Renaissance Magic and Neoplatonic Philosophy : Ennead 4.3-5 in Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda’

ceren wtver BX. P.as\- S62 MARCELL to Ficino € il entommo Brian P. COPENHAVER Vi CEATPNC, 4 RENAISSANCE MAGIC AND NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY: « ENNEAD » 4.3.5 | IN FICINOS « DE VITA COELITUS COMPARANDA » Marsilio Ficino, author of the most important Renaissance treatise on magic, was one of the leading philosophers of his age, so we might expect that his approach to magic in De vita coelitus comparanda would be a philosophical one. But the refined and rational analysis. expected of philosophy in the Western tradition may seem wasted on the problem of magic if we take magic to be essentially primitive and irrational, In fact, the common understanding of the English word © magic’, even among educated people, is still so strongly colored by the evolutionist anthropology of J. G. Frazer and other scholars of the last century that the term only approximately translates the meagia that Ficino wrote about. The magic of the third book of De vita libri tres can only be understood in the context of Ficino's subtly reasoned philosophy; it is as far from being primitive or irrational as one can imagine. To elucidate the philosophical premises that led Ficino to his magical conclusions is my task in what follows as it has been in the two related essays that preceded this report. The first of these carlier papers argued that a short work of Proclus translated by Ficino under the title De sacrificio was a key ingredient in the theory of magic set forth in De vita but that neither the Hermetic dialogues that Ficino translated nor the Latin Asclepius contributed much of theoretical interest to thar work. In the Elements of Theology and other large, systematic works of Praclus, Ficino could find a philosophically coherent context in which to understand and evaluate the terms— +4215, sed, obvihnua,

RENAISSANCE MAGIC AND NEOPLATONIC PHILOSOPHY: « ENNEAD » 4.3-5 IN FICINO’S « DE VITA COELITUS COMPARANDA » Marsilio Ficino, author of the most important Renaissance treatise on magic, was one of the leading philosophers of his age, so we might expect that his approach to magic in De vita coelitus comparanda would be a philosophical one. But the refined and rational analysis expected of philosophy in the Western tradition may seem wasted on the problem of magic if we take magic to be essentially primitive and irrational. In fact, the common understanding of the English word ‘ magic’, even among educated people, is still so strongly colored by the evolutionist anthropology of J. G. Frazer and other scholars of the last century that the term only approximately translates the magia that Ficino wrote about. The magic of the third book of De vita libri tres can only be understood in the context of Ficino’s subtly reasoned philosophy; it is as far from being primitive or irrational as one can imagine. To elucidate the philosophical premises that led Ficino to his magical conclusions is my task in what follows as it has been in the two related essays that preceded this report. The first of these earlier papers argued that a short work of Proclus translated by Ficino under the title De sacrificio was a key ingredient in the theory of magic set forth in De vita but that neither the Hermetic dialogues that Ficino translated nor the Latin Asclepius contributed much of theoretical interest to that work. In the Elements of Theology and other large, systematic works of Proclus, Ficino could find a philosophically coherent context in which to understand and evaluate the terms — réZ1¢, oetp&, obvdnua,

« ENNEAD BRIAN P. COPENHAVER ovpBorov — that Proclus used to explain magical action in De sacrificio, but because the eclectic Hermetica (which in any event have little to say about magic) refer only vaguely and imprecisely to a miscellany of philosophies, they offered no depth or solidity or regularity to anyone searching for a theory of magic.' My second paper claimed that Ficino also found crucial philosophical support for his magic in two works of Thomas Aquinas, the Summa contra gentiles and De occultis operibus naturae. Like many medieval thinkers, Thomas taught that the heavenly bodies caused the eduction of substantial or specific forms in material objects and that these forms were the source of the non-elemental or ‘occult’ powers found in certain objects. More important, Thomas admitted that the figura carved on a talisman was like a substantial form and hence could bear astrological and occult properties like those associated with substantial forms. Ficino noticed what Thomas conceded to talismanic figurae and imbedded 353 comparanda® The topic of the first chapter of Ficino’s work is intermediation among terrestrial, celestial and supercelestial entities as the basis of astrological causation: By divine agency, the Soul of the World possesses at least as many seminal reasons of things (rationes rerum seminales) as there are ideas in the divine Mind and with these reasons [Soul] makes the same number of species in matter. Thus, each and every species corresponds through its own seminal reasons to an idea, and often through this reason it can easily receive something of value from on high since it was made from on high through this [reason]. ... And surely if to a given species of things or to an individual in [the species] you correctly apply the many things that have been scattered but still conform to the idea, you will soon attract an extraordinary gift from the idea into the matter thus fitly prepared — through the seminal reason of the soul, of course. this concession in his defense of magic? Having tried to show the importance of Aquinas and Proclus for a philosophical theory of magic — and correspondingly the small significance of Hermes Trismegistus — I will attempt here to summarize certain contributions of Plotinus’ three treatises on « Problems of the Soul » The magus can dispose earthly objects to receive celestial powers by manipulating material species, i.e., species in a taxonomical (Enneads 4.3-5) to Ficino’s De vita. intermediary between mind and body, are links between species Philosophical analysis will substantiate the familiar codicological and structural evidence, revealed first by Professor Kristeller, that points to Ennead 4.3.11 as a starting point for De vita coelitus sense, because such species are part of a hierarchy of forms that reaches through the heavens to the divine mind, Ficino says that rationes seminales or seminal reasons, associated with Soul as in matter and ideas in mind. He also writes that spiritus joins man’s 3 P. O. KRISTELLER, Supplementum Ficinianum, Florence 1937, pp. xii, bexxiv; ! B. P. CopenHaver, Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus and the Question of a Theory of Magic in the Renaissance, read at the F ibrary E. Garin, Le « elezioni » e il problema dell'astrologia, in E. CasreLLI, ed., Umanesimo e esoterismo, Padua 1960, p. 18; cf. D. P. WaLker, Spiritual and Demonic of that conference; Procı. Inst. 5, 28, 29, 32, 103, 140-145, J. Bez et al., astrologica e la sua teoria: Marsilio Ficino e i suoi critici contemporanei, Rome 1977, pp. 12-18, 29, 40, analyzes the influence of Plotinus in Ficino's as primarily rence on Hermes Trismegistus in March, 1982, and to be published with the Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs, V1, Michael Psellus, Epitre sur la Be: Opuscules et extraits sur Valchimie, la météorologie et la démonologie, B: 1928, pp. 139-151; A.J. Fesrucière, Hermétisme et mystique paienne, Paris 1967, Pr 34-40, 53, 55, 66-67; In., La Révélation d'Hermès Trismegiste, Paris 1950-54, ‚PP. 5, 7, 14, 44-47; IV, pp. 54-78. … ? B. P. CoPENHAVER, Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the « De vita» of Marsilio Ficino, « Renaissance Quarterly », XXXVII (1984), p . 523-554; AS, De occultis operibus naturae, 7-11, 14, 16; Summa contra Gentiles, III, 92, 99, 103-105; Summa theologiae, I, 45, 8, resp.; 65, 4, resp.; 76, 4, resp.; 91, 2, resp., ad 2™, 3"; 110, 1, ad 2°"; 2, resp.: 115, 3, ad 2%; IÎ-II, 96, 2 ad 2"; ommentarius in de generatione et corruptione, 1, 8; Commentarius in de anima, II, 14; Marsitit Ficini florentini insignis philosopbi platonici medici atque theologi clarissimi opera et quae haectenus extitere ..., Basel 1576, pp. 541, 558, 569, 571. Magic from Ficino to Campanella, London 1958, p. 3, n. 2. G. ZANIER, La medicina in terms of Enn. 2.3, which is anti-astrological in the sense that it limits (though it does not eliminate) the causal as opposed to the signifying power of the stars (2.3.1.1-2; 8.8-9; 13.1-2). Although Zanier (p. 29) recognizes the special relationship between De vita 3 and the fourth Ennead, he also says (p. 16) that «altre trattazioni mentale plotiniane del problema non ag i a quanto esposto niente di fonda», I will e here not only that Bnn, 4.4.3-4 is fundamental to the argument of De vita 3 but also that as a philosophical account of magic and astrology it is a prominent expression of the thinking of Plotinus, In fact, the relationship of 2.3 to 4.3-4 on such matters as sympathy (2.3.7.14-23) and Aöyos (2.3.16-17) should probably be understood as derivative; note that Plotinus wrote 43-4 in his middle period, while 2.3. is a late treatise, third from last in Porphyry’s chronological list (PorpH. Vita 5.20-25, 6.20).

« ENNEAD » 4.3-5 IN FICINO'S «DE VITA» 3 soul to his limbs as the quintessence joins objects in the cosmos to its soul. All of this — even the mention of spiritus, which in discussing 4.3.8 Ficino attributes to « Pythagoreans » criticized by Sextus Empiricus in Adversus Mathematicos — can be accounted for from the first eleven chapters of Ennead 4.3 or Ficino’s commentaries on them. Plotinus explains in this introduction to « Problems of the Soul » how souls by their succession are linked to the several Intellectual-Principles (xx9” Exaotov voüv), for they are the expressions, the Logos, of the Intellectual-Principles … That Soul which abides in the Supreme is the one expression or Logos of the Intellectual-Principle, and from it spring other Reason-Principles (A6yor), partial but immaterial … [Even the] ultimate depth, neighboring with soul, may not go void of 355 on specific forms and talismanic figures related to what he took from Aquinas. Higher forms, among which are figurae in the heavens, generate lower forms in matter; Soul makes both higher and lower forms through seminal reasons, and the lower forms she also makes through figurae: Out of its own reasons the [World-Soul].... constructed figutes (figurae) in the heavens beyond the stars... and impressed properties on all of them. In the stars — in their figures, sub-figures and properties — are contained all the species of lower things and their properties … And from these highly ordered [heavenly] forms depend the forms of lower things, for these latter have been ordered from on high... Thus, when the Soul produces specific forms and powers of lower things, she makes them through her own reasons, with the aid of the stars and celestial forms.’ whatsoever degree of the Reason-Principle (Aéyoc) it can absorb ... Living in reason (Aöyos), [Soul] ... communicates reason (Aéy0¢) to the body — an image (cl3wdov) of the reason within itself... and it bestows … upon that material the appropriate shapes (popgat) of which it contains the Reason-Forms (Aéyot)... Each particular thing is the image within matter of a Reason-Principle (&v tay A6yoc) which itself images a pre-material Reason-Principle: thus every particular entity is linked to that Divine Being in whose likeness it is made (7 9eò Belien, xa? Bv évivero).s + Fıcını Opera cit., pp. 531-532: « anima mundi totidem saltem rationes rerum seminales divinitus habet quot ideae sunt in mente divina, quibus ipsa rationibus otider icat species in materia … Ac si certe cuidam rerum speciei vel individuo eius rite adhibeas multa quae sparsa sunt sed etiam ideae conformia, mox in materiam hanc ita opportune paratam $ are munus ab idea trahes — per rationem irm seminalem »; Garin, Le « elezioni » cit., pp. 19-23. Enn. 4.3.1-11; Fıcmı Opera cit p. 1736; Sext. Emp. Adv: Math. 9.127.130; cf. A, H. Armstrone, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus, Cambridge 1940, pp. 54-55. $ Prot. Enn. 4.3.5.8-10, 17-18; 9.27-28; 10.38-41; 11.9-12; English translations of Plotinus are from S. McKenna trans., Plotinus: The Rosato th ed. rev. by B. S. Pace, London 1969, pp. 264, 268, 270, but I have indicated significant or SE mob by supplying the and a quasi-substantial figura in St. Thomas, the very active seminal reasons that he discovered in Plotinus were less potent in Thomas’s metaphysics. But they were quite important to the argument of De vita 3, whose author ends his work (3.26) by repeating what he had said about formae and rationes in 3.1. The World-Soul generates the forms of natural things through seminal reasons, which remain in touch with the ideas; hence, Soul touches the This much Ficino could read in the first of Plotinus’ three essays De dubiis animae, but the remainder of the principal argument in De vita 3.1 led him away from Ennead 4.3 and toward material T. Although Ficino found an astrologically operative substantial form in parentheses; all other translamatter that she had originally formed through rationes. When the magus manipulates matter specified by forms asociated with rationes of a given kind, he gains access through such rationes to higher powers of the same kind.’ De vita 3 begins and ends, then, with an analysis of rationes or Xéyot taken from Ennead 4.3. Ficino also tells us in De vita 3.26 that the philosopher who 7 Ficini Opera cit., pp. 531-532: «Haec... rationibus suis aedificavit ultra stellas in coelo figuras... impressitque his omnibus proprietates. In stellis autem — figuris, partibus, proprietatibus — omnes rerum inferiorum species continentur et proprietates earum … A quibus formis ordinatissimis dependent inferiorum formae, illinc videlicet ordinatae ... Quando igitur anima cip palla inferiorum formas viresque, eas per rationes efficittara sub ste formarumque coelestium adminiculo »; ibid., pp. 1737, 1746; . Enn. 44.35. 8 Ficint Opera cit, pe. 571-572; F. CopLEston, A History of Philosophy, II, Medieval Philosophy, New York 1962, I, pp. 91-92, 305-307; II, pp. 16, 47, 170-178, 306; B. NArpr, La dottrina d'Alberto Magno sull'inchoatio formae, in Studi di filosofia medievale, Rome 1960, pp. 75-85, 96-98: supra, n. 2.

understands these intricate abstractions is «a person skilled in natural science and astronomy, whom we are rightly accustomed to call a magus »” Ficino’s philosophus was a magus not merely because he required additional, extra-philosophical information about astrology or natural history in order to follow the iatromathematical recipes of De vita but also because the philosophical basis of De vita was itself magical and astrological. In particular, Ficino treated celestial figure, form and seminal reason as an amalgam of metaphysical and astrological concepts, not as a mixture of unrelated notions. _ Does this particular constellation of ideas — oyfua for figura, eldos for forma, Xbyag aoneppatints for ratio seminalis — occur in chapter, he sensed a real division in the text: the problem in the ten chapters preceding is the World-Soul’s relation to its body and to our souls, but chapter 11 introduces a new. topic, the soul’s descent, with the special case of the animation of cult-statues, which naturally reminded Ficino of the god-making passages of the Asclepius.” Beginning this chapter, Plotinus wrote that « those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All», and he had already set forth the content of this insight in the ten previous chapters which describe Soul and souls from a metaphysical and cosmological point of view. The metaphysics and cosmology of these ten chapters provided half the material — specifically, the notion of Aéyo. or rationes as Soul’s dynamic links between ideas in Mind and species in matter — for Ficino’s presentation of psychic intermediation and astrological causation in De vita 3.1 and 3.26. For the other half of his argument, which injected figurae or oxhuara into this chain of intermediation, Ficino went to the more strictly psychological chapters of the last third of Ennead 4.4. Memory is the faculty of Soul at question in these chapters.” Plotinus asked if the evident efficacy of astrological magic and of prayer addressed to the divine celestials requires that the heavenly gods remember petitions and respond to them intentionally. His negative conclusion led him to propose another explanation for the effects of magic and prayer, and this brought him back to the system or ouvrat of psychic intermediation outlined at the beginning of the previous treatise. One result of the ensoulment of the cosmos is that all its members, participants in a common life, respond to one another without volition and across gaps of distance and time. Commenting on 4.4.32, Ficino put it this way: 356 Plotinus’ treatises on the Soul? Yes, but not in Ennead 4.3. Instead, we find it in the last third of Ennead 4.4, where the leading motif is Plotinus’ elaborate punning on the words cyfpa, oxéow and their cognates; words of this family occur only three times in Ennead 4.3, but in 4.4 Plotinus uses fifty-two of them. This lexical evidence, with the philosophical argument to follow, supports Professor Walker’s claim that the rich magical theory of the latter chapters of 4.4 was important to the author of De vita. Another corroboration is the independent finding of Plotinus scholarship that the argument of the early chapters of 4.3 leads naturally to the final chapters of 4.4.” Both these texts, the first eleven chapters of Ennead 4.3 and the last fifteen of 4.4, are part of a comprehensive collection of contested questions on the Soul which Porphyry divided into the third, fourth and fifth treatises of the fourth Ennead. The principal aporiai treated in the collection as a whole are Soul’s faculties and Soul’s relation to other metaphysical and physical entities.” When Ficino interrupted his commentary on Ennead 4.3 at the eleventh 357 9 Fıcını Opera cit, p. 570: «Idem quoque ou naturalium rerum astrorumque peritus, quem proprie magum 10 Prior, Enn. 4.4.26, 30-4 Cant Le «lon cp.25; J. H. SLEEMAN and G. Porrer, Lexicon Plotinianum, Leiden 1980, coll. 982-986 ; W. HELLEMANNELGERSMA, Soul-Sisters: A Commentary on Enneads IV 3 (27), 18 of Plotinus, Aen 1980, p. 41; supra, n. 3. ger: uE, a trans., PLOTIN, Ennéades IV, Paris 1927, pp. 13-14; A. H. ed, The GiGabrie History of Later Greek and Eart Medieval À Philoopb, Cane pP. 12 BREHIER, Enndades IV cit, pp. 14-22 divides the collection at 4.3.1-8, which treat relationships among Soul and souls; 43.9-11, which deal with the World-Soul pig nr and 4312-18. whose topic is the relation between the human soul body; cf. HELLEMANN-ELGERSMA, Commentary cit., pp. 38-41. But as Brehier (p 20) owes, 4.3.12 begins with the soul’s descent, which is surely anticipated in statue-magic of 4.3.11; cf. Asclep. 23-24, 37-38. 13 BREHIER, Eanäader IV cit, pp. 46-57; cf. HELLEMANN-ELGERSMA, Commentary cit., pp. 40-41.

The heavens act on all these lower things not out of any intention to choose a particular thing or to act in a particular way, nor do they to the statues of the Asclepius gave doxographic or genealogical support to his defense of magic, Ficino found almost nothing of theoretical interest in the Hermetica because the treatises known to him have little of a theoretical nature to say about magic.” Given the obvious connection between the third book of De vita and the eleventh chapter of Ennead 4.3, I believe that if a philosophically interesting treatment of the statues — based either on Plotinus or on the Hermetica — had seemed possible to Ficino, he 358 act only through corporeal qualities, ie, by heating or rarefying or the reverse. They act by certain natural powers of the soul that governs growth … Therefore, to the extent that all corporeal objects are limbs of the. cosmic animal, they are readily affected sometimes by the whole, sometimes by one another, since even things that seem to be located far from another are near by wondrous communion in a single nature." would have provided it. Instead, he initiated and sustained the Prayer and magic are artificial imitations of this greater natural wonder, the sympathy given in the very structure of the cosmos. Thus, in Plotinus’ Treatises on the Soul Ficino found three important and distinct motivations for developing a theory of magic: one was the metaphysics and cosmology from the beginning of Ennead 4.3 that set forth the dynamics of Soul contemplating Mind yet operating on matter through Aéyot arspuarıxoi connected with ideas in Mind; another was the psychological material from Ennead 4.4 that explained magical sympathy by way of a complex metaphor based on various meanings of cyfu or « figure » and its cognates; a third was the allusion to the magic of statues in 4.3.11. This mention of the statues had no important role in Plotinus’ reasoning. In his most extensive statement on magic in 4.4.30 and following, he said nothing about them.” While Ficino clearly saw a connection between the statues in Ennead 4.3 and those in the Asclepius, he made little use of them in De vita. Elsewhere, I have tried to show that while his ambiguous and unflattering references ca LE rar io qu 359 te cit., res «Coelum in omnia haec inferiorade a eligente scilicet calefaciendo, pp y ter agere, tantum corporels qualita a vel contra, Sed riaiuralibue uibusdam vegetalis animae viribus ... Quatenus ergo corporea sunt animalis mundani membra, facile tum a toto tum invicem patiuntur, quippe cum etiam quae loco inter se distare peu sit propinqua ob mirabilem naturae unius communionem »; Prot. Enr. argument of De vita 3 from philosophically richer material in Plotinus and from other thinkers — Aquinas and Proclus, for example — whom he could make compatible with his reading of Plotinus. The first eleven chapters of Ennead 4.3 treat Soul's relation to body and to other souls. Soul brings X6yos or a principle of intellectuality to all orders of being in the cosmos, even to the last, the forms in dead matter. Commenting on chapter 10, Ficino explained that « because the whole fabric of the cosmos and its form derives from [universal Nature], nothing at all can resist it, especially since everything from then on depends from [Nature] in a series that follows from it ».” Immaterial Soul, undivided by limitations of space, is omnipresent to matter though matter is fit to receive it only in a way that distinguishes one ensouled body from another. Still, it is not Soul, but matter variously apt for Soul, that is divided by the distinction between one ensouled being and another, and the ensoulment entails no intention in Soul, which 16 Ficint Opera cit., pp. 548, 561, 571-572; supra, n. 1. 1? Frcini Opera cit, p. 1737: «Cum enim ex ea pendeat tota mundi moles eiusque forma, nihil usquam ei posse res istere, praesertim quia inde omnia subsequenti serie ita dependent …»; PLor. Enr. 4.3.10.1-11; re Cambridge History cit., pp. DI254; Ae à N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation and the One, Toronto 1967, pp. 42-43; Ist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality, Cambridge 1967, of the imagination, and at 44.10.12 it is a «likeness» in Soul. On statues in pp. 84-86, 94. On eeeStoic origins of A6yoc in Plotinus, see: ARMSTRONG, Architecture cit, pp. 63, 100, 107; Rist, Road cit, pp. 74, 255; Deck, Nature cit., . 56, 61; on the history of Aöyos, oméeur, Hs 4 ‘Agro onepuarizol in Middle stonism, Stoicism and other pre-Plotinian philosophies, ho W.K. C. GUTHRIE, A History of Greek Philosophy, ee 1962-1981,I, pp. 6, 19-20, 278, 340, les fragments des traités « Ilepì dyadudre wet « De 420-424; II, pp. 299-300; p. 210; V, pp. 117-118; VI, re 214, 219, 224, 236, 281; J. Ditton, The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism, 80 BC. to À. D. 220, 15 Plotinus uses SyæAux, an important word in the Platonic tradition, at 4.3.10.28 and 11.2, but nowhere else in 4.3-5. At 43.303 elxciv means an ‘ image’ Neoplatonism, see: J. Bmez, Vie de ‚Porphyre, le philosophe néo-platonicien avec regressu animae », Ghent 1913, 553143197, 923%; top itether’ sort OE date of Hermesin Plotiaus sce Fim 3.6.19.25-30 and Fıcmı Opera cit., p. 1720. London 1977, pp. 46, 80, 95, 128, 136-137, 159, 252, 285, 390; D. E. Hanm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology, Columbus, Ohio 1977, pp. 60-62, 75-16.

is present to the whole material cosmos as water is present to a net stretched and given shape in the sea. Body, including the body of the cosmos, is an automatic consequence of Soul’s procession from this inward and rational motion, through the seminal reasons of things, grows the rational form of the world ...” 360 from Mind. Nature, that aspect of Soul that does not remain entirely with Mind, brings the physical universe into being by carrying form and life even to the dim margins of the All illuminated by Mind.” This is why statue-magic showed « insight into the nature of the All». « Soul is everywhere tractable », wrote Plotinus, but «its presence will be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is elaborated ». This is what Ficino meant by a proprium animae susceptaculum, a concept he used both in the commentary on Ennead 4.3.8 and in De vita 3.” _ Plotinus called Soul a A6yos of Mind, meaning that it is a diverse and hence imperfect expression of the intellectuality more simply present in Mind. He also said that even matter receives what Aöyos it can, thus making Soul the medium for a transmission of intellectual-principles or Aéyot that join the more perfect forms of Mind, the ideas, to the less perfect forms of the physical cosmos, material objects in their various shapes, Soul, a A6yos of Mind, gives body its Xéyos. The forms that bodies take are corporeal expressions of Aöyoı descended from ideas in Mind through Soul and souls to matter. Ficino’s explication of this psychic cosmology in his commentary on 4.3.10 has more imagery in it than light: The world always abounds naturally in growth from the procreative (seminarius) power of its own Soul, as any living being does from its seed (semen) ... Therefore, Soul (especially the World-Soul) as a principle of life acts always and chiefly in itself inasmuch as its intelforms its own reason (ratio) from just this source … But it is in the nature of reason (ratio) to think discursively with “itself, and it swells everywhere and exults with the seeds of all things … Indeed; 361 But Ficino’s presentation of the same material in the first chapter of De vita 3 (supra, p. 353) was much more schematic, a clear outline of correspondences among ideas, souls, seminal reasons, and material species accessible to the magus. In the Plotinus Commentary, Ficino insisted that while the presence of the World-Soul to a fit material receptacle might cause the life of an ensouled being, it was not to be identified with the life of that being, its individual Soul. Christian orthodoxy compelled him to sacrifice some of Plotinus’ subtlety on this other major topic of Ennead 4.3, the relation of souls to Soul, and this caution influenced his reaction to the assertion of Plotinus in 4.3.8 that « sympathy ... between soul and soul is due to the mere fact that all spring from that self-same soul ». Ficino responded that « our souls sympathize so much with each other and also with the World-Soul that they are often affected together by a like excitement, and an impulse of some sort flows quickly from one to the other, … [but] this by no means requires », he added, « that our souls are begotten by the World-Soul ».” Ficino was careful about the causes of cosmic sympathy, but of the fact of sympathy he made good use in his treatment of magic. Plotinus had much to say about sympathy in the last third of the second part of « Problems of the Soul», a serious and sustained philosophical analysis of magic and prayer from a perspective 2 Front Opera cit. p, 1737: «Item mundum semper naturaliterque pullulare ex seminaria suse animae potestate, sicut vivens quodlibet ex semine suo … Anima ergo vivendi io mundana ts praecipue agit semper atque potissimumin seipsa prout intelligentia eius hinc quidem suam rationem format... Atqui et ratio naturaliter secum ipsa discurrit, et omnia turget gestitque seminibus rerum omnium … pa eno quidem dimo, setionali zie Der rationes rerum seminales motu. nascitur iRi forma rationalli]s mundi ... eg coli) Cambridge History cit., pp. 248, 255; Deck, Nature cit., p. 58; HELLEMANN-ELGERSMA, To cit, pp. 32, 355, Pror. Enn. 4.3.8.38-60; 9.12-51; 10.14-17; Fıcmı Opera cit., pp. 1734-1737; TRONG, Cambridge History cit., pp. 254-255; HELLEMANN-ELGERSMA, Commencit, p. 34. 1 Pror. Enr. 4.3.11.1-6; McKenna, Plotinus cit., p. 270; Ficini Cree cit, 736, cf, cf. 549, 556; ARMSTRONG, Architecture cit. pp. 55-57, compares the idea Sprint hot one sical receptacles » in 4.3.11 to Corpus Hermeticum 16.6, which icino translated. 416, 425; supra, n À Hicou Opera dit, 1734; «… ad hoc ipsum aut animae nostrae tum feng wea Die quod consimili saepe afficiantur instinctu, di gina olivia facile sb alli Bokt in Wan non et winde rr ae rap alee a mer itas »; idid., pp. 1735-1736; ne cit, D. MA, Commentary cit,

primarily psychological but secondarily metaphysical and physical. Since Plotinus wished to absolve the heavenly gods of intentional or moral complicityin the base affairs of earthy beings, and since he admitted relations of causation and signification between the from one another are closely conjoined by the Magus, …and the cosmos commits no sin. 362 celestial and the terrestrial, he claimed that, as far as the gods are concerned, such effects of magic and prayer occur spontaneously, without volition.” To clarify this point, Plotinus offered a comn between medical and magical actions; the metaphor seems to have made a deep impression of Ficino the physician, who remembered it several times. Plotinus proposed in 4.4.42 the analogy of many powers... in one living organism … which, independently of plan or. . method, act without any…will: one member «is helped or hurt by ‘anotherin the mere play of natural forces; and the art of doctor or magic healer will compel some one centre to purvey something of its own power to another centre. Just so the All: it purveys spontaneously, but it purveys also under spell; a petition brings to some one part the power laid up for each: the All gives to its members by a natural act, and... the giver does not know of the gift … A’ mati" may: therefore help himself to what lies: open to all. = The techniques of magic available to men are simply imitations of what Plotinus in 4.4.40 called « the true magic, ... the Friendship and the Strife... within the All. Hereis the primal mage and dorearer — discovered by men who thenceforth turn those same … magic atts upon one another ». Although Plotinus did not use the medical analogy in this chapter, Ficino began his commentary on it by pointing out that any organ of an animal has the power to attract its proper share of nourishment, as the heart [attracts] spices, the liver sweets [and so on] … The condition of the cosmic animal is the same; throughout are scattered things that can strongly attract to themselves one thing or another ... In this [cosmic] animal different powers naturally disjoined 2 Pror. Enn. 4431.8-15, 24-29, 48-50; 32.1-32; 34.33-38; 35.4-8, 22-23; 36.25-27; 37.17-20; Risr, Road cit., pp. 203-206, mentions the Stoic origins of the ‘of sympathy, as does ARMSTRONG, Architecture cit., pp. 77, 98. B Pror. Enn. 4.4.42 thes MCKENNA, Plotinus cit, p. 324; Fıcını Opera dh pp. 532-533, 570, 1748; M. Ficino, Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon, ed., oon Nie, Paris 1956, p. 220; MS Vallicellianus F 20,f. 1380; Rist, Road 363 Ficino then explained that there are four such powers dispersed through the universe and available to the physician: « occult qualities of species, figures, harmonies and prayers ».* Only the first two, species (el8oc) and figura (oyfux), are of immediate interest. Often in Ennead 4.4, only a few times in 4.3, Plotinus used the word oyñux in three ways:* broadly, his oyju« refers to the form, shape or figure of an object or set of objects, and in this general sense the word had a considerable philosophical history long before Plotinus; * more specifically, it refers to the figures formed by the heavenly bodies, such as the stable figures in the zodiac or the mobile planetary aspects, and this is the commonest use of the term in Ennead 4.4;” in another specific application Plotinus used oyfux for the gesture or attitude of a dancer in a performance or of a magician in a ceremony.” The verb oynuatitew « to configure », and the derivative nouns for « configuration », oynudrow and oynuarıouss appear in similar connections in 4.4.” Plotinus also treated oyéoic, which really means « condition », « state» or « habit », as if it were synonymous with oyîjga, and he gave it an astrological reference.” The purpose of his elaborate punning on the philosophical, astrological, theatrical and magical 4 Ficini Opera cit., pp. 1747-1748; « Quodlibet animalis membrum vim habet ad portionem nutrimenti propriam ae [ult cor ad aromata, iecur ad dulcia,… eadem est ani is mundani conditio in quo passim dispersa sunt quae rem hanc aut illam ad se rapere possint…Sunt et differentes in hoc animali vires pee se a natura disiunctae quae enter a mago coniunctae ..., non peccante mundo. Nominat piesen quatuor quibus mirabilis insit virtus, scilicet qualitates specierum occultas concentusque et vota »; Prot. Enn. 4.4.40.1-9; McKenNA, Plotinus cit., p.2 Rist, Road cit., p. 206. 3 This any of terminology is based on the Lexicon Plotinianum of SLEEMAN and PoLLET, supra, n. 10; for occurrences in Enum. 4.3, see 2.24, 12.24 and 20.29. 3 Prior. Enn. 4.3.2.24; 20.29; 4.4.5.17, 18; 23,18; 29.23; Arist. EN 1160°2; De an 414°20; Part. An. 640°34; PL. Rep. 365e, 373b; Legg. 685c; Plt. 291d. 2 Prot. Enn. 4.3.12.24; 4.4.33.37-38; 34.13-14, 20, 27; 35,15, 19, 46, 49-51, 58, 60, 65. 2 44.33.12; 34.29; 40.14, 21-22; PL. Legg. 655a, 669d. © Prot. Enn. 4.4.33.16, 20, 33, 34-35; 34.7, 15, 18, 19, 21, 24, 27; 35.12, 15, 44, 47, 55; 40.15 0 442632; 29.23; 31.13; 34.4, 29, 32; 34.10, 22; 35.20.

« ENNEAD senses of these words was to prove that the effects of cosmic sympathy, especially the magical effects, were automatic, unintentional and hence not attributable to any willed act of the celestial figures cause them by disposing matter ».* Although this causation is unintentional on the part of the cosmos, it is not irrational, for Xóyog guides all the celestial configurations. In fact, Plotinus tells us that the oxfuars are brought into being by Aöyor, and are themselves Aöyor. He adds that in addition to the powers deriving from 364 The beautiful analogy in which Plotinus introduced these words occupies chapters 33, 34 and 35 of Ennead 4.4. He compared the heavenly oyfuara there are other marvellous effects, also shaped by cosmos to a dancer; modifications in the structure of the cosmos Aéyot and associated with some non-elemental quality in earthly objects, like stones and plants. This is another of Ficino’s four sources of power, the one he called « occult qualities of species ». He revealed the origin of occult qualities in a key passage of his commentary on chapter 35 of Ennead 4.4: to changes in the arrangement of a dancer’s body; and configurations of stars to particular gestures of the dancer, The stars that make up a given celestial figure are no more the causes of the events they signify than the dancer’s gesturing limb is the cause of what the dancer communicates through his whole body. The true causes of events signified and meanings communicated are the dancer and the cosmos, but just as the dancer concentrates on the whole performance rather than on any momentary gesture, All powers of natural things exist, first, in the seminal reasons of Nature in general. From there, they are soon carried over into the spheres of the world and their figures, the fixed and the revolving, and thence into the species of natural objects, in which wondrous, supra-elemental powers [derived] from them lay hidden, and also from the same figures of the heavens powers [descend] wondrously so the cosmos has no intention of forming the physical figures constituted by the stars, much less the terrestrial events caused by those figures. As Ficino wrote in his commentary, into lower figures.” The whole cosmos is a single living being dancing to a pattern of third through these cycles he somehow sees to the things that follow from them or are at least signified by them! These cycling cosmic figures are one of the magician’s four sources of power because, as Plotinus wrote, « the magician … draws on … patterns (ox)uara) of power, and by ranging himself also into the pattern is able ... to possess himself of these forces ». Ficino located these powers in the spheres, the parts of the spheres and the Stars — specifically in the fixed and mobile figures made up of stars. « What happens below the Moon », he explained, « follows especially from these powers of natures and of figures … The celestial figures indeed signify lower events, while natures together with 31 Fıcını Opera cit., p. 1746: «Totus mundus est animal unum ratione musica saltans … Ipse qui saltator intentione spectat primo insitam sibi musicam, deinde per hanc mundanorum revolutiones, tertio per eas prospicit quodammodo quae inde sequuntur vel saltem significantur»; Prot. Enn. 4.4.33-35; ARMSTRONG, Architecture cit., p. 99. es music … First the dancer looks intentionally to the music within him, next through this music to the cycles of the limbs of the cosmos, and 365 The significance of this passage and of its larger context in the Plotinus Commentary emerges when we consider the several senses in which Ficino, much as Plotinus in his use of oyïga, employed the word figura. As clues to the magic of De vita 3, the most important of Ficino’s figurae are the natural celestial figure seen in a group of stars and the artificial talismanic figure carved on an amulet. The lower artificial figure can draw power from the natural figure above because both figures belong to the hierarchy of forms stretching from Mind through Soul and its A6yoı to body. At the end of his chapter (3.16) « On the might of the heavens and the powers of 32 Prot. Enn. 4.4.34.33-38; 40.14-19; McKenna, Plotinus cit, p. 323; Fıcını Opera cit., p. 1746. . 3 FICINI Opera. cit., p. 1746: « Virtutes rerum naturalium omnes primo sunt in seminalibus rationibus naturae communis. Hinc mox traducuntur in mundi sphaeras earumque fee tam volubiles quam firmas, hinc in rerum naturalium species, in quibus inde latent vires super elementa mirabiles, atque ex ipsis coeli figuris in a inferiores vires quoque mirifice»; PLor. Enn. 4.4.34.9-11; 35.48, 12-22,

the rays whence images are thought to get their power», Ficino concluded that substantial form, the form that makes a thing what it is, a member of its species. He cites St. Thomas on this point, which he echoes by claiming in a metaphysical pun that change in the species of an object implies change in its forma.” Moreover, he knew the passage an image (imago) will be more effective if the elementary power in its matter is well adapted to the specific power naturally implanted in the same matter and if this also adapts to the other specific power to be received through a figure from the action of the heavens. A material imago, say the likeness of a scorpion carved in a gem, opens three sources of power: the manifest power of its elemental qualities; the occult power of its specific form; and another occult and specific power deriving from the likeness of the artificial figure of the scorpion to the natural figure of the constellation Scorpio. « One figure needs the other », warned Ficino. He insisted that a material imago cannot be fully active unless all three of these powers are in conformity and reinforce one another? From Plotinus and Aquinas he learned how they could be in conformity. In De vita 3.17, he set forth the linkages that bind figures in terrestrial objects to ideas in supercelestial Mind: Figures … [made up] of natural parts possess a special inseparable from species inasmuch as [figures] along with nl their dispositions from action of the heavens. Actually [figures] have @ very strong connection with ideas in Mind ... And since ... [figures] are a kind of species assigned to their own ideas there above, they undoubtedly get their own powers from there. This is why... the species of natural objects... are bound to particular figures® What exactly is the chain of causation that joins figures to ideas? Ficino clearly thought of figura as a marginal sort of specific or _ 4 Ficini Opera cit, p. 553: «De potestate coeli, de viribus radiorum unde m sortiri putentur imagines»; ibid, p. 554: « Praeterea imaginem Breciorem Dre Si virtus in materia eius elementaris conveniat cum speciali eiusdem virtute 367 of Ennead 4.4.35 in which Plotinus associated A6yac with the occult properties carried by eldos (which can mean both « substantial form » and « species »), and in commenting on it he explained how rationes in Nature (an aspect of Soul) transmit power to the celestial spheres and the figures constituted by them. In turn, the heavens and their figures give power both to natural species and to figures constituted of lower objects.” Because the whole movement takes place through entities which in greater or lesser degree are rationes, the common dynamic term in the process is ratio or X6yog. Plotinus gave the name »éyot to the celestial oyhuare. and, because Xóyot have the function of informing matter, his A6yos is also an eldog.* Thus, if oxïige, Adyoo and eloc (figura, ratio and species or forma) can be the same entities, metaphysics reinforces the visible, physical similarity between terrestrial and celestial figures. In the Enneads, then, Ficino had evidence of a sufficiently close kinship between two of the three sources of power — specific form, celestial resemblance and material qualities — whose conformity he required in an imago. All Plotinus lacked to complete the structure was the Peripatetic concept of hylemorphic union between matter and form, for true hylemorphic composition would endow even the matter of the imago with the conforming properties radiating from natural to artificial figure. The X6yog that was the el3os of the gem could be in the same order with the 16yos that was the cyfjux made up of stars. But a material object in Plotinus is not like a composite substance in Aristotle; its matter remains naturaliter insita atque haec insuper cum virtute altera speciali per figuram coelitus en »; ibid, p. 555: « Exigit enim figura illa »; ibid. pp. 531-532 348, 552, = cf. Por. Enn. 3.3.4.37-41; Deck, Nature cit., pp. 61-62. > Ficint Opera cit., p. 555: « Figurae … partium naturalium i rietatem cum specie ie arabilem peculiaremque possident, utpote quae costs ls cum speciebus « ta fuerunt. Imo et cum idaeis maximam haben in mente mundi regina en Atque quum ipsae … species quaedam sint idacis ibi Propriis desiu en = inde proprias sortiuntur. Ideoque ... species naturalium certis dan tringun », % Ibid., pp. 555, 558; THOMAS Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, III, 105; supra, n. 2, 37 Pror. Enn. 4.4.35.67-69. % Deck, Nature cit, pp. 59-62; Rist, Road cit., p . 85-86, 107-110; Arm- STRONG, Architecture cit, p. 54, 107; In., Cambridge History cit., p. 252; supra,

« ENNEAD passive and finally dead to the form, which is sometimes said to be on it rather than in it. So Ficino had to complete his requirements for an effective imago from his own essentially scholastic doctrine of substantial form, influenced chiefly by St. Thomas.” Ficino appealed to Aquinas as guarantor of his orthodoxy in the final chapter of De vita coelitus comparanda, where he also The pure passivity of matter in Plotinus and the stark immateriality of his A6yog may have encouraged Ficino to make use of this Neoplatonist approach to the problem of matter and form in conjunction with the more familiar Thomist hylemorphism." It was Ficino’s eclectic genius that put philosophical doctrines so distant from one another equally at the service of an original theory of magic. 368 recapitulated the Plotinian teaching on Adyo. or rationes that he 369 had introduced in the first chapter of his treatise: Mercurius says that the priests got a harmonious power from the nature of the world... Following him, Plotinus thinks that the All can be favorably arranged when the World-Soul joins it together insofar as it breeds and drives the forms of natural objects through certain seminal reasons implanted in it by divine agency ... Through reasons of this sort, the World-Soul can easily apply itself to the material things it originally formed through these same reasons, when the Magus or the priest applies the forms of things … which properly incline towards one reason or another … Sometimes it can alto happen that higher gifts descend if reasons are applied to forms in this way insofar as reasons in the World-Soul are joined to intellectual forms of the same Soul and through them to the ideas of the divine Mind.” Although his convictions on the strict formlessness of prime matter made Thomas reject the doctrine of seminal reasons as it was commonly understood in the Middle Ages, i.e., that seminal reasons were forms existing virtually in the potency of matter, Ficino could perhaps have taken Aquinas’s refetences to rationes seminales as compatible with what Plotinus taught about xéyot orepuarıxol. i la, Nature cit, pp. 74-77; ARMSTRONG, Cambridge History cit, p. 256; n 0 Ficini Opera cit., pp. 571-572: « Mercurius sacerdotes ait virtutem a mundi natura convenientem eamque miscuisse. Sequutus hunc putat totum in anima mondi conciliante facile confei posse quatenus illa naturalium rerum forma: per seminales quasdam rationes sibi divinitus insitas generat atque movet … j'ationes eiusmodi animam mundi facile se applicare materiis quas formaei initio se ge pe condo aaa Ria. adhibuerit formas rerum … proprie spectant ieri vero posse vandogque ut presti gen ee ne sublimiora ‘San den urnes rationes in anima mundi coniunctae sunt in s eiusdem animae formis atque per illas divinae mentis idaeis», Prot. Enn. 4.3.11.8-12. 41 THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa theologiae, I, 4, 1, resp.; 115, 1, ad 2°; 2, resp., ad primum, 2°", 4"; III, 32, 4, resp., ad 3°"; supra, n. 8.

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