Three Books of Occult Philosophy - Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1651)

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) is the most influential writer of Renaissance esoterica, and indeed all of Western occultism. Without doubt, his book de occulta philosophia should be at the top of any required reading list for those interested in Western magic and esoteric traditions.

Written in three books between the years 1509 and 1510 (he would have been 23 at the time), it was an ambitious attempt to rejuvenate the art of magic which had degenerated during the dark ages. He did this by assembling an intellectual and theoretical foundation from his extensive collection of sources. Agrippa started with a "systematic exposition of ... Ficinian spiritual magic and Trithemian demonic magic (and) ... treatised in practical magic" (I. P. Couliano in Hidden Truths 1987, p. 114). Other major sources used by Agrippa include Liber de mirabilibus mundi of pseudo-Albertus Magnus, Giovanni Pico's Oratio de Dignitate Hominis and Apologia, Johannes Reuchlin's De Verbo Mirifico, Pliny's Historia Naturalis, as well as Picatrix and the Hermetic and Neoplatonic texts. The resulting text circulated widely in manuscript form.

Over twenty years later Agrippa undertook an extensive expansion and careful revision of the work, which was printed in 1533. Typesetting had scarcely begun before the book was denounced as heretical by the Dominican Inquisitor Conrad Köllin of Ulm. These last minute difficulties account for the inclusion of the lengthy retraction appended to book 3, as well as the absence of the printer's name or location. (Cf. V. Perrone Compagni, Cornelius Agrippa: De occulta philosophia Libri tres, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992, p. 11.)

In his Mysteriorum Libri, John Dee makes frequent mention of Agrippa's book, to the extent that he seems almost to have memorized it. Portions of Agrippa's work are also frequently found appended to magical manuscripts or even liberally merged with the text.

The English translation appeared in London in 1651. The translator, identified only as "J.F." was probably John French, not J. Freake. (See Ferguson, I, 13 and DNB.)

This is a scan of the translation in PDF form.