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§ 5. The Fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa It is a matter now almost of general knowledge that a Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy is attributed to Cornelius Agrippa, and that it is rejected as spurious. The authenticity of the famous three books has never been questioned and is indeed beyond challenge; the fourth is perhaps less interesting from the nature of its contents than from this question of its authorship. It is, at the same time, a much more skilful performance than the common run of magical impostures; it connects with and rises out of the genuine work in a very curious manner; and, having regard to the special magical complexion of the latter, there might seem no inherent reason why it should not have been the production of Agrippa. The difficulties concerning it may be reduced to three heads. One is of time; it appeared after the death of the restless speculating philosopher of Nettersheim. Now, a posthumous publication is not necessarily open to suspicion unless it is a treatise on Magic, but a treatise on Magic of the period concerned, not appearing in the lifetime of its writer, is open to the gravest suspicion, because of the scandalous company to which it belongs. The second difficulty is internal, and I do not think that it can be overridden. It is to a considerable extent a rechauffé of various portions of the three undisputed books, and, even in the days of Agrippa, it is not likely that any author would have so liberally reproduced himself. The third difficulty is that it was rejected as a forgery by Wierus, the pupil of Agrippa, who must have had a good opportunity of knowing; its rejection by later writers simply follows the lead of Wierus, and is therefore of no moment. The strength of the case against it lies mainly in the third difficulty, but other objections are possible. Though not the work of Agrippa, it was evidently produced in immediate proximity to his period. The book itself, which is quite informally written, falls into several divisions. There is, firstly, an elaborate treatise on the method of extracting the names of the good and evil spirits referred to the seven planets. This is a further development of a subject treated at some length in the third book of Occult Philosophy . The method is of no importance to our inquiry, but those who have sought to unravel it confess that they have been baffled. I ask leave to assure my readers that I have not emulated their zeal by seeking to follow in their footsteps, and, so far as I am concerned, the method therefore remains in the bosom of its proper mystery. Possibly Agrippa and his successor were only fooling their readers, and did not disclose the secret. The treatise on Names is followed by one upon Characters and, depending as it does from the first, this is also not readily intelligible. I have left it to those whom it may concern. Thereafter comes a formal tabulation of all the known shapes familiar to the spirits of the planets, followed by a disquisition upon Pentacles and Sigils, another upon the consecration of instruments used in magical ceremonies, as also of fire, water and so forth. The work concludes with methods for the invocation of good and evil spirits and a short process in Necromancy. As I shall have occasion to cite it frequently in the Second Part, the analysis may here be confined to establishing its connection with diabolism, and the kind of manifestations which are supposed to be obtained by its processes. Like the Lemegeton , it gives specific directions for communicating with evil spirits, and there is no question whatever as to the lawful nature of the experiment, by which I mean that no doubt on the subject entered into the mind of the writer, who offers what he has to the artist without attempting to justify its nature.