De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic,

by Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples:

Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and

prisca theologia

© 2006 by

Kathryn LaFevers Evans

CSUSM Thesis Advisor, Professor Oliver Berghof

______________________________

Committee Member Professor Peter Arnade

______________________________

July 2006

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THESIS ABSTRACT

The life of Catholic reformer Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, 1455-

1536, spanned the threshold between Medieval and Renaissance eras.

Like other humanists, Lefèvre synthesized philosophical, theological

and scientific theories and practices — of such is his unpublished

treatise De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic. I elucidate Lefèvre’s

focus on universal mystical metaphors of divine union, in order to

offer a simpler view into the evolution of his writings. Engaging

historic-intellectual background in critical analysis of Book II, I

address the conflicting political, religious, and academic opinions

of natural magic, demonstrating that current Academia is poised to

expand the historical, “theoretical” treatment of natural magic to

engage it as a phenomenological, “practical” human experience.

In De Magia naturali Book II, Lefèvre decloaks mythology,

philosophy, astrology, literature and religion to a scientific

theory, practice and experience of number as Idea. He reveals how

the limit of metaphorical imagery is duality, the binary Coincidence

of Opposites, symbolized by the number 2. The magic in Lefèvre’s

number mysticism is human experience of numerical ascension from man

to God, achieved through the number 3, the love-nexus re-uniting 2

into One, duality into unity. Renaissance humanists conceived of

this prisca theologia, pristine or ancient theology, as embodied in

the Christian Trinity through the Spirit of Christ. Current Academia

is responsible to teach this wisdom tradition from a multicultural,

interdisciplinary worldview, as I posit the humanists intended.

Number Mysticism; Numerical Ascension; Christian Kabbalah;

Renaissance Humanism; Theology; Mythology; Literary Theory.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my teachers: Charles, Celeste & Austin; my parents;

Thesis Committee, Professors Oliver Berghof & Peter Arnade; and

Medieval Curator Consuelo Dutschke, of Columbia Rare Book &

Manuscript Library — all of whom have taught me that a childlike

heart is the best place to learn.

My family’s endurance of the thesis process has been stellar,

particularly that of my husband without whom this endeavor would not

have been undertaken. Dr. Berghof, of UC Irvine and of CSU San

Marcos Literature & Writing Studies Department, has been an

inspiration whose depth can only be measured in Silence. Scholar Dr.

Arnade of CSUSM History Department has listened with patient

enthusiasm. Dr. Dutschke has been an exemplary academic colleague.

Appreciation to Professor Jason van Boom, Ph.D. student at Graduate

Theological Union, for Latin consultation as the thesis process

ended when I most needed scholarly camaraderie.

I honor the LTWR Faculty, Staff and fellow grad students for

caring like a family. Lastly, I thank the Book of Nature, expressed

in the literary disciplines through something sacred: Words.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Historical Context and Humanism 5

2. Justification through Christ the Spirit 19

3. Ascension, Intellect and Love 24

II. TRADITION OF MASTERS & LEGACY IN LANGUAGE

1. Italian Background and Contemporary Foreground 34

2. History and Summary of De Magia naturali 47

3. Snapshot in Time of the Tradition 57

III. METHODOLOGY & BOOK II ON CHRISTIAN KABBALAH

1. Stigma of the Non-Christian 59

2. Book II on Kabbalah 65

3. Network of Christian Kabbalists 80

IV. EQUALITY & UNITY OF THE BINARY

1. Primal Metaphors & Myth 114

2. Experience & History, Metaphorical & Literal 133

3. Poets, Philosophers, & Mythological Beings 144

V. PRIMARY SOURCES & CONCLUDING REMARKS 154

VI. WORKS CITED & WORKS CONSULTED 168

Original thesis hardcopy available at CSU San Marcos,

and at GTU Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.

Online digital edition forthcoming through CSUSM.

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I. INTRODUCTION

1. Historical Context and Humanism

Renaissance Catholic reformer Jean Jacques Lefèvre, known as

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, was born around 1455 of humble parentage

in the small fishing village of Étaples in the Northeastern province

of Picardy, France.1 His lifetime, 1455-1536, spanned the threshold

between the European Medieval and Renaissance eras. After the

Valois-Hapsburg Wars resumed in the early 1520’s, many homes in the

Northeast of France were burned, as well as churches and the records

in them. Consequently, little is known of his youth, although it may

be conjectured that as a young boy he was singled-out by local

clergy as exemplary in intellectual potential, and as was customary,

Lefèvre was later sent to the University of Paris.

Living at the threshold between Medieval and Renaissance

world-views, in essence between pagan and modern worlds, Lefèvre and

other humanists synthesized many philosophical, theological and

scientific theories and practices. Exemplary among Lefèvre’s

teachings is his unpublished treatise De Magia naturali, On Natural

Magic.2 Providing historical and intellectual backgrounds, and

engaging in critical analysis of Book II as informed by numerous

texts, this thesis addresses the conflicting political, religious,

and academic opinions of natural magic in Lefèvre’s time and in our

1 Historical dates and facts on Lefèvre d’Étaples not otherwise cited are from Scott R. Clark’s Chronology of the Medieval and Reformation Church, referenced in Works

Cited. 2Olomouc, Universitni Knihovna, ms M I 119, ff. 174-342; Book II begins on f. 198;

all further references are cited per Evans transcription-translation work-in-progress

pagination, eg. Book II begins with page 50, cited “Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198”.

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own. The goals are to demonstrate: that Lefèvre never did abandon

natural magic, the practical half of philosophy; and that current

Academia is ready to expand the historical, “theoretical” treatment

of natural magic to engage it as an experiential, “practical” human

universal.

In the title of De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 10, Lefèvre

employs the umbrella term, “Prisce velate Theologie” or “Ancient

veils of Theology” (Evans II:80, f. 213). Throughout Book II,

Lefèvre unveils or decloaks mythology, philosophy, astrology,

literature and religion to reveal a scientific theory, practice and

experience of number as Idea. He reveals how the limit of the

metaphorical imagery in disciplines is duality, the binary

Coincidence of Opposites, symbolized by the number 2. The magic in

Lefèvre’s number mysticism is based on human experience of numerical

ascension from man to God inherited through a tradition of masters

and achieved through the number 3 – identified in Chapter 1 as

Venusian love-nexus – reuniting exilic binary into the One, duality

into unity (Evans II:51, f. 199v).

Renaissance humanists conceived of this prisca theologia,

pristine or ancient theology, as embodied in the Christian Trinity

through the Spirit of Christ. Theirs was a mystical vision of

universal Holy Spirit beyond dualistic boundaries. Current Academia

has the tools to study and teach this tradition, demonstrated in the

topic of Lefèvre’s Book II, which he calls “Pythagorean philosophy”,

and which he equates to “Cabala” and prophetic teachings (Evans Ch.

1 II:50, f. 198; Ch. 14 II:89-90, f. 217-218v). As such, Book II can

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be categorized as Christian Kabbalah, a springboard for this and

future study of the text.

The primal architectural metaphor in Christian Kabbalah or

prisca theologia is the exilic Fall from One to 2. Exile is

expressed mythically as lover below exiled from Beloved above,

allegorically in the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the

Garden of Eden, and metaphorically in Jesus’ birth as the Son of

God. The final Christian salvation from exile is expressed

sacrificially through Jesus’ crucifixion when he becomes Christ, the

Spirit that unites God and man, completing ascension to the Trinity.

Likewise, magic resolves exile anagogically in number mysticism

through the mysteries of relationship between above and below,

between superior and inferior numbers. Lefèvre equates that final

Christian sacrifice into salvation with the thoughts of pre-

Christian philosophers, the words of pre-Christian myths passed down

through the oral tradition by the poets of Classical Antiquity, and

the actions of pre-Christian magicians or magi: identical in both

Negative and Positive theology; identical in both theoretical and

practical philosophy – delivering Christianity onto the same Ground

of Silence as pagan magic.

In “The Revival of Lullism at Paris, 1499-1516,” Joseph M.

Victor reminds us that, always a devotee of Christ, always a lover

of Catholicism, Lefèvre cherished the teachings of the Spanish

mystic Raymond Lull, who described the universe as a ladder of

beings — stones, plants, animals, man, angels, God — a giant

collection of symbols that led to the divine (Victor online). For

the metaphorical scaffolding of Book II itself, Lefèvre employs the

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descending and ascending chains of the numerical, celestial and

angelic spheres, on which man ascends to the divine. The Coincidence

of Opposites is the tension that drives Book II of the treatise On

Natural Magic, and this before Lefèvre had read the Church-

sanctioned Nicholas of Cusa. Augustin Renaudet, in Préréforme et

Humanisme à Paris: Pendant les Premières Guerres d’Italie (1494-

1517), dates Lefèvre’s studies of Cusa during the first decade and a

half of the sixteenth century (661). Therefore rather than Cusa,

Lefèvre cites many-another proponent of number mysticism, each of

whom either expounds or metaphorically embodies a common theory of

genesis through a Coincidence of Opposites, and a common practice of

ascension to unity through a Trinitarian relationship intrinsic in

the binary itself.

Reproduced below, with permission from San Diego State

University Special Collections Library, are several pages of the

1230 CE Sphaera of Johannes de Sacro Bosco, published in 1527 with a

prefatory epistle and commentary by Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. These

images illustrate the prevalent Ptolemaic world-view of the era,

while portraying its precariousness through the personified

discourse between science and myth.

In these anthropocentric, geocentric depictions, the celestial

spheres are under the purview of both the astronomer Ptolemy and

Urania, the muse of astronomy and astrology. She foretells the

future from the position of the stars, and is associated with

universal love and the Holy Spirit (“Urania” Wikipedia). This male-

female binary of Ptolemy and Urania embodies the architectural

principle of Coincidence of Opposites – Earth below, celestial above

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– yet is paradoxically indefinite as to which gender holds the

superior position.

The planets Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and

Saturn orbit Earth on spheres ascending to the eighth sphere of the

Constellations and unmoving stars, then beyond. This unmoving ground

is termed “Aplanes” in Book II Chapter 7, and this celestial ground

that exists beyond is also termed “the Ground of Silence” in Chapter

14 (Evans II:68, f. 207; II:90, f. 218v). Depicted in the first

illustration under the image of the world is the higher soul resting

upon this celestial Ground.

These celestial, planetary spheres become the personified

binaries or Coincidence of Opposites in Lefèvre’s Book II, out of

whom, through the Trinitarian relationship between them, the chains

for ascension to divine union are woven. The treatise is thus

mythopoetic, and should be studied primarily as a sacred text. The

fact that Lefèvre published Sphaera in 1527, writing a prefatory

epistle and commentary on it at that time, supports my argument that

Lefèvre never did abandon the world-view and teachings of the 1493

De Magia naturali. Modern scholars have repeatedly asserted that he

did. I posit that the key, the cipher for interpreting not only this

treatise, but also the entirety of Lefèvre’s teachings, is found in

Book II’s prisca theologia of Coincidence of Opposites and the

Trinity.

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Renaissance humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples lived at a time

of creative expression in Europe. In 1441, Thomas à Kempis published

Imitatio Christi, The Imitation of Christ, exemplifying the devotio

moderna. In 1450, Pope Nicholas V founded the Vatican Libary.

Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452. In 1453, the Hundred Years’ War

ended. Constantinople fell to the Turks, leading to an increasing

westward migration of Greek-speaking intellectuals some of whom

brought manuscripts with them. Around 1454, the first printing press

operated at Mainz. Born also around 1455 was the German humanist

Johannes Reuchlin. Italian humanist Count Giovanni Pico Della

Mirandola (Pico) was born in 1463, and Michelangelo was born in

1475. War between France and the Hapsburgs broke out in 1477. In

1478 Lorenzo de Medici rose to ruler of Florence: Lorenzo the

Magnificent, patron of the arts and of Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic

Academy.

William A. Christian Jr. explains, in Local Religion in

Sixteenth-Century Spain, that the practice of Christianity

transformed in part during the sixteenth century from one of

personal vows made to the saints and Mary to one of personal

devotion directed to Christ — a movement known as devotio moderna,

modern devotion. A central ingredient in both modes of practice was

the fact that this was personal religion, direct contact with the

divine, accomplished without clerical intervention. Lay devotion

spread on ordinary feet — person to person, belonging to the people

and imbedded in the landscape. Devotes of the divine experienced

visions, rapture and ecstasy. At times when human intervention

seemed necessary to a successful outcome of prayer, traveling

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magicians competed directly with priests for the power to intercede

with God on behalf of their fellow laymen. Priests accused magicians

of forming pacts with the devil. The Spanish Inquisition acted

against this modern practice of Christian devotion among Catholics —

peasants, magicians and clergy alike — as well as against conversos,

Jewish converts to Christianity (19-20, 29-32, 55, 90).

Despite the creative expression for which the Renaissance is

known, throughout Europe during this volatile time between Medieval

and Renaissance eras freedom of thought, speech and action was

curtailed among the educated as well as among the population at

large. According to Henry Kamen in The Spanish Inquisition: A

Historical Revision, from the 1480’s on, book burnings by the

Spanish Inquisition were common (308). Relative to the chronology of

Lefèvre d’Étaples, he attended the University of Paris (la

Sorbonne), receiving a Master of Arts degree in 1480.

During the 1490’s, burning of the conversos themselves peaked.

Mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila focused on the interior religion

of union with God, but many were denounced as heretics. Village

religion, the freedom to practice traditions, folklore, and beliefs

in a landscape shared by all faiths, no longer belonged to the

people. Convivencia in Spain — where Christian, Jewish and Muslim

faiths coexisted and intermingled — was officially eradicated in

attempts to control avenues of access to God and to promote

political solidarity (Kamen 308). Political oppression of interior

religion, whether of layman or intellectual, crossed all borders of

the contiguous European countries and citystates.

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According to Eugene F. Rice Jr. in “The De Magia Naturali of

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples,” Lefèvre’s whereabouts between 1480 and

1490 is unknown (20). Returning to Paris in 1490 the Renaissance

humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples became a professor of philosophy

at the Collège du Cardinale Lemoine, a residential college of the

University of Paris. Rice, in “Humanism in France,” reports that he

treasured Thomas à Kempis’ point in Imitatio Christi, on which

humanists and mystics agree, that it is more important to love the

Trinity than to argue fine points in the relationship of the Persons

(Rabil 2: 113).

The clash between politicized or state religion and interior

religion is one based in man-made law rather than in natural law.

The Trinitarian ritual of the Eucharist, where the Holy Spirit

unites Father and Son in the body of Christ, draws grace downwards

to the congregation. Inverted salus, inverted salvation, happens

when the beneficence of grace through sacrificial blood is replaced

with politically driven persecution. Mystic-minded thinkers such as

Lefèvre performed a Trinitarian ascesis — exercise or discipline —

for ascending upwards to God. The mystical, practical exercises

grounded Father and Son in love, eliciting in humankind an ethical

choice of moral freedom.

The Renaissance humanist anthropocentric vision of man as the

intermediary circuit joining heaven and earth, and through which

Spirit is drawn, was not only to be taken theoretically, but also to

be exercised practically. In using what some would consider an

abstract mathematical concept, a triangle representing the number 3,

humanists described the practical relationship of the Trinity, with

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man as the conduit of love, and love as the basis of creation. As

John Bossy explains in Christianity in the West: 1400-1700, Christ

the man was central. In Bossy’s way of describing the Trinity,

Spirit becomes flesh (73, 101).

Werner L. Gundersheimer writes in French Humanism: 1470-1600

that French humanists studied questions specific to cognition,

ethics and faith, attempting to reorganize university education and

studies. Occamist criticism narrowed by modern philosophers into the

study of formal logic constricted the study of past intellectuals

and theology, prompting humanist research into the thought of past

histories and the pursuit of mysticism among all classes of society

(65-9).

“Humanism” as used in this thesis, comprises Aristotelianism,

Neoplatonism, and also Christian Kabbalah. Renaissance humanism is,

most basically, the study of human culture, particularly man’s

intellectual activities. Humanism revived and imitated literary and

educational ideals of ancient Greek and Latin thought through a

cultural and educational program (Pico, Wallis Introduction xii-

xiii).

Paul O. Kristeller’s essay “Renaissance Humanism and Classical

Antiquity” provides more detailed descriptions of Renaissance

humanism. Activities humanists engaged in included the collecting of

ancient texts and the discovery of important unknown manuscripts,

the practice and development of textual criticism and commentary,

editing for dissemination via the newly-invented printing press, the

imitation of ancient authors in new writings, and transformation of

the vernacular after the Latin model. Humanist Greek studies were

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facilitated through Byzantine scholars who moved to the West,

teaching their language and literature. The study of Greek became

established in universities. The Greek New Testament and the Hebrew

Old Testament impacted theological scholarship, resulting in

vernacular versions of the Bible such as Lefèvre’s [Louvain and]

Antwerp edition[s] (Rabil 1: 5-28; parenthetical note mine).

Lefèvre is best known as early translator of the Bible into

French, yet also wrote many commentaries on ecclesiastical works,

editing and publishing numerous scientific works as well. He is

lauded among European and American Catholics, Protestants and

scholars, each from their own perspective on his work as it pertains

to their area of expertise.

In his essay “Humanism in France” Eugene F. Rice summarizes

that, like their Italian contemporaries, Lefèvre and other French

humanists restored Aristotle’s philosophy, and emphasized Plato,

late antique Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism, as well as Hermetic

writings (attributed to Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus), and Kabbalah

(Rabil 2: 109-10). While on his Italian journey of 1491-2, discussed

below in Chapter II Section 1, in Rome Lefèvre sought out Ermolao

Barbaro, who acquainted him with Christian Aristotelianism, the path

to further synthesis of knowledge (Gundersheimer 70).

According to Kristeller, humanist patristic scholarship

provided a Christian philosophy and eloquence, as well as a

Christian vision of antiquity and a pristine theology that

reconciled pagan religious thought with Christian. Humanists

searched for manuscripts in monastic and cathedral libraries, and

scrutinized the legends entwined with biographies. The union of

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wisdom and piety with eloquence was the humanist religious program,

justifying the studia humanitatis. Humanists developed the idea of

the dignity of man: man as the link between macrocosm and microcosm,

with moral freedom to turn toward the good (Rabil 1: 5-28).

Kristeller’s essay “Humanism and Moral Philosophy” begins with the

clarification that moral philosophy “was considered part of the

studia humanitatis and was therefore closely associated with the

humanist movement” (Rabil 3: 271).

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2. Justification through Christ the Spirit

Despite political censorship, interior religion flourished

during what Frank L. Borchardt calls the enchanted years surrounding

1500. Direct contact between French, German and Italian

intellectuals fostered the distillation of techniques for mystical

union with God into a plausibly Christian format. He explains in

“The Magus as Renaissance Man” that through appropriation of the

Negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius (called via negativa and

considered a passive receiving), Positive theology techniques handed

down through pagan magi (considered an active taking), were rendered

acceptable to Christians as grace from God: flesh was stitched to

Spirit; magic was transformed into Christian mysticism. Furthermore,

the culmination of mystical techniques through negation leading to

transcendence was called “faith,” enabling numerical ascension on

threads of love to miracle (Borchardt online).

During the Reformation, the sixteenth-century Trinity of the

Father, the Word, and the Spirit also inspired several heretical

sects who elaborated indirectly upon the doctrine of a radical

Saxon, Thomas Muentzer. A theologian of the Holy Ghost or Spirit,

Muentzer framed his message in the language of unity. He believed in

the Oneness of Spirit, that 2-ness was the opposite of Oneness, and

that holiness entailed the swallowing of the parts by the whole.

This radical German Christianity of the 1520’s and 30’s was perhaps

seed for that in England of the 1640’s and 50’s (Bossy 91, 107,

110). Like Lefèvre in this regard, the doctrine of Coincidence of

Opposites was prevalent among these practitioners of Spirit also.

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Justification by faith, and the notion of absolute brotherhood

indemic in Medieval Christianity, had already been embraced with the

1470’s Restitution of primitive Christianity. God the Father, and

son as Word, has been said to collapse inevitably into a

confrontation with the issue of Spirit. Various tributaries of

“brethren” or the “Brotherhood” propounding peace and love (or

otherwise) through the Holy Spirit found refuge in Bohemia and

Moravia. Bossy captures the propensity of Spirit to threaten

organized Christianity as “a kind of spirit of permanent revolution”

(104-8). His elaboration that freeing Spirit meant that scriptural

words were outer coverings of an inner meaning to be discerned is

what Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali ultimately addresses. Spirit being

the seed, vehicle and goal of this treatise, De Magia naturali is

thus understood as a product of the times. Perhaps not

coincidentally, the single extant complete manuscript copy ended up

in Czechoslovakia.

In 1505, the Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius expressed

in a letter that the basis of occult knowledge rests in the mystery

of the Trinity. His technique for ascension to the Trinity was by

faith, through the study of number leading to understanding of the 3

and the One. Trithemius was not the first to record these themes,

for they circulated among the intellectuals of the time (Borchardt

online). Philip Edgcumbe Hughes in Lefèvre: Pioneer of

Ecclesiastical Renewal in France comments that many learned

Christiformity, becoming Christlike through faith, through the

writings of Nicholas of Cusa, a German mystic born in 1400 (31-2).

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Cusa’s mysticism of Positive theology becomes a central theme of

Lefèvre’s spirituality (44-7).

Lawrence H. Bond, in his essay “Nicholas of Cusa and the

Reconstruction of Theology: the Centrality of Christology in the

Coincidence of Opposites,” though not mentioning number mysticism

directly, explains the mechanics of it via the doctrine of

reconciliation: between the dialectic, between and encompassing

object and subject, is the paradox of Christ’s person; the

epistemological basis of all theology is Christology, which provides

the only true knowledge of God. The terms “Christology” or

“Christocentric view of the universe” describe Cusan metaphysics.

Cusa clarifies the only valid dialectic and the epistemological

given as that of Coincidence of Opposites.3 Cusa stipulates that a

reform of epistemology must precede the reconstruction of

methodology (81-4).

This observation supports my argument that Lefèvre’s marrying

of his methodology to this epistemology, the embodying of this

Trinitarian epistemology within his methodology, is Lefèvre’s legacy

to the Academy that has been overlooked. In other words, a marrying

of the practical experiential with the theoretical historical is the

next reconstruction needed in Academia. Bond stipulates that this

technique (the mechanics of Christology) is “descriptive rather than

logical, declarative rather than academic” (94).

3 Capitalized throughout to accentuate its fundamental importance to the thesis.

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Cusa holds that God cannot be the object of knowledge since he

operates as subject on our Intellect.4 He concludes that the object

of knowledge must necessarily be ignorance (83).

That type of ignorance can be called duality. Cusa therefore

unifies the Father-son/subject-object/unity-duality binary into one

Trinitarian whole, which is only subjectively experiential through

Christ or Spirit. Bond clarifies this in Cusa’s means of knowing God

through negation — also called Negative theology — explaining

knowing as reconciliation received in faith through Christ as nexus

of both Infinite and finite, knowledge and ignorance. Coincidence is

the theologian’s method (85, 87). The subject’s Intellect is the

culmination, Lefèvre concurs, of the theologian’s method and where

this faith and intuition occur. In this regard, Bond reiterates the

problem of confusing logical and linguistic distinctions (84, 87).

This I call simply an issue of semantics, the issue that silenced

Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali for 500 years: the Church’s refusal to

recognize the reconciliation of magic with mysticism in Intellect as

knowledge of faith in Christ’s Spirit by a sacrifice into grace.

Relative to mysticism versus magic, Bossy pinpoints that it is

never the wholly other that is the object of persecution, but

specifically that which is most alike. What fueled the wrath against

neighbor in the later Middle Ages was the doctrine of the limited

good, where there was only so much to go around, therefore some must

be evil and undeserving. Magic – witchcraft – like the sexual act,

was deemed intrinsically shameful and evil, an offense against

holiness (36-7). The semantic interpretation generally accepted, and

4 Imagination, Reason, and Intellect capitalized throughout to accentuate that these were named the ascending methodology Lefèvre employed in teaching.

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that of the Church, was the historical literal sense, whereas

Lefèvre’s methodology unified Opposites through the paradoxical

language of metaphor, disclosing anagogical or mystical-Spiritual

meaning.

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3. Ascension, Intellect and Love

Throughout the Renaissance the interrelatedness of the three

major intellectual traditions — Aristotelianism, humanism, and

Neoplatonism — typified the synthesizing nature of its culture.

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ epistemology and methodology – a

hierarchical, philosophical theology in ascending order of

Imagination, Reason, and Intellect – mirrored these three traditions

and will serve to explain their interpretations here.

For an academic program of studies, Kent Emery Jr. reports in

“Mysticism and the Coincidence of Opposites in Sixteenth- and

Seventeenth-Century France” that Lefèvre recommended beginning with

Aristotle’s natural philosophy and physics, as they engage the

Imaginative mode and require many words; proceeding to Scripture and

the Fathers, as the humanists did, since those engage the rational

mode of Reason through modest sermon; and culminating in the

Neoplatonist Intellectual mode with the study of Pythagoras, who

teaches in Silence (Emery online).

Lefèvre, whose De Magia naturali concerns itself with knitting

together the heavenly and the earthly, surmounted the potentially

heretical claiming of man’s power to achieve union with God through

numerical ascension by equating his final vehicle — Intellect — with

faith. Intellect was perceived by Lefèvre as the faculty of

intuition and vision. Through Intellection, faith corrected Reason

(Rice, “Lefèvre d’Étaples and the Medieval Christian Mystics” 101-

2).

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At one extreme, Aristotle represented the life of studies, in

that through contemplating the world the student ascends to

knowledge of heavenly things. At the other extreme, Pythagoras

represented the death of studies, in that he fulfilled their goal of

leading the student to the Silence beyond the binary of life and

death, beyond the Coincidence of Opposites. Between the paradox of

the Infinity of God and the nothingness of man lay the fertile

ground of receiving in mystical Silence — divine essence, the will

of God, pure love (Emery online).

This circumscribed the relationships within the Trinity: the

All of the Father, the nothing of man the Son, ascending as Christ

Incarnate through the love of the Father for the Son – the Holy

Spirit. The goal of prisca theologia and of mystica theologia,

(mystical theology) — that of union with God in divine love — is at

the heart of personal religion. Via the ascending continuum in the

human mind of Imagination, Reason, and Intellect, Lefèvre applied

Aristotelianism, humanism, and Neoplatonism in order to guide his

students to wisdom. His epistemology was reflected in his teaching

methodology, which demonstrates my point that Academia might engage

the experiential, practical modes along with the theoretical.

Like Pythagoras, Gundersheimer tells us that Lefèvre traveled

widely from the time of his adolescence in search of “the honey of

the Fathers.” He collected manuscripts from numerous monasteries and

convents, written by visionary monks and nuns expounding on their

experiences of God. Hildegard of Bingen, Hilary, and Nemesius of

Emesa were among those he resurrected and published. The latter had

developed the themes of the dignity of man, of man as the link

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between macrocosm and microcosm, and of freedom of the will in De

natura hominis (a Greek work of late fourth century). According to

Gundersheimer, the politically safe haven of the Christian Fathers

and mystics justified humanist affinity with pagan philosophers,

whom the indisputable Fathers themselves brought forward. An example

Gundersheimer provides is that, in 1512 Lefèvre published the

Epistles of St. Paul, considered by some the first Protestant book.

In the teachings of the Fathers, Lefèvre found pietas et doctrina,

piety and doctrine, the religious and moral insight required to

raise man’s mind to God. The Fathers inspired Lefèvre and his

followers to reform theological teaching through a humanist cultural

program grounded in the simplicity of love (70, 84, 166-7, 176,

179).

In Rice’s Introduction to The Prefatory Epistles, Lefèvre’s

Commentary on the Catholic Epistles is quoted:

“The true Christian does not love only Christians of his

own kind but will love also Indians, Ethiopians, Asians

and Africans, and those who live in islands beyond the

sea and in lands which for so many centuries have been

unknown until discovered in our own day.” (XXIII)

Rice pinpoints the key to Lefèvre’s doctrine of justification,

which leads to salvation for all, as the reconciliation of Aristotle

and Paul in an ideal pietas, piety or compassion (XXII). This key of

ideal pietas I posit is embodied in the humility of sacrifice to the

middle term – the number 3 as love-nexus between lover and Beloved –

in the prisca theologia of his 1493 De Magia naturali Book II. This

treatise, as the fulcrum between Lefèvre’s textbook, Introduction to

27

Aristotle’s Metaphysics written in 1490, and his publications

subsequent to the De Magia, is thus also the nexus marrying pagan

and Christian teachings. I posit that specifically Book II on

Pythagorean philosophy or Christian Kabbalah holds the key for

interpreting not only this treatise, but also the entirety of

Lefèvre’s teachings.

Teaching at the Collège du Cardinale Lemoine until 1508,

Lefèvre brought the discipline of mathematics back into University

studies. Rice, in “Humanism in France,” calls mathematics the

pinnacle of his teachings, as a path to understanding scriptural

mysteries (Rabil 2: 110, 113). Lefèvre expressed mythological

archetypes through writings on Images such as numbers, geometric

shapes, and divine names, in a mythopoetic style that has declined

in Academia with secularization.

The publications in 1509 and 1513 of Quincuplex Psalterium or

Fivefold Psalter, and publication in 1512 of Paul’s Epistles with

commentary, marked Lefèvre as a heretic. Lefèvre concluded that the

Scriptures told of justification by faith alone, near to the time

when Luther identified that doctrine. Erasmus, another famed

academic, was a companion of Lefèvre’s in Paris, althouth their

paths parted (Reformation Histories).

Rice’s compilation of The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques

Lefèvre d’Étaples and Related Texts, I feel, is an invaluable source

of clues concerning censure for heresy. I note them here in support

of my position that, contrary to what previous scholars have

asserted, Lefèvre never did renounce the magic philosophies of his

earlier writings. Epistle 26 from Guillaume de la Mare’s Sylvae,

28

singing the praises of illustrious gentlemen, is a poem published in

1513 honoring Lefèvre. I interpret it as revealing specifically that

the unpublished De Magia naturali was nevertheless known and

publicly praised among his contemporaries. I conjecture that the

author published the poem in 1513 in response to Lefèvre’s recent

censure. Concurrently, Guillaume de la Mare also dismissed the

verity of his Sylvas in a letter to the Bishop, calling them

juvenile. In denouncing the rationality of his own work, I conclude

that the author is simply acting out of self-preservation (85-6).

In Epistle 38 to Jacobo Ramirez de Guzman, 1503/4, Lefèvre

includes Pico della Mirandola alongside the martyrs, in that their

teachings were misunderstood. Not long after the De Magia was

written, Pico died suspiciously of a sudden illness (Lynn Thorndike,

A History of Magic and Experimental Science: Vol’s III and IV,

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 4: 520). Lefèvre seems to be

asking the reader again to judge for himself whether or not pagan

teachings can be reconciled with Christian teachings. In the letter

he uses as example of paganism serpents, pythons and insane rituals

(117-20). Yet contradictorily, close to that time Lefèvre was

preparing to write the Kabbalistic Quincuplex Psalterium in which he

has much to say about dragons, serpents and all of the abyss. In the

commentary to Psalm 148 he claims that the subterranean meaning of

dragons sent forth from the cave is the Spirit between heaven and

earth (230-32). Therefore in the 1509 Quincuplex Psalterium, Lefèvre

was still propounding the doctrine of Christ as Spirit uniting

heaven and earth, still marrying pagan and Christian teachings in

Christian Kabbalah.

29

Coincidental clues, regarding responses to censorship, in

Prefatory Epistles from the date of 1512 are that: Lefèvre’s alleged

opinion of natural magic turns from positive to negative; he

denounces his property in Étaples; and on pages 287-90 Rice tells of

an anonymous supplementary biography appearing in 1512 and published

through Trithemius, cataloging and praising Lefèvre’s works.

Rice’s Introduction to his edition of Lefèvre’s Prefatory

Epistles also provides a thorough yet succinct summary of Lefèvre’s

life and works. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to recap

everything of import in Lefèvre’s life, but I wish to include a very

relevant paragraph of Rice’s that is so succinct there is no room

for paraphrase:

Between 1508 and 1520 Lefèvre continued his

scholarly work at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des Prés,

under the patronage of the abbot, Guillaume Briçonnet,

bishop of Lodève and subsequently of Meaux. In the

spring of 1521 Briçonnet called him to Meaux to help him

put into effect a comprehensive program of diocesan

reform. On May 1, 1523 he made him his vicar-general in

spiritualibus. Lefèvre’s chief contribution was a French

translation of the New Testament and Psalms. The

fortuitous coincidence of this experiment in reform with

the first penetration of Lutheranism in France focused

the attention of the faculty of theology on his

exegetical works. In 1523 a committee of theologians

detected eleven errors in his commentary on the Gospels.

When the Parlement of Paris summoned him to appear

30

before it on suspicion of heresy, he fled to Strasbourg

in the late summer of 1525. Recalled by Francis I in

1526 and appointed librarian of the royal collection,

then at Blois, and tutor of the king’s children, Lefèvre

finished translating the Bible under royal protection

and published it in a single volume at Antwerp in 1530.

He passed his last years in tranquil retirement at the

court of Marguerite d’Angoulême, queen of Navarre (XIII-

XIV).

In the prefatory epistle to Introduction to Aristotle’s

Metaphysics, Lefèvre praises Aristotle for the same wisdom he

cherishes in Book II: geometric reckoning, mathematical computation,

are the mirror and measure of justice (Lefèvre). The Spiritual

reckoning to justice that is justification, then, Lefèvre decloaks

through number mysticism. In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 2,

Lefèvre names the Jove-Venus ternary of love as the virtue or vigor

that couples with the quaternary to compute the 12 signs of the

zodiac and the 12 judges who are the form of justice through whom

all are counted saved (Evans II:52-55, ff. 199-201v).

Also in the prefatory epistle to Introduction to Aristotle’s

Metaphysics, Lefèvre cites the tradition of masters that he equally

lauds in De Magia naturali, as an unbroken chain from Egyptian

priests and Chaldean magi to the philosophers Plato and Aristotle,

conveying wisdom concordant with Christian theology (Lefèvre). The

Jove-Venus ternary of love, the Trinitarian prisca theologia through

Coincidence of Opposites, is the marriage nexus between pagan and

31

Christian to which Lefèvre always returns, the key to all of his

writings.

Convinced that divine wisdom was best taught through the

simple words of the medieval mystics to whom God had spoken

directly, Lefèvre revived French study of the Spanish mystic Raymond

Lull (Victor online). This revival of Lullism in Paris propagated

the Christian mystic’s metaphor of lover and Beloved as expression

of man’s relationship with God — the continuity of Lefèvre’s

essential focus on the Coincidence of Opposites as path to divine

union.

In 1491 he read Lull’s Contemplations. Lull brought Lefèvre

beyond Occamism, which cleared his way to the doctrine of divine

love (Gundersheimer 70). As mentioned above, Lull described the

universe as a ladder of beings — stones, plants, animals, man,

angels, God — a giant collection of symbols that led to the divine

(Victor online). At a monastery in Padua, Lefèvre copied a

manuscript of Lull’s Book of the Lover and the Beloved (Hughes 12).

Lull’s words relating nature and man to God that Lefèvre

copied are exemplified in a quote from that book: “The birds hymned

the dawn, and the Lover, who is the dawn, awakened. And the birds

ended their song, and the Lover died in the dawn for his Beloved”

(Peers 41). In this love poem to God, the principle of Coincidence

of Opposites central to my thesis is dramatized in birth-death

imagery, as if enacting the genesis of creation and the sacrificial

act of re-union with, or return to, the divine.

Teachings of the Christian Mystics, edited by Andrew Harvey,

supplies these words from one of St. Paul’s Epistles that Lefèvre

32

published exemplifying aequalitas, equality: “So we, being many, are

one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (27).

Gregory of Nyssa was another whose words he published, and which we

can read in the above collection: “Do not be surprised that we

should speak of the Godhead as being at the same time both unified

and differentiated. Using riddles, as it were, we envisage a strange

and paradoxical diversity-in-unity and unity-in-diversity” (49).

Words of Pseudo-Dionysius, a sixth century Syrian monk whom Lefèvre

praised, speak of divine Silence: “Trinity!!...Lead us up beyond

unknowing and light, up to the farthest highest peak of mystic

Scripture, where the mysteries of God’s word lie simple, absolute

and unchangeable in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence”

(50). Thus, many of the pagan themes expounded in the Florentine

Platonic Academy Lefèvre also received through Church Fathers such

as these.

Lefèvre also copied some of Hildegard von Bingen’s writings.

Matthew Fox explains, in Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen, that

an Illumination titled, “Egg of the Universe” in Scivias, depicts

one of her visions of unity: “By this supreme instrument in the

figure of an egg, and which is the universe, invisible and eternal

things are manifested. [. . .] Oh Holy Spirit, you are the mighty

way in which every thing that is in the heavens, on the earth, and

under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with

relatedness” (48-9). Hildegard describes “The Cosmic Wheel” with

Christ in the center and spokes resembling the hexagram Star of

David, another vision depicted in an Illumination about unity in De

33

operatione Dei: “[. . .] Love appearing in a human form, the Love of

our heavenly Father” (54-5).

Hildegard praises the devotees who aided her in writing out

and depicting her visions: “[. . .] and he faithfully heard and

loved all the words of these visions without tiring, since they were

sweeter than honey and honeycomb; and so through the grace of God,

and with the help of these venerable men, the writing of this book

was finished” (Flanagan 88). In copying some of Hildegard’s work,

Lefèvre was a vital link for transmitting wisdom through the

humanist tradition of masters.

Guy Bedouelle reiterates in Lefèvre d’Étaples et

l’Intelligence des Écritures that in the latter part of his life,

Lefèvre’s only goal was to convey the sweetness of Scripture to the

humble to nourish them (16). After reading Reuchlin’s works on

Kabbalah, he treated explicitly in the 1509 Quincuplex Psalterium

the Kabbalistic theme of number mysticism associated with sacred

names, dear to him in De Magia naturali Book II (37). Lefèvre

remarked of Psalm LXXII: “Jeshua nomen benedictum regis nostri et

salvatoris omnium, et Deo incarnato ineffabile factum effabile”

(86). “The blessed name of Jesus our king and savior of all, and the

name of God incarnated, makes the ineffable effable.”

34

II. TRADITION OF MASTERS & LEGACY IN LANGUAGE

1. Italian Background and Contemporary Foreground

As for Christian Brotherhood and convivencia, in 1492 the

Inquisition expelled Jews from Spain, and Christopher Columbus

discovered the New World (Kamen 20; Clark). By 1493, Pope Alexander

VI had divided the New World between Spain and Portugal, and by

1494, King Charles VIII of France went to war against Italy

(Renaudet 150). During the Italian Wars, under Emperor Charles V

Spanish troops intervened in Italy against the French (Kamen 308).

It was just before the wars began – around 1493 – that Lefèvre,

inspired by Ficino and Pico of the Florentine Academy, wrote his

treatise De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic (Renaudet 150).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Augustin Renaudet,

Honorary Professor of Le Collège de France, wrote his definitive

history of pre-Reform humanism at Paris. It is from Préréforme et

Humanisme à Paris: Pendant les Premières Guerres d’Italie (1494-

1517) that I translate and paraphrase the story of Lefèvre’s Italian

journey, which functions here as background history for De Magia

naturali.

In 1491, Lefèvre read the two first books of Lull’s

Contemplations, which provided the inspiration to travel to Italy.

Many other University Parisians, such as Robert Gaguin, Charles

Fernand and Jean Cordier, had already crossed the mountains before

him. Distancing himself from scholasticism, Lefèvre intended to

visit the schools of philosophy to initiate himself into the

35

methodology of the Italian professors, particularly the

Aristoteltian rationalism of Barbaro and the Platonic mysticism of

Pico (134-136).

Lefèvre left France in the cold winter of 1491-2, accompanied

by Guillaume Gontier as secretary and copyist. He traversed the

mountainous Region Piémont in northwestern Italy and the Alps of

Lombardie. Perhaps bypassing Venice, Lefèvre arrived in Florence

where Marsilio Ficino and the Florentine humanists restored Plato’s

philosophy. Following the Neoplatonic model, Ficino founded a

religious metaphysics on the idea of a ladder of beings, emmanations

of God – the supreme unity and intelligence – descending by degrees

to multiple, insensible matter. From the middle of this cosmic

hierarchy, the rational soul of man can ascend to God by the way of

a dialectic of love. Thus, Ficino revived the spirit of the Gnostics

(136-139). Through a tradition of masters then, reaching from the

Gnostics to Plato and the Neoplatonic tradition, to the Florentine

humanists, Lefèvre inherited the dialectic of love. I assert that

this dialectic of love is the Coincidence of Opposites and

Trinitarian prisca theologia of which Lefèvre writes in De Magia

naturali Book II.

Lefèvre recognized in Ficino then, his own vision of

intellectual and mystical synthesis. Pico at this time was

publishing On Being and the One, preliminary thoughts of a synthesis

between the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato (Bedouelle 15). Hugh

Ross Williamson writes in Lorenzo the Magnificent that Ficino and

Pico of the Florentine Platonic Academy fused Christian, Greek,

Hebrew, Orphic and Kabbalistic teachings in their quest for unity

36

based on their theory of vestiges of the Trinity. A triad of the

Graces, for instance — Beauty, Chastity, Desire — were perceived as

a giving in emanatio (emanation), a receiving in raptio or conversio

(rapture or conversion), and a drawing up in returning, remeatio

(return). Revealing the Neoplatonic triad through this embodiment of

the dialectic, the Graces are then changed through the experience of

Venus’ initiation of the Primavera to – Beauty, Love, Desire (142,

145). Venus here represents the One.

This reflects the Coincidence of Opposites described herein –

the All of God (Beauty) opposite the nothing of man (Desire or

Longing) – with Divine Love, or Holy Spirit as the third or middle

element completing the Trinity. As in Botticelli’s Primavera,

painted for Lorenzo, Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 1

portrays Mercury as longing and Venus as love-nexus between the Moon

and Mercury (Evans II:50-51, f. 198-199v). Pagan becomes Christian

Kabbalah fully in Chapters 14-17, where Lefèvre asserts that the

numbers to the mystery of the magi and the numbers to the mystery of

the prophets are the same. These chapters explain that the letter

“s” sounded in the middle of the Tetragrammaton, or the number “300”

counted in the middle of the numbers ascribed to the Tetragrammaton,

completes the name Jesus through which mediating love-nexus,

enjoined by Spirit, man is redeemed (Evans II:89-97, ff. 217-221).

Williamson quotes Ficino: “’the Trinity was regarded by the

Pythagorean philosophers as the measure of all things, the reason

being, I surmise, that God governs things by threes and that the

things themselves also are determined by threes,’” and “’The Trinity

has left its mark on every part of Divine Creation’” (142, 145).

37

These are the lines of inquiry Renaissance humanists followed

that led them to the belief in what Emery points out as a prisca

theologia. Specifically through Kabbalah and the Judaic mystical

tradition they traced religious truth and philosophical wisdom to

their source in God’s communications with Adam and Moses. Egyptian

priests and Chaldean magi were supposed to have passed on divine

mysteries to the philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato and

Aristotle (Emery online).

Again paraphrasing Renaudet, erudite syncretism pleased the

poetic intelligence of Marsilio Ficino. Under the protection of

Lorenzo de Medici, this doctrine embellished the elegant and noble

life that the Florentine humanists led. Ficino’s country home next

to the Caregio, facing the royal villa built by Cosimo de Medici,

was where the members of the Platonic Academy that he founded met.

Inscriptions of moral and religious character ornamented the walls

of the grand salon where Ficino worked and presided over the

reunions. One remarked with pleasure the resemblances between his

character and that of Plato. As before in the gardens of the

Platonic Academy, at Careggi one supported moral, metaphysical or

literary controversies; sometimes a banquet gathered familiars with

master. With dinner over, the master would discourse on an obscure

theory of the Platonic system (140-1).

Renaudet surmises that in Florence Lefèvre could thus hear

Ficino expounding on his doctrines; he could assist at some of the

Academy’s meetings, get to know these professors, savants, priests

and doctors who met at Careggi. Perhaps Lefèvre heard Cristoforo

Landino, the teacher who had tried to demonstrate that Vergil, in

38

recounting the voyages of the Aeneid, described a man who fought

against vices and arrived finally at the contemplation of God. For

three years already, under the guidance of Pico della Mirandola,

Lefèvre had studied the philosophers. Concluding his studies in 1491

at Pico’s Studio, these lessons, inspired by a method in contrast to

the scholastics, provided Lefèvre with elegant and precise models of

teaching (141).

Lefèvre best loved Pico’s thinking and character among the

Florentine savants, who, despite his 1480’s imprisonment at Vicennes

and the censures of the Inquisition, continued his efforts to

reconcile antique philosophy with Christian dogma and modern

doctrines. Pico recognized the accepted three worlds – intelligence,

celestial bodies, and matter – yet with man free to model himself

after any of the diverse elements of his nature. Like Ficino though,

for Pico philosophic speculation was founded on divine love (142-3).

Simplified here then is the Lullian ladder of beings, which spans

architecturally the Coincidence of Opposites embodied as divine

Intellect or intelligence and man as Fallen matter, with celestial

or divine love the intermediating ground: a dialectic of love.

Renaudet reports that not only did Pico frequent the Platonic

Academy, he also often went to the convent of San Marco where Jerome

Savonarola preached. Pico’s patron Lorenzo de Medici feared this

friar though, who alluded to his rulership as corrupt tyranny. In

April 1492, Lefèvre may not have yet left Tuscany when Lorenzo the

Magnificent fell ill and died, amid dark premonitions of those

closest to him (142-4).

39

In Rome Lefèvre at last met Ermolao Barbaro where he

questioned him on the art of explaining Aristotle. An erudite more

than a thinker, Barbaro revealed the riches of Aristotelianism, and

gave Lefèvre a copy of the anti-Platonic Dialectic that had been

copied by Georges de Trébizonde. Renaudet unfortunately provides no

information as to Lefèvre’s return journey itself, though he does

continue that, back at Paris, Lefèvre taught an interpretation of

Aristotle that harmonized with the thinking of Ficino and Pico. He

taught that in all of Aristotle’s philosophy of sensible nature

there existed secret correspondences with divine things, opening the

way to hidden knowledge of the sub-sensory intelligible world, and

without which this philosophy lacks life. For Lefèvre and his

Florentine associates, a rational theory of the world was incomplete

without the soul (145-9).

At this point in Préréforme et Humanisme à Paris, Renaudet

perhaps exposes his own bias against magic in discussing censorship

of Lefèvre’s time and his treatise on magic: “superstitions of the

ancients, combined with those of the Arabs formed a system at once

theoretical and practical where astrology supplemented magic” (149).

After little more than a 150-word summary of Lefèvre’s De Magia

naturali, Renaudet concludes that he probably cast aside the science

of horoscopes, and that he probably didn’t believe in astrology

(151, 153). Like Ficino though, he did admit planetary influences,

and like Pico, Reuchlin and the Kabbalists he did admit the

marvelous properties of numbers (151).

As foreground for De Magia naturali, I provide viewpoints on

Kabbalah from more recent sources, such as Janet Berenson-Perkins’

40

Kabbalah Decoder. Sacred numerology called gematria, a specific

aspect of Jewish Kabbalah developed between the seventh and eleventh

centuries CE, I consider in this thesis as interpreted by

Renaissance Neoplatonists, and as transformed by them into an aspect

of Christian Kabbalah (94).

As they practiced it, Kabbalah intertwined with Christianity

in the mystical technique of numerical ascension. The Kabbalistic

Tree of Life, 10 sefirot or cosmic tree, depicts genesis descending

or emanating, and man returning to God in ascension, within an

anthropomorphic Image symbolizing the Coincidence of Opposites and

the Trinitarian prisca theologia. As an interior religion, the

natural magic of Christian Kabbalah is embedded in the human body.

Viewed from above as if looking down onto the crown of the head,

that sefirotic Image is seen as a hexagram, a central topic of

sacred geometry and sacred numerology. Formed of 2 interlocking

triangles, one descending from above, one ascending from below, the

hexagram is a geometric Image of man’s union with the divine.

Again, the primal myth embedded in the human body and depicted

anthropomorphically in the cosmic tree or 10 sefirot is exilic,

where lover below must ascend via divine love or Holy Spirit to

reunite with Beloved above. In the system Pico endorsed, man has the

free will to ascend to Plato’s the Good. Trinitarian Spirit, the

dialectic of love, is the key Christian Kabbalists chose to use.

Pythagoras originated Grecian numerology, believing that the

universe was expressible in numbers. Fascination with sacred

geometry goes hand in hand with sacred numerology and sacred names.

Illustrating how the prisca theologia intercepted by humanists is

41

brought forward in time through an unbroken chain of masters, Jacob

Boehme, a seventeenth-century German Christian Kabbalist, made the

theoretical descriptions of his predecessors more accessible through

diagrams (Berenson-Perkins 12, 94).

Boehme described his visionary experience: “I saw the Being of

all Beings, the Ground and the Abyss, also the birth of the Holy

Trinity, the origin and the first state of the world and of all

creatures” (Law 8). Boehme’s first figure, the equilateral triangle,

symbolizes the “Trinity Unmanifest”, “Nothing and All”, “Alpha and

Omega”, “the Eternal Beginning and the Eternal End”, “Mysterium

Magnum” — “the Great Mystery.” The culmination to Boehme’s Clavis or

The Key is depicted in the Judaic hexagram Star of David as Image of

final union of the 2 triangles into One (Boehme 56-7, 52-3, 80-1).

To demonstrate further that there is a perennial unbroken

chain of teachers of prisca theologia, I mention Leonora Leet’s 1999

publication, The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah: Recovering the Key

to Hebraic Sacred Science. Leets writes, “But associating the four

days of creation needed to manifest the hexagram form with the four

cosmic worlds of the Kabbalah leading to the manifestation of the

physical world will call for a radical reinterpretation of the

biblical account” (228). The first chapter of Lefèvre’s Book II

concurs regarding the quaternary being the foundation for the rest

of manifest creation (Evans II:50, f. 198). Leets draws the

beautiful geometric forms depicting genesis. The story unfolds again

with a precise and comprehensive scholarly astuteness.

Pertaining to literature in particular, Georges Dumézil,

structuralist, philologist and historian of religions, wrote a

42

magnum opus, great work, during the early 1900’s. Mythe et Épopée or

Myth and Epic brought the knowledge forward into our time of an

Indo-European civilization, based on the intimate relationship

between languages spoken from India to England. This linguistic

hypothesis is supported by a body of mythological-religious stories

common to all Indo-European peoples. More fascinating still is his

extrapolation that these peoples shared a common perception of the

world through a common mode of thought, that of thinking in 3 terms

(Dumézil, Grisward Introduction). This is an essential thesis point,

since I extrapolate that all humans think in 3’s, hilighting the

importance of the Renaissance humanists’ Trinitarian prisca

theologia as a key for decloaking metaphorical imagery in mythology.

Georges Dumézil’s Archaic Roman Religion is an encyclopedic

resource for use in studying both Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali and

his subsequent Quincuplex Psalterium. The difficulty of translating

the De Magia naturali is revealed in Dumézil’s descriptions of the

correlations between the Indo-Iranian and Italo-Celtic languages. He

quotes Joseph Vendryes:

“What is striking is that a rather large number of words

appear in this list of concepts which are connected with

religion, and especially with the liturgy or worship,

with sacrifice. Reviewing these words, adding certain

others to them, and grouping the whole by categories,

one does not merely establish one of the most ancient

elements of Italo-Celtic vocabulary; one also

establishes the existence of common religious traditions

43

in the languages of India and Iran and in the two

Western languages.” (1: Trans. Philip Krapp 80)

This reiterates the importance of engaging current

mythological studies through an experiential key such as prisca

theologia, along with teaching the historical multicultural roots of

Christianity.

Dumézil gives specific examples of identical words and their

connotations, one example being “I believe” and its substantive

“faith” which cover the whole field of relations between gods and

men (1: 81). Huston Smith’s semantic interpretation of faith as

beliefs in the mind is a linguistically correct one (“Finding Wisdom

in the Western Tradition”). Despite semantics one must attempt

translation of De Magia naturali; and perhaps having little

experience in the beaten path of Vergilian translation, for

instance, is an advantage to the translator striving for

multicultural ownership of Lefèvre’s treatise on prisca theologia.

Editor of Dante, Cristoforo Landino recorded some of the

Platonic Academy’s sessions, including those when Vergil was

discussed as a philosopher whose allegorical teachings were in

harmony with Plato’s. It was pondered in what way the meaning

beneath the surface of the text became obvious (Williamson 135).

Another commonality between Archaic Roman Religion and De

Magia naturali, in this instance provided by Dumézil, is that

abstractions were elevated to personifications as paired divinities:

ritual theological couples, where the female expressed one essential

mode of action of the male. “The elevation of abstractions,

desirable qualities, or powerful forces, virtutes and utilitates

44

(Cic. Leg. 2.28), to the rank of divinities was a game of language

and thought in which all the ancient Indo-European societies

indulged” (1: 49; 2: 397). This supports my translation of “vires”

as “vigors” rather than “virtues,” since the active connotation of

the word vigor perhaps better captures the original meaning of the

female-male essential mode of action (Evans Ch. 4 II:59, f. 203v);

Ch. 7 II:67, f. 207v). The process that Dumézil describes in

“abstractions as a game of language and thought,” is what I suggest

bringing more deeply into Academia through the study of religion as

mythology, decloaking it within Literature’s treatment of sacred

texts.

Mircea Eliade, in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,

speaks to Huston Smith’s, and Plato’s, point about student

experience being the goal of teaching:

At this point we wish to emphasize the following

fact: Although the shamanic experience proper could be

evaluated as a mystical experience by virtue of the

cosmological concept of the three communicating zones,

this cosmological concept does not belong exclusively to

the ideology of Siberian and Central Asian shamanism,

nor, in fact, of any other shamanism. It is a

universally disseminated idea connected with the belief

in the possibility of direct communication with the sky.

On the macrocosmic plane this communication is figured

by the Axis (Tree, Mountain, Pillar, etc.); on the

microscopic plane it is figured by the central pillar of

the house or the upper opening on the tent — which means

45

that every human habitation is projected to the “Center

of the World,” or that every altar, tent or house makes

possible a break-through in plane and hence ascent to

the sky. [. . .] The shamans did not create the

cosmology, the mythology, and the theology of their

respective tribes; they only interiorized it,

“experienced” it, and used it as the itinerary for their

ecstatic journeys. (274-6)

R. Labat asserts, In “Chapter 2. Mesopotamia,” that the magic

and divination of Sumero-Akkadian thought [assimilated into

Renaissance Neoplatonism as wisdom of the Chaldean priests] was not

the expression of a primitive mentality. Well-developed

intellectually, Mesopotamian magic was not synonymous with primitive

black magic. Incantations were based on elements common to most

forms of magic, such as “the constraining force of knots, [. . .]

attraction or repulsion by specifics, the purifying action of water,

the dissolving power of fire, [and] the power of occult forces”

(Taton ed., Ancient and Medieval Science 69-70).

Lefèvre understood this same natural magic as a prisca

theologia in harmony with Christianity, its technique of numerical

ascension being synonymous with the journey of the Christian mystic:

[. . .] and its goal is the same: a brief and rapturous

moment of contemplation in which the mind sees God face

to face. [. . .] those who properly understand how the

inferior world is coupled in love to the heavenly, will

recognize that the fundamental link between them, the

nexus from which flows all the harmony in the universe,

46

is Jesus Christ. And they will recognize that magic is

ultimately reducible to the Christian sacrament whereby

man puts on Christ and emerges reformed and repaired by

love — amore divino reformatus atque recuperatus. (Rice,

“The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples” 27-

8)

Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali thus reveals a Renaissance

humanist who reached beyond political and intellectual boundaries

through writings expressive of the humanly universal mystical

experience of union with God in divine love.

47

2. History and Summary of De Magia naturali

In the long wake of Pope Innocent VIII’s Papal Bull of 1484

against sorcerers, Lefèvre chose not to publish his treatise On

Natural Magic, possibly specifically in light of the debate against

astrology during the Spring of 1493 in Lyon (Bedouelle 36-7). Simon

de Phares, condemned, appealed to the Parlement of Paris who

transferred proceedings to the Sorbonne. The Doctors condemned those

often called mathematicians, Chaldeans or astrologers, declaring

mortal punishment for any Christian concurring with them. The

Faculty seized, condemned and burned forty volumes of de Phares

(Renaudet 152-3). De Phares himself was imprisoned in Lyon, then in

Paris (Bedouelle 37).

Pico’s sudden death at 31 may also have deterred Lefèvre from

publishing his treatise. Lynn Thorndike in, A History of Magic and

Experimental Science: Vol’s III and IV, Fourteenth and Fifteenth

Centuries, evokes our suspicion over the means of Pico’s death,

through the words of Sidonius: “’And another whose name I suppress

was more miserably captured and mulcted of his fame.’ [. . .] Peril

of life and death is about all that one gets from the pursuit of

magic” (4: 520). In the funeral sermon, Savonarola regretted that

Pico had not renounced the world in time, “declaring his conviction

that Pico’s early death was an unexpectedly severe punishment from

God because he had delayed to put this purpose into effect” (Hughes

33).

What is remarkable is that, despite Lefèvre’s notoriety, this

one treatise has been read by perhaps only a handful of modern

48

scholars. There is an alleged edition, or at least Book II, studied

philologically at l’École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) of the

Sorbonne. I believe it is yet unpublished. Possibly due to America’s

current political reputation I received no response from their

librarian regarding the edition. Likewise, I received no response to

repeated correspondences with libraries and individual scholars in

the Czech Republic, where the only extant copy of the complete

manuscript is held. There is an alleged copy in some form held by a

German databank “Alcuin,” although access is restricted and it

appears from the superscript markings that the databank merely lists

De Magia naturali but does not hold a copy of it.

Guy Bedouelle has noted that what is implicit in De Magia

naturali is made explicit in Lefèvre’s Quincuplex Psalterium, a

facsimile edition of which has been published. Yet the availability

of this more in-depth study on natural magic within the context of

Biblical Psalms does not explain the persisting disinterest in the

shorter treatise, which contains the seed of Lefèvre’s inspiration.

Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali has been left virtually untouched

primarily because of its physical obscurity. There is sparse

reference to it in the critical work available on Lefèvre, with

Columbia’s Kristeller, Rice and Penham, and Europe’s Mandosio, Brach

and Pierozzi, and myself, being perhaps the only modern scholars to

have read the treatise. The single extant manuscript in six books of

De Magia naturali is held by the Czech Republic’s Knihovna

Univerziti. The University of Columbia graciously gave me permission

to work on that manuscript in the form of a microfilm copy housed

there through the generosity of Professor Paul O. Kristeller. The

49

Olomouc manuscript was not catalogued until after the middle of the

twentieth century, when Kristeller happened upon it in the course of

cataloguing Medieval/Renaissance Latin manuscripts throughout

European libraries. Kristeller had anticipated a critical edition by

Penham, though, as I confirmed through Penham’s son, the elder

passed away before engaging in the project.

The Vatican Library holds a 1568 manuscript copy of the first

four books of De Magia naturali in the Queen Christina collection,

and the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels holds a fragment of the

treatise. Looking at the first few pages of all three manuscripts,

one is drawn to the conclusion that they appear to have come from

the same prime manuscript. I have therefore decided to work from the

complete 1538 Olomouc manuscript, itself perhaps the extant prime.

Undoubtedly the most important specific research find came

during my final recheck of resources on Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali.

WorldCat had of course always listed the Longinus compilation, which

includes a De magia naturali for instance. No new works by that name

came up under these standard searches when I re-checked. For years,

nothing whatsoever came up on a Google search for De Magia naturali,

however in re-checking Google before preparing the final thesis, I

was pleasantly surprised. Apparently due to the popularity of the

music group Melek-Tha, Google had learned that the search for their

dark ambient music CD De Magia Naturali Daemonica was frequent.

In learning to display the title of their CD, Google

inadvertantly picked up a class that was offered at EPHE, École

Pratique des Hautes Études of the Sorbonne. That 2002-3 philology

class was taught by Jean-Marc Mandosio, who allegedly collaborated

50

with Jean-Pierre Brach on an edition and commentary of Jacques

Lefèvre d’Étaples’ De Magia naturali. I was enthusiastic to contact

their librarian regarding accessibility of the alleged French

edition. My first attempt at correspondence got no reply, but I plan

to continue this pursuit. There was another seminar taught by

Mandosio in 2004-5 on Book II, which verifies the correctness of my

decision to begin work on the De Magia with that key book.

Google then also picked up an article by Pierozzi and

Mandosio, in the revue Chrysopœia entitled, “L’interprétation

alchimique de deux travaux d’Hercule dans le De Magia naturali de

Lefèvre d’Étaples,” which I was able to get through interlibrary

loan. Although other sources such as Rice’s essay include

information on the De Magia, I will translate and paraphrase this

article’s account on pages 191-263 of Chrysopœia Volume V:

The complete manuscript MI 119 of the university library in

Olomouc, Czech Republic, dated 1538, is entitled Jacobi Fabri

Stapulensis Magici naturalis liber primus ad clarissimum virum

Germanum Ganaium regium senatore. Pierozzi chose the Olomouc

manuscript for this essay’s study since it is the only complete copy

in six books, and (aside from the Belgian fragment) is the oldest.

The manuscript in the Vatican Library, 1115 Reginense, seems

to have been copied around 1568-9 in Crackow by the Hungarian

humanist Andreas Dudith, also with his annotations. Rice had pointed

out that Dudith made his copy from an original undoubtedly brought

to Crackow by Jon Schilling, who frequented the Parisian milieu of

Ganay and Lefèvre d’Étaples between 1504 and 1512.

51

Latin manuscript 10875 of the Bibliothèque royale de Belgique

holds a fragment written in Gothic cursive, probably between 1496-

1501.

A fourth fragment I had not previously heard of, Latin

manuscript 7454 of la Bibliothèque nationale de France, is an

anonymous calligraphy copy on paper of Book I.

Lefèvre dedicated many books to his patron Germain de Ganay up

until 1503, for all magic, natural or demonic, was condemned

outright in 1504. This is an important event to bear in mind

regarding the epistles I mention in support of my postulation that

Lefèvre never did abandon magic. Pierozzi, like Rice, dates the

writing of De Magia naturali between Fall of 1492 and Fall of 1495,

since Book III Chapter 18 mentions Roland, the firstborn of Charles

VIII and Anne of Bretagne who was short-lived. Pierozzi in this

essay dates the De Magia at 1494, rather than Renaudet’s 1493 which

I’ve followed.

The first chapter of Book I presents a definition of magic,

wherein the magi practice a discipline of natural philosophy that

utilizes the secret effects of nature. Lefèvre adopts Pico’s formula

of magic operations as the marriage of the world. The key to

exploring and manipulating nature is the sympathetic relationship

between the active celestial and the passive terrestrial. A sexual

analogy is employed, with superior world as masculine, and inferior

world as receptive feminine.

For Lefèvre, the foundation of all magical operations is the

sympathetic relationship that exploits the friendship or opposition

between living beings. His magic includes occult artifices such as

52

ligatures and incantations. The terms I find in Book II or use

regarding it that correlate with these terms of Pierozzi’s are:

exercises, Coincidence of Opposites, binding chains, and the poets’

songs. As I have done, Pierozzi notes the influence of Ficino and

Pico throughout Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali.

In Book I, Lefèvre examines in detail the various

correspondences between the signs of the zodiac, the four elements

and the four humors. He uses the Chaldean Image of the celestial

seen as a Great Animal, with the zodiacal body parts influencing

terrestrial bodies; the celestial agent, the terrestrial patient.

Lefèvre claims that if the friendships between things were

known, even miracles would cease to astound. He posits that natural

magic is an operational wisdom that exploits the principle

scientific knowledge attained in astrology, medicine and alchemy.

This I term Lefèvre’s decloaking of disciplines. He enjoins those

who want to learn in depth, to read not only Latin authors, but also

Chaldean and Indian authors.

Pierozzi notes the element of dialogue in Book II, as I have,

considering the mystical significance of numbers and referring

continually to teachings of the Pythagoreans, Chaldeans and

Kabbalists. While writing the De Magia, Lefèvre discovered the work

of Odo of Morimond, twelfth century specialist in number mysticism.

Subsequently, Lefèvre formulated the correlations between

mathematics, music and astrology with the same arguments as those in

Book II. Again I offer to term this Lefèvre’s decloaking of

disciplines.

53

Pierozzi and Mandosio’s translation on pages 200-1, of the

paragraph on the Pythagorean Silence that I have also found as a key

passage in Chapter 14, is more of a paraphrase than my own

translation which strives to capture the poetic idiom that itself

embodies the mystical teachings it imparts. As a result of the

translation choices or understanding, Pierozzi and Mandosio have a

slightly different interpretation than myself of Lefèvre’s intended

meaning, emphasizing the distinction Lefèvre makes between sacred

numerology and sacred names, whereas I emphasize his correlation of

them and the point of the passage, which is negation or sacrifice

onto the Ground of Silence (Evans II:90, f. 218v). This highlights

the importance of multiple published editions to provide a breadth

of possible interpretations and a depth of understanding for future

scholars studying the De Magia naturali.

Pierozzi does however concur that modern Kabbalah becomes an

essential key for mystical exegesis of Scriptures. Although, the

authors perhaps overlook the essence of the link between De Magia

naturali and Quincuplex Psalterium, since Lefèvre does employ in the

latter for instance, Scriptural exegesis that includes the sacred

Hebrew alphabet alongside sacred numerology — a complete system of

gematria. This I find clear proof of in Quincuplex Psalterium pages

170-203, Psalm 118 (119). Lefèvre divides this long Psalm into 22

Spiritual Meditations, each ascribed a letter of the Hebrew

alphabet, its name, what it signifies (quality), and its number.

Pierozzi singles out another passage wherein Abraham is said

to have been granted the potency to engender his descendents through

the number of his name, which is the quinary or 5. I had also

54

written on the importance in Book II of the 5th element, the

quintessential Spirit that elicits God’s grace into the world.

The text that could be considered the source of Lefèvre’s

Kabbalistic Book II Pierozzi, acknowledging Copenhaver, cites as

Pico’s Conclusiones, wherein is the same type of Kabbalistic

exegesis of the Old Testament and the Trinity. Lefèvre and Pico see

in Kabbalah a method of exegesis suited to confirm Christian

theology as in accord with the truths of ancient theologians.

In Book III, Lefèvre returns to more classic astrological

theory, reviewing the constellations while recalling specific

mythological characters associated with them. The Triangle, for

example, by analogy to the Trinity stimulates scientific and

artistic capacities in human beings. He examines the properties of

the planets that dominate each constellation and the influences that

they exert on the vegetal and animal world. Lefèvre’s decloaking of

mythology according to what I would call a mystical-metaphorical

interpretation, Pierozzi designates as an alchemical-metaphorical

interpretation. These ideas concur, confirming my assertion that De

Magia naturali is a useful treatise for convincing scholars to

decloak mythology mystically, Spiritually – anagogically.

Pierozzi’s summary also points to Books III & IV specifically

as fertile ground for critical analysis of mythology in terms of

mysticism, Spirit. In Book IV, Greco-Roman mythological divinities

are aligned with the 12 signs of the zodiac according to named

temples or houses. Pierozzi and Mandosio chose to write this

alchemical-metaphorical essay on Lefèvre’s two chapters (one from

each of Books III & IV) treating the exploits of Hercules. The

55

authors find Book III Chapter 6 and Book IV Chapter 18, of

alchemical and astrological motifs, interlaced with allegorical and

symbolic Images. Beyond the scope of this thesis, I will only

comment further that their essay addresses such charged Images (to

Christianity and Judaism) as the golden apples in the Garden of the

Hesperides and the dragon, the serpent. Hercules is symbolic of the

operations [exercises] the alchemist [Magus/Maga] employs in his/her

alchemical [mystical-magical] practice. The serpent-spirit is like a

flame that burns eternally.

The bulk of the collaborative article is Mandosio’s

translation and commentary on those two chapters, which at the time

of writing in the mid-1990’s were the ony two chapters he had read

of the treatise. Mandosio concludes that Lefèvre is the forgotten

precurser to the birth of a veritable alchemical mythological

tradition found in Augurelli’s 1515 Chrysopœia, and in Bracesco’s

1542 Il Legno della vita and 1544 L’Esposizione di Geber filosofo.

He surmises, as I did, that Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali was known

through a confidential distribution. These sources and observations

strongly support my thesis. Mandosio notes numerous other Primary

Sources than what I’ve compiled below that Lefèvre may have had

occasion to read before writing this treatise. I include Mandosio’s

mention of Manilius’ Astronomica, Pico’s Conclusiones and Ficino’s

De Amore in the listing below.

Concluding my translation and paraphrase of Pierozzi and

Mandosio’s essay, “L’interprétation alchimique de deux travaux

d’Hercule dans le De Magia naturali de Lefèvre d’Étaples” on pages

191-263 of Chrysopœia Volume V:

56

Book V is a series of tables on the passage of diverse

celestial figures through each sign of the zodiac. Book VI presents

tables of the degrees in the function of which the constellations,

through the diverse signs of the zodiac, produce extraordinary

effects on the life of the whole universe. Lefèvre concludes his

treatise with an examination of the reciprocal rapport of attraction

and repulsion, which the celestial figures embody in their diverse

aspects.

The above summation sentence of Pierozzi and Mandosio confirms

my assessment of the central key in De Magia naturali as the

Coincidence of Opposites.

57

3. Snapshot in Time of the Tradition

Lefèvre’s life and work has only recently come to the

attention of U.S. scholars who focus on mysticism, tracing the

tradition of masters through Medieval and Renaissance eras and

suggesting their influence on subsequent theologians and

philosophers. In the 1980’s article by Kent Emery, Jr., he asserts

that Lefèvre’s teachings contributed to the evolution of l’ecole

abstraite, the abstract school, an indigenous French school of

Spirituality the influence of which, Emery claims, reached to the

philosophy of Hegel.

In the absence of a published critical edition of De Magia

naturali, Emery is missing the puzzle piece that places Lefèvre’s

awareness of and commitment to the principle of Coincidence of

Opposites and ascension not only with his 1491 studies of Lull, but

also directly from Pico’s teachings at that time on Christian

Kabbalah. Lacking that information, Emery places Lefèvre’s

contribution to this tradition after his turn-of-the-century studies

of Cusa. As mentioned above, Renaudet dates Lefèvre’s studies of

Nicholas of Cusa during the first decade and a half of the sixteenth

century (661). Thus because of De Magia naturali’s physical

obscurity, Lefèvre has not been counted among the Christian

Kabbalists of his day. My work on the treatise sheds light on

Lefèvre’s role in propagating the prisca theologia in abstract form.

Gershom Scholem in Kabbalah suggests further research to

substantiate that, along with heirarchical metaphors, philosophical

speculation on sacred Names came through the Christian Platonic

58

tradition via the De Divisione Naturae of John Scotus Erigena (48).

This comment directly ties in Lefèvre’s writings, since he followed

the tradition of masters that included Raymond Lull and Erigena.

Importantly, Emery emphasizes that Lefèvre reinforced teachings,

aside from those of Lull and Cusanus, of mystic Church Fathers such

as St. Bonaventure and the Victorines, which were then later

legitimized by Lefèvre’s students Josse Clichtove and Charles de

Bovelles, then by the Capuchin Benet of Canfield, then Laurent de

Paris who expressed prisca theologia as the Palace of Divine Love,

then by the Capuchin Joseph du Tremblay (Emery online).

This clearly direct inheritance, which Emery traces over just

a few hundred years, inclines one to accept the legitimacy of the

Renaissance humanists’ claim to have rediscovered an ancient prisca

theologia through an unbroken chain of teachers. This thesis further

substantiates that the tradition of masters is unbroken even up to

today’s Academy. To illustrate the impact Renaissance humanists had

on future thought, I again cite Emery’s article in Journal of the

History of Ideas, “modern historians recognize an indigenous French

school of spirituality, which one authority calls ‘l’école

abstraite.’” Of the founder Benet of Canfield, and his contemporary

Laurent de Paris, Emery says, “For both, the principle of the

coincidence of opposites is central” (Emery online).

59

III. METHODOLOGY & BOOK II ON CHRISTIAN KABBALAH

1. Stigma of the Non-Christian

It seems that modern theologians and scholars before Emery’s

time would categorize De Magia naturali, even sight unseen, as an

erroneous early work that he outgrew and regretted. This seems to be

due to the persistence of the stigma associated with natural magic,

and, more importantly, due to the persistent misunderstanding of

Lefèvre’s interpretation of it. Lefèvre’s public repudiation of

natural magic seems to me to be rather simply in compliance with

religious censorship, expressed to avoid persecution as a heretic.

Paul J. W. Miller’s Introduction to the translation of Pico’s

On the Dignity of Man, a book that includes On Being and the One and

Heptaplus is somewhat biased, yet otherwise provides a good summary

of Pico’s humanist epistemology and methodology. Miller negates what

I posit as Lefèvre’s, and Pico’s, decloaking of religions to a

universal prisca theologia in such comments as, “Pico treats the

qabbalah with more respect than it perhaps deserves.” Although,

Miller is justified in concluding that the humanists’ methodology

was to utilize tools from other sources in a Christian Biblical

exegesis (Pico xi). That was a goal of Renaissance Academia, though

our current goal in the Academy should include critical analysis

from outside the confines of Christianity, since mysticism and

shamanism are universally human.

What Miller presents as the humanists’ misinformation, “A

sacred religious truth was presented by these thinkers in

60

allegorical form, hidden under mythological fables” (ix), I posit as

truth in the sense that human myths can be interpreted in mystical

terms according to how all humans think and perceive. Lefèvre

believed so, including in De Magia naturali many examples of his

mystical-metaphorical reading of mythology, astrological or

otherwise. Treatment above of Pierozzi and Mandosio’s essay on a

chapter in each of Books III & IV addresses Lefèvre’s

interpretations of Hercules and the serpent. Through number

mysticism in Book II, besides the planetary Greek and Roman gods and

goddesses, Lefèvre decloaks such mythological characters as Phoebus,

Minos, Cacus and Rhadamanthys, Cÿbele, Narcissus, Phillide and

Flora, and Daedalus — some of whom will be addressed herein. I point

out vehemently that Lefèvre’s anagogical decloaking of mythology

according to mystical-Spiritual metaphors is an essential and timely

key for current literary theory.

Miller’s Introduction demonstrates just how Pico [and thus

Lefèvre] reconciled St. Thomas’ distinction between God and

creatures, and Aristotle’s God with Plato’s Good, in that the

humanists equated the highest principle of each with God as

existence or being itself, juxtaposed to its opposite in creatures

who merely participate in existence or being (xxi-iii). Philosophies

and theologies were thus decloaked into the binary Coincidence of

Opposites, sometimes simplified as the All of God and the nothing of

man.

Following Aristotle’s injunction that man can actualize

virtues through habituation, Pico asserted man’s moral freedom

[which Lefèvre then taught as freedom to moral choice] (xv). Like

61

Pythagoras and Plato, they propounded an active participation on the

part of their students for the ethical choice between good and evil

(xvi). The Images or Forms and Names employed in this tradition as

it passed from teacher to student were intended for use in practical

exercises, or Positive theologies. The Christian challenge was to

demonstrate how these were reconciled with the Negative theology of

receiving grace through Christ.

One of Pico’s fundamental theses is that his universal concord

between philosophies and religions “is embodied in the collaboration

of man’s free moral choice with a return to God which we do not

make, but receive” (xvii). Herein is Lefèvre’s severing, or

receiving through sacrifice, of Pythagorean number mysticism at the

point where it becomes the One who alone descends on the Ground of

Silence.

Voluntque Cabalam litterariam in numerorum secretam

philosophiam Magicumque traducere. Hinc pendet secreta

Pythagore philosophia. Hinc arcana numerorum singula in

solo silentio discenda.

And they will the written Cabala to conduct them across

into the secret philosophy and magic of numbers. From

here Pythagorean philosophy hangs secreted. From here

the mystery of numbers descends alone on the desert

silence. (Evans Ch. 14 II:90, f. 218v)

Both Pico and Lefèvre thus equate magic with Christian

mysticism. Retelling their propagation of this prisca theologia of

aequalitas, equality, is the fulcrum on which this thesis is

balanced. That scholars belonging to a particular religious

62

tradition such as Catholicism or Judaism retell the ancient,

pristine theology as slanted toward their own religion is what I

protest. I posit that these Renaissance humanists were not Christian

Fundamentalists, but instead practiced their open-minded humanist

creed of the study of human culture, particularly that of man’s

intellectual activities. Miller concurs, in that he finds

The permanent interest and value of Pico’s view of

nature comes from his seeing the physical order as a

translation of philosophical and religious truth. In

this way, physics, philosophy, and Scripture literally

say the same things in different languages. (xii)

It is the humanists’ exegesis of religion along with the

decloaking of these disciplines into a metaphorical language of

Images that leads me to insist that their prisca theologia be

studied under the broad discipline of Literature as the mythology of

sacred texts. Mythology embodies archetypal human Ideas through

Images just as prisca theologia does. More importantly, prisca

theologia is a language of Images that can inform our study of

mythology in a way intended by the Renaissance humanists. Lefèvre in

Book II, for instance, interprets both Ovid and Vergil in terms of

his “Pythagorean philosophy” or number mysticism (Evans Ch. 2 II:53,

f. 200v; Ch. 3 II:57, f. 202v; Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203).

I suggest that Lefèvre’s conviction to ground the subjective,

abstract mystical experiences not only in metaphor, but also in

objective action, is the step that caused many scholars to overlook

a key to his thinking. Unlike the mystic poets cloistered in

monasteries and convents, Lefèvre lived in the secular working

63

world. His ardor, which found him traveling often, served the

humanist purpose of recovering and publishing the writings of pagan

and Christian mystics whose mode of expression was poetic.

Lefèvre further grounded subjective, metaphorical abstractions

in the world through his rigorous teaching at the Collège du

Cardinale of the University of Paris. The teachings embodied his

epistemological convictions: Lefèvre began teaching his students

with Imagination through study of Aristotle’s many words, proceeding

to Reason through study of Scripture and the Church Fathers, and

ascending to Silence in Intellect through study of authors such as

Pythagoras or Nicolas of Cusa. Grounded in the world of publishing

and teaching, he was diligently engaged in climbing up the Spiritual

ladder with his students through words that were perpetually

inclined towards Silence.

Revealing through two choice words of subjective abstraction

acceptable in his day exactly what was the highest rung of this

concrete ladder to the divine, Lèfevre equated Intellect with

intuition and faith. An important lesson of this teaching technique

is that for Lèfevre and other abstract thinkers such as Pythagoras,

Cusa and the Kabbalists, abstract symbolism itself was a technique

they could utilize to ascend to union with God, whereas those with

other modes of thinking needed to hear abstractions expressed

through metaphor to access their meaning. Lèfevre correlated the

metaphors of Scripture, the metaphors within writings of the Church

Fathers and pagan poets, with abstractions of Pythagoras such as

those which Reuchlin later summarizes in On the Art of the Kabbalah:

64

De Arte Cabalistica: “This is Pythagoras in a nutshell. Two is the

first number; one is the basis of number” (155).

Of the Church Fathers, Lefèvre also valued Cusa’s teaching of

this coincidentia oppositorum, the Coincidence of Opposites.

Lefèvre’s keen intent on sharing these intuitions, this faith, with

his Catholic students and the Christian public at large, with the

seeming ease of leaving behind their prior Kabbalistic, magic,

Pythagorean and Chaldean garments, I posit has been misinterpreted

as an evolution beyond erroneous teachings.

Quite the opposite may be more accurate: that the seed for

much of Lefèvre’s later writings lies hidden in De Magia naturali —

hidden because of its physical obscurity and not because its

metaphors lack clarity. The treatise is neither greater nor lesser

than his later writings, but may be more succinct regarding his

vision of man’s relationship with God, which is the reason I am

endeavoring a complete transcription alongside all of his other

works, and adding the uncommon dimension of translation into

English, to be followed or accompanied by a critical edition of the

treatise. Relative to that project, I will engage Quincuplex

Psalterium as Christian Kabbalah. Quincuplex Psalterium is both a

resource for my work on De Magia naturali and a subsequently written

support to my postulations.

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2. Book II on Kabbalah

Akin to Pico della Mirandola’s principle of universal accord,

Book II of the De Magia is a typical humanist synthesis of

metaphorical systems of expression: that of Neoplatonism and

Ficino’s macrocosm of the planets within the microcosm of man; of

angelology; of Pythagorean philosophy and numerical ascension; of

Pico’s Christian Kabbalah and genesis; and of the poets’

anthropomorphic male-female metaphors for union in divine love.

The primal exilic metaphor of the Fall from One to 2 that

forms the scaffolding of Book II, and which is the Coincidence of

Opposites, always followed by an ascension in return, leads one to

agree with Lefèvre’s categorizing of Book II as Pythagorean

philosophy or Christian Kabbalah. That is substantiated in the

Kabbalah’s system of the 10 sefirot depicting emanation of divine

attributes down from Keter, the Crown or God, into creation. The

Kabbalist’s technique then effects ascension from Malkhut, Kingdom

or Presence, back upwards towards Keter, and beyond to the En Sof,

Infinity or unfathomable depth. The En Sof then, equates with the

Ground of Silence in Book II, the “severed beyond” that numerical

ascension sacrifices one into.

De Magia naturali Book II follows this formula of numerical

ascension: through contemplation of the Coincidence of Opposites

expressed metaphorically as anthropomorphic relationship of the 2

into union with the One, man can apprehend the Trinity, which

precedes the multiplicity of genesis. The unchanging constant in

Lefèvre’s writings may be simply this consistent and systematic

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intent on ascent to the divine, with numerical ascension essentially

the only magic and mysticism of which he writes.

As Rice has noted regarding De Magia naturali Book II, he

cherishes in particular numerical ascension, following the tradition

of masters of number mysticism, which includes Pythagoras, the magi

and the Kabbalists (“The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre

d’Étaples” 26-7). I posit that Lefèvre’s metaphysical thinking in

abstract mathematical symbols requires a metaphorical-mythological

clothing akin to that used by mystic poets, and that his synthesis

of multicultural metaphors has a logic that is simpler and perhaps

more profound than one might think at first glance.

Lefèvre divides natural philosophy into two divisions:

philosophy, the theoretical science; and natural magic, the

practical science. This magic works through attractions and

repulsions that knit together heavenly and earthly things (Rice,

“The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples” 21-2).

Drawing upon the authority of contemporary religious and

scholarly writers, I hope to elucidate Lefèvre’s focus on

multicultural mystical symbolism of divine union in order to offer a

simpler, less contradictory, view into the evolution of his

writings. This particular treatise is the fulcrum point between

Lefèvre’s early work on Aristotle and his subsequent confinement to

Christian themes, the fulcrum between pagan and Christian. Lefèvre’s

epistemology and methodology never changed, but the cloth he dressed

them in and his sources of authority did, because of political

pressure in the guise of religion.

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Lefèvre, though, did find that Christian teachings clearly

expressed his own religious experiences and convictions. This

arranged marriage to Christianity did, after all, prove to be a

marriage of love. For example, in De Magia naturali, Lefèvre relates

that God delights in the number 3, and associates the triangle with

the Trinity: “From the triangle all things come; it is the

beginning, middle and end. [. . .] It inspires love of justice and

equity, for the equilateral triangle is the figure of aequalitas”

(Rice, “The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples” 24).

Lefèvre’s Ideal of the triangle as expressing Trinity, aequalitas,

is thus also a metaphor for the freedom to moral choice, an ideal of

perfection that Lefèvre strove for even within the imperfections of

his working world. Through sacred geometry and number mysticism

then, Lefèvre married Christianity to Kabbalah.

Lefèvre, in Book II, honors the ancient tradition of masters

from whom he inherited the principle of Coincidence of Opposites and

number mysticism in general. Rice summarizes that, in Book II,

Lefèvre refers to number mysticism as Pythagorean philosophy. He had

inherited Ficino’s teaching of the propagation of mathematical

philosophy by Hermes Trismegistus, Zalmoxis, Zoroaster, Pythagoras,

the Egyptian magi, Plato and the Kabbalists — numerical ascension

being the most ancient teaching of the magi. In the language of

Neoplatonism and Neopythagoreanism, Lefèvre wrote that numbers and

figures best express the love and harmony linking creation to the

divine paradigm. He wrote on emanation from the One, and of the

mental technique of using arithmetical-geometrical symbolism to

ascend golden chains to a vision of the One and of the Trinity. The

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correspondences Lefèvre draws reflect the harmony of natural magic,

which he now understood as a prisca theologia of Christianity (“The

De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples” 26-7, n.28). These

observations support my arguments that Academia ought to engage

humanity’s esoteric, phenomenological tradition that crosses

historical and cultural boundaries. As importantly, Rice himself

here provides support for my assertion that Lefèvre, although active

in the working world, was indeed a mystic.

D.P. Walker explains, in Spiritual and Demonic Magic from

Ficino to Campanella, that natural magic was the term used for

describing numerical correspondence between positions of heavenly

bodies and musical intervals, belonging to a cosmological theory

that the whole universe is constructed on musical proportions (81).

Yet Rice’s assessment of the astrology and magic of which

Lefèvre and other Renaissance humanists wrote is ultimately a

negative one:

The assumption of a sympathetic relationship

between things heavenly and earthly, the one agent, the

other patient, was for Lefèvre — as it had been for his

ancient and medieval predecessors — the guiding

principle of natural magic. The basic analogy is sexual.

The celestial bodies are masculine; the world is

feminine, passively receptive to heavenly influence. The

mundus inferior is as straitly linked to the superior

mundus as Juno, the female principle, is joined to

Jupiter, the male. Between the two worlds the attentive

magician discerns a dense and subtle network of

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correspondences and “secret” effects, simple in

principle, enormously complex in detail.

The secret effects Lefèvre attributed to the

constellations will sufficiently illustrate the

anecdotal absurdity of his method. [. . .]

The shape of a constellation also determines the

character of its influence. Lefèvre found in Deloton,

the Triangle, an especially congenial subject for a

fanciful essay packed with historical exempla,

quotations from the poets, and Christian analogies. [. .

.] A detailed system of correspondences between parts of

the body and signs of the zodiac relates the inferius

animal, the human body, to the magnum animal, the sky.

[. . .] Around this fundamental correspondence, Lefèvre

embroidered — with a perfectly conventional and

stereotyped ingenuity — a host of others, connecting

with the planets and signs of the zodiac the four

elements, the four humors, and the secret properties of

plants and animals, colors, stones and drugs. (24-5)

In a twist that I can’t help but see as intelligently

intentional, Rice concludes his 10-page synopsis of Lefèvre’s 350-

page treatise with a hint as to where Lefèvre really stood with

magic. He begins the concluding paragraph explaining how Lefèvre’s

opinion of magic was a high one, then Rice explains how on the other

hand Lefèvre later published “the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones

Petri apostoli, a work whose most frequently quoted and illustrated

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episodes were Peter’s disputes with Simon Magus” (28). Rice shows us

the paradox of contradiction that Lefèvre presents publicly:

[. . .] he publicly repudiated his earlier views and

attacked even natural magic as a dangerous delusion.

After pointing out that the Recognitiones Petri contains

“apostolic doctrine,” Lefèvre emphasized what he took to

be the chief profit to be got from it: we should all

especially admire this book “because it attacks every

sort of vanity. To begin with, it refutes the deceptions

of magic, so that no one may henceforth find refuge from

his own errors under the cover of magic of any sort; I

say of any sort, because no magic is good magic. It is

nonsense to believe that any magic is natural or good,

for natural magic is a wicked deception practiced by men

who seek to hide their crimes under a respectable name.”

The shift is typical of his intellectual development,

and parallels his growing disenchantment with Hermes

Trismegistus, Pythagoras and the Platonici, a shift the

easier to make because virtually all the ideas he had

come to disapprove of when they were called “magical”

seemed to him as admirable as ever when he found them in

the Dionysian corpus, the Fathers of the church, Ramon

Lull or Cusanus. (28-9)

Rice thus inadvertently supports my argument that Lefèvre

never did abandon the Christian Kabbalists’ Trinitarian natural

magic. I feel that in these closing remarks Rice may have actually

meant to elicit that very inquiry, since the paradox in Lefèvre’s

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positions really is too obvious to ignore. An example is found in

the 1510 title to a Trinitarian work by Richard of St. Victor that

apparently Lefèvre had published by Henricus Stephanus in 1510. The

descriptive title of the commentary to the work reads thus, followed

by my translation:

Metaphysica(m) & humani sensus transcendentem apicem sed

rationali modo complectens intelligentiam, quod opus ad

dei trini honorem et piarum mentium exercitationem.

Foeliciter prodeat in lucem.

Metaphysics and the transcendent apex of human

sensation, but embracing the intellect by means of

reason, which work to the threefold god I’m honoring, is

the exercise of pious minds. [The Trinity] Felicitously

appearing in the light. (Richard, title)

Miller’s summary of Pico’s overarching philosophy expresses

the premise on which Lefèvre’s natural magic worked, and the premise

about creation I adopt in this thesis:

For one thing, Pico had a philosophic view of the world,

including man, according to which each part of the world

is wholly present in every other part. It follows that a

truth about any one part immediately reverberates

through the whole, and discloses truth about every other

part. (x)

Miller points out that the key to Pico’s Scriptural exegesis

is revealed in Heptaplus, Septiform Narration of the Six Days of

Creation, Pico’s principle being to identify within Biblical

doctrines truths of science and philosophy (xi). This observation

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reveals that humanists interpreted creation through the number

mysticism of Genesis. A sixfold genesis is exactly where Lefèvre

begins De Magia naturali Book II. Chapter 1 delineates the flow from

unity – the first and absolute principle from which all other

principles form — of the binary – the principle of alterity and the

number of power (Evans II:50, f. 198). In this juxtaposition of

unity and binary — One and 2 — Lefèvre portrays the Coincidence of

Opposites as the relationship from which the sixfold genesis of

creation ensues.

Lefèvre continues building the scaffolding on which number

mysticism rests, stating that after the binary is the ternary number

longing, the unborn nearest to nature itself (Evans Ch. 1 II:50, f.

198). This means that, still within the unmanifest nature of God,

Spirit is nearest of the 3 to manifest nature. The ternary thus

embodies the resultant middle element formed between the Coincidence

of Opposites of Father and Son, and is itself the Trinitarian

longing, breath or Spirit for reunification of the exiled binary

with unity. The Holy Spirit of Christ is thus shown to be the

binding love-nexus that moves the parts into reunification with the

whole.

After the ternary, the quaternary number connection is

vaporized and perfected (Evans Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198). The quaternary,

like vapor, is thus a perfect unmanifest foundation, which supports

manifest creation. The quinary number of action extends out from

that womb, accompanied by the senary to the end of creation (Evans

Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198). The given end or completion of creation, later

designated as the septenary rest, would thus be Kabbalah’s Malkhut

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or Kingdom (Evans Ch. 16 II:94, f. 220v). By beginning with a

septiform narration of the six days of creation, Lefèvre thus

reveals in the first chapter of Book II, that the natural magic of

number mysticism is identical to Biblical Scripture.

Of great interest for future study of Book II as Kabbalah is

that Lefèvre first depicts a septiform creation, just as the Image

of the 10 sefirot is sometimes depicted as the truncated version of

the cosmic tree, the version comprised of only 7 spheres. They are

sometimes correlated with the Hindu Chakra system, as well as with

the Ptolemaic system of 7 planets. Before the treatise concludes

however, Lefèvre discusses all 10 numbers. In Pearl Epstein’s

analysis of Kabbalah as detailed below, she concurs with my

interpretation of the cosmic tree as anthropomorphic, representing

man’s nervous system joining Heaven and Earth, and the ascension of

man’s Spirit through the internal spheres back up to God (Kabbalah:

The Way of the Jewish Mystic 69-72).

I assert that a fundamental purpose of Lefèvre’s Book II would

have been to discern the process of genesis through number

mysticism, natural magic, which would lead in return up ultimately

to the Trinity within unity. Miller reminds us that, “This

Renaissance humanism was not a philosophy at all, but a cultural and

educational program” (xiii). Lefèvre would have intended On Natural

Magic Book II, at least in part, as a number mysticism or numerical

ascension exercise manual for students. The reason humanists placed

such an emphasis on the practical half of philosophy is that they

believed in God’s continual accessibility to humans through our very

body. Theirs was an anthropomorphic religion that conceived of

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divine union as a reality literally within each human. Miller

explains thus:

The natural world, in this sort of interpretation,

is a physical embodiment or model of philosophic and

religious truth, not a mere symbol or metaphor of a

supernatural order: nature actually embodies God’s

goodness and wisdom. The parallel between one part of

nature and another, between man and nature, or between

man and God, is not a poetic fiction but a real

isomorphism or identity of structure. (xii)

In Pico’s “First Proem” to Heptaplus, he mentions another work

in progress on the Psalms of David, wherein he interprets them

according to the secrets of nature found within Genesis (67).

Perhaps Lefèvre intended his Quincuplex Psalterium as a continuation

of Pico’s work in extrapolating Genesis in the Psalms, since it

expounds extrinsically through commentary what is intrinsic in De

Magia naturali. I chose Book II as the topic of this thesis for the

reason that it contains the key of genesis for interpreting the

other five books, and most likely his larger work Quincuplex

Psalterium as well. It will be a substantial future scholarly

undertaking alone to compare Pico’s Heptaplus with Lefèvre’s Book

II.

Regarding the continuum from theoretical philosophy to

practical philosophy, Pico held that the cross and Christ’s blood

signify that the approach to God is open for man through ascension

in imitatio Christi. Lefèvre felt the need to unify action and

contemplation, describing Christ in his native tongue of Middle

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French as, “nostre pensee, nostre parler, nostre vie...nostre tout”

(Renaudet 603; Bedouelle 223). “Our thought, our speech, our

life...our all,” echoing Zoroaster the Chaldean’s famous quote,

“Good thoughts, good words, good deeds” (Greenlees, Title Page).

Lefèvre thus taught the practice of philosophy together with the

theory of philosophy.

Rice asserts that Lefèvre, in the Olomouc manuscript of De

Magia naturali, makes the earliest recorded reference in France to

the Kabbalah (Rice, “The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefèvre

d’Étaples” 27). I would amend that claim to read, “the earliest

recorded Christian reference in France to the Kabbalah by that

name.” I feel it is important to clarify the source and history of

Kabbalah in order to obtain a clear understanding of Lefèvre’s

contribution to the tradition known as Christian Kabbalah.

Scholem provides us with a detailed account of Kabbalah’s

evolution. He argues against the view of adoption by pre-Kabbalists

of the Iranian theory of two principles, yet he refers to Kabbalah’s

indebtedness to Sufi mysticism of Islam, and comments that some of

its similes are Babylonian. Also, the Kabbalistic link between

gematria — sacred numerology — and angelology was either formulated

in Babylonia, or within the Italian Jewish tradition (Kabbalah 26,

32, 35). In Book II Chapter 10 Lefèvre delights in this correlation,

which he fully develops through commentary in his Quincuplex

Psalterium, Fivefold Psalter.

Scholem defines Kabbalah as the historical interpenetration of

Jewish Gnosticism and Neoplatonism. The doctrine of the Sefirot with

its 10 spheres is likely from the Pythagorean School or from Gnostic

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doctrine. Scholem concludes that the main part of Sefer Yezirah was

written between the third and sixth centuries by a Palestinian Jew

(27, 45). Gnosis is defined as, “Intuitive apprehension of spiritual

truths, an esoteric form of knowledge sought by the Gnostics”

(“Gnosis”). Again, Lefèvre’s methodology, and highest rung of his

philosophical theology – Intuition – corresponds with Kabbalistic

wisdom.

These were early stages of Kabbalah’s evolution, for:

Contemporaneous with the growth of hasidut in France and

Germany, the first historical stages of the Kabbalah

emerged in southern France [. . .]. Sefer ha-Bahir,

ostensibly an ancient Midrash, appeared in Provence some

time between 1150 and 1200 but no earlier; it was

apparently edited there from a number of treatises which

came from Germany or directly from the East. An analysis

of the work leaves no doubt that it was not originally

written in Provence [. . .]. Cast in the form of

interpretations of scriptural verses, particularly

passages of mythological character, the Bahir transforms

the Merkabah tradition into a Gnostic tradition

concerning the powers of God that lie within the Divine

Glory (Kavod), whose activity at the creation is alluded

to through symbolic interpretation of the Bible and the

aggadha. Remnants of a clearly Gnostic terminology and

symbolism are preserved, albeit through a Jewish

redaction, which connects the symbols with motifs

already well known from the aggadah. This is especially

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so with regard to anything that impinges on keneset

Yisrael, which is identified with the Shekhinah, with

the Kavod, and with the bat (“daughter”), who comprises

all paths of wisdom. There are indications in the

writings of Eleazar of Worms that he too knew this

terminology, precisely in connection with the symbolism

of the Shekhinah. The theory of the Sefirot was not

finally formulated in the Sefer ha-Bahir, and many of

the book’s statements were not understood, even by the

early kabbalists of Western Europe. The teaching of the

Bahir is introduced as ma’aseh merkabah, the term

“Kabbalah” not yet being used. (42-3)

I plan to further research Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’ De Magia

naturali Book II with reference to the Bahir, in order to compare

Venus with Shekhinah and the bat, and to compare the Ideas that

number mysticism represent in terms of the powers of God within the

Kavod. Following Lefèvre’s extrapolation of what is taught

intrinsically in De Magia naturali into his extrinsic interpretation

of those teachings as Scripture in Quincuplex Psalterium, it will be

of great interest to compare that book also with the Bahir’s

“interpretations of scriptural verses, particularly passages of

mythological character” and passages on the Kavod “whose activity at

the creation is alluded to through symbolic interpretation of the

Bible.”

The Sefer ha-Bahir stresses “the mysticism of the lights of

the intellect,” its spirit reflected in later Neoplatonic literature

as the “’Book of the Five Substances of Pseudo-Empedocles’ (from the

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school of Ibn Masarra in Spain)” (48). Notice again that “the lights

of the intellect” as highest mysticism correlates with Lefèvre’s

Intellect as final vehicle. Empedocles is named by Lefèvre in Book

II as regards his version of Coincidence of Opposites and the

quinary (Evans Ch. 4 II:59-60, f. 203). Scholem continues with a

listing of metaphors from several texts — and expressive of our

humanists’ syncretistic blending of traditions — that reveal the

“supernal essences” from “the highest hidden mystery” or “the

primeval darkness”:

[. . .] primeval wisdom, wonderful light, the hashmal,

the mist (arafel), the throne of light, the wheel (ofan)

of greatness, the cherub, the wheel of the Chariot, the

surrounding ether, the curtain, the throne of glory, the

place of souls, and the outer place of holiness. (48)

Scholem’s book Kabbalah is an encyclopedic and excellent

reference tool for further research into Lefèvre’s Book II. His

chapter on “Practical Kabbalah” points out the at times vehement

opposition to the magical operations of practical magic. Scholem

reports that, for the most part, the boundary between physical magic

and purely inward magic was easily crossed in either direction. Yet,

he singles out Pico as one whose usage of the term “practical

Kabbalah” was ambiguous and contradictory, a semantic issue (182-3).

Scholem concludes this on the issue of semantic pejoratives: “From

the fifteenth century on, the semantic division into ‘speculative’

and ‘practical’ Kabbalah became prevalent, though it was not

necessarily meant to be prejudicial to the latter” (183).

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The importance, to scholars like Lefèvre at the turn of the

sixteenth century, of mathematically generated images as forms

expressing Ideas was captured in allegorical representations such as

Rabelais’ Pantagruel, first published in 1532 (Gargantua and

Pantagruel Chronology). In the Glossary to Oeuvres Complètes, the

stereotype of good evangelical theologian immortalized in Rabelais’

character Hippothadée, is said to allude to either Lefèvre d’Étaples

or to St. Jude Thadée (998). The anti-heretical stereotype Lefèvre

was stamped with was, I assert, due to his intentionally exaggerated

denouncements of heretical teachings — a practical means of evading

censure. During the turn of the sixteenth century, it would have

been far safer to suffer trial by satire than to be brought to trial

by the Inquisition for openly expounding Jewish mysticism.

After the turn of the sixteenth century, in a climate volatile

with anti-semitism, Reuchlin courageously published De arte

Cabalistica, in which he wrote: “This is Pythagoras in a nutshell.

Two is the first number; one is the basis of number” (155). A

contemporary of Rabelais and Lefèvre, Johannes Reuchlin was brought

before the Inquisition in 1513 for propounding Judaism. Lefèvre

spoke out on his behalf during the ensuing disputes over the ruling

of heresy. By 1520, both Inquisition and the Sorbonne academics had

condemned Reuchlin’s teachings as heretical (Hughes 102-3). Yet by

then Reuchlin had already won the support of other humanistic

scholars, and had dedicated a pivotal book to Pope Leo X, a Medici

who had favored Reuchlin’s cause. De arte Cabalistica was published

in 1517, at the same time as Lefèvre’s Introductorium astronomicum

discussed herein.

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3. Network of Christian Kabbalists

Beginning with the tradition of masters that Lefèvre claims in

De Magia naturali: Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie reminds us, in The

Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, that Pythagoras traveled widely

at an early age to gather the wisdom of the ancients — to Egypt and

possibly as far as Persia to study the teachings of Zoroaster and

the Chaldeans. Pythagoras learned that the monad/unity/One is a

divine principle underlying number, but in itself is not a number at

all. Dyad/2, represents the possibility of duality/Logos — the

relation of one thing to another – while the triad/3 achieves that

relation in actuality. This is the archaic paradigm of cosmogenesis,

the pattern of creation resulting in the world. The long tradition

of masters passing down the concepts we are considering here

continues to proceed from Pythagoras to Plato and Aristotle, St.

Augustine, to the Neoplatonists and Neopythagoreans (20-2, 33-43).

Before the turn of the sixteenth century in Italy, Marsilio

Ficino’s Florentine Platonic Academy became a renowned institution,

a mecca for the era’s intellectuals. Platonic philosophy united this

informal gathering of scholars, some of whom traveled far to

occasionally join in this intimate learning experience (Brucker,

Renaissance Florence 228-9). As related above via Renaudet, in the

winter of 1491-2 Lefèvre made the arduous journey to Florence

seeking out Pico and Ficino.

Central at the Florentine Academy was Plato’s teaching that

philosophy itself was a mystical initiation, a union of man and God.

Ficino’s efforts to reconcile Platonism with Christianity pivoted on

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his Catholic conviction that God became man, that the Incarnate

Christ was God’s masterpiece, created for man to imitate in order to

achieve that union with God. Through such juxtapositions of

Platonism and Christianity, Ficino popularized “the idea of

comparative religion, from which all reconciliatory arguments must

start” (Williamson 133-4).

R. Yohanan Alemanno, one of Pico’s Jewish companions, conveyed

a unified vision of Torah and Kabbalistic lore, ascribing to both

the secret of the descent of supernal powers upon man, contending

that the same structure informs the two lores (Idel, Absorbing

Perfections 487). Lefèvre also married the literal with the

mystical, and as with Pico and Ficino, philosophic speculation was

always grounded in divine love (Renaudet 183).

In the “First Proem” of The Heptaplus: on the Sevenfold

Narration of the Six Days of Genesis, Pico writes that Pythagoras

became a master of Silence, that Plato concealed the teachings in

mathematical images that reveal Jesus Christ as the image of the

substance of God. In the “Second Proem” Pico describes, what Eliade

later calls the pre-eminent shamanic experience of ascension, in

terms of the crucifixion, which opened the way for men to approach

God Himself. The early Fathers spoke allegorically of hidden

alliances and affinities of all nature, inspired by the

Spirit/Creator. In closing, Pico reminds us that Moses called the

world “the great man,” a world created through the law of peace and

friendship, a world at one with its Maker, the good itself (67-9,

77, 173-4).

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Pico’s master Ficino, in Theologia Platonica de Immortalitate

Animorum, Platonic Theology of the Immortality of the Soul,

explained that St. Augustine chose Plato as his model, as closest to

Christian truth. Ficino also chose to portray Plato in accord with

Christian truth, marrying philosophy with sacred religion: theology.

Ficino cited Hermes Trismegistus in this treatise. He understood

Zoroaster to reveal that all is within the body of God, since God

wills himself, enacts himself, as creation. Ficino’s interpretation

of Plato’s teachings on free will of the thinking soul, leaving its

judgment free, is echoed in our understanding of Lefèvre’s teaching

of freedom to moral choice (Ficino 11, 23,185, 209-11).

Pico wrote essays on comparative religion, paralleling

Pimander, the alleged Egyptian genesis attributed to Hermes

Trismegistus, with the Hebrew-Christian Genesis as received by

Moses. Giordano Bruno, like other visionary mystics before him and

others after, depicted aspects of cosmogenesis in geometric

diagrams, involving triangles and the Star of David (Yates 85, 306-

24). Lefèvre as well, in an attempt to visualize intuitions of

Nicolas of Cusa, drew an extended Star of David diagram (Bedouelle

64). In 1494, Lefèvre published an edition of what Bedouelle calls

“the treasured” Pimandre (64). All of these wisdom traditions are

beginning to be studied extensively in Academia as Esotericism.

Although writings such as Pimander have proven to be of much

later dates than previously thought, I question the assumption that

therefore these multicultural teachings were never connected after

all. As a counter to the skepticism about Pythagoras having traveled

to Persia to learn much wisdom passed on from the Chaldeans, I would

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direct attention to Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In

Collections and Treasures it holds a Cuneiform stone tablet in Old

Babylonian script, a unique artifact in that it confirms:

[. . .] that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia employed in

their calculations Pythagorean number theory, as much as

thirteen hundred years before Pythagoras lived. [. . .]

From this tablet we learn that Greek mathematics,

particularly astronomy, was indebted to the Babylonian

science which preceded it (Columbia).

Perhaps the most important general realization from my studies

on resources relevant to Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali is that it can

be categorized, in terms of comparative religion, as Christian

Kabbalah. I have resisted the easy notion of such categorization in

my thesis title in order to emphasize instead the three more

universal components the De Magia Book II is structured around:

Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca theologia. One

must choose terms from some particular perspective though, so it

could be argued that these particular terms originate from within

the Christian tradition. I contend that the Ideas are humanly

universal and that the terms were meant to lead us beyond the

Christian and Judaic boundaries.

My purpose in including neither the word “Christian,” nor the

Judaic term “Kabbalah” in the title, was to de-emphasize the

politico-religious polemic the terms elicit in some contemporary

readers, whether scholar or not. Instead, this thesis claims the

Ground of Silence with no politico-religious boundaries in order to

raise continually my own sights on equality as well as that of the

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reader, and also to hi-light the best of Renaissance humanist

intentions and the Ideal they strove for.

The terms Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca

theologia named in sequence, correspond with the numbers 2, 3, and

One. After the condition of duality exists, it is evident that there

is a third element joining them in the holistic perception of the

Three in One. These three terms in the thesis title express a

unified transcendent Idea: a continuum where there is no separation

between God, Spirit, and man; a continuum where there are no

religious boundaries.

Religious metaphors and Images are useful when they instruct

about transcendent Ideas, but confusing when they are misconstrued

to confine to political boundaries. Yet, Ideas most often do need to

be expressed through metaphor and Image in order to convey meaning,

and those metaphors and Images do become misconstrued. For instance,

the terms Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca

theologia – as a unified Idea – could be Imag-ined as a Pillar, a

phalus, a Mountain, an umbilicus, or the body of Jesus Christ

uniting God and man. This statement will become clearer in the

treatment of Moshe Idel’s book Ascensions on High in Jewish

Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders below. However, the metaphorical

Images used above to communicate the same Idea may be interpreted or

construed differently by every reader.

This reality of human communication is played upon differently

by different authors, as noted below in the writings of scholars on

Christian Kabbalah. Each author has a somewhat different angle on

the Ideas at stake, and each succeeds to a greater or lesser degree

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at convincing the reader of the legitimacy of their angle. All I can

do, as an equal of scholar and reader alike, is to present my own

arguments in the best possible light. This is akin to what the

Renaissance humanists have done in such treatises as Lefèvre’s De

Magia naturali and Pico’s Conclusiones. Each accentuates or draws

attention to certain facets of natural magic, Christianity,

Kabbalah, Platonism or Pythagoreanism for instance, through

metaphors and Images that lend credibility to their arguments. These

metaphors and Images are expressed in words for the most part,

sometimes with graphic depictions added. We must ultimately admit

that our individual interpretations of these words and drawings,

even of numbers, are speculative. Communication is a speculative

venture. I feel however, that the one point that transports these

written communications out of the field of speculative politico-

religious contentions is the fact that they were, and are, based on

humanly universal Intuitive experiences.

Although my research into the two recent books that follow

came at the end of my thesis research, this chapter is provided as a

central confirmation to the reader that the teachings of the

tradition of masters I touch upon could, during some European

historical eras, be categorized as Christian Kabbalah, and as a

confirmation that these teachings were in fact studied by a network

of scholars who could be called Christian Kabbalists – European

Renaissance humanists, scientists, philosophers, German pietists,

and Jewish conversos alike. My hope however, is that it will

support, as the other chapters have, the thesis argument that

Academia ought to engage such texts as humanly universal

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experiential phenomenon rather than solely as historical religious

artifacts.

That is essentially the same argument offered in the

concluding chapters of Christian Kabbalah: Neglected Child of

Theology, written by the scholar Ernst Benz in 1958, and translated

into English by Kenneth W. Wesche in 2004. It is an introductory

work on the history and teachings of Christian Kabbalah, the author

concluding thus about Oetinger in particular, and about the

Christian Kabbalists in general:

What he brings to expression in his joining of the

classical doctrine of the Trinity with the doctrine of

the Sefirot is a speculative attempt to penetrate into

the inner movement of life in the Godhead, and to

comprehend the processes in the universe and in

salvation history, the presence of God in the world, in

nature, in humanity, and the various forms of the

personal encounter between God and man from out of the

inner movement of life in the Godhead itself. Also, the

Christian Trinity doctrine is but the intellectual

reflection, the insufficient attempt of human

expression, [of] a genuinely intuitive encounter with

the divine Transcendence on the ground of its various

forms of self-manifestation returning back to man.

[. . .] It would be a mistake to require dogmatic

correctness of such an attempt. It is much more the

expression of an experience of the Transcendent that

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formed a genuine community. We ourselves are not afraid

to call it mystical, so long as this word is not weighed

down by a multitude of misunderstandings and prejudices,

and we can say with certainty that it was an experience

of the Transcendent in which the greatest pious men of

the Jews and Christians experienced themselves as one.

That appreciation of this commonality is on the

rise again today confirms to me the conclusion in

Leopold Ziegler’s Conversation of the Masters, the most

recent work of the great revivalist of Schelling’s

theology in our time. His Conversations of the Masters

on Universal Man, at the climax of its presentation,

joins the theogonic and eschatological aspects of the

Image of the Universal Man, and in so doing comes upon

the Hasidic Image of the Messiah. There Leopold Ziegler

writes apropos his meditation on Hasidism concerning the

Jewish capacity for Spirit: “There is a capacity for

Spirit, moreover, which at the very least encompasses

the Christian revelation as far as is possible, and

includes rather than excludes it in itself. I repeat: at

the very least, as far as possible. Accordingly, I place

all my hopes on that day of reconciliation, when Judaism

and Christianity commonly acknowledge their guilt in

their divisions and both affirm their common root in the

symbol of the Return or Restoration.” (79-82)

I point out that the Return specifically is under the purview

of mythology. These speculative attempts at communication then –

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even within the Biblical communications of God with Moses, and back

further before the Bible to sacred texts of other cultures – all

might be studied as the mythology of religions within sacred texts,

in order to know of humanity’s deepest commonalities. The

anthropomorphic Image of the Return of the Messiah – whether one

calls it Jesus Christ, the Pillar, the Pentagrammaton, or the number

326 – embodies the Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and prisca

theologia, and expresses an intuitive experience of transcendent

Being or unity.

Ernst Benz begins Christian Kabbalah: Neglected Child of

Theology with an Introduction setting the stage for the relevancy of

his book to “our modern ears” (7). His observations reflect our

contemporary dilemma of politicized religion – fundamentalism –

polarizing the Global Village:

The rejection of mysticism in contemporary Protestant

theology follows from a particular understanding of

God’s utter transcendence and of the absolute break that

prevails in the relationship between God and man [. . .]

we must nevertheless reckon with this attitude as a

widespread prejudice. Such a hostile attitude, however,

has not always held the field. In particular, the great

surge of mysticism within the theology and theosophy of

German pietism led not only to a renaissance in the

study of the Kabbalah within Protestant theology, but

also to a positive evaluation of the religious content

of the Kabbalah in its own right. (7-8)

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Benz hi-lights in the Introduction some of the masters he

treats in what I have called the tradition of masters. He includes:

(beginning with but not sequentially thereafter) the Swabian

humanist and Hebraist Reuchlin, followed by a Swabian intellectual

tradition and the prelate Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, head of the

Christian theosophy of early Pietism; the Protestant mysticism of

Jacob Boehme and his school, which spread throughout England and the

Netherlands, particularly Holland and especially in Amsterdam;

theological circles influenced by Boehme included natural scientists

such as Isaac Newton, Robert Fludd and Francis Mercurius von

Helmont; then outside the Christian religion from the beginning of

the Enlightenment as theosophy and anthroposophy. He studies

Oetinger in particular for the simple reason that he names his

authorities (9). We will see the historical differences of opinion

that lack of clearly cited sources leads to in my treatment of the

symposium edited by Joseph Dan. We will also see how this tradition

is differently defined and confined by different scholars,

supporting my postulation that it could instead be defined with no

politico-religious barriers whatsoever, as I feel the humanists

attempted.

In Chapter I, Benz dives into an account of the beginnings of

Christian Kabbalah. He defines “Christian Kabbalism” as: “the

interpretation of Kabbalistic themes in the context of the Christian

faith, or an interpretation of Christian doctrines utilizing

Kabbalistic methods and concepts” (11). From his bibliographic notes

we learn that members of this tradition named by Hamberger include

also: the Buxtorfs, Rittangel, Hottinger, Athansius Kircher,

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Vitringa, Knorr von Rosenroth, H. More, Buddeus [Guillaume Budé,

student of Lefèvre], Kleuker, Schelling, Franz von Baader, Friedrich

von Meyer, Joseph Franz Molitor and Adolph Koester (84).

For the beginnings though, Benz cites Gershom Scholem who

asserts that although Pico della Mirandola is generally thought of

as the progenitor of Christian Kabbalah, in actuality the conversos

or Jewish converts formulated it. Abraham Abulafia is the earliest

“witness” for this avenue of conversion that Scholem has found,

although he points out that the first convert to refer explicitly to

Kabbalah is Abner von Burgos, also called Alfonso von Valladolid.

Scholem also points to Samuel ben Nissim Abul Fradsch who also went

by the names Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada and Flavius Mithridates, as

the convert who taught Pico Hebrew and Chaldean. Raymond Lull

praised Christian Kabbalah, and Pico veritably equated it with the

Magia or magic in their mutual proof of the divinity of Christ (12-

13).

Benz mentions the objecting reactions of Jewish and Christian

orthodoxy alike. Notwithstanding, Christian Kabbalah continued in

its fundamental departures on the Trinity and the Incarnation, where

they linked the Trinity with the sefirot, which are defined as “the

outflowings or emanations of the Godhead” (15). Benz states that

Pico also came into contact with the “forgeries of the Kabbalistic

pseudepigrapha” through such authors as Paulus de Heredia and Pedro

de la Caballeria, the latter of which falsely quotes the Zohar with

an equivalent of the Trisagion from Isaish 6.3 (15). As Joseph Dan

also includes this instance via Scholem’s chapter “The Beginnings of

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the Christian Kabbalah,” I find it appropriate here to comment on

that Biblical verse:

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord seated

on a throne, high and exalted, and the skirt of his robe

filled the temple. About him were attendant seraphim,

and each had six wings; one pair covered his face and

one pair his feet, and one pair was spread in flight.

They were calling ceaselessly to one another,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts:

The whole earth is full of his glory.

(The New English Bible with the Apocrypha 816)

My interpretation is that each seraph is a clear embodiment or

Image of the unified experience of the Trinity in the One. The 2

pairs of wings covering the head and feet symbolize Coincidence of

Opposites; the 3rd middle pair of wings in flight symbolizes

completion of the Trinity in the Holy Spirit; and the fact that this

Trinity is envisioned as One Being is symbolized in the body of the

seraph that constantly announces God’s unified presence in creation.

Lefèvre begins De Magia naturali Book II by stating that the subject

of Pythagorean philosophy is unity, the generatrix of every number

(Evans Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198). In Chapter 2 Lefèvre then praises the

Venusian nexus as embodying the ternary, of which Vergil sings in

order to bind and draw tight the three in an amatory (love) chain

(Evans II:52, f. 199). Vergil’s injunction is for the poets to weave

the mountain of amaryllis or the chain of Venus out of the threefold

colors of amaryllis (Evans II:53, f. 200v). I interpret this amatory

chain or Venusian love-nexus as equivalent to not only the Image of

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the Mountain or Pillar, but also to that of the Trinity unified in

the crucifix.

Lefèvre continues the explanation declaring that the ternary

of the magus (magician) is the number of Venus, and that the

Charities and Graces are themselves the ternary number of Venus, who

Pindarus asserts live next to Apollo’s throne and who Jove

perpetually extols. At this point Lefèvre then positions himself

squarely in the Pythagorean tradition, in whose school women were

welcomed as equals, by regarding Venus – as third from the lowest

earth and Image of inferior female – and Jupiter – as third from the

highest earth or eighth globe and Image of superior male – as

equals: “just as the inferior lover always occurs reversing to the

superior, nor at any time ought to be degenerated to fallen” (Evans

II:53, f. 200v). In terms of Isaiah’s Image of the seraphim, the

head and feet, though opposite, are continuously, bodily connected

through the Holy Spirit as a ternary, Trisagion or Trinity, Holy on

all Three counts.

Lefèvre states that the mutual chain of benevolence,

beneficence, and concord is perfected through this nexus of love

between Jupiter and Venus. The number three, which Venus and Jupiter

computed from the Monad, the fountain and beginning of things, is

efficacious and made for love (Evans II:53-54, f. 200). Later we

will see how Lefèvre equates the name of Jesus Christ with the

middle, restorative element of divine love.

Regarding Pico as the accepted founder of Christian Kabbalah,

Benz points out that the tradition made a deep impression only when

Pico championed it, raising it to “a central theme of the Christian

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philosophy of the Renaissance.” Through Pico, Reuchlin took up

Christian Kabbalah. His writings recognized the Jewish Kabbalah as

an “ur-revelation brought to mankind even before the birth of

Christ, imparting insight into the sublime mysteries of the divine

Being” (16). Published in 1494 [the year after Lefèvre wrote his De

Magia], Reuchlin’s De Verbo Mirifico or The Wonderworking Word

states that:

God and man are joined by the ‘wondrous Word’ [. . .]

even from Moses’ Tetragrammaton there is a progressive

development to the most wonderful of all Names: Jesus,

through whom the inexpressible Name of God is first made

expressible. To this name of Jesus, in whom man and God

are united, belongs all glory. This Name works wonders

and redemption. (Benz 16-17)

Lefèvre culminates Chapters 14-16 with a Kabbalistic

discussion of the numbers of the Tetragrammaton YHVH [Yehouah],

totaling 26. His conclusion through number mysticism equates with

Reuchlin’s conclusion that when the Name becomes that of Jesus

[Yehoshuah] it works wonders. As Lefèvre describes it, the

Tetragrammaton becomes this Name when the quinary or fifth number-

letter [the “s”], which is 300, is born in the middle of the four,

declaring the miraculous sign operating above all celestial and

earthly virtues and powers, the conciliator of God and man. Thus the

effable is born from the ineffable, making the invisible visible,

and converting God into audible, visible Word (Evans II:89-95, ff.

217-220). This Name above all Names and in whom all will genuflect,

whether celestial, earthly, or infernal, is that most powerful,

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blessed and holy Name in whom the Spirit is enjoined. It is the Name

therefore that works and makes all miracles or wonders. When these

sacramental numbers of the magi, the prophets and David are

collected in one sum to the number 326, the intelligible world is

born from the paternal mind (Evans Ch. 16 93-94, f. 219-220v).

Lefèvre includes in Chapter 16 a diagram of the Cross with

the letter “s” – signifying Jesus Christ or the number 300 – on each

extremity of the Cross (Evans II:93, f. 219). Benz reports that

Reuchlin too, ends his 1517 De Arte Kabbalistica “in a glorification

of the Name of Jesus and of the Cross, which are explained using the

above mentioned Kabbalistic technique of letter interpretation”

(18). Like Lefèvre, Reuchlin posits that the Kabbalah was

transmitted in an unbroken tradition, and maintains that it may also

be the source of Hellenistic philosophy, Pythagorean philosophy in

particular, which itself came from Egyptian, Jewish and Persian

wisdom. Reuchlin also talks about the angels and the heavenly

spheres (17-18). It is clear from these exact parallels between the

Christian Kabbalistic writings of Reuchlin and Lefèvre’s treatise

that De Magia naturali can be categorized as Christian Kabbalah.

Benz devotes Chapters II through IX to F.C. Oetinger of the

early eighteenth century. Naming Leone Ebreo of the fifteenth

century, Benz relates that he linked the Kabbalistic tradition with

Platonism and Neoplatonism in Dialoghi d’Amore or Dialogues of Love.

Centuries later, Oetinger corresponded with Spencer’s Collegia

pietatis in Frankfurt, a circle which studied Kabbalah. Knorr von

Rosenroth’s Kabbalah Unveiled is cited as of particular interest to

this circle, and in it they found the doctrine of the Trinity and

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Christology, the version of which included the Shekinah as Wisdom,

the first of God’s creatures (20-21).

Oetinger was initiated into “the teaching of the greatest

Kabbalist of German Jewry, Isaac Luria” (42). He counted Boehme,

Swedenborg and Luria as “principal witnesses of spiritual knowledge”

(43). Historically, through Oetinger’s directly linking Boehme and

Luria, German Pietism is connected with Hasidism. Ez Chaim or Tree

of Life, was the most important work on Luria, written by one of his

students Hajim Vital. That book is an explanation received from

above by Luria of the obscure Zohar, the author of which is Simeon

son of Jochai. Oetinger related that Luria was visited nightly by

Moses and Elijah, “as on Mt. Tabor, and they would speak with him of

the resurrection of the fallen house of David that was drawing near”

(44-45, 51). Oetinger equated Jesus Christ with “the Lord of the

Spirit” from II Cor 3.17-18 (46).

As I have noted the date in the Introduction, Benz also

remarks that the year 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain,

marks a turning point in Kabbalistic history. He clarifies this as

the transition from an Old Kabbalah of esoteric teachings limited

within a small group of scholars. The New Kabbalah replaced those

traditional messianic teachings with “speculation on the ur-origin

of the world, on Creation’s spiritual Image in God, and on the

divine Ur-Image of Man in God [. . .] and of the way of meditation

in ‘vision’ participating in that Ur-Oneness and returning to it”

(49-50). Again, it is clear that Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali fits

the scholarly category of Christian Kabbalah. The more universally

human terms of my title – Coincidence of Opposites, the Trinity, and

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prisca theologia – again encompass that speculation on genesis or

origin, the Image of Spirit, and the Ur-Image of Man in God uniting

all three and returning them to Oneness.

Summarizing Oetinger’s sequence of the 10 sefirot, as God the

unfathomable Depth, the “En Sof” or “Ungrund,” “thrusts itself out

of itself”:

1. Keter (Crown)

2. Hochmah (Wisdom)

3. Binah (Understanding)

4. Gedulah or Chesed (Love or Mercy)

5. Gevurah or Din (Judgment or Power)

6. Tipereth (Compassion)

7. Netsah (Endurance-victory or Eternity)

8. Hod (Splendor)

9. Yesod (Foundation)

10. Malkhut (Kingdom) (Benz 67-73)

Benz points out that the correlation of the doctrine of the

Trinity to that of the 10 sefirot belongs to the oldest tradition of

Christian Kabbalah, and cites Reuchlin as the first to do this in

the Swabian tradition (74). Lefèvre, then, should be counted as the

first in the French Christian Kabbalistic tradition to correlate the

Trinity with the 10 sefirot. In Book II Chapter 11, he relates that

Christian Theology [the doctrine of the Trinity] is by no means all

power alone itself, though the highest infinite born from the monad.

[The Trinity] from the monad, indeed having stirred, leads all. It

is the supra-rational, -intelligible and -intellectible, all within

themselves as the permanency of majesty within the Infinity of

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light. The sensing, reasoning, intellecting portions of the

intellectible were responding alternately in analagous proportions

(Evans II:85-86, f. 215-216v). In this not only can we see Lefèvre’s

methodological continuum of Imagination, Reason, and Intellect, but

we can also see how he proportions that directly to his Trinitarian

epistemology.

In Chapter 12, Lefèvre discusses the contribution of these

three superior numbers within the divine numbers, concluding that

the denary number (10) arises out of the primordial triune. And as

through which denary the magus Pythagoras descended. This denary-

monaden principle is lover returning to Beloved, namely the unity of

all powers, and the unity of all causes, the love of all causes.

Therefore Monad and monad will be one and the same, in which is made

as one and the same principle: power and love (Evans II:86-87, f.

216).

Continuing in this vein, Chapter 13 qualifies the Monaden as

empty [En Sof or abyss], while the binary signifies the intelligible

world, and the ternary as the Idea of the most divine longing that

coincides with the love-nexus. Emptiness returning to Idea coincides

with power, and the beginning coincides with the end. The empty

Monaden is also Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, the beginning of

all and the newest: namely the Monad and the senary. But yoke the

beginning and the end with the septenary and they fill full rest.

The Paternal Monad is power and love returning to unity, equality

and nexus. From the Monad therefore through equality, and from

equality are made all things. Name as the binary the exemplar of

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water as it contains all: it is Idea. Monad, Idea, and Love

returning: these three are One (Evans II:87-89, ff. 216-217).

Similarly, Oetinger states that the Messiah is the Alpha and

Omega “in union and communion with the 10 sefirot in his union with

mankind, just as the eternal God is the Alpha and Omega outside of

humanity” (Benz 75). Of the first three sefirot, the Crown is the

First Person of the Godhead, Wisdom is the Second Person, the Son,

Logos or Word, and Understanding is the Third Person, the Holy

Spirit. These inseparably united three are the Threeness of Persons

in the Divine Being. After naming the first three sefirot as the

Trinity, Benz interprets the other seven as spirits and spirit-

fountains of God. Noting that the doctrine of the sefirot is

connected to that of emanations from Neoplatonism, he concludes that

these are “not Persons in the sense of the classical doctrine of the

Trinity,” and that thus there are difficulties in comparing the two

doctrines (75-6). Oetinger insisted the Doctrine of the Three

Persons not be imposed on Jews, but suggested to use instead the

words “outflowings or mirrored-splendor or sefiroth” (Benz 77). Benz

explains the doctrines as joined, where one term replaces another,

which I interpret as meaning that they are meant as equally valid

interpretations. He comments then that Oetinger [being a Christian]

of course uses the term Person (77). This is admitedly a problem

with comparative religion, though as I noted, one must choose terms

of communication. Bear in mind that Lefèvre himself chose the term

“Pythagorean philosophy” for the subject of Book II.

Like Lefèvre, Benz emphasizes that for Oetinger the divine

Triad is “an uncreated thousand-fold myriad” (77). Relative to that,

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he cites Koppel Hecht’s insightful definition of Spirit: “’The

outflowing from Wisdom through the Spirit towards creation and the

return to God, the Eternal One, is the Spirit’” (76-7).

Benz treats extensively the Kabbalistic Master Tablet of

Princess Antonia, a mural in the Church of the Trinity in Deinach

(Bad Teinach) that graphically depicts a Kabbalistic system that

encompasses the 10 sefirot via Biblical history set in a palace and

garden inhabited by anthropomorphic, angelic, and animal Images. The

two princesses living in Wurtemberg between 1613 and 1679, Antonia

and her sister Anna Johanna who studied the sciences, are proof that

educated Christian women were allowed to study Kabbalah alongside

the Bible. Through Kabbalah, Antonia saw the sefirot within the

crucified Jesus: two radiances in the head united in the third; two

radiances in the breast and shoulders united in the third; two

radiances in the hip and stomach united in the third; and all were

united in the final 10th sefirot. She experienced these as uniting

the mystery of God and Christ, as well as the Old and New Testaments

(57-9, 96-7). In short, the Threefoldness along with the Seven

Spirits of God “are depicted on two columns as ten persons” (61-2).

A century later, Oetinger was perhaps one of the few Christian

scholars who could interpret the Tablet. Benz points out that “no

one has troubled himself to study this rare monument until most

recently” (59). Impressions were made in 1663 of illustrations of

the Master Tablet, but were never published (64).

The 2 columns experienced by Antonia represent the Coincidence

of Opposites. Her three sets of 3 are depicted in Lefèvre’s Book II

as the elemental mind, the second mind and the Supernal mind (Evans

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Ch. 7 II:69-71, ff. 208v-209v). Like Antonia, Lefèvre offers us

angels as anthropomorphic Images, deities whose guardianship of the

Ideas facilitate our learning the ascent by Saturnian chains to the

Saturnian mind (Evans Ch. 4 II:57, f. 202v). In my larger work-in-

progress, I will correlate Princess Antonia’s Master Tablet with

Lefèvre’s system of correspondences between angels, celestial

spheres and numbers, as depicted and described in Chapter 10 (Evans

II:80-85, ff. 213-215).

The mural’s secrecy due to its physical obscurity, and not

because it’s Images lack clarity, mirrors that of Lefèvre’s

treatise. Esotericism such as that in Lefèvre’s treatise has been

understood since the dawn of mankind. Yet until recent years, few

scholars have been interested in challenging the boundaries of

Academia in this regard again.

In hi-lighting some of the Master Tablet’s graphic teachings

that Oetinger wrote on, Benz mentions first what Pico claimed in his

Conclusiones: “’no science proves the Divinity of Christ as well as

the Kabbalah and Magia’” (62). From the beginnings of this tradition

then, magic was associated with Kabbalah, as in Lefèvre’s treatise.

Benz sums up further that Kabbalistic philosophy was “raised as a

criterion for all philosophy and theology of the time,” comparing

these (among others) against it: Newtonian Philosophy; Lord

Professor Plouquet’s System; Detlev Cluver’s system; the philosophy

of Baglivius and that of Frederick the Great (63). Kabbalistic

philosophy as this “criterion” equates with the Renaissance

humanists’ denoting it as a prisca theologia.

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Oetinger’s sermon delivered on the Feast of the Three Wise

Men, wherein he counts Nicodemus (Jn 3:1-5) as a master of Kabbalah

who knew the mystery of the Trinity and the Seven Spirits within the

sefirot, bears particular import regarding categorizing De Magia

naturali Book II as Christian Kabbalah. Oetinger preached the

doctrine that Kabbalah was ur-revelation of the Way of Salvation,

which was known since the beginning of the world. He equates

Nicodemus’ vision of God with that in the Zohar, noting that early

Kabbalists also spoke of the Trinity as the Triad or the higher

Synetrium. He counted all of those who knew of this Trinity –

heathens, Jews, and Christians alike – as illumined by communion

with God (55-7). Thus Oetinger echoes Lefèvre’s injunction to “’love

also Indians, Ethiopians, Asians and Africans, and those who live in

islands beyond the sea’” and that “Even pagans and men who live

today in unknown regions of the earth, if they love God and respect

their parents and fellows according to their natural instinct

(naturalis instinctus) and the law of nature (which is

indistinguishable from the Decalogue), will be saved” (Rice,

Prefatory Epistles XXII-III).

Moreover, to categorize Nicodemus as a Kabbalist as we have

seen in Benz’s book, then also to categorize Lefèvre as a Kabbalist

through analysis of Book II in this treatise, is to categorize

Lefèvre as a Nicodemite. This definitively informs the question,

posed by Thierry Wanegffellen at the 1992 conference, Jacques

Lefèvre d’Étaples: Actes du Colloque d’Étaples, as to whether or not

he was a nicodémite (“Lefèvre nicodémite? Qu’est-ce que le

nicodémisme?” 155-80).

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As posed at the conference, the accusation of heresy that the

label nicodémite signified in Lefèvre’s time was centered around the

controversy of a Catholic’s bodily union of God and man through

Christ in the Eucharist, as it related to the spiritual union that

is Justification by Faith. Wanegffellen includes quotes from

Lefèvre’s teachings to his students. He concludes the paper with a

quote in which Lefèvre teaches that the virtue and efficacy He

offers us in this sacrament, can and must be better cognized and

felt through experience than can be expressed through speaking.

Lefèvre then instructs his student to meditate that there can be

none worthy to receive Him. Wanegffelen simplifies this instruction

to the “non sum dignus” or “I am not worthy” (179-80). Although both

of these Ideas signify a receiving in negation, a Negative theology

– a sacrifice – I feel that Lefèvre’s inclusion of all people in the

meditation is the key to understanding him as a nicodémite.

Lefèvre’s Justification by Faith was for all of humankind, Catholic

or not.

Benz’s Christian Kabbalah also supports my suggestion that the

reason Lefèvre has not been understood in the manner which I present

in this thesis is that scholars have not only taken his cross-talk

at face value, they have thought of him primarily as a man of action

in the material world – teaching, writing, editing, publishing. In

the essay, “Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and the Medieval Christian

Mystics,” Rice claims that, “Lefèvre was not himself a mystic. He

recorded no visions for us; his mind apparently never deserted his

flesh in ecstasy” (102). Yet Rice follows that with, “He repeatedly

cited the mystics’ silence as the exemplar of the highest form of

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contemplation” (102). I contend that Lefèvre actively practiced this

mystical Silence, the highest experience that can only be described

in riddles or negations. This is where scholars have missed the fact

that Lefèvre was a practicing mystic, which was itself the reason he

strove to bring practical philosophy – natural magic – into

university studies via his threefold ascending technique of

Imagination, Reason and Intellect.

Rice continues to puzzle over the contradiction that Lefèvre

presented over the course of time:

The relation of his own thought to the mystical

tradition, however, was never a simple one, and it

changed a good deal with time. The following curious

passage, from a letter of 1501, illustrates the

difficulty: “ [. . .] Aristotle is the life of learning;

Pythagoras the death of learning, which is superior to

life. It rightly follows that Pythagoras taught by

keeping silent, Aristotle by talking, but silence is act

and speech privation. [. . .] in Aristotle there is very

little silence and many voices; but silence speaks and

utterance says nothing and the best words are simple

silence.” (102-3)

This passage is not “curious” at all, but rather speaks

volumes in its riddles about Lefèvre’s inner commitment to mystical

Silence. He was established on the Ground of Silence, and no

bantering of words was to diminish or shake that faith. A double-

entendre is that Lefèvre’s silence on magic, Kabbalah and

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Pythagorean philosophy in his later years was itself the best proof

of their validity.

Rice supports his position that Lefèvre’s philosophy evolved

away from natural magic, stating:

One thing at least is clear. Lefèvre would not have

written the passage this way ten years later. [. . .]

“Nothing is more vain and empty than those who call

themselves Pythagoreans . . . read Irenaeus and you will

find that the Pythagoreans were the most vicious

opponents of the Christian religion.” And to a visiting

Italian about 1511 he emphasized that he was not an

Aristotelian (and still less a Platonist) but was a

Christian only. (103)

The passage in Christian Kabbalah that clearly supports my

argument is this:

In considering these ideas, one must constantly remember

that we are not dealing with abstract speculations or

logical concepts, but with an effort to give expression

to religious intuitions and experiences. The creators of

the Kabbalah were not abstract thinkers; they were

mystics, men of prayer, and in large part ascetics who

spent their time in prayerful meditation and

contemplation on the mysteries of God. (Benz 65)

Benz elaborates that the feeling of piety for God as a sacred

and sublime transcendence, an intuitive experience, was practiced in

the knowledge that God and the earthly world were intimately linked.

God’s Being was experienced in the longing for self-manifestation,

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and then in man’s return to God: a theogonic process with no

separations (65-7). In this description of Christian Kabbalah then,

we recognize the Pillar, the One Image that includes all Three.

Lefèvre also delineates the Pillar whose parts are inseparable from

the whole in Book II, when he speaks of the knots, nexus, and chain

in both Jove and Venus as celestial Concords: in the singular, the

magician that draws every thing and every effect together (Evans Ch.

4 II:57-58, f. 202). In describing the ternary Venus as passionate

longing, Lefèvre later ascribes that love-nexus to Jesus Christ in

the number 300, and celebrates this reforming love, concluding that

Venus is namely that by which is being chained and drawn tight the

body, sometimes as if by Venus’ laughter (Evans Ch. 5 II:62-3, f.

204-205v; Ch. 17 II:95, f. 220).

Oetinger, in comparing Newton’s doctrine with that of

Kabbalah, echoes Lull’s ladder of beings cited above in the

Introduction, claiming that it can be easily implied:

“[. . .] from all flowers, herbs, stones, animals, that

an all-universal unified Spirit of nature goes out to

the sanctuary of heaven, filling up the space of heaven

(Ps. 150.1) and itself in seven powers and thereafter

through combinations, conternationes (placing of three

things together), conquaternationes (placing of four

things together) in endless corporeal and specific

mixtures.” (70)

Lefèvre describes the same perception, wherein the ternary

unites upon and is coupled to the quaternary. Multiplied together

they compute the 12 judges in the end of ages who put forth sacred

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and immovable utterances, and through which divine virtues all are

counted saved and into their end are called back (Evans Ch. 2 II:54-

55, f. 200-201v). Book II, in fact, culminates with a table

depicting four unities or worlds, comprised of four groups of 7,

each divided into 3 and 4. This table encompasses the Christian

Kabbalist’s central interest in both the theogonic process and the

unified continuum: that of genesis of creation, reformation and

recuperation of man, and the end of time or death of creation; and

that of the first unity as the superintelligible, the second unity

as the intelligible, the third unity as the intellectual world, the

fourth unity as the sensible or corruptible (Evans Ch. 18 II:97-98,

f. 221-222v).

Lefèvre, in the 19th or ultimate chapter on Syrian Arithmetic,

offers to his patron Germain de Ganay that, with the obscure they

speak of mysteries; contemplative people (who having been severed

are worthy) convey much fruit. He then displays a table in 10’s,

offering the salutation to Germain of a future disputation on how

Syrian numbers might compute the end (Evans II:99, f. 222). Again,

Lefèvre’s partiality to contemplatives or mystics who sever

themselves in a sacrifice, a negation in meditation, a Negative

theology, bears witness to my thesis arguments.

The 1997 publication by Harvard College Library of the

symposium proceeds, The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books &

Their Interpreters, edited by Joseph Dan, is another contemporary

resource for research on De Magia naturali as well as an indication

that acceptance of Esotericism within Academia has begun. Indeed,

the University of Pennsylvania’s groundbreaking first volume of the

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scholarly journal Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft has just this summer

been published.

The proceeds of the symposium on The Christian Kabbalah

includes papers on these contributors to the tradition of masters:

Francesco Zorzi; Leibniz, Locke, and Newton; Jacob Frank; and

Johannes Reuchlin. I will comment in brief on Joseph Dan’s treatment

of the latter, along with his Introduction, and then on Gershom

Scholem’s chapter on “The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah,”

which Dan has included before the symposium proceeds (Contents

page). I also mention here the inclusion of Paul Ricci in this

tradition of masters.

Joseph Dan connects the beginning of Christian Kabbalah in

the last two decades of the fifteenth century to the Platonic-

Hermetic-magical Florentine enterprise of Ficino and Pico. Of those

not previously noted herein, Dan mentions the occult work of

Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, noting that Christian Kabbalah also

significantly influenced John Dee, Francis Bacon, Robert Fludd,

Michael Maier, Guillaume Postel, Francis Mercurius van Helmont,

Giordano Bruno, and possibly the Masonic movement. Dan names Frances

Yates, P. O. Kristeller, F. Secret, and Chaim Wirszubski as

important contributors to the study of Christian Kabbalah

(“Introduction” 13-15).

Importantly though, Dan asserts that “a great deal remains to

be done concerning particular writers and works and concerning the

nature of the phenomenon as a whole and its place in comtemporary

European culture” (15). Here then are the needs and issues that this

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thesis and my transcription-translation work-in-progress on De Magia

naturali address.

Scholem, in “The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah,” points

out that the thesis of Pico and others regarding Christian Kabbalah

was a mere variation of that proposed by Raymundus Martini in the

thirteenth century in Pugio fidei, regarding the Talmudists. This

work, which served as Catholic propaganda for the purpose of

conversions, occurred in Catalonia, the location and period when

Kabbalists led by Nachmanides began to consolidate Kabbalistic

literature (17-18). This observation hi-lights my point that the

common phenomenon being studied here is indeed a prisca theologia

that transcends the boundaries of religions.

In his customarily thorough mode, Scholem next relates the

difficulties in pinpointing exactly who and by what names the

progenitors of Christian Kabbalah were, citing the work of Eugenio

Anagnine and Joseph Blau as resources on the development of

Christian Kabbalah. He then notes that Pico was the first Latin

scholar to refer directly to the Kabbalah in explicita mentio,

though concluding he was preceded by implicita mentio of Paulus de

Heredia (18-21). Scholem cites the fourteenth century Abner of

Burgos as the first converted Jew to make specific reference to the

Kabbalah. Alfonso focused on the concepts of the shekinah and the

measure of the body of God (26). Of great interest for future

research I feel, regarding the female or Daughter as the perfected

physical manifestation of God, is the observation that Metatron has

been equated to both the Son and to the shekinah (27-8). As Lefèvre

has said, she ought not to be degenerated to fallen.

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Scholem again cites Pico’s Jewish associates as those who

provided Pico with his sources, in particular, “the former Sicilian

Jew Samuel ben Nissim Abu’l-Faradj of Agrigento (Flavius

Mithridates) (21-2). Pico was the first Christian of non-Jewish

origin to follow this thought process (24). Scholem pinpoints the

earliest documented conversion via Kabbalistic methods of exegesis

as Abraham Abulafia of the thirteenth century (25).

From the same century Scholem cites Arnaldo de Villanova as

the first, before Pico, to ascribe the doctrine of the Trinity to

the Tetragrammaton [YHVH]: Y = Father; W [V] = Son; H = Holy Spirit

(25). A key point here is that my interpretation places the H of

Holy Spirit between Y and V, and not as the final H. The reason is

the architecture of the Coincidence of Opposites, where the 1 and 2

are united by the middle element 3. The resultant ineffable

theological structure is Y/1 – H/3 – VH/2. Lefèvre and the Christian

Kabbalists then constructed the effable Pentagrammaton YHSVH, with

the middle HS signifying Jesus Christ’s physical incarnation as

bringing down the Holy Spirit and uniting Father and Son in the

Messiah. I will need to research Scholem’s source on Pico’s

Trinitarian interpretation, which names V as the Holy Spirit.

Scholem does confirm that Pico dealt with sefirotic symbolism in

general (34-5).

Importantly informing this thesis, Scholem provides the dates

of Pico’s time in Paris as between July 1485 and March 1486 (23).

This fact explains that Lefèvre may have been studying with Pico in

Paris during part of the uncharted time between 1480 and 1490. As

mentioned previously herein, Lefèvre merely concluded his studies

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with Pico during his own trip to Italy. Scholem reiterates that

Pico’s theory that “Kabbalah and magic were the most convincing

proof of the divinity of Christ” was astounding and scandalous at

the time (17, 24).

Scholem also reiterates that Pico inherited Christian

misinterpretations and falsifications, including teachings of John

and Paul, and naming Pedro de la Caballeria’s interpretation of the

Trisagion from Isaiah 6:3 (28-30). Though founded in historical

fact, these strongly expressed opinions support my suggestion that

scholars not place impenetrable boundaries on their respective

religions, as the Ideas and experiences are humanly universal.

An author for further research is David Messer Leon who was

inspired by Ficino’s circle, and whose Magen David treats the

relationship between Plato and Kabbalah. Of note regarding the

scarcity of references to Pico’s work [and to Lefèvre’s] on

Christian Kabbalah is Scholem’s mention of a Jew burned as a martyr

in 1490. He states as evidence of the interchanges between Jews and

Pico the fact that “while the Italian Platonists were turning to

Kabbalah, Jewish scholars in Italy were simultaneously turning to a

Platonic interpretation of the Kabbalah’s basic principles” (39). In

the final analysis, exchanges between religions that can be called

comparative religion cross boundaries in all directions equally.

Dan’s obervation [regarding Lefèvre’s era of humanists], in

“The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin,” corroborates this possibility

of open-minded comparative religion:

The Christian Kabbalist rejects, knowingly or

unknowingly, the concept that Christianity is right

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exactly in as much as Judaism is wrong [. . .]. As

stated above, I have not been able to find a credible,

sustained parallel to this attitude in earlier or later

points of contact between Judaism, Christianity and

Islam. (57)

The historical prevalence of closed-mindedness regarding

comparative religion in Academia that this observation implies, one

hopes will end through acceptance of a phenomenological approach to

the ideas and experiences religions convey.

Noting several points of divergence between Pico’s version of

“Christian” and that of the era’s other Christians, Dan concludes

that “the main difference can be presented in one word which

expresses almost everything: Pythagoras” (58). Dan quotes Reuchlin’s

1517 letter to Pope Leo X declaring his innocence of heresy:

“Marsilio (Ficino) has prepared Plato for Italy, Lefèvre d’Étaples

has restored Aristotle for the French, and I, Reuchlin, shall

complete this group, and explain to the Germans the Pythagoras [. .

.]” (59). Dan follows the letter with a clear synopsis of Reuchlin’s

history of Christianity, Judaism and Pythagoreanism:

The “Italian philosophy of the Christian religion” was

recorded first in the works of the Jewish kabbalah. It

was then absorbed by Pythagoras and his disciples. Their

writings have been dispersed, and can be reconstructed

now only by assembling the fragments of the Greek school

and combining them with the remaining volumes of the

Jewish kabbalah. Together, they represent the lost

philosophy of Christianity, and this is the essence of

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Reuchlin’s enterprise. There is no boundary separating

Pythagoras from the kabbalah, and there is no boundary

separating both of them from the philosophy of the

Christian religion. (60)

This is the direction in which Academia needs to go. Aside

from that however, neither Reuchlin nor Dan mentions Lefèvre as a

Christian Kabbalist. Nor do they mention the De Magia naturali as a

treatise that contains a book on Christian Kabbalah that may be the

key to all of Lefèvre’s teachings and writings. My thesis makes

those contributions to the research on Lefèvre, on Renaissance

humanists as Christian Kabbalists, tying both to the humanly

universal prisca theologia.

Dan points out that Reuchlin’s letter to the Medici pope was

naive in that he was obviously unaware of how marginal his concept

of Christianity was. He concludes that, although Reuchlin’s was a

sincere Christian orientation, this Christianity in the phrase

“Christian Kabbalah” denotes a highly unusual meaning shared by few

“before, after or during the period in which this cultural

phenomenon flourished” (61). This assertion I take exception to on

the grounds that the beliefs of the populace at large were perhaps

sparsely recorded in what we now call Academia, and also the fact

that this interpretation of Christianity is one of Jesus Christ as

both Spirit and flesh, which I observe as not uncommon at all. Dan’s

point does, however, confirm the appropriateness of my attempt at

explaining this prisca theologia by using terms that are not

religion-specific: hence the terms I chose for the thesis title. It

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is at this juncture that Dan treats the problem of communication,

which I mentioned in regards to choosing terms (65-67).

Dan brings attention to the fact that the Kabbalistic texts

studied by Jews and Christians differ, another reason to bear in

mind the intended meaning of the term Kabbalah (62-3). The Kabbalah

inherited from the Zohar includes three core features: the idea from

the book of Bahir that the sefirotic realm included a feminine power

termed the shekinah, the pleroma of the 10 sefirot, which now

included the second parallel set of sefirot creating a dualistic

concept of existence (65). Whereas Dan asserts that “Christian

kabbalists, consciously and unconsciously, rejected or marginalized

the symbols which were central to the Zohar and most other

kabbalistic works” (65), my thesis describes how all three criteria

are met in Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali Book II.

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IV. EQUALITY & UNITY OF THE BINARY

1. Primal Metaphors & Myth

Relative to the Medieval-Renaissance threshold which Lefèvre’s

De Magia naturali bridges, examples follow of a few avenues through

which current scholars are engaging the pagan-Christian dialogue.

Flint’s The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe tells of the

“rehabilitation” of pagan magic to Christian miracle. Regarding

pagan sacred places becoming Christianized, Flint reports “an

abundance, almost an embarassment, of evidence”:

Where non-Christian shrines were destroyed, they were

wherever possible replaced by Christian ones: oratories,

churches, and monasteries, erected upon the selfsame

spot and made up sometimes of the very same materials

(those, at least, which had managed to survive the first

fine fury of destruction). (254)

Kieckhefer’s Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the

Fifteenth Century provides translations of magical rites, along with

commentary. In a chapter on “The Magic of Circles and Spheres”, he

writes:

[. . .] in medieval thought, the stars and planets

emitted powers that affected life on earth and could be

put to use by a magician for good or for ill. The

possibility of such astral magic was not merely a belief

of the magicians themselves; philosophers and

theologians, indeed educated people generally, accepted

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the premise that the heavenly bodies influenced affairs

here below. (176)

In Book II Chapter 3, Lefèvre details planetary effects on the

earthly resulting from similars’ affinity to similars through the

benignity or archetypes who embody the Coincidence of Opposites:

And Jupiter and also Venus, celestial love-nexus of

benevolence, sound in unison the approach reciprocally

nearest to benignity, as of all magical accordances,

through their path, benignity is sanctioned. And in

truth not only the celestial to the celestial accord,

but also the celestial to the earthly. [. . .] The

influence consequently of the eighth circle, and also of

the Moon, earth feels the greatest. (Evans Ch. 3 II:56-

57, f. 201-202v)

Flint translates an incantation for bringing concord between

humans through archetypes who embody the Coincidence of Opposites:

“O Lord God, almighty creator of [all] things,

visible and invisible, establish gentle concord between

[_________ and _______], such as you established between

Adam and Eve, and between Jacob and Rachel, and between

Michael and Gabriel [. . .], and such concord as you

established between the angel whose medium is fire and

the one whose medium is snow, so that the snow does not

extinguish the fire, nor does the fire consume the snow,

and so you likewise turn envy into concord. [. . .]”

(179)

Thomas Moore, in The Planets Within: The Astrological

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Psychology of Marsilio Ficino, elucidates Ficino’s notion of Spirit

as an intermediary, unifying body, soul and Spirit in solar

consciousness through the Image of divine marriage:

“Heaven, the bridegroom of earth, does not touch her, as

is commonly thought, nor does he embrace her; he regards

(illuminates) her by the mere rays of his stars which

are, as it were, his eyes; and in regarding her he

fructifies her and so begets life.” (132)

This sexualized, though decidedly mystical, Coincidence of

Opposites in ritual theological couples Lefèvre adopts as a primary

metaphorical scaffolding for De Magia naturali, describing it as

“the mitigation of re-creation,” and justifying its use with “such

that minds more easily understand” (Evans Ch. 7 II:67, f. 207v).

Christianity’s pagan roots in Mesopotamia, as was elucidated

by Dumézil, Jean Bottéro explains through Religion in Ancient

Mesopotamia. God, Marduk, is revered “in all his bodily components,

external and internal, including all bodily fluids, the hair, the

lower jaw, the spinal column, the hair on the chest, the blood,

tears, earwax, sperm, and so on, to compare them all, following a

logic about which we no longer have any idea, to precious elements

in nature or in culture:”

1 His top-knot is tamarisk;

His whiskers are a frond;

His ankle bones are an apple.

His penis is a snake.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11 His heart is a kettle-drum;

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His skull is silver;

His sperm is gold. (66)

In Lefèvre’s Chapter 5, he speaks of “the vigor of Jove” as

“the seminal fluid of all things” (Evans Ch. 5 II:62, f. 204). The

fact that metaphors intimate to human anatomy as embodying God have

been prevalent in various religious traditions supports my argument

that sacred texts ought to be studied primarily as mythology within

the discipline of Literature, in order to cross the thresholds of

specific religions easily on the vehicle of metaphor.

Bottéro links Mesopotamian cosmology with Biblical cosmology,

in one instance where 2 opposing terms represent the antithetical

couple, “On High,” or “Heaven,” and “Below” or the “Earth [and

Hell]”. The “Epic of Creation reveals how Marduk, after having

felled Tiamat, the primitive universal mother, built the framework

of the universe out of her remains:

He split her in two, like a fish for drying,

Half of her he set up and made as a cover, heaven.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Spreading [half of] her as a cover, he established the

earth.

[After] he had completed his task inside Tiamat,

[He spre]ad his net, let all (within) escape,

He formed (?) the . . . [] of heaven and netherworld,

Tightening their bond []. . . .

[. . .]And since their matter was the “sea water” from

the body of the primordial mother goddess, that mass,

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emptied from within, floated in a certain sense in an

abyss of infinite water, a cosmic ocean (79).

This description parallels Lefèvre’s quotation from Ovid’s

Metamorphoses when “All was sea,” and his intuitions about the

Pythagorean plane or Ground of Silence (Evans Ch. 4 II:59-60, f.

203). Lefèvre further reiterates the pervasive quality of Venus as

sung by the poets and magi: “the entire Venus and the passionate

longing of Venus are born in the sea” (Evans Ch. 5 II:62, f. 204).

Moshe Idel, in Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism, shows

instances of the shekhinah as the universal soul, the supernal Image

both on high and below, female thus embodying both conduit from the

last sefirah below, called “ocean”, and goal above, the first

sefirah (177-8).

In the translation and pictorial form of the World Egg that

Bottéro has provided on pages 78-9, the One primordial Mother

Goddess is sacrificed in order to create the 2 of duality: heaven

and earth, bound together (we are left to assume since the word is

missing) by some kind of World Pillar or Mountain. This sacrifice is

a sacred one, where the primordial Mother’s “death” is the negation

that creates life.

Negation through sacrifice, death of the primordial Mother, is

depicted also in the primal exilic myth of the Fall from the Garden

of Eden. The Fall is that illusory Self-reflection of the monad,

that severing in 2 as lover and Beloved; and the story of ascension

to the One, myth’s eternal return to unity of that Coincidence of

Opposites. Idel concurs:

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The Garden and the Eden, which stand respectively for

the last and the first sefirah, symbolize the entire

sefirotic realm. In other words, Gan Eden is the symbol

of the whole divine pleroma. [. . .] The repair of the

divine pleroma is the quintessence of the religious

obligation of the righteous [. . .]. (208)

The Fall can also be Imagined then, as a metaphor for the

World Egg, the Egg of the Universe, where the ellipsoid shape formed

by the relationship of above and below has 2 centers. As described

in Spirit and the Mind, the egg-shaped Shiva Lingam:

The sphere, a symbol of unity, has one centerpoint — but

the lingam, ellipsoid in shape, has two centers,

emerging and merging back into, the one. Here is the

symbol of the two (duality) coming out of and returning

into the one — the one being the source, the sustenance

— the basis of the two. (Sandweiss 140)

Moshe Idel’s Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars,

Lines, Ladders thus is another of the encyclopedic resources

essential to future study of Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali, which

concerns itself with ascension via the Homeric catena aurea, golden

chains. The chains in Book II are themselves the World Pillar or

Mountain, both path and unity.

In support of my argument that Academia might include

experiential ascesis, exercise, Idel in his Introduction points out

that Eliade had shifted our attention to the modes of achieving

religious experiences, the techniques, in such books as Yoga and

Shamanism:

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These works represent a major methodological

breakthrough in the study of the history of religion by

shifting the center of interest from theoretical views

and beliefs to modes of achieving religious experiences.

The importance of technique is also evident in Ioan P.

Culianu’s Eros and Magic, in which the magical

techniques are emphasized as central to Giordano Bruno’s

world view. (6)

Idel points out that Scholem’s prevailing theory of Kabbalah

as theological interpretation misses the experiential nature of this

mystical lore (17). The impact of the Christian emphasis on theology

and faith has imbalanced the perception of Jewish mysticism away

from its technical, ritualistic and linguistic facets (19).

Idel proposes unifying our understanding of the contending

ideologies of mysticism and magic:

Ascending on high and bringing down some form of

esoteric knowledge, either in the form of magical names,

of remedies or of a magical reading of the Torah, can be

understood as a model that I propose calling mystical-

magical. The first action — the ascent on high —

represents the mystical phase of the model, as it allows

the religious perfectus contact with the divine or

celestial entities. His bringing down of the secret

lore, which in many cases has magical qualities,

represents the magical aspect of this model. (31)

Ascent has practical implications, for when the righteous soul

ascends to the source it can know the future. In ascensio mentis,

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human Intellect as his real Image is man’s vehicle of ascent to the

divine Intellect (40-2). Our Coincidence of Opposites, in terms of

human and divine, Idel correlates with the biblical verse, “’Make

thee two trumpets of silver, of a whole piece shall thou make them’”

(46). According to his explanatory definition, the same metaphorical

Image infers Lefèvre’s male-female Coincidence of Opposites: “The

Hebrew word for trumpets — Hatzotzerot — is interpreted as Hatzi-

Tzurah — namely ‘half of the form,’ which together, since they are

two halves, create a perfect form” (46). Through the metaphor of

virgin bride and bridegroom, Idel explains that as Israel ascends to

the Holy One by degrees, experiencing always a new union, the

pleasure in the process is more important than attainment of the

goals. He ties all of the metaphorical “as if” scenarios to

Neoplatonism. While in Neoaristotelian language, Imagination ascends

beyond itself to the supernal source, actualizing Intellect, “until

he merits that the spirit rest upon him” (50-3).

Relating Medieval astrology’s celestial bodies to the 10

sefirot, Idel cites Cordovero’s descriptions of the nature of

Kabbalistic prayer [wherein, I point out, both pairs of opposites —

God-man and male-female — are working together]:

“Behold, this man is worshiping the Holy One, blessed be

He and his Shekhinah, as a son and as a servant standing

before his master, by means of a perfect worship, out of

love, without deriving any benefit or reward because of

that worship . . . because the wise man by the quality

of his [mystical] intention when he intends during his

prayer, his soul will be elevated by his [spiritual]

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arousal from one degree to another, from one entity to

another until she arrives and is welcome and comes in

the presence of the Creator, and cleaves to her source,

to the source of life; and then a great influx will be

emanated upon her from there, and he will become a

vessel [keli] and a place and foundation for [that]

influx, and from him it [the influx] will be distributed

to all the world as it is written in the Zohar [. . .].”

(47-8)

This description supports Lefèvre’s claim that the numbers to

the mystery of the magi and the numbers to the mystery of the

prophets are the same, that this “ancient veil of theology” is in

concordance with Christian theology, and that Judaic Kabbalah is not

unworthy (Evans Ch. 10 II:80, f. 213; Ch. 14 II:89, f. 217). Idel

explains further that this ascent in the supernal world is part of

the mystical-magical model. Most importantly, is that it is not a

rare experience, but is practiced daily by the Kabbalist. The

ascendent Kabbalist triggers the descent of the influx and serves as

pipeline for its transmission into the world (48).

In relation to Lefèvre’s attribution of the number 3 to

techniques of the magi, Idel mentions Tzevi’s description of the

Messiah’s ascent to the “mother” as referring to the 3rd sefirah,

meaning that Tzevi experienced the “secret of the Divinity” through

ascension to the 3rd sefirah. Idel suggests that the 3

rd sefirah

itself, “the nest of the bird, the mystical place of the Messiah” is

itself the secret of divinity (49). Thus Lefèvre’s interpretation of

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Christ the Messiah as the mystical Holy Spirit, 3rd in the Trinity,

is a prisca theologia that embraces both Christianity and Judaism.

Through the ontologically creative human Imagination, its

thought products, such as the divine name YHVH, ascend to the

highest firmament (Idel 54). Thus, Moses was transformed into a

universal being by means of the Tetragrammaton (44). Lefèvre

positions the numbers 10-5-6-5, which equate with the Tetragrammaton

Y-H-V-H, vertically descending. In this schema, the practitioner

descends on the Ground of Silence rather than ascending (Evans Ch.

14 II:90, f. 218v). This reinforces the appropriateness of Idel’s

mystical-magical model, in that neither the mystical nor the

magical, Spirit ascending or descending, is meant as subordinate or

fallen since it is all One. He continues in this vein citing an

unnamed late fifteenth century Kabbalistic book from Spain, speaking

about Elijah’s angelization through ascension and his descent to the

world in corpore et in spiritu, in body and in spirit, through

divine names (55). Ascent via divine names through the hierarchy of

angels in Lefèvre’s Quincuplex Psalterium will be an important point

of scholarly comparison regarding these topics as presented in

Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders.

Importantly, Idel points out the paradox of what I term as the

Coincidence of Opposites, in that the literary body in particular of

Kabbalistic writings, portrays a more concrete ascent-descent

scenario, while also portraying a “continuum among the divine, the

angelic and the human. The ascent is a motion taking place between

planes of existence that are not separated by ontic gaps but that

are different forms or manifestations of a Protean and more

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comprehensive being” (56). Although the primal myth is exilic — one

of duality — it is from within this unified perspective that

Lefèvre’s works should be studied; it is in this unified vision that

Idel concludes his book.

In his Concluding Remarks of the final chapter, Idel

simplifies the mythologized variations of the World Pillar, or axis

mundi, by severing it into 3 parts: the divine realm above; the

human below; and the path or technique between that unites them

through its usage by the righteous (205). In this simplified model —

unity as One center of the ellipsoid, duality as the 2nd center of

the ellipsoid, and the 3rd element the path between them of return to

the One — all are collapsed into the Pillar alone. In this symbolic

representation of a cosmic continuum where duality, the Coincidence

of Opposites, becomes unified as One, resolving exile, Idel finds

unity among religions, citing Hindu, Manichaean, Christian, Islam,

Shiite, and Sufi metaphors (205-6). The Pillar can be conceived as a

unified metaphor representing both phallus and umbilicus, equalizing

male and female in their common source.

Although a work on Christian Kabbalah, Lefèvre’s De Magia

naturali is an important treatise to compare with Idel’s list of

only two Jewish literary sources on ascent through the planetary

system. The “widespread ascent of the soul through the seven planets

found in Hellenistic and early Christian sources” is rare in Jewish

texts even through the premodern era (56). Notice the emphasis on

the fact that these works are studied as literature.

Despite the impact of astrology and of hermetic sources

on various Jewish literatures, discussions of the ascent

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through the planetary system are few and explicitly

literary; in fact, I am aware of only two examples.

Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, the influential twelfth-century

thinker, produced a literary composition entitled Hay

ben Mequiz under the influence of Avicenna. Another

composition was authored by Rabbi Abraham Yagel, a

Kabbalist in the second half of the sixteenth century,

that is entitled Gei Hizzayon, which follows Italian

models. (56)

Idel concludes through lack of evidence, that in Medieval

mystical literature of Muslims, Christians and Jews, ascent lost its

centrality. Citing Dante’s Divine Comedy, he makes the distinction

between literary and experiential treatments of ascension, the

latter of which he categorizes as mystical literature (56-7). This

distinction may be contradictory to his mystical-magical model, in

that it denies Imagination the ontological creativity he has

ascribed to it. I contend that through the Words and Images

themselves, literature elicits experience.

Another instance of Idel’s distinction between physical and

cosmic worlds (as reflected in his distinction between literature

and mystical literature) is in his treatment of the Pillar in the

Book of Bahir. As mentioned above, the Bahir — a late twelfth/early

thirteenth century Kabbalistic work from Provence — will be an

important primary source in studying De Magia naturali.

Idel distinguishes between the sexual and the cosmic

connotations of the Pillar, severing human and divine righteousness.

Again this runs contradictory to his mystical-magical model,

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particularly as he explains the Pillar in the final Concluding

Remarks as a unified whole even though it has distinguishable parts

(205-6). The cosmic tree, the path itself, the Pillar from earth to

heaven is referred to as the Great Aion, identical to the foundation

and also to the righteous themselves (80-1). Yet in this Idel is not

willing to collapse the models into a unified continuum,

particularly as regards the distinction between the sexual and the

cosmic connotations of the Pillar (80-3).

As in Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali, the Bahir tells of the

descent of semen, portraying the seventh divine power as the spinal

column, and the eighth divine power as the membrum virile (Evans Ch.

5 II:62, f. 204; Idel 82). Lefèvre’s quoting of Vergil’s “chill

snake” burst open through incantations tells of the creative power

of Words and Images, uniting sexual and cosmic connotations in the

metaphor of the snake, as it equates human sexual and spinal

energies with the Cosmic Pillar (Evans Ch. 2 II:53, f. 200v). This

demonstrates Literature’s power to unite duality, and disciplines,

through metaphor.

One value in bringing De Magia naturali out of obscurity is

that it clearly shows the Medieval Neoplatonic metaphorical approach

to Kabbalistic theosophy through architectural, sexual and

geometrical Imagery. Common Images are the circle and center;

emergence from point through line, plane and space; and the chain of

being (Idel 167). The resurfacing of Lefèvre’s treatise points to

the cause for the scarcity of this type of Imagery as oppression by

the Church. Such literary works synthesizing religions had to be

shared in secret. Idel reports that “Medieval thinkers adopted

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belief systems that envisioned the divine reality as spiritual, and

images are scant and cautious in their works.” Here again though,

Idel makes an unfortunate distinction between Images as metaphors

and Images that convey something fundamental to understanding (167).

Throughout Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism, Idel

grapples with the problem of whether ascensions are of the physical

body, in corpore, or of some spiritual form. He recalls the ascent

of Moses as interpreted by the Besht, when Moses remained in

ascendence for 40 days yet his body remained below “thrown down like

a stone” (152). Idel likens the function of the tzaddiq in Hasidism

to that of the primal shaman, in that the shaman plays a dual role

of sacred and social, and through ritual mediation with the sacred

heals society as a collective patient. Presenting examples

throughout the book of the paradox that is duality, Idel also

directly challenges Academia to recognize the connection between the

realms of sacred and social (Spirit and body) in future studies of

the shamans and magicians (154).

Describing the continuous historical interaction of religions,

one of Idels’s examples is the adoption by Muslims of cosmology as

shaped in pagan Neoplatonism. Citing an Ismailiyah epistle, he

highlights the Neoplatonic universal or cosmic soul, which mediates

between Intellectual and corporeal worlds. After emergence of the

cosmic Intellect, “the universal soul emanates nature [. . .].

Particular human souls are simply parts of the universal soul,

extensions that are one with the cosmic soul. As such, human souls

may return to their supernal source” (168). The universal soul

serves as intermediary emanation between universal Intellect and

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corporeal world, having particular relevance in worldly events. The

epistle explains that with the genesis of the universal soul it

penetrates from the highest to the lowest, and reaching that nadir

reverses direction toward the all-encompassing sphere in an ascent,

arousing, or resurrecting as it enters its angelic forms. The

universal soul is thus the Spirit of the world (168-9). Lefèvre

graphically depicts this zippering together effect of higher to

lower correspondences in Chapter 10, where angels are correlated

with planets and numbers (Evans Ch. 10 II:81, f. 213).

The Neoplatonic concept of the cosmic soul was also adapted by

Jewish Kabbalists into the “mundane Jerusalem” (human soul, center

of the lower world) and the “supernal Jerusalem” (cosmic soul,

center of the spiritual world) (Idel 176). Lefèvre delineates the

inferior terrestrial numbers of the body and the Superior celestial

numbers of the soul, forming the first binary relationship: “the

first [number] is therefore the binary.” This binary, which embodies

the primal exilic metaphor of the Fall, he unites metaphorically by

means of “the mountain of the binary” (synonymous with the axis

mundi or Pillar). Also transcribed as “the binary (second) mind,”

this first binary contains within it all other numbers (Evans Ch. 7

II:68-9, f. 207-208v).

These definitions and descriptions illustrate the highly

Neoplatonic framework of Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali Book II, as

exemplified in Chapter 4 where the knots, nexus and chains are let

down from heaven to the lowest with guardian angels positioned to

assist in the ascent (Evans II:57, f. 202v). Idel’s mystical-magical

model is thus embodied in Book II as an elliptical continuum with a

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heavenly center and an earthly center, but an ellipsoid that

perpetually weaves itself along “the knots, nexus and chains,” or

Idel’s “the ladder of the ascensions,” out of the spherically

centered love-nexus (Evans Ch. 4 II:57, f. 202v; Idel 170).

Each number in Book II, whether of body or soul, is also

called a soul, each ascending to a planetary mind in accordance with

its qualities, so that the souls of Saturn are of the Saturnian

mind. There are also strati of soul-numbers grouped into

hierarchical minds, beginning with the elemental mind, rising to the

second mind, and then to the supernal mind (Evans Ch. 6, ff. 205-

207v; Ch. 7, ff. 207v-211v).

Idel’s book studies the correspondences between the 10

sefirot, spheres or divine attributes, and the many metaphorical

depictions of ascension he addresses. Using this resource, Lefèvre’s

planetary spheres, minds, and their angelic correspondences in Book

II should also be thoroughly analyzed in terms of Kabbalah’s 10

sefirot.

The Neoaristotelian notion of agent intellect above the

universal soul that Idel demonstrates via an excerpt from an

eleventh-century Neoplatonic Muslim treatise, the Book of the

Imaginary Circles (Ascensions on High 170), Lefèvre adopts in the

overarching metaphor of superior male agent acting upon inferior

female patient. I assert however, that he uses this sexual or

gender-specific metaphor interchangeably.

Lefèvre discloses in Chapters 16 and 17 the Christian

Sacrament as the number 300, the recuperative mediating number for

humans. In gematria, the number 300 is emblematic of the Hebrew

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letter “s” or “shin,” mother or Spirit. Hughes gives a supporting

interpretation of “shin” as a convergence of man and fire (21). This

reinforces the clarity in Plato’s metaphorical injunction to “leap

like a living flame”. In Chapters 14-16 Lefèvre explains how, in

Kabbalah, letters are translated into numbers, in this case the

ineffable name of God: the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton YHVH

(Yehovah) translates into the divine numbers 10, 5, 6, 5. By adding

this fifth Sacramental number in the center of the other four

numbers, Kabbalah translates YHShVH (Yehoshua, Jesus) into 10, 5,

300, 6, 5, totaling 326. Through the active female quintessence of

Spirit, the passive male ineffable becomes effable, the invisible

becomes visible, the Name of God becomes pronounceable as Jesus.

Power to enjoin the universal soul or Spirit Lefèvre ultimately

ascribes to the name Jesus, depicting this in a cross with the

letter “s” inscribed at each of the extremities (Evans Ch. 14 II:89-

90, f. 217-218v; Ch. 15 II:90-92, ff. 218-219v; Ch. 16 II:92-93, f.

219).

Hence magic, Kabbalah, number mysticism, is a prisca theologia

useful to understanding Christian theology. Christ is both

quintessence and the magic ternary uniting the binary Coincidence of

Opposites — God and man — in the Trinity. In pagan terms within Book

II, through love Jupiter and Venus compute this ternary from the

monade, which is itself an all-embracing unity comprised of the four

elemental celestial numbers sounding in unison. (Evans Ch. 7 II:72,

f. 209) Thus, God, celestial realms, and man are envisioned as a

continuum.

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Idel’s book provides the exact link as to where in the

Kabbalist tradition of masters Lefèvre should be placed, albeit

within the offshoot of Christian Kabbalah. Idel identifies the

Renaissance author especially fond of the Book of the Imaginary

Circles as Rabbi Yohanan ben Isaac Alemanno who was active for many

years in Florence, and whose famous student was Count Giovanni Pico

della Mirandola. From Pico, then, Lefèvre received this tributary of

Jewish Kabbalah. To illustrate the importance of this cross-

fertilization between religions, consider Pico and Lefèvre’s

enthusiasm in correlating also the Judaic sefirot with the Christian

sphaera, Imagination’s planetary spheres. Idel points out though

that while the author al-Batalyawsi considers the ladder connecting

the circle earth to that of agent Intellect to be the universal

soul, Pico sees it as nature (Ascensions on High 181-4). Here again

is my point about Lefèvre’s group of Christian Kabbalists conceiving

of nature, or body, as intimately connected to soul at every level,

a unified vision of God and creation, where all is sacred and

nothing is profane.

My point that Academia might more thoroughly and meaningfully

address sacred texts through a phenomenological exegesis is

corroborated by Idel, who also highlights my argument that the

experiential dimension should be illuminated. In the Concluding

Remarks of his last chapter, he enjoins Academia to transcend the

historical approach:

Pinpointing the basic phenomena that emerge from a

certain literature and describing their reverberations

might be considered their inner history. Here we are

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adopting a specific type of phenomenological approach,

which assumes that a model that appears in Jewish

mysticism may articulate its main conceptual structure,

and in our case, this mystical-magical model transcends

the boundaries of various types of Jewish mystical

literature. From a more general viewpoint, the survival

of shamanic imagery and perhaps also experiences in the

remnants of shamanic religions, in Yoga and in

eighteenth-century Hasidism invites new reflections on

the history of religion in general. [. . .] [These]

demonstrate that archaic imagery and presumably

experiences have not been extinguished even in the

regions and religions that Mircea Eliade believes were

conquered by the “historical” penchant in religion.

(208-9).

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2. Experience & History, Metaphorical & Literal

The history versus experience polarity is however, within the

Christian timeframe, as old as Christianity itself according to

Elaine Pagels in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. Around 150 CE, both

Masters Justin and Valentinus were teaching in Rome. Valentinus

taught the mysteries of gnosis, or immediate experience; Justin

taught moral action and philosophic discourse. Pagels goes so far as

to say that the majority of Jews and Christians then, and ever

since, interpret Scriptures as Justin did: in particular they

interpret the Genesis story as history with a moral, Adam and Eve as

historical persons whose Original Sin taught them a moral lesson

(62-3).

In the same era, Tertullian of Carthage labelled all women co-

conspirators of Eve:

“You are the devil’s gateway. . . .you are she who

persuaded him whom the devil did not dare attack. . . .

Do you not know that every one of you is an Eve? The

sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age; the

guilt, of necessity, lives on too.” (63)

Lefèvre, on the other hand, true to the Gnostic inheritance

through Kabbalah, espoused a model of aequalitas between ritual

theological couples. His extrapolation of the Fall and the Adam-Eve

binary into other personifications of the Coincidence of Opposites,

and indeed into pure number, didn’t expunge Lefèvre of the heresy

associated with a metaphorical, allegorical reading of Genesis.

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Maintaining perspectives of duality seems to be a constant in

Judaism and Christianity, where, as Pagels points out, a devotee’s

relationship with God is described as “I and Thou”. A Hindu or a

Gnostic, on the other hand, could say “I am Thou”, would claim “that

the divine being is hidden deep within human nature, as well as

outside it” (65). This unified continuum of being was the vision of

Jewish and Christian mystics alike, including Pico and Lefèvre. What

is overlooked of the mystics and their mystical techniques is their

practical impact on nature and society.

Lefèvre understood the riddle of Adam and Eve, of duality, in

Gnostic terms, and expressed that exegesis in the most abstract

terms possible — that of number mysticism: numerical ascension was

fueled by the Coincidence of Opposites personified in ritual

theological couples such as Jupiter and Venus, the key element being

the love-nexus between them, the ascension to unity in marriage.

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent brings controversial religious

issues down to earth. Pagan religion in the Roman Empire held that

the elemental forces of nature were divine forces. During the same

era as Justin, Tertullian and Valentinus, pagan philosopher-emperor

Marcus Aurelius stood for the belief that “gods embodied elemental

forces at work in the universe,” identifying himself with those

powers which he called “providence, necessity, and nature” (40). The

sun’s energy was personified in Apollo, thunder and lightening in

Jupiter, and internal passion in Venus. Pagels explains, though,

that no intelligent pagan worshipped the actual Image of gods or

rulers, but rather used Image as “an accessible focus for reverring

the cosmic forces they represented” (41).

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Thus, pagan religion as an exercise, a practice, is reflected

in Lefèvre’s use of the gods’ Images to transcend their own duality

to a vision of the One, of God. The Images were, and are, metaphors

that serve as vehicles for ascension to experience of divine wisdom.

Pagels cites the Gnostic text Reality of the Rulers, which

tells of Adam recognizing in Eve not merely a marriage partner but a

spiritual power:

“And when he saw her, he said, ‘It is you who have given

me life: you shall be called Mother of the Living [Eve];

for it is she who is my Mother. It is she who is the

Physician, and the Woman, and She Who Has Given Birth.’”

(66)

The Reality of the Rulers tells it that when God warned Adam

to disregard her voice he lost contact with the female Spiritual

principle, who then appeared as instructor in the form of a Snake.

The Snake instructor said that it was out of jealousy that God

forbade Adam to eat from the tree “’of recognizing evil and good [.

. .]. Rather your eyes shall open and you shall come to be like

gods, recognizing evil and good’” (67). The “Reality of the Rulers,”

the “Riddle of the Rulers of the Land,” then is simply the duality

that humans are immersed in. This is the same decloaking of creation

to its basic component of “2 is the first number” that Lefèvre leads

us to in De Magia naturali Book II. The “sinful” duality of good and

evil that a fundamentalist view leads to, Lefèvre unifies through

love, Christ’s Spirit, in a vision of blessedness in the One and the

Trinity.

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In the Epilogue, Pagels discloses her realization that, “using

historical means to explore the origins of Christianity most often

does not solve religious questions. [. . .] Finally, I came to see

that more important, to me, [. . .] is the recognition of a

spiritual dimension in human experience” (153-4).

Pearl Epstein’s scholarly yet accessible book, Kabbalah: The

Way of the Jewish Mystic, is an encyclopedic reference for study of

Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali Book II, but along with being one of

historical reference, this book is essential as an experiential

reference. Epstein gracefully rends the shroud of mystery that

traditionally has kept mystical practices secret, providing

descriptions of the many ways in which Kabbalah has been practiced

over the millenium.

While focusing on Kabbalah as Jewish tradition, Epstein

demonstrates that the 10 sefirot or spheres — the cosmic tree of

life — is anthropomorphic: a schematic of the human nervous system.

Collapsing all of the techniques she has described, the Kabbalist’s

tree of spheres, utilized since the Middle Ages, is a breathing and

concentration chart that mirrors the Taoist “diagram of the

ultimateless” (69-72). Epstein thus breaks the spell of religious

ownership, freeing this wisdom tradition to any human in much the

same way that Lefèvre does in Book II through the prisca theologia

of number mysticism.

As noted throughout Kabbalah: The Way of the Jewish Mystic,

the metaphorical Imagery is interchangeable, so that there is no

separation between divine attributes, their hidden Names, words,

their colors and so on, indeed there is no separation between nature

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and the divine, between man and God (57). This then supports my

argument that literature, through its attention to Words as symbols,

as metaphors for Ideas, already embodies the practical exercise

necessary to unify studies in wisdom. In much the same way that

Epstein suggests taking the Kabbalist’s tree of spheres “out of its

mysterious wrappings and stripped of its religious overtones,” my

suggestion is only to broaden Literature’s domain in public

education to include the study of religion as the mythology of

sacred texts (71).

Epstein describes the Kabbalist’s journey of lover to Beloved

in ways that resonate with Lefèvre’s unification of duality through

ascending chains via the technique of prisca theologia:

Even at this exhalted level, the lover approaches his

goal in stages; the interdependence of the entire chain

of worlds along the cosmic tree allows him to work with

Love as he had with Awe, in the knowledge that God, His

idea, and His word are One. Therefore, in the

corresponding microcosm of his own mind, the mystic’s

thoughts, speech, and action may also be united as one.

Emptied of his ego, he too is free to create new worlds

with each breath — and to destroy them with each

expiration. (34)

The mystical technique of numerical ascension as Lefèvre

describes it, wherein the worthy practitioner by the Jovial chains

ascends to the Jovian mind, is rightly called a prisca theologia

(Evans Ch. 4 II:58, f. 202). As Pagels has noted, Jupiter is a

personified force of nature, the pagan god of thunder and lightning.

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In Epstein’s comparison between Kabbalah and Tao, she cites

Professor Chang:

“When the practitioner constantly sends the genuine idea

to the nervous system, it moves on unceasingly; a

tremendous change in the electrical charges is effected

and the current flow is greatly increased. As the

operation in the serious practitioner goes on month

after month, and year after year, the emergence of

‘lightning and thunder’ within his nervous system will

be the natural outcome . . . Here symbolic language is

used to describe a physical phenomenon.” (71)

Of particular interest is that this phenomenon, which

Lefèvre’s practitioners of Pythagorean philosophy or Kabbalah

experience as a unification into One of the 2 or duality, a unity

between the Coincidence of Opposites, neurologists now characterize

as “’depolarization of the electric charges in the network of the

nervous system’” (71). For this reason, natural magic is called the

practical half of philosophy, because it creates results in the

natural world through an active practice. Without further scrutiny

of the mechanics of natural magic, it would be categorized as

Positive theology since it is active. Its magic happens, however,

always through a Negative theology, a sacrifice of individual ego on

the Ground of Silence.

Brian P. Copenhaver, who wrote the Introduction to the 2000

edition of Walker’s Spiritual and Demonic Magic, shares my own

opinion of the oft-cited Lynn Thorndike:

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Thorndike’s polemical chapters on Ficino, Pico and other

figures studied by Walker are hostile to the concept of

a renaissance in European history and contemptuous of

that period’s most eminent thinkers. Walker’s approach

is, on the one hand, fairer to the renaissance, but on

the other hand, startlingly innovative in taking magic

seriously as a feature of European high culture.

Walker’s book itself would have been informed by his study of

Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali, as his most extensive coverage of

Lefèvre is inclusion in Chapter 5 as one who condemned magic. The

chapter culminates: “But then, Lefèvre himself, in about 1492, had

written a long treatise on astrological magic, which he never

published; he was perhaps being harsh on his own errors” (170). Just

prior to this closing comment, Walker cites with bewilderment

Lefèvre’s condemnation of Ficino’s Hermetica, since he venerated

Ficino as a father (169-70). My point that Lefèvre made these public

denouncements only in order to avoid persecution resolves these

contradictions about Lefèvre’s position on magic. More subtly

though, this particular condemnation is against magicians who draw

Spirit into Images such as statues. Lefèvre perhaps enjoyed the

double-entendre set up by the Spirit-body polarity in that he would

have condemned confining Spirit in stone Images, yet would have

celebrated freeing the boundaries of Image through infusion of

Spirit. This relates directly to the age-old controversy of duality

versus unity, mentioned above through Pagel’s commentary as “I and

Thou” versus “I am Thou”.

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Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella is

otherwise a thorough synopsis of the personages and ideas at play

regarding magic in Lefèvre’s era. To summarize Ficino’s definition

of “spiritus,” it is “the instrument by which they [the priests of

the Muses] can measure and grasp the whole world,” and it is the

link between body and soul (3-4). Walker reveals himself as a

dualist when he categorizes Ficino’s “spiritus” as a physical

phenomenon, distinguishing it from the truly “spiritual” “in the

Christian (modern) sense” (4, 26). Walker’s chapter on the “General

Theory of Natural Magic” is a succinct and essential overview. Magia

Naturalis embodies a real overlapping of art, science, practical

psychology and religion. The vis imaginativa is the fundamental

force; the medium of transmission is the cosmic and human Spirit,

vehicle of the Imagination; the effects are on either animate or

inanimate beings. In Ficinian, Neoplatonic magic, “The main magical

importance of occult qualities is in the resultant planetary

groupings of objects, which can then be used by the other forces,”

i.e., one can make a picture Solarian by representing Solarian

Images, in turn causing the Imagination to become more Solarian.

Words as a force of the Imagination are often used in creating the

objects to reinforce their astrological power; this rests on the

theory of language that there is a real connection between Words and

what they denote: a poem could therefore be both art and incantation

(75-84).

Without the benefit of Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali Book II,

Walker concludes that what he calls, the “Vis Musices B (Proportion

and Number (harmony of the spheres; sympathetic magic) remained, as

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far as I know, purely theoretical” (77, 81). In contrast, Lefèvre

categorizes number mysticism, Pythagorean philosophy as practical,

and in Chapter 7 describes effects based on musical proportions as

practical, not just theoretical (Evans II:73-75, ff. 210-211v).

Without Lefèvre’s De Magia naturali Book II, Walker stops short of

making that connection:

It is a theory that proposes the production of effects

by means of the mathematical or numerical correspondence

between the movements, distances or positions of the

heavenly bodies and the porportions of consonant

intervals in music. That this correspondence could be

physically operative was explained by the analogy of the

sympathetic vibration of strings. This theory is part of

a wider cosmological theory, which supposes that the

whole universe is constructed on these musical

proportions, and which provides the most usual

theoretical basis for sympathetic magic. (81)

Walker discusses the possibility of heresy in each of the

magical combinations he describes. Ficinian subjective magic can

overlap with psychology, which at that time was part of religion,

therefore is that which makes natural magic an obvious threat to

religion. Walker summarizes this chapter in a manner that reveals

the scholarly openmindedness with which he studied magic:

The overlap of magic and religion produced then this

dilemma: either a miraculous but plainly magical

religion, or a purely psychological religion without a

god. [. . .] The historical importance of these

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connexions between magic and religion is, I think, that

they led people to ask questions about religious

practices and experiences which would not otherwise have

occurred to them; and, by approaching religious problems

through magic, which was at least partially identical

with, or exactly analogous to religion [. . .] they were

able sometimes to suggest answers which, whether true or

not, were new and fruitful. (84)

The confluence of the seemingly disparate traditions of

theoretical Negative theologies and practical Positive theologies is

where I suggest much fruit could be harvested in Academia: through

engaging not only the historical literal modes, but also the

metaphorical-Spiritual, experiential modes of critical analysis and

teaching: the anagogical and phenomenological. When Academia

empowers judgmental dialogue against this worldview, the result is a

polarizing bias that is itself “contagious,” as is Hughes’

unfortunate case of mimicking the established authority:

Pico’s enthusiasm for the cabala as a secret repository

of Christian truth proved to be highly contagious, and

many other scholars absorbed themselves in the studies

he had initiated. The claims he made had at least one

good and positive effect, namely, the reflorescence of

interest in the Hebrew language. (21)

Alternatively, translator Michael J. B. Allen and editor James

Hankins of Platonic Theology present Ficino’s Platonism as key to

understanding European art, thought, culture and spirituality of the

following 250 years. Through mystical mathematics and “an ancient

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pagan mythological philosophy” God gifted the gentile poets and

sages with a Trinitarian gift of wisdom (viii).

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3. Poets, Philosophers, & Mythological Beings

In De Magia naturali, for this mystical mathematics and pagan

mythological philosophy, Lefèvre applauds the ancients in recalling

names of poets who sang of the Coincidence of Opposites, with Spirit

as the 3rd element unifying the mythic, ritual theological pairs; and

in recalling the names of philosophers who also taught that genesis

was through the Coincidence of Opposites creating Trinity. The

following chart names a few of the persons and personifications

whose wisdom Lefèvre praises in Book II:

Philosophers

Pythagoras for his formula of 2 as the first number, One as

the basis of number (throughout Book II on Pythagorean

philosophy).

The tradition of masters who have learned to ascend from below

to above, for passing on the techniques: Mercury, Zalmoxis,

Zoroaster, Plato, and the magi (Evans Ch. 4 II:58, f. 202).

Empedocles and Heraclitus for the philosophy of unbinding

through friendship, e.g., “lying near the flexible power

reciprocally in addition to friendship, the mates of the world

beget disorder and annihilation [. . .] Empedocles and

Heraclitus of Ephesus were predicting also of unbinding

through friendship, but of the fatal and boiling fires now of

the superior, now of the inferior I unite as if to couple”

(Evans Ch. 4 II:59-60, f. 203).

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Empedocles for his assertion of real numbers as those saved by

concordant discord, i.e., the tangible by-product of the

continual genesis of number through sacrifice of one to the

next (Evans Ch. 4 II:61, f. 204v); for his forces of Love and

Strife inherent in Lefèvre’s attraction and repulsion, eg., in

order “to percieve, by trials in man and the world, there is

no other way” (Evans Ch. 4 II:59, f. 203v), duality is the

necessary “evil” for a perceptible creation; the cosmic cycle

where all matter contracts and expands repeatedly without

beginning or end (“Empedocles” thebigview).

Heraclitus for his theory of flux and fire, “unity of

opposites” where “all things are flowing” and burning of the

eternal fire, reality merely a succession of transitory

states” (“Heraclitus” thebigview); inherent in Book II, eg.,

“[. . .] ‘the worlds of the collective fires and vigors are

yoked; conducting the world fire they labor [. . .] [the]

worlds were disuniting and consuming all power, longing and

also nexus, as if collected altogether into one flame [. . .]

and they are being collected by the sea.’ And after that it is

of true sameness, supposing that the world is ever [always]

disuniting, which plane Pythagoras was perceiving,” returning

us to the desert silence (Evans Ch. 4 II:59, f. 203v).

Poets & Mythological Beings

Vergilian magic and that of the magus (magician) is of the

Venusian ternary nexus created by coupling and, “employed in

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songs, by which they labor to be bound and drawn tight in an

amatory chain” (Evans Ch. 2 II:52-53, f. 199-200v).

Orpheus and Pindarus sing of the ternary embodied in the

Charities or Graces, Beauty, Joy, and Charm (Evans Ch. 2

II:53, f. 200v); the Charities equate with the Venusian

amatory chain: “they hinder, and as if drawn tight, they lend

stronger chains” (Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203).

Cloen (Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203) St. Broccan Cloen who wrote

of St. Brigid (CatholicEncyclopedia) is numbered among the

last of the poets to sing in the meter or measure that Lefèvre

“counts”.

Pyramus and Thisbe are forbidden lover and Beloved who through

an illusion kill themselves out of love (Mythology Guide).

They are interpreted by Lefèvre as metaphorical of the

sacrifice to Spirit that occurs between lover and Beloved, in

this case they are inferred to be numbers as they are created

through sacrifices one to the next, the sacrifice fueling the

dimensional building of creation: “hence with Pyramus they are

taking away life, number above measure growing up [. . .]

[they] celebrate by sacrifices due proportion and also

salvation in things” (Evans Ch. 4 II:60-61, f. 204).

Phillide and Flora as the couple with whom the poets count the

collection of life (Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203).

Man and the numbers of love the poets use to grow proportion

(Evans Ch. 4 II:60, f. 203). Proportion, then, is

anthropomorphic; perception of creation is anthropormorphic.

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Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells of the Deucalion flood (paralleling

Noah’s Flood and the Sumerian Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh),

when the waters were gathered and the first binary ritual

theological couple Deucalion and Pyrrha (akin to Adam and Eve)

were created out of that void, the Ground of Silence, One:

“’Then the sea and earth were wearing no separation. All was

sea’” (Evans Ch. 4 II:58, f. 202; “Deucalion” Wikipedia).

Vulcan and Vesta are personifications of the paired fires of

Sun and Mars (Evans Ch. 3 II:56, f. 201).

Other Personifications

Phaëthon is “the Sun’s son,” son of Phoebus Apollo (Helios or

Prometheus) and Eos who Lefèvre cites simply as “Sun,” and

“mother” (Evans Ch. 4 II:59-60, f. 203). Phaënon and Phaëthon

(“shining”) are said to be the planets Saturn and Jupiter

(Room 241-2).

Planet Number Element Quality

(varies)

Aplanes 2 8 earth celestial ground

Saturn 3 7 water intimate longing

Jupiter/Jove 4 6 air nexus of justice & harmony

(e.g., “the celestial horse”)

Mars 5 5 fire nexus of action

Sun 5 4 fire nexus of action

Venus/Juno 4 3 air nexus of love

Mercury 3 2 water sensory longing

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Moon 2 1 earth corporeal power

Earth corporeal ground

As Ficino denotes them in Platonic Theology, Zoroaster’s

immovable movers that Aristotle had called “minds,” the Hebrews and

subsequent philosophers called “angels” and “messengers;” just so

Lefèvre correlates the hierarchy of angels with planetary spheres,

which he also designates as “minds” (Ficino 73; Evans Ch. 8 II:75-

77, Ch. 9 II:77-78, Ch. 10 II:80-81). Lefèvre’s equation of

intuition with Intellect reflects Ficino’s model wherein he defers

to Zoroaster who had said that the intelligible lies outside the

mind, and asserts that above angel and mind is truth (Ficino 83).

Above mind then, Intellect intuits truth or the intelligible.

Ficino agrees with Parmenides the Pythagorean, who claimed

that God is Being, One and motionless, but elaborates that God

“moves and preserves everything and does all things in all” (133).

This exemplifies the architectural scaffolding on which Platonic

Theology rests: the Coincidence of Opposites. This architecture is

the foundation of Lefèvre’s number mysticism in Book II, where it is

embodied: in pure number as 2; in the concept of agent Intellect

above acting on passive body below; as celestial spheres interacting

2 at a time joined by the nexus between; of God and man, with Christ

as the love-nexus uniting the 2. Ficino describes the dynamics of

such action between 2 thus: “For action arises in natural bodies

when opposition arises between contraries. Such opposition is born

in the genus of qualities” (23). The qualities of the celestial or

planetary spheres in Book II, such as fire or water, along with that

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of their nexus, determine the resultant effects on man. The

existence of 2 implies a 3rd element, the relationship between them,

creating the Trinitarian gift of wisdom and understanding.

Coincidence of Opposites is described in Book II in various

ways: “inconsonant concord,” “concordant discord,” “concord

advancing throws salvation into disorder” (Evans Ch.’s 4 & 5 II:61,

f. 204v). Of great importance to this thesis, is that genesis, and

numerical ascension, proceed via these binary couplings through

their sacrifices: they “celebrate by sacrifices due proportion and

also salvation in things” (Evans Ch. 4 II:61, f. 204v). In other

words, their coming into being in due proportion they achieve or

celebrate through sacrifice, and the salvation in things is achieved

or celebrated through sacrifice. The Spirit, the love-nexus between

the 2, is the negation beyond their union that each of the 2 is

sacrificed into. The Positive theology embodied within the qualities

of the 2 is always sacrificed to the relationship between in a

Negative theology. These are the basic architectural elements in

Lefèvre’s Book II: the relationship of 2 is unified in the One,

within which the grace of the Trinity is received. Christ was

celebrated as the uniting Spirit received through faith and

intuition. Nevertheless, the Church chose to condemn natural magic.

Lefèvre’s ontological premises dramatized in Book II are

inherited from his Florentine patriarch Ficino, whose second edition

of Platonic Theology was published in 1491 at the time of Lefèvre’s

journey to Italy, and two years before writing his treatise De Magia

naturali. Ficino further elaborates on the process of genesis and

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re-creation via teachings from Zoroaster the Chaldean and Plotinus,

founder of Neoplatonism:

Being, therefore, wherever it may be, depends on

God. Zoroaster touched on this mystically: “Everything

is born from a single fire.” The lower bodies of the

world make the passage from not-being into being and

cross over from being into not-being. Higher bodies

change from one being into another, or from one mode of

being into another. So all these bodies are by nature

equally inclined to being and to not-being. [. . .]

Plotinus has explained this more or less as follows: God

is act, not of another, not for another, but of Himself

and for Himself. [. . .] God is act, unsleeping and

perpetual, from Himself, in Himself, and wholly with

regard to Himself. [. . .] The whole thrust of the

divine act is centered on itself. [. . .] But willing

and doing — indeed even being — are utterly identical.

(xi, 135, 185)

Plotinus’ above description of God as, “in Himself, and wholly

with regard to Himself. [. . .] centered on itself,” is the theology

Lefèvre uses to decloak the myth of Narcissus in Chapter 8:

If indeed the body which is the soul’s shadow, that

which follows for the sake of the neglected soul,

similars go forth to those things as her own image in

the water, the shadow of herself having then been

contemplated, the forms are held with longing, so as not

to be torn apart from her they will ever and consuming

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seeing, which ingenuously of Narcissus, son of the river

god Cephissus, Orpheus kept singing. (Evans II:75-76, f.

211)

Lefèvre thus interprets the myth of Narcissus as a metaphor

for the One soul manifesting as Her own female-male binary, with the

Trinitarian relationship of longing simultaneously created to bind

them in an eternal Self-reflective gaze. The stereotypical male-

female active-passive position is therefore reversed, with female as

active and male as passive. They are a ritual theological couple of

aequalitas, since both are part of the One. Lefèvre reiterates this

in Chapter 2 (Evans II:53, f. 200v) and also Chapter 7 (Evans II:67,

f. 207v).

Ficino characterizes body or corporeal nature as receptive or

passive, and incorporeal nature as active, stipulating that quality,

since it is incorporeal has the power to act upon the corporeal

(217). It is in this vein of natural magic that Lefèvre in Book II

ascribes the qualities of the celestial spheres (themselves

Imaginary or incorporeal) with the power to influence corporeal

nature. That natural magic is fueled by an active, Positive theology

is tied to Ficino’s premise that since man’s nature is that of a

thinking soul, God grants him free judgment, free will, through

which the soul judges the options and chooses between them (211).

Following Pythagorean thought, Ficino finds the soul of each

zodiacal constellation in the brightest star of each, their heart.

The single soul of the world contains these 12 principal souls, and

each of those 12 heart-souls contains many souls within it.

Following the archetypal mythic mandate of the eternal return,

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Ficino explains how humans are drawn back to the One itself, the

universal Apollo, through the 12 principle souls:

Since every large plurality has to be reduced to a small

number, and the small number to a few unities and the

few unities to one unity, the numberless host of souls

dwelling in any one of the world’s spheres has to be led

back to the few most important souls. (267-8)

This multilayered hierarchy Lefèvre employs through

mathematical geometry in Book II, the subject of which he calls

Pythagorean philosophy. Facilitating genesis, Jupiter and Venus

compute the 3 from the monad fountain; the 4 is next generated from

this Trinitarian love-nexus due to the monad longing for power.

Besides the monad, the other origin of things is 4, the fourth

region held by 3, so that their coupling computes 12. The soul’s

return to its origin is accomplished through active free will

choices of fruitful loving actions, through which souls return to

the 12 and beyond “into their end” (Evans Ch. 2 II:54-55, f. 200-

201v). This process is reflected in the Positive theology, the

active scenario, of natural magic. This is where Zoroaster’s

injunction for “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds” leads

Lefèvre, who must invoke the Pythagorean sacrifice into Silence in

order to absolve magic of its Positive theology, in order to receive

God’s grace through the Negative theology of Intellect, intuition

and faith.

Ficino elaborates that Pythagoras called the One the universal

Apollo “a-pollôn, meaning ‘cut off from the many’” (271).

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In a Negative theology then, Lefèvre claims that Pythagorean

philosophy, Kabbalah, natural magic, sacrifices itself, severs

itself beyond One and descends on the Ground of Silence (Evans Ch.

14 II:90, f. 218v). The treatise did not find sanctuary in this

sacrifice to grace however, for as Walker astutely points out, it is

the very fact that subjective, natural magic culminates in a

Negative theology that was a threat to the Church since it implied

“deism,” belief in God on the basis of Reason without revelation

(83). Thus Walker’s book delineates why the prisca theologia, God’s

Trinitarian gift to the magi (who explained creation via the

relationship of its 3 chief rulers), was not accepted by the Church

as the inheritance of Christianity, but instead the grace bestowed

by the Trinity was claimed as unique to Christianity: Ficino equates

the Trinitarian god of the magi with the Christian Trinitarian God,

“From God alone comes the prime unity in the world of the parts and

of the whole” (289); Walker sums up the Church’s response as “the

Christian revelation is unique and exclusive, and there is no room

for any other religion” (82).

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V. PRIMARY SOURCES & CONCLUDING REMARKS

A comprehensive Suggested Reading list, which I have not

compiled to date, would include Secondary Sources that are not

already listed in my Works Cited and Consulted pages. More

importantly perhaps is this listing of Primary Sources for

supportive and comparative research into Lefèvre’s De Magia

naturali:

Lefèvre d’Étaples, Elementa musicalia, Arithmetica et musica

(use the 2nd edition titled In hoc opere contente, authors

Boethius and Nemorarius, which includes “Pythagoras’ Game” or

“Rithmimacia”), Astronomicum, Philosophiae naturalis

paraphrases and Quincuplex Psalterium, L’s edition of Richard

of St. Victor’s Egregii patris et clari theologi Ricardi, and

L’s edition of Ficino’s Hermetica

Marsilio Ficino, De Amore, Theologia platonica de

immortalitate animorum (in translation as Platonic Theology

listed in the Works Cited), and De triplici Vita which

includes De vita coelitùs comparanda

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones magicae, Oration,

and On the Dignity of Man, a translation listed in the Works

Cited that includes On Being and the One and Heptaplus

Guillaume Budé, De transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum; a

study of a little known treatise of Guillaume Budé, followed

by a translation into English, By Daniel F. Penham

Nicolas of Cusa, Opera omnia

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Dionysiaca

Sefer ha-Bahir (available in translation)

Josse Clichtove, De Mystica numerorum significatione

Johannes Reuchlin, De Verbo mirifico and De arte Cabalistica

the works of Odo of Morimond on number mysticism

Manilius, Astronomica

Giordano Bruno, Opere magiche, Italian tranlslation by Michele

Ciliberto

Longinus, ed., Trinum magicum

Thomas von Bungay, De magia naturali liber

Giovanni Battista della Porta, La magie naturelle divisée en

quatre livres

Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, Daemonologia; sive, De

magia naturali, daemonica, licita, & illicita . . .

Pavao Skaliş, De magia naturali, a satirical piece

Agrippa, De occulta philosophia

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Vergil, Eclogues, Aeneid, Georgicon

Pliny, Natural History

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Further critical analysis of De Magia naturali Book II will

serve as support to and summation of my thesis arguments. In Chapter

7, Lefèvre explains how he employs the primary binary metaphors of

the Fall and human intercourse, “the mitigation of re-creation”, [.

. .] “such that minds more easily understand” (Evans Ch. 7 II:67, f.

207v). They are just that: metaphors, with neither of the Fallen

meant as sinful in “this unskillful subordinate description” (Evans

Ch. 7 II:67, 207v). Lefèvre makes this point clear in Chapter 2, at

the beginning of Book II; in this example emphasized here again,

Jove is beneath Venus extolling her:

[. . .] (for it is Venus most of all subject to Phoebus)

and who Jove perpetually extols; just as the inferior

lover always occurs reversing to the superior, nor at

any time should be degenerated to fallen. (Evans II:53,

f. 200v)

The ritual theological couple, the Coincidence of Opposites,

therefore prefigures and circumscribes the Trinitarian aequalitas,

equality, which will be discussed shortly.

It must be reiterated now that the Coincidence of Opposites =

the binary = 2; ternary = 3; quaternary = 4; quinary = 5, and so on.

Notice also below how Lefèvre describes the 5th element — the

quinary, the quintessential Spirit — as the number who from within

the quaternary is cast and unites with its own Image in the first

manifestation of creation. The prerequisite for that happening is

exemplified in theses images of 2 as the first number: superior

celestial numbers and inferior terrestrial numbers; soul and body;

157

the second mind and the elemental mind; “the first is therefore the

binary” (Evans Ch. 7 II:69-70, f. 208).

The first manifestation of creation happens between the

quinary of the second mind and the quinary chain cast out of the

quaternary within the elemental mind: “The elemental mind, namely of

which are the binary, ternary, quaternary and also quinary, and if

planting all with the inferior elements of the soul you were

uniting, is filled full, of which first the quinary is united, [. .

.]” (Evans Ch. 7 II:69-70, f. 208). “Fire in truth quinary vigor”:

the inferior quinary eagerly and powerfully longs for unification,

leaping like a living flame to meet the superior quinary power, the

singular vigor lifting. Depicted numerically therein is the Image of

Jesus sacrificed like a flame of human blood on the cross, Jesus

becoming Christ, body ascending to Spirit (Evans Ch. 5 II:61, f.

204v).

Genesis then proceeds, “[. . .] second the senary, third the

septenary, fourth the octonary desirous and powerful. But in the

second mind, the benevolence of union and of grace is freeing with

benefaction” (Evans Ch. 7 II:70, f. 208). Spirit then, freed by

union and grace into the beneficent Eucharist, the body of Christ.

An example of the number mysticism tables that Lefèvre provides in

Book II follows (Evans Ch. 7 II:72, f. 209):

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159

II:72

Simplices numeri caelestes

superiores, hoc pacto

colliguntur:

2 Aplanes

3 Saturnus

4 Jupiter

5 Mars

Compositi caelestes numeri

superiores:

5 Aplanes Saturnus

6 Aplanes Jupiter

7 Aplanes Mars

8 Saturnus Mars

9 Aplanes Saturnus Jupiter

9 Jupiter Mars

10 Aplanes Saturnus Mars

11 Aplanes Jupiter Mars

12 Saturnus Jupiter Mars

Monas mundi duodenarium

illuminans:

14 Aplanes Saturnus

Jupiter Mars

II:72

The Simple superior celestial

numbers, collected into this

treatise:

2 Aplanes

3 Saturn

4 Jupiter

5 Mars

The united superior celestial

numbers:

5 Aplanes Saturn

6 Aplanes Jupiter

7 Aplanes Mars

8 Saturn Mars

9 Aplanes Saturn Jupiter

9 Jupiter Mars

10 Aplanes Saturn Mars

11 Aplanes Jupiter Mars

12 Saturn Jupiter Mars

The Monad of the world,

illuminating the duodenary:

14 Aplanes Saturn

Jupiter Mars

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In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 1, Lefèvre describes the

subject of Pythagorean philosophy as: “unitatem,” unity, which is

“in the magi’s thought the generatrix of every number, and the first

and absolute principle from which all other principles form” (Evans

Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198).

Lefèvre describes the principles embodied in the form of

numbers flowing sequentially out of unity, like vapor congealing to

form a more and more manifest fluid: “Nearest whom flows the binary,

the principle of alterity and the number of power, after whom the

ternary number longing, the unborn nearest to nature itself, after

whom the quaternary number connection, and already of the matter

vaporized and perfected” (Evans Ch. 1 II:50, f. 198).

Then, after ascribing active qualities to the planetary

spheres, Lefèvre explains how they continue congealing the flow of

genesis from One: “In like manner the Moon flows number into the

body, and number power, [. . .] Mercury flows longing into the

sensory, Venus flows love-nexus into the corporeal, Sun flows love-

nexus into the vital life which flows from the heart into the body”

(Evans Ch. 1 II:51, f. 199v).

By the end of only Chapter 2, Lefèvre has decloaked within

pagan Imagery the nature of the Trinity, and just which god is

transporting what quality through fluid sacred space and enchanted

time, clear to the end of time, to that mathematical point where all

of the Virtues converge, returning the souls who had flowed forth in

the genesis of creation, through song ascending back to their source

in the fountain waters. Such was the fluid intermingling of

religions and academic disciplines at the turn of the sixteenth

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century. I posit that it was not just from the humanist habit of

reading ancient poets such as Vergil, but also from his habit of

ascesis, mental discipline or exercise, that Lefèvre was fluent at

Imagining the meaning of ancient mythological traditions.

In his travels between France and Italy, before writing De

Magia naturali, Lefèvre would have traversed ground where Christian

shrines were built on top of pagan temples. Cÿbele is the Phrygian

goddess Mother Earth; Ops is the Roman equivalent of the Greek

goddess Rhea whose name may have derived from “to flow”: both

associated with the natural riches of earth (Room 106, 222). In

Chapter 1, Lefèvre juxtaposes the celestial earth Ops and Rhea above

with the Earth of humans, Cÿbele, below (Evans Ch. 1 II:52, f. 199).

Since Cÿbele held a somewhat prominent place in the artistic

expressions during the reign of Francis I, Lefèvre would have had

good reason to create his own artistic Imagery of her. It is

reasonable to conjecture that, at home in Paris he may have thought

of “The statue of Cÿbele by the Tribolo, executed for Francis I.,

and placed, not against a wall, but in the middle of Queen Claude’s

chamber at Fontainebleau, [. . .] behind it an attribute [. . .]

which was the symbol of generativeness” (“Cÿbele”). This non-

numerical, personified instance of the binary is an example of how

Lefèvre saw the same Coincidence of Opposites as that in the number

2, here clothed in a metaphor of myth.

Lefèvre saw our human mind as a reflection of the divine mind.

His words from Introductorium astronomicum show us that perception,

which can be summarized in my words: “as above, so below” or “object

and subject are unified in the Coincidence of Opposites,” the stance

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from which he wrote De Magia naturali. By permission of San Diego

State University Special Collections Library, the first pages of

Lefèvre’s Introductorium astronomicum of 1517 CE are reproduced

here.

Copernicus, sharing Lefèvre’s lifespan, had begun to overturn

this Imagery with a heliocentric, physical model of the solar

system. Since the anthropocentric, geocentric, view of the universe

had already been challenged by the developing science of astronomy,

Lefèvre apparently felt the need to make clear that these earlier

Images of the universe are an interior vision within the mind. He

asserts in the prefatory epistle to Introductorium astronomicum that

this “is the wisest, optimum working of the true heavens, and of the

true movement of the divine mind: our minds always emulate that of

the parent (with which the ignorant lips of many disagree). Our mind

is a simulation, a vestige, through which we can comprehend the

workings of the divine mind, and how the heavens are created. This

is therefore mental astronomy through which one touches the heavens.

It’s the mind’s eye in which the ethereal orbs and orbits are

represented without confusion” (Lefèvre).

Then at the end, Lèfevre seems to contradict himself by

condemning the Chaldeans and Egyptians whom he had in earlier works

lauded for those very perceptions. What has been interpreted

literally by other scholars as a renouncement of astrology and

magic, I interpret as merely a pandering to the Church in order to

avoid persecution. Like De Magia naturali, Lèfevre dedicates

Introductorium astronomicum to Germain de Ganay.

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165

166

Summing up then, Lefèvre continues from Chapter 1, explaining

salvation or redemption in taking us just through Chapter 2 of Book

II, when all “whom love action will have led forth to that place of

divine virtues” have ascended to the One, “all are counted saved,

into their end are called back” (Evans Ch. 2 II:55, 201v).

Within Chapter 2 the prisca theologia of the sacred Venusian

ternary, the amatory chain of the Trinity, is praised. I interpret

that Lefèvre equates the “plains” in Vergilian magic to the

Pythagorean “plane,” or the Ground of Silence from which creation

arises. The chill, torpid snake is split in 2, then we are able to

perceive creation from within the binary, as the Trinitarian “tree,”

“vine,” “chain” or “snake” (Evans Ch. 2 II:53, f. 200v; Ch. 4 II:60,

f. 203).

This Trinitarian number 3, “Venus and Jupiter computed from

the monad, the fountain of things.” Trinity, the love nexus, couples

with the quaternary, who after the monad, is the other “origin who

made things.” This multiplying of 3 with 4 makes the zodiac of 12

(Evans Ch. 2 II:54-55, f. 200-201v).

Then, in Chapter 3, Lefèvre delineates how the opposing forces

of attraction and repulsion chain creation together through the

elements and qualities (Evans II:56-57, f. 201-202v). Chapter 4

reveals how deities, angels, are positioned along the chain from

heaven, to assist in our ascent to Idea, and beyond “into the seed

of life”: grace, the Eucharist (Evans II:57-8, f. 202).

Where does this Infinity of couplings begin and end, this

Infinity of descending grace and ascensions on high, and who is the

observer, the witness of their coming and going?

167

In Chapter 5 genesis begins with the binary and is completed

within that self-reflective binary. Through Coincidence of

Opposites, Spirit is perpetually manifested as body: “The sensible

world, nearest image of the celestial world, by the concordant

discord of their own numbers the nexus perseveres perpetually in its

own motion.” I add that from an anthropomorphic viewpoint, we as

body are duality, we as Spirit are the unification of duality and

One in the Trinity: We are the only observer of genesis. Aside from

human ascension into Spirit, humility leads us to remember who we

the recipients of grace also are: “all things earthly whatsoever are

cast of the mortal binaries, the most enduring, and into earth of

the binary itself at last reverting” (Evans II:62-63, f. 204-205v).

And genesis begins again through the ritual theological couple

Jove and Venus. Venus herself is a personification of and a metaphor

for the Pythagorean “plane” or Ovid’s “all was sea”: “the entire

Venus and the passionate longing of Venus are born in the sea.”

Jove, “the seminal fluid of all things,” emulates air. The poets

continuously sing of their virtuous lovemaking, World without end:

“Venus indeed is that by which is being chained and drawn the body,

sometimes as if by Venus’ laughter” (Evans II:62-63, f. 204-205v).

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