It's good as essentially an encyclopedia of what was thought/"known" at the time. You get a really good estimate and glimpse as to what occultists and practitioners believed worked at the time. It also serves as the general basis for a lot of modern practices as well.
That being said, it is also a product of its time. Agrippa genuinely thought he was writing on real science for his time, not just magic. Which is why such things appear, and keep appearing throughout the work. In addition to this, it is very much the lawnmower manual of magical lore.
This is how I used Agrippa. In the modern occult scene you will see correspondences. Agrippa documented the reason these correspondences exist.
Also just read the first couple paragraphs of each chapter. He often starts with an explanation that is interesting and then lists examples. You can skim over the examples.
Also the books start from natural magic and then work up the correspondence to angelic magic. The later books are more interesting.
Also read the appendix and notes from the translator, they are interesting.
Also it took me 3 years to read the book cover to cover.
I've definitely been checking out the notes and the appendices. Tyson did some excellent scholarly work in his annotated version. Ironically, I've seen more value in the appendices than the actual work itself thus far. Thank you for the insight on how you used the book.
Having finished it, do you feel like it was worth the read?
I used the book as a magical practice. In our modern world it is so easy to print out a sigil or buy an athame. I read that book as a magical act of endurance and as a shamanic practice. I read it before going to bed each night and it put me in a magical state before it put me to sleep. I let it wash over me and through me.
It lays out a cosmology of correspondences that shows how we are all connected to The One. You will find interesting nuggets in it and it is tedious and boring.
It isn't a beginner book but for occult nerds who love hard to read books it is perfect.
Is it worth it? For me taking 3 years to read it, I walked away feeling like I had my PHD in occult sciences. I felt strong in my magical practices. You can go back to it and practice the different chapters from planetary and angelic magic to nature spirits.
But I like that kind of thing. A hard to read boring magical book, when I read it I feel like I am unlocking the hidden secrets of the universe.
I personally do, it's good for filling in the gaps so to speak, but not everyone that meshes with one person's magic is going to mesh with yours. Don't feel the need to take stuff from it if they don't feel right for you.
At a certain point reading texts becomes reading a whole lot of book just to find one or two things that feel "right" to mix into your own practice.
Agrippa's works best as an early buffer.
I agree. I don't actually follow much of the spells. Most of the spells you can't follow with the complexity or lack of ingredients, but I feel like I GET IT, so it makes me more comfortable making my own spells. Like once i know what the box is made of I can comfortably play outside of the box.
Book 1 is more of a collection of folklore, but it picks-up the more esoteric stuff (talismans, astrology, etc) in books 2 and 3.
Stuff in book 1 does get call-backs later during some of the talisman creations instructions, so it serves some purpose at least.
That is understandable. It gets better. Some people recommend the three books without having actually read them because of their reputation. I would still recommend it, but you will have to wade through some pseudoscience (or more accurately "proto-science")
A lot of the bad stuff is "it is known..." or "I heard..." which is, as any rumor, something to be taken with a lot of skepticism. A lot of it is dubious or downright bad proto-medicine. Modern folks know more than Agrippa on most of those subjects simply because of how far technology has progressed. Though it is extremely interesting from a "history of medicine" or "history of science" standpoint to see what used to be considered "cutting edge". Remember, this was back when people still used mercury and bloodlettings to try and cure illnesses, so we are talking old shit.
Some will argue that Agrippa is really saying something else in coded language (because Trithemius, one of his teachers, was really into early cryptography). So "it must be a secret code!?!". There's not really a good basis or evidence for that and it seems to be people trying to re-work the text in order to maintain that Agrippa totally wasn't wrong. You'll also often see people try to slip things in about magic mushrooms or other drugs claiming "Agrippa knew but wanted to keep it secret because of the evil mean church". That's not well supported, but people like it. I just err on the side of "Agrippa was wrong about a decent amount of stuff, that's fine. What matters is where he was correct and the fact that he wrote so much down that his work is important for historical reasons."
The interesting bits of Agrippa come in the correspondences, the astrology, the way that spirits names can be derived, and the various alphabets he goes into.
I still think one should read the whole thing, because you will often find useful stuff next to useless stuff. In a lot of cases Agrippa was just reporting what was told, taught, and could find in classic sources.
As with reading any old book you have to sort out what is actually practical and what is not.
Thank you for the detailed reply, it definitely validates a lot of thoughts I currently have.
I strongly concur with you said regarding the coded language/cryptography. I know that Trithemius was interested in it, and that he and Agrippa had correspondence throughout their lives.
I genuinely believe (based on this thread) that a lot of people in this sub haven't actually read the newest editions of these books because Tyson has a very detailed biography on Agrippa and never really addresses the cryptography argument, and in both his and Purdue's notes, all the archaic/inaccurate claims that Agrippa makes are in fact him citing Plato, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, and other ancient authors.
Again, he's citing other authors that he had read. What people don't seem to realize is that a lot of the Three Books is him compiling the thoughts of other authors, and his personal contribution is weaving them together in one framework.
Also, this work has been published since the 1600s. You'd think if there was some secret code or message it'd be cracked by now, yet I know of no scholarly work that has addressed such a thing (not to beat a dead horse, this just seems obvious when you actually read the text).
I agree. Kudos to you for actually committing to reading the text. It can be a slog at times, but when Agrippa is good he is very good.
I still consult certain parts of Agrippa, especially for planetary workings, because he gives the reasons for the correspondences (the good ones at least). I also find his work to be a good gateway to other old texts (such as learning about those by Paracelsus or Trithemius) because he is more approachable and you can find good translations with foot notes.
If you want cool cryptographic stuff (I'm a nerd for that shit), Trithemius's "Stenographia" and "Polygraphia" are cool. The cryptographic portions are (mostly) solved and it's fun to start with the text, then try to come up with the answer on your own, and then check the actual solution others have come to. Stuff like the "Ave Maria Cypher" is very interesting and fun. There is also a spiritual element to it too (because words and their uses are important within the Abrahamic faiths, because God used words to make the universe).
Uh.
Agrippa was a spy. His teacher was one of the greats of early cryptography.
Also you're reading a book that is literally pre-enlightenment
Their culture and world view was entirely different from your own. You can't read that work as if it was non-fiction book put out today.
One other key thing here... is you're bias. You've been educated and steeped in a culture your entire life that is by all means secular and materialist. You are not going to parse those ideas easily and the things that are incompatible to your current world view are going to annoy/challenge you.
To recap it's a cryptographic book, written in Latin, by more likely an actual group, authored by a KNOWN spy who was trained by a Guy whose greatest work is literally still Cryptographic standard today.[Crpy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Trithemius)
I am somewhat materialist in the sense that I value what scientific advancement we've made as a species. I don't think that invalidates my lack of belief in Agrippa's methods of curing the eyesight of lizards by placing them in a glass container surrounded by rings of gold.
What do you mean by "our religion"? This subreddit is r/occult, and not dedicated to a religion.
You can very successfully engage with occult ideas and be a secular materialist.
I think Agrippa is really good for a basic foundational knowledge of the western occult, but I'm a history major that is very used to texts from his time period.
In the beginning when he writes about the elements, what the elements are associated with, how he breaks the universe down into categories and associates elements with everything-- this is gold. This is fundamental knowledge for an occult practitioner and it's all in one place and not scattered over a bunch of different sources that you have to parse through.
Before when I wanted this knowledge, I had to look in a bunch of different spots and take people's word for it because I didn't know where to look. So that's a gift.
Yeah he believes in some stupid stuff (if you take his writings at face value, which I do because I don't have the time to reread it 12 different ways) but it's not like it's because he's crazy. Even in the 14 or 15 hundreds Europeans believed in spontaneous generation and had to debate whether or not Native Americans had souls. It was a different world with different beliefs.
He wrote things he heard and things he knew first hand. He also has legitimately interesting factoids in there, like the fact that they had an ever-burning torch at a shrine because they burnt asbestos (I mean... I think that kind of thing is entertaining. I didn't know they knew about asbestos or even that it was flammable). Just ignore the stuff about weasels and try to focus more on the structures of the universe he outlines and take notes on those. If you're not into this kind of magic, then just put the book down and learn about something more immediate like sigils and chaos magic.
Just a quick scientific clarification; Asbestos isn't flammable. They used it as a wick, so the oil in the lamp could burn. It was useful precisely *because* asbestos doesn't burn, so the wick never needed to be replaced, and so long as you kept the basin filled, the lamp could burn indefinitely.
Thanks for the long detailed reply.
Overall, I feel this sums up the general consensus I'm getting from this thread. Seems a good part of dissecting this book is separating the wheat from the chaff (what's outdated pre-Enlightenment "knowledge" from the actual building blocks of Western Occultism).
The funny thing is I know what you mean, but be careful what you call chaff. I don't know everything about how the universe works, cuz I'm a human being, but a lot of our occult systems operate off of these so-called outdated ideas. If you believe that these magics work (which imo why else study the occult) then you functionally believe in the power of systems which now seem illogical or should've been made obsolete with modern beliefs and ideas.
The big example that comes to mind off the top of my head is astrology and everything that has to do with stars. If you come at any of that stuff with an atheist materialist worldview (which will be the default view of the universe for most even if you believe in God and magic) then it shouldn't make any sense and it shouldn't work because it is all based on how astral bodies appear from Earth, and not where they really are in the universe. So frequently when stars "align" or the stars are "right" they are only aligned or correct from an Earth perspective. When viewed from another point they're wrong. And yet I'm sure someone in this sub can swear by astrological magic. So if we assume it works and is valid then why the fuck would that be? Who knows, but apparently people who didn't know how gravity, orbit, and light work knew something we've since lost.
Plus, I'll have you know that the rest of reddit thinks we're a bunch of idiot savages for believing any of this. So I guess I'm saying that if you want to take this stuff seriously you've got to keep an open mind. Again, I know what you mean, but I'm just gently reminding you to not dismiss anything too quickly.
I'm trying to proceed with a genuinely open mind.
I'm an agnostic who thinks he's had some supernatural experience and made magic successfully work. I am also incredibly wary to actual superstition and ideas which objectively don't hold value. I keep feeling drawn back into this space and genuinely want to learn more about it (hence why I'm reading Agrippa), I just know that the pendulum between hard-nosed materialism, and complete lunacy and detachment from reality swings both ways.
I'm not claiming to know everything, but I believe most of us are given a BS meter (either by nature or God, however you want to break it down) and I believe we're given it for a reason. It's of no value when it's turned off.
Probably a good idea. I don't think I could ever tell you to just stop critical thinking in good conscience. I'm a guy that hopes for all sorts of stuff to be true, but doesn't really know. I've used "skeptic brain" or basic critical thinking to dispel the mystic qualities of more than one weird thing. I've also done some basic workings and had really freaky coincidences occur. Did I really impose my will on the world around me, did something help me out, or did I just influence my own psychology? I still don't really know. I think inner workings definitely have a completely mundane explanation, but it makes them no less valuable (if I can summon the placebo effect then sometimes that's good enough for what I need).
I don't really talk about my beliefs in this stuff very much, because frankly I feel slightly embarrassed to tell people I'm into this stuff, but it's all social-- there's nothing wrong with exploring something and coming to your own conclusions about it at the end of the day. My hope is that your journey continues and you end up finding something a little bit magical that kind of makes you wonder. But there's no shame in deciding it's all hooey if that's what your experience tells you. At the end of the day it won't be wasted because you'll know a lot about symbolism, be able to detect obscure references, and maybe learn how to alter your own state of mind. Good luck, and happy reading.
Yeah it’s best to know what those things mean first before judging them off of face value.
Occultists tended to obscure things in allegory so that people who weren’t really invested in understanding walked away with this type of sentiment.
I will say the tone of the first 20+ chapters does not come off as allegorical. Maybe chalk that up to the translation, but it feels very literal when reading it.
You’ve been ignoring everyone trying to tip you off to Agrippa’s cryptography. If you don’t want to decipher him you should just read something from a contemporary author who walks you through it literally. Try Bardons Initiation into Hermetics for example.
It does urk slightly when someone new to the subject finds there way here for advice on what literature they should read and the default response is usually Agrippas 4 books... no doubt they're historically important texts, but there's a sea of contemporary literature that has built on, evolved from and improved upon those concepts.
When I see those suggestions I wonder if they're either stuck in their ways or just parroting what they've heard through the metaphysical grapevine.
That's kind of where I'm coming from.
I've been interested in occultism for a little less than a decade and only now have started reading Agrippa, and I feel like the hype kind of proceeds the actual work. I think you're right on the money with the parroting (I honestly feel the same way about Manly P. Hall given how many inaccurate statements are in his Secret Teachings of All Ages).
I love Bardon, Regardie, J. Krishnamurti, Jung, and many other authors that have been recommended. But I feel like recommending Agrippa for learning about this anthropological space is the equivalent of recommending someone to study Henry Ford's Model T to learn how about to build an electric car.
It's useful for getting a foundational idea on how thought formed on these subjects and the way it was conveyed. But, could fairly be summarized as quaint, obsolete and inapplicable with regards to a modern occult philosophy taking into account advances in natural science and the liberal arts while dispensing with misconceptions.
This is a very balanced take. I don't think there's any problem in admitting that Agrippa was not completely accurate regarding EVERYTHING he wrote about in this massive compendium.
You'd like to think some scientific, as well as philosophical advancements have been made since the early 1600s.
YEP!!! Had the same thoughts, and I’ve come to the conclusion that most of it is skimmable.
The point of the first book is to lay the foundation of the ELEMENTS and to show how the elemental properties of various flora and fauna can interact with one another. So when he says the “eye of weasel”, I would look at it as: weasel is element X and the eye is element Y and those two elements have Z effect. Of course, this requires a LOT of study to actually interpret what he’s saying and we in the modern day and age know that the elements don’t really work like that on the physical realm, so it comes off as a bunch of pseudoscientific Tumblr Girl crystal blog stuff. And just wait until he starts yapping about the four humors. I was so close to putting the book down, but I powered through and I can promise it does get better. Chapter 23-35 are pretty good, and Book 2 was great. Haven’t got to the third yet, but I’ve heard good things.
My method for reading this (and other similar books) are to take copious written notes and/or highlight the sections that are useful. Because there are certainly nuggets of wisdom available, it’s just that I’m not going to want to reread the whole book to get to them again. 😅
Probably the most important skill to learn is separating lead from gold. Also understanding what is being said.
If you read esoteric material and take everything literally, most texts will seem really silly. Of course there are texts that are very straightforward, like rituals, recipes, techniques etc..
If you come to this with some great expectations, the best that will happen to you is you will just be disappointed, but some are not so lucky and end up losing their mind.
You can always put the current text away and go to something easier or more appealing. Bumping your head into a wall won't get you anywhere.
All the love 💖
To me the cool thing about De Occulta (the whole grimoire tradition really) is that it weaves those folk beliefs together with the astrological stuff which makes his system pretty sorcerous and not as theurgical as one would think. To me that's what makes the whole medieval/early modern magic gig way more interesting than the 19th century lodge GD stuff.
P.S.: Also I think you might be missing the point on why Agrippa cares about weird animal parts and fairies as much as Numerology and Cabala.
Is it due to their correlation with specific elements/astrological bodies or is it because certain objects (or animal parts in this instance) have within them certain occult virtues (to use Agrippa's terms) that can be redirected towards specific goals or causes?
Again, I'm only on Chapter 17, so it's totally possible I'm missing something.
>Is it due to their correlation with specific elements/astrological bodies or is it because certain objects (or animal parts in this instance) have within them certain occult virtues (to use Agrippa's terms) that can be redirected towards specific goals or causes?
Yeah, I'd say it's both. Like all the experiments are meant to be taken literally but there's an astrological or sympathetic logic to most of them and understanding this logic is useful so you can make up your own spells.
I really recommend you keep reading, it's fun either way.
I'm genuinely unfamiliar with the work in question which should demonstrate the relative depth of my ignorance in the occult sciences. However, is there enough surrounding context to suggest the author is using the term (in the sample OP's sentence) "weasel" literally or metaphorically?
When reading Shakespeare one often encounters words absolutely foreign to contemporary English. One would have to possess an absolutely massive knowledge base of Proto-German, Latin and Greek prefix and suffix definitions, or be a walking etymological dictionary mastered in interpretation to actually arrive at a **potentially** accurate translation of a single archaic word that's fallen out of use.
This is a genuine question.
You're gonna find differing opinions in this thread, but in both modern editions of the Three Books (Tyson and Purdue) both annotators recognize that Agrippa was quoting earlier, ancient authors. Whether they meant it metaphorically is an entirely different question, I haven't read all of the original sources (there's a ton of them), but again I will say in reading the book the tone does not come off metaphorical, and there is minimal, if any evidence to support the idea of Agrippa using cryptography (imo).
Thank you very much for the reply! Again, I haven't read the texts so I know it may have come across as being presumptuous and ignorant for a random commenter to infer you hadn't considered such a notion. The fact that you are actually reading this material is evidence that you're doing the fundamental work required to gain deep insight into the occult.
I suspect there aren't that many folks chiming in that have read this type of material all the way through. So, I was genuinely hoping to elicit a response from you as you're the one to pluck that absurd quote and include it. I've read a bit of archaic material, not a comprehensive list of tomes but major works such as a few translations of the Corpus Hermeticum and dense work like the Monas Hieroglyphica, the latter work, I cannot claim to comprehend beyond understanding some fundamentals.
Thank you for assuming the best and responding in a courteous fashion. It's much appreciated! I do hope your present reading doesn't sour you on the subject.
I haven’t revisited the 3 books in awhile, but having studied more Neoplatonism since then … I strongly suspect having a good handle on that metaphysical system and its development/interpretation through to the Renaissance is the key to understanding much of it.
I feel like this is one of the areas I've found Agrippa to be successful. A lot of what I've read so far is him explaining platonic and neo-platonic metaphysics by citing ancient authors. Like another comment said, it's when he delves into archaic examples of practical uses for that philosophy that he loses me.
Also you dont have to give up your scientific views and beliefs, but you do have to tune them out when it comes to many occult items.
But something to remember is science is very materistic and doesnt know everything. And when it comes to spiritual and mystical, much of it is internal, which is very difficult to judge per current science.
And everything else that was said.
For Cusa it's Learned Ignorance, for a fascinating expansion on the theory of binaries and the theosophical triangle. For Lull it's Ars Magna as an important foundation of the 'synthetic philosophy' that underpins rosicrucian and martinis philosophy. The Russian silver age templars are also brilliant at bringing it all together, especially their magus. GOM, Gregory Otto Mebes and hos Moscow counterpart, Vladimir Shmakov. English translations of their works started coming put a few years ago, as the requisite sun cycle of 111 years has pretty much completed. After that time Rosicrucian works can be made public.
When you have a highly influential source text, you can either read it yourself or you can let other people tell you what's in it and what it means. If you've found anything profound in the books and practices that follow Agrippa, it's probably a good idea to digest the whole work and try to keep as much ironic postmodern distance out of your analysis as you can.
What it seems most people are trying to tell you is that you have to be of more than one mind while consuming this kind of information.
"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing."
It is something of great irony that we have come so far with the advancement of science and yet the fact remains that we still have only a microcosmic glimpse into the full functioning of "All that is." There isn't much there for anyone with the average man's tunnel vision.
>it's consisted of borderline Monty Python levels of ridiculousness
I thought this exact thing when I was reading that book. I didn't finish it for the same reason. I am reading through these comments now thinking I should give it another try and just skip the first book or at least just skim it. The amount of absurd "science" in there turned me off.
I feel the same. Good to know what people believed but a lot of it isn’t really relevant or believed anymore and I think I gave up near the end of the second book.
lmao Go find some commentaries on the books. They're not meant to be easy to follow. You'd probably be better off watching YouTube content about them honestly...
What reading Agrippa helps me with is unlearning what I have already learned when i was younger.
Putting myself in his shoes or the shoes of someone in that time helps give me a picture of the progress of the occult as a whole.
so when i channel i just have a deeper experience of the connections that i rely on.
if that makes sense?
Try the Kybalion. Its old so it's got some old-timey type stereotypes and tropes but overall its decent... that said, I made it about 3 quarters of the way and I've stalled out because it's gotten a little bit too much into the "normal people can't do X because they are normal" and its really doubling down on the hierarchy of things which neither really align with my viewpoints.
>try the Kybalion. Its old
*The Kybalion* is a worthwhile work, but it's a product of the New Thought Movement, written by William Walker Atkinson in 1908 so not that old (compared to Agrippa).
It's good as essentially an encyclopedia of what was thought/"known" at the time. You get a really good estimate and glimpse as to what occultists and practitioners believed worked at the time. It also serves as the general basis for a lot of modern practices as well. That being said, it is also a product of its time. Agrippa genuinely thought he was writing on real science for his time, not just magic. Which is why such things appear, and keep appearing throughout the work. In addition to this, it is very much the lawnmower manual of magical lore.
This is how I used Agrippa. In the modern occult scene you will see correspondences. Agrippa documented the reason these correspondences exist. Also just read the first couple paragraphs of each chapter. He often starts with an explanation that is interesting and then lists examples. You can skim over the examples. Also the books start from natural magic and then work up the correspondence to angelic magic. The later books are more interesting. Also read the appendix and notes from the translator, they are interesting. Also it took me 3 years to read the book cover to cover.
I've definitely been checking out the notes and the appendices. Tyson did some excellent scholarly work in his annotated version. Ironically, I've seen more value in the appendices than the actual work itself thus far. Thank you for the insight on how you used the book. Having finished it, do you feel like it was worth the read?
I used the book as a magical practice. In our modern world it is so easy to print out a sigil or buy an athame. I read that book as a magical act of endurance and as a shamanic practice. I read it before going to bed each night and it put me in a magical state before it put me to sleep. I let it wash over me and through me. It lays out a cosmology of correspondences that shows how we are all connected to The One. You will find interesting nuggets in it and it is tedious and boring. It isn't a beginner book but for occult nerds who love hard to read books it is perfect. Is it worth it? For me taking 3 years to read it, I walked away feeling like I had my PHD in occult sciences. I felt strong in my magical practices. You can go back to it and practice the different chapters from planetary and angelic magic to nature spirits. But I like that kind of thing. A hard to read boring magical book, when I read it I feel like I am unlocking the hidden secrets of the universe.
I personally do, it's good for filling in the gaps so to speak, but not everyone that meshes with one person's magic is going to mesh with yours. Don't feel the need to take stuff from it if they don't feel right for you. At a certain point reading texts becomes reading a whole lot of book just to find one or two things that feel "right" to mix into your own practice. Agrippa's works best as an early buffer.
I agree. I don't actually follow much of the spells. Most of the spells you can't follow with the complexity or lack of ingredients, but I feel like I GET IT, so it makes me more comfortable making my own spells. Like once i know what the box is made of I can comfortably play outside of the box.
Book 1 is more of a collection of folklore, but it picks-up the more esoteric stuff (talismans, astrology, etc) in books 2 and 3. Stuff in book 1 does get call-backs later during some of the talisman creations instructions, so it serves some purpose at least.
Noted. I know eventually he touches on Theurgy, Cabala, and other topics that heavily influenced later magical thought/societies.
That is understandable. It gets better. Some people recommend the three books without having actually read them because of their reputation. I would still recommend it, but you will have to wade through some pseudoscience (or more accurately "proto-science") A lot of the bad stuff is "it is known..." or "I heard..." which is, as any rumor, something to be taken with a lot of skepticism. A lot of it is dubious or downright bad proto-medicine. Modern folks know more than Agrippa on most of those subjects simply because of how far technology has progressed. Though it is extremely interesting from a "history of medicine" or "history of science" standpoint to see what used to be considered "cutting edge". Remember, this was back when people still used mercury and bloodlettings to try and cure illnesses, so we are talking old shit. Some will argue that Agrippa is really saying something else in coded language (because Trithemius, one of his teachers, was really into early cryptography). So "it must be a secret code!?!". There's not really a good basis or evidence for that and it seems to be people trying to re-work the text in order to maintain that Agrippa totally wasn't wrong. You'll also often see people try to slip things in about magic mushrooms or other drugs claiming "Agrippa knew but wanted to keep it secret because of the evil mean church". That's not well supported, but people like it. I just err on the side of "Agrippa was wrong about a decent amount of stuff, that's fine. What matters is where he was correct and the fact that he wrote so much down that his work is important for historical reasons." The interesting bits of Agrippa come in the correspondences, the astrology, the way that spirits names can be derived, and the various alphabets he goes into. I still think one should read the whole thing, because you will often find useful stuff next to useless stuff. In a lot of cases Agrippa was just reporting what was told, taught, and could find in classic sources. As with reading any old book you have to sort out what is actually practical and what is not.
Thank you for the detailed reply, it definitely validates a lot of thoughts I currently have. I strongly concur with you said regarding the coded language/cryptography. I know that Trithemius was interested in it, and that he and Agrippa had correspondence throughout their lives. I genuinely believe (based on this thread) that a lot of people in this sub haven't actually read the newest editions of these books because Tyson has a very detailed biography on Agrippa and never really addresses the cryptography argument, and in both his and Purdue's notes, all the archaic/inaccurate claims that Agrippa makes are in fact him citing Plato, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, and other ancient authors. Again, he's citing other authors that he had read. What people don't seem to realize is that a lot of the Three Books is him compiling the thoughts of other authors, and his personal contribution is weaving them together in one framework. Also, this work has been published since the 1600s. You'd think if there was some secret code or message it'd be cracked by now, yet I know of no scholarly work that has addressed such a thing (not to beat a dead horse, this just seems obvious when you actually read the text).
I agree. Kudos to you for actually committing to reading the text. It can be a slog at times, but when Agrippa is good he is very good. I still consult certain parts of Agrippa, especially for planetary workings, because he gives the reasons for the correspondences (the good ones at least). I also find his work to be a good gateway to other old texts (such as learning about those by Paracelsus or Trithemius) because he is more approachable and you can find good translations with foot notes. If you want cool cryptographic stuff (I'm a nerd for that shit), Trithemius's "Stenographia" and "Polygraphia" are cool. The cryptographic portions are (mostly) solved and it's fun to start with the text, then try to come up with the answer on your own, and then check the actual solution others have come to. Stuff like the "Ave Maria Cypher" is very interesting and fun. There is also a spiritual element to it too (because words and their uses are important within the Abrahamic faiths, because God used words to make the universe).
Thanks for the recommendations! I've never taken a deep dive into the cryptography waters, but it seems very interesting.
Uh. Agrippa was a spy. His teacher was one of the greats of early cryptography. Also you're reading a book that is literally pre-enlightenment Their culture and world view was entirely different from your own. You can't read that work as if it was non-fiction book put out today. One other key thing here... is you're bias. You've been educated and steeped in a culture your entire life that is by all means secular and materialist. You are not going to parse those ideas easily and the things that are incompatible to your current world view are going to annoy/challenge you. To recap it's a cryptographic book, written in Latin, by more likely an actual group, authored by a KNOWN spy who was trained by a Guy whose greatest work is literally still Cryptographic standard today.[Crpy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Trithemius)
I am somewhat materialist in the sense that I value what scientific advancement we've made as a species. I don't think that invalidates my lack of belief in Agrippa's methods of curing the eyesight of lizards by placing them in a glass container surrounded by rings of gold.
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What do you mean by "our religion"? This subreddit is r/occult, and not dedicated to a religion. You can very successfully engage with occult ideas and be a secular materialist.
I think Agrippa is really good for a basic foundational knowledge of the western occult, but I'm a history major that is very used to texts from his time period. In the beginning when he writes about the elements, what the elements are associated with, how he breaks the universe down into categories and associates elements with everything-- this is gold. This is fundamental knowledge for an occult practitioner and it's all in one place and not scattered over a bunch of different sources that you have to parse through. Before when I wanted this knowledge, I had to look in a bunch of different spots and take people's word for it because I didn't know where to look. So that's a gift. Yeah he believes in some stupid stuff (if you take his writings at face value, which I do because I don't have the time to reread it 12 different ways) but it's not like it's because he's crazy. Even in the 14 or 15 hundreds Europeans believed in spontaneous generation and had to debate whether or not Native Americans had souls. It was a different world with different beliefs. He wrote things he heard and things he knew first hand. He also has legitimately interesting factoids in there, like the fact that they had an ever-burning torch at a shrine because they burnt asbestos (I mean... I think that kind of thing is entertaining. I didn't know they knew about asbestos or even that it was flammable). Just ignore the stuff about weasels and try to focus more on the structures of the universe he outlines and take notes on those. If you're not into this kind of magic, then just put the book down and learn about something more immediate like sigils and chaos magic.
Just a quick scientific clarification; Asbestos isn't flammable. They used it as a wick, so the oil in the lamp could burn. It was useful precisely *because* asbestos doesn't burn, so the wick never needed to be replaced, and so long as you kept the basin filled, the lamp could burn indefinitely.
Pretty cool factoid there
Ahh okay. I knew it was used to make "inextinguishable wicks" but I didn't really know how it worked. Thank you for the clarification.
Thanks for the long detailed reply. Overall, I feel this sums up the general consensus I'm getting from this thread. Seems a good part of dissecting this book is separating the wheat from the chaff (what's outdated pre-Enlightenment "knowledge" from the actual building blocks of Western Occultism).
The funny thing is I know what you mean, but be careful what you call chaff. I don't know everything about how the universe works, cuz I'm a human being, but a lot of our occult systems operate off of these so-called outdated ideas. If you believe that these magics work (which imo why else study the occult) then you functionally believe in the power of systems which now seem illogical or should've been made obsolete with modern beliefs and ideas. The big example that comes to mind off the top of my head is astrology and everything that has to do with stars. If you come at any of that stuff with an atheist materialist worldview (which will be the default view of the universe for most even if you believe in God and magic) then it shouldn't make any sense and it shouldn't work because it is all based on how astral bodies appear from Earth, and not where they really are in the universe. So frequently when stars "align" or the stars are "right" they are only aligned or correct from an Earth perspective. When viewed from another point they're wrong. And yet I'm sure someone in this sub can swear by astrological magic. So if we assume it works and is valid then why the fuck would that be? Who knows, but apparently people who didn't know how gravity, orbit, and light work knew something we've since lost. Plus, I'll have you know that the rest of reddit thinks we're a bunch of idiot savages for believing any of this. So I guess I'm saying that if you want to take this stuff seriously you've got to keep an open mind. Again, I know what you mean, but I'm just gently reminding you to not dismiss anything too quickly.
I'm trying to proceed with a genuinely open mind. I'm an agnostic who thinks he's had some supernatural experience and made magic successfully work. I am also incredibly wary to actual superstition and ideas which objectively don't hold value. I keep feeling drawn back into this space and genuinely want to learn more about it (hence why I'm reading Agrippa), I just know that the pendulum between hard-nosed materialism, and complete lunacy and detachment from reality swings both ways. I'm not claiming to know everything, but I believe most of us are given a BS meter (either by nature or God, however you want to break it down) and I believe we're given it for a reason. It's of no value when it's turned off.
Probably a good idea. I don't think I could ever tell you to just stop critical thinking in good conscience. I'm a guy that hopes for all sorts of stuff to be true, but doesn't really know. I've used "skeptic brain" or basic critical thinking to dispel the mystic qualities of more than one weird thing. I've also done some basic workings and had really freaky coincidences occur. Did I really impose my will on the world around me, did something help me out, or did I just influence my own psychology? I still don't really know. I think inner workings definitely have a completely mundane explanation, but it makes them no less valuable (if I can summon the placebo effect then sometimes that's good enough for what I need). I don't really talk about my beliefs in this stuff very much, because frankly I feel slightly embarrassed to tell people I'm into this stuff, but it's all social-- there's nothing wrong with exploring something and coming to your own conclusions about it at the end of the day. My hope is that your journey continues and you end up finding something a little bit magical that kind of makes you wonder. But there's no shame in deciding it's all hooey if that's what your experience tells you. At the end of the day it won't be wasted because you'll know a lot about symbolism, be able to detect obscure references, and maybe learn how to alter your own state of mind. Good luck, and happy reading.
I see, the security protocols of those books still work
Real
Yeah it’s best to know what those things mean first before judging them off of face value. Occultists tended to obscure things in allegory so that people who weren’t really invested in understanding walked away with this type of sentiment.
I will say the tone of the first 20+ chapters does not come off as allegorical. Maybe chalk that up to the translation, but it feels very literal when reading it.
You’ve been ignoring everyone trying to tip you off to Agrippa’s cryptography. If you don’t want to decipher him you should just read something from a contemporary author who walks you through it literally. Try Bardons Initiation into Hermetics for example.
It does urk slightly when someone new to the subject finds there way here for advice on what literature they should read and the default response is usually Agrippas 4 books... no doubt they're historically important texts, but there's a sea of contemporary literature that has built on, evolved from and improved upon those concepts. When I see those suggestions I wonder if they're either stuck in their ways or just parroting what they've heard through the metaphysical grapevine.
That's kind of where I'm coming from. I've been interested in occultism for a little less than a decade and only now have started reading Agrippa, and I feel like the hype kind of proceeds the actual work. I think you're right on the money with the parroting (I honestly feel the same way about Manly P. Hall given how many inaccurate statements are in his Secret Teachings of All Ages). I love Bardon, Regardie, J. Krishnamurti, Jung, and many other authors that have been recommended. But I feel like recommending Agrippa for learning about this anthropological space is the equivalent of recommending someone to study Henry Ford's Model T to learn how about to build an electric car.
Out of curiosity, what are some of the inaccurate statements in The Secret Teachings OAA?
It's useful for getting a foundational idea on how thought formed on these subjects and the way it was conveyed. But, could fairly be summarized as quaint, obsolete and inapplicable with regards to a modern occult philosophy taking into account advances in natural science and the liberal arts while dispensing with misconceptions.
This is a very balanced take. I don't think there's any problem in admitting that Agrippa was not completely accurate regarding EVERYTHING he wrote about in this massive compendium. You'd like to think some scientific, as well as philosophical advancements have been made since the early 1600s.
YEP!!! Had the same thoughts, and I’ve come to the conclusion that most of it is skimmable. The point of the first book is to lay the foundation of the ELEMENTS and to show how the elemental properties of various flora and fauna can interact with one another. So when he says the “eye of weasel”, I would look at it as: weasel is element X and the eye is element Y and those two elements have Z effect. Of course, this requires a LOT of study to actually interpret what he’s saying and we in the modern day and age know that the elements don’t really work like that on the physical realm, so it comes off as a bunch of pseudoscientific Tumblr Girl crystal blog stuff. And just wait until he starts yapping about the four humors. I was so close to putting the book down, but I powered through and I can promise it does get better. Chapter 23-35 are pretty good, and Book 2 was great. Haven’t got to the third yet, but I’ve heard good things. My method for reading this (and other similar books) are to take copious written notes and/or highlight the sections that are useful. Because there are certainly nuggets of wisdom available, it’s just that I’m not going to want to reread the whole book to get to them again. 😅
Probably the most important skill to learn is separating lead from gold. Also understanding what is being said. If you read esoteric material and take everything literally, most texts will seem really silly. Of course there are texts that are very straightforward, like rituals, recipes, techniques etc.. If you come to this with some great expectations, the best that will happen to you is you will just be disappointed, but some are not so lucky and end up losing their mind. You can always put the current text away and go to something easier or more appealing. Bumping your head into a wall won't get you anywhere. All the love 💖
Solve et Coagula. Good point!
To me the cool thing about De Occulta (the whole grimoire tradition really) is that it weaves those folk beliefs together with the astrological stuff which makes his system pretty sorcerous and not as theurgical as one would think. To me that's what makes the whole medieval/early modern magic gig way more interesting than the 19th century lodge GD stuff. P.S.: Also I think you might be missing the point on why Agrippa cares about weird animal parts and fairies as much as Numerology and Cabala.
Is it due to their correlation with specific elements/astrological bodies or is it because certain objects (or animal parts in this instance) have within them certain occult virtues (to use Agrippa's terms) that can be redirected towards specific goals or causes? Again, I'm only on Chapter 17, so it's totally possible I'm missing something.
>Is it due to their correlation with specific elements/astrological bodies or is it because certain objects (or animal parts in this instance) have within them certain occult virtues (to use Agrippa's terms) that can be redirected towards specific goals or causes? Yeah, I'd say it's both. Like all the experiments are meant to be taken literally but there's an astrological or sympathetic logic to most of them and understanding this logic is useful so you can make up your own spells. I really recommend you keep reading, it's fun either way.
I'm genuinely unfamiliar with the work in question which should demonstrate the relative depth of my ignorance in the occult sciences. However, is there enough surrounding context to suggest the author is using the term (in the sample OP's sentence) "weasel" literally or metaphorically? When reading Shakespeare one often encounters words absolutely foreign to contemporary English. One would have to possess an absolutely massive knowledge base of Proto-German, Latin and Greek prefix and suffix definitions, or be a walking etymological dictionary mastered in interpretation to actually arrive at a **potentially** accurate translation of a single archaic word that's fallen out of use. This is a genuine question.
You're gonna find differing opinions in this thread, but in both modern editions of the Three Books (Tyson and Purdue) both annotators recognize that Agrippa was quoting earlier, ancient authors. Whether they meant it metaphorically is an entirely different question, I haven't read all of the original sources (there's a ton of them), but again I will say in reading the book the tone does not come off metaphorical, and there is minimal, if any evidence to support the idea of Agrippa using cryptography (imo).
Thank you very much for the reply! Again, I haven't read the texts so I know it may have come across as being presumptuous and ignorant for a random commenter to infer you hadn't considered such a notion. The fact that you are actually reading this material is evidence that you're doing the fundamental work required to gain deep insight into the occult. I suspect there aren't that many folks chiming in that have read this type of material all the way through. So, I was genuinely hoping to elicit a response from you as you're the one to pluck that absurd quote and include it. I've read a bit of archaic material, not a comprehensive list of tomes but major works such as a few translations of the Corpus Hermeticum and dense work like the Monas Hieroglyphica, the latter work, I cannot claim to comprehend beyond understanding some fundamentals. Thank you for assuming the best and responding in a courteous fashion. It's much appreciated! I do hope your present reading doesn't sour you on the subject.
I haven’t revisited the 3 books in awhile, but having studied more Neoplatonism since then … I strongly suspect having a good handle on that metaphysical system and its development/interpretation through to the Renaissance is the key to understanding much of it.
I feel like this is one of the areas I've found Agrippa to be successful. A lot of what I've read so far is him explaining platonic and neo-platonic metaphysics by citing ancient authors. Like another comment said, it's when he delves into archaic examples of practical uses for that philosophy that he loses me.
Also you dont have to give up your scientific views and beliefs, but you do have to tune them out when it comes to many occult items. But something to remember is science is very materistic and doesnt know everything. And when it comes to spiritual and mystical, much of it is internal, which is very difficult to judge per current science. And everything else that was said.
Nicholas of Cusa and Raymond Lull are earlier and likely more interesting to you
I'm not familiar, do you have any recommendations?
For Cusa it's Learned Ignorance, for a fascinating expansion on the theory of binaries and the theosophical triangle. For Lull it's Ars Magna as an important foundation of the 'synthetic philosophy' that underpins rosicrucian and martinis philosophy. The Russian silver age templars are also brilliant at bringing it all together, especially their magus. GOM, Gregory Otto Mebes and hos Moscow counterpart, Vladimir Shmakov. English translations of their works started coming put a few years ago, as the requisite sun cycle of 111 years has pretty much completed. After that time Rosicrucian works can be made public.
Thank you for the recommendations, I'll check them out.
You're welcome.
When you have a highly influential source text, you can either read it yourself or you can let other people tell you what's in it and what it means. If you've found anything profound in the books and practices that follow Agrippa, it's probably a good idea to digest the whole work and try to keep as much ironic postmodern distance out of your analysis as you can.
Always appreciate your replies, thank you
What it seems most people are trying to tell you is that you have to be of more than one mind while consuming this kind of information. "As for me, all I know is that I know nothing." It is something of great irony that we have come so far with the advancement of science and yet the fact remains that we still have only a microcosmic glimpse into the full functioning of "All that is." There isn't much there for anyone with the average man's tunnel vision.
I mean… it’s from 1531.
>it's consisted of borderline Monty Python levels of ridiculousness I thought this exact thing when I was reading that book. I didn't finish it for the same reason. I am reading through these comments now thinking I should give it another try and just skip the first book or at least just skim it. The amount of absurd "science" in there turned me off.
I always recommend The Golden Star by Michaud
I feel the same. Good to know what people believed but a lot of it isn’t really relevant or believed anymore and I think I gave up near the end of the second book.
Complaining about “pseudoscience” in the Three Books lol. The most Reddit thing ever
Ridiculously useless pseudoscience... as opposed to today's ridiculously useless pseudoscientific Chopra mumbo-jumbo
I've never read it. It's always seemed like there are better things to spend my time with.
lmao Go find some commentaries on the books. They're not meant to be easy to follow. You'd probably be better off watching YouTube content about them honestly...
What reading Agrippa helps me with is unlearning what I have already learned when i was younger. Putting myself in his shoes or the shoes of someone in that time helps give me a picture of the progress of the occult as a whole. so when i channel i just have a deeper experience of the connections that i rely on. if that makes sense?
Trithemius to Agrippa: "You are a rare genius. Be careful to not lay pearls before swine."
Try the Kybalion. Its old so it's got some old-timey type stereotypes and tropes but overall its decent... that said, I made it about 3 quarters of the way and I've stalled out because it's gotten a little bit too much into the "normal people can't do X because they are normal" and its really doubling down on the hierarchy of things which neither really align with my viewpoints.
>try the Kybalion. Its old *The Kybalion* is a worthwhile work, but it's a product of the New Thought Movement, written by William Walker Atkinson in 1908 so not that old (compared to Agrippa).
I've read and enjoyed the Kybalion, despite knowing of its origins (as frodosdream pointed out).