The Italian Renaissance and Planetary Magick - Part One

The Italian Renaissance and Planetary Magick - Part One

As the Inquisition sought to ground out all opposing thought, a group of freethinkers began to appear on the scene. They had to be careful to disguise their contempt for doctrine, for fear of being burned at the stake. For this reason alone you’ll have to understand just why most of the magickal texts from the 16th century through the end of the 19th have veiled meanings. To be discovered being interested in the occult was almost sure to land a person sever repercussions, up to and including their death. Actually, your penalty could extend beyond death! Many a condemned person was dug back up and burned, just to make sure their souls were “saved”. In times like this, it would be madness to reveal too much of anything concerning your beliefs.

But in Italy, powerful patrons of the Arts appeared who were eager to employ artisans, philosphers, and craftsmen to create new and inspiring works in many nascent fields. One such person was Marsilio Ficino, a friend of Cosimo De Medici and a proponent of an early psychological system that was based on Plantery Magick, and had a heavy emphasis on his astrological interpretations. Although his writings, of course, are very dated, he was enthusiastic about the Planets and he wanted everyone to get in touch with their Hidden Universe in order to live more balanced and healthy lives.

Ficino was greatly influenced by the classic works of both the Greeks and the Romans, and it showed in much of his work. He was convinced that many diseases and disorder were caused by Planetary mis-alignment, and he sought to discover how to put these energies to work for him. Simply, Ficino was a humanist. He thought of people as being able to think for themselves, and he believed that the basic nature of man was good. This contrasted deeply with the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, that felt man was permanently stained due to Original Sin. The conflict would cause him trouble.

Ficino was accused of practicing magick in 1489 and was nearly condemned to die. His “Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae” was the cause of the outrage. That Ficino was expert on Latin philosophy and astrology couldn’t be denied. He was the first to translate Plato’s collected works from Latin. He truly love the language and the sentiments of the classics, and that passion would stay with him until the end. Where Ficino strived the hardest, and ultimately probably fell short, was his attempt to reconcile Christianity with Astrology. This overarching goal made some of his work less clear than it should have been.

“Ficino, (1433-1499), the true center of the Academy, recieved Holy Orders at the age of 40, and spent the rest of his days in the honest and reverent to reconcile Platonism and Christianity. In the latter part of his life he translated and expounded Plotinus. After surviving Lorenzo for seven years, he died in 1499, an is commemorated by a marble bust in the Cathedral of Florence.” (2)

Ficino took an approach that would probably be called “Holistic” today where it concerned health. He looked at the soul as literal, and decided that certain interactions with planetary energies could be responsible for certain maladies. Naturally, he didn’t have the requisite medical background to make actual diagnoses, but from a psychological standpoint, much of what he wrote about was well ahead of its’ time and showed an attempt at synthesis and balance that was rare for many of his contemporaries.

Ficino was concerned with the World Soul, which was popularized in more recent times by Carl Jung, who called it the “Collective Unconcious.” Ficino, of course, was touching upon heresy when he made a number of obvious allusions to sympathetic magick and using planetary correspondences.

“the World-soul possesses by divine power precisely as many seminal reasons of things as there are Ideas in the Divine Mind…. And if in the proper manner you bring to bear on a species, or on some individual in it, many things which are dispersed but which conform to the same Idea, into this material thus suitably adapted you will soon draw a particular gift from the Idea, through the seminal reason of the Soul… And so let no one think that any divinities wholly separate from matter are being attracted by any given mundane materials, but that daemons rather are being attracted and gifts from the ensouled world and from the living stars. Again, let no man wonder that Soul can be allured as it were by material forms, since indeed she herself has created baits of this kind suitable to herself, to be allured thereby, and she always and willingly dwells in them. There is nothing to be found in this whole living world so deformed that Soul does not attend it, that a gift of the Soul is not in it. Therefore Zoroaster called such correspondences of forms to the reasons existing in the World-soul divine lures and Synesius corroborated that they are magical baits. ” (3)

Considering he was writing these words over 500 years ago, and considering how much other literature he could find on the subject, it would have to be stated that Marsilio Ficino was well ahead of others concerning his thoughts. Ficino, in fact, ends up being a major figure in Planetary Magick theory for the simple reason that very few texts from that pivotal era exist. Indeed, Ficino was known to have a number of loyal followers, but few appeared to speak publicly on the subject. It isn’t hard to imagine why, given the nature of the times. To talk about the occult could often be the last official act by any author.

Continued: The Italian Renaissance and Magick - Part Two