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This was originally posted by Kzwleh in my Ritual Magick tribe but it better belongs here, if anyone feels like taking a shot at it.
"Do you think that Marsilio Ficino influenced the ideas of Cornelius Agrippa about Ritual Magic? If so, how? If not, why? "
"Do you think that Marsilio Ficino influenced the ideas of Cornelius Agrippa about Ritual Magic? If so, how? If not, why? "
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Re: Ficino and Agrippa ROSWKA
Fri, March 4, 2005 - 2:16 AMWhen I wrote this thread I was mostly joking (the joke is not funny here, so I won't bring it here). However the question which was somehow a tongue in cheek joke had a reason:
I find it really interesting that Ficino was extremely against any form of magic which didn't fit his idea of "Natural Magic". Even if it's not really possible to know if that's how he really felt or if his plan was to make magic "acceptable" for the average Christian and, of course, avoid getting killed by the Church (hence some forms of magic had to be discarded).
Agrippa was really a random name; I could have chosen any magician/alchemist influenced by Ficino's neo-platonism (but, of course, feel free to reply to the original question).
What I had in mind is that probably Pico della Mirandola's ideas about Magic became more important for magicians working under the influence of neo-platonism than Ficino's ideas about magic. And I am not talking about Qabalah (or "Cabala" as Pico would have prefered)... but about what is acceptable and what is not in magic (the strange thing is also that even if Pico's definition of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable was more "liberal" than Ficino's ideas, the philosophy of Ficino was still by far more "liberal" than the philosohpy of Pico -i.e, Pico never really accepted that non-christian systems could have exactly the same status than christian ideas... his tendency was to place them a few steps below in the ladder of truth... whilst Ficino wanted all these sources to have the same status than Christian ideas).
So in a strange way I think that Agrippa (and most Neo-Platonist magicians) were working uder the influence of Ficino's philosophy, but with the wider definition of magic that Pico created (and Pico's inclusion of Cabala, of course).
