thinking with Agrippa

I have been reading Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa recently at
http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa ; a fascinating read. Agrippa died
in 1535. I have read many things that mentioned Agrippa, but never read
Agrippa. He wrote a book rather provocatively entitled 'de occulta
philosophia'. Men such as Giordano Bruno and Agrippa were artists, of a
sort, particularly Bruno.

Looking at the work of western esoterica, we note a kind of neoplatonism in
which text headings like the following are wont to appear:

"How our Mind can Change and Bind inferior Things to the Ends which we
Desire."

"inferior Things"? What does Agrippa mean by this? Something quite different
than it appears on first inspection, for the "inferior Things" he refers to
are simply things in the quotidian, any things. As opposed to things of the
realm of forms, the Ur of the Timaeus, where truth and beauty hang out, and
justice, and all ideals, including mathematical forms.

What is the power of art?

Agrippa says

"…as by naturall vertues we collect naturall vertues, so by abstracted,
mathematicall, and celestiall, we receive celestiall vertues, as motion,
life, sense, speech, southsaying [soothsaying], and divination, even in
matter less disposed, as that which is not made by nature, but only by art."

What does this mean? What are "vertues" and so what are "naturall vertues"
or "celestial vertues"?

He had previously mentioned that humanity had "Vallies [valleys] made, and
Mountains made into a Plain, Rocks have been digged through, Promontories
have been opened in the Sea, the bowels of the Earth made hollow, Rivers
divided, Seas joyned to Seas, the Seas restrained, the bottome of the Sea
been searched, Pools exhausted, Fens dryed up, new Islands made, and again
restored to the continent…"

The knowledge by which such things are accomplished involves the application
of celestial vertues to naturall vertues. The mathematics and engineering
involved in the sorts of tasks Agrippa mentions is concerned with the
phenomenology of the celestial, the ideal, the 'imaginary' but
no-less-existent, the mind and logic of God, the will of God, the necessary,
the formal, the binding.

"…our Mind can Change and Bind inferior Things to the Ends which we
Desire" because "the superior binds that which is inferior, and converts it
to it self, and the inferior is by the same reason converted to the
superior, or is otherwise affected, and wrought upon." In outher words, art
can use the laws of the superior world (the realm of forms and truth) to
harness the engines of necessity as they apply in this world. That is part
of what is involved in western Magick: the belief that by 'entering' the
'superior world', in some sense, and invoking the powers of the superior
world through this portal, that we can effect what we desire. The portal is
often art, writing, meditation, awareness of the celestial realm.

We also note that Agrippa seems to overestimate the extent to which sheer
force of will and passion determines the ability to 'joyn Sea to Sea', ie,
he speaks of "binding" in a somewhat dark tone when he says

"There is also a certain vertue in the minds of men, of changing,
attracting, hindring, and binding to that which they desire, and all things
obey them, when they are carried into a great excess of any Passion or vertu
[vertue], so as to exceed those things which they bind." And his reasons
seem to be more from psychology than physics, ie, he accounts for celestial
affairs as though they were determined by love and affection of the soul,
essentially by a loving God entirely without enmity:

"Now the ground of such a kind of binding is the very vehement, and
boundless affection of the souls, with the concourse of the Celestiall
order. But the dissolutions, or hinderances of such a like binding, are made
by a contrary effect, and that more excellent or strong, for as the greater
excess of the mind binds, so also it looseth, and hindreth. And lastly, when
the [thou] fearest Venus, oppose Saturn. When Saturn or Mars, oppose Venus
or Jupiter: for Astrologers say, that these are most at enmity, and contrary
the one to the other (i.e.) causing contrary effects in these inferior
bodies; For in the heaven, where there is nothing wanting, and where all
things are governed with love, there can in no wise be hatred, or enmity. "

But the main point I want to make is that in the works of Giordano Bruno and
Agrippa, there's the idea that the power of art is involved in the power of
God, the power of the 'superior' world, and that art is a portal to the
superior world, and so part of the end of a work of art is to let people
know the divine, and acquire something close to knowledge of the divine, and
to apply that knowledge in effecting change in this world.

However one estimates the probability of such a state of affairs, it is
interesting to observe and understand the beliefs of these
artist/philosophers/mathematicians/astronomer/astrologists. Their thought is
in the depths of Western notions of art that involves both, say, writing and
mathematics, or fine arts and science, ie, they are quite relevant to some
new media artists in that they practiced intermedia art and their writings
are a synthesis of the artistic and mathematical/technological/'magical'.

ja
http://vispo.com