Description

This publication is a great copy and is required reading for your journey..

By direction of the Brotherhood of Magic: The magic mirror, a message to mystics, containing full instructions on its make and use.”

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) is the most influential writer of Renaissance esoterica, and indeed all of Western occultism. Without doubt, his book de occulta philosophia should be at the top of any required reading list for those interested in Western magic and esoteric traditions.

Agrippa is perhaps best known for his books. An incomplete list:

• De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum atque artium declamatio invectiva (Declamation Attacking the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and the Arts, 1526; printed in Cologne 1527), a skeptical satire of the sad state of science. This book, a significant production of the revival of Pyrrhonic skepticism in its fideist mode, was to have a significant impact on such thinkers and writers as Montaigne, Descartes and Goethe.^{[citation needed]}
• Declamatio de nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus (Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, 1529^[9]), a book pronouncing the theological and moral superiority of women. Edition with English translation, London 1670^[10]
• De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books Concerning Occult Philosophy, Book 1 printed Paris 1531; Books 2-3 in Cologne 1533). This summa of occult and magical thought, Agrippa’s most important work in a number of respects, sought a solution to the skepticism proposed in De vanitate. In short, Agrippa argued for a synthetic vision of magic whereby the natural world combined with the celestial and the divine through Neoplatonic participation, such that ordinarily licit natural magic was in fact validated by a kind of demonic magic sourced ultimately from God. By this means Agrippa proposed a magic that could resolve all epistemologicalproblems raised by skepticism in a total validation of Christian faith.

One example of the text, not especially indicative of its broader contents, is Agrippa’s analysis of herbal treatments for malaria in numeric terms: