RENAISSANCE MAGIC - jan/5/2022

RENAISSANCE NEOPLATONISTS

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NOTES

Ad Fontes - Back to the source

Where does knowledge come from? Well, it comes from Hermes trismegistus.

Last quarter of the 15th century = Platonic + Orphic + Hermetic + Kabbalistic work

Assembled by Ficicno, Pico, and Bruno

Syncretized by Agrippa, and extrapolated by Dee

Hermes trismegistus

1433 - 1499 Marsilio Ficino

• Published the The Corpus Hermeticum though corrupted in translation. It hit the presses in 1471
• Started to translate Plato in the 15th century
• Tried to re-establish the platonic academy
• Expanded upon and systematized Platos theory of The Mania
• “On the Divine Frenzies”
• The Abstracteo, the process by which plato’s four frenzies liberate the soul, acting as stages
• Poetic: Liberates the soul through sacred language
• Telestic: Ceremonies of ritual purification allow the soul to begin traveling
• Prophetic:
• Love: soul is re-united with god
• He further explores this in On the Platonic Theologies
• He actually cites the corpus hermeticum as an example of what he means. This is truly a Christian/Hermetic theology of salvation
• “On the Heroic Frenzy”
• 
  
• Plato and Aristotle underwent the bacchic rituals
• 
  

1463 - 1494 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

1447 - 1500 Lodovico Lazzarelli

• First guy to identify as a Hermeticist
• Crater Hermetis - First true work of european Hermetic Philosophy

1548 - 1600 Giordano Bruno

1455 - 1522 Reuchlin

• Ad Fontes, back to the source
• De Verbo Merofico - The Wonder-working word
• On the Art of Kabbalah
• Ficino and Pico were weirdly contemptuous of “modern” magic like solomonic or astral magic. Binding demons, ritual furniture, robes, binding sigils, etc
• Shit like the munich manual
• They seemed to view these things as an extension of the debased and backwards medieval era
• Pico was the first guy to introduce Kabbalah to western society, as part of a renovation of religion
• “No science more truly assures us of the divinity of christ than magic and kabbalah”
• “No magic is efficacious unless supported by Kabbalah”
• Pico’s works were some of the first ever put on the index prohibitorum, the catholic list of banned books
• Pico was assassinated at 31 probably
• Reuchlin studied hebrew and actually valiantly argued against the destruction of hebrew texts in an effort for mass conversion, dude was an OG

The aspiring hermetic mage would have built everything off Iamblichus’s De Mysteriis

Proclus: On Sacrifices in Magic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMREGOVqxZ4&ab_channel=ESOTERICA

Reuchlin and the Wonder-Working Word

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmhmzERU84g&ab_channel=ESOTERICA

Hermetic Philosophy, Earlies European Hermeticism - Crater Hermetis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG7U_3OA868&ab_channel=ESOTERICA

Resistance is Futile: Perennialism, Platonism, and Hegemony - 1 of 2

• Dr Dan Atrell
• Most Polemics are In Group Singaling, intended to demonstrate faith
• Not all Evangelization is colonialism
• What SHOULD be criticized is this process of Appropriation and Weaponization
• 15th Century
• Christianity is in trouble
• Eastern Christianity is being encroached upon by the Ottoman Empire
• 1453, Constantinople falls of Mehmed the 2nd and this scares the FUCK out of the christian world
• Mass exile of greek scholars fleeing to italy, beginning all their texts with em
• Tehre is no Christian Kabbalah, only a Christian Interpretation of Kabbalah
• Joseph L. Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Kabbalah in the renaissance
• Christian Perenial thought is this idea that pre-christian religion foreshadowed christianity
• The goal being to create an irrefutable system of religion that could be used to convert the world
• Perennialism: The belief that there is one metaphysical truth underlying all world religions. (or all “true” religions)
• Perennialists hold what is Universal to be significant, and what is particular to be insignificant
• Perniallism emerged as a polemical strategy to locate common denominators ebtween two similar but incomensurate belief systems
• Perennialism functions via the distinction between Exoteric and Esoteric
• 
• Ficino Prisca Theologia
• Argues that God revealed himself as the Logos to pagans
• He gets this directly from Proclus
• The forefront of these guys was Hermes Trismegistus
• 1:26:11
• Marsillio Fincino On the Christian Religion trans. Dr. Dan Attrell
• Ficino considered jews to be valueable and worth studying, but he also considered them to not have a natural end point
• On the Spiritual Understanding:
• “In [the words fo Jeremiah,] God promises that someday He will set up a new agreement and testament, and that He will hand down a new law, different from the one which he had given to moses after he had delivered the Jews from Egypt, and that he will no longer write it on tablets, but in the minds of men, as if to say that the first one could be destroyed, not the second, and the old ceremonies ought to be maintained according to the spiritual understanding (intelligentia spiritalis) once the New Testamant is introduces. Certainly, as paul the Apostle says, when the prophet speaks of a “new agreement and testament, ” je ,eams tjat the other cam grow old and falter.”
• -
• …The divine depth of the prophetic and Christian mysteries: because it is divine, it is therefore impenetrable to human understanding. Conversely, the character of the venal and wretched Jews is entirely uncultivated and obstinate: and insatiable greed not only to preserve what is theirs, but also to earn interest; a natural love of their own people and an innate hatred for Christians.

Marsillo Ficino has a deep reverence and appreciation for Judaism as a religion, but he describes actual Jewish people as "uncultivated" and "venal." In his mind, Judaism has a sort of natural theological endpoint, as if its a seed that will inevitably sprout into Christianity. He interprets Kabbalah as "proof" that Judaism will become obsolete. His interpretation of Kabbalah is notably supersessionist and anti-Jewish, but also aggressively antisemitic. De Christiana Religione trades in some pretty awful stereotypes.

Pico de Mirandola seems to interpret Judaism as a sort of necessary root structure for Christianity. He interprets Kabbalah as evidence of some deeper truth underlying both religions, heavily implying that he thinks both Jews and Christians are doing religion wrong. Rather than supersesionism, his interpretation of Kabbalah leans into a sort of proto-theosophical stance, as if both Christianity and Judaism hold fragments of some deeper truth that must be reconstructed.

• Ficino didn’t study under jewish teachers
• Pico did
• Reuchlin did

Part 2

Prisca Theologia, the Six Sages

• Hermes Trismegistus
• Zoroaster
• Orpheus
• Agleophemus
• Pythagoras
• Plato

If the hebrews agree with us anywhere, we shall order them to stand by the ancient traditions of their fathers; if anywhere they disagree, then drawn up in Catholic legions we shall make an attack upon them. In short, whatever we detect foreign to the truth of the Gospels we shall refute to the extent of our power, while whatever we find holy and true we shall bear off from the synagogue as from a wrongful possessor to ourselves, the legitimate Israelites.

-Pico della Mirandola

Pico thought that Neoplatonists were appropriating the ideas of Christians, and not the other way around 17:46

Pico is trying to reconcile Aristotle and Plato, but his solution is very aristotelian. Ficino was a platonist. Ficino said that The One is above and outside of being. For Pico, The One IS being.

Pico is all about Averroes and merging with the Active intellect. Pico wants to annihilate himself in The One, become one with the Good. The soul merges with god.

Ficino, the soul is immortal, but goes to be with god in eternal beatitude but never fully merges.

Pico got this from Averroists like aliah del Medico

Dr. Sledge emphasizes the importance of Averroes

• Oh, Christian brothers, I pray that you consider a little more diligently how true and sound is my exposition, when to you there will be furnished, against the stony hearts of the Hbrewes, very powerful darts taken from their armaments.
• Heptaplus, 1489
• They conceived of themselves as engaging in spiritual warfare

Pico’s Jewish Teachers

Elia del Medigo

• Jewish schoolman at padua
• The Last Jewish Averroist
• Pro-Aristotle, Anti-plato, anti-Kabbalah, anti-syncretism

Flavius Mithridates

• Converso
• Preached ideas from the pugio fidei before the papal court
• (Mis)translator of 70 works of Kabbalah (This is where Pico gets his Kabbalah from)
• Pro-Platonic, Pro-Pisca Theologia, Pro-syncretism

Yohannan Alemanno

• Jewish Kabbalist and Astral Magician, Pro-syncretism
• Big Influence on Heptaplus
• Apparently there was a bit of a cottage industry of conversoes translating kabbalistic texts into latin and just kinda adding trinitarian shit for the paycheck

Wonder working word was probably the big influence on John Dee

Agrippa is getting his Kabbala from Francesco giorgi, a fransiscan, and Giorgi is getting his shit from Pico

The Last Gasp of Platonic Realism. By the time that all this was going on, the late 15th century, Nominalism had already won the day

Pico believed in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. He conceptualized magic as playing the strings between objects, and he did so with hebrew. He believed that Hebrew was the fundamentally primordial language, the language that god taught to Moses

Figura: Diagram to explain things. Very common medieval thing to try and summarize everything in a single diagram.

Joacim of Fiore, John dee calls him Joachim the prophicizer

The thing that unites the three realms is number

42:17