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Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter LXI — Of the Forming of Man, of the External Senses, also those Inward, and the Mind; and of the Three-Fold Appetite of the Soul, and Passions of the Will

Occult Philosophy, Book I: Natural Magic (Agrippa) · part 61 of 74 · 3 passages · tr. Henry Morley; L. W. de Laurence ed.
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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 LXI

The text presents the opinion of some divines, favored by Alcinous and Plato, that God framed man's body through heavenly spirits, since directly created beings would be immortal. The spirits mixed Earth, Fire, Air, and Water into one body, assigning provinces to each power. It divides the external senses into five, ranked by purity: eyes, ears, nostrils, taste, touch. Following Averrois, it divides interior senses into four: common sense, imaginative power, phantasy (citing Iamblicus), and memory, locating their organs in the head. It describes the organs of speech, then the incorporeal mind's double nature: contemplative and active intellect. It names three appetites: natural, animal, intellectual (will), noting the devil's will. From depraved appetite arise four passions: oblectation, effusion, vaunting, and envy, plus contrary passions.

Chapter LXI, Section 1aChapter LXI, Section 1bChapter LXI, Section 1c