Courtesy of Sorcerix Helios, we read a few carefully chosen selections from the monster tome, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy. The pages to be discussed: 44-57; 318-329; 426-433. These are the page numbers printed in the book, not the PDF program’s numbering.
Further optional reading – appendices by the editor Donald Tyson:
Appendix II: The Soul of the World, 713-718
Appendix III: The Elements, 719-727
Appendix V: Magic Squares, 733-751
A word from Helios:
Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy represents the most complete accounting of European magical thought of his time. A titanic portion of the ancient wisdom which informed western occultism passed its influence to later occult movements through this text. Despite his refusal to cite his sources, errors in some of his tables, and the vagueness of his ramblings, this edition was painstakingly edited and annotated by occult scholar Donald Tyson. In fact, of the above 31 pages, only 8.5 are Agrippa’s, the rest being diagrams, figures, and cited annotations inserted by Tyson. Because the real substance of the text is thin but tough, I challenge readers to attempt the appendices by Tyson which supplement, contextualize, and more clearly explain the chapters I gave above.
I cannot overstate how foundational and helpful this text has been to my occult research and magical practice. Reading and practicing the procedures in this book was the first time I truly felt wizardly. I have never ceased using it as reference.