De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic, by Jacques Lefvre dtaples: 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

2 THESIS ABSTRACT
The life of Catholic reformer Jacques Lefvre dtaples, 14551536, spanned the threshold between Medieval and Renaissance eras. Like other humanists, Lefvre synthesized philosophical, theological and scientific theories and practices of such is his unpublished treatise De Magia naturali, On Natural Magic. I elucidate Lefvres 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, Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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.

3 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 familys 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.

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS* Chapter Page

I.

INTRODUCTION 1. Historical Context and Humanism 2. Justification through Christ the Spirit 3. Ascension, Intellect and Love

15 20 30

II.

TRADITION OF MASTERS & LEGACY IN LANGUAGE 1. Italian Background and Contemporary Foreground 2. History and Summary of De Magia naturali 3. Snapshot in Time of the Tradition

43 53 55

III.

METHODOLOGY & BOOK II ON CHRISTIAN KABBALAH 1. Stigma of the Non-Christian

2. Book II on Kabbalah
3. Network of Christian Kabbalists IV. EQUALITY & UNITY OF THE BINARY 1. Primal Metaphors & Myth 2. Experience & History, Metaphorical & Literal 3. Poets, Philosophers, & Mythological Beings V. VI. PRIMARY SOURCES & CONCLUDING REMARKS WORKS CITED & WORKS CONSULTED

61 76 110

129 140 150 162

*Note regarding edition published through Scribd.com: page numbers do not correspond exactly with Table of Contents. Original thesis hardcopy available at CSUSM, San Marcos, and at GTU Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.

5 I. INTRODUCTION

1. Historical Context and Humanism

Renaissance Catholic reformer Jean Jacques Lefvre, known as Jacques Lefvre dtaples, was born around 1455 of humble parentage in the small fishing village of taples 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 1520s, 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, Lefvre 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, Lefvre and other humanists synthesized many philosophical, theological and scientific theories and practices. Exemplary among Lefvres 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 Lefvres time and in our
1

Historical dates and facts on Lefvre dtaples not otherwise cited are from Scott R. Clarks Chronology of the Medieval and Reformation Church, referenced in Works Cited. 2 Olomouc, 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 Lefvre 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, Lefvre employs the umbrella term, Priscae velatae Theologiae or Ancient veils of Theology (Evans II:80, f. 213). Throughout Book II, Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvres 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

7
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 Eves 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. Lefvre equates that final Christian sacrifice into salvation with the thoughts of preChristian 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, Lefvre 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, Lefvre employs the

8
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 Lefvre had read the Churchsanctioned Nicholas of Cusa. Augustin Renaudet, in Prrforme et Humanisme Paris: Pendant les Premires Guerres dItalie (14941517), dates Lefvres studies of Cusa during the first decade and a half of the sixteenth century (661). Therefore rather than Cusa, Lefvre 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 Lefvre dtaples. 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 malefemale binary of Ptolemy and Urania embodies the architectural principle of Coincidence of Opposites Earth below, celestial above

9
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 Lefvres 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 Lefvre published Sphaera in 1527, writing a prefatory epistle and commentary on it at that time, supports my argument that Lefvre 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 Lefvres teachings, is found in Book IIs prisca theologia of Coincidence of Opposites and the Trinity.

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11

12

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Renaissance humanist Jacques Lefvre dtaples lived at a time of creative expression in Europe. In 1441, Thomas 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 Ficinos 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

14
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 1480s on, book burnings by the Spanish Inquisition were common (308). Relative to the chronology of Lefvre dtaples, he attended the University of Paris (la Sorbonne), receiving a Master of Arts degree in 1480. During the 1490s, 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.

15
According to Eugene F. Rice Jr. in The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefvre dtaples, Lefvres whereabouts between 1480 and 1490 is unknown (20). Returning to Paris in 1490 the Renaissance humanist Jacques Lefvre dtaples became a professor of philosophy at the Collge du Cardinale Lemoine, a residential college of the University of Paris. Rice, in Humanism in France, reports that he treasured Thomas 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 Lefvre 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

16
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 Bossys 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 mans 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 xiixiii). Paul O. Kristellers 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 Lefvres [Louvain and] Antwerp edition[s] (Rabil 1: 5-28; parenthetical note mine). Lefvre 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, Lefvre and other French humanists restored Aristotles 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 Lefvre 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). Kristellers 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).

19 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 1520s and 30s was perhaps seed for that in England of the 1640s and 50s (Bossy 91, 107, 110). Like Lefvre 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 1470s 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvre: 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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Cusas mysticism of Positive theology becomes a central theme of Lefvres 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 Christs 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 Lefvres marrying of his methodology to this epistemology, the embodying of this Trinitarian epistemology within his methodology, is Lefvres 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). 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).
3 4

Capitalized throughout to accentuate its fundamental importance to the thesis. Imagination, Reason, and Intellect capitalized throughout to accentuate that these were named the ascending methodology Lefvre employed in teaching.

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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 Cusas 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 theologians method (85, 87). The subjects Intellect is the culmination, Lefvre concurs, of the theologians 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 Lefvres De Magia naturali for 500 years: the Churchs refusal to recognize the reconciliation of magic with mysticism in Intellect as knowledge of faith in Christs 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 that of the Church, was the historical literal sense, whereas Lefvres methodology unified Opposites through the paradoxical language of metaphor, disclosing anagogical or mystical-Spiritual meaning.

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24 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 Lefvre dtaples 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 Lefvre recommended beginning with Aristotles 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). Lefvre, whose De Magia naturali concerns itself with knitting together the heavenly and the earthly, surmounted the potentially heretical claiming of mans power to achieve union with God through numerical ascension by equating his final vehicle Intellect with faith. Intellect was perceived by Lefvre as the faculty of intuition and vision. Through Intellection, faith corrected Reason (Rice, Lefvre dtaples and the Medieval Christian Mystics 1012).

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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, Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvre published the Epistles of St. Paul, considered by some the first Protestant book. In the teachings of the Fathers, Lefvre found pietas et doctrina, piety and doctrine, the religious and moral insight required to raise mans mind to God. The Fathers inspired Lefvre 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 Rices Introduction to The Prefatory Epistles, Lefvres 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvres textbook, Introduction to

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Aristotles 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 Lefvres teachings. Teaching at the Collge du Cardinale Lemoine until 1508, Lefvre 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). Lefvre 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 Pauls Epistles with commentary, marked Lefvre as a heretic. Lefvre 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 Lefvres in Paris, althouth their paths parted (Reformation Histories). Rices compilation of The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefvre dtaples 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, Lefvre never did renounce the magic philosophies of his earlier writings. Epistle 26 from Guillaume de la Mares Sylvae,

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singing the praises of illustrious gentlemen, is a poem published in 1513 honoring Lefvre. 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 Lefvres 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, Lefvre 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: Vols III and IV, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 4: 520). Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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, Lefvre was still propounding the doctrine of Christ as Spirit uniting heaven and earth, still marrying pagan and Christian teachings in Christian Kabbalah.

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Coincidental clues, regarding responses to censorship, in Prefatory Epistles from the date of 1512 are that: Lefvres alleged opinion of natural magic turns from positive to negative; he denounces his property in taples; and on pages 287-90 Rice tells of an anonymous supplementary biography appearing in 1512 and published through Trithemius, cataloging and praising Lefvres works. Rices Introduction to his edition of Lefvres Prefatory Epistles also provides a thorough yet succinct summary of Lefvres life and works. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to recap everything of import in Lefvres life, but I wish to include a very relevant paragraph of Rices that is so succinct there is no room for paraphrase: Between 1508 and 1520 Lefvre continued his scholarly work at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des Prs, under the patronage of the abbot, Guillaume Brionnet, bishop of Lodve and subsequently of Meaux. In the spring of 1521 Brionnet 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. Lefvres 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 kings children, Lefvre 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 dAngoulme, queen of Navarre (XIIIXIV). In the prefatory epistle to Introduction to Aristotles Metaphysics, Lefvre praises Aristotle for the same wisdom he cherishes in Book II: geometric reckoning, mathematical computation, are the mirror and measure of justice (Lefvre). The Spiritual reckoning to justice that is justification, then, Lefvre decloaks through number mysticism. In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 2, Lefvre 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 Aristotles Metaphysics, Lefvre 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 (Lefvre). 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 Lefvre 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, Lefvre revived French study of the Spanish mystic Raymond Lull (Victor online). This revival of Lullism in Paris propagated the Christian mystics metaphor of lover and Beloved as expression of mans relationship with God the continuity of Lefvres essential focus on the Coincidence of Opposites as path to divine union. In 1491 he read Lulls Contemplations. Lull brought Lefvre 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, Lefvre copied a manuscript of Lulls Book of the Lover and the Beloved (Hughes 12). Lulls words relating nature and man to God that Lefvre 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. Pauls Epistles that Lefvre

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 Lefvre 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 Gods 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 Lefvre also received through Church Fathers such as these. Lefvre also copied some of Hildegard von Bingens 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 Hildegards work, Lefvre was a vital link for transmitting wisdom through the humanist tradition of masters. Guy Bedouelle reiterates in Lefvre dtaples et lIntelligence des critures that in the latter part of his life, Lefvres only goal was to convey the sweetness of Scripture to the humble to nourish them (16). After reading Reuchlins 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). Lefvre 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 Lefvre, 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 Collge de France, wrote his definitive history of pre-Reform humanism at Paris. It is from Prrforme et Humanisme Paris: Pendant les Premires Guerres dItalie (14941517) that I translate and paraphrase the story of Lefvres Italian journey, which functions here as background history for De Magia naturali. In 1491, Lefvre read the two first books of Lulls 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, Lefvre 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). Lefvre left France in the cold winter of 1491-2, accompanied by Guillaume Gontier as secretary and copyist. He traversed the mountainous Region Pimont in northwestern Italy and the Alps of Lombardie. Perhaps bypassing Venice, Lefvre arrived in Florence where Marsilio Ficino and the Florentine humanists restored Platos 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, Lefvre inherited the dialectic of love. I assert that this dialectic of love is the Coincidence of Opposites and Trinitarian prisca theologia of which Lefvre writes in De Magia naturali Book II. Lefvre 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 Botticellis Primavera, painted for Lorenzo, Lefvres 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 Lefvre 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).

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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 Gods 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. Ficinos 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 Lefvre could thus hear Ficino expounding on his doctrines; he could assist at some of the Academys meetings, get to know these professors, savants, priests and doctors who met at Careggi. Perhaps Lefvre heard Cristoforo Landino, the teacher who had tried to demonstrate that Vergil, in

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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, Lefvre had studied the philosophers. Concluding his studies in 1491 at Picos Studio, these lessons, inspired by a method in contrast to the scholastics, provided Lefvre with elegant and precise models of teaching (141). Lefvre best loved Picos thinking and character among the Florentine savants, who, despite his 1480s 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. Picos patron Lorenzo de Medici feared this friar though, who alluded to his rulership as corrupt tyranny. In April 1492, Lefvre may not have yet left Tuscany when Lorenzo the Magnificent fell ill and died, amid dark premonitions of those closest to him (142-4).

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In Rome Lefvre 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 Lefvre a copy of the anti-Platonic Dialectic that had been copied by Georges de Trbizonde. Renaudet unfortunately provides no information as to Lefvres return journey itself, though he does continue that, back at Paris, Lefvre taught an interpretation of Aristotle that harmonized with the thinking of Ficino and Pico. He taught that in all of Aristotles 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 Lefvre and his Florentine associates, a rational theory of the world was incomplete without the soul (145-9). At this point in Prrforme et Humanisme Paris, Renaudet perhaps exposes his own bias against magic in discussing censorship of Lefvres 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 Lefvres De Magia naturali, Renaudet concludes that he probably cast aside the science of horoscopes, and that he probably didnt 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

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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 mans 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 Platos 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

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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). Boehmes 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 Boehmes 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 Leets 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 Lefvres 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 Dumzil, structuralist, philologist and historian of religions, wrote a

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magnum opus, great work, during the early 1900s. Mythe et pope 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 (Dumzil, Grisward Introduction). This is an essential thesis point, since I extrapolate that all humans think in 3s, hilighting the importance of the Renaissance humanists Trinitarian prisca theologia as a key for decloaking metaphorical imagery in mythology. Georges Dumzils Archaic Roman Religion is an encyclopedic resource for use in studying both Lefvres De Magia naturali and his subsequent Quincuplex Psalterium. The difficulty of translating the De Magia naturali is revealed in Dumzils 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

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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. Dumzil 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 Smiths 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 Lefvres treatise on prisca theologia. Editor of Dante, Cristoforo Landino recorded some of the Platonic Academys sessions, including those when Vergil was discussed as a philosopher whose allegorical teachings were in harmony with Platos. 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 Dumzil, 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

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(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 Dumzil 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 Literatures treatment of sacred texts. Mircea Eliade, in Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, speaks to Huston Smiths, and Platos, 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

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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). Lefvre 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 Lefvre dtaples 278) Lefvres 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 VIIIs Papal Bull of 1484 against sorcerers, Lefvre 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). Picos sudden death at 31 may also have deterred Lefvre from publishing his treatise. Lynn Thorndike in, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: Vols III and IV, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, evokes our suspicion over the means of Picos 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 Picos 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 Lefvres 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 lcole Pratique des Hautes tudes (EPHE) of the Sorbonne. I believe it is yet unpublished. Possibly due to Americas 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvres inspiration. Lefvres 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 Lefvre, with Columbias Kristeller, Rice and Penham, and Europes 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 Republics 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

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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 Penhams 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 Bibliothque 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 Lefvres 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, cole Pratique des Hautes tudes of the Sorbonne. That 2002-3 philology class was taught by Jean-Marc Mandosio, who allegedly collaborated

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with Jean-Pierre Brach on an edition and commentary of Jacques Lefvre dtaples 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 Chrysopia entitled, Linterprtation alchimique de deux travaux dHercule dans le De Magia naturali de Lefvre dtaples, which I was able to get through interlibrary loan. Although other sources such as Rices essay include information on the De Magia, I will translate and paraphrase this articles account on pages 191-263 of Chrysopia 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 essays 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 Lefvre dtaples between 1504 and 1512.

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Latin manuscript 10875 of the Bibliothque royale de Belgique holds a fragment written in Gothic cursive, probably between 14961501. A fourth fragment I had not previously heard of, Latin manuscript 7454 of la Bibliothque nationale de France, is an anonymous calligraphy copy on paper of Book I. Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Renaudets 1493 which Ive 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. Lefvre adopts Picos 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 Lefvre, 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

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ligatures and incantations. The terms I find in Book II or use regarding it that correlate with these terms of Pierozzis are: exercises, Coincidence of Opposites, binding chains, and the poets songs. As I have done, Pierozzi notes the influence of Ficino and Pico throughout Lefvres De Magia naturali. In Book I, Lefvre 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. Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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, Lefvre discovered the work of Odo of Morimond, twelfth century specialist in number mysticism. Subsequently, Lefvre formulated the correlations between mathematics, music and astrology with the same arguments as those in Book II. Again I offer to term this Lefvres decloaking of disciplines.

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Pierozzi and Mandosios 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 Lefvres intended meaning, emphasizing the distinction Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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). Lefvre 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

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written on the importance in Book II of the 5th element, the quintessential Spirit that elicits Gods grace into the world. The text that could be considered the source of Lefvres Kabbalistic Book II Pierozzi, acknowledging Copenhaver, cites as Picos Conclusiones, wherein is the same type of Kabbalistic exegesis of the Old Testament and the Trinity. Lefvre 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, Lefvre 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. Lefvres 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. Pierozzis 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 Lefvres two chapters (one from each of Books III & IV) treating the exploits of Hercules. The

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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 Mandosios translation and commentary on those two chapters, which at the time of writing in the mid-1990s were the ony two chapters he had read of the treatise. Mandosio concludes that Lefvre is the forgotten precurser to the birth of a veritable alchemical mythological tradition found in Augurellis 1515 Chrysopia, and in Bracescos 1542 Il Legno della vita and 1544 LEsposizione di Geber filosofo. He surmises, as I did, that Lefvres 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 Ive compiled below that Lefvre may have had occasion to read before writing this treatise. I include Mandosios mention of Manilius Astronomica, Picos Conclusiones and Ficinos De Amore in the listing below. Concluding my translation and paraphrase of Pierozzi and Mandosios essay, Linterprtation alchimique de deux travaux dHercule dans le De Magia naturali de Lefvre dtaples on pages 191-263 of Chrysopia Volume V:

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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. Lefvre 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

Lefvres 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 1980s article by Kent Emery, Jr., he asserts that Lefvres teachings contributed to the evolution of lecole 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 Lefvres 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 Picos teachings at that time on Christian Kabbalah. Lacking that information, Emery places Lefvres contribution to this tradition after his turn-of-the-century studies of Cusa. As mentioned above, Renaudet dates Lefvres studies of Nicholas of Cusa during the first decade and a half of the sixteenth century (661). Thus because of De Magia naturalis physical obscurity, Lefvre has not been counted among the Christian Kabbalists of his day. My work on the treatise sheds light on Lefvres 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

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tradition via the De Divisione Naturae of John Scotus Erigena (48). This comment directly ties in Lefvres writings, since he followed the tradition of masters that included Raymond Lull and Erigena. Importantly, Emery emphasizes that Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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 todays Academy. To illustrate the impact Renaissance humanists had on future thought, I again cite Emerys article in Journal of the History of Ideas, modern historians recognize an indigenous French school of spirituality, which one authority calls lcole 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 Emerys 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 Lefvres interpretation of it. Lefvres 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. Millers Introduction to the translation of Picos 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 Picos humanist epistemology and methodology. Miller negates what I posit as Lefvres, and Picos, 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

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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. Lefvre believed so, including in De Magia naturali many examples of his mystical-metaphorical reading of mythology, astrological or otherwise. Treatment above of Pierozzi and Mandosios essay on a chapter in each of Books III & IV addresses Lefvres interpretations of Hercules and the serpent. Through number mysticism in Book II, besides the planetary Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, Lefvre decloaks such mythological characters as Phoebus, Minos, Cacus and Rhadamanthys, Cbele, Narcissus, Phillide and Flora, and Daedalus some of whom will be addressed herein. I point out vehemently that Lefvres anagogical decloaking of mythology according to mystical-Spiritual metaphors is an essential and timely key for current literary theory. Millers Introduction demonstrates just how Pico [and thus Lefvre] reconciled St. Thomas distinction between God and creatures, and Aristotles God with Platos 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 Aristotles injunction that man can actualize virtues through habituation, Pico asserted mans moral freedom [which Lefvre then taught as freedom to moral choice] (xv). Like

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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 Picos fundamental theses is that his universal concord between philosophies and religions is embodied in the collaboration of mans free moral choice with a return to God which we do not make, but receive (xvii). Herein is Lefvres 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 severed. From here the mystery of numbers descends alone on the Ground of Silence. (Evans Ch. 14 II:90, f. 218v) Both Pico and Lefvre 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

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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 mans intellectual activities. Miller concurs, in that he finds The permanent interest and value of Picos 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. Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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, Lefvre lived in the secular working

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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. Lefvre further grounded subjective, metaphorical abstractions in the world through his rigorous teaching at the Collge du Cardinale of the University of Paris. The teachings embodied his epistemological convictions: Lefvre began teaching his students with Imagination through study of Aristotles 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, Lfevre equated Intellect with intuition and faith. An important lesson of this teaching technique is that for Lfevre 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. Lfevre 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:

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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, Lefvre also valued Cusas teaching of this coincidentia oppositorum, the Coincidence of Opposites. Lefvres 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 Lefvres 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 mans 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.

65 2. Book II on Kabbalah

Akin to Pico della Mirandolas principle of universal accord, Book II of the De Magia is a typical humanist synthesis of metaphorical systems of expression: that of Neoplatonism and Ficinos macrocosm of the planets within the microcosm of man; of angelology; of Pythagorean philosophy and numerical ascension; of Picos 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 Lefvres categorizing of Book II as Pythagorean philosophy or Christian Kabbalah. That is substantiated in the Kabbalahs system of the 10 sefirot depicting emanation of divine attributes down from Keter, the Crown or God, into creation. The Kabbalists 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvre dtaples 26-7). I posit that Lefvres 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. Lefvre 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 Lefvre dtaples 21-2). Drawing upon the authority of contemporary religious and scholarly writers, I hope to elucidate Lefvres 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 Lefvres early work on Aristotle and his subsequent confinement to Christian themes, the fulcrum between pagan and Christian. Lefvres 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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Lefvre, 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, Lefvre 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 Lefvre dtaples 24). Lefvres Ideal of the triangle as expressing Trinity, aequalitas, is thus also a metaphor for the freedom to moral choice, an ideal of perfection that Lefvre strove for even within the imperfections of his working world. Through sacred geometry and number mysticism then, Lefvre married Christianity to Kabbalah. Lefvre, 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, Lefvre refers to number mysticism as Pythagorean philosophy. He had inherited Ficinos 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, Lefvre 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 Lefvre draws reflect the harmony of natural magic, which he now understood as a prisca theologia of Christianity (The De Magia Naturali of Jacques Lefvre dtaples 26-7, n.28). These observations support my arguments that Academia ought to engage humanitys esoteric, phenomenological tradition that crosses historical and cultural boundaries. As importantly, Rice himself here provides support for my assertion that Lefvre, 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 Rices assessment of the astrology and magic of which Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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. Lefvre 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, Lefvre 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 cant help but see as intelligently intentional, Rice concludes his 10-page synopsis of Lefvres 350page treatise with a hint as to where Lefvre really stood with magic. He begins the concluding paragraph explaining how Lefvres opinion of magic was a high one, then Rice explains how on the other hand Lefvre later published the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones Petri apostoli, a work whose most frequently quoted and illustrated

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episodes were Peters disputes with Simon Magus (28). Rice shows us the paradox of contradiction that Lefvre 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, Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvres

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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 Lefvre 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 Im honoring, is the exercise of pious minds. [The Trinity] Felicitously appearing in the light. (Richard, title) Millers summary of Picos overarching philosophy expresses the premise on which Lefvres 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 Picos Scriptural exegesis is revealed in Heptaplus, Septiform Narration of the Six Days of Creation, Picos 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvre portrays the Coincidence of Opposites as the relationship from which the sixfold genesis of creation ensues. Lefvre 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 Kabbalahs 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, Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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, Lefvre discusses all 10 numbers. In Pearl Epsteins analysis of Kabbalah as detailed below, she concurs with my interpretation of the cosmic tree as anthropomorphic, representing mans nervous system joining Heaven and Earth, and the ascension of mans 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 Lefvres 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). Lefvre 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 Gods 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 Gods 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 Picos 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 Lefvre intended his Quincuplex Psalterium as a continuation of Picos 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 Picos Heptaplus with Lefvres Book II. Regarding the continuum from theoretical philosophy to practical philosophy, Pico held that the cross and Christs blood signify that the approach to God is open for man through ascension in imitatio Christi. Lefvre 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 Chaldeans famous quote, Good thoughts, good words, good deeds (Greenlees, Title Page). Lefvre thus taught the practice of philosophy together with the theory of philosophy. Rice asserts that Lefvre, 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 Lefvre dtaples 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 Lefvres contribution to the tradition known as Christian Kabbalah. Scholem provides us with a detailed account of Kabbalahs evolution. He argues against the view of adoption by pre-Kabbalists of the Iranian theory of two principles, yet he refers to Kabbalahs 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 Lefvre 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, Lefvres methodology, and highest rung of his philosophical theology Intuition corresponds with Kabbalistic wisdom. These were early stages of Kabbalahs 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 books statements were not understood, even by the early kabbalists of Western Europe. The teaching of the Bahir is introduced as maaseh merkabah, the term Kabbalah not yet being used. (42-3) I plan to further research Jacques Lefvre dtaples 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 Lefvres 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 Bahirs 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 Lefvres Intellect as final vehicle. Empedocles is named by Lefvre 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) Scholems book Kabbalah is an encyclopedic and excellent reference tool for further research into Lefvres 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 Lefvre 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 Compltes, the stereotype of good evangelical theologian immortalized in Rabelais character Hippothade, is said to allude to either Lefvre dtaples or to St. Jude Thade (998). The anti-heretical stereotype Lefvre 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 Lefvre, Johannes Reuchlin was brought before the Inquisition in 1513 for propounding Judaism. Lefvre spoke out on his behalf during the ensuing disputes over the ruling of heresy. By 1520, both Inquisition and the Sorbonne academics had condemned Reuchlins 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 Reuchlins cause. De arte Cabalistica was published in 1517, at the same time as Lefvres Introductorium astronomicum discussed herein.

80 3. Network of Christian Kabbalists

Beginning with the tradition of masters that Lefvre 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 Ficinos Florentine Platonic Academy became a renowned institution, a mecca for the eras 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 Lefvre made the arduous journey to Florence seeking out Pico and Ficino. Central at the Florentine Academy was Platos teaching that philosophy itself was a mystical initiation, a union of man and God. Ficinos efforts to reconcile Platonism with Christianity pivoted on

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his Catholic conviction that God became man, that the Incarnate Christ was Gods 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 Picos 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). Lefvre 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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Picos 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. Ficinos interpretation of Platos teachings on free will of the thinking soul, leaving its judgment free, is echoed in our understanding of Lefvres 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, 30624). Lefvre as well, in an attempt to visualize intuitions of Nicolas of Cusa, drew an extended Star of David diagram (Bedouelle 64). In 1494, Lefvre 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 Columbias 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 Lefvres 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 Idels 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 Lefvres De Magia naturali and Picos 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 politicoreligious 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 Zieglers Conversation of the Masters, the most recent work of the great revivalist of Schellings 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 humanitys 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 Gods 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 Bud, student of Lefvre], 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 (1213). 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 Scholems 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 Uzziahs 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 Gods unified presence in creation. Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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). Vergils 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. Lefvre 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 Apollos throne and who Jove perpetually extols. At this point Lefvre 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 Isaiahs 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. Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvre wrote his De Magia], Reuchlins 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) Lefvre 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 Reuchlins conclusion that when the Name becomes that of Jesus [Yehoshuah] it works wonders. As Lefvre describes it, the Tetragrammaton becomes this Name when the quinary or fifth numberletter [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). Lefvre 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 Lefvre, 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 Lefvres 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 dAmore or Dialogues of Love. Centuries later, Oetinger corresponded with Spencers Collegia pietatis in Frankfurt, a circle which studied Kabbalah. Knorr von Rosenroths 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 Gods 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 Oetingers 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 Creations 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 Lefvres 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 Oetingers 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). Lefvre, 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 Lefvres methodological continuum of Imagination, Reason, and Intellect, but we can also see how he proportions that directly to his Trinitarian epistemology. In Chapter 12, Lefvre 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 denarymonaden 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 spiritfountains 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 Lefvre himself chose the term Pythagorean philosophy for the subject of Book II. Like Lefvre, 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 Hechts 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 Lefvres 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, Lefvre 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-inprogress, I will correlate Princess Antonias Master Tablet with Lefvres system of correspondences between angels, celestial spheres and numbers, as depicted and described in Chapter 10 (Evans II:80-85, ff. 213-215). The murals secrecy due to its physical obscurity, and not because its Images lack clarity, mirrors that of Lefvres treatise. Esotericism such as that in Lefvres 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 Tablets 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 Lefvres 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 Plouquets System; Detlev Cluvers 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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Oetingers 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 Lefvres 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 Benzs book, then also to categorize Lefvre as a Kabbalist through analysis of Book II in this treatise, is to categorize Lefvre as a Nicodemite. This definitively informs the question, posed by Thierry Wanegffellen at the 1992 conference, Jacques Lefvre dtaples: Actes du Colloque dtaples, as to whether or not he was a nicodmite (Lefvre nicodmite? Quest-ce que le nicodmisme? 155-80).

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As posed at the conference, the accusation of heresy that the label nicodmite signified in Lefvres time was centered around the controversy of a Catholics 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 Lefvres teachings to his students. He concludes the paper with a quote in which Lefvre 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. Lefvre 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 Lefvres inclusion of all people in the meditation is the key to understanding him as a nicodmite. Lefvres Justification by Faith was for all of humankind, Catholic or not. Benzs Christian Kabbalah also supports my suggestion that the reason Lefvre 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 Lefvre dtaples and the Medieval Christian Mystics, Rice claims that, Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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 doubleentendre is that Lefvres 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 Lefvres philosophy evolved away from natural magic, stating: One thing at least is clear. Lefvre 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. Gods Being was experienced in the longing for self-manifestation,

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and then in mans 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. Lefvre 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, Lefvre 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 Newtons doctrine with that of Kabbalah, echoes Lulls 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) Lefvre 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:5455, 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 Kabbalists 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). Lefvre, 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 10s, offering the salutation to Germain of a future disputation on how Syrian numbers might compute the end (Evans II:99, f. 222). Again, Lefvres 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 Pennsylvanias 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 Dans treatment of the latter, along with his Introduction, and then on Gershom Scholems 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 PlatonicHermetic-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 Lefvre has said, she ought not to be degenerated to fallen.

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Scholem again cites Picos Jewish associates as those who provided Pico with his sources, in particular, the former Sicilian Jew Samuel ben Nissim Abul-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. Lefvre and the Christian Kabbalists then constructed the effable Pentagrammaton YHSVH, with the middle HS signifying Jesus Christs physical incarnation as bringing down the Holy Spirit and uniting Father and Son in the Messiah. I will need to research Scholems source on Picos 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 Picos time in Paris as between July 1485 and March 1486 (23). This fact explains that Lefvre may have been studying with Pico in Paris during part of the uncharted time between 1480 and 1490. As mentioned previously herein, Lefvre merely concluded his studies

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with Pico during his own trip to Italy. Scholem reiterates that Picos 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 Caballerias 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 Ficinos circle, and whose Magen David treats the relationship between Plato and Kabbalah. Of note regarding the scarcity of references to Picos work [and to Lefvres] on Christian Kabbalah is Scholems 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 Kabbalahs basic principles (39). In the final analysis, exchanges between religions that can be called comparative religion cross boundaries in all directions equally. Dans obervation [regarding Lefvres 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 Picos version of Christian and that of the eras other Christians, Dan concludes that the main difference can be presented in one word which expresses almost everything: Pythagoras (58). Dan quotes Reuchlins 1517 letter to Pope Leo X declaring his innocence of heresy: Marsilio (Ficino) has prepared Plato for Italy, Lefvre dtaples 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 Reuchlins 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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Reuchlins 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvres teachings and writings. My thesis makes those contributions to the research on Lefvre, on Renaissance humanists as Christian Kabbalists, tying both to the humanly universal prisca theologia. Dan points out that Reuchlins 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 Reuchlins 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. Dans 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 Lefvres De Magia naturali Book II.

114 IV. EQUALITY & UNITY OF THE BINARY

1. Primal Metaphors & Myth

Relative to the Medieval-Renaissance threshold which Lefvres De Magia naturali bridges, examples follow of a few avenues through which current scholars are engaging the pagan-Christian dialogue. Flints 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) Kieckhefers Forbidden Rites: A Necromancers 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, Lefvre 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:5657, 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 Ficinos 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 Lefvre 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). Christianitys pagan roots in Mesopotamia, as was elucidated by Dumzil, Jean Bottro 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 Lefvres 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. Bottro 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 Lefvres quotation from Ovids Metamorphoses when All was sea, and his intuitions about the Pythagorean plane or Ground of Silence (Evans Ch. 4 II:59-60, f. 203). Lefvre 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 Bottro 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 Mothers 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, myths 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 Idels Ascensions on High in Jewish Mysticism: Pillars, Lines, Ladders thus is another of the encyclopedic resources essential to future study of Lefvres 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. Culianus Eros and Magic, in which the magical techniques are emphasized as central to Giordano Brunos world view. (6) Idel points out that Scholems 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 mysticalmagical. 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 mans 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 Lefvres male-female Coincidence of Opposites: The Hebrew word for trumpets Hatzotzerot is interpreted as HatziTzurah 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 astrologys celestial bodies to the 10 sefirot, Idel cites Cordoveros 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvres attribution of the number 3 to techniques of the magi, Idel mentions Tzevis description of the Messiahs 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 3rd sefirah itself, the nest of the bird, the mystical place of the Messiah is itself the secret of divinity (49). Thus Lefvres 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). Lefvre 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 Idels 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 Elijahs 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvres 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, Lefvres De Magia naturali is an important treatise to compare with Idels 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 Dantes 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 Idels 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 Lefvres 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). Lefvres quoting of Vergils 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 Literatures 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 Lefvres 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 Idelss 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). Lefvre 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). Lefvre 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). The 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 Lefvres 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). Idels mystical-magical model is thus embodied in Book II as an elliptical continuum with a heavenly center and an earthly center, but an ellipsoid that

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perpetually weaves itself along the knots, nexus and chains, or Idels 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. 205207v; Ch. 7, ff. 207v-211v). Idels book studies the correspondences between the 10 sefirot, spheres or divine attributes, and the many metaphorical depictions of ascension he addresses. Using this resource, Lefvres planetary spheres, minds, and their angelic correspondences in Book II should also be thoroughly analyzed in terms of Kabbalahs 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), Lefvre 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. Lefvre 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 letter s or shin, mother or Spirit. Hughes gives a supporting

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interpretation of shin as a convergence of man and fire (21). This reinforces the clarity in Platos metaphorical injunction to leap like a living flame. In Chapters 14-16 Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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:8990, 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. Idels book provides the exact link as to where in the Kabbalist tradition of masters Lefvre should be placed, albeit

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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, Lefvre received this tributary of Jewish Kabbalah. To illustrate the importance of this crossfertilization between religions, consider Pico and Lefvres enthusiasm in correlating also the Judaic sefirot with the Christian sphaera, Imaginations 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 Lefvres 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 adopting a specific type of phenomenological approach, which assumes that a model that appears in Jewish

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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).

133 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 coconspirators of Eve: You are the devils 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) Lefvre, 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, didnt expunge Lefvre 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 devotees 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 Lefvre. What is overlooked of the mystics and their mystical techniques is their practical impact on nature and society. Lefvre 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 suns 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvre leads us to in De Magia naturali Book II. The sinful duality of good and evil that a fundamentalist view leads to, Lefvre unifies through love, Christs 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 Epsteins scholarly yet accessible book, Kabbalah: The Way of the Jewish Mystic, is an encyclopedic reference for study of Lefvres 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 Kabbalists 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 Lefvre 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 Kabbalists tree of spheres out of its mysterious wrappings and stripped of its religious overtones, my suggestion is only to broaden Literatures domain in public education to include the study of religion as the mythology of sacred texts (71). Epstein describes the Kabbalists journey of lover to Beloved in ways that resonate with Lefvres 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 mystics 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 Lefvre 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

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lightening. In Epsteins 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 Lefvres 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 Walkers Spiritual and Demonic Magic, shares my own opinion of the oft-cited Lynn Thorndike:

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Thorndikes 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 periods most eminent thinkers. Walkers 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. Walkers book itself would have been informed by his study of Lefvres De Magia naturali, as his most extensive coverage of Lefvre is inclusion in Chapter 5 as one who condemned magic. The chapter culminates: But then, Lefvre 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 Lefvres condemnation of Ficinos Hermetica, since he venerated Ficino as a father (169-70). My point that Lefvre made these public denouncements only in order to avoid persecution resolves these contradictions about Lefvres position on magic. More subtly though, this particular condemnation is against magicians who draw Spirit into Images such as statues. Lefvre 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 Pagels 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 Lefvres era. To summarize Ficinos 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 Ficinos spiritus as a physical phenomenon, distinguishing it from the truly spiritual in the Christian (modern) sense (4, 26). Walkers 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 Lefvres 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, Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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: Picos 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 Ficinos 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).

144 3. Poets, Philosophers, & Mythological Beings

In De Magia naturali, for this mystical mathematics and pagan mythological philosophy, Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Lefvres 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 Ground of 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 Lefvre counts. Pyramus and Thisbe are forbidden lover and Beloved who through an illusion kill themselves out of love (Mythology Guide). They are interpreted by Lefvre 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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Ovids Metamorphoses tells of the Deucalion flood (paralleling Noahs 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 Phathon is the Suns son, son of Phoebus Apollo (Helios or Prometheus) and Eos who Lefvre cites simply as Sun, and mother (Evans Ch. 4 II:59-60, f. 203). Phanon and Phathon (shining) are said to be the planets Saturn and Jupiter (Room 241-2).

Planet

Number (varies)

Element

Quality

Aplanes Saturn

2 3

8 7 6

earth water air

celestial ground intimate longing nexus of justice & harmony

Jupiter/Jove 4

(e.g., the celestial horse) Mars Sun Venus/Juno 5 5 4 5 4 3 fire fire air nexus of action nexus of action nexus of love

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Mercury Moon Earth 3 2 2 1 water earth sensory longing corporeal power corporeal ground

As Ficino denotes them in Platonic Theology, Zoroasters immovable movers that Aristotle had called minds, the Hebrews and subsequent philosophers called angels and messengers; just so Lefvre correlates the hierarchy of angels with planetary spheres, which he also designates as minds (Ficino 73; Evans Ch. 8 II:7577, Ch. 9 II:77-78, Ch. 10 II:80-81). Lefvres equation of intuition with Intellect reflects Ficinos 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 Lefvres 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

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planetary spheres in Book II, such as fire or water, along with that 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 Lefvres 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. Lefvres 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 Lefvres 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 Lefvre uses to decloak the myth of Narcissus in Chapter 8: If indeed the body which is the souls 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) Lefvre 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 malefemale 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. Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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 Ficinos premise that since mans 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 worlds spheres has to be led back to the few most important souls. (267-8) This multilayered hierarchy Lefvre 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 souls 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. 200201v). This process is reflected in the Positive theology, the active scenario, of natural magic. This is where Zoroasters injunction for Good thoughts, good words, good deeds leads Lefvre, who must invoke the Pythagorean sacrifice into Silence in order to absolve magic of its Positive theology, in order to receive Gods grace through the Negative theology of Intellect, intuition and faith. Ficino elaborates that Pythagoras called the One the universal Apollo a-polln, meaning cut off from the many (271).

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In a Negative theology then, Lefvre 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 Walkers book delineates why the prisca theologia, Gods 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 Churchs response as the Christian revelation is unique and exclusive, and there is no room for any other religion (82).

154 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 Lefvres De Magia naturali:

Lefvre dtaples, 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, Ls edition of Richard of St. Victors Egregii patris et clari theologi Ricardi, and Ls edition of Ficinos 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 coelits 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 Bud, De transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum; a study of a little known treatise of Guillaume Bud, followed by a translation into English, By Daniel F. Penham

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Nicolas of Cusa, Opera omnia 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 divise en quatre livres Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, Daemonologia; sive, De magia naturali, daemonica, licita, & illicita . . . Pavao Skali, 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, Lefvre 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). Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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;

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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 Lefvre provides in Book II follows (Evans Ch. 7 II:72, f. 209):

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160

II:72

II:72

Simplices numeri caelestes superiores, hoc pacto colliguntur: 2 3 4 5 Aplanes Saturnus Jupiter Mars

The Simple superior celestial numbers, collected into this treatise: 2 3 4 5 Aplanes Saturn Jupiter Mars

Compositi caelestes numeri superiores: 5 6 7 8 9 9 Aplanes Saturnus Aplanes Jupiter Aplanes Mars Saturnus Mars Aplanes Saturnus Jupiter Jupiter Mars

The united superior celestial numbers: 5 6 7 8 Aplanes Saturn Aplanes Jupiter Aplanes Mars Saturn Mars

9 Aplanes Saturn Jupiter 9 Jupiter Mars 10 Aplanes Saturn Mars 11 Aplanes Jupiter Mars 12 Saturn Jupiter Mars

10 Aplanes Saturnus Mars 11 Aplanes Jupiter Mars 12 Saturnus Jupiter Mars

Monas mundi duodenarium illuminans: 14 Aplanes Saturnus Jupiter Mars

The Monad of the world, illuminating the duodenary: 14 Aplanes Saturn Jupiter Mars

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162
In De Magia naturali Book II Chapter 1, Lefvre describes the subject of Pythagorean philosophy as: unitatem, unity, which is in the magis 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). Lefvre 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, Lefvre 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 lovenexus 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, Lefvre 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 Lefvre was fluent at Imagining the meaning of ancient mythological traditions. In his travels between France and Italy, before writing De Magia naturali, Lefvre would have traversed ground where Christian shrines were built on top of pagan temples. Cbele 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, Lefvre juxtaposes the celestial earth Ops and Rhea above with the Earth of humans, Cbele, below (Evans Ch. 1 II:52, f. 199). Since Cbele held a somewhat prominent place in the artistic expressions during the reign of Francis I, Lefvre 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 Cbele by the Tribolo, executed for Francis I., and placed, not against a wall, but in the middle of Queen Claudes chamber at Fontainebleau, [. . .] behind it an attribute [. . .] which was the symbol of generativeness (Cbele). This nonnumerical, personified instance of the binary is an example of how Lefvre saw the same Coincidence of Opposites as that in the number 2, here clothed in a metaphor of myth. Lefvre 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 Lefvres Introductorium astronomicum of 1517 CE are reproduced here. Copernicus, sharing Lefvres 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, Lefvre 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. Its the minds eye in which the ethereal orbs and orbits are represented without confusion (Lfevre). Then at the end, Lfevre 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, Lfevre dedicates Introductorium astronomicum to Germain de Ganay.

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Summing up then, Lefvre 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 Lefvre 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, Lefvre 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 staff 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?

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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 Ovids 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).

VI. WORKS CITED & WORKS CONSULTED

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