Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter XXXVII — How, By Some Certain Natural and Artificial Preparations, We May Attract Certain Celestial and Vital Gifts · 1 of 2 · tr. Henry Morley; L. W. de Laurence ed.
Chapter XXXVII, Section 1a
CHAPTER XXXVII.
How, By Some Certain Natural and Artificial Preparations, We May Attract Certain Celestial and Vital Gifts .
Platonists , together with Hermes, say, and Jarchus Brachmanus and the Mecubals of the Hebrews confess, that all sublunary things are subject to generation and corruption, and that also there are the same things in the Celestial World, but after a celestial manner, as also in the Intellectual World, but in a far more perfect and better fashion and manner, and in the most perfect manner of all in the Exemplary.
And, after this course, that every inferior thing should, in its kind, answer its superior thing, and through this the Supreme Itself, and receive from heaven that celestial power they call the quintessence, or the Spirit of the World, or the Middle Nature; and from the Intellectual World a spiritual and enlivening virtue, transcending all qualities whatsoever; and, lastly, from the Exemplary, or original, World, through the mediation of the other, according to their degree receive the original power of the whole perfection.
Hence, every thing may be aptly reduced from these Inferiors to the Stars, from the Stars to their Intelligences, and from thence to the First Cause itself—from the series and order whereof all Magic and all Occult Philosophy flows: For every day some natural thing is drawn by art, and some divine thing is drawn by Nature, which, the Egyptians, seeing, called Nature a Magicianess ( i.
e.
), the very Magical power itself, in the attracting of like by like, and of suitable things by suitable.
Now, such kind of attraction, by the mutual correspondency of things amongst themselves, of superiors with inferiors, the Grecians called sympathies .
So the earth agrees with cold water, the water with moist air, the air with fire, the fire with the heaven in water; neither is fire mixed with water, but by air; nor the air with the earth, but by water.
So neither is the soul united to the body, but by the spirit; nor the understanding to the spirit, but by the soul.
So we see that when Nature hath framed the body of an infant, by this very preparative she presently fetcheth its spirit from the Universe.
This spirit is its instrument to obtain of God its understanding and mind in its soul and body, as in wood the dryness is fitted to receive oil, and the oil, being imbibed, is food for the fire, the fire is the vehicle of light.
By these examples you see how by some certain natural and artificial preparations we are in a capacity to receive certain celestial gifts from above.
For stones and metals have a correspondency with herbs, herbs with animals, animals with the heavens, the heavens with Intelligences, and they with divine properties and attributes and with God himself, after whose image and likeness all things are created.
Now, the first image of God is the world; of the world, man; of man, beasts; of beasts, the zeophyton or zoophyte ( i.
e.
), half animal and half plant; of the zeophyton, plants; of plants, metals; and of metals, stones.
And, again, in things spiritual, the plant agrees with a brute in vegetation, a brute with a man in sense, man with an angel in understanding, and an angel with God in immortality.
Divinity is annexed to the mind, the mind to the intellect, the intellect to the intention, the intention to the imagination, the imagination to the senses, and the senses, at last, to things.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The passage explicitly states that things are drawn by art and nature through mutual correspondency of things amongst themselves.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The text defines sympathies as the mutual correspondency of things that allows natural things to be drawn by art and divine things by nature.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage describes a descending chain from the Supreme to the Celestial, Intellectual, and Exemplary Worlds, each less perfect than the one above.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The Celestial World, Intellectual World, and Exemplary World are described as non-physical dimensions populated by Intelligences and divine properties that actively affect the sublunary realm through the transmission of celestial power.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage describes a directional descent from the Exemplary World through successive planes to full materialization (stones), with each stage receiving and transmitting power downward, complemented by the upward attraction of celestial gifts.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
Man is positioned as the image of the world ('of the world, man'), and the soul-body-spirit triad mirrors the cosmic structure of understanding-spirit-soul, making the human the privileged mirror of the whole.