Rosslyn Sanctuary

Southern Oregon Thelemic Community and Organic Farm

Rosslyn Coven of the Hawk & Jackal

Merlin - Oregon - USA

Agrippa

1486 e.v. - 1535 e.v.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, German mystic and alchemist.  Agrippa of Nettesheim was born of a once-noble family near Cologne.  Agrippa studied both medicine and law there.  In 1503, he assumed the name Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, adopting the von to suggest a noble background; three years later, he established a secret society in Paris devoted to astrology, magic, and Kabbalah.

 

His career is diverse: secret agent, soldier, physician, orator, and law professor, in Cologne, Paris, Dôle, London, Italy, Pavia, and Metz. In 1509, he set up a laboratory in Dôle in the hopes of synthesizing gold.  Legend has it that he was able to create the legendary Philosophers stone.  Over the next decade or so traveled Europe, making a living as an alchemist, and conversing with such important early humanist scholars as Colet and Reuchlin. In 1520, he set up a medical practice in Geneva, and in 1524 became personal physician to the queen mother at the court of King Francis I in Lyons. When the queen mother abandoned him, he began practicing medicine in Antwerp, but was later banned for practicing without a license, and became historiographer at the court of Charles V.  The truth of the matter was that the Dominicans pursued Agrippa for the publishing of his works.  Charles V sentenced Agrippa to death for Heresy.  Saved by friends, Agrippa fled to France where Francis I immediately put him in to prison for the old offense of using a horoscope.  Charles V soon changed the sentence to that of exile and Agrippa was released by Francis I.  Agrippa then made his way to Lyon but did not appear there. He was last seen in Grenoble, Rue des Clercs, in the house of the Ferrand family, owned by Vachon, governor of Grenoble, son of M. Vachon - Receiver General of the Province of Dauphine. His manuscripts and letters in secure hands, he had nothing else to do in this world. And he departed this Earth in 1535.

 

Agrippa's wrote on a great many topics, including marriage and military engineering, but his most important work is the three-volume De occulta philosophiae (written c. 1510, published 1531), a defense of "hidden philosophy" or magic, which draws on diverse mystical traditions -- alchemy, astrology, Kabbalah. A later work, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum (Of the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences), attacks contemporary scientific theory and practice.

 

As most students of the Occult have come to understand, many of Agrippa's opinions and works were controversial even in his own time. His early lectures on theology angered the Church (surprise), and his defense of a woman accused of witchcraft in 1520 led to his being hounded out of Cologne by the Inquisition. In his own day, Agrippa was widely attacked as a charlatan by the authorities and yet greatly respected by those of higher learning. After his death, legends about him were plentiful. Some believed him to be not only an alchemist but a demonic magician, even a vampire. In one account, he traveled to the New World.  In 1799, Robert Southey published an amusing ballad on Agrippa, suggestive of his later reputation as a master of black magic, as well as of his susceptibility to gothic trappings.

 

For more detailed history on Agrippa's see Agora Agrippa

Works of Agrippa

De occulta philosophiae - Book 1 - PDF

De occulta philosophiae - Book 2 - PDF

De occulta philosophiae - Book 3 - PDF

De occulta philosophiae - Book 4 - PDF

Of Geomancy - PDF

The DaVinciCode - LIT

Research site on Agrippa

( Good site for historical accuracy )

Additional works by Agrippa are available and will soon be put on-line for your enjoyment.