The first year · Lesson 9
The Threefold World
What Agrippa says magic is, its three parts, and the four elements
Good day. I am Rowan Ashby, and I teach the foundations. Over the next few lessons we will build a map. It is the map of the world that the old books share: the elements, the hidden powers of things, the planets, and the links between them. Today we lay its first two pieces. Our guide is Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, a German scholar of the early 1500s. His Three Books of Occult Philosophy gathered nearly everything the learned of his day had said about magic. We read it in an English version printed in London in 1651.
The reading
- Book I, Chap. I. How Magicians Collectvertues from the three-fold World, is declared in these three Books. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, p. 1 · about 335 words, 2 min
- Book I, Chap. II. What Magick is, what are the Parts thereof, and how the Professors thereof must be qualified. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, pp. 2–4 · about 919 words, 5 min
- Book I, Chap. III. Of the four Elements, their qualities, and mutuall mixtions. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, p. 6 · about 552 words, 3 min
- Book I, Chap. IV. Of a three-fold consideration of the Elements. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, p. 7 · about 420 words, 2 min
About 12 minutes in all. Each link opens the book at the first paragraph.
Before you read
- This is the hardest English you will meet this year, so read slowly. That is normal. The four chapters are only about 2,300 words and seven pages. Still, they may take you as long as a chapter of the Kybalion three times their length. Read a long sentence twice, and look for the main verb.
- The spelling is from 1651. “Vertue” is virtue, and here it means a power that a thing has. “Magick” is magic, “Aire” is air, and “VV” is just a W. Capitals land on many nouns. Say a strange word out loud and it often gives itself away.
- Chapter I is Agrippa’s plan for all three books. Chapter II says what magic is and what a student must know. It quotes some poetry, much of it from the Roman poet Virgil. You can read the verses lightly; they are lists of the things each kind of learning studies. Chapters III and IV are about the four elements.
- Agrippa backs up his claims with long lists of names: Plato, Pythagoras, Zoroaster and many more. You don’t need to know them. Notice what he says each one did. The quiz asks about that, and about the examples he uses.
In a nutshell
Chapter I: How Magicians Collect Virtues from the Threefold World
Agrippa starts with a picture of the world in three layers. At the bottom is the world of the elements. Above it is the world of the heavens and the stars. At the top is the world of the mind, of angels and of God. Each layer is ruled by the one above it, and powers flow down from God through all of them. So, Agrippa says, wise men think we can climb back up the same steps. They seek the powers of each world in turn. The three books follow that climb, one book for each world. Then Agrippa does two careful things. He calls himself young and unlearned. And he says no one should accept his words unless the Church approves them.
Chapter II: What Magic Is, Its Parts, and What a Magician Must Know
Agrippa defines magic as the deepest kind of knowing. It studies the hidden powers of things and how things agree or differ. It joins those powers together to bring about wonders. He calls it the highest form of philosophy. Learning in his day had three branches, and he explains each one. Natural philosophy studies the things of nature and their causes. Mathematics measures bodies and follows the stars. Theology, or divinity, teaches about God, angels, the soul and religion. Magic, he says, takes in all three. He then names a long line of ancient masters who, he says, practised it. He ends with a rule. No one can understand magic without all three kinds of learning.
Chapter III: The Four Elements, Their Qualities and Mixtures
Everything with a body, Agrippa says, is made of four elements: fire, earth, water and air. They are not just piled up. They are blended so that they become something new. No element we can see is pure, and each can change into another. Every element has two qualities. It shares one of them with the element next to it, and that is how they link in a ring. Agrippa also sorts them in other ways, as heavy or light. And he gives Plato’s own way of sorting them. Whoever knows the elements and how they mix, he says, can work wonders. Here is the ring of qualities. It is the first piece of your map, so learn it well.
- Fire
- Hot and dry.
- Earth
- Dry and cold.
- Water
- Cold and moist.
- Air
- Moist and hot.
Chapter IV: The Elements Taken Three Ways
Agrippa now says that each element comes in three orders, or kinds. So the four become twelve. The first order is the pure elements. They never mix or change, and all natural powers work through them. The second order is the elements we meet in the world. They are mixed and impure, but skill can make them pure again. The third order is twice mixed. Agrippa calls it the middle nature, and he says very few understand it. He ends with a warning. No one can work in magic without knowing all three orders.
Highlights
The order and process of all these I shall endeavor to deliver in these three Books: Whereof the first contains naturall Magick, the second Celestiall, and the third Ceremoniall.
The plan of the whole work in one line. Book I is about nature, Book II the heavens, and Book III religion and ritual. The first year stays in Book I.
I would not have any one assent to them, nor shall I my self, any further then they shall be approved of by the Universall Church, and the Congregation of the Faithfull.
A writer on magic in the 1500s had to be careful. Agrippa puts the Church’s judgment above his own before he has said anything at all.
MAgick is a faculty of wonderfull vertue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound Contemplation of most secret things
Agrippa’s definition of magic. For him it is first a way of knowing, a deep study of hidden things. Only then is it a way of doing.
This is the most perfect, and chief Science, that sacred, and sublimer kind of Phylosophy, and lastly the most absolute perfection of all most excellent Philosophy.
Notice how high he ranks it. Magic is not a trick here. It is the top of all learning, because it joins the other three branches.
THere are then, as we have said, four Elements, without the perfect knowledge whereof we can effect nothing in Magick.
This is why the elements come first. Fire, earth, water and air are the ground floor of Agrippa’s world, and you will see them in nearly every chapter that follows.
Words to know
- Vertue (virtue)
- A power or property that a thing has, often a hidden one. Not goodness, as we mostly use the word today.
- Occult
- Hidden. “Occult philosophy” means the study of hidden powers in nature.
- The threefold world
- Agrippa’s three layers. The elementary world is the world of the elements, the celestial is the heavens, and the intellectual is the world of mind and God.
- Natural, celestial and ceremonial magic
- The three parts of magic, one for each book. They deal with nature, the stars, and religion and ritual.
- Mixtion
- A mixture or blend, where the parts join into something new.
- Physick
- The old word for medicine.
- Theologie, Divinity
- The study of God and religion.
- Intelligencies
- Pure minds without bodies, such as angels.
The real story
Our notes, not the book's.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim was born in Cologne in 1486 and died in 1535. He was a scholar, doctor, lawyer and soldier, and he moved from city to city all his life. He wrote a first draft of this book young, around 1510. That is why Chapter I speaks of “my very youth.” But he printed the full Three Books only in 1533, after years of changes. Meanwhile, in 1530, he had published On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences. That book attacks every branch of learning, magic included. Readers still argue over how the two books fit together. After his death, tales grew up that he was a sorcerer with a demon in the shape of a black dog. There is no good evidence for them. Our text is the English of 1651 by “J. F.,” probably John French. It is how most English readers met Agrippa, and it is the best map we have of how the old world-view fitted together.
Quiz
Answer from the notes or the reading, in any order; you can change an answer at any time. Each answer says why, with a link to the page.