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Agrippa: The Philosophy of Natural Magic, Chapter LXIV — How the Passions of the Mind Change the Body by Way of Imitation From Some Resemblance; of the Transforming and Translating of Men, and What Force the Imaginative Power Hath, Not Only Over the Body But the Soul

Occult Philosophy, Book I: Natural Magic (Agrippa) · part 64 of 74 · 2 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 LXIV

The passions alter the body through likeness and imagination: teeth set on edge, gaping at another's gape, nausea, swooning at blood. William of Paris reports a man affected by a medicine's mere resemblance; dreamers feel they burn. Cyprus, meditating on bulls, awoke horned. Imagination marks infants and dog-bitten men; Dagobertus and Franciscus bore marks. Avicen, Gallus Vibius, Austin, Pliny, and Pontanus (Caietava, Aemilia changed to men) are cited. Medea dreamed love for Jason; Celsus tells of a presbyter who made himself senseless.

Chapter LXIV, Section 1aChapter LXIV, Section 1b