherein he interprets them
according to the secrets of nature found within Genesis (67).
Perhaps Lefevre intended his Quincuplex Psalterium as a continuation
of Pico's work in extrapolating Genesis in the Psalms, since it
expounds extrinsically through commentary what is intrinsic in De
Magia naturali. I chose Book II as the topic of this thesis for the
reason that it contains the key of genesis for interpreting the
other five books, and most likely his larger work Quincuplex
Psalterium as well. It will be a substantial future scholarly
undertaking alone to compare pico's Heptaplus with Lefevre's Book
II.
Regarding the continuum from theoretical philosophy to
practical philosophy, pico held that the cross and Christ's blood
signify that the approach to God is open for man through ascension
in imitatio Christi. Lefevre felt the need to unify action and
contemplation, describing Christ in his native tongue of Middle 71
French as, "nostre pensee, nostre parler, nostre vie ... nostre tout"
(Renaudet 603; Bedouelle 223). "Our thought, our speech, our life ... our all," echoing Zoroaster the Chaldean's famous quote,
"Good thoughts, good words, good deeds" (Greenlees, Title Page) .
Lefevre thus taught the practice of philosophy together with the theory of philosophy.
Rice asserts that Lefevre, in the Olomouc manuscript of De
Magia naturali, makes the earliest recorded reference in France to the Kabbalah (Rice, "The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples" 27). I would amend that claim to read, "the earliest recorded Christian reference in France to the Kabbalah by that name." I feel it is important to clarify the source and history of
Kabbalah in order to obtain a clear understanding of Lefevre's
contribution to the tradition known as Christian Kabbalah.
Scholem provides us with a detailed account of Kabbalah's
evolution. He argues against the view of adoption by pre-Kabbalists of the Iranian theory of two principles, yet he refers to Kabbalah's
indebtedness to Sufi mysticism of Islam, and comments that some of
its similes are Babylonian. Also, the Kabbalistic link between
gematria - sacred numerology - and angelology was either formulated
in Babylonia, or within the Italian Jewish tradition (Kabbalah 26,
32, 35). In Book II Chapter 10 Lefevre delights in this correlation,
which he fully develops through commentary in his Quincuplex
Psalterium, Fivefold Psalter.
Scholem defines Kabbalah as the historical interpenetration of
Jewish Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. The doctrine of the Sefirot with
its 10 spheres is likely from the Pythagorean School or from Gnostic 72 doctrine. Scholem concludes that the main part of Sefer Yezirah was written between the third and sixth centuries by a Palestinian Jew
(27, 45). Gnosis is defined as, "Intuitive apprehension of spiritual
truths, an esoteric form of knowledge sought by the Gnostics"
("Gnosis"). Again, Lefevre's methodology, and highest rung of his
philosophical theology - Intuition - corresponds with Kabbalistic wisdom.
These were early stages of Kabbalah's evolution, for:
Contemporaneous with the growth of hasidut in France and
Germany, the first historical stages of the Kabbalah
emerged in southern France [. .J. Sefer ha-Bahir,
ostensibly an ancient Midrash, appeared in Provence some
time between 1150 and 1200 but no earlier; it was
apparently edited there from a number of treatises which
came from Germany or directly from the East. An analysis
of the work leaves no doubt that it was not originally
written in Provence [. .J. Cast in the form of
interpretations of scriptural verses, particularly
passages of mythological character, the Bahir transforms
the Merkabah tradition into a Gnostic tradition
concerning the powers of God that lie within the Divine
Glory (Kavod) , whose activity at the creation is alluded
to through symbolic interpretation of the Bible and the
aggadha. Remnants of a clearly Gnostic terminology and
symbolism are preserved, albeit through a Jewish
redaction, which connects the symbols with motifs
already well known from the aggadah. This is especially 73
sO'with regard to anything that impinges on keneset
Yisrael, which is identified with the Shekhinah, with
the Kavod, and with the bat ("daughter"), who comprises
all paths of wisdom. There are indications in the
writings of Eleazar of Worms that he too knew this
terminology, precisely in connection with the symbolism
of the Shekhinah. The theory of the Sefirot was not
finally formulated in the Sefer ha-Bahir, and many of
the book's statements were not understood, even by the
early kabbalists of Western Europe. The teaching of the
Bahir is introduced as ma'aseh merkabah, the term
"Kabbalah" not yet being used. (42-3)
I plan to further research Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples' De Magia naturali Book II with reference to the Bahir, in order to compare
Venus with Shekhinah and the bat, and to compare the Ideas that number mysticism represent in terms of the powers of God within the
Kavod. Following Lefevre's extrapolation of what is taught intrinsically in De Magia naturali into his extrinsic interpretation of those teachings as Scripture in Quincuplex Psalterium, it will be of great interest to compare that book also with the Bahir's
"interpretations of scriptural verses, particularly passages of mythological character" and passages on the Kavod "whose activity at the creation is alluded to through symbolic interpretation of the
Bible."
The Sefer ha-Bahir stresses "the mysticism of the lights of the intellect," its spirit reflected in later Neoplatonic literature as the "'Book of the Five Substances of Pseudo-Empedocles' (from the 74
school of Ibn Masarra in Spain)" (48). Notice again that "the lights of the intellect" as highest mysticism correlates with Lefevre's
Intellect as final vehicle. Empedocles is named by Lefevre in Book
!! as regards his version of Coincidence of Opposites and the quinary (Evans Ch. 4 11:59-60, f. 203). Scholem continues with a
listing of metaphors from several texts - and expressive of our humanists' syncretistic blending of traditions - that reveal the
"supernal essences" from "the highest hidden mystery" or "the primeval darkness":
[ ••• J primeval wisdom, wonderful light, the hashmal,
the mist (arafel) , the throne of light, the wheel (ofan)
of greatness, the cherub, the wheel of the Chariot, the
surrounding ether, the curtain, the throne of glory, the
place of souls, and the outer place of holiness. (48)
Scholem's book Kabbalah is an encyclopedic and excellent
reference tool for further research into Lefevre's Book II. His
chapter on "Practical Kabbalah" points out the at times vehement
opposition to the magical operations of practical magic. Scholem
reports that, for the most part, the boundary between physical magic
and purely inward magic was easily crossed in either direction. Yet,
he singles out Pico as one whose usage of the term "practical
Kabbalah" was ambiguous and contradictory, a semantic issue (182-3).
Scholem concludes this on the issue of semantic pejoratives: "From
the fifteenth century on, the semantic division into 'speculative'
and 'practical' Kabbalah became prevalent, though it was not
necessarily meant to be prejudicial to the latter" (183). 75
The importance, to scholars like Lefevre at the turn of the
sixteenth century, of mathematically generated images as forms
expressing Ideas was captured in allegorical representations such as
Rabelais' Pantagruel, first published in 1532 (Gargantua and
Pantagruel Chronology). In the Glossary to Oeuvres Completes, the
stereotype of good evangelical theologian immortalized in Rabelais'
character Hippothadee, is said to allude to either Lefevre d'Etaples
or to St. Jude Thadee (998). The anti-heretical stereotype Lefevre was stamped with was, I assert, due to his intentionally exaggerated
denouncements of heretical teachings - a practical means of evading
censure. During the turn of the sixteenth century, it would have
been far safer to suffer trial by satire than to be brought to trial
by the Inquisition for openly expounding Jewish mysticism.
After the turn of the sixteenth century, in a climate volatile
with anti-semitism, Reuchlin courageously published De arte
Cabalistica, in which he wrote: "This is Pythagoras in a nutshell.
Two is the first number; one is the basis of number" (Gundersheimer
155). A contemporary of Rabelais and Lefevre, Johannes Reuchlin was
brought before the Inquisition in 1513 for propounding Judaism.
Lefevre spoke out on his behalf during the ensuing disputes over the
ruling of heresy. By 1520, both Inquisition and the Sorbonne
academics had condemned Reuchlin's teachings as heretical (Hughes
102-3). Yet by then Reuchlin had already won the support of other
humanistic scholars, and had dedicated a pivotal book to Pope Leo X,
a Medici who had favored Reuchlin's cause. De arte Cabalistica was
published in 1517, at the same time as Lefevre'S Introductorium
astronomicum discussed herein. 76 3. Network of Christian Kabbalists
Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie reminds us, in The Pythagorean
Sourcebook and Library, that Pythagoras traveled widely at an early
age to gather the wisdom of the ancients - to Egypt and possibly as
far as Persia to study the teachings of Zoroaster and the Chaldeans.
Pythagoras learned that the monad/unity/One is a divine principle underlying number, but in itself is not a number at all. Dyad/2,
represents the possibility of duality/Logos - the relation of one
thing to another - while the triad/3 achieves that relation in
actuality. This is the archaic paradigm of cosmogenesis, the pattern
of creation resulting in the world. The long tradition of masters
passing down the concepts we are considering here continues to
proceed from Pythagoras to Plato and Aristotle, St. Augustine, to
the Neoplatonists and Neopythagoreans (20-2, 33-43).
Before the turn of the sixteenth century in Italy, Marsilio
Ficino's Florentine Platonic Academy became a renowned institution,
a mecca for the era's intellectuals. Platonic philosophy united this
informal gathering of scholars, some of whom traveled far to
occasionally join in this intimate learning experience (Brucker,
Renaissance Florence 228-9). As related above via Renaudet, in the
winter of 1491-2 Lefevre made the arduous journey to Florence
seeking out Pico and Ficino.
Central at the Florentine Academy was Plato's teaching that
philosophy itself was a mystical initiation, a union of man and God.
Ficino's efforts to reconcile Platonism with Christianity pivoted on
his Catholic conviction that God became man, that the Incarnate 77
Christ was God's masterpiece, created for man to imitate in order to achieve that union with God. Through such juxtapositions of
Platonism and Christianity, Ficino popularized "the idea of comparative religion, from which all reconciliatory arguments must start" (Williamson 133-4) .
R. Yohanan Alemanno, one of Pico's Jewish companions, conveyed a unified vision of Torah and Kabbalistic lore, ascribing to both the secret of the descent of supernal powers upon man, contending that the same structure informs the two lores (Idel, Absorbing
Perfections 487). Lefevre also married the literal with the mystical, and as with Pico and Ficino, philosophic speculation was always grounded in divine love (Renaudet 183).
In the "First Proem" of The Heptaplus: on the Sevenfold
Narration of the Six Days of Genesis, Pico writes that Pythagoras became a master of Silence, that Plato concealed the teachings in mathematical images that reveal Jesus Christ as the image of the substance of God. In the "Second Proem" pico describes, what Eliade later calls the pre-eminent shamanic experience of ascension, in terms of the crucifixion, which opened the way for men to approach
God Himself. The early Fathers spoke allegorically of hidden alliances and affinities of all nature, inspired by the
Spirit/Creator. In closing, pico reminds us that Moses called the world "the great man," a world created through the law of peace and friendship, a world at one with its Maker, the good itself (67-9,
77, 173-4).
pico's master Ficino, in Theologia Platonica de Immortalitate
Animorum, Platonic Theology of the Immortality of the Soul, 78 explained that St. Augustine chose Plato as his model, as closest to
Christian truth. Ficino also chose to portray Plato in accord with
Christian truth, marrying philosophy with sacred religion: theology.
Ficino cited Hermes Trismegistus in this treatise. He understood
Zoroaster to reveal that all is within the body of God, since God wills himself, enacts himself, as creation. Ficino's interpretation of Plato's teachings on free will of the thinking soul, leaving its
judgment free, is echoed in our understanding of Lefevre's teaching of freedom to moral choice (Ficino 11, 23,185, 209-11).
Pico wrote essays on comparative religion, paralleling
Pimander, the alleged Egyptian genesis attributed to Hermes
Trismegistus, with the HebreW-Christian Genesis as received by
Moses. Giordano Bruno, like other visionary mystics before him and others after, depicted aspects of cosmogenesis in geometric diagrams, involving triangles and the Star of David (Yates 85, 306-
24). Lefevre as well, in an attempt to visualize intuitions of
Nicolas of Cusa, drew an extended Star of David diagram (Bedouelle
64). In 1494, Lefevre published an edition of what Bedouelle calls
-the treasured" Pimandre (64).
Although writings such as Pimander have proven to be of much
later dates than previously thought, I question the assumption that therefore these teachings were never connected after all. As a
counter to the skepticism about Pythagoras having traveled to Persia
to learn much wisdom passed on from the Chaldeans, I would direct
attention to Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In
Collections and Treasures it holds a Cuneiform stone tablet in Old
Babylonian script, a unique artifact in that it confirms: 79
[ ... ] that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia employed in
their calculations Pythagorean number theory, as much as
thirteen hundred years before Pythagoras lived. [ ... ]
From this tablet we learn that Greek mathematics,
particularly astronomy, was indebted to the Babylonian
science which preceded it (Columbia).
Perhaps the most important general realization from my studies
on resources relevant to Lefevre's De Magia naturali is that it can
be categorized, in terms of comparative religion, as Christian
Kabbalah. I have resisted the easy notion of such categorization in my thesis title in order to emphasize instead the three more
universal components the De Magia Book II is structured around:
Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca theologia. One
must choose terms from some particular perspective, though, and it
could be argued that these particular terms originate from within
the Christian tradition. I contend that these ideas are humanly
universal and that the terms were meant to lead us beyond the
Christian and Judaic boundaries.
My purpose in including neither the word "Christian," nor the
Judaic term "Kabbalah" in the title, was to de-emphasize the
politico-religious polemic the terms elicit in some contemporary
readers, whether scholar or not. Instead, this thesis claims the
Ground of Silence with no politico-religious boundaries in order to
raise continually my own sights on equality as well as that of the
reader, and also to hi-light the best of Renaissance humanist
intentions and the Ideal they strove for. 80
The terms Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca
theologia named in sequence, correspond with the numbers 2, 3, and
One. After the condition of duality exists, it is evident that there
is a third element joining them in the holistic perception of the
Three in One. These three terms in the thesis title express a
unified transcendent Idea: a continuum where there is no separation
between God, Spirit, and man; a continuum where there are no
religious boundaries.
Religious metaphors and Images are useful when they instruct
about transcendent Ideas, but confusing when they are misconstrued
to confine to political boundaries. Yet, Ideas most often do need to
be expressed through metaphor and Image in order to convey meaning,
and those metaphors and Images do become misconstrued. For instance,
the terms Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca
theologia - as a unified Idea - could be imagined as a Pillar, a
phalus, a Mountain, an umbilicus, or the body of Jesus Christ
uniting God and man. This statement will become clearer in the
treatment of Moshe Idel's book Ascensions on High in Jewish
Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders below. However, the metaphorical
Images used above to communicate the same Idea may be interpreted or
construed differently by every reader.
This reality of human communication is played upon differently
by different authors, as noted below in the writings of scholars on
Christian Kabbalah. Each author has a somewhat different angle on
the Ideas at stake, and each succeeds to a greater or lesser degree
at convincing the reader of the legitimacy of their angle. All I can
do, as an equal of scholar and reader alike, is to present my own 81 arguments' in the best possible light. This is akin to what the
Renaissance humanists have done in such treatises as Lefevre's De
Magia naturali and Pico's Conclusiones. Each accentuates or draws attention to certain facets of natural magic, Christianity,
Kabbalah, Platonism or Pythagoreanism for instance, through metaphors and Images that lend credibility to their arguments. These metaphors and Images are expressed in words for the most part, sometimes with graphic depictions added. We must ultimately admit that our individual interpretations of these words and drawings, even of numbers, are speculative. Communication is a speculative venture. I feel however, that the one point that transports these written communications out of the field of speculative politico religious contentions is the fact that they were, and are, based on humanly universal intuitive experiences.
Although my research into the two recent books by Wesche and
Dan that follow came at the end of my thesis research, this chapter
is provided as a central confirmation to the reader that the teachings of the tradition of masters I touch upon could, during
some European historical eras, be categorized as Christian Kabbalah, and as a confirmation that these teachings were in fact studied by a network of scholars who could be called Christian Kabbalists -
European Renaissance humanists, scientists, philosophers, German pietists, and Jewish conversos alike. My hope however, is that it will support, as the other chapters have, the thesis argument that
Academia ought to engage such texts as humanly universal
experiential phenomena rather than solely as historical religious
artifacts. 82
That is essentially the same argument offered in the concluding chapters of Christian Kabbalah: Neglected Child of
Theology, written by the scholar Ernst Benz in 1958, and translated into English by Kenneth W. Wesche in 2004. It is an introductory work on the history and teachings of Christian Kabbalah. Benz highlights in the Introduction some of the masters he treats in what
I have called the tradition of masters. He includes: (beginning with but not sequentially thereafter) the Swabian humanist and Hebraist
Reuchlin, followed by a Swabian intellectual tradition and the prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, head of the Christian theosophy of early Pietism; the Protestant mysticism of Jacob Boehme and his school, which spread throughout England and the Netherlands, particularly Holland and especially in Amsterdam; theological circles influenced by Boehme included natural scientists such as
Isaac Newton, Robert Fludd and Francis Mercurius von Helmont; then outside the Christian religion from the beginning of the
Enlightenment as theosophy and anthroposophy. He studies Oetinger in particular for the simple reason that he names his authorities (9).
Benz writes about Oetinger in particular, and about the Christian
Kabbalists in general, disclosing in the concluding chapters:
What he brings to expression in his joining of the
classical doctrine of the Trinity with the doctrine of
the Sefirot is a speculative attempt to penetrate into
the inner movement of life in the Godhead, and to
comprehend the processes in the universe and in
salvation history, the presence of God in the world, in
nature, in humanity, and the various forms of the 83 personal encounter between God and man from out of the inner movement of life in the Godhead itself. Also, the
Christian Trinity doctrine is but the intellectual reflection, the insufficient attempt of human expression, [of] a genuinely intuitive encounter with the divine Transcendence on the ground of its various forms of self-manifestation returning back to man.
[. .] It would be a mistake to require dogmatic correctness of such an attempt. It is much more the expression of an experience of the Transcendent that
formed a genuine community. We ourselves are not afraid
to call it mystical, so long as this word is not weighed down by a multitude of misunderstandings and prejudices,
and we can say with certainty that it was an experience of the Transcendent in which the greatest pious men of
the Jews and Christians experienced themselves as one.
That appreciation of this commonality is on the
rise again today confirms to me the conclusion in
Leopold Ziegler's Conversation of the Masters, the most
recent work of the great revivalist of Schelling's
theology in our time. His Conversations of the Masters
on Universal Man, at the climax of its presentation,
joins the theogonic and eschatological aspects of the
Image of the Universal Man, and in so doing comes upon
the Hasidic Image of the Messiah. There Leopold Ziegler
writes apropos his meditation on Hasidism concerning the 84
Jewish capacity for Spirit: "There is a capacity for
Spirit, moreover, which at the very least encompasses
the Christian revelation as far as is possible, and
includes rather than excludes it in itself. I repeat: at
the very least, as far as possible. Accordingly, I place
all my hopes on that day of reconciliation, when Judaism
and Christianity commonly acknowledge their guilt in
their divisions and both affirm their common root in the
symbol of the Return or Restoration." (79-82)
I point out that the Return specifically is under the purview of mythology. These speculative attempts at communication then -
even within the Biblical communications of God with Moses, and back
further before the Bible to sacred texts of other cultures - all might be studied as the mythology of religions within sacred texts,
in order to know of humanity's deepest commonalities. The
anthropomorphic Image of the Return of the Messiah - whether one
calls it Jesus Christ, the Pillar, the Pentagrammaton, or the number
326 - embodies the Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca
theologia, and expresses an intuitive experience of transcendent
Being or unity.
Ernst Benz begins Christian Kabbalah: Neglected Child of
Theology with an Introduction setting the stage for the relevancy of
his book to "our modern ears" (7). His observations reflect our
contemporary dilemma of politicized religion - fundamentalism -
polarizing the Global Village:
The rejection of mysticism in contemporary Protestant
theology follows from a particular understanding of 85
God's utter transcendence and of the absolute break that
prevails in the relationship between God and man [ ... J
we must nevertheless reckon with this attitude as a
widespread prejudice. Such a hostile attitude, however,
has not always held the field. In particular, the great
surge of mysticism within the theology and theosophy of
German pietism led not only to a renaissance in the
study of the Kabbalah within Protestant theology, but
also to a positive evaluation of the religious content
of the Kabbalah in its own right. (7-8)
We will see the historical differences of opinion that lack of clearly cited sources leads to in my treatment of the symposium edited by Joseph Dan. We will also see how this tradition is differently defined and confined by different scholars, supporting my postulation that it could instead be defined with no politico religious barriers whatsoever, as I feel the humanists attempted.
In Chapter I, Benz delves into an account of the beginnings of
Christian Kabbalah. He defines "Christian Kabbalism" as: "the
interpretation of Kabbalistic themes in the context of the Christian faith, or an interpretation of Christian doctrines utilizing
Kabbalistic methods and concepts" (11). From his bibliographic notes we learn that members of this tradition named by Hamberger include also: the Buxtorfs, Rittangel, Hottinger, Athansius Kircher,
Vitringa, Knorr von Rosenroth, H. More, Buddeus [Guillaume Bude,
student of Lefevre], Kleuker, Schelling, Franz von Baader, Friedrich von Meyer, Joseph Franz Molitor and Adolph Koester (84). 86
For the beginnings though, Benz cites Gershom Scholem who asserts that although Pico della Mirandola is generally thought of as the progenitor of Christian Kabbalah, in actuality the conversos or Jewish converts formulated it. Abraham Abulafia is the earliest
"witness" for this avenue of conversion that Scholem has found, although he points out that the first convert to refer explicitly to
Kabbalah is Abner von Burgos, also called Alfonso von Valladolid.
Scholem also points to Samuel ben Nissim Abul Fradsch who also went by the names Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada and Flavius Mithridates, as the convert who taught pico Hebrew and Chaldean. Raymond Lull praised Christian Kabbalah, and pico veritably equated it with the
Magia or magic in their mutual proof of the divinity of Christ (12-
13) .
Benz mentions the objecting reactions of Jewish and Christian orthodoxy alike. Notwithstanding, Christian Kabbalah continued in its fundamental departures on the Trinity and the Incarnation, where they linked the Trinity with the sefirot, which are defined as "the outflowings or emanations of the Godhead" (15). Benz states that
Pico also came into contact with the "forgeries of the Kabbalistic pseudepigrapha" through such authors as Paulus de Heredia and Pedro de la Caballeria, the latter of which falsely quotes the Zohar with an equivalent of the Trisagion from Isaish 6.3 (15). As Joseph Dan also includes this instance via Scholem's chapter "The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah," I find it appropriate here to comment on that Biblical verse:
In the year of King Uzziah's death I saw the Lord seated
on a throne, high and exalted, and the skirt of his robe 87
filled the temple. About him were attendant seraphim,
and each had six wings; one pair covered his face and
one pair his feet, and one pair was spread in flight.
They were calling ceaselessly to one another,
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts:
The whole earth is full of his glory.
(The New English Bible with the Apocrypha 816)
My interpretation is that each seraph is a clear embodiment or
Image of the unified experience of the Trinity in the One. The 2 pairs of wings covering the head and feet symbolize Coincidence of
Opposites; the 3rd middle pair of wings in flight symbolizes completion of the Trinity in the Holy Spirit; and the fact that this
Trinity is envisioned as One Being is symbolized in the body of the seraph that constantly announces God's unified presence in creation.
Lefevre begins De Magia naturali Book II by stating that the subject of Pythagorean philosophy is unity, the generatrix of every number
(Evans Ch. 1 11:50, f. 198). In Chapter 2 Lefevre then praises the
Venusian nexus as embodying the ternary, of which Vergil sings in order to bind and draw tight the three in an amatory (love) chain
(Evans 11:52, f. 199). Vergil's injunction is for the poets to weave the mountain of amaryllis or the chain of Venus out of the threefold colors of amaryllis (Evans 11:53, f. 200v). I interpret this amatory chain or Venusian love-nexus as equivalent to not only the Image of the Mountain or Pillar, but also to that of the Trinity unified in the crucifix.
Lefevre continues the explanation declaring that the ternary of the magus (magician) is the number of Venus, and that the 88
Charities and Graces are themselves the ternary number of Venus, who
Pindarus asserts live next to Apollo's throne and who Jove perpetually extols. At this point Lefevre then positions himself squarely in the Pythagorean tradition, in whose school women were welcomed as equals, by regarding Venus - as third from the lowest earth and Image of inferior female - and Jupiter - as third from the highest earth or eighth globe and Image of superior male - as equals: "just as the inferior lover always occurs reversing to the
superior, nor at any time ought to be degenerated to fallen" (Evans
11:53, f. 200v). In terms of Isaiah's Image of the seraphim, the head and feet, though opposite, are continuously, bodily connected
through the Holy Spirit as a ternary, Trisagion or Trinity, Holy on all Three counts.
Lefevre states that the mutual chain of benevolence, beneficence, and concord is perfected through this nexus of love between Jupiter and Venus. The number three, which Venus and Jupiter
computed from the Monad, the fountain and beginning of things, is
efficacious and made for love (Evans 11:53-54, f. 200). Later we will see how Lefevre equates the name of Jesus Christ with the middle, restorative element of divine love.
Regarding pico as the accepted founder of Christian Kabbalah,
Benz points out that the tradition made a deep impression only when
Pico championed it, raising it to "a central theme of the Christian
philosophy of the Renaissance." Through pico, Reuchlin took up
Christian Kabbalah. His writings recognized the Jewish Kabbalah as
an "ur-revelation brought to mankind even before the birth of
Christ, imparting insight into the sublime mysteries of the divine 89 Being'" (16). Published in 1494 [the year after Lefevre wrote his De
MagiaJ, Reuchlin's De Verbo Mirifico or The Wonderworking Word states that:
God and man are joined by the 'wondrous Word' [ ... J
even from Moses' Tetragrammaton there is a progressive
development to the most wonderful of all Names: Jesus,
through whom the inexpressible Name of God is first made
expressible. To this name of Jesus, in whom man and God
are united, belongs all glory. This Name works wonders
and redemption. (16-17)
Lefevre culminates Chapters 14-16 with a Kabbalistic discussion of the numbers of the Tetragrammaton YHVH [Yahweh or
YehouahJ, totaling 26. His conclusion through number mysticism equates with Reuchlin's conclusion that when the Name becomes that of Jesus [YehoshuahJ it works wonders. As Lefevre describes it, the
Tetragrammaton becomes this Name when the quinary or fifth number letter [the Us"), which is 300, is born in the middle of the four, declaring the miraculous sign operating above all celestial and earthly virtues and powers, the conciliator of God and man. Thus the effable is born from the ineffable, making the invisible visible, and converting God into audible, visible Word (Evans 11:89-95, ff.
217-220). This Name above all Names and in whom all will genuflect, whether celestial, earthly, or infernal, is that most powerful, blessed and holy Name in whom the Spirit is enjoined. It is the Name therefore that works and makes all miracles or wonders. When these sacramental numbers of the magi, the prophets and David are 90 collected in one sum to the· number 326, the intelligible world is born from the paternal mind (Evans Ch. 16 93-94, f. 219-220v).
Lefevre includes in Chapter 16 a diagram of the Cross with
the letter "s" - signifying Jesus Christ or the number 300 - on each extremity of the Cross (Evans 11:93, f. 219). Benz reports that
Reuchlin too, ends his 1517 De Arte Kabbalistica "in a glorification of the Name of Jesus and of the Cross, which are explained using the above mentioned Kabbalistic technique of letter interpretation"
(18). Like Lefevre, Reuchlin posits that the Kabbalah was
transmitted in an unbroken tradition, and maintains that it may also be the source of Hellenistic philosophy, Pythagorean philosophy in particular, which itself came from Egyptian, Jewish and Persian wisdom. Reuchlin also talks about the angels and the heavenly
spheres (17-18). It is clear from these exact parallels between the
Christian Kabbalistic writings of Reuchlin and Lefevre's treatise that De Magia naturali can be categorized as Christian Kabbalah.
Benz devotes Chapters II through IX to F.C. Oetinger of the early eighteenth century. Naming Leone Ebreo of the fifteenth century, Benz relates that he linked the Kabbalistic tradition with
Platonism and Neoplatonism in Dialoghi d'Amore or Dialogues of Love.
Centuries later, Oetinger corresponded with Spencer's Collegia pietatis in Frankfurt, a circle which studied Kabbalah. Knorr von
Rosenroth's Kabbalah Unveiled is cited as of particular interest to this circle, and in it they found the doctrine of the Trinity and
Christology, the version of which included the Shekinah as wisdom, the first of God's creatures (20-21). 91
Oetinger was initiated into Uthe teaching of the greatest
Kabbalist of German Jewry, Isaac Luria" (42). He counted Boehme,
Swedenborg and Luria as uprincipal witnesses of spiritual knowledge"
(43). Historically, through Oetinger's directly linking Boehme and
Luria, German Pietism is connected with Hasidism. Ez Chaim or Tree of Life, was the most important work on Luria, written by one of his students Hajim Vital. That book is an explanation received from above by Luria of the obscure Zohar, the author of which is Simeon son of Jochai. Oetinger related that Luria was visited nightly by
Moses and Elijah, Uas on Mt. Tabor, and they would speak with him of the resurrection of the fallen house of David that was drawing near"
(44-45, 51). Oetinger equated Jesus Christ with Uthe Lord of the
Spirit" from II Cor 3.17-18 (46).
As I have noted the date in the Introduction, Benz also
remarks that the year 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, marks a turning point in Kabbalistic history. He clarifies this as
the transition from an Old Kabbalah of esoteric teachings limited within a small group of scholars. The New Kabbalah replaced those
traditional messianic teachings with uspeculation on the ur-origin
of the world, on Creation's spiritual Image in God, and on the
divine Ur-Image of Man in God [. .J and of the way of meditation
in 'vision' participating in that Ur-Oneness and returning to it"
(49-50). Again, it is clear that Lefevre'S De Magia naturali fits
the scholarly category of Christian Kabbalah. The more universally
human terms of my title - Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and
prisca theologia - again encompass that speculation on genesis or 92 origin, the Image of Spirit, and the Ur-Image of Man in God uniting all three and returning them to Oneness.
Summarizing Oetinger's sequence of the 10 sefirot, as God the unfathomable Depth, the "En Sof" or "Ungrund," "thrusts itself out of itself":
1. Keter (Crown)
2. Hochmah (Wisdom)
3. Binah (Understanding)
4. Gedulah or Chesed (Love or Mercy)
5. Gevurah or Din (Judgment or Power)
6. Tipereth (Compassion)
7. Netsah (Endurance-victory or Eternity)
8. Hod (Splendor)
9. Yesod (Foundation)
10. Malkhut (Kingdom) (Benz 67-73)
Benz points out that the correlation of the doctrine of the
Trinity to that of the 10 sefirot belongs to the oldest tradition of
Christian Kabbalah, and cites Reuchlin as the first to do this in
the Swabian tradition (74). Lefevre, then, should be counted as the
first in the French Christian Kabbalistic tradition to correlate the
Trinity with the 10 sefirot. In Book II Chapter 11, he relates that
Christian Theology [the doctrine of the Trinity] is by no means all
power alone itself, though the highest infinite born from the monad.
[The Trinity] from the monad, indeed having stirred, leads all. It
is the supra-rational, -intelligible and -intellectible, all within
themselves as the permanency of majesty within the Infinity of
light. The sensing, reasoning, intellecting portions of the 93 intellectible were responding alternately in analagous proportions
(Evans 11:85-86, f. 215-216v). In this not only can we see Lefevre's methodological continuum of Imagination, Reason, and Intellect, but we can also see how he proportions that directly to his Trinitarian epistemology.
In Chapter 12, Lefevre discusses the contribution of these three superior numbers within the divine numbers, concluding that the denary number (10) arises out of the primordial triune. And as through which denary the magus Pythagoras descended. This denary monad principle is lover returning to Beloved, namely the unity of all powers, and the unity of all causes, the love of all causes.
Therefore Monad and monad will be one and the same, in which is made as one and the same principle: power and love (Evans 11:86-87, f.
216) .
Continuing in this vein, Chapter 13 qualifies the Monad as empty [En Sof or abyss], while the binary signifies the intelligible world, and the ternary as the Idea of the most divine longing that coincides with the love-nexus. Emptiness returning to Idea coincides with power, and the beginning coincides with the end. The empty
Monad is also Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, the beginning of all and the newest: namely the Monad and the senary. But yoke the beginning and the end with the septenary and they fill full rest.
The Paternal Monad is power and love returning to unity, equality and nexus. From the Monad therefore through equality, and from equality are made all things. Name as the binary the exemplar of water as it contains all: it is Idea. Monad, Idea, and Love returning: these three are One (Evans 11:87-89, ff. 216-217). 94
Similarly, Oetinger states that the Messiah is the Alpha and
Omega "in union and communion with the 10 sefirot in his union with mankind, just as the eternal God is the Alpha and Omega outside of humanity" (Benz 75). Of the first three sefirot, the Crown is the
First Person of the Godhead, Wisdom is the Second Person, the Son,
Logos or Word, and Understanding is the Third Person, the Holy
Spirit. These inseparably united three are the Threeness of Persons
in the Divine Being. After naming the first three sefirot as the
Trinity, Benz interprets the other seven as spirits and spirit
fountains of God. Noting that the doctrine of the sefirot is connected to that of emanations from Neoplatonism, he concludes that these are "not Persons in the sense of the classical doctrine of the
Trinity," and that thus there are difficulties in comparing the two doctrines (75-6). Oetinger insisted the Doctrine of the Three
Persons not be imposed on Jews, but suggested to use instead the words "outflowings or mirrored-splendor or sefiroth" (Benz 77). Benz
explains the doctrines as joined, where one term replaces another, which I interpret as meaning that they are meant as equally valid
interpretations. He comments then that Oetinger [being a Christian]
of course uses the term Person (77). This is admittedly a problem with comparative religion, though as I noted, one must choose terms
of communication. Bear in mind that Lefevre himself chose the term
"Pythagorean philosophy" for the subject of Book II.
Like Lefevre, Benz emphasizes that for Oetinger the divine
Triad is "an uncreated thousand-fold myriad" (77). Relative to that,
he cites Koppel Hecht's insightful definition of Spirit: "'The 95 outflowing from Wisdom through the Spirit towards creation and the return to God, the Eternal One, is the Spirit'" (76-7).
Benz treats extensively the Kabbalistic Master Tablet of
Princess Antonia, a mural in the Church of the Trinity in Deinach
(Bad Teinach), that graphically depicts a Kabbalistic system that encompasses the 10 sefirot via Biblical history set in a palace and garden inhabited by anthropomorphic, angelic, and animal Images. The two princesses living in Wurtemberg between 1613 and 1679, Antonia and her sister Anna Johanna who studied the sciences, are proof that educated Christian women were allowed to study Kabbalah alongside the Bible. Through Kabbalah, Antonia saw the sefirot within the crucified Jesus: two radiances in the head united in the third; two radiances in the breast and shoulders united in the third; two radiances in the hip and stomach united in the third; and all were united in the final 10th sefirot. She experienced these as uniting the mystery of God and Christ, as well as the Old and New Testaments
(57-9, 96-7). In short, the Threefoldness along with the Seven
Spirits of God "are depicted on two columns as ten persons" (61-2).
A century later, Oetinger was perhaps one of the few Christian scholars who could interpret the Tablet. Benz points out that "no one has troubled himself to study this rare monument until most recently" (59). Impressions were made in 1663 of illustrations of the Master Tablet, but were never published (64).
The 2 columns experienced by Antonia represent the Coincidence of Opposites. Her three sets of 3 are depicted in Lefevre's Book II as the elemental mind, the second mind and the Supernal mind (Evans
Ch. 7 11:69-71, ff. 208v-209v). Like Antonia, Lefevre offers us 96 angels as anthropomorphic Images, deities whose guardianship of the
Ideas facilitate our learning the ascent by Saturnian chains to the
Saturnian mind (Evans Ch. 4 II:57, f. 202v). In my larger work-in
progress, I will correlate Princess Antonia's Master Tablet with
Lefevre's system of correspondences between angels, celestial
spheres and numbers, as depicted and described in Chapter 10 (Evans
II:80-85, ff. 213-215).
The mural's secrecy due to its physical obscurity, and not
because it's Images lack clarity, mirrors that of Lefevre's
treatise. Esotericism such as that in Lefevre's treatise has been
understood since the dawn of mankind. Yet until recent years, few
scholars have been interested in challenging the boundaries of
Academia in this regard again.
In highlighting some of the Master Tablet's graphic teachings
that Oetinger wrote on, Benz mentions first what Pico claimed in his
Conclusiones: "'no science proves the Divinity of Christ as well as
the Kabbalah and Magia'" (62). From the beginnings of this tradition
then, magic was associated with Kabbalah, as in Lefevre's treatise.
Benz sums up further that Kabbalistic philosophy was "raised as a
criterion for all philosophy and theology of the time," comparing
these (among others) against it: Newtonian Philosophy; Lord
Professor Plouquet's System; Detlev Cluver's system; the philosophy
of Baglivius and that of Frederick the Great (63). Kabbalistic
philosophy as this "criterion" equates with the Renaissance
humanists' denoting it as a prisca theologia.
Oetinger's sermon delivered on the Feast of the Three Wise
Men, wherein he counts Nicodemus (In 3:1-5) as a master of Kabbalah 97 who knew the mystery of the Trinity and the Seven Spirits within the sefirot, bears particular import regarding categorizing De Magia naturali Book II as Christian Kabbalah. Oetinger preached the doctrine that Kabbalah was ur-revelation of the Way of Salvation, which was known since the beginning of the world. He equates
Nicodemus' vision of God with that in the Zohar, noting that early
Kabbalists also spoke of the Trinity as the Triad or the higher
Synetrium. He counted all of those who knew of this Trinity - heathens, Jews, and Christians alike - as illumined by communion with God (55-7). Thus Oetinger echoes Lefevre's injunction to u'love also Indians, Ethiopians, Asians and Africans, and those who live in
islands beyond the sea'" and that UEven pagans and men who live today in unknown regions of the earth, if they love God and respect their parents and fellows according to their natural instinct
(naturalis instinctus) and the law of nature (which is
indistinguishable from the Decalogue), will be saved" (Rice,
Prefatory Epistles XXII-III) .
Moreover, to categorize Nicodemus as a Kabbalist as we have
seen in Benz's book, then also to categorize Lefevre as a Kabbalist through analysis of Book II in this treatise, is to categorize
Lefevre as a Nicodemite. This definitively informs the question, posed by Thierry Wanegffellen at the 1992 conference, Jacques
Lefevre d'Etaples: Actes du Colloque d'Etaples, as to whether or not he was a nicodemite (uLefevre nicodemite? Qu'est-ce que Ie nicodemisme?" 155-80).
As posed at the conference, the accusation of heresy that the
label nicodemite signified in Lefevre's time was centered around the 98 controversy of a Catholic's bodily union of God and man through
Christ in the Eucharist, as it related to the spiritual union that is Justification by Faith. Wanegffellen includes quotes from
Lefevre's teachings to his students. He concludes the paper with a quote in which Lefevre teaches that the virtue and efficacy He offers us in this sacrament, can and must be better cognized and felt through experience than can be expressed through speaking.
Lefevre then instructs his student to meditate that there can be none worthy to receive Him. Wanegffelen simplifies this instruction to the "non sum dignus" or "I am not worthy" (179-80). Although both of these Ideas signify a receiving in negation, a Negative theology
- a sacrifice - I feel that Lefevre's inclusion of all people in the meditation is the key to understanding him as a nicodemite.
Lefevre's Justification by Faith was for all of humankind, Catholic or not.
Benz's Christian Kabbalah also supports my suggestion that the reason Lefevre has not been understood in the manner which I present in this thesis is that scholars have not only taken his cross-talk at face value, they have thought of him primarily as a man of action in the material world - teaching, writing, editing, publishing. In the essay, "Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples and the Medieval Christian
Mystics," Rice claims that, "Lefevre was not himself a mystic. He recorded no visions for USi his mind apparently never deserted his flesh in ecstasy" (102). Yet Rice follows that with, "He repeatedly cited the mystics' silence as the exemplar of the highest form of contemplation" (102). I contend that Lefevre actively practiced this mystical Silence, the highest experience that can only be described 99 in riddles or negations. This is where scholars have missed the fact that Lefevre was a practicing mystic, which was itself the reason he strove to bring practical philosophy - natural magic - into university studies via his threefold ascending technique of
Imagination, Reason and Intellect.
Rice continues to puzzle over the contradiction that Lefevre presented over the course of time:
The relation of his own thought to the mystical
tradition, however, was never a simple one, and it
changed a good deal with time. The following curious
passage, from a letter of 1501, illustrates the
difficulty: " [ ... J Aristotle is the life of learning;
Pythagoras the death of learning, which is superior to
life. It rightly follows that Pythagoras taught by
keeping silent, Aristotle by talking, but silence is act
and speech privation. [ ... J in Aristotle there is very
little silence and many voices; but silence speaks and
utterance says nothing and the best words are simple
silence." (102-3)
This passage is not "curious" at all, but rather speaks volumes in its riddles about Lefevre's inner commitment to mystical
Silence. He was established on the Ground of Silence, and no bantering of words was to diminish or shake that faith.
Rice supports his position that Lefevre's philosophy evolved away from natural magic, stating:
One thing at least is clear. Lefevre would not have
written the passage this way ten years later. [ ... J 100
"Nothing is more vain and empty than those who call
themselves Pythagoreans . . . read Irenaeus and you will
find that the Pythagoreans were the most vicious
opponents of the Christian religion." And to a visiting
Italian about 1511 he emphasized that he was not an
Aristotelian (and still less a Platonist) but was a
Christian only. (103)
The passage in Christian Kabbalah that clearly supports my argument is this:
In considering these ideas, one must constantly remember
that we are not dealing with abstract speculations or
logical concepts, but with an effort to give expression
to religious intuitions and experiences. The creators of
the Kabbalah were not abstract thinkers; they were
mystics, men of prayer, and in large part ascetics who
spent their time in prayerful meditation and
contemplation on the mysteries of God. (Benz 65)
Benz elaborates that the feeling of piety for God as a sacred and sublime transcendence, an intuitive experience, was practiced in the knowledge that God and the earthly world were intimately linked.
God's Being was experienced in the longing for self-manifestation, and then in man's return to God: a theogonic process with no separations (65-7). In this description of Christian Kabbalah then, we recognize the Pillar, the One Image that includes all Three.
Lefevre also delineates the Pillar whose parts are inseparable from the whole in Book II, when he speaks of the knots, nexus, and chain in both Jove and Venus as celestial Concords: in the singular, the 101 magician that draws every thing and every effect together (Evans Ch.
4 11:57-58, f. 202). In describing the ternary Venus as passionate
longing, Lefevre later ascribes that love-nexus to Jesus Christ in
the number 300, and celebrates this reforming love, concluding that
Venus is namely that by which is being chained and drawn tight the
body, sometimes as if by Venus' laughter (Evans Ch. 5 11:62-3, f.
204-205v; Ch. 17 II:95, f. 220).
Oetinger, in comparing Newton's doctrine with that of
Kabbalah, echoes Lull's ladder of beings cited above in the
Introduction, claiming that it can be easily implied:
"[. .J from all flowers, herbs, stones, animals, that
an all-universal unified Spirit of nature goes out to
the sanctuary of heaven, filling up the space of heaven
(Ps. 150.1) and itself in seven powers and thereafter
through combinations, conternationes (placing of three
things together), conquaternationes (placing of four
things together) in endless corporeal and specific
mixtures. II (70)
Lefevre describes the same perception, wherein the ternary
unites upon and is coupled to the quaternary. Multiplied together
they compute the 12 judges in the end of ages who put forth sacred
and immovable utterances, and through which divine virtues all are
counted saved and into their end are called back (Evans Ch. 2 11:54-
55, f. 200-201v). Book II, in fact, culminates with a table
depicting four unities or worlds, comprised of four groups of 7,
each divided into 3 and 4. This table encompasses the Christian
Kabbalist's central interest in both the theogonic process and the ------
102 unified continuum: that of genesis of creation, reformation and recuperation of man, and the end of time or death of creation; and that of the first unity as the superintelligible, the second unity as the intelligible, the third unity as the intellectual world, the fourth unity as the sensible or corruptible (Evans Ch. 18 II:97-98, f. 221-222v).
Lefevre, in the 19th or ultimate chapter on Syrian Arithmetic, offers to his patron Germain de Ganay that, with the obscure they speak of mysteries; contemplative people (who having been severed are worthy) convey much fruit. He then displays a table in 10's, offering the salutation to Germain of a future disputation on how
Syrian numbers might compute the end (Evans II:99, f. 222). Again,
Lefevre's partiality to contemplatives or mystics who sever themselves in a sacrifice, a negation in meditation, a Negative theology, bears witness to my thesis arguments.
The 1997 pUblication by Harvard College Library of the symposium proceeds, The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books &
Their Interpreters, edited by Joseph Dan, is another contemporary resource for research on De Magia naturali as well as an indication that acceptance of Esotericism within Academia has begun. Indeed, the University of Pennsylvania's groundbreaking first volume of the scholarly journal Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft has just this summer been published.
The proceeds of the symposium on The Christian Kabbalah includes papers on these contributors to the tradition of masters:
Francesco Zorzi; Leibniz, Locke, and Newton; Jacob Frank; and
Johannes Reuchlin. I will comment in brief on Joseph Dan's treatment 103 of the latter, along with his Introduction, and then on Gershom
Scholem's chapter on "The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah," which Dan has included before the symposium proceeds (Contents page). I also mention here the inclusion of Paul Ricci in this tradition of masters.
Joseph Dan connects the beginning of Christian Kabbalah in the last two decades of the fifteenth century to the Platonic
Hermetic-magical Florentine enterprise of Ficino and Pico. Of those not previously noted herein, Dan mentions the occult work of
Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, noting that Christian Kabbalah also
significantly influenced John Dee, Francis Bacon, Robert Fludd,
Michael Maier, Guillaume Postel, Francis Mercurius van Helmont,
Giordano Bruno, and possibly the Masonic movement. Dan names Frances
Yates, P. o. Kristeller, F. Secret, and Chaim Wirszubski as
important contributors to the study of Christian Kabbalah
("Introduction" 13-15).
Importantly though, Dan asserts that "a great deal remains to be done concerning particular writers and works and concerning the nature of the phenomenon as a whole and its place in comtemporary
European culture" (15). Here then are the needs and issues that this thesis and my transcription-translation work-in-progress on De Magia naturali address.
Scholem, in "The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah," points out that the thesis of Pico and others regarding Christian Kabbalah was a mere variation of that proposed by Raymundus Martini in the thirteenth century in Pugio fidei, regarding the Talmudists. This work, which served as Catholic propaganda for the purpose of 1M
conversions, occurred in Catalonia, the location and period when
Kabbalists led by Nachmanides began to consolidate Kabbalistic
literature (17-18). This observation highlights my point that the
common phenomenon being studied here is indeed a prisca theologia
that transcends the boundaries of religions.
In his customarily thorough mode, Scholem next relates the
difficulties in pinpointing exactly who and by what names the
progenitors of Christian Kabbalah were, citing the work of Eugenio
Anagnine and Joseph Blau as resources on the development of
Christian Kabbalah. He then notes that pi co was the first Latin
scholar to refer directly to the Kabbalah in explicita mentio,
though concluding he was preceded by implicita mentio of Paulus de
Heredia (18-21). Scholem cites the fourteenth century Abner of
Burgos as the first converted Jew to make specific reference to the
Kabbalah. Alfonso focused on the concepts of the shekinah and the
measure of the body of God (26). Of great interest for future
research I feel, regarding the female or Daughter as the perfected
physical manifestation of God, is the observation that Metatron has
been equated to both the Son and to the shekinah (27-8). As Lefevre
has said, she ought not to be degenerated to fallen.
Scholem again cites Pico's Jewish associates as those who
provided pico with his sources, in particular, "the former Sicilian
Jew Samuel ben Nissim Abu'l-Faradj of Agrigento (Flavius
Mithridates) (21-2). Pico was the first Christian of non-Jewish
origin to follow this thought process (24). Scholem pinpoints the
earliest documented conversion via Kabbalistic methods of exegesis
as Abraham Abulafia of the thirteenth century (25). 105
From the same century Scholem cites Arnaldo de Villanova as the first, before pico, to ascribe the doctrine of the Trinity to the Tetragrammaton [YHVH]: Y = Father; W [V] = Son; H = Holy Spirit
(25). A key point here is that my interpretation places the H of
Holy Spirit between Y and V, and not as the final H. The reason is the architecture of the Coincidence of Opposites, where the 1 and 2 are united by the middle element 3. The resultant ineffable
theological structure is Y/1 - H/3 - VH/2. Lefevre and the Christian
Kabbalists then constructed the effable Pentagrammaton YHSVH, with
the middle HS signifying Jesus Christ's physical incarnation as bringing down the Holy Spirit and uniting Father and Son in the
Messiah. I will need to research Scholem's source on pico's
Trinitarian interpretation, which names V as the Holy Spirit.
Scholem does confirm that pico dealt with sefirotic symbolism in
general (34-5).
Importantly informing this thesis, Scholem provides the dates
of Pico's time in Paris as between July 1485 and March 1486 (23).
This fact explains that Lefevre may have been studying with pico in
Paris during part of the uncharted time between 1480 and 1490. As
mentioned previously herein, Lefevre merely concluded his studies
with pico during his own trip to Italy. Scholem reiterates that
Pico's theory that uKabbalah and magic were the most convincing
proof of the divinity of Christ" was astounding and scandalous at
the time (17, 24).
Scholem also reiterates that Pico inherited Christian
misinterpretations and falsifications, including teachings of John
and Paul, and naming Pedro de la Caballeria's interpretation of the 106
Trisagion from Isaiah 6:3 (28-30). Though founded in historical
fact, these strongly expressed opinions support my suggestion that
scholars not place impenetrable boundaries on their respective
religions, as the Ideas and experiences are humanly universal.
An author for further research is David Messer Leon who was
inspired by Ficino's circle, and whose Magen David treats the
relationship between Plato and Kabbalah. Of note regarding the
scarcity of references to Pico's work [and to Lefevre's] on
Christian Kabbalah is Scholem's mention of a Jew burned as a martyr
in 1490. He states as evidence of the interchanges between Jews and
Pi co the fact that "while the Italian Platonists were turning to
Kabbalah, Jewish scholars in Italy were simultaneously turning to a
Platonic interpretation of the Kabbalah's basic principles" (39). In
the final analysis, exchanges between religions that can be called
comparative religion cross boundaries in all directions equally.
Dan's obervation [regarding Lefevre's era of humanists], in
"The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin," corroborates this possibility
of open-minded comparative religion:
The Christian Kabbalist rejects, knowingly or
unknowingly, the concept that Christianity is right
exactly in as much as Judaism is wrong [. .]. As
stated above, I have not been able to find a credible,
sustained parallel to this attitude in earlier or later
points of contact between Judaism, Christianity and
Islam. (57)
The historical prevalence of closed-mindedness regarding
comparative religion in Academia that this observation implies, one 107 hopes will end through acceptance of a phenomenological approach to the ideas and experiences religions convey.
Noting several points of divergence between Pico's version of
"Christian" and that of the era's other Christians, Dan concludes that "the main difference can be presented in one word which expresses almost everything: Pythagoras" (58). Dan quotes Reuchlin's
1517 letter to Pope Leo X declaring his innocence of heresy:
"Marsilio (Ficino) has prepared Plato for Italy, Lefevre d'Etaples has restored Aristotle for the French, and I, Reuchlin, shall complete this group, and explain to the Germans the Pythagoras [ ..
. ]" (59). Dan follows the letter with a clear synopsis of Reuchlin's history of Christianity, Judaism and Pythagoreanism:
The "Italian philosophy of the Christian religion" was
recorded first in the works of the Jewish kabbalah. It
was then absorbed by Pythagoras and his disciples. Their
writings have been dispersed, and can be reconstructed
now only by assembling the fragments of the Greek school
and combining them with the remaining volumes of the
Jewish kabbalah. Together, they represent the lost
philosophy of Christianity, and this is the essence of
Reuchlin's enterprise. There is no boundary separating
Pythagoras from the kabbalah, and there is no boundary
separating both of them from the philosophy of the
Christian religion. (60)
Aside from that however, neither Reuchlin nor Dan mentions
Lefevre as a Christian Kabbalist. Nor do they mention the De Magia
naturali as a treatise that contains a book on Christian Kabbalah 108 that may be the key to all of Lefevre's teachings and writings. My
thesis makes those contributions to the research on Lefevre, on
Renaissance humanists as Christian Kabbalists, tying both to the humanly universal prisca theologia.
Dan points out that Reuchlin's letter to the Medici pope was naive in that he was obviously unaware of how marginal his concept of Christianity was. He concludes that, although Reuchlin's was a
sincere Christian orientation, this Christianity in the phrase
"Christian Kabbalah" denotes a highly unusual meaning shared by few
"before, after or during the period in which this cultural phenomenon flourished" (61). This assertion I take exception to on
the grounds that the beliefs of the populace at large were perhaps
sparsely recorded in what we now call Academia, and also the fact
that this interpretation of Christianity is one of Jesus Christ as
both Spirit and flesh, which I observe as not uncommon at all. Dan's
point does, however, confirm the appropriateness of my attempt at
explaining this prisca theologia by using terms that are not
religion-specific: hence the terms chosen for the thesis title. It
is at this juncture that Dan treats the problem of communication,
which I mentioned in regards to choosing terms (65-67).
Dan brings attention to the fact that the Kabbalistic texts
studied by Jews and Christians differ, another reason to bear in
mind the intended meaning of the term Kabbalah (62-3). The Kabbalah
inherited from the Zohar includes three core features: the idea from
the book of Bahir that the sefirotic realm included a feminine power
termed the shekinah, the pleroma of the 10 sefirot, which now
included the second parallel set of sefirot creating a dualistic 109 concept of existence (65). Whereas Dan asserts t'hat "Christian kabbalists, consciously and unconsciously, rejected or marginalized
the symbols which were central to the Zohar and most other kabbalistic works" (65), my thesis describes how all three criteria
are met in Lefevre's De Magia naturali Book II. 110 IV. EQUALITY & UNITY OF THE BINARY
1. Primal Metaphors & Myth
Relative to the Medieval-Renaissance threshold which Lefevre's
De Magia naturali bridges, examples follow of a few avenues through which current scholars are engaging the pagan-Christian dialogue.
Flint's The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe tells of the
"rehabilitation" of pagan magic to Christian miracle. Regarding
pagan sacred places becoming Christianized, Flint reports "an
abundance, almost an embarassment, of evidence":
Where non-Christian shrines were destroyed, they were
wherever possible replaced by Christian ones: oratories,
churches, and monasteries, erected upon the selfsame
spot and made up sometimes of the very same materials
(those, at least, which had managed to survive the first
fine fury of destruction). (254)
Kieckhefer's Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the
Fifteenth Century provides translations of magical rites, along with
commentary. In a chapter on "The Magic of Circles and Spheres", he
writes:
[. .] in medieval thought, the stars and planets
emitted powers that affected life on earth and could be
put to use by a magician for good or for ill. The
possibility of such astral magic was not merely a belief
of the magicians themselves; philosophers and
theologians, indeed educated people generally, accepted 111
the premise that the heavenly bodies influenced affairs
here below. (176)
In Book II Chapter 3, Lefevre details planetary effects on the earth resulting from similars' affinity to similars through the benignity or archetypes who embody the Coincidence of Opposites:
And Jupiter and also Venus, celestial love-nexus of
benevolence, sound in unison the approach reciprocally
nearest to benignity, as of all magical accordances,
through their path, benignity is sanctioned. And in
truth not only the celestial to the celestial accord,
but also the celestial to the earthly. [ ... J The
influence consequently of the eighth circle, and also of
the Moon, earth feels the greatest. (Evans Ch. 3 II:56-
57, f. 201-202v)
Flint translates an incantation for bringing concord between humans through archetypes who embody the Coincidence of Opposites:
"0 Lord God, almighty creator of [all] things,
visible and invisible, establish gentle concord between
and ------] , such as you established between
Adam and Eve, and between Jacob and Rachel, and between
Michael and Gabriel [ ... ], and such concord as you
established between the angel whose medium is fire and
the one whose medium is snow, so that the snow does not
extinguish the fire, nor does the fire consume the snow,
and so you likewise turn envy into concord. [. .]/1
(179)
Thomas Moore, in The Planets Within: The Astrological 112
Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, elucidates Ficino's notion of Spirit as an intermediary, unifying body, soul and Spirit in solar consciousness through the Image of divine marriage:
"Heaven, the bridegroom of earth, does not touch her, as
is commonly thought, nor does he embrace her; he regards
(illuminates) her by the mere rays of his stars which
are, as it were, his eyes; and in regarding her he
fructifies her and so begets life." (132)
This sexualized, though decidedly mystical, Coincidence of
Opposites in ritual theological couples Lefevre adopts as a primary metaphorical scaffolding for De Magia naturali, describing it as
"the mitigation of re-creation," and justifying its use with "such that minds more easily understand" (Evans Ch. 7 11:67, f. 207v).
Christianity's pagan roots in Mesopotamia, as was elucidated by Dumezil, Jean Bottero explains through Religion in Ancient
Mesopotamia. God, Marduk, is revered "in all his bodily components, external and internal, including all bodily fluids, the hair, the lower jaw, the spinal column, the hair on the chest, the blood, tears, earwax, sperm, and so on, to compare them all, following a logic about which we no longer have any idea, to precious elements in nature or in culture:"
1 His top-knot is tamarisk;
His whiskers are a frond;
His ankle bones are an apple.
His penis is a snake.
11 His heart is a kettle-drum; 113
His skull is silver;
His sperm is gold. (66)
In Lefevre's Chapter 5, he speaks of "the vigor of Jove" as
"the seminal fluid of all things" (Evans Ch. 5 II: 62, f. 204). The fact that metaphors intimate to human anatomy as embodying God have been prevalent in various religious traditions supports my argument that sacred texts ought to be studied primarily as mythology within the discipline of Literature, in order to cross the thresholds of specific religions easily on the vehicle of metaphor.
Bottero links Mesopotamian cosmology with Biblical cosmology, in one instance where 2 opposing terms represent the antithetical couple, "On High," or "Heaven," and "Below" or the "Earth [and
Hell]". The "Epic of Creation reveals how Marduk, after having felled Tiamat, the primitive universal mother, built the framework of the universe out of her remains:
He split her in two, like a fish for drying,
Half of her he set up and made as a cover, heaven.
Spreading [half of] her as a cover, he established the
earth.
[After] he had completed his task inside Tiamat,
[He spre]ad his net, let all (within) escape,
He formed (?) the . [] of heaven and netherworld,
Tightening their bond [].
[. .]And since their matter was the "sea water" from
the body of the primordial mother goddess, that mass, 114
emptied from within, floated in a certain sense in an
abyss of infinite water, a cosmic ocean (79).
This description parallels Lefevre's quotation from Ovid's
Metamorphoses when "All was sea," and his intuitions about the
Pythagorean plane or Ground of Silence (Evans Ch. 4 11:59-60, f.
203). Lefevre further reiterates the pervasive quality of Venus as sung by the poets and magi: "the entire Venus and the passionate longing of Venus are born in the sea" (Evans Ch. 5 11:62, f. 204).
Moshe Idel, in Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism, shows instances of the shekhinah as the universal soul, the supernal Image both on high and below, female thus embodying both conduit from the last sefirah below, called "ocean", and goal above, the first sefirah (177-8).
In the translation and pictorial form of the World Egg that
Bottero has provided on pages 78-9, the One primordial Mother
Goddess is sacrificed in order to create the 2 of duality: heaven and earth, bound together (we are left to assume since the word is missing) by some kind of World Pillar or Mountain. This sacrifice is a sacred one, where the primordial Mother's "death" is the negation that creates life.
Negation through sacrifice, death of the primordial Mother, is depicted also in the primal exilic myth of the Fall from the Garden of Eden. The Fall is that illusory Self-reflection of the monad, that severing in 2 as lover and Beloved; and the story of ascension to the One, myth's eternal return to unity of that Coincidence of
Opposites. Idel concurs: 115
The Garden and the Eden, which stand respectively for
the last and the first sefirah, symbolize the entire
sefirotic realm. In other words, Gan Eden is the symbol
of the whole divine pleroma. [. .J The repair of the
divine pleroma is the quintessence of the religious
obligation of the righteous [. . J. (208)
The Fall can also be Imagined then, as a metaphor for the
World Egg, the Egg of the Universe, where the ellipsoid shape formed
by the relationship of above and below has 2 centers. As described
in Spirit and the Mind, the egg-shaped Shiva Lingam:
The sphere, a symbol of unity, has one centerpoint - but
the lingam, ellipsoid in shape, has two centers,
emerging and merging back into, the one. Here is the
symbol of the two (duality) coming out of and returning
into the one - the one being the source, the sustenance
- the basis of the two. (Sandweiss 140)
Moshe Idel's Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars,
Lines, Ladders thus is another of the encyclopedic resources
essential to future study of Lefevre's De Magia naturali, which
concerns itself with ascension via the Homeric catena aurea, golden
chains. The chains in Book II are themselves the World Pillar or
Mountain, both path and unity.
In support of my argument that Academia might include
experiential ascesis, exercise, Idel in his Introduction points out
that Eliade had shifted our attention to the modes of achieving
religious experiences, the techniques, in such books as Yoga and
Shamanism: 116
These works represent a major methodological
breakthrough in the study of the history of religion by
shifting the center of interest from theoretical views
and beliefs to modes of achieving religious experiences.
The importance of technique is also evident in Ioan P.
Culianu's Eros and Magic, in which the magical
techniques are emphasized as central to Giordano Bruno's
world view. (6)
Idel points out that Scholem's prevailing theory of Kabbalah as theological interpretation misses the experiential nature of this mystical lore (17). The impact of the Christian emphasis on theology and faith has imbalanced the perception of Jewish mysticism away from its technical, ritualistic and linguistic facets (19).
Idel proposes unifying our understanding of the contending ideologies of mysticism and magic:
Ascending on high and bringing down some form of
esoteric knowledge, either in the form of magical names,
of remedies or of a magical reading of the Torah, can be
understood as a model that I propose calling mystical
magical. The first action - the ascent on high
represents the mystical phase of the model, as it allows
the religious perfectus contact with the divine or
celestial entities. His bringing down of the secret
lore, which in many cases has magical qualities,
represents the magical aspect of this model. (31)
Ascent has practical implications, for when the righteous soul ascends to the source it can know the future. In ascensio mentis, 117 human Intellect as his real Image· is man's vehicle of ascent to the
divine Intellect (40-2). Our Coincidence of Opposites, in terms of human and divine, Idel correlates with the biblical verse, u'Make
thee two trumpets of silver, of a whole piece shall thou make them'"
(46). According to his explanatory definition, the same metaphorical
Image infers Lefevre's male-female Coincidence of Opposites: UThe
Hebrew word for trumpets - Hatzotzerot - is interpreted as Hatzi
Tzurah - namely 'half of the form,' which together, since they are
two halves, create a perfect form" (46). Through the metaphor of virgin bride and bridegroom, Idel explains that as Israel ascends to
the Holy One by degrees, experiencing always a new union, the
pleasure in the process is more important than attainment of the
goals. He ties all of the metaphorical Uas if" scenarios to
Neoplatonism. While in Neoaristotelian language, Imagination ascends
beyond itself to the supernal source, actualizing Intellect, Uuntil
he merits that the spirit rest upon him" (50-3).
Relating Medieval astrology's celestial bodies to the 10
sefirot, Idel cites Cordovero's descriptions of the nature of
Kabbalistic prayer [wherein, I point out, both pairs of opposites
God-man and male-female - are working together] :
uBehold, this man is worshiping the Holy One, blessed be
He and his Shekhinah, as a son and as a servant standing
before his master, by means of a perfect worship, out of
love, without deriving any benefit or reward because of
that worship . . because the wise man by the quality
of his [mystical] intention when he intends during his
prayer, his soul will be elevated by his [spiritual] 118
arousal from one degree to another, from one entity to
another until she arrives and is welcome and comes in
the presence of the Creator, and cleaves to her source,
to the source of life; and then a great influx will be
emanated upon her from there, and he will become a
vessel [keli] and a place and foundation for [that]
influx, and from him it [the influx] will be distributed
to all the world as it is written in the Zohar [ .. . ] . "
(47-8)
This description supports Lefevre's claim that the numbers to
the mystery of the magi and the numbers to the mystery of the prophets are the same, that this "ancient veil of theology" is in
concordance with Christian theology, and that Judaic Kabbalah is not unworthy (Evans Ch. 10 11:80, f. 213; Ch. 14 11:89, f. 217). Idel
explains further that this ascent in the supernal world is part of
the mystical-magical model. Most importantly, is that it is not a
rare experience, but is practiced daily by the Kabbalist. The
ascendent Kabbalist triggers the descent of the influx and serves as
pipeline for its transmission into the world (48).
In relation to Lefevre's attribution of the number 3 to
techniques of the magi, Idel mentions Tzevi's description of the
Messiah's ascent to the "mother" as referring to the 3rd sefirah, meaning that Tzevi experienced the "secret of the Divinity" through
ascension to the 3rd sefirah. Idel suggests that the 3rd sefirah
itself, "the nest of the bird, the mystical place of the Messiah" is
itself the secret of divinity (49). Thus Lefevre's interpretation of 119
Christ the Messiah as the mystical Holy Spirit, 3m in the Trinity,
is a prisca theologia that embraces both Christianity and Judaism.
Through the ontologically creative human Imagination, its
thought products, such as the divine name YHVH, ascend to the highest firmament (Idel 54). Thus, Moses was transformed into a universal being by means of the Tetragrammaton (44). Lefevre positions the numbers 10-5-6-5, which equate with the Tetragrammaton
Y-H-V-H, vertically descending. In this schema, the practitioner
descends on the Ground of Silence rather than ascending (Evans Ch.
14 II:90, f. 218v). This reinforces the appropriateness of Idel's mystical-magical model, in that neither the mystical nor the magical, Spirit ascending or descending, is meant as subordinate or
fallen since it is all One. He continues in this vein citing an
unnamed late fifteenth century Kabbalistic book from Spain, speaking
about Elijah's angelization through ascension and his descent to the
world in corpore et in spiritu, in body and in spirit, through
divine names (55). Ascent via divine names through the hierarchy of
angels in Lefevre's Quincuplex Psalterium will be an important point
of scholarly comparison regarding these topics as presented in
Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders.
Importantly, Idel points out the paradox of what I term as the
Coincidence of Opposites, in that the literary body in particular of
Kabbalistic writings, portrays a more concrete ascent-descent
scenario, while also portraying a ~continuum among the divine, the
angelic and the human. The ascent is a motion taking place between
planes of existence that are not separated by ontic gaps but that
are different forms or manifestations of a Protean and more 120 comprehensive being" (56). Although the primal myth is exilic one of duality - it is from within this unified perspective that
Lefevre's works should be studied; it is in this unified vision that
Idel concludes his book.
In his Concluding Remarks of the final chapter, Idel simplifies the mythologized variations of the World Pillar, or axis mundi, by severing it into 3 parts: the divine realm above; the human below; and the path or technique between that unites them through its usage by the righteous (205). In this simplified model unity as One center of the ellipsoid, duality as the 2nd center of the ellipsoid, and the 3rd element the path between them of return to the One - all are collapsed into the Pillar alone. In this symbolic representation of a cosmic continuum where duality, the Coincidence of Opposites, becomes unified as One, resolving exile, Idel finds unity among religions, citing Hindu, Manichaean, Christian, Islam,
Shiite, and Sufi metaphors (205-6). The Pillar can be conceived as a unified metaphor representing both phallus and umbilicus, equalizing male and female in their common source.
Although a work on Christian Kabbalah, Lefevre's De Magia naturali is an important treatise to compare with Idel's list of only two Jewish literary sources on ascent through the planetary system. The "widespread ascent of the soul through the seven planets found in Hellenistic and early Christian sources" is rare in Jewish texts even through the premodern era (56). Notice the emphasis on the fact that these works are studied as literature.
Despite the impact of astrology and of hermetic sources
on various Jewish literatures, discussions of the ascent 121
through the planetary system are few and explicitly
literary; in fact, I am aware of only two examples.
Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, the influential twelfth-century
thinker, produced a literary composition entitled Hay
ben Meguiz under the influence of Avicenna. Another
composition was authored by Rabbi Abraham Yagel, a
Kabbalist in the second half of the sixteenth century,
that is entitled Gei Hizzayon, which follows Italian
models. (56)
Idel thus concludes, from lack of evidence, that in Medieval mystical literature of Muslims, Christians and Jews, ascent lost its
centrality. Citing Dante's Divine Comedy, he makes the distinction
between literary and experiential treatments of ascension, the
latter of which he categorizes as mystical literature (56-7). This
distinction may be contradictory to his mystical-magical model, in
that it denies Imagination the ontological creativity he has
ascribed to it. I contend that through the Words and Images
themselves, literature elicits experience.
Another instance of Idel's distinction between physical and
cosmic worlds (as reflected in his distinction between literature
and mystical literature) is in his treatment of the Pillar in the
Book of Bahir. As mentioned above, the Bahir - a late twelfth/early
thirteenth century Kabbalistic work from Provence - will be an
important primary source in studying De Magia naturali.
Idel distinguishes between the sexual and the cosmic
connotations of the Pillar, severing human and divine righteousness.
Again this runs contradictory to his mystical-magical model, 122 particularly as he explains the Pillar in the final Concluding
Remarks as a unified whole even though it has distinguishable parts
(205-6). The cosmic tree, the path itself, the Pillar from earth to heaven is referred to as the Great Aion, identical to the foundation and also to the righteous themselves (80-1). Yet in this Idel is not willing to collapse the models into a unified continuum, particularly as regards the distinction between the sexual and the
cosmic connotations of the Pillar (80-3).
As in Lefevre's De Magia naturali, the Bahir tells of the descent of semen, portraying the seventh divine power as the spinal
column, and the eighth divine power as the membrum virile (Evans Ch.
5 II:62, f. 204; Idel 82). Lefevre's quoting of Vergil's "chill
snake" burst open through incantations tells of the creative power of Words and Images, uniting sexual and cosmic connotations in the metaphor of the snake, as it equates human sexual and spinal
energies with the Cosmic Pillar (Evans Ch. 2 II:53, f. 200v). This
demonstrates Literature's power to unite duality, and disciplines,
through metaphor.
One value in bringing De Magia naturali out of obscurity is
that it clearly shows the Medieval Neoplatonic metaphorical approach
to Kabbalistic theosophy through architectural, sexual and geometrical Imagery. Common Images are the circle and center;
emergence from point through line, plane and space; and the chain of
being (Idel 167). The'resurfacing of Lefevre's treatise points to
the cause for the scarcity of this type of Imagery as oppression by
the Church. Such literary works synthesizing religions had to be
shared in secret. Idel reports that "Medieval thinkers adopted 123 belief systems that envisioned the divine reality as spiritual, and images are scant and cautious in their works." Here again though,
Idel makes an unfortunate distinction between Images as metaphors and Images that convey something fundamental to understanding (167)
Throughout Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism, Idel grapples with the problem of whether ascensions are of the physical body, in corpore, or of some spiritual form. He recalls the ascent of Moses as interpreted by the Besht, when Moses remained in ascendence for 40 days yet his body remained below "thrown down like a stone" (152). Idel likens the function of the tzaddiq in Hasidism
to that of the primal shaman, in that the shaman plays a dual role of sacred and social, and through ritual mediation with the sacred heals society as a collective patient. Presenting examples
throughout the book of the paradox that is duality, Idel also directly challenges Academia to recognize the connection between the
realms of sacred and social (Spirit and body) in future studies of
the shamans and magicians (154).
Describing the continuous historical interaction of religions,
one of Idels's examples is the adoption by Muslims of cosmology as
shaped in pagan Neoplatonism. Citing an Ismailiyah epistle, he
highlights the Neoplatonic universal or cosmic soul, which mediates
between Intellectual and corporeal worlds. After emergence of the
cosmic Intellect, "the universal soul emanates nature [. .J.
Particular human souls are simply parts of the universal soul,
extensions that are one with the cosmic soul. As such, human souls
may return to their supernal source" (168). The universal soul
serves as intermediary emanation between universal Intellect and 124 corporeal world, having particular relevance in worldly events. The epistle explains that with the genesis of the universal soul it penetrates from the highest to the lowest, and reaching that nadir
reverses direction toward the all-encompassing sphere in an ascent,
arousing, or resurrecting as it enters its angelic forms. The universal soul is thus the Spirit of the world (168-9). Lefevre graphically depicts this zippering together effect of higher to
lower correspondences in Chapter 10, where angels are correlated with planets and numbers (Evans Ch. 10 11:81, f. 213).
The Neoplatonic concept of the cosmic soul was also adapted by
Jewish Kabbalists into the "mundane Jerusalem" (human soul, center
of the lower world) and the "supernal Jerusalem" (cosmic soul,
center of the spiritual world) (Idel 176). Lefevre delineates the
inferior terrestrial numbers of the body and the Superior celestial
numbers of the soul, forming the first binary relationship: "the
first [number] is therefore the binary." This binary, which embodies
the primal exilic metaphor of the Fall, he unites metaphorically by
means of "the mountain of the binary" (synonymous with the axis
mundi or Pillar). The first binary contains within it all other
numbers (Evans Ch. 7 11:68-9, f. 207-208v).
These definitions and descriptions illustrate the highly
Neoplatonic framework of Lefevre'S De Magia naturali Book II, as
exemplified in Chapter 4 where the knots, nexus and chains are let
down from heaven to the lowest with guardian angels positioned to
assist in the ascent (Evans 11:57, f. 202v). Idel's mystical-magical
model is thus embodied in Book II as an elliptical continuum with a
heavenly center and an earthly center, but an ellipsoid that 125 perpetually weaves itself along "the knots, nexus and chains," or
Idel's "the ladder of the ascensions," out of the spherically centered love-nexus (Evans Ch. 4 II:57, f. 202vi Idel 170).
Each number in Book II, whether of body or soul, is also called a soul, each ascending to a planetary mind in accordance with its qualities, so that the souls of Saturn are of the Saturnian mind. There are also strati of soul-numbers grouped into hierarchical minds, beginning with the elemental mind, rising to the second mind, and then to the supernal mind (Evans Ch. 6, ff. 205-
207vi Ch. 7, ff. 207v-211v).
Idel's book studies the correspondences between the 10 sefirot, spheres or divine attributes, and the many metaphorical depictions of ascension he addresses. Using this resource, Lefevre's planetary spheres, minds, and their angelic correspondences in Book
II should also be thoroughly analyzed in terms of Kabbalah's 10 sefirot.
The Neoaristotelian notion of agent intellect above the universal soul that Idel demonstrates via an excerpt from an eleventh-century Neoplatonic Muslim treatise, the Book of the
Imaginary Circles (Ascensions on High 170), Lefevre adopts in the overarching metaphor of superior male agent acting upon inferior female patient. I assert however, that he uses this sexual or gender-specific metaphor interchangeably.
Lefevre discloses in Chapters 16 and 17 the Christian
Sacrament as the number 300, the recuperative mediating number for humans. In gematria, the number 300 is emblematic of the Hebrew letter "s" or "shin," mother or Spirit. Hughes gives a supporting 126
interpretation of "shin" as a convergence of man and fire (21). This reinforces the clarity in Plato's metaphorical injunction to "leap
like a living flame". In Chapters 14-16 Lefevre explains how, in
Kabbalah, letters are translated into numbers, in this case the
ineffable name of God: the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton YHVH
(Yehovah) translates into the divine numbers 10, 5, 6, 5. By adding
this fifth Sacramental number in the center of the other four numbers, Kabbalah translates YHShVH (Yehoshua, Jesus) into 10, 5,
300, 6, 5, totaling 326. Through the active female quintessence of
Spirit, the passive male ineffable becomes effable, the invisible
becomes visible, the Name of God becomes pronounceable as Jesus.
Power to enjoin the universal soul or Spirit Lefevre ultimately
ascribes to the name Jesus, depicting this in a cross with the
letter "s" inscribed at each of the extremities (Evans Ch. 14 II:89-
90, f. 217-218vi Ch. 15 II:90-92, ff. 218-219vi Ch. 16 II:92-93, f.
219) .
Hence magic, Kabbalah, number mysticism, is a prisca theologia
useful to understanding Christian theology. Christ is both
quintessence and the magic ternary uniting the binary Coincidence of
Opposites - God and man - in the Trinity. In pagan terms within Book
!!, through love Jupiter and Venus compute this ternary from the
monade, which is itself an all-embracing unity comprised of the four
elemental celestial numbers sounding in unison. (Evans Ch. 7 II:72,
f. 209) Thus, God, celestial realms, and man are envisioned as a
continuum.
Idel's book provides the exact link as to where in the
Kabbalist tradition of masters Lefevre should be placed, albeit 127 within the offshoot of Christian Kabbalah. Idel identifies the
Renaissance author especially fond of the Book of the Imaginary
Circles as Rabbi Yohanan ben Isaac Alemanno who was active for many years in Florence, and whose famous student was Count Giovanni pi co della Mirandola. From Pico, then, Lefevre received this tributary of
Jewish Kabbalah. To illustrate the importance of this cross
fertilization between religions, consider Pico and Lefevre's
enthusiasm in correlating also the Judaic sefirot with the Christian
sphaera, Imagination's planetary spheres. Idel points out though
that while the author al-Batalyawsi considers the ladder connecting
the circle earth to that of agent Intellect to be the universal
soul, pico sees it as nature (Ascensions on High 181-4). Here again
is my point about Lefevre's group of Christian Kabbalists conceiving
of nature, or body, as intimately connected to soul at every level,
a unified vision of God and creation, where all is sacred and
nothing is profane.
My point that Academia might more thoroughly and meaningfully
address sacred texts through a phenomenological exegesis is
corroborated by Idel, who also highlights my argument that the
experiential dimension should be illuminated. In the Concluding
Remarks of his last chapter, he enjoins Academia to transcend the
historical approach:
Pinpointing the basic phenomena that emerge from a
certain literature and describing their reverberations
might be considered their inner history. Here we are
adopting a specific type of phenomenological approach,
which assumes that a model that appears in Jewish 128 mysticism may articulate its main conceptual structure·, and in our case, this mystical-magical model transcends the boundaries of various types of Jewish mystical
literature. From a more general viewpoint, the survival of shamanic imagery and perhaps also experiences in the remnants of shamanic religions, in Yoga and in eighteenth-century Hasidism invites new reflections on
the history of religion in general. [ ... ] [These] demonstrate that archaic imagery and presumably experiences have not been extinguished even in the
regions and religions that Mircea Eliade believes were
conquered by the "historical" penchant in religion.
(208-9) . 129 2. Experience & History, Metaphorical & Literal
The history versus experience polarity is however, within the
Christian timeframe, as old as Christianity itself according to
Elaine Pagels in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. Around 150 CE, both
Masters Justin and Valentinus were teaching in Rome. Valentinus taught the mysteries of gnosis, or immediate experience; Justin taught moral action and philosophic discourse. Pagels goes so far as to say that the majority of Jews and Christians then, and ever
since, interpret Scriptures as Justin did: in particular they
interpret the Genesis story as history with a moral, Adam and Eve as historical persons whose Original Sin taught them a moral lesson
(62-3) .
In the same era, Tertullian of Carthage labelled all women co
conspirators of Eve:
"You are the devil's gateway. .you are she who
persuaded him whom the devil did not dare attack. .
Do you not know that everyone of you is an Eve? The
sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age; the
guilt, of necessity, lives on too." (63)
Lefevre, on the other hand, true to the Gnostic inheritance
through Kabbalah, espoused a model of aequalitas between ritual
theological couples. His extrapolation of the Fall and the Adam-Eve
binary into other personifications of the Coincidence of Opposites,
and indeed into pure number, didn't expunge Lefevre of the heresy
associated with a metaphorical, allegorical reading of Genesis. 130
Maintaining perspectives of duality seems to be a constant in
Judaism and Christianity, where, as Pagels points out, a devotee's
relationship with God is described as "I and Thou". A Hindu or a
Gnostic, on the other hand, could say "I am Thou", would claim "that
the divine being is hidden deep within human nature, as well as
outside it" (65). This unified continuum of being was the vision of
Jewish and Christian mystics alike, including pico and Lefevre. What
is overlooked of the mystics and their mystical techniques is their
practical impact on nature and society.
Lefevre understood the riddle of Adam and Eve, of duality, in
Gnostic terms, and expressed that exegesis in the most abstract
terms possible - that of number mysticism: numerical ascension was
fueled by the Coincidence of Opposites personified in ritual
theological couples such as Jupiter and Venus, the key element being
the love-nexus between them, the ascension to unity in marriage.
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent brings controversial religious
issues down to earth. Pagan religion in the Roman Empire held that
the elemental forces of nature were divine forces. During the same
era as Justin, Tertullian and Valentinus, pagan philosopher-emperor
Marcus Aurelius stood for the belief that "gods embodied elemental
forces at work in the universe," identifying himself with those
powers which he called "providence, necessity, and nature" (40). The
sun's energy was personified in Apollo, thunder and lightening in
Jupiter, and internal passion in Venus. Pagels explains, though,
that no intelligent pagan worshipped the actual Image of gods or
rulers, but rather used Image as "an accessible focus for reverring
the cosmic forces they represented" (41). 131
Thus, pagan religion as an exercise, a practice, is reflected in Lefevre's use of the gods' Images to transcend their own duality to a vision of the One, of God. The Images were, and are, metaphors that serve as vehicles for ascension to experience of divine wisdom.
Pagels cites the Gnostic text Reality of the Rulers, which tells of Adam recognizing in Eve not merely a marriage partner but a spiritual power:
"And when he saw her, he said, 'It is you who have given
me life: you shall be called Mother of the Living [Eve];
for it is she who is my Mother. It is she who is the
Physician, and the Woman, and She Who Has Given Birth.'"
(66 )
The Reality of the Rulers tells it that when God warned Adam to disregard her voice he lost contact with the female Spiritual principle, who then appeared as instructor in the form of a Snake.
The Snake instructor said that it was out of jealousy that God forbade Adam to eat from the tree "'of recognizing evil and good [ .
. ]. Rather your eyes shall open and you shall come to be like gods, recognizing evil and good'" (67). The "Reality of the Rulers," the "Riddle of the Rulers of the Land," then is simply the duality that humans are immersed in. This is the same decloaking of creation to its basic component of "2 is the first number" that Lefevre leads us to in De Magia naturali Book II. The "sinful" duality of good and evil that a fundamentalist view leads to, Lefevre unifies through love, Christ's Spirit, in a vision of blessedness in the One and the
Trinity. 132
In the Epilogue, Pagels discloses her realization that, uusing historical means to explore the origins of Christianity most often does not solve religious questions. [ ... J Finally, I came to see
that more important, to me, [ ... J is the recognition of a
spiritual dimension in human experience" (153-4).
Pearl Epstein's scholarly yet accessible book, Kabbalah: The
Way of the Jewish Mystic, is an encyclopedic reference for study of
Lefevre's De Magia naturali Book II, but along with being one of historical reference, this book is essential as an experiential
reference. Epstein gracefully rends the shroud of mystery that
traditionally has kept mystical practices secret, providing
descriptions of the many ways in which Kabbalah has been practiced
over the millenium.
While focusing on Kabbalah as Jewish tradition, Epstein
demonstrates that the 10 sefirot or spheres - the cosmic tree of
life - is anthropomorphic: a schematic of the human nervous system.
Collapsing all of the techniques she has described, the Kabbalist's
tree of spheres, utilized since the Middle Ages, is a breathing and
concentration chart that mirrors the Taoist Udiagram of the
ultimateless" (69-72). Epstein thus breaks the spell of religious
ownership, freeing this wisdom tradition to any human in much the
same way that Lefevre does in Book II through the prisca theologia
of number mysticism.
As noted throughout Kabbalah: The Way of the Jewish Mystic,
the metaphorical Imagery is interchangeable, so that there is no
separation between divine attributes, their hidden Names, words,
their colors and so on, indeed there is no separation between nature 133 and the divine, between man and God (57). This then supports my argument that literature, through its attention to Words as symbols, as metaphors for Ideas, already embodies the practical exercise necessary to unify studies in wisdom. In much the same way that
Epstein suggests taking the Kabbalist's tree of spheres Uout of its mysterious wrappings and stripped of its religious overtones," my suggestion is only to broaden Literature's domain in public education to include the study of religion as the mythology of sacred texts (71).
Epstein describes the Kabbalist's journey of lover to Beloved in ways that resonate with Lefevre's unification of duality through ascending chains via the technique of prisca theologia:
Even at this exhalted level, the lover approaches his
goal in stages; the interdependence of the entire chain
of worlds along the cosmic tree allows him to work with
Love as he had with Awe, in the knowledge that God, His
idea, and His word are One. Therefore, in the
corresponding microcosm of his own mind, the mystic's
thoughts, speech, and action may also be united as one.
Emptied of his ego, he too is free to create new worlds
with each breath - and to destroy them with each
expiration. (34)
The mystical technique of numerical ascension as Lefevre describes it, wherein the worthy practitioner by the Jovial chains ascends to the Jovian mind, is rightly called a prisca theologia
(Evans Ch. 4 II:58, f. 202). As Pagels has noted, Jupiter is a personified force of nature, the pagan god of thunder and 134
. lightening. In Epstein's comparison between Kabbalah and Tao, she
cites Professor Chang:
~When the practitioner constantly sends the genuine idea
to the nervous system, it moves on unceasingly; a
tremendous change in the electrical charges is effected
and the current flow is greatly increased. As the
operation in the serious practitioner goes on month
after month, and year after year, the emergence of
'lightning and thunder' within his nervous system will
be the natural outcome . . . Here symbolic language is
used to describe a physical phenomenon." (71)
Of particular interest is that this phenomenon, which
Lefevre's practitioners of Pythagorean philosophy or Kabbalah
experience as a unification into One of the 2 or duality, a unity
between the Coincidence of Opposites, neurologists now characterize
as ~'depolarization of the electric charges in the network of the
nervous system'" (71). For this reason, natural magic is called the
practical half of philosophy, because it creates results in the
natural world through an active practice. Without further scrutiny
of the mechanics of natural magic, it would be categorized as
Positive theology since it is active. Its magic happens, however,
always through a Negative theology, a sacrifice of individual ego on
the Ground of Silence.
Brian P. Copenhaver, who wrote the Introduction to the 2000
edition of Walker's Spiritual and Demonic Magic, shares my own
opinion of the oft-cited Lynn Thorndike: 135
Thorndike's polemical chapters on Ficino, pico and other
figures studied by Walker are hostile to the concept of
a renaissance in European history and contemptuous of
that period's most eminent thinkers. Walker's approach
is, on the one hand, fairer to the renaissance, but on
the other hand, startlingly innovative in taking magic
seriously as a feature of European high culture.
Walker's book itself would have been informed by his study of
Lefevre's De Magia naturali, as his most extensive coverage of
Lefevre is inclusion in Chapter 5 as one who condemned magic. The
chapter culminates: "But then, Lefevre himself, in about 1492, had written a long treatise on astrological magic, which he never
published; he was perhaps being harsh on his own errors" (170). Just
prior to this closing comment, Walker cites with bewilderment
Lefevre's condemnation of Ficino's Hermetica, since he venerated
Ficino as a father (169-70). My point that Lefevre made these public
denouncements only in order to avoid persecution resolves these
contradictions about Lefevre's position on magic. More subtly
though, this particular condemnation is against magicians who draw
Spirit into Images such as statues. Lefevre perhaps enjoyed the
double-entendre set up by the Spirit-body polarity in that he would
have condemned confining Spirit in stone Images, yet would have
celebrated freeing the boundaries of Image through infusion of
Spirit. This relates directly to the age-old controversy of duality
versus unity, mentioned above through Pagel's commentary as "I and
Thou" versus "I am Thou". 136
Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella is otherwise a thorough synopsis of the personages and ideas at play regarding magic in Lefevre's era. To summarize Ficino's definition of "spiritus," it is "the instrument by which they [the priests of the Muses] can measure and grasp the whole world," and it is the
link between body and soul (3-4). Walker reveals himself as a dualist when he categorizes Ficino's "spiritus" as a physical phenomenon, distinguishing it from the truly "spiritual" "in the
Christian (modern) sense" (4, 26). Walker's chapter on the "General
Theory of Natural Magic" is a succinct and essential overview. Magia
Naturalis embodies a real overlapping of art, science, practical psychology and religion. The vis imaginativa is the fundamental
force; the medium of transmission is the cosmic and human Spirit, vehicle of the Imagination; the effects are on either animate or
inanimate beings. In Ficinian, Neoplatonic magic, "The main magical
importance of occult qualities is in the resultant planetary
groupings of objects, which can then be used by the other forces,"
i.e., one can make a picture Solarian by representing Solarian
Images, in turn causing the Imagination to become more Solarian.
Words as a force of the Imagination are often used in creating the
objects to reinforce their astrological power; this rests on the
theory of language that there is a real connection between words and
what they denote: a poem could therefore be both art and incantation
(75-84) .
Without the benefit of Lefevre's De Magia naturali Book II,
Walker concludes that what he calls, the "vis Musices B (proportion
and Number (harmony of the spheres; sympathetic magic) remained, as 137 far as I know, purely theoretical" (77, 81). In contrast, Lefevre categorizes number mysticism, Pythagorean philosophy as practical, and in Chapter 7 describes effects based on musical proportions as practical, not just theoretical (Evans II:73-75, ff. 210-211v).
Without Lefevre's De Magia naturali Book II, Walker stops short of making that connection:
It is a theory that proposes the production of effects
by means of the mathematical or numerical correspondence
between the movements, distances or positions of the
heavenly bodies and the porportions of consonant
intervals in music. That this correspondence could be
physically operative was explained by the analogy of the
sympathetic vibration of strings. This theory is part of
a wider cosmological theory, which supposes that the
whole universe is constructed on these musical
proportions, and which provides the most usual
theoretical basis for sympathetic magic. (81)
Walker discusses the possibility of heresy in each of the magical combinations he describes. Ficinian sUbjective magic can
overlap with psychology, which at that time was part of religion,
therefore is that which makes natural magic an obvious threat to
religion. Walker summarizes this chapter in a manner that reveals
the scholarly openmindedness with which he studied magic:
The overlap of magic and religion produced then this
dilemma: either a miraculous but plainly magical
religion, or a purely psychological religion without a
god. [ ... J The historical importance of these 138
connexions between magic and religion is, I think, that
they led people to ask questions about religious
practices and experiences which would not otherwise have
occurred to them; and, by approaching religious problems
through magic, which was at least partially identical
with, or exactly analogous to religion [ ... J they were
able sometimes to suggest answers which, whether true or
not, were new and fruitful. (84)
The confluence of the seemingly disparate traditions of theoretical Negative theologies and practical positive theologies is where I suggest much fruit could be harvested in Academia: through engaging not only the historical literal modes, but also the metaphorical-Spiritual, experiential modes of critical analysis and teaching: the anagogical and phenomenological. When Academia empowers judgmental dialogue against this worldview, the result is a polarizing bias that is itself "contagious," as is Hughes' unfortunate case of mimicking the established authority:
pico's enthusiasm for the cabala as a secret repository
of Christian truth proved to be highly contagious, and
many other scholars absorbed themselves in the studies
he had initiated. The claims he made had at least one
good and positive effect, namely, the reflorescence of
interest in the Hebrew language. (21)
Alternatively, translator Michael J. B. Allen and editor James
Hankins of Platonic Theology present Ficino's Platonism as key to
understanding European art, thought, culture and spirituality of the
following 250 years. Through mystical mathematics and "an ancient 139 pagan mythological philosophy" God gifted the gentile poets and sages with a Trinitarian gift of wisdom (viii). 140 3. Poets, Philosophers, & Mythological Beings
In De Magia naturali, for this mystical mathematics and pagan mythological philosophy, Lefevre applauds the ancients in recalling names of poets who sang of the Coincidence of Opposites, with Spirit as the 3rd element unifying the mythic, ritual theological pairs; and
in recalling the names of philosophers who also taught that genesis was through the Coincidence of Opposites creating Trinity. The
following chart names a few of the persons and personifications whose wisdom Lefevre praises in Book II:
Philosophers
• Pythagoras for his formula of 2 as the first number, One as
the basis of number (throughout Book II on Pythagorean
philosophy) .
• The tradition of masters who have learned to ascend from below
to above, for passing on the techniques: Mercury, Zalmoxis,
Zoroaster, Plato, and the magi (Evans Ch. 4 II:58, f. 202).
• Empedocles and Heraclitus for the philosophy of unbinding
through friendship, e.g., "lying near the flexible power
reciprocally in addition to friendship, the mates of the world
beget disorder and annihilation [. .J Empedocles and
Heraclitus of Ephesus were predicting also of unbinding
through friendship, but of the fatal and boiling fires now of
the superior, now of the inferior I unite as if to couple"
(Evans Ch. 4 II:59-60, f. 203). 141
• Empedocles for his assertion of real numbers as those saved by
concordant discord, i.e., the tangible by-product of the
continual genesis of number through sacrifice of one to the
next (Evans Ch. 4 II:61, f. 204v); for his forces of Love and
Strife inherent in Lefevre's attraction and repulsion, eg., in
order "to percieve, by trials in man and the world, there is
no other way" (Evans Ch. 4 II:59, f. 203v) , duality is the
necessary "evil" for a perceptible creation; the cosmic cycle
where all matter contracts and expands repeatedly without
beginning or end ("Empedocles" thebigview).
• Heraclitus for his theory of flux and fire, "unity of
opposites" where "all things are flowing" and burning of the
eternal fire, reality merely a succession of transitory
states" ("Heraclitus" thebigview); inherent in Book II, eg.,
"[ ... ] 'the worlds of the collective fires and vigors are
yoked; conducting the world fire they labor [ ... ] [the]
worlds were disuniting and consuming all power, longing and
also nexus, as if collected altogether into one flame [. .]
and they are being collected by the sea.' And after that it is
of true sameness, supposing that the world is ever [always]
disuniting, which plane Pythagoras was perceiving," returning
us to the Ground of Silence (Evans Ch. 4 II:59, f. 203v).
Poets & Mythological Beings
• Vergilian magic and that of the magus (magician) is of
Venusian ternary nexus created by coupling and, "employed in 142
songs, by which they labor to be bound and drawn tight in an
amatory chain" (Evans Ch. 2 II:52-53, f. 199-200v).
• Orpheus and Pindarus sing of the ternary embodied in the
Charities or Graces, Beauty, Joy, and Charm (Evans Ch. 2
II:53, f. 200v); the Charities equate with the Venusian
amatory chain: "they hinder, and as if drawn tight, they lend
stronger chains" (Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203).
• Cloen (Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203) St. Broccan Cloen who wrote
of St. Brigid (CatholicEncyclopedia) is numbered among the
last of the poets to sing in the meter or measure that Lefevre
"counts".
• pyramus and Thisbe are forbidden lover and Beloved who through
an illusion kill themselves out of love (Mythology Guide) .
They are interpreted by Lefevre as metaphorical of the
sacrifice to Spirit that occurs between lover and Beloved, in
this case they are inferred to be numbers as they are created
through sacrifices one to the next, the sacrifice fueling the
dimensional building of creation: "hence with Pyramus they are
taking away life, number above measure growing up [. .]
[they] celebrate by sacrifices due proportion and also
salvation in things" (Evans Ch. 4 II:60-61, f. 204).
• Phillide and Flora as the couple with whom the poets count the
collection of life (Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203).
• Man and the numbers of love the poets use to grow proportion
(Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203). proportion, then, is
anthropomorphic; perception of creation is anthropormorphic. 143
• OVid's Metamorphoses tells of the Deucalion flood (paralleling
Noah's Flood and the Sumerian Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh),
when the waters were gathered and the first binary ritual
theological couple Deucalion and pyrrha (akin to Adam and Eve)
were created out of that void, the Ground of Silence, One:
"'Then the sea and earth were wearing no separation. All was
sea'" (Evans Ch. 4 11:58, f. 202; "Deucalion" Wikipedia).
• Vulcan and Vesta are personifications of the paired fires of
Sun and Mars (Evans Ch. 3 11:56, f. 201).
Other Personifications
• Phaethon is "the Sun's son," son of Phoebus Apollo (Helios or
Prometheus) and Eos who Lefevre cites simply as "Sun," and
"mother" (Evans Ch. 4 11:59-60, f. 203). Phaenon and Phaethon
("shining") are said to be the planets Saturn and Jupiter
(Room 241-2) .
Planet Number Element Quality
(varies)
• Aplanes 2 8 earth celestial ground
• Saturn 3 7 water intimate longing
• Jupiter/Jove 4 6 air nexus of justice & harmony
(e.g., "the celestial horse" )
• Mars 5 5 fire nexus of action • Sun 5 4 fire nexus of action • Venus/Juno 4 3 air nexus of love
• Mercury 3 2 water sensory longing 144
• Moon 2· 1 earth corporeal power
• Earth corporeal ground
As Ficino denotes them in Platonic Theology, Zoroaster's
immovable movers that Aristotle had called "minds," the Hebrews and
subsequent philosophers called "angels" and "messengers;" just so
Lefevre correlates the hierarchy of angels with planetary spheres, which he also designates as "minds" (Ficino 73; Evans Ch. 8 11:75-
77, Ch. 9 11:77-78, Ch. 10 11:80-81). Lefevre's equation of
intuition with Intellect reflects Ficino's model wherein he defers
to Zoroaster who had said that the intelligible lies outside the mind, and asserts that above angel and mind is truth (Ficino 83) .
Above mind then, Intellect intuits truth or the intelligible.
Ficino agrees with Parmenides the Pythagorean, who claimed
that God is Being, One and motionless, but elaborates that God
"moves and preserves everything and does all things in all" (133).
This exemplifies the architectural scaffolding on which Platonic
Theology rests: the Coincidence of Opposites. This architecture is
the foundation of Lefevre's number mysticism in Book II, where it is
embodied: in pure number as 2; in the concept of agent Intellect
above acting on passive body below; as celestial spheres interacting
2 at a time joined by the nexus between; of God and man, with Christ
as the love-nexus uniting the 2. Ficino describes the dynamics of
such action between 2 thus: "For action arises in natural bodies
when opposition arises between contraries. Such opposition is born
in the ge~us of qualities" (23). The qualities of the celestial or
planetary spheres in Book II, such as fire or water, along with that 145 of their nexus, determine' the resultant effects on man. The existence of 2 implies a 3rd element, the relationship between them, creating the Trinitarian gift of wisdom and understanding.
Coincidence of Opposites is described in Book II in various ways: "inconsonant concord," "concordant discord," "concord advancing throws salvation into disorder" (Evans Ch.'s 4 & 5 II:61,
f. 204v). Of great importance to this thesis, is that genesis, and numerical ascension, proceed via these binary couplings through
their sacrifices: they "celebrate by sacrifices due proportion and
also salvation in things" (Evans Ch. 4 II:61, f. 204v). In other words, their coming into being in due proportion they achieve or
celebrate through sacrifice, and the salvation in things is achieved
or celebrated through sacrifice. The Spirit, the love-nexus between
the 2, is the negation beyond their union that each of the 2 is
sacrificed into. The Positive theology embodied within the qualities
of the 2 is always sacrificed to the relationship between in a
Negative theology. These are the basic architectural elements in
Lefevre's Book II: the relationship of 2 is unified in the One, within which the grace of the Trinity is received. Christ was
celebrated as the uniting Spirit received through faith and
intuition. Nevertheless, the Church chose to condemn natural magic.
Lefevre's ontological premises dramatized in Book II are
inherited from his Florentine patriarch Ficino, whose second edition
of Platonic Theology was published in 1491 at the time of Lefevre's
journey to Italy, and two years before writing his treatise De Magia
naturali. Ficino further elaborates on the process of genesis and 146 re-creation via teachings from Zoroaster the'Chaldean and Plotinus,
founder of Neoplatonism:
Being, therefore, wherever it may be, depends on
God. Zoroaster touched on this mystically: "Everything
is born from a single fire." The lower bodies of the
world make the passage from not-being into being and
cross over from being into not-being. Higher bodies
change from one being into another, or from one mode of
being into another. So all these bodies are by nature
equally inclined to being and to not-being. [ ... J
Plotinus has explained this more or less as follows: God
is act, not of another, not for another, but of Himself
and for Himself. [ ... J God is act, unsleeping and
perpetual, from Himself, in Himself, and wholly with
regard to Himself. [ ... J The whole thrust of the
divine act is centered on itself. [. • J But willing
and doing - indeed even being - are utterly identical.
(xi, 135, 185)
Plotinus' above description of God as, "in Himself, and wholly
with regard to Himself. [ ... J centered on itself," is the theology
Lefevre uses to decloak the myth of Narcissus in Chapter 8:
If indeed the body which is the soul's shadow, that
which follows for the sake of the neglected soul,
simi lars go forth to those things as her own image in
the water, the shadow of herself having then been
contemplated, the forms are held with longing, so as not
to be torn apart from her they will ever and consuming 147
seeing, which ingenuously of Narcissus, son of the river
god Cephissus, Orpheus kept singing. (Evans II:75-76, f.
211)
Lefevre thus interprets the myth of Narcissus as a metaphor
for the One soul manifesting as Her own female-male binary, with the
Trinitarian relationship of longing simultaneously created to bind
them in an eternal Self-reflective gaze. The stereotypical male
female active-passive position is therefore reversed, with female as
active and male as passive. They are a ritual theological couple of
aequalitas, since both are part of the One. Lefevre reiterates this
in Chapter 2 (Evans II:53, f. 200v) and also Chapter 7 (Evans II:67,
f. 207v).
Ficino characterizes body or corporeal nature as receptive or
passive, and incorporeal nature as active, stipulating that quality,
since it is incorporeal has the power to act upon the corporeal
(217). It is in this vein of natural magic that Lefevre in Book II
ascribes the qualities of the celestial spheres (themselves
Imaginary or incorporeal) with the power to influence corporeal
nature. That natural magic is fueled by an active, positive theology
is tied to Ficino's premise that since man's nature is that of a
thinking soul, God grants him free judgment, free will, through
which the soul judges the options and chooses between them (211).
Following Pythagorean thought, Ficino finds the soul of each
zodiacal constellation in the brightest star of each, their heart.
The single soul of the world contains these 12 principal souls, and
each of those 12 heart-souls contains many souls within it.
Following the archetypal mythic mandate of the eternal return, 148
Ficino explains how humans are drawn back to the One itself, the universal Apollo, through the 12 principle souls:
Since every large plurality has to be reduced to a small
number, and the small number to a few unities and the
few unities to one unity, the numberless host of souls
dwelling in anyone of the world's spheres has to be led
back to the few most important souls. (267-8)
This multilayered hierarchy Lefevre employs through mathematical geometry in Book II, the subject of which he calls
Pythagorean philosophy. Facilitating genesis, Jupiter and Venus compute the 3 from the monad fountain; the 4 is next generated from
this Trinitarian love-nexus due to the monad longing for power.
Besides the monad, the other origin of things is 4, the fourth
region held by 3, so that their coupling computes 12. The soul's
return to its origin is accomplished through active free will
choices of fruitful loving actions, through which souls return to
the 12 and beyond "into their end" (Evans Ch. 2 11:54-55, f. 200-
201v). This process is reflected in the positive theology, the
active scenario, of natural magic. This is where Zoroaster's
injunction for "Good thoughts, good words, good deeds" leads
Lefevre, who must invoke the Pythagorean sacrifice into Silence in
order to absolve magic of its Positive theology, in order to receive
God's grace through the Negative theology of Intellect, intuition
and faith.
Ficino elaborates that Pythagoras called the One the universal
Apollo "a-pollan, meaning 'cut off from the many'" (271). 149
In a Negative theology then, Lefevre claims that pythagorean philosophy, Kabbalah, natural magic, sacrifices itself, severs
itself beyond One and descends on the Ground of Silence (Evans Ch.
14 11:90, f. 218v). The treatise did not find sanctuary in this
sacrifice to grace however, for as Walker astutely points out, it is
the very fact that subjective, natural magic culminates in a
Negative theology that was a threat to the Church since it implied
"deism," belief in God on the basis of Reason without revelation
(83). Thus Walker's book delineates why the prisca theologia, God's
Trinitarian gift to the magi (who explained creation via the
relationship of its 3 chief rulers), was not accepted by the Church
as the inheritance of Christianity, but instead the grace bestowed
by the Trinity was claimed as unique to Christianity: Ficino equates
the Trinitarian god of the magi with the Christian Trinitarian God,
"From God alone comes the prime unity in the world of the parts and
of the whole" (289); Walker sums up the Church's response as "the
Christian revelation is unique and exclusive, and there is no room
for any other religion" (82). 150 v. PRIMARY SOURCES & CONCLUDING REMARKS
A comprehensive Suggested Reading list, which I have not
compiled to date, would include Secondary Sources that are not
already listed in my Works Cited and Consulted pages. More
importantly perhaps is this listing of Primary Sources for
supportive and comparative research into Lefevre's De Magia naturali:
• Lefevre d'Etaples, Elementa musicalia, Arithmetica et musica
(use the 2nd edition titled In hoc opere contente, authors
Boethius and Nemorarius, which includes "Pythagoras' Game" or
"Rithmimacia"), Astronomicum, Philosophiae naturalis
paraphrases and Quincuplex Psalterium, L's edition of Richard
of St. Victor's Egregii patris et clari theologi Ricardi, and
L's edition of Ficino's Hermetica
• Marsilio Ficino, De Amore, Theologia platonica de
immortalitate animorum (in translation as Platonic Theology
listed in the Works Cited), and De triplici Vita which
includes De vita coelitus comparanda
• Giovanni pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones magicae, Oration,
and On the Dignity of Man, a translation listed in the Works
Cited that includes On Being and the One and Heptaplus
• Guillaume Bude, De transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum; a
study of a little known treatise of Guillaume Bude, followed
by a translation into English, By Daniel F. Penham
• Nicolas of Cusa, Opera omnia 151
• Dionysiaca
• Sefer ha-Bahir (available in translation)
• Josse Clichtove, De Mystica numerorum significatione
• Johannes Reuchlin, De Verbo mirifico and De arte Cabalistica
• the works of Odo of Morimond on number mysticism
• Manilius, Astronomica
• Giordano Bruno, Opere magiche, Italian tranlslation by Michele
Ciliberto
• Longinus, ed., Trinum magicum
• Thomas von Bungay, De magia naturali liber
• Giovanni Battista della Porta, La magie naturelle divisee en
quatre livres
• Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, Daemonologia; sive, De
magia naturali, daemonica, licita, & illicita .
• Pavao Skali$, De magia naturali, a satirical piece
• Agrippa, De occulta philosophia
• Ovid, Metamorphoses
• Vergil, Eclogues, Aeneid, Georgicon
• Pliny, Natural History 152
Further critical analysis of De Magia naturali Book II will serve as support to and summation of my thesis arguments. In Chapter
7, Lefevre explains how he employs the primary binary metaphors of the Fall and human intercourse, "the mitigation of re-creation", [ .
• • J "such that minds more easily understand" (Evans Ch. 7 II:67, f.
207v). They are just that: metaphors, with neither of the Fallen meant as sinful in "this unskillful subordinate description" (Evans
Ch. 7 II:67, 207v). Lefevre makes this point clear in Chapter 2, at the beginning of Book II; in this example emphasized here again,
Jove is beneath Venus extolling her:
[. .J (for it is Venus most of all subject to Phoebus)
and who Jove perpetually extols; just as the inferior
lover always occurs reversing to the superior, nor at
any time should be degenerated to fallen. (Evans II:53,
f. 200v)
The ritual theological couple, the Coincidence of Opposites, therefore prefigures and circumscribes the Trinitarian aequalitas, equality, which will be discussed shortly.
It must be reiterated now that the Coincidence of Opposites = the binary = 2; ternary = 3; quaternary = 4; quinary 5, and so on.
Notice also below how Lefevre describes the 5th element - the quinary, the quintessential Spirit - as the number who from within
the quaternary is cast and unites with its own Image in the first manifestation of creation. The prerequisite for that happening is exemplified in theses images of 2 as the first number: superior
celestial numbers and inferior terrestrial numbers; soul and body; 153 the second mind and the elemental mind; "the first is therefore the binary" (Evans Ch. 7 11:69-70, f. 208).
The first manifestation of creation happens between the quinary of the second mind and the quinary chain cast out of the quaternary within the elemental mind: "The elemental mind, namely of which are the binary, ternary, quaternary and also quinary, and if planting all with the inferior elements of the soul you were uniting, is filled full, of which first the quinary is united, [ .
. J" (Evans Ch. 7 11:69-70, f. 208). "Fire in truth quinary vigor":
the inferior quinary eagerly and powerfully longs for unification,
leaping like a living flame to meet the superior quinary power, the
singular vigor lifting. Depicted numerically therein is the Image of
Jesus sacrificed like a flame of human blood on the cross, Jesus
becoming Christ, body ascending to Spirit (Evans Ch. 5 11:61, f.
204v) .
Genesis then proceeds, ,,[. .J second the senary, third the
septenary, fourth the octonary desirous and powerful. But in the
second mind, the benevolence of union and of grace is freeing with
benefaction" (Evans Ch. 7 11:70, f. 208). Spirit then, freed by
union and grace into the beneficent Eucharist, the body of Christ.
An example of the number mysticism tables that Lefevre provides in
Book II follows (Evans Ch. 7 11:72, f. 209): 154
II:72 II:72
Simplices numeri caelestes The Simple superior celestial superiores, hoc pacto numbers, collected into this colliguntur: treatise:
2 Aplanes 2 Aplanes
3 Saturnus 3 Saturn
4 Jupiter 4 Jupiter
5 Mars 5 Mars
Compositi caelestes numeri The united superior celestial superiores: numbers:
5 Aplanes Saturnus 5 Aplanes Saturn
6 Aplanes Jupiter 6 Aplanes Jupiter
7 Aplanes Mars 7 Aplanes Mars
8 Saturnus Mars 8 Saturn Mars
9 Aplanes Saturnus Jupiter 9 Aplanes Saturn Jupiter
9 Jupiter Mars 9 Jupiter Mars
10 Aplanes Saturnus Mars 10 Aplanes Saturn Mars
11 Aplanes Jupiter Mars 11 Aplanes Jupiter Mars
12 Saturnus Jupiter Mars 12 Saturn Jupiter Mars
Monas Mundi duodenarium The Monad of the world, illuminans: illuminating the duodenary:
14 Aplanes Saturnus 14 Aplanes Saturn
Jupiter Mars Jupiter Mars 155
In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter I, Lefevre describes the subject of Pythagorean philosophy as: "unitatem," unity, which is
"in the magi's thought the generatrix of every number, and the first and absolute principle from which all other principles form" (Evans
Ch . 1 II: 50 , f. 198).
Lefevre describes the principles embodied in the form of numbers flowing sequentially out of unity, like vapor congealing to form a more and more manifest fluid: "Nearest whom flows the binary, the principle of alterity and the number of power, after whom the ternary number longing, the unborn nearest to nature itself, after whom the quaternary number connection, and already of the matter vaporized and perfected" (Evans Ch. 1 11:50, f. 198).
Then, after ascribing active qualities to the planetary spheres, Lefevre explains how they continue congealing the flow of genesis from One: "In like manner the Moon flows number into the body, and number power, [. .] Mercury flows longing into the sensory, Venus flows love-nexus into the corporeal, Sun flows love nexus into the vital life which flows from the heart into the body"
(Evans Ch. 1 11:51, f. 199v).
By the end of only Chapter 2, Lefevre has unveiled within pagan Imagery the nature of the Trinity, and just which god is transporting what quality through fluid sacred space and enchanted time, clear to the end of time, to that mathematical point where all of the Virtues converge, returning the souls who had flowed forth in the genesis of creation, through song ascending back to their source
in the fountain waters. Such was the fluid intermingling of 156 religions and academic disciplines at the turn of the sixteenth century. I posit that it was not just from the humanist habit of reading ancient poets such as Vergil, but also from his habit of ascesis, mental discipline or exercise, that Lefevre was fluent at
Imagining the meaning of ancient mythological traditions.
In his travels between France and Italy, before writing De
Magia naturali, Lefevre would have traversed ground where Christian shrines were built on top of pagan temples. Cybele is the Phrygian goddess Mother Earth; Ops is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Rhea whose name may have derived from "to flow": both associated with the natural riches of earth (Room 106, 222). In
Chapter 1, Lefevre juxtaposes the celestial earth Ops and Rhea above with the Earth of humans, Cybele, below (Evans Ch. 1 11:52, f. 199).
Since Cybele held a somewhat prominent place in the artistic expressions during the reign of Francis I, Lefevre would have had good reason to create his own artistic Imagery of her. It is reasonable to conjecture that, at home in Paris he may have thought of "The statue of Cybele by the Tribolo, executed for Francis I., and placed, not against a wall, but in the middle of Queen Claude's chamber at Fontainebleau, [ ... ] behind it an attribute [. .] which was the symbol of generativeness" ("CYbele"). This non numerical, personified instance of the binary is an example of how
Lefevre saw the same Coincidence of opposites as that in the number
2, here clothed in a metaphor of myth.
Lefevre saw our human mind as a reflection of the divine mind.
His words from Introductorium astronomicum show us that perception, which can be summarized in my words: "as above, so below" or "object 157 and subject are unified in the Coincidence of Opposites," the stance from which he wrote De Magia naturali. By permission of San Diego
State University Special Collections Library, the first pages of
Lefevre's Introductorium astronomicum of 1517 CE are reproduced here.
Copernicus, sharing Lefevre's lifespan, had begun to overturn this Imagery with a heliocentric, physical model of the solar system. Since the anthropocentric, geocentric, view of the universe had already been challenged by the developing science of astronomy,
Lefevre apparently felt the need to make clear that these earlier
Images of the universe are an interior vision within the mind. He asserts in the prefatory epistle to Introductorium astronomicum that this ~is the wisest, optimum working of the true heavens, and of the
true movement of the divine mind: our minds always emulate that of
the parent (with which the ignorant lips of many disagree). Our mind
is a simulation, a vestige, through which we can comprehend the workings of the divine mind, and how the heavens are created. This
is therefore mental astronomy through which one touches the heavens.
It's the mind's eye in which the ethereal orbs and orbits are
represented without confusion" (Lefevre).
Then at the end, Lefevre seems to contradict himself by
condemning the Chaldeans and Egyptians whom he had in earlier works
lauded for those very perceptions. What has been interpreted
literally by other scholars as a renouncement of astrology and magic, I interpret as merely a pandering to the Church in order to
avoid persecution. Like De Magia naturali, Lefevre dedicates
Introductorium astronomicum to Germain de Ganay.
159
t:lacobus StapulenRs fp£tlabili vUo GumaDo ~coo1ili:uior~jo/deGU1o BdlouaceG.
_.10 pr.te.n!:mmrei'~ Gffm:lt1C! lidC11ill'll £,I. _1I1~1(',•. =-A{fynj 6C :i\qrypt1t: nO!1 mlnlU&ClltQCf 6I1ltemiilB:CiltatJiCOflam kg . II \"t p~ .&at~ lJb'UaiUl J1~~~·Nqhlau$dC'mtrunCfVt Quo Iigum.,.M. V.arroJ Iult1> ul"KWI$~ qull.lIdo," dc~ ..N,oe/UM (OJ'1'lU1tIIC:rC.OJltal· ttl! poIi WKOr< a&
Summing up then, Lefevre continues from Chapter I, explaining salvation or redemption in taking us just through Chapter 2 of Book l!., when all "whom love action will have led forth to that place of divine virtues" have ascended to the One, "all are counted saved, into their end are called back" (Evans Ch. 2 11:55, 201v).
Within Chapter 2 the prisca theologia of the sacred venusian ternary, the amatory chain of the Trinity, is praised. I interpret that Lefevre equates the "plains" in Vergilian magic to the
Pythagorean "plane," or the Ground of Silence from which creation arises. The chill, torpid snake is split in 2, then we are able to perceive creation from within the binary, as the Trinitarian "tree,"
"vine," "chain" or "snake" (Evans Ch. 2 11:53, f. 200v; Ch. 4 11:60, f. 203).
This Trinitarian number 3, "Venus and Jupiter computed from the monad, the fountain of things." Trinity, the love nexus, couples with the quaternary, who after the monad, is the other "origin who made things." This mUltiplying of 3 with 4 makes the zodiac of 12
(Evans Ch. 2 11:54-55, f. 200-201v).
Then, in Chapter 3, Lefevre delineates how the opposing forces of attraction and repulsion chain creation together through the elements and qualities (Evans 11:56-57, f. 201-202v). Chapter 4 reveals how deities, angels, are positioned along the chain from heaven, to assist in our ascent to Idea, and beyond "into the staff of life": grace, the Eucharist (Evans 11:57-8, f. 202).
Where does this Infinity of couplings begin and end, this
Infinity of descending grace and ascensions on high, and who is the observer, the witness of their coming and going? 161
In Chapter 5 genesis begins with the binary and is completed within that self-reflective binary. Through Coincidence of
Opposites, Spirit is perpetually manifested as body: "The sensible world, nearest image of the celestial world, by the concordant discord of their own numbers the nexus perseveres perpetually in its own motion." I add that from an anthropomorphic viewpoint, we as body are duality, we as Spirit are the unification of duality and
One in the Trinity: We are the only observer of genesis. Aside from human ascension into Spirit, humility leads us to remember who we the recipients of grace also are: "all things earthly whatsoever are cast of the mortal binaries, the most enduring, and into earth of the binary itself at last reverting" (Evans II:62-63, f. 204-20Sv).
And genesis begins again through the ritual theological couple
Jove and Venus. Venus herself is a personification of and a metaphor
for the Pythagorean "plane" or Ovid's "all was sea": "the entire
Venus and the passionate longing of Venus are born in the sea."
Jove, "the seminal fluid of all things," emulates air. The poets continuously sing of their virtuous lovemaking, World without end:
"Venus indeed is that by which is being chained and drawn the body,
sometimes as if by Venus' laughter" (Evans II:62-63, f. 204-20Sv). 162 VI. WORKS CITED & WORKS CONSULTED
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