A Change of Heart: The Candor of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Anyone who has ever beheld a copy of De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (The Three Books of Occult Philosophy) by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa — that infamous 16th Century German magician and alchemist — knows that it is a very lengthy tome. It is a sort of encyclopedia or compendium to all that was known at that time, at least to Agrippa, about occult magic, divination, astrology, and alchemy. He began work on the tome sometime in 1509 to 1510, and sent an early draft of it to his mentor, the great Johannes Trithemius — that other great German occultist and scholar. Agrippa was only twenty-four years old. The first book of the three was published in 1531, and the rest published two years later in 1533; just two years before his untimely death at the age of forty-seven. It is quite a lengthy tome, so needless to say I have not read the whole thing, though I do pick it up from time to time to peruse certain chapters and sections. Just recently I was reading the last few chapters — excerpts he added into The Three Books from a polemic of his on science of that time, entitled De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum atque Artium Declamatio Invectiva (Declamation Attacking the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and the Arts, published in 1526 — that I wish to discuss. In particular it is Agrippa's almost complete change of heart on magic, and his candor is something I find to be very admirable.

There is a quote that is often misattributed to John Maynard Keynes (actually I don't even know who said it originally), but I like it anyway and it is appropriate here: "When my information changes, I alter my conclusions."

Agrippa did just that: he worked on, revised, and published his canonical work, The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and after nearly twenty years of working on it he rejected much of what he had written before. It is at the end of the final installation of his three books that Agrippa recants much of what he said:

"But of magic I wrote whilst I was very young three large books, which I called Of Occult Philosophy, in which what was then through the curiosity of my youth erroneous, I now being more advised, am willing to have retracted, by this recantation; I formerly spent much time and costs in these vanities. At last I grew so wise as to be able to dissuade others from this destruction.
"For whosoever do not in the truth, nor in the power of God, but in the deceits of devils, according to the operation of wicked spirits persume to divine and prophesy, and practising through magical vanities, exorcisms, incantations and other demonical works and deceits of idolatry, boasting of delusions, and phantasms, presently ceasing, brag that they can do miracles, I say all these shall with Jannes, and Jambres, and Simon Magus, be destined to torments of eternal fire."
—De Occulta, Book III, Chapter IXV (originally from De Incertitude et Vanitate, Chapter XLVIII): Of Juggling or Legerdemain

Now, Agrippa did not reject magic in its entirety, but he does believe that a great number of magicians and sorcerers were frauds and charlatans: he came to call them "jugglers" and legerdemains (someone who is crafty and deceitful with their hands). Many of the great magicians he had so greatly admired throughout his life he had come to regard as frauds: Paseton, Numa Pompilius, Pythagoras (yes, the mathematicians, who was also a notable sorcerer), and even the Thrice Great Hermes Trismegistus. He regards all things they and others like them have done to be "according to appearances only":

"...these things which are supposed to be juggled or bewitched, besides imagination, have no truth of action or essence. The end of these is but to hold forth things to the imagination according to appearance, of which there presently remains no footsteps or signs. Now by what hath been said, it is manifest that magic is nothing else but a collection of idolatry, astrology, and superstitious medicines."

It is not apparently in the chapter Of Juggling or Legerdemain that Agrippa still accepts some forms of magic, but in a few preceding chapters this is abundantly clear. For the most part magic was superfluously flooded with superstition, and much of practical magic was either juggling or the work of devils and evil spirits. Cabala, that ancient study of Jewish mysticism, becomes a point of heavy attack by Agrippa, who seeing it as mostly a secretive oral tradition with no real practice or operation, claims it to be "a mere rhapsody of superstition... nothing else than a most pernicious superstition" (Of Cabalie).

Concerning geotia (black magic) and necromancy (literally divination and magic performed with the assistance of the spirits of the dead) Agrippa believed these to be real magic, but only by the assistance of evil spirits: "...it doth not yet appear that these arts are fables... and why do the geotians use those evil spirits only, but because good angels will hardly appear expecting the command of God, and come not but to men pure in heart, and holy in life: but the evil are easily called up, favouring him that is false and counterfeiting holiness are always ready to deceive with their craft, that they may be worshipped and adored" (Of Geotia and Necromancy) But concerning theurgia (white magic) Agrippa simply agrees with Porphyry: "...by theurgical consecrations the soul of man may be fitted to receive spirits, and angels, and to see God: but he [Porphyry] altogether denies that we can by this art return to God... many such like superstitions, which are so much more pernicious, by how much they seem the more divine to the ignorant" (Of Theurgia).

These two forms of magic, i.e. geotia and theurgia, are part of what Agrippa called ceremonial magic, and while he believed them to be the actual work of devils or angels or other spirits, there is one other form of ceremonial magic that Agrippa believed possible to be performed by mortal magicians: namely, enchantment. He demonstrates: "...also those things which do accompany nature... motions, numbers, figures, sounds, voices, concents [i.e. musical harmonies], lights, affections of the mind, and words. So the Psylli, and Marsi called together serpents, and other things depressing to them, put them to flight. So Orpheus repressed the tempest of the Argonauts with a hymn; and Homer relates of Ulysses that his blood was restrained with words. And in the law of the Twelve Tables [of Roman Law] punishment was ordained for them who enchanted the corn" (Of Enchanting Magic). His examples are not exactly empirical, but Agrippa believed it, and that is all that is under scrutiny here.

Much of what would be called miracles and magic were in Agrippa's mature opinion to be works of God, his angels, or devils. He was a very religious man, so he believed the Holy Scriptures to be the infallible word of God, and as such he quotes and demonstrates via examples from scripture frequently. For instance, transmutation, such as lycanthropy or other modes of shapeshifting, he believed to be possible, but only through the will of God; the example he uses is King Nebuchadnezzar's transformation into a cow until he returned to the mercy of God. He cites another example of transmutation from Saint Augustine in which wicked women transformed men into cows for the purpose of making them carry those women's stuff, then changed them back — certainly Agrippa would have regarded this as work done via the assistance of devils, as he refers to those women as being "like Circe"... Circe, that ancient Greek goddess that turned Odysseus' men in swine, who Agrippa later suspects — like all women (in Agrippa's opinion) — achieved magic via evil spirits.

To the mature Agrippa there is really only one true magic: what he calls natural magic:

"It is thought that natural magic is nothing else but the highest power of natural sciences, which therefore is called the height of natural philosophy, and the most absolute consummation thereof, and that which is the active part of natural philosophy, which by the help of natural virtues, from a mutual, and opportune application of them, brings forth operations even to admiration...
"...from thence arise wonderful miracles, not so much by art as by nature, to which art becomes an assistant whilst it works these things.
"...making use of those things which are prepared by nature, by applying active things to passive, produce oftentimes effects before the time ordained by nature, which the vulgar think are miracles, which indeed are natural works..."
—Of Natural Magic

Yes, what Agrippa calls magic — and the only real magic able to be performed by men without the aid of spirits or devils — is what we would call science. Of course, Agrippa still believed stones could heal people and effect one's fate, and that astrology was still useful, but then again it was the 16th Century and bloodletting and vomiting were advisable medical practices. On a practical level Agrippa was still caught in the same superstitions and mystical techniques of his time, but philosophically he was — like his contemporary Paracelsus — a head of his time.

Really, his ability to study and master his chosen vocation, i.e. magic and alchemy, and still not be enslaved to it was Agrippa's greatest merit; more especially he was not enslaved to what he had written before. His candor and forwardness toward the end of his short life is something to be admired. He felt no need to justify his previous writings (as so many authors tend to do), but rejected them forthwith and advised others to not follow those writings (sadly this is an admonition that few have followed in latter centuries, as his work is still followed).

There is a passage from Emerson that I think is appropriate to conclude that I feel best expresses Agrippa's change of heart:

"Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were young men in libraries when they wrote those books."
—The American Scholar, §2.

Further reading:
Agrippa, Heinrich (Henry) Cornelius. The Three Books of Occult Philosophy.