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Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter XXIV — What Things Are Lunary, or Under the Power of the Moon

Occult Philosophy, Book I: Natural Magic (Agrippa) · part 24 of 74 · 2 passages · tr. Henry Morley; L. W. de Laurence ed.
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§ About this work

Agrippa opens by positing a three-fold World—Elementary, Celestial, Intellectual—ascended toward the First cause (I), then defines Magic as the chief Science comprehending Natural, Mathematical, and Theological Philosophy (II). He treats the four Elements, their qualities, orders, and the properties of Fire and Earth, Water and Air, their compounded bodies, and their presence in all things up to God (III–VIII). He distinguishes elementary, secondary, and occult virtues, tracing the latter to Ideas, the Soul of the World, and celestial situation (IX–XIV), then how virtues move to their like, infuse likeness, form friendships and enmities, and reside in species, individuals, whole substances, parts, and life or death (XV–XXI). He assigns things to Sun, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, planetary governments, kingdoms, Signs, stars, and Characters (XXII–XXXIII), then shows how virtues are drawn down through conformable things, mixtions, prepared matter, correspondence of Worlds, and animated Images (XXXIV–XXXVIII). Turning operative, he treats raising spirits (XXXIX), bindings, sorceries, catamenia, suffumigations and their recipes, collyries and unguents, alligations, rings, and virtues of places (XL–XLVIII). He describes light, fascination, wonder-working acts, and gestures and bodily figures (XLIX–LII), then divinations—Auguria and Auspicia, birds and beasts, lightnings and prodigies, and the four elemental divinations (LIII–LVII)—and reviving of bodies (LVIII). He treats dreams and prophetic madness (LIX–LX), then man's body, senses, mind, and passions, how the phantasy alters one's own and another's body, and how passions gain power through Heaven, faith, and the stars' minds (LXI–LXVIII). He closes with the power of words, proper names, sentences, enchantments, writing, and the Hebrew letters ordered to Signs, Planets, and Elements, ending the first book (LXIX–LXXIV).

Chapters
Chapter XXIV

The text lists lunary things: among elements, earth, water, moist things, especially white ones. Among tastes salt and insipid; metals silver; stones crystal, silver marcasite, selenite, pearls, stalactites, beryl. Among plants selenotropion, palm, hyssop, rosemary, agnus castus, olive, chinosta; onions belong to Mars. Among animals, quail is enemy of Moon and Sun, dogs, chameleon, swine, hinds, goats, baboon, panther, cats, civet cat, otters, mice; fowl including geese, ducks, herons, equivocally generated insects; the two-horned beetle burrowing in cow-dung for twenty-eight days; and fish including Ælurus, tortoise, echeneis, crabs, oysters, cockles, frogs.

Chapter XXIV, Section 1aChapter XXIV, Section 1b