Elisabeth Blum, Paul Richard Blum. Pantheism, Panpsychism, and Secularization

Elisabeth Blum

Paul Richard Blum Pantheism, Panpsychism, and Secularization

Case Studies from Early Modernity

This book study is aresult of the research funded by the Czech Science Foundation as the project GA ČR21-17059S “Pantheism and Panpsychism in the Renaissance and the Emergence of Secularism” .

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Pantheism and panpsychism were philosophical strains that, in simple terms, view the divine as omnipresent in the world or declare everything to be animated. In this book we present asmall number of casestudies that show how these theories arose in the Renaissance,their implicationsfor an understandingofRenaissance and early modern philosophy, and to what extent they were linked to the overall intellectualclimate of early modernity that may be described as increasingly secularized. For, pantheism and its related panentheism (the view that God is not identical with but embraces the world)evidentlypreluded modern secularism as the attitude that deems religion and theology irrelevant to science

The philosophical approach of both pantheism and panpsychism is based on its claim or attempt to unite theprinciple of all that there is with that very realm that depends on it. In simple terms:the principle of nature is nature – or at least attendant to it;or: the life and intelligibilityofbeings is present in everything and anything that can be experienced. In both claims the “all”-component (the pan‐) is constitutive and decisive. Lookingback to the history of Western thought, this figure of all-encompassing and all-pervasive principles appears almost natural, in the sense that the purpose and character of philosophy is to find general rules, principles, and ontological statuses that reflect the universality of the object of study – this object is, indeed, everything and all that there is. From that point of view there is no surprise that fundamental philosophy converges with the area of competence of theology. Therefore, in ancient Greece and Rome there was no conflict between theology and philosophy because both were natural approaches to the world of humans. Obviously, there had been strains keeping philosophy clear of theology, namely in Epicureanism;however, it can be said that this effort (instead of anticipating secularistEnlightenment)only aimed at preventing amerely theological areafrom detaching from theuniversal competence of philosophy. With Aristotle we have apeculiarcase:inmodern interpretation it is clear that Aristotle intended and managed to give universal philosophy amethodology that kept it open both to empirical discoveriesand to reflection upon the human nature of wisdom: “By nature, all humans desire to know.” Thesewords did not open his epistemology but his Metaphysics. Metaphysics, then, studies the most generalprinciples of all there is, including the conditionsofunderstanding and the universal conditions of being – and that included natural theology. The ancient response to Aristotle was, among the

Neoplatonists, emphasis on the unconditional reality of what transcends the particular being and the particular understanding:the infinite transcending thefinite. When in the Renaissance philosophers revisited the questions concerning the relation between principle and principiatum,they revivedthe (broadly speaking)Platonic traditions in philosophy. Given thehistory of Christian understanding of the principle of the world and the world itself, including the conditions of intelligibilityofthatrelation (that is:God, creation, and faith), it was inevitable that Renaissance philosophers had to negotiate potential failures in their interpretations of God, World, and Soul.Insome cases, aberrations from the right doctrine were condemned as heresies(most notably in GiordanoBruno), but generally it was not fear of institutionalized dogmatics (the Inquisition) that guided the thinkers but, rather, the consistency of the theory that aimed at –as said before – understanding theconstitution and conditionsofthe universe and of human accessibility to it. In this book,wepresent some examples of how the problems of pantheism, panpsychism, and eventually secularism unfolded.

We begin with the widespread and varied theories of magic. Magic as a worldview is comprehensive in that it assumes all-pervadingpowers that govern the experiential world from within. As such, it is fundamentally panpsychist. Its comprehensiveness also entails its character as sets of techniques in dealing with the tangible world, based on powers beyond amere mechanical use of tools. By understandingand directingforces other than one ’ sown, aperson endeavorsto impose his or her will on processes in the outward world and on fellow creatures, including the next man ’smind. Here we interpret mainly Marsilio Ficino, Agrippa of Nettesheim,GiordanoBruno,and Tommaso Campanella. From these samples it becomes clear how variations of magic (astrology, spiritual powers, general animation, etc.) aimed at universal theories of reality that encompassed the foundation, agency, and intelligibility of the world, including its principles and humanity. To the same extent as these magical philosophies had to negotiate with Christian theology and religion, they also are paramount in the continuity of panpsychist and pantheist thoughtsfrom antiquity through the Middle Ages into modernity. Such historic continuity also marks the other chapters in this book.

The treatise On the World (De mundo), that in the 16th century was still read as an original work by the same Aristotle who had written on physics, biology, metaphysics, and other universal topics, was commented on by the scholar Simon Grynaeus. In his notes we clearly detect the effort, most likelynot out of confessional bias, to profit themost from Neoplatonic cosmology without eventually giving in to any identification of the creator with its creature. The deity’ s natural effectiveness and its epistemic validity do not deify nature.

At any rate, the relation between the principle of the world and the world as such is expressed, in Christian terms, as the presence of God, the Creator, in his creation. The theological framework cannot be content with asheer cause-effect relation, for that could result in akind of deist theology:God created theworld

(however perfect)and left it and its inhabitants to their own devices. Such theology can do without the enduring presence of adivinity. Rather, the government of the world hastobepermanentand overall;inother words, God’ spresence in the world needs to be negotiated – without lapsing into pantheism.1 Christianity topped this problem with the theology of Incarnation:God becomes man, at a particular point in history. GiordanoBruno,the critic of Christianity, and the Jesuit Francisco Suárez, representative of the Second Scholasticism,debated this issue at the same time. While Bruno relegates Incarnation to the realm of mythology and makes the omnipresence of God acosmological fact, Suárez highlights the semantic nature of theological propositions and, at the same time, the total freedomofGod relative to his creation. The awareness of the inadequacy of philosophical language about God and of the ultimatefreedomofthe creator keeps any temptation of pantheism at bay.

Panpsychism claims that everything is ensouled. This statementrequires an explanation as to the purpose of granting asoul to everything. The answer can be grasped from explaining the animation of anything:for Aristotle, the soul was just another word for things to be alive. Animation explained why and how some beings contain their own principles of movement and development. Aspecial case (discussed in De anima,book 3) was that type of soul that operated without depending on the body it inhabits, the intellect. In this framework, it is plausible that ensoulment offers the inner workings of animals (meaning:animated beings). But even more, things being endowed with somethinglike soul also makes them intelligible;for it is the human soul, as intellect, that connects with the animal world. Hence, the thought is not outrageous that everything understood, all understandable reality, is gifted with apsyche that relates somehow with human understanding – panpsychism.

The degrees and varieties of soul still need to be explored. One version of that was the theoryofanimal spirits, constitutive for ancient, Galenic, medicine. René Descartes endorsed that medical physiology and made the animal spirits –paradoxicalthings, seemingly both physical and spiritual in nature – conveyors between the inanimate world of experience and theintellectual soul that processes experience.

Epicureanism, as mentioned above, had arevival in the Renaissance when philosophers appreciated the fruitfulness of atomism for aphilosophy of physical reality that relies upona universal principle that is not transcendent but funda-

1 Examples of deist cosmology can be seen in Paul Richard Blum, Oracles of the Cosmos: Between Pantheism and Secularism (Basel:Schwabe, 2022). On the scholastic debates regarding the presence of God in the world see Paul Richard Blum, “The Location of God:A Medieval Question on Pantheism and Its Responses in Early Modernity,” Philosophical Readings – Online Journal of Philosophy – ISSN 2036–4989 15, no. 2(August 29, 2023), https://open.unive.it/ojs/ index.php/pr/article/view/193.

mentally internal and constitutive, namely atoms. Atomism was suspect of atheism, and even in the late 19th century it was disparaged on scientific grounds insofar as atomism appeared to deny continuity in matter (this is certainly not a theological objection, but it presupposes some universality in physical reality that atoms appeared to preclude).

2 With GiordanoBruno, atomism was instated as a serious alternative to Aristotelian physics, which had as its main features acontinuity between metaphysical principles (such as universality)and particular instantiation in empirical and finite reality. From acertain point of view, Bruno’ s monadology was arevival of Neoplatonism, as A. N. Whitehead diagnosed;in our context and in thereception of monadology, for instance in Leibniz, it was a universal theory of reality that had basic traits of pantheism.3

Concluding ourpreface, here anote on thecover illustration, which is taken from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, De incertitudine& vanitate omnium scientiarum &artium fiber, lectu plane jucundus &elegans. (Lugduni Batavorum:Abraham Commelinus &David Lopes de Haro, 1643), http://archive.org/ details/henricicorneliia00agri.

The book on the Uncertainty and vanity of all disciplines is illustrated with the representation of the order of the world by an angel, spirits, and musical harmony, as it is familiar to any Platonist and Christian reader:however, all this turns out to be empty bubbles.

2 Hence, Max Planck was a “reluctant atomist”:J.L.Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man:Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1986), p. 14.

3 The text of this book has been improved thanks to advice from Andrew Olesh, Jr (what remained awkward is due to the obstinacy of the topic or the authors).

Panpsychism and Renaissance Magic

Magic – an Elusive Concept

Magic – like the term deep-sea fauna, this word does not go far in defining or explaining what it comprises. Though originally the name of an ancient Iranian philosophical religion, the meaning of the term has been extended to comprise a conglomerateofolder as well as more recent beliefs and practices with acertain strangeness, amysterious character as their common denominator. In this current extended sense, it sums up aworld of diverseand heterogeneous phenomena, most of which are elusive, known but superficially, or totally ignored. Nor is the range and volume of the term stable;itvaries not only according to the dominant culture, but also with divergent interpretations within the same cultural environment, since it agglomerates pre-scientific traditional know-how with survivals (semi-forgotten beliefs and rites)from abandoned religions around acore of atavistic fears and hopes. Such versatility may be an explanation for the worldwide diffusion and temporal endurance of magic. It is also the reason why even the mostmeticulous of attempts at defining, systematizing, and catalogizing it, like the Malleus maleficarum or Cornelius Agrippa’sencyclopedic De occulta philosophia, may embracequite alarge segment of the overall complex, but still remain aselection that depends on the intentions of its authors, be it the condemnation or defense of magic. For, like life on the bottom of the sea, magical beliefs and acts tend to thrive below the surface:even in cultures where there is no general ban againstall occult practices, many of them are sanctioned as impious and socially threatening, and thence survive underground.

As to specific traits, we can scarcely say more than that magic is both a worldview and acollection of techniques which aim at extending the human range of action beyond amere mechanical use of tools. By understanding and directing forces other than one ’ sown, aperson endeavors to impose his or her will on processes in theoutward world and on fellow creatures, including the next man ’smind. While the forces employed may appear as more or lessalien or fairly anthropomorphic, they are not seen as mere objects of cognition and as automatic concatenations of events, but rather as sentient partners and/oropponents with their own preferences and volitions. Magic moves not so much in some enchanted world than in aliving universe that is ruled by sympathy and antipathy, hence human intercoursewith such aworld cannot separate reason

from emotion,nor theory from practice. We may also state that, however enlightened and self-assured modern or post-modern humanity may be, not all the windows overlooking that world are closed. Beneath the flow, rise, and fall of various high religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, including thecult of matter that calls itself atheism, there is aquite persistent undercurrent of low beliefs and credulities. Under God, or gods, there are thespirits. Under the strict order of nature’slaws there is the chaotic interplayofindividualphenomena. Under fate there is life.

Religion versus Magic

Two movements in one water in the sphere of belief and worldview there is both:divergence and antagonismonthe one hand, exchangeand mingling on the other. The reigning high religion with its social prevalence and its authoritative claim to distinguish between good and evil will always absorb and integrate part of themanyfold persisting popular beliefs while rejecting and outlawing others as malicious superstitions. In contrast to the divine sphere, there is no clear moral predominance in the world of heterogeneous spirits, whether they belong to the elements, thewoods,streams, or mountains, or to the dead:unless tamed by high religion and assigned their legitimate place and functionasangelicalor diabolical forces, they are ambiguous and unreliable in their beneficial or malignant intentions. For mortal man (i.e., the living human being), to oppose divine will is sin, but to compete with the much more limited power of the spirits may be regarded as supreme virtue. Whoever has found away to harness such spiritual forces and to make them instrumental to his or her will, amagician, awitch or awizard, is no longer the passive subject of their incalculable whims. In him or her, the living human spirit has won supremacy over anon-human (beitsub- or superhuman) dimension of the world.

More than polytheistic ones, dominant monotheistic religions tend to regard magic as their natural foe. If sovereignty over all spirits or intellects, human or otherwise, belongs to the one and only true God, ruler and author of the universe, any individual initiativeand intervention in the course of events is circumscribed. Just as in the material world nature is given its laws by divine will and wisdom, while every deviation fromsuch laws must be ordered and initiated by that same highest authority, humanity has to obeythe moral law, submitting the individualwill to universal divine providence, while exceptionsfromthe general rule can only be justified by immediate divine command. Awider range for human self-empowerment (beitmagicalorscientific)isonly acceptable, if ageneral divine commandment to all mankind to “subdue the earth and have dominion

over every living thing uponit”1 is interpreted in this sense, though even then the boundary that defines rebellion againstdivine providence remains hazy. Among monotheistic religions, Christianity has afurther problem with magic:Christ’ s dominionover the spirits, as described in theGospels, must testifyHis divine nature, not just his expertise as amagician, who “casteth out devils through the prince of the devils” . 2

Yet there are many reasons why the Christian faith could not definitively and effectively get rid of the entire complex of heterogenous, heathen, and prereligious atavistic beliefs and traditions that constitute amagic sub-culture. Some of these reasons are of apurely pragmatic character. Thus, divinatory astrology, for all the good argumentsSt. Augustine had brought up againstit,3 and despite its obviously polytheisticfoundations, was too inextricably fused with the indispensable science of astronomy to suffer amajor loss of authority. Not just agriculture and navigationdepended on astronomical observation, but also the Church calendar, determining the dates of the mobile holidays Easter and Pentecost. Hence, we get the somewhat paradox situation of certain dubious practices being defended as legitimate naturalmagic (versus the forbidden demonic magic)onthe groundthat theoccult qualitiesand connections exploited therein were due exclusively to the “natural” influence of the heavenly bodies – as if their movements were not themselves held to be caused by spiritual movers.4

1 Genesis 1:26 and 28.

2 Matthew 9:34 (see also Luke11:15–20 and Mark 3:22–26); the accusation of the Pharisees was taken up by Jewish pamphlets against Christianity, but also by Giordano Bruno, on whose comments on Christ as magician both in his written work and in conversations during his incarceration, see Elisabetta Scapparone, “‘Imposture’ e ‘meraviglie’.Note sul Cristo Mago di Bruno,” in Con l’ali de l’inteletto. Studi di filosofia edistoria della cultura,ed. Fabrizio Meroi (Firenze:Olschki, 2005). It was certainly atactical mistake when Giovanni Pico della Mirandola offered in his 900 Theses to show that Christ’smiracles could not have been produced by magic, “Conclusiones Magicae secundum opinionem propriam,” in Joannes Picus Mirandulanus, Opera Omnia vol. I(Torino:Bottega d’Erasmo, 1971) (reprint of the edition Basel 1572), p. 105.

3 St. Augustine, Confessions,Book IV, iii and Book VII, vi.

4 The common distinction between alegitimate natural magic (anart or science)and a sinful demonic magic (apostasy and devil worship)heads an extensive praise of magic in Giovanni Pico’ s Apologia to his 900 Theses (despite his later condemnation of divinatory astrology): “duplicem esse magiam significamus, quarum altera deamonum tota opera et authoritate constat, res medius fidius execranda et portentosa, altera nihil est aliud, cum bene exploratur, quam naturalis philosophiae absoluta consummatio.” (“Ioannis Pici Mirandulae et Concordiae comitis Apologia,” in Joannes Pico Mirandulanus. op. cit. note 2, p. 120); see also his “Conclusiones Magicae secundum opinionem propriam,” 1–5, ibid., p. 104. It is also implicit in Cornelius Agrippa’sdistinction between the various kinds of occult philosophy,though in the third book of De occulta philosophia he strives to show that contacts with spirits are the peak of magic and do not presuppose apact with the evil one;chapters 15 and 24 of book III deal with the

Another science or art with astrong affinity to magic was medicine. Indeed, if it was not officially included among the occult sciences, this was not due to any fundamentaldifference in its theoryorpractice, but merely to its beneficial aims and undisputed utility. And even this might not have savedmedicine from the theologians’ suspicions, had it not been afirmly established professional art that in late antiquity was practiced in the Roman Empire mostly by Jews and Christians. Nor did such immunity extend in thesame way to traditional folk medicine, to lay healers, herbalists, and midwives, who ran aserious risk of being denounced as witches.

Accordingly, like some medieval defenders before them (above all Albert the Great),the early modern advocates of magic arts aimed not merely at proving its compatibility with Christian faith, but also its scientific validity and authority. Their claim was that, far from indulging avain curiosity, the true magician fulfilled an important office in following and serving nature, even perfecting it by his art. Less open-minded than Albert the Great, who not only studied and commented on Aristotle’snatural philosophy, but also collected information from sources that would have been highly suspicious to his fellow Dominicans two centuries later,5 early modern theoreticians of the occult arts tried to give magic back to thespecialists, i. e., the philosopher priests. If vulgar practitioners, malicious charlatans, and superstitious old women had, by usurping the name, given this venerable wisdom abad reputation, restituted to its pristine purity it would agree much better with Christian theology than Aristotle’sphysics with its unmoved mover:magic was the genuine way of studying and demonstrating how divine providencewas active throughout the world, all the way down to the level of particular phenomena of the sensible world.

souls or angelic regents of the heavenly bodies. On the problematic distinction between natural and demonic and licit versus illicit magic see D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic:From Ficino to Campanella,first published 1958 (University Park, PA:Penn State Press, 2000), pp. 75–76;C.I.Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels (Leiden:Brill, 2003), pp. 45–46; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York:Oxford University Press 1971), pp. 151–153.

5 His stunningly modern approach to the study of nature earned Albert, along with the usual holy legends, some rather unholy ones, like that he spent several years disguised as a woman to learn the art of midwifery and then wrote abooklet De secretis mulierum. That very successful pseudo-Albertine work circulated in manuscript since the 14th century and was printed and reprinted from the 1470s on, both in Latin and in vernacular translations, along with other Secreta of plants and animals. Arichly illustrated German translation: Albertus Magnus, Daraus man alle Heimlichkeit des weiblichen Geschlechts erkennen kann … (Frankfurt:Walter Feyerabend, 1581), was reprinted in facsimile in Stuttgart (Steingrüben Verlag, 1966). The wide diffusion of numerous such pseudographs led to the coining of ars Albertina as asynonym for magic.

It is evident that the Neoplatonic hierarchy of divine emanations offered itself as the metaphysical foundation for such aproject. Astrology offered aserviceable (and, within certain limits, theologically legitimate)structurefor the mediation and executive force of the divine plan, with the stars conveying, channeling, and distributing God’screative power to the lower sphere. Hence, we are not surprised to find in Marsilio Ficino – with his philosophical, theological, medical, astrological, and musical expertise – afervent defender of thesavant (professional)magician. As he wrote in De triplici vita,a treatise on astrological medicine:

Why then are you so terribly afraid of the name Magus, to the Gospel an agreeable name that does not signify asorcerer or poisoner, but asage and priest?[…]Ifyou want to listen, he is, likewise, afield-cultivator, indeed, he is aworld-cultivator. Nor does he, for all that, adore the world – neither does the farmer adore the soil. Rather, as the farmer adapts the soil to the air for the sake of human nourishment, that priest, for the sake of human welfare, adapts what is lower in the world to what is higher. And as it is proper, he puts, like the eggs under the hen, the terrestrial things for breeding under the Heavens. This is what God Himself always does, and in doing so teaches and encourages [us] to do: in order that the lower should be generated, moved, and governed by the higher.6

And Giovanni Pico strikes asimilar note in his Apologia (concerningthe theses on magic according to his own view):

[Natural magic], having thoroughly explored the inmost of that consensus of the universe, which the Greeks name more meaningfully sympathy,and having perceived the mutual recognition of the natures, using the inborn [properties]ofeach thing and its own incantations, which are called the turges of the magicians, exposes to public [view], as if it [i.e.magic]were the artificer himself, those miracles that lie hidden in the recesses of the world, in the groin of nature, in God’streasuries and arcana. And like the farmer who marries the elms to the vine, thus the magician marries earth to heaven, i. e. the lower to the higher faculties and forces […].7

Biblical Testimonies and Attitudes Concerning Magic

But how could Renaissance philosophers hope to make magic acceptable to Christian theologians?Are not all its arts strictly and explicitly condemned in Sacred Scripture?

6 Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life (Liber de vita in tres libros divisus), bilingual edition, ed. and translated by C. V. Kaske and J. R. Clark (Binghamton:Medieval &Renaissance Texts &Studies, 1989), pp. 397–399 (translation modified).

7 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, op. cit. note 4, p. 121 (mytranslation); see also Marsilio Ficino, op. cit. note 6, p. 386, 51–56.

Actually, no. Here, like for many other issues, thedistinction between the legitimate and the illicit arts is amatter of interpretation. The second commandment certainly forbidssorcery through waxen dolls and the making and use of talismans. Another clearly and irrefutably condemned practice is necromancy (evocationofthe spirits of the dead).8 But King Saul’svisit to the soothsayer of Endor9 shows both theillegitimacy of meddling with the dead and the legitimacy of other techniques of predicting the future, like oracles and the interpretation of dreams, and, of course, prophecy – with the notorious problem of discerning which kind of spirit is speaking through the human mouth. There is furthermore the laconic commandment “Thou shalt not suffer awitch to live”10,which leaves us, however, entirely in the dark if it applies to magicians, what practices make someone awitch,and if more is intended than theuse of forbidden means for soothsaying.11 For in theOld Testament illicit magic is always associated with idolatry, and the evil that must be weeded out lies in the cult of foreign gods, rather than in specific acts and manifestations.The Old Testament view on foreign godsseems to be vacillating between two positions:theyare mere manmade idols, hence entirely powerless, or else they are evil spiritual beings endowed with acertain limited power on which asorcerer might draw. Hence, they must never be named, and their abodesmust be destroyed. In fact, these conditions make astrology also aforbidden art.12

When it comes to portents and miracles, the visible proceduresand effects shown by Old Testament saints and prophets do not vary greatly from those of gentile magicians. The only criteria the Old Testament offers for distinguishing between holy and unholy practices is that the emissary of the true God will (ultimately)prevail over the false foreign gods. In competing with Pharaoh’smagicians, Moses and Aaron are shown to be more efficient, but their Egyptian opponents also succeed for awhile in producing the same effects, though they are incapable of counteracting theplagues.13 Following the reports on Moses’ miracles, it is hard to quarrel with Giordano Bruno,who counts the Hebrew legislator among the great magicians of all times and countries, as one who had learned the

8 The translators of the King James Bible render that in the terminology of the time as “having afamiliar spirit”,while other translations speak about power over the spirit of adead person – if we think of alate modern medium’sspirit guide, we find aremarkable persistence of belief.

9 1Samuel 28:2–19.

10 Exodus 22:18.

11 On this see also Leviticus 19:31;20:6; 20:27.

12 For acondemnation see Deuteronomy 4:19.

13 Exodus 7:11–12 and 20–22;Exodus 8:6–7; for the first defeat of the Egyptian magicians see Exodus 8:16–18.

craft from the Egyptians.14 Indeed, like in the case of King Solomon, there was a certain insecurity of evaluation even against at least one of Moses’ achievements: the brazen snake he erected in the desert was later destroyed along with gentile idols.15

The Old Testament distinction between the holy and the unholy did certainly not follow any universal, naïve, or modern ethical notions, since the prophets were more inclined to curse than to bless, and could inflict gruesome sanctions for petty personalprovocations, like Elisha who killed amob of small children for laughing at his baldness.16 On the other hand, the same Elisha could also resuscitate adead boy by arather atavistic procedure contrary to all commandsofritual purity.17 Both events are presented on the same levelasmanifestations of God’ s power workingthrough his elect.

An ethic criterionfor distinguishing true prophets from the false is introduced in theNew Testament: “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit;but acorrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”18 The innovative character of this distinction is emphasized by its place at theend of the revolutionary Sermon on the Mount with its recurrent “Ye have heard – but Isay unto you ”.Yet, to apprise Christ’sattitude versus miraclesand portents is also not so easy: While he generally shows acertain reluctance to assert his powerinsuch away, preferring to convince by his word alone, he sends out his apostles endowed with “the power against unclean spirits, to cast them out.”19 As to foreign magicians, and specifically astrologers, we have the star over Bethlehem as atrue sign and the adoration of the infant Christ by the Magi (cautiously transformed by oral tradition into three holy Kingsfrom the Orient)asanessential argument for the universality of Christianity.

14 Giordano Bruno, “Spaccio della bestia trionfante,” in Dialoghi Italiani,ed. Giovanni Aquileccia (Firenze:Sansoni, 1958), p. 782 and 787, and Sigillus sigillorum, Giordano Bruno, Jordani Bruni Nolani opera latine conscripta,ed. Francesco Fiorentino and Felice Tocco, [Napoli/Firenze, 1879–1891] (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:Frommann-Holzboog, 1962), vol. II 2, pp. 180–181.

15 Numbers 21:8–9and 2Kings 18:4.

16 2Kings 2:23.

17 2Kings 5:32–35.

18 Matthew 7:16–17.

19 Matthew 10:1.

The Promise of aUniversal Formula

As theimmense difficulty of gleaninga clear verdict on magic fromthe Bible shows, thedistinction between commended and condemnedhuman interventions in the course of nature boils down to the crude tautology: everything is allowed that thecurrent ecclesiastical authorities approve. Hence, Renaissance Platonists like Ficino and humanist reform theologians like Cornelius Agrippa20 were not entirely naïve in their hopes to make the magical worldview attractive to mainstream Christian theology:their task was precisely to extend the concept of “natural” influence,oreven, more ambitiously, to prove the legitimacy of an intercourse with “good spirits” beyond the administration of sacraments by the Church. Yet, it was abet against great odds, since theproposal was actually to fight the danger of adouble truth inherent in thesymbiosis of Christianity with Aristotelianism by syncretism – for most theologians aclear case of expelling devils by Beelzebub. Thus, the victory of the opposite party that branded all magic as heresy (with an epidemy of witch hunts in its wake)does not come altogether as asurprise. As D. P. Walker puts it bluntly and adequately: “The Church has her own magic;there is no room for any other.”21

More than four centuries later we have left behindboth religious and enlightenment-secularist prejudices againstmagic, adopted adifferent concept of science, and are facing adifferent historical crisis. By now we should be ready to try an unbiased appraisal of what was then at stake:what were the promises and threats of themagic worldview for Western European culture in the Renaissance?

Threats and promises are omnipresent in atime of transition, its innovations and discoveries are paid for in doubts and losses. At the dusk of the Middle Ages acomparatively stabileand coherent worldview with its established hierarchies and authorities all in place proved unreliableand insufficient underthe impact of the unforeseen.22 Therewas acall for reform in close to all fields of life, in social order, politics, theology, and science. The reasons are well known:the shocking experiences of the Black Death and the fall of Constantinople jeopardized confidence in abenign Providence, and while the first shattered social stability, the latter contributed to the explosion of information through fugitive scholars and access to formerly unknown booksand manuscripts. The rivalry between two politicalideals,the Holy Roman Empireversus national states, was

20 On Agrippa as ahumanist theologian see Dario Gurashi, In deifico speculo (Paderborn: Brill Fink, 2021), pp. XLVI–LV.

21 Walker, op. cit. note 4, p. 36.

22 Still avaluable access to the medieval model of the universe and the intellectual satisfaction it provided is found in C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image [1964](Cambridge:University Press, 2012).

added to the unresolved rivalry between ecclesiastical and secular power; geographical discoveriesexpanded the earth, not just in space, but also in time, and the seeping through of Copernicus’ theorymade its immobility adebatable issue. An easier accessibility of booksand lesser sources of information through the printing press presented such discoveries, innovative ideas, doubts, and debates to an ever widening segment of society. Better than the staunch believers in an unchecked growth and unlimited progress we can appreciate what it must have felt like to live in the 15th or 16th century.

In this situation anew universal modelwith alargerrange for human initiative offered not only the hope of accommodating some new data, but also relief from afeeling of helplessness and general confusion. However chaotic it might appear to the ignorant, Renaissance Platonists assured, the world is marvelously ordered in all its parts, and humanity holds aprivileged position therein.

Within Renaissance magic we find various degrees of open syncretism, more cautious, as in Ficino, or more radical, as in Agrippa. We find agreater or lesser emphasis on man as themicrocosmos and on an inward, self-perfecting versus an outward, influential efficiency of rites. Since the purpose of this chapter is not to give adetailed description of all variants, but rather to show certain developments of aworldview based on the notion of universal life, and their implicit danger for theism, Iwill concentrate on three exemplary cases.

Marsilio Ficino’ sAstrological Magic

First of all, there is of course Marsilio Ficino,who by his translationsand commentaries not only introduced Plato and the Platonists into Western European (Latin)philosophical discourse but also triggered theHermeticmovement. The basic idea is that of auniversal religion, or acontinuity of sacred wisdomand divine truth that was passed on from Adam over achain of prophetic priests (Magi)ofdifferent nations up to the coming of Christ (oreven beyond that crucial point, according to Giordano Bruno and Early Modern Unitarians).23 This Adamic religion was passed down, among others, via Noah, Moses and theEgyptian Hermes Trismegistus (assumed to be close contemporaries), Zoroaster,King Solomon, and PythagorastoPlato and his school. Since Hermetism was based mainly on pseudographs, the various attempts of bringing such lists of great teachers (both legendary and historical)into achronological order were doomed from the outset, while they show the urgency of giving theenterprise aserious scientific aspect. But apart from some allegedly prophetic announcements of

23 The official view of the Church that there cannot be any true prophets after John the Baptist has not been followed in all consequences even by such visionaries who had not broken with Christianity, like Joachim of Fiore or Tommaso Campanella.

Christian dogma, like redemption by Christ and the Holy Trinity, the message of the prisca theologia is mostly magical and its vaunted piety includes theurgical practices.24

Ficino was cautious in describing his theory of magic, in order to avoid the (well-founded)suspicion of involvingpreternatural (angelic or demonic)powers. But since it was adopted, among others by the reckless Cornelius Agrippa, we may quote here the first passages from De occulta philosophia as amost concise characteristic of the cosmological model, which serves at the same time as the metaphysical foundation of magic, and assume its validity also for Ficino:

Since the world is threefold:elemental, celestial, and intellectual, and since each lower of them is governed by the higher and receives the influence of its powers, so that the Archetype and Supreme Artificer Himself pours the virtues of His omnipotence through angels, heavens, stars, elements, animals, plants, metals, and stones onto us, for whose service He has installed and created all those, the Magi believe it not to be irrational that we can ascend by the same steps through the single worlds to the Archetype world, the maker and cause of all Himself [ ]. And not only can we use the powers preexisting in the nobler things, but moreover attract other, new ones from above. Hence by medicine and natural philosophy they hunt for the elemental powers by various mixtures of natural things;and finally, according to the rules of astrologers and the teachings of the mathematicians, they conjoin them with celestial virtues through the rays and influences of the heavenly world. Indeed, they strengthen and confirm all that by the powers of diverse intelligences through the holy ceremonies of religions.25

We observe the importance of the number three, and we will see other structures correspond with the mundus tripartitus. Thereismind-soul, vital spirit, and body in thehuman being, but also, under the assumption of universal life,inthe heavenly bodies and in theentire physical world. Renaissance magicians used this structural feature of their cosmology to gain favor with the theologians by deducing it fromthe divine Trinity. Actually, it is the structure of every mediation between extremes, that is, the dialecticalovercoming of dualism. The main burden of connecting the beginning with the end, the first principle with the ultimate goal, etc., lies on the middle term, in our casethe spirit of life.

Referring to the third book of Ficino’ s De vita, 26 D. P. Walkerwrites:

24 Cf. Martin Žemla, “The Pagan Gods in Marsilio FicinoʼsChristian Platonism,” Philosophical Readings – Online Journal of Philosophy – ISSN 2036–4989 15, no. 2(August 29, 2023), https://open.unive.it/ojs/index.php/pr/article/view/187.For an overview cf. Wilhelm SchmidtBiggemann, Philosophia Perennis:Historical Outlines of Western Spirituality in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought (Dordrecht:Springer, 2004).

25 Cornelius Agrippa, “De occulta philosophia, ” book I, in Henrici Corneliui Agrippae aNettesheim, Opera [ ]induos tomos (Basel:Thomas Guarin, 1578), p. 1(my translation).

26 See Marsilio Ficino, op. cit. note 6, pp. 255–257;indeed, to the third chapter of book 3 –acoincidence?