Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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Astrology
and
magic
287
thought it unbecoming ever to say a word about [astrology] in all their
philosophy, damning it more by their silence
than
anyone else by speaking
or writing.' Modern critics, lacking Pico's intimacy with the texts, have
made similar if artless remarks, which are especially misleading in
Aristotle's case. Certain methods or
traits
in Aristotle, particularly his
empiricism, and some of his theories, such as the role of contact action in
physics,
seem to have convinced modern readers
that
Peripatetic philos-
ophy and occultism are incompatible in principle, but this judgement can
only
rest on modern notions of magic and astrology
that
have little to do
with the
views
of Thomas Aquinas, Pomponazzi or Fernel. These thinkers
and many others knew the Aristotelian texts
that
were
loci
classici
for the
magical
worldview of the Renaissance. Besides providing the basic physics
and metaphysics for the key doctrines of occult quality and substantial
form, Aristotle contributed to
belief
in astrological influence on
earth
and
man, the
life
and divinity of the heavenly bodies, the relationship of
microcosm to macrocosm,
spiritus,
imagination and the astral body, and the
alchemical theory of transmutation. Quoting from the
Meteorology
and De
generatione
et
corruptione,
John
Dee explained how
the
most
auncient
and
wise
Philosophers
. . .
[have]
left
unto
us
sufficient
proufe
and
witnesse
. . .
that
mans
body,
and all
other
Elementall
bodies,
are
altered,
disposed,
ordred,
pleasured
and
displeasured
by the
Influentiall
working
of the
Sunne,
Mone
and the
other
Starres
and
Planets
. . .
[Aristotle's]
Meteorologicall
bookes
are
full
of. . .
demonstrations
of the
vertue,
operation
and
power
of the
heavenly
bodies.
Aristotle,
of course, could also be cited in opposition to occultism, as could
Plato, who had combatted the sophists by comparing their deceits to
magical
tricks. Modern historiography, inspired by Anglo-American
empiricism, has generally had less trouble associating the 'idealist' Plato
with magic
than
admitting similar connections for the hard-headed
Stagirite. It was clear to Ficino and his Renaissance readers, in any event,
that
Plato's
eros
was a powerful magic force.
47
coelo
astrorum
conversionibus
rebus
singulis
acquiritur
. . . sed
iussus
Dei est ab
initio
rebus
singulis
inditus';
Aristotle,
Meteorology 1.2
(339
a
i
1-32);
De
generatione
animalium
m.i 1
(762
a
i8-2o);
Problems
x.i5 and 64;
Decaeloi.g
(278¡10-17);
Metaphysics
xn.6-8
(i07i
b
-74
b
);
Walker
1958, pp. 156-7, 162;
Thorndike
1923-58,
v, pp.
653—63.
47. G.
Pico
1946-52,1,
p. 48:
'Plato
et
Aristoteles.
. .
indignam
putaverunt
de qua
verbum
aliquando
facerent
tota
sua
philosophia,
plus
earn
silendo
quam
quisque
voce
scriptisve
condemnantes';
Dee
1570, sig. b
iii
v
;
Aristotle,
Physics 11.2 and vm.2
(i94
b
i3~i4
and
252
b
25~3o);
De caelo 1.3
(270
b
i-i2);
Meteorology 1.4 and 11.4
(34^6-25
and
359
b
28-36o
a
i7);
Rattansi
1966, pp. 128, 131; cf.
Zambelli
1972, p. 280;
1973a,
pp. 121-3,
128-30,
135-6;
Thorndike
1923-58,1,
pp. 24-7,11,
249-54;
see nn.
16-21,23,46 above;
on
John
Dee, see
Clulee
1977 and Occult and Scientific Mentalities 1984, pp. 57-71
(Clulee).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
288
Natural philosophy
If
theoreticians
of
magic
and
their
opponents found
support
in the
philosophical remains
of
antiquity,
the
profession
of
philosophy
in the
Renaissance also organised
its
studies along lines
that
continued
to
stimulate
interest
in
occultism. Topics
well
established
in
most
of the
standard
divisions
of
philosophy encouraged speculation relevant
to
occultism.
Metaphysicians
and
natural
philosophers studied problems
of
cosmology,
matter-theory,
causality, substance, form
and
quality whose development
and resolution shaped
the
discussion
of
such central occultist doctrines
as
astrological influence
and
occult properties.
The
freedom
of
man's
will
was
as contentious
for
moral philosophy
as for
astrology.
The
antithesis
between demonology
and
astrology asserted
by
Pomponazzi raised grave
questions
for the
theologians.
In
psychology
and
philosophical medicine
the
imaginative faculty
of
the soul
and its
spiritual junction with
the
body were
topics
of
long-standing importance.
48
Gianfrancesco Pico published
a
treatise
De imaginatione in 1501
along traditional philosophical lines.
Although
Gianfrancesco admitted
that
the
fantasy
was a
target
of
demonic
meddling,
for the
most
part
he
passed over
the
magical imagination
exploited
by
Ficino
and
limited
himself
to ethical analysis. Around
the
time
when
he
published
De imaginatione,
Gianfrancesco
was
writing
a
more
ambitious book
that
helps explain
his
reticence
on
magical imagination.
The
purpose
of
the Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium,
unpublished until
1520,
was to
protect Christian faith
by
destroying pagan philosophy.
Continuing
in the
Examen
and in De
rerum
praenotione
(1506—7)
the
campaign motivated
by
Savonarola
but
interrupted
by his
uncle's death,
Gianfrancesco
saw
astrology
and
natural
magic
as
special
threats
to
religion,
yet
his
sceptical fideism
did not
produce
a
wholesale denial
of
occultism.
In
1523
he
published
Strix sive
de
ludificatione daemonum,
a
dialogue that
attributed
all
magic
to
demonic deceits
and put
full credence
in
witchcraft.
49
Thus,
while Gianfrancesco's scepticism eroded
the
philosophical grounds
for
certain occultist beliefs,
it
posed little
threat
to
occultism
as
such.
In
fact,
his polemics foreshadowed
a
new period
in the
development
of
the occultist
tradition.
After
(if
not
because
of) the
publication
of the Examen, one
sees
less reliance
on the
usual philosophical arguments
for
magic
and
astrology,
less confidence
in
their
certainty,
but
more willingness
to
find
new
bases
for
occultist beliefs
than
to
reject them.
As in
Gianfrancesco's case, disavowals
48.
See nn.
12-14, 16-21,
27, 30, 40—2, 44
above.
49.
G. F.
Pico
1984, pp. 8,
11-14,
33-4, 38, 74-5;
Schmitt
1967, pp.
191-3;
Walker
1958, pp.
147-9;
Damned
Art 1977, pp. 36-40
(Burke).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Astrology
and magic
289
of
occultism in the later Renaissance were almost always partial; even
Reginald
Scot, who followed Pomponazzi in rejecting demons and then
outdid him by dispensing with determinist astrology, repeated a litany on
natural magic
that
can be traced back to Giovanni
Pico.
50
In De
incertitudine
et
vanitate
scientiarum
(1526),
Agrippa retracted the demonic magic of his
earlier De
occulta
philosophia
(1510),
but in 1533 he published an expanded
version
of the same work, including the recanted demonology. Agrippa's
scepticism
about astrology, which predated the original De
occulta
philosophia,
was epistemological uncertainty
rather
than
thorough phys-
ical
and metaphysical criticism. He always doubted astrology but never
abandoned it, and his confidence in natural magic remained intact even in
De
incertitudine.
A letter written around 1526 reveals the fideism and
quietism
that
motivated De
incertitudine,
whose relation to the younger
Pico's
similar work remains unclear. 'If the
life
and fortune of mankind
comes
from the stars', asked Agrippa, 'why should we worry? Why should
we
not leave these things to God and the heavens, since they can neither err
nor do
evil?
. . . Let us consign hours and times to God the Father, who
established them by his power.' This damping of curiosity about messages
from the stars offered no challenge to the theoretical basis of their
influence.
51
It has been argued
that
Agrippa's scepticism was of a piece with his
occultism
in
that
both were anti-rational and merely empirical. Although
the latter charge has a basis in anti-magical polemic reaching back to Galen,
the former misses a crucial point:
that
even Agrippa tried to provide a
rational theoretical foundation for his magic, chiefly in the first book
of
De
occulta
philosophia,
where most
of
the philosophical content is lifted from the
eminently rational writings of Ficino and the Neoplatonists. Agrippa's
demonic magic outreached its Renaissance predecessors in its boldness, but
in philosophising about natural magic he merely copied ideas from Ficino
and others without developing them. Furthermore, he overwhelmed his
blatantly derivative theory with a tonnage of recipes and anecdotes
that
leave
the impression of chaotic wonder-mongering, more in the spirit of
Pliny
than
Plotinus.
52
Paracelsus, whose death in 1541 preceded by a decade
50.
Scot
1886, pp. 169-73,
236-7;
see n. n
above;
Damned Art 1977, p. 109-11,
126-9,
132-5
(Anglo).
51.
From
a Prognosticon of
Agrippa's
published
in Umanesimo e esoterismo
i960,
p. 168
(Zambelli):
'Si ab
astris
est
hominum
vita
atque
fortuna,
quid
sollicitamur?
Quin
deo hec et
celis
(qui nec
errare,
nec
malum agere
possunt)
relinquimus?
. . .
linquamus
horas
et
momenta
deo
patri,
qui ea
posuit
in sua
potestate';
ibid., pp.
144-52,
155-6;
Nauert
1965, pp. 154,199,
204-13,
268;
Walker
1958, p. 90; see
n. 1
above.
52. Garin
1950b,
pp.
661-2;
Zambelli
i960,
pp.
171-2;
Umanesimo e esoterismo
i960,
p. 144
(Zambelli);
Nauert
1965, pp.
122-4,
134,
148-9,
200-2,
237-9,
245-8,
261.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
290
Natural philosophy
the full burgeoning of his fame, followed and surpassed Agrippa in his
admiration for German mysticism, his assimilation of Ficinian and
Neoplatonic magic and, above all, his forsaking the logic and book learning
of
Plato, Aristotle and Galen for the sake
of
observation, experience and the
mechanical arts. Paracelsus found the Greek and Latin classics remote in
time and space from his own eschatological circumstances. As a German
who
witnessed the first decades of the Reformation, he wondered how the
old
books of the pagan South could speak to the New Hebron, the
imminent golden age before the end
of
time in which the adept in medicine,
magic and
natural
philosophy would
follow
the light
of
nature
towards the
perfection of the
arts
and sciences. When Paracelsus proclaimed
that
he had
more to learn from travelling to observe
(erfahren)
nature
and technique in
action
than
from any library, he echoed the devaluation of traditional
learning in Agrippa and Gianfrancesco
Pico,
but he also joined Agrippa in
preserving certain elements of the occultist tradition, especially
natural
magic.
From
experientia,
from reading the book of
nature
in preference to
human books, comes
scientia,
a knowledge which is more
than
the
subjective contents of the knower's mind.
Scientia
exists autonomously in
the object of experience; much like the substantial form of Avicenna or
Thomas Aquinas, it emanates from the
stars
and defines the object as one of
its kind. The identification and manipulation of such terrestrial products of
the heavens is
natural
magic.
Just
as the models for Paraclesus'
magus
were
more scriptural (Moses, Solomon, the
/judyoL
of Matthew's gospel)
than
classical,
so the epistemology behind his magic had its roots more in the
German mysticism of Sebastian Franck
than
in the pagan mysticism of
Plotinus. By emphasising the immediacy of a
scientia
which is as real in the
known object as in the knower, Paracelsus transferred to the plane
of
natural
philosophy or
natural
magic the mystic's direct, inward vision of God's
word.
Likewise,
faith more
than
learning became the basis
of
the Paracelsian
magician's operation, as
of
the Christian mystic's union with God. In a later
debate between
Johannes
Kepler and Robert Fludd, this Agrippan-
Paracelsian-Teutonic anti-philosophy of magic, mediated by the
alchemical spiritualism of Valentin
Weigel
and Jacob Boehme, earned the
new title 'theosophy', a term which describes some of the features of
Agrippa's
occultism better
than
the word he chose,
philosophia.
53
The
divergent attitudes of Agrippa, Gianfrancesco Pico and Paracelsus towards
53.
Koyre
I97i,pp.
133-4,
156-7,166,177;R.M.Jones
1959,pp.
133,141,148-50,
154,173,
i8o;Pagel
1958a,
pp. 40-4,
54-65,
80-1,
207-9,
218-27,
284-9,
295-301,
336;
Webster
1982, pp. 4-5, 17-23,
48-57,
61, 80-4.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Astrology
<w>à
magic
291
the legitimacy
and
efficacy
of
magic converged
in a
common distrust
of
traditional philosophical analysis
that
coloured subsequent explorations
of
occultism.
In
his
autobiography,
De vita propria
(1575-6)»
Girolamo Cardano
complained
that
'by
means
of
these [philosophical] doctrines.
. . men
strive
...
to
discern
the
incorporeal form
and
separate
. . . the
souls
of
things from
the physical structure; putting thereby experiments
in
casuistry
. . .
before
true
scientific knowledge,
so
that
out of a
limited field
of
experience they
come
to
far-reaching conclusions'.
A few
pages later,
the
author
of the
encyclopaedic
De subtilitate
(1550)
and De rerum varietate
(1557),
reckoning
the tally
of his
life's work, revealed
the
nature
of his
'true
scientific
knowledge'
when
he
calculated
that
'of
problems solved
or
investigated
I
shall leave something like forty thousand,
and of
minutiae
two
hundred
thousand'.
54
An
equal hunger
for the
minute,
the
particular
and the
manifold filled
the
twenty chapters
of
Giambattista Delia Porta's
Magia
naturalis
(1558,
1589)
with 'experiences'
and
'experiments'
but
left little
room
for
theory.
In the
English translation
of 1658,
Delia Porta's
recapitulation
of
Ficinian
and
Neoplatonic philosophy occupies only about
sixteen
of
409 pages.
In
addition
to the
famous chapter
on
optics, Delia Porta
gave
directions
for
'experiments'
(a
physical demonstration
of
magnetic
polarity,
a
technique
for
assaying
by
displacement
of
water)
that
sometimes
approach
the
modern sense
of the
word,
but
these appeared alongside
recipes
for
preserving cherries
and
blanching lettuce leaves
or
advice
on
how
to
procure
a shag-hair'd Dog. In
sawting time
. . .
strew their kennels.
. .
where
they
lie and
couple
. . .
with
the
fleeces
and
hides
of
beasts;
and so,
while they
continually look upon those sights, they
will
beget shag whelps like Lions.
Of
Delia
Porta,
the
organiser
of
scientific
academies
and the
rival
of
Galileo,
Cassirer
wrote
that
such 'empiricism leads
not to the
refutation
but the
codification
of
magic'.
55
Delia
Porta, Cardano, Paracelsus, Fracastoro
and
other contributors
to
the sixteenth-century debate
on
occultism
are
often counted among
the
school
of
Renaissance
nature
philosophers.
The
most independent thinker
of
this group, Bernardino
Telesio,
taught
that
observation
and
sense
perception
are the
only
true
foundations
of
philosophy,
but his
book
De
rerum natura iuxta propria principia
(1565,
1586)
is the
work
of a
54. Cardano
1962, pp. 215, 219;
Occult
and
Scientific Mentalities
1984, pp.
231-3,
242
(Maclean);
Thorndike
1923-58,
v, pp.
563-79.
55.
Delia
Porta
1658, pp. 1-16, 53, 93, 130, 193,
355-81,
384;
Cassirer
1927, pp.
160-1.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
292
Natural philosophy
metaphysician,
not an
observer
of
Delia
Porta's type. Expertly trained
in the
Aristotelianism
of
Padua, Telesio became disenchanted with
the
Peripatetic
style
as a priori
verbalising,
and he
attempted
to
replace Aristotle with
his
own
remarkably original system. Some
of
Telesio's novelties helped
discredit ideas
that
had
long been fundamental ingredients
of
magical
thought; others worked
to
prolong
the
career
of the
occultist tradition
by
opening
new
explanatory options. Both these consequences
of
Telesio's
revisionism,
which was
not
primarily concerned with occultist issues, were
more important
for the
future
of
the theory
of
magic
than
any
of
his specific
views
on
astrology
or
occult qualities. Setting aside
the
whole armoury
of
Aristotle's
metaphysics
as
unrelated
to
sensation, Telesio reduced
the
principles
of
his
own
system
to two
sensible, active forces, heat
and
cold,
along
with
matter,
a
passive substrate.
As
opposites, heat
and
cold struggle
perpetually
for the
sole possession
of
matter;
each
is
equipped
for
this
contest with
a sense of
self-preservation describable mechanically
as an
intrinsic impulse
for
existence
and
expansion (pleasure)
and
against
contraction
and
annihilation (pain).
Spiritus, the
most powerful combina-
tion
of
heat
and
matter,
became
for
Telesio
a
material soul
that
performs
all
man's necessary psychological functions. Since this soul
is
nothing
but hot
matter,
it
cannot have
the
formal, autonomous properties
of the
Aristotelian-scholastic soul.
Telesio's
radical
new
philosophy encouraged magical thinking
not so
much because
he,
like many others, found
a
place
in his
system
for the
ubiquitous
spiritus as
because
he
provided
a new
theoretical basis (with
precedents
in
Presocratic
and
Stoic thought)
for the
cosmic vitalism
that
had
always
been prominent
in the
occultist worldview. When Telesio said
that
matter
was
percipient
and
supported
his
claim
in
mechanical terms
of
expansion
and
contraction,
his
arguments were more like rational analysis
than
enthusiastic assertion, more like science
than
poetry.
He
thus
established credible philosophical foundations
for the
magical 'pansensism'
whose
fullest expression
was
Tommaso Campanella's
De sensu
rerum
et
magia
(1620).
On the
other hand, Telesio's critique
of
Peripatetic
hylemorphism
— a
common exercise among
the
nature
philosophers
-
nullified
the
doctrine
of
substantial forms
and
hence diminished
the
prospects
for a
coherent theory
of
occult qualities. Francesco Patrizi aimed
another blow
at
Aristotle's doctrine
of
forms
in his Discussiones peripateticae
(1581),
but the
main motive
for his
anti-Aristotelianism was admiration
for
Platonism. Patrizi translated Proclus, Hermes Trismegistus
and the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Astrology
and
magic
293
Chaldaean
Oracles
and
developed
a
cosmic psychology reminiscent
of the
teachings
on anima mundi to be
found
in
those writings.
56
Although
Giordano Bruno echoed
his
Italian contemporaries
in
criticising
Peripatetic hylemorphism
and
revived earlier arguments
of
Giovanni
Pico
in
sometimes objecting
to
astrology,
the
general tenor
of
his
work
was
strongly sympathetic
to
occultism, whether
in
later writings
specifically
addressed
to
magic
(De
magia; Theses
de
magia\
De
vinculis
in
genere,
1590—1)
or in
earlier books
(De
umbris idearum,
1582;
ho
spaccio
de
la
bestia
trionfante,
1584;
Lampas triginta statuarum,
1586—8)
of
broader content.
In
a
decade
of
prolific writing, Bruno's ideas changed
and
sometimes
conflicted
as
intellectual passions drove
him
from enthusiasm
to
enthusi-
asm. Inconsistency
of
thought
and
idiosyncrasy
of
form
will
make
any
catalogue
of
Bruno's mind disorderly.
He
preserved Aristotle's terminol-
ogy
of
matter
and
form,
for
example, even though
he
gave
matter
a
privileged,
divinised
status
alien
to
Aristotelian philosophy. Bruno
saw
matter
as a
real substantial principle
—
stable, persistent, capable
of
receiving
all
forms
and
therefore nobler
and
more durable
than
any
limited form
that
must eventually disappear. Disregarding individual species
and
genus
as
illusions
of
merely
logical
diversity,
he
concluded
that
the
forms indicated
by
these notional distinctions lacked substantiality. From such
a
critique
of
substantial form
to
Moliere's
jokes
about dormitive virtue
it
was
a
small step
but
a
perilous
one for the
theory
of
magic.
57
Yet
Bruno's anti-
Aristotelianism opened
no
breach with occultism.
On
the
contrary,
his
disenchantment with Aristotle made
him
receptive
to Neoplatonic
and
Hermetic authorities even friendlier
to a
magical
worldview.
Thus,
the
same Bruno
who
discarded substantial form
as an
inefficacious
accident
of
matter
accepted Ficino's position
on
seminal
reasons
as the
basis
of
occult virtues.
The
whole Ficinian theory reappeared
in Bruno,
who
added
his own
touches (Lullism,
the art of
memory,
a
more
extravagant Hermetism)
and
ignored
the
constraints
of
orthodoxy.
He
placed
Ficino's seminal reasons among
the
links
(vinculo)
that
bind
man not
only
to the
stars
but
also
to
astral demons attracted into
the
Hermetic statues
standing
in the
temple
of
memory. Bruno's conception
of
memory
and
56. Van Deusen 1932, pp. 20-2, 25-45, 53, 68-70, 79-80, 92; Kristeller 1964a, pp. 95-103; Walker 1958,
pp.
189-91; Thorndike 1923-58^1, pp. 370-71; Brickman
I94i,pp.
13-14,
18,31-6, 42-4,
59-60;
see nn.
59-60
below.
57.
Bruno 1879-91, in, pp. 1-258, 397-491, 637-700, especially pp. 695-6; 1958, pp. 178-82, 245-9,
264-73, 547-829; Yates 1964, pp. 192-9,
211-16,231-2,262-7,
307-11;
Vedrine 1967, pp. 262, 269-
82, 352; Michel 1962, pp. 36, 42, 133-8; Ingegno 1978, pp.
212-13,
215-16.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
294
Natural philosophy
imagination, like the theurgy of Iamblichus, turned magic inwards toward
the operator's soul and upwards to the One; the interiority of this
contemplative impulse lends credence to the
view
that
Bruno's magic
underlay a larger project of cultural and religious reform. On the other
hand, since
spiritus
can carry an astral image outside the operator and seal it
in another's soul, the powers of Bruno's imagination are also external and
practical.
58
When
he wrote in De
magia
that
'magus
means a wise man who has the
power
to act', Bruno emphasised the operative character of magic, its
motivation in man's
will
and its expression in concrete human action.
Campanella,
who became an advocate of the new Galilean science, also
valued
magic for its utility, although neither his theoretical nor his
pragmatic interest in magic ripened until after he met Delia Porta (1589)
and read Cardano. The young author of
Philosophia
sensibus
demonstrata
(1591),
a Telesian apology, was a critic of astrology, but by 1626 he and
Pope Urban VIII were practising a medical astrology defensible as natural
magic
yet vulnerable to the demonic dangers of Ficino's planetary music.
The
unauthorised publication in De
fato
siderali
vitando
(1626) of these papal
adventures complicated Campanella's already troubled career. His most
extensive
treatment of magic, De
sensu
rerum
et
magia,
was another product
of
his youth
that
appeared only in 1620.
59
It brought Telesio's theory of
sensate matter to one of its possible conclusions,
'that
the world is a feeling
animal. . . [whose]
parts
partake in one and the same kind
of
life'.
Like
any
higher organism, the living cosmos possesses a 'spirit . . . both active and
passive
in
nature
. . . capable of suffering everything and of acting with
everything.
The soul in things both suffers and enjoys with the things
themselves.'
Imagination, a faculty of the soul, acts 'when the spirit takes in
something and thinks
of
it'. The operations
of
soul,
spirit and imagination in
the cosmos account for its wonders:
What marvel is there in the fact
that
the rooster is feared by the lion? . . . The lion is
a heavy-spirited beast. . .; the rooster is of subtle and sharp spirits; and when these
rooster-spirits pass through the air, they penetrate those
of
the lion and render them
fearful.
Although
this passage recalls similar remarks on the
cock
and the lion in
Proclus and Ficino, Campanella has removed the alleged fact of the cock's
58.
Yates
1964, pp.
192-9,
211-16,
231-2,
262-7,
270, 307-11,
322-35;
1966, pp.
199-236,
243-59;
cf.
Ingegno
1978, pp. xii, 143; see n. 32
above.
59.
Bruno
1879-91,
m, p. 400: 'A
philosophis
ut
sumitur
inter
philosophos,
tunc
magus
significat
hominem
sapientem
cum
virtute
agendi';
Garin
1950b,
pp.
657-8;
Védrine
1967, p. 354; Di
Napoli
1947, pp. 338, 356, 359, 361;
Walker
1958, pp. 203,
207-17-
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
Astrology
and
magic
295
superiority from
the
theoretical context
in
which Ficino
and
Proclus
had
explained
it,
i.e.,
a
metaphysical context. Campanella's analysis
of
the cock's
dominance
is
wrong
and
perhaps
arbitrary,
but it is
nonetheless physical,
which
accounts
for the
popularity
of
this
and
similar appeals
to
fluids,
vapours, effluences
and
other progeny
of spiritus
long after
the
scientific
revolution
and the
rise
of the
mechanical philosophy.
60
Campanella's wish
to
reduce occult phenomena
to
mechanical contact,
material force
or
physical
structure
emerged again
in the
fourteenth book
of
his monumental
Theologia
(begun
in
1613),
where
he
discussed
the
passage
from Thomas Aquinas
on
which Ficino
had
based
his
claim
that
an
astrological
figura is
like
a
substantial form. 'Images
and
characters
are
controversial', wrote Campanella:
St
Thomas.
.
. seems to attribute to them, from the influence
of
the
heavens,
some
virtue
... so
that if one makes
a
lion
in
gold
under
the
sign of
Leo,
it
acquires
a
power
. .
. leonine in nature
. . .
beyond what virtue the
gold
possesses.
. .
These
[zodiacal]
images
do not
actually
exist
in
heaven,
but
heat sent from
the
constellation
Leo
to a
climate and region
of our
Earth is
or
becomes similar
... to
leonine
heat.
. .
Wherefore, although the image and the figure as such
. . .
are not
active,
yet inasmuch as the figure is placed
in an
artificial species connected with
a
natural species produced
by the
heavens,
St
Thomas said that
it can
receive
influence
. . .
Although
the figure is artificial,
a
work of
design,
its execution
in a
physical
body comes under the
heavens,
as do other motions.
.
.
Clearly,
no action
comes
from
an
artificial
or a
natural body unless
the
figure suits that action
. . .
[And]
local
motion [is
necessary]
in an
astrological
figure
if it
is to
receive
influence
and to act.
. .
This action occurs through a quality
of
sympathy,
like
that between
iron
and a
magnet, whose mode
of
action they
avow
to be
occult.
In
this
remarkable passage,
the
Dominican Campanella preserves
the
Thomist approval
of
figurate talismans,
but he
does
not
depend
on the
metaphysical basis
of
that
approval,
the
doctrine
of
substantial forms.
In
place
of
Peripatetic hylemorphism, against which
he had
raised objections
like
Telesio's
and
Bruno's
as
early
as the
Philosophia
sensibus
demonstrata,
Campanella proposed notions
of
structural
resonance
and
physical force
that
were only distantly related
to
Ficino's metaphysical^wrtfe
yet
served
as
well
as
them
to
uphold
a
theory
of
magic.
61
60.
Campanella's
De
sensu rerum
et
magia,
translated
in
Renaissance Philosophy 1967,
pp. 360-1 (1.8), 362
(i-9)>
375
(v.5);
Di
Napoli
1947,
pp-
350-7; see
nn.
35,
43, 56
above.
61.
Campanella
1949-,
xiv, pp.
192-4:
'De imaginibus autem
et
caracteribus siderum controvertitur.
Etenim
Divus
Thomas,
3
contra
Gentiles
c.
105, videtur
eis
tribuere
ex
coelesti
influxu
aliquid
virtutis
.
.
. uti si
fiat
leo in auro sub
Leonis
signo,
sortiatur, ultra id quod aurum habet virtutis, etiam
vim
roborandi
et
strenuitatem
conciliandi,
his
praesertim
qui
natura leonini sunt
... In
coelo
quidem
imagines istae
non
sunt,
sed
calor
qui ex
asterismo
Leonis
ad
Telluris
nostrae
clima
et
regionem
demittitur,
similis
est vel
fit . . .
leonino
calori
. . .
Quapropter
licet
imago
et
figura
in
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
296
Natural philosophy
FRANCIS
BACON:
THE
REFORM
OF
MAGIC
IN THE
ABANDONMENT
OF
TRADITIONAL
PHILOSOPHY
Francis Bacon knew
the
Renaissance philosophers
who had
nourished
Campanula's magic
-
Ficino, Cardano, Delia Porta, Telesio
- and he
also
understood
the
anti-philosophical
and
occultist impulses expressed
by
Agrippa
and
Paracelsus.
At
times
he had
harsh words
for all of
them
as
complicit
in the
moral
and
intellectual scandal begun
by the
Greek
philosophers, continued
by the
scholastics
and to be
ended
by
himself.
But
Bacon's
vision
of
the history
of
philosophy
as a
chronicle
of
degeneracy left
him
in
many respects
an
heir
of that
history,
and
nowhere more
than
in his
attitudes towards occultism.
62
In De
augments,
for
example,
he
described
an
astrologia
sana
similar
in
many
ways
to the
iatromathematics
of
Ficino's
De
vita
in.
Though
he
denied
the
existence
of a
spiritus
mundi,
he
conceded
the
influence
of the
heavens
on
human spirits
and he
granted
that the
imagination could affect
the
transmission
of
spirits, even their communica-
tion
to
other persons,
as
in
fascinatio.
He
worried
that 'the
inquiry
how to
raise
and
fortify
the
imagination' might constitute
'a
palliation
and
defence
of
a great
part
of
ceremonial magic'
if
it convinced people
that
natural
rather
than
demonic powers were
at
work
in
'ceremonies, characters, charms,
gesticulations
[and]
amulets'. Indeed, this
was his own
conviction;
he
affirmed
'that
imagination
has
power,
. . . that
ceremonies.
. .
strengthen
that
power,
and that
they
be
used sincerely
and
intentionally
for that
purpose,
and as a
physical remedy, without
any the
least thought
of
inviting
thereby
the aid of
[demonic] spirits'.
The
admission
that
'many things
. . .
work
upon
the
spirits
of man by
secret sympathy
and
antipathy
... [as in]
the virtues
of
precious stones
. . .
[that]
have
in
them fine spirits' takes
on
new meaning
in
light
of a
recent discovery:
that, in
addition
to his
methodological
reforms, Bacon also intended
to
formulate
a
substantive
natural philosophy,
a
physical system
one of
whose
chief
ingredients
was a
quantum
figura non habeat activitatem, tamen prout reponitur in
specie
artificiali per ordinem ad
naturalem,
quae a
coelo
fit, dixit Divus Thomas quod potest recipere influxum . . . Et quidem licet
sit opus arbitrarium figuratio et artificiosa,
eius
tamen exequutio in corpore physico subiicitur coelo,
sicut ceteri motus . . . Palam enim est quod neque artificialia neque naturalia corpora, quibus actio
aliqua
fit, absque figura commoda illi actioni non sunt. . . [Et] motus localis in figura astrologica
[necessarius
est] ut influxum recipiat et agat. . actio enim ista fit per qualitatem sympathiae, sicut
magnetis in ferrum, cuius agendi modum profitentur occultum'; Di Napoli 1947, pp. 331-40; see
nn.
39—40
above.
62. P. Rossi 1974, PP- 3-129; Anderson 1948, p. 136; Walker 1958, pp. 189-91, 199; 1985, § x, p. 121;
Rees 1975, PP- 81-92, 101;
unless
otherwise indicated, translations from Bacon's Latin works are
those
in F. Bacon 1857-74,
IV
and v.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008