The Hidden Powers

Before you read

• Slow reading is normal here. This is the hardest English of the first year. “Vertue” is virtue, and it means a power or a property, not goodness. A “Loadstone” is a magnet. “Hearb” is herb. Most chapters are one long paragraph, so take a breath at each colon.
• The chapters come in three steps. Chapters IX and X sort the powers of things into two kinds. Chapters XI to XIV say where the hidden kind comes from. That is the heart of the lesson. Chapter XV says how to find a hidden power by looking for likeness.
• Agrippa names many old writers and tells many marvels. You don’t need to know who each one is. Notice the words “they report” and “it is said.” He is passing on what he read. Many of these are old tales, and the quiz asks about some of them.
• Chapter XV ends with old cures and charms made from animals. Some are odd and some are unpleasant. Read them as a record of what people once believed. The quiz asks what the book says, never how to do anything.

In a nutshell

Chapter IX: The natural virtues that come from the elements

Agrippa starts with the powers we can explain. The first ones are heating, cooling, wetting and drying. He calls these first qualities. When elements mix, they make second qualities, such as softening, hardening or drawing. Some of these act on one part of the body, and he calls those third qualities. He says doctors cure and cause diseases by these three kinds. Then he lists strange fires and things that will not burn. All of these, he says, can still be traced back to the elements.

Chapter X: The occult virtues

Now the second kind. Some powers don’t come from any element. Driving off poison and pulling iron are his examples. A little of such a thing can do a lot, he says, because it has much form and little matter. We call these powers occult because their causes are hidden. We learn about them by long experience, not by reason. The chapter ends with a run of marvels from old books.

Chapter XI: Ideas, the Soul of the World and the stars

Here Agrippa follows the Platonists, the followers of Plato. They say every kind of thing has a perfect pattern, called an Idea. The Ideas are one in the mind of God. They are many in the Soul of the World. They come down as seeds in nature, and as shadows in matter. The Soul of the World stamps shapes on the stars. Each kind of thing on earth gets its hidden power from its own Idea, by way of the stars. A thing whose matter is pure gets more of the power. A thing whose matter is gross gets less.

Chapter XII: Why one thing differs from another of its kind

Chapter XI was about kinds. This short chapter is about single things. Two stones of the same kind may not have the same power. Agrippa says each one gets a gift of its own from the stars at the moment it begins. Matter obeys the Soul of the World, he says, the way our bodies obey our souls. All virtues come from God, through the Soul of the World and the rays of the stars.

Chapter XIII: Where the occult virtues come from

Agrippa opens with a long list of famous hidden powers in stones and herbs. Many writers have listed such powers, he says, but none of them said where they come from. The old answers seem to clash. Plato said the Ideas. Others said the Intelligences, the stars or the forms of things. Agrippa says they all agree when rightly understood. Then he gives his chain. The virtue of a thing comes first from the Ideas in God. Next it passes through the Intelligences, the spirits who rule the world for God. Then come the stars and the heavens. Last of all come the elements, which are made ready to take it in. The chapter ends with God acting without this chain.

Chapter XIV: The Spirit of the World

One problem is left. A soul moves of itself, but a body is heavy and slow. How can the one act on the other? Agrippa says something must sit in between, half like a soul and half like a body. He calls it the Spirit of the World, or the quintessence, the fifth essence beyond the four elements. It works in the world the way our own spirit works in our body. It carries the power of the Soul of the World into herbs, stones, metals and animals, by way of the stars. He ends with the alchemists, who try to draw this spirit out of gold.

Chapter XV: Finding virtues by likeness

Hidden virtues can only be found by experience and good guessing, Agrippa says. So he gives a rule to guess by. Everything draws other things toward itself and tries to make them like itself. So a thing that is full of some quality will stir up that same quality. Fire moves to fire, and a bold creature moves to boldness. To find a power, look for the thing that has the most of it, and the part of that thing where it is strongest. The rest of the chapter is a long list of old examples built on this rule. Remember the rule; you will meet it again and again.

Highlights

Words to know

Vertue (virtue)

A power or property of a thing, what it can do. Not goodness.

Occult

Hidden. An occult quality is a power whose cause we can’t see or work out.

First, second and third qualities

The powers that come from the elements. First are hot, cold, wet and dry. Second come from mixing them, like softening. Third act on one part of the body.

Species and individual

A species is a kind of thing, like the magnet. An individual is one single thing, like this magnet.

Idea

In Plato’s sense, the perfect pattern of a kind of thing. Agrippa says the Ideas are in the mind of God.

Soul of the World

The one soul that some old thinkers said gives life to the whole universe, as your soul does to you.

Intelligences

In Agrippa, spirits who rule parts of the world for God and pass on the Ideas.

Spirit of the World, quintessence

The thing Agrippa says joins the Soul of the World to bodies. Quintessence means the fifth essence, beyond the four elements.

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.