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‘Diligentia et divina sorte’1

the components of Marsilio Ficino’s astral magic in

De vita coelitus comparanda

Angela Voss

Marsilio Ficino of Florence (1433-99) was instrumental in the revival of Platonism in 15th century Europe, devoting his career to the integration of pagan wisdom and Christianity in order to

revitalise cultural life and rekindle a philosophical understanding of religious experience.2

Following the examples of Pythagoras, Socrates and Christ he combined an active and

contemplative life in service of both physical and spiritual wellbeing,3 his ordination as a priest in 1473 and later as a Canon of Florence cathedral enabling him to ‘sanctify’ the philosophy of the

‘ancient theologians’ whilst still confirming the supremacy of the established faith.4 But he was also a practising physician, astrologer, musician and magician, all of these activities contributing to his ‘natural magic’, a form of healing which was firmly situated within the cosmological framework of Plotinian neoplatonism, drawing on the unitive powers of the symbolic imagination for its effects. In this chapter I will be exploring the meaning of a specific phrase used by Ficino in De vita coelitus comparanda (‘On harmonising your life with the heavens’), the third part of his

medico/magical treatise, the Liber de vita of 1489.5 In this work he addresses the means by which

the natural magician may discover how to compose or improvise suitable music for attracting propitious stellar influences. “It is indeed very difficult to judge exactly what kinds of

1 De vita coelitus comparanda (henceforth Dvcc), XXI, 47 (see n. 8 below). I shall be using the translation by C. Kaske and J. Clark, Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, Binghamton, 1989, pp. 236-393. 2 For example, in his De Christiana religione Ficino laments the profanity of his age and states his mission to “liberate philosophy from impiety” and to “redeem holy religion”:“I therefore exhort and implore all philosophers to reach out and embrace religion firmly, and all priests to devote themselves diligently to the study of legitimate religion.” (liberemus obsecro quandoque philosophiam, sacrum Dei munus, ab impietate, si possumus—possumus autem, si volumus—religionem sanctam pro vivus ab execrabili insitia redimamus, Hortor igitur omnes atque precor philosophos quidem, ut religionem vel capessant penitus vel attingant, sacerdotes autem, ut legitimate sapientiae studiis diligenter incumbant). Ficino, Opera omnia ,Basle, 1576 (repr. Paris, 2000), p. 1, quoted in J. Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden-New York, 1991, p. 289. 3 Ficino tells us in the Proem to his Three Books on Life that he had two fathers, his natural father (a physician) and his patron Cosimo de’ Medici: “The former commended me to Galen as both a doctor and a Platonist; the latter consecrated me to the divine Plato. And both the one and the other alike dedicated Marsilio to a doctor—Galen, doctor of the body, Plato, doctor of the soul.” (Ille quidem me Galieno tum medico tum Platonico commendavit; hic autem divino consecravit me Platoni. Et hic similiter atque ille Marsilium medico destinavit: Galienus quidem corporum, Plato vero medicus animorum), Kaske & Clark, Three Books on Life, p.103. 4 The ancient theologians were the succession of pagan sages from Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus to Plato who comprised the chain of perennial wisdom which Ficino understood himself as reviving. For details of the lineage see the Preface to his translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, Opera omnia, p. 1386, trans. in B. Copenhaver, Hermetica , Cambridge, 1992, xlviii; D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology, Cornell, 1972. 5 Vernon Wells has drawn attention to the ambiguity of the title of Book 3 in ‘Tempering Heaven: A Commentary on the first chapter of Marsilio Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda’, unpublished MA thesis, University of Kent, 2010, pp.3-5. Comparanda has also been translated as ‘fitting’ and ‘obtaining’ although this is not its usual meaning. I prefer ‘harmonising’ as translated by M.J.B. Allen (in ‘At Variance: Marsilio Ficino, Platonism and Heresy’ in Platonism at the Origins of Modernity, eds D. Hedley & S Hutton, New York, 2007, ch. 3 ). The first two parts of the treatise, De vita sana and De vita longa are devoted to medical and regimen advice for scholars prone to excessive melancholy.

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tones/modes6 are suitable for what sorts of stars”, says Ficino, “what combination of tones/modes especially accord with what sorts of constellations and aspects. But we can attain

this, partly through our own efforts, partly by some divine oracle” (sors).7 Sors is used in classical sources for the practice of divination by lot, for example the ancient Roman custom of drawing Homeric verses from a pot to determine a course of action—implying that what we call ‘chance’ is

in fact an opportunity for the gods to give divine guidance.8 But sors could also refer to the verbal

response of an oracle,9 and this seems to be what Ficino has in mind in Dvcc, in which his primary

concern is to attract the gifts of higher (ostensibly cosmic) powers in order to assimilate oneself to them. Ficino’s use of sors here suggests that he is thinking of his astrological music as a divinatory procedure, in which human diligentia prepares the ground for a numinous response. Indeed in confirmation that the divine collaborates in the healing process, he defers to Iamblichus and

Apollonius of Tyana who testify that “all medicine had its origin in inspired prophecy”.10 This

statement has far-reaching implications in relation to the supposedly ‘natural’ remit of Ficino’s magic, as we shall see. But how do the gods reveal their oracular message? Ficino would seem to imply that the divine direction is experienced as a spontaneous, intuitive inspiration that appears to be ‘other’ than human in origin, yet which finds a channel through the soul of the performer—causing a

condition akin to Plato’s ‘poetic frenzy’.11 It is thus both creative and intelligent, and calls into

question the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ realms of operation in astral magic,

a question which is never satisfactorily resolved in Dvcc.12 In the neoplatonic framework of

6 Kaske and Clark translate toni as ‘tones’, but tonus (from the Greek tonos meaning note, interval, region of the voice or pitch) may also refer to a Church mode or plainsong recitation formula, i.e. a series of tones arranged as a species of octave scale or as a melodic fragment. See Cleonides, ‘Harmonic Introduction’, trans. O. Strunk in Source Readings in Music History, vol. 1, New York, 1965, pp. 34-46; A. Barker, Greek Musical Writings, vol. II, ‘Harmonic and Acoustic Theory’, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 17-19. On Ficino’s probable use of the modes in his planetary music, see A. Voss, ‘The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance Harmonia’, Culture and Cosmos, vol.2, no. 2, 1998, pp. 16-38. 7 Dvcc, XXI, 44-47: Difficillimum quidem est iudicatu, quales potissimum toni qualibus convenient stellis, quales item tonotum compositiones qualibus praecipue sideribus aspectibusque consentient. Sed partim diligentia nostra, partim divina quadam sorte id assequi possumus. Kaske & Clark translate sors as ‘destiny’, but the word has a range of other meanings, including oracular response, prophecy, fate, chance, fortune, condition, share or part (See Lewis and Short Latin dictionary at http://artflx.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.17:2703lewisandshort). 8 See Cicero De divinatione, I.34; also M. Loewe and C. Blacker (eds), Divination and Oracles, London, 1981, pp. 116-122 on different kinds of divination by lot. Generally speaking, ‘chance’ is envisioned as the working of some impartial power which makes dice fall in a specific way, or an odd or even number of pebbles jump out of a buffalo horn, or a specific individual draw a certain lot. These may be ways of revealing divine will, or simply of ensuring fairness. 9 See Cicero, De divinatione, II.56. 10 Dvcc XXI, 51: totam medicinam exordium a vaticiniis habuisse. See Iamblichus, De mysteriis 3.3, epitome by Ficino in Opera, p. 1883; Philostratus, Vita Apollonii in Opera auctiora, ed. C.L. Kayser, Liepzig, 1870-71, vol. 1, 3.44. 11 On poetic frenzy, see Plato, Ion, 533e-536d ; Phaedrus, 245a; Ficino, ‘Letter on Divine Frenzy’ in The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. members of the language department of the School of Economic Science, vol. 1, London, 1975, pp. 42-48. That Ficino himself was possessed by such frenzy on occasion, we have an eye witness account from Bishop Campano in 1471 “... And there is frenzy; when he sings, as a lover to the singing of his beloved, he plucks his lyre in harmony with the melody and rhythm of the song. Then his eyes burn, he leaps to his feet and he discovers music whch he never learnt by rote” (Et furor est, cum cantata mans cantante puella /Ad flexum, ad nutum percutit ill lyram. /Tunc ardent oculi, tunc planta exsurgit utraque,/ Et quos non didicit, comperit ille modos.) Quoted in A. Della Torre, Storia dell’Accademia Platonica, Florence, 1902, p. 791. Other references to Ficino’s own performance include Opera, p. 673 (Letters vol.1, p.198); ibid., p.651 (Letters vol. 1, p. 144); ibid. p. 665 (Letters vol. 1, p. 179); ibid., p. 725 (Letters vol. 2, [1978 ], p. 14; ibid., pp. 734-5 (Letters vol. 2, p. 33); ibid. p. 788 (Letters, vol. 4 [1988], pp. 16-17). 12 ‘Natural’ in a theological sense would be understood to refer to the created order below the primum mobile of Aristotelian cosmology, and to the powers of the created world and the human being as opposed to the supernatural powers of God and the angels, who were located beyond any human intelligence and whose essence constituted a mystery. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2.1.94, on ‘natural law’.

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Ficino’s thinking, the human soul may achieve resonance with powers beyond its usual modus operandi through cultivating its ‘higher’ part, the part which partakes of the anima mundi with its

influx of Divine Ideas.13 In chapter I of Dvcc Ficino sets the scene for his magic in the Plotinian tripartite cosmos, where the world soul mediates between the Divine Ideas and the material world, conveying qualities from the Ideas to material forms by way of ‘seminal reasons’ (rationes

seminales) by which she fashions species.14 Thus all things conform through their reason (which can be described as an ‘occult property’) to an Idea, and this identification can be intensified by the natural magician working with a knowledge of correspondences. Most importantly, the stars, planets and their various configurations flourish in the anima mundi, and “on these well-ordered

forms the forms of lower things depend.”15 Celestial forms (i.e. planetary and stellar patterns) in

turn refer back to the Ideas, being images, brought forth by the soul, of intellectual properties, and ultimately they return to the unity of the “One and Good” (unum atque bonum), the ground

of all being.16

The soul of the human being, made from the same stuff as the soul of the world,17 resonates with or comprehends the archetypal images of the cosmos through its corresponding faculty of intellectual imagination (which for Plotinus, is distinct from the phantasia in the lower part of the

soul),18 and just as these images point back to their source, so the human imagination can follow through the act of symbolising, that is, engaging with the images mirrored in the lower soul and bringing them into single focus with the intellectual properties of the higher. In neoplatonic hermeneutics, this constitutes an active process which will lead the soul back to a condition of unity with itself , the anima mundi and ultimately with the One/God. This is why Ficino found both astrology and music—as archetypal image-systems—such powerful means of re-alignment, and why, theologically speaking, he found himself in a difficult position with regard to Christian orthodoxy. The neoplatonic understanding that the soul uses its own innate powers, powers which are in fact divine, to achieve a level of consciousness that transcends human reason (and

thus may be seen to be prophetic) was not compatible with Christian doctrine on revelation,19

13 On the higher and lower parts of the soul (the ‘divisible and ‘indivisible’) and the necessity of bringing them into single focus, see Plotinus, Ennead IV.3.19, 31 (trans. A.H. Armstrong, Plotinus, vol.4, Cambridge, Mass., 1984, pp. 133, 143). 1414 Dvcc I, 13-20. 15 Dvcc I, 56-7: A quibus formis ordinatissimis dependent inferiorum formae. 16 Ibid., 57-62. 17 As in Plato, Timaeus, 41d-e. 18 See n. 28. On the nature of the Plotinian soul, see M. Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty, Oxford, 1999, pp. 57-82. On Plotinus’ understanding of the role of imagination as facilitating the mirroring of divine Ideas in the lower soul, see Enneads IV, 3-5; J. Dillon,‘Plotinus and the Transcendental Imagination’ in The Religious Imagination, ed. J. Mackey, Edinburgh, 1986, ch.2. G. Watson in the same volume gives a clear overview of the development of phantasia from its negative connotations in Plato to its elevation as an intermediary between sense-perception and intellect by the early centuries CE (‘Imagination and Religion in Classical Thought’, ch.1). 19 ‘On the nature of prophetic knowledge, see Aquinas, De veritate 12.1-2; ST, 2.2.173: ‘The manner in which prophetic knowledge is conveyed’. Aquinas distinguishes between the direct impression on the mind by God ‘from without’, and the kind of prophecy that arises from the imaginative and intellectual faculties of the soul. As J. Hankins points out, Ficino never makes this distinction (‘Ficino, Avicenna and the Occult Properties of the Rational Soul’, in La Magia nell’Europa Moderna: tra antica sapienza e filosofia natural, eds F. Meloi and E. Scapparone, Florence, 2003, vol. I, pp. 35-52; online version referenced in this paper at http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3223908/ficinomagic.pdf?sequence=6 , pp. 19-20). Nor did Christian orthodoxy acknowledge a ‘higher’ imaginative faculty of the soul in the neoplatonic/Avicennan sense of partaking of the divine mind, for it understood the imagination as having a corporeal basis, not existing outside time. See Aquinas, ST 1.84, 7, 3 and A. Kenny, Aquinas on Mind, London & New York, 1994, ch. 7. The question of the theological compatibility of scholastic doctrine, heavily dependent on Aristotle, with neoplatonic theories regarding the nature of

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and thus Ficino found himself required to limit the scope of his magic to ‘natural’ sympathy and influence. However, there is plenty of evidence in the Dvcc that he was fully aware of its deeper implications. Ficino had translated the neoplatonist Iamblichus’ De mysteriis shortly before writing the Liber de vita,20 and there would have read of the theurgic practice of purifying the subtle or astral body

(pneuma or ochema)21 through ritual techniques to the extent that it became ‘divinised’ whilst the theurgist was still alive, and thus constituted a vehicle for his or her return to the gods. Furthermore, this process takes place, says Iamblichus, through the imaginative power of the operator, for the phantasia is impressed on the pneuma, and accompanies it when it leaves the

body.22 I will be exploring this further, because Ficino’s engagement with an imaginal cosmology

and his ritual use of astral forces to purify the spiritus of the individual point directly to a neoplatonic theurgy whose fulfilment lay in the soul’s realisation of its innate divinity. In this sense, both astrology and music became necessary preparations for opening the door, as it were, to a transformation of the soul in which it shifted its locus of consciousness from the world of appearance to the intelligible reality of the Ideas, via the sense-perceptible images of stars,

planets and audible sound.23

In relation to diligentia et divina sorte, I am going to take up two main themes in this chapter. Firstly, I will explore the techniques or ingredients that comprise the ‘diligence’ of our astrological musician—the ‘human’ contribution to magical efficacy if you like—and secondly, consider the implications of the divina sors in relation to oracular prophecy and celestial and supercelestial intelligence. If astrology for Ficino is essentially in aid of re-aligning the soul not only with the cosmos but with its divine source, which I believe it is, then Dvcc is a remarkable attempt at disguise—carefully cloaking the first steps of such a dangerous enterprise in the non-threatening sympathies of the natural order.

the soul and its faculties of perception was the central theme of Ficino’s major original work, the Theologia Platonica of 1469-74, in which he set out to achieve a synthesis of philosophy and theology and demonstrate the immortality of the soul (trans. by M.J.B. Allen and J. Hankins, 6 vols, Harvard, 2001-2006). The problem would seem to centre around the incompatibility of literal and metaphoric discourses of transcendence and immanence: for the neoplatonists divine revelation depends on movement through, not a detachment from, the natural creation. 20 Ficino had translated two key texts on theurgy, Iamblichus, De mysteriis Aegyptorum, Chaldaeorum, atque Assyriorum,(Opera pp. 1873-1908) and Proclus, De sacrificio et magia, (Opera pp. 1908-1928); and also Psellus (1018-1078 CE), De daemonibus (Opera pp. 1939-1945). Many of the letters in Book IX (1488-1489) reveal Ficino’s preoccupation with Iamblichus and the neoplatonists at this time; he often calls Iamblichus ‘divine’ (see e.g. Letters, vol. 8, 2009, pp. 9, 15, 19). 21 This luminous, astral body was gathered from the celestial spheres as the soul descended into a body (see Watson, ‘Imagination and Religion’ p. 44). 22 On the Platonic history of phantasia and its relationship with the pneuma or astral body see Plotinus (e.g. Enneads IV.3.31), Porphyry (e.g Sententia 29, Ad Gaurum VI.1), Synesius (e.g. De insomniis 4-6) and Iamblichus (e.g. De mysteriis III.2, 14, 24) all of whom contribute to the linking of imagination with the soul; also A. Sheppard, ‘Phantasia and inspiration in Neoplatonism’ in Studies in Plato and the Platonic Tradition: essays presented to John Whittacker, ed. J. Joyal, Aldershot, 1997, pp. 201-10), and G. Watson, Phantasia in Classical Thought, Galway, 1988, chs 5 and 6. It is Iamblichus who develops the idea of penetrating through an image to its divine source (De mysteriis I.7-8, 3.8). See also L. George, ‘Iamblichus on the Esoteric Perception of Nature’, in Esotericism, Religion and Nature, eds A. Versluis, C. Fanger, L. Irwin & M.Phillips, West Lancing, Michigan, 2010, pp.73-88; G. Shaw, ‘The Role of Aesthesis in Theurgy’, unpublished paper, 2010; also ‘Containing Ecstacy; the strategies of Iamblichean Theurgy’, Dionysus vol. XXI, 2003, pp. 53-88; Theurgy and the Soul, Pennsylvania, 1995. 23 The Platonic source for the religious function of astronomy and music in regulating the soul and aligning it with the divine order is Timaeus 47b-d. See also Epinomis (attr. Philip of Opus). On the intelligible cosmos of the Timaeus see A.Wilson Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context, Cambridge, 2004, pp. 168-186.

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Astrology

As a prelude to both themes, Ficino’s astrology must be situated in context, for the techniques of his astrological magic cannot be isolated from his underlying philosophical concerns which relate directly to the nature and autonomy of the human soul. I hope to show how what Ficino did, Orphic lyre or talisman in hand, was the result of his conviction that the cultivation of the intellectual imagination through divinatory means could lead to revelation of an order of intelligibility beyond that of natural sympathy, and that one way to achieve such a level of prophetic intuition was through the astrological practice of ‘reading the signs’. Ficino evidently practised astrology from an early age, and was familiar with his own natal

chart and those of his friends.24 But whilst inheriting the practical techniques of the classical

tradition, demonstrating his expertise publicly on several occasions,25 the Platonic cosmology in which he lived and breathed demanded that these techniques were dependent on—or arose out of—a primary reality which embraced yet transcended human sense-perception and

reason.26 As the cosmos was infused with soul-intelligence, and the aim of Platonic paideia

was to re-align the human soul with the perfect harmonies of this world soul, the epistemology

of astrology as a system of interpretation had to be directed to sotierological concerns.27 Furthermore, the soul’s language, in neoplatonic terms, is mythic, i.e. symbolic and

metaphoric, and it expresses itself through analogy.28 Thus we find Ficino in Dvcc viewing the soul as a microcosm, equating its three faculties of imagination, reason and understanding with corresponding planetary qualities (according to the Chaldean order):

24 Ficino writes on his own horoscope several times: e.g. Opera, p. 644 (Letters, vol.1, pp.125-127); Opera, pp. 731-732 (Letters, vol. 2, pp. 33-34); Opera , pp. 871-872 (Letters, vol. 7 [2003], pp. 20-24); Opera p. 901 (Letters, vol. 8 [2009], pp. 25-26). He often offers astrological advice to friends and reveals an easy-going, playful attitude towards astrological symbolism in everyday life: see Opera, pp. 672-673 (Letters, vol.1, p.196); Opera, pp. 731-732 (Letters, vol. 2, p. 30); Opera, p. 763 on the horoscope of Plato (Letters, vol.3, pp. 32-3); Opera, p. 801 (Letters, vol .4, pp. 52-3); Opera, p. 892 (Letters, vol. 7, p. 79); Opera, p. 886, (Letters, vol. 7, pp. 67-69); Opera, pp. 889-890 (Letters, vol. 7, p.72); Opera, pp. 894-895 (Letters, vol. 8 [2009], pp.6-8); ibid. p. 901 (Letters, vol. 8, p. 24); ibid. pp. 918, 919, 948, 951 (pending translation). 25 For example, in 1478 Ficino wrote to Pope Sixtus IV regarding an adverse astrological prognostication for the following two years (Opera, pp. 813-815, Letters, vol. 5, pp. 15-19), and in 1489 he was involved in the astrological election for the laying of the cornerstone of the Strozzi palace (see L. Strozzi, Vita di Filippo Strozzi, Florence, 1851, p. 70; M. Bullard, ‘The Inward Zodiac, A Development in Ficino’s Thought on Astrology’, Renaissance Quarterly, no. 42, 1990, p. 692). 26 There has been much scholarly debate on the seeming fluctuations and inconsistencies in Ficino’s views on astrology, and the development of his thought on the subject. Melissa Bullard suggests that Ficino evolved a ‘psychological’ approach after his Disputatio of 1477, where he struggled to resolve his inner conflict between belief in providence and freewill and his ‘fated’ Saturnine melancholy, but she does not locate this within a theological context (‘The Inward Zodiac’, esp. pp. 695-6); C. Kaske, P.O. Kristeller and D.P. Walker have all tended to be misled by Ficino’s seemingly inconsistent stance towards astrology, which I hope to have clarified in the light of his understanding of divination (see Voss, ‘Magic, Astrology and Music: the Background to Marsilio Ficino’s Astrological Music Therapy’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, City University, London, 1992, pp. 8-13 for a full review of these authors’ views and their sources), and modern archetypal psychologists such as James Hillman and Thomas Moore tend to emphasise Ficino’s polytheism and psychological stance at the expense of his Christian/Platonic monotheism (e.g. see J. Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, New York, 1975 pp. 200-202 and T. Moore, The Planets Within, New York, 1982). For a recent overview of Ficino’s astrology and selection of texts, see Voss, Marsilio Ficino, Berkeley, California, 2006. 27 See Geoffrey Cornelius, ‘Field of Omens, A Study in Inductive Divination’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Kent, 2010), pp. 277-281 for a lucid overview of the implications of Platonic cosmology for astrological practice. 28 See Plotinus, Enneads, trans. A.H. Armstrong, 6 vols, Cambridge, Mass., 1966-1987, II.3: ‘Are the stars causes?’ Here Plotinus gives a rationale for reading heavenly patterns as signifying the greater order of things, e.g.“all teems with symbol: the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another”(II.3.3) and “those who know how to read this sort of writing can, by looking at [the stars] as if they were letters, read the future from their patterns, discovering what is signified by the systematic us of analogy” (III.1.6).

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Our imagination is able to be so disposed, composed and conformed especially to Mars or to the Sun ... that it might instantly be a proper receptacle for Martian or Phoebean influence. Similarly, our reason ... by imitation is so able to adapt itself to Jupiter on account of its dignity and nearness to him that it can receive Jupiter and the rewards of Jupiter much more than the imagination or the spirit could ... Lastly, the contemplating intellect—insofar as it separates itself not only from things we perceive but even from those things which we commonly imagine and which we prove about human behaviour and insofar as it recollects itself in emotion, in intention and in life to supra-physical things—exposes itself somewhat to Saturn.29

That the ‘eye’ of the soul is imagination has a long history in the Platonic tradition,

and we will be returning to this theme.30 Most importantly, astrology for the Platonist

must be a means of self-knowledge; as a poetic language of signs which points to an ever-

deeper unfolding of meaning as an ‘inner’ event reflected in the world, it ceases to be a

cause and effect predictive tool which simply taps into a vast machine of fated events. It

may still have a natural scientific dimension, and Ficino as a physician was entirely at

home with the language of astral influence that he found in his astrological authorities—

for human temperament, health and changes in natural phenomena were clearly related

to cosmic movements.31 Even theories of ‘occult’ properties and rays could be seen to sit

happily within a world of natural sympathy and correspondence.32 But Ficino roundly

29 Dvcc, XXII, 18-31: In anima vero nunc imaginationem, rationem, mentem ponimus. Potest utique imaginatione nostra vel propter qualitatem motumque spiritus, vel per electionem nostrum, vel etiam utrinque ita disponi, componi, conformari Marti Solive, ut sit e vestigio proprium influxus Phoebei vel Martii susceptaculum. Similiter ratio vel per imaginationem spiritumque simul, vel per deliberationem, vel utrinque sic ad Jovem imitatio quadam comparare se potest, ut multo magis ob dignitatem propinquitatemque suam ipsa Iovem capiat et munera Iovis quam imaginatione sive spiritus, quemadmodum imaginatio spiritusque eadem ratione multo magis coelestia capiunt quam res et materiae quaevis inferiores. Mens denique contemplatrix quatenus se ipsam non solum ab his quae sentimus, verum etiam ab eis quae imaginamur communiter moribusque argumentamur humanis, sevocat, et affect, intentione, vita ad separata se revocat, Saturno quodammodo se exponit. 30 The idea that the soul ‘sees’ is first expressed in Plato, Phaedo 66d-e; in Phaedrus we also find the idea that physical beauty allows the soul to see ideal Forms, 253e-256e. But when does the eye of the soul become imagination? See n. 22 for sources on the neoplatonic development of phantasia. 31 Ficino’s chief astrological authorities were Abu’Mashar (787-886 CE), Intoductorium in astronomiam; Al-Kindi (d. 873 CE), De radiis; M. Manilius (1st c. CE), Astronomicon ;J. Firmicus Maternus (4th c. CE), Mathesis; Albohazen Haly (1006-1040), Liber de iudiciis astrorum; C. Ptolemy (90-168 CE), Tetrabiblos. Sources for cosmic and astral magic would include the Chaldaean Oracles and the Corpus Hermeticum (both early centuries CE), Albertus Magnus (1193/1206-1280), Speculum astronomiae, the Arabic Picatrix (Gayat al Hakim,10th-11th c., see n.55) as well as the neoplatonic theurgists Synesius (4th c. CE), Iamblichus and Proclus (412-485 CE). The astrological tradition tended to promulgate a theory of influences based on an Aristotelian conception of natural science and astronomical observation, with specific rules for judging horoscopes and making predictions, whereas the Arabic and neoplatonic sources combined astrological knowledge with operative magical techniques such as talismans and invocations. See Liana Saif ,‘The Theory of Astral Influences in Renaissance Medicine’, unpublished paper 2010, who draws attention to the influence of Abu’Mashar, Al-Kindi and the Picatrix on Ficino’s astral medicine. She says “Ficino’s astral medicine is also a defence of astrology and magic in that it emphasises the naturalisation of effects that are often considered supernatural, but following the Arabs, he considers the celestial world as an extension of nature but beyond it.” (p. 12). Also, D.P. Walker, ‘The Astral Body in Renaissance Medicine’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21, 1958, pp. 119-133, and ‘Sources of Ficino’s Magic’ in Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, London, 1958, pp. 36-44. 32 See n. 90

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condemned those astrologers who presumed to determine and limit the autonomy of the

soul through practising judicial astrology,33 who ‘literalised’ the heavens and thought

human reason alone capable of interpreting divine indications—for only metaphorical,

not rational, discourse would allow the soul to see itself reflected in the meaningful

patterns of the heavens. In short, there was a whole order of understanding beyond the

theory of causal influence.

The Christian Platonist must allow the individual to take responsibility for their earthly

choices in order to follow the path of the ‘Good’, and to ‘rule the stars’ with freewill—and

the stars themselves must point to this Good.34 Therefore there must be a ‘hidden’ gold

behind the apparent hardships of Saturn, or the anger of Mars—and Ficino, with malefic

Saturn situated prominently on the ascendant of his natal chart, had therefore to find a

deeper, more philosophically satisfying rationale underlying the astrological techniques

and interpretations of the classical tradition.35 Saturn was the most distant known

planet—in neoplatonic cosmology, its sphere therefore most proximate to the Divine

Mind itself and with access to its secrets.36 Any apparently negative effects in the realm of

material existence must then conceal the potential for elevated contemplation and

insight, and were to be viewed as a deficiency in the lower world’s capacity for

unobstructed participation in the Good.37 Ficino had no doubt that his vocation to unite

philosophy and religion was signified by his dignified Saturn in Aquarius amongst other

factors,38 but that the price he had to pay was ill-health and melancholy on a worldly

level—indeed Dvcc can be read as a manifesto of the harmonising effects of natural

magic on his own troubled temperament.39

33 i.e. the art of making judgements from natal horoscopes. 34 See n. 79 35 According to Ficino his parents estimated his birth time as 21 hours on 19th October 1433. Hours of the day were calculated from sunset on the previous day, which would bring his birth time to between 1.00 and 2.00 pm. The planetary positions at 1.26 pm correlate with the description of his horoscope he gives to Martinus Uranius, apart from Mars which is in Capricorn not Aquarius (Opera p. 901). 36 In the Preface to his commentaries on Plato, Ficino includes a beautiful passage comparing the activities of the members of the Platonic academy to their divine counterparts in the heavens, concluding that in the inmost sanctuary “philosophers will come to know their Saturn contemplating the secrets of the heavens” (In ipsis denique penetralibus, philosophi Saturnum suum agnoscent, coelestium arcanorum contemplatorem [Opera, pp. 1129-30]). 37 See Plotinus, Ennead I.8. 38 Including Sun and Mercury in the ninth house of religion and philosophy (Opera, p. 901). 39 Ficino often speaks of the therapeutic effects of playing music on his temperament, e.g. De vita sana, X, 10, Opera, p. 651 (Letters vol. 1, pp. 143, 144); Opera, p. 673 (Letters, vol. 1, p. 198); Opera, pp. 725-726, 731-732 (Letters, vol. 2, pp. 14, 33); Opera, p.788 (Letters, vol. 4, 1988, pp. 16-17); Opera, p. 871 (Letters, vol. 7, p. 21). See also Voss, ‘Father Time and Orpheus’ in The Imaginal Cosmos eds. A. Voss and J. Hinson Lall, Canterbury, 2007, pp.139-156; ‘Marsilio Ficino, the Second Orpheus’ in Music as Medicine, The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity ed. P. Horden, Aldershot, 2000, pp.154-72; ‘Orpheus redivivus: The Musical Magic of Marsilio Ficino’ in Marsilio Ficino, his Theology, his Philosophy, his

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But Ficino not only practised astrology as allegorical interpretation, he also actively

called on planetary spirits to bestow their gifts; he therefore could not avoid the question

of the source of such oracular revelation, and whether invocations to planetary spirits

could be considered to encroach on star-worship. If astrological technique is harnessed to

communication with immaterial intelligences, then it is very difficult to ascertain where

the line is drawn between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ response:40

When at the right astrological hour you declaim aloud by singing and playing in the manners we have specified for the four gods [Mercury, Venus, Sun and Jupiter], they seem to be just about to answer you like an echo or like a string in a lute trembling to the vibration of another which has been similarly tuned.41

Ficino suggests this happens ‘naturally’, but in the next paragraph he refers to composing

a ‘prayer’ (orationem)42 and in the following chapter states that goods come “straight

from [celestial] souls or angels ... not so much by some natural means as by the election

of free will or by affection”(my italics).43 Quasi-material planetary daemons may just

about be seen as part of the ‘natural’ order, but angels? The difficulty, in a nutshell, was

that in the theurgic practices of Iamblichus or Proclus, the daemons played an important

part in the awakening of the human soul to higher states of being, being mediators

between divine and human dimensions.44 A belief in their cosmic necessity does, I

believe, deeply inform Ficino’s project, but could never be explicit. In the neoplatonic

hypostatic scheme of things, there is no clear dividing line between categories of spiritual

being—they form part of an unbroken emanation from the One, via the divine mind and

the anima mundi to the material world, differing only in levels of materiality.45 In working

through the daemonic inspiration of the cosmos to align the soul with the powers behind Legacy Leiden, 2002, pp. 227-41. On the relationship between the melancholy temperament and divination, see Voss, ‘The Power of a Melancholy Humour: Divination and Divine Tears’ in Seeing with Different Eyes:Essays in Astrology and Divination, Newcastle, 2008, pp.150-169. 40 Ficino did not escape accusation of ‘some offence against religion’ in 1490 and felt obliged to write an ‘Apology’ to Dvcc in which he emphasises that he is not approving the use of magic and images and is only dealing with natural processes. See Ficino, Apologia in Kaske and Clark, pp. 394-401; Kaske and Clark, ‘Repercussions’ in Three Books on Life, pp. 55-70.. 41 Dvcc XXI, 131-134: adeo ut cum eorum more oportune canendo et sonando clamaveris, responsuri protinus videantur vel instar echo, vel sicut corda quaedam in cithara tremens, quotiens vibratur altera temperata similiter. Note that Kaske and Clark insert the word ‘gods ‘ in the translation, but it is unlikely in this context that Ficino would identify the planetary spirits as gods. In XXII,117-118 he describes the celestials as ‘similar to the gods’, and in XXVI, 26-27 tells us that Plotinus calls the seminal reasons gods. 42 Dvcc XXI, 144. 43 Dvcc XXII, 111-115: tum etiam animarum coelestium bona partim in eundem spiritum per radios prosilire atque hinc in nostros animos redundare, partim ab animis eorum vel ab angelisin animos hominum illis expositos pervenire—expositos, inquam, non tam naturali quodam pacto quam electione arbitrii liberi vel affectu. 44 See Plato, Symposium, 202e. 45 As described in Dvcc, I, 13-23.

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the planetary spirits, as it were, Ficino’s magic risked overstepping the mark of religious

legitimacy, for it depended on the efficacy of what Henry Corbin terms “a unique and

necessary mediation that, accomplished on the celestial plane between the divinity and

the individual soul, on the terrestrial plane frees the individual existence from all

collective and institutional forms.”46 This no doubt contributed to the fundamental reason

for the suspicion of a Church which regarded itself as sole mediator, providing the only

legitimate source of Revelation. St Augustine had ‘demonised’ the daemons, effectively

cutting the telephone wires between divine and human worlds, and there were very strict

orthodox guidelines regarding magical techniques that might attract alien intelligences.47

Nevertheless, Ficino was intensely interested in the active ritual practices of the

Hermetic and neoplatonic theurgists and the medieval Arabic magicians, astrologers and

physicians,48 and despite his attempts to explain daemonic activity as part of a ‘natural’

cosmic process of emanation, roundly condemning any association with ‘pagan’ practices,

he remained ambivalent about their function in any spiritual sense.49 We will return to

the subject of celestial intelligence when we take up the question of the divina sors and

its possible connotations. But now we must resume our analysis of diligentia and its role

in the preparation of the human soul as a receptacle for the life of the cosmos.

46 Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital¸ Dallas, Texas, 1980, p. 270. 47 Although both Platonists and Christians acknowledge that human reason is severely limited and its efforts at divinatory interpretation to be distinguished from the revelations of divine truth, for the Christian the intermediate realm of intelligence in the Platonic cosmos has become divided into the demonic on the one hand and the angelic on the other, the demonic being deceitful and misleading, if not downright evil. Man must strive to go as far as he can according to his reason, then await revelation of the world beyond the stars through grace– there cannot be divine intelligence within creation that is apprehended through the human creative imagination, as in a divinatory interpretation. Ironically, Augustine suggests that if diviners such as astrologers do ‘get it right’ in their pronouncements, this is due to the intervention of “unclean and lying spirits” hidden in their minds. See Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, 2. 17; City of God, Book IX; Aquinas, ST, 2.2.95; On legitimate and illegitimate forms of magic, see B. Copenhaver, ‘Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the De vita of Marsilio Ficino, Renaissance Quarterly vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 523-554; W.J. Hanegraaff, ‘Sympathy or the Devil? Renaissance Magic and the Ambivalence of Idols’ at http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/Sympdevil.html 48 See n. 29. 49 For example, Dvcc, Ad lectorem, I, 35: “In all the things which I discuss here or elsewhere, I intend to assert only so much as is approved by the Church” (In omnibus quae hic aut alibi a me tractantur, tantum assertum esse volo, quantum ab ecclesia comprobatur) and VIII, 79: “Let us by no means ever attempt anything forbidden by holy religion” (Nihil omnino tentemus a sancta religion prohibitum). It should be noted that although Plotinus takes a different stance from Iamblichus, not interesting himself in active ritual and promoting a purely contemplative path of realigning the soul, his relationship to theurgy has been recently reassessed by Z. Mazur. See ‘Unio Magica: Part I: On the Magical Origins of Plotinus’ Mysticism’, Dionysius, vol. XXI, 2003, pp. 23-52 and ‘Unio Magica: Part II: Plotinus, Theurgy and the Question of Ritual’, Dionysius, vol. XXII, 2004, pp. 29-56.

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Power, Timeliness, Intention

In chapter XXI of Dvcc Ficino tells us that there are three key factors involved in the

efficacy of his astrological song: the inner power or moral excellence (virtus) of the singer,

the election of an astrologically propitious time, and the desire or focussed intention of

the performer. If these are all cultivated, the performer will in some way “conceive” a

music spirit which will have a transformative, healing effect on the listener:

Now song which arises from this power, timeliness and intention is undoubtedly nothing else but another spirit recently conceived in you in the power of your spirit—a spirit made Solar and acting both in you and in the bystander by the power of the Sun.50

When this spirit “pours out from the both the imagination and the heart at the same

time”,51 it will touch the spirit of the bystander through sympathetic resonance, and

being the subtle bond between physical body and immaterial soul, will convey its

influence to both. But what does Ficino mean by “a spirit made solar”?

Solar Power

In the three-tiered vision of neoplatonic cosmology, the power and function of the heart

in the human body mirrors the Sun in the cosmic realm, which again corresponds to the

Divine intelligence in the eternal realm; by analogy, they share qualities of intelligence,

authority, and life-giving power in their respective domains. But the Sun is also Plato’s

symbol for the supreme Good, and came to be representative of God Himself—

representative in the Christian tradition that is—but in the neoplatonic, as Ficino would

have read in Proclus, the symbolic image has the potential not only to represent, but also

ultimately identify with its referent:52

Let us celebrate [the Sun] as unfolding into light the whole intelligible and intellectual genus of Gods, together with all the supermundane and mundane divinities—as the God of all Gods, the unity of all unities…as more ineffable than

50 Dvcc, XXI, 105-107: Cantus autem hac virtute, opportunitate, intentione, conceptus factusque Solaris et agens tum in te, tum in proximum potestate Solari. 51 Dvcc, XXI, 110: .. ab imaginatione cordeque simul uberior profluens. 52 On the function of the symbolic image in the theurgy of Proclus and Iamblichus, see P. Struck, Birth of the Symbol, Princeton, 2004, chs 6 & 7, quoting Proclus In Cratylus, 30.19-32.3 (p. 237). Proclus describes the transformation of perception in the theurgist which allows a ritual object (in this case a statue) to be seen as firstly a sense-perceptible object, then a representation, a reflection and finally as the deity itself. See Proclus, In Parmenidem, trans. G.Morrow and J. Dillon, Princeton, 1987, 847; Voss, ‘The Secret Life of Statues’ in Sky and Psyche, eds N. Campion and P. Curry, Edinburgh, 2006, pp.201-227.

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all silence, and more unknown than all essence—as holy among the holies, and concealed in the intelligible Gods.53

The act of ‘symbolisation’, of moving from sense-perception of an image to a its

numinous significance, would allow the Sun to be both fiery ball and divinity

simultaneously and thus effect a unity of two modes of perception, understood as human

and divine. As Lucas Siorvanes explains, the solar essence remains the same, but it reveals

itself differently according to the particular modes of perception appropriate to each level

of being:

The One is the divine sun. The intellective Sun is the creator. The supra-cosmic sun which shines in the median levels [of soul and nature] is personified by Apollo. Finally there is the Sun as we normally see it. Behind the visible Sun lie the metaphysical, invisible suns, which give it power and substance.54

Ficino explored this idea in his treatise De sole of 1492, which is a tour de force of

symbolic interpretation, demonstrating how the allegorisation of the Sun can lead the

understanding from empirical observation to mystical revelation—although as a Christian

he was unable to affirm the final identity of the Sun with a God who must retain his place

above all creation.55 He does however locate the Sun as the seat of divine intelligence in

the heavens, and influential in the bestowal of the intellectual soul in humans:

The old physicians called the Sun the heart of heaven. Heraclitus called it the fountain of celestial light. Most Platonists located the world soul in the Sun, which, filling the whole sphere of the Sun, poured out through that fiery-like globe just as it poured out spirit-like rays through the heart, and from there through everything, to which it distributed life, feeling and motion universally. For these reasons, perhaps, most astrologers think that just as God alone gave us an intellectual soul so he alone sends it to us under the influence of the Sun; that is, only in the fourth month after conception.56

In chapter I of Dvcc Ficino describes the heart as “the source of the fire which is the

nearest thing to the soul”, stating enigmatically that “some thinkers” say the soul is

53 Proclus, Platonic Theology, II.11, trans. Thomas Taylor, London, 1816. 54 L. Siorvanes, Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science, Edinburgh, 1996, p. 242. 55 Ficino, Liber de sole, Opera p. 965-986, trans. G. Cornelius, D.Costello, G. Tobyn, A. Voss and V. Wells in Voss, Marsilio Ficino, pp. 189-213; see ch. XIII, pp. 211-213: ‘That the Sun is not to be worshipped as the author of all things’ (Solem non esse adorandum tanquam rerum omnium authorem [Opera pp. 974-5]). See Cornelius, ‘Astrology’s Hidden Light, Reflections on Marsilio Ficino’s De sole, in Sphinx, A Journal for Archetypal Psychology and the Arts, vol. 5, 1993, p. 114-122; on the symbolism of the Sun in early Christianity see D. Fideler, Jesus Christ Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism, Wheaton, Illinois, 1993. 56 De sole, ch. VI, in Voss, Marsilio Ficino, p. 198 (Physici veteres, Solem cor coeli, nomine averunt. Heraclitus luminis coelestis fontem. Plerique Platonici in Sole mundi animam collocarunt, quae sphaeram Solis totam implens, per globum ilum quasi igneum motum universo distribuit. His forte de causis Astrologi plerique putant, sicut Deus solus intellectualem nobis animam tribuit, ita solum sub influx Solis eam mittere, id est, quarto duntaxat mense post conceptum. [Opera, p. 969]).

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located most forcefully in both the Sun and the heart.57 Furthermore, the “Arab

astrologers” agree that the human species is essentially solar in character, although Ficino

would add to this the “nimble motion of versatile intelligence” (strenuum versatilis ingenii

motum) of Mercury and the “temperate complexion” (complexionem temperatam) of

Jupiter.58 From Avicenna Ficino would also have read of the heart as the locus of the

soul,59 and from medical practice would know that the zodiacal sign of Leo, ruled by the

Sun, also ruled the heart.60 He would be familiar with Hermetic and neoplatonic magical

theory deriving from the chains of sympathy that cluster around particular archetypal

images, for example the archetype of kingship and authority as manifest through Apollo,

the Sun, the king, the lion, the heliotrope and gold.61

It would therefore be of the utmost importance for the natural magician to

intentionally cultivate solar qualities, and he or she would do this through the assimilation

of solar substances and the practice of solar activities. In keeping with the tone of Dvcc as

a practical handbook, Ficino suggests particular foods, ointments, fumigations, animals

and people that might be used to enhance such qualities, for example “gold ... chrysolite,

carbuncle, myrrh, frankincense, musk, amber, balsam, yellow honey, sweet calamus,

saffron, spikenard, cinnamon, ... the ram, the hawk, the cock, the swan, the lion, the

scarab beetle, the crocodile, and people who are blond, curly-haired, prone to baldness,

57 Dvcc, I, 71-4: Anima quidem nostra ultra vires membrorum proprias commune ubique promit in nobis vitae virtutem, maxime vero per cor, tanquam ignis animae proximi fontem ... Unde quidam animam et in nobis et in mundo in quolibet membro totam potissimum in corde collocant atque Sole. Kaske and Clark suggest these thinkers are Plotinus (Ennead, 4.3.11) and the Emperor Julian (‘Hymn to the Sun’, in The Works of the Emperor Julian, ed. W.C. Wright, London, 1913, p. 358). See Kaske and Clark, Three Books on Life p. 431, n.12. 58 Dvcc, II, 18; I, 21. Possibly Ficino is referring to the Picatrix here. He adds that he does not believe the influences of Saturn and Mars to be harmful, and that one should use them as purgatives “just as doctors sometimes use poisons” (Quemadmodum venenis nonnumquam utuntur et medici [De vita II, 57-60]). 59 E.g. Avicenna, De anima, V.8; see D.N. Hasse, Avicenna’s De anima in the Latin West, London, 2002, p.176. Ficino would also know the al-Adwīa al-qalbīya, a treatise on psychiatry translated as De viribus cordis (On the powers of the heart) by Arnald of Villanova (d. 1311) at Barcelona in 1306, mentioned in Dvcc at IV, 17-18. See Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn’Arabi, Princeton, 1969, pp. 221-236 for an explanation of the role of himma in Islamic metaphysics. 60 The art of melothesia, relating zodiac signs and planets to specific parts of the body, was one of the principle techniques of Hellenistic medicine. 61 E.g. as found in Proclus, Elements of Theology, trans. E.R. Dodds, Oxford, 1963, De sacrificio et magia, trans. S. Ronan as ‘On the Sacred Art’ at http://www.esotericism.co.uk/proclus-sacred.htm.; Picatrix, ed. D. Pingree, London, 1986. See A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, Mass., 1964; Struck, Birth of the Symbol , pp. 227-234. Of relevance here is C.G. Jung’s observation in Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious: “An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors. If such a content should speak of the Sun and identify it with the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the dragon, or the power that makes for the life and health of man, it is neither the one thing nor the other, but the unknown third thing that finds more or less adequate expression in all these similes, yet—to the perpetual vexation of the intellect, remains unknown and not to be fitted into a formula.” (Collected Works, vol. 9, pt. 1, rev. ed. Princeton, 1992, p. 267).

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and magnanimous”.62 The most powerful solar ingredients of all are “words, song and

sounds” (verba, cantus, soni) which are dedicated to Apollo,63 for song “is a most

powerful imitator of all things ... when it imitates the celestials, it also wonderfully

arouses our spirit upwards to the celestial influence and the celestial influence

downwards to our spirit”.64 Ficino also alludes here to the importance of our other two

factors of timeliness and intention: for the substances must be used or ingested “in the

day and the hour of the Sun and while the Sun is dominant in a theme of the heavens”,65

and most importantly, the practitioner must “frequently perceive and think about these

things and love them above all”.66

In a complex passage in chapter XXI, Ficino suggests that there is a reciprocal

relationship between the spirit of the song and the vital and animal spirit of the singer,

and that it is this spirit that must be nourished by solar properties. The sense in which

Ficino uses the idea of ‘spirit’ here is akin to the physiological spirits of Galenic

medicine,67 but he attributes to the “Arabic astrologers” an extension of this, in which the

spirit becomes the interface between the anima mundi and the material world, and

between the human soul and the body. Thus the human spirit acts as mediator, or

channel, for the celestial gifts to pass from the cosmic spirit, to the soul and body—like a

sort of “bait or kindling”.68 The “application of spirit to spirit” is achieved, says Ficino, “by

physical technique and our disposition of mind”,69 re-iterating the importance of

combining artistic skill with emotional intention. The spirit in humans is in quality denser

62 Dvcc, I,100-104: item aurum et auripigmentum aureique colores, chrysolitus, carbunculus, myrrha, thus, muscus, ambra, balsamum, mel flavum, calamus aromaticus, crocus, spica nardi, cinnamomum, lignum aloes, ceteraque aormata; aries, astur, gallus, olor, leo, cantharis, crocodillus, homines flavi, crispi, saepe calvi, magnanimi. 63 Dvcc, XXI, 32-33. 64 Dvcc, XXI, 78-80: ...quando coelestia imitator, hinc quidem spiritum nostrum ad coelestem influxum, inde vero influxum ad spiritum mirifice provocat. 65 Dvcc, I, 98-99: ... praesertim in die et hora Solis et Sole in figura coeli regnante. This refers to a) the doctrine of planetary days and hours, whereby each day of the week and each hour of the day corresponds to a planet, and b) to the astrological doctrine of dignities, whereby planets are considered to be stronger and more favourable in when located in certain parts of the zodiac. The Sun’s day is Sunday, and it is said to rule Leo and be exalted in Aries (Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, I.21-22). Planetary hours are calculated according to sunset and sunrise, each light and dark period being divided into twelve ‘hours’. The first hour of the day will be ruled by the planet that rules the day, i.e. the first hour of Sunday will be given to the Sun, the sequence will then follow the Chaldean order of the planets. 66 Dvcc I, 106-7: Haec sentienda et cogitanda frequenter et imprimis amanda. 67 Galen (2nd c. CE) considered that the body worked by three types of spirit: natural spirit (located in the liver), vital spirit (located in the left ventricle of the heart), and animal spirit (located in the brain). See Kaske and Clark, Three Books on Life, ‘Traditional Material and Innovations’, pp. 31-38. 68 Dvcc II, 87-91; I, 9-10: Sic in universe esca quaedam sive fomes ad animam corpora copulandam est ile ipse quem spiritum appellamus. 69 Dvcc II, 89-91: Ubi etiam probant ex applicatione quadam spiritus nostri ad spiritum mundi per artem physicam affectumque facta ... Kaske and Clark translate artem as ‘science’and affectum as ‘affect’, but ‘science’ is not accurate here, and I prefer ‘emotion’ or ‘disposition of mind’ which capture more precisely the idea of focussing intention.

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than soul but more refined than body, “a body not a body, as it were”, 70 it contains the

power of generation, and appears to be the same to Ficino as the Mercurial elixir of

alchemy.71 The similarity of Ficino’s spiritus to the neoplatonic pneuma is striking.72 Its

process of purification certainly suggests the theurgic illuminations of Iamblichus’ ochema

which involved photagogia or an assimilation of light, enabling the soul to access divine

visions and ultimately achieve divine possession.73 The fact that this aetheric vehicle

played a key role in neoplatonic theurgy would be a good reason for Ficino to disguise it

as something more innocuous and less challenging to his orthodox critics.74

Our solar-powered performer must then refine his or her spirit, which consists

primarily of “stellar fire” (igneae stellaris),75 and Ficino prescribes a pure diet, clear skin

and clothing, gentle exercise, circular movements (to imitate the soul’s motion),

contemplation of light, a joyful mood and all the other solar activities and rituals

performed when the Sun is in Aries or Leo, with beneficial aspects to the Moon.76 It will

then gain access to the spirit of the song, which has life and warmth like “a kind of airy

and rational animal” (animal quoddam aerium et rationale):77

Song ... which is full of spirit and meaning—if it corresponds to this or that constellation not only in the things it signifies, its parts and the form that results

70 Dvcc III,11-12: Opus est igitur excellentioris corporis adminiculo, quasi non corporis. 71 Dvcc III,12-23. In relation to the alchemical nature of the work of purifying the spirit, H. Corbin remarks: “the Philosopher’s Stone is to be found only through the coincidentia oppositorum, and this coincidentia can only occur through a mediatory level ... a level, as the Islamic theosophers say, where bodies are spiritualised and where spirit takes on body” (‘The Imago Templi in Confrontation with Secular Norms’, in Temple and Contemplation, London, 1986, p. 376). This is the only reference to alchemists (as ‘natural philosophers’) in Dvcc. 72 See D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, 38-39. Walker also alludes to the sphericality of the pneuma and its circular motion, citing Ficino’s sources as Plotinus, Synesius and Iamblichus (p. 39, ns1-4). Kaske and Clark however suggest that the spiritus is “one of Ficino’s more original ideas” although he may have found its magical uses in Picatrix 3.5 (Three Books on Life, pp. 433-4). 73 See Shaw, ‘The Role of Aesthesis’, pp. 12-13; Iamblichus, De mysteriis, II.4, 8. Iamblichus’ reference to the “double aspect” of theurgy at IV. 2 resonates with Ficino’s diligentia et divina sors distinction: “On the one hand, it is performed by men, and as such observes our natural rank in the universe; but on the other, it controls divine symbols, and in virtue of them is raised up to union with the higher powers, and directs itself harmoniously in accordance with their dispensation, which enables it quite properly to assume the mantle of the gods” (trans. E.C.Clarke, J. M. Dillon and J.P. Herschbell, Iamblichus: On the Mysteries, Atlanta, 2003, p. 207). 74 Augustine in particular condemned theurgy, see City of God ch. 10. 75 Dvcc, III, 34. 76 Dvcc, IV.1-49. See also II, 40-41, IV, 60-65. The Moon as mediator between the heavens and the earth was understood to convey qualities of the other planets—particularly the ‘three graces’ of Sun, Venus and Jupiter—to the lower world: “These favors [astrologers] believe to be transmitted through Mercury and the Moon as if through messengers, and they take care that this happens often, but most easily and generally through the Moon” (Ab his quidem tribus coeli Gratiis et a stellis eiusdem generis astrologic gratias et spirant et diligentur exquirunt, easque per Mercurium atque Lunam quasi nuntios tansmitti putant atque currant, facile vero communiterque per Lunam [Dvcc V, 5-8]). It has been convincingly suggested by John Dee (‘An Overshadowed Goddess’, Society of Renaissance Studies, forthcoming, 2011) that Botticelli depicted the central figure of his Primavera as the lunar rational soul, inspired by Ficino. 77 Dvcc, XXI, 84-5.

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from those parts, but also in the disposition of the imagination—has as much power as does any other combination of things and casts it into the singer and from him into the nearby listener. It has this power as long as it keeps the vigor and the spirit of the singer, especially if the singer himself be Phoebean by nature and have in his heart a powerful vital and animal spirit.78

The stellar power in the spirit, says Ficino, is drawn both from its own essence and from

“the election of a suitable astrological hour”79 which will facilitate the sympathetic

resonance between human and cosmic spirits—and to the crucial role of timing we will

now turn.

Timeliness

The importance of electing a precise time for a musical invocation, taking a medicine or

any other deliberate attempt to purify the spirit, had a sound basis in medical astrology,

where the planetary movements would be considered in relation to the patient’s

horoscope. “Just as a given thing is fortunately born and coalesces and is preserved not

elsewhere than here nor at any other time but just then”, says Ficino, “so also such or

such a material action, motion, or event does not obtain full or perfect efficacy except

when the celestial harmony conduces to it from all sides” 80 and in case anyone should

think this implies astrological determinism, he quotes Albertus Magnus, who asserted

that “Freedom of will is not repressed by the election of an excellent hour; rather, to

scorn to elect an hour for the beginnings of great enterprises is not freedom but reckless

choice”.81 In choosing the moment of action, the moment of qualitative, ‘vertical’

alignment of like with like, the human being exercises free will and deliberately “enters

into the play of forces” of the cosmos in order to reap its benefits, rather than passively

78 Dvcc, XXI, 85-92: Concentus igitur spiritu sensuque plenus, si forte tum secundum eius significata, tum secundum eius articuolos atque formam ex articulis resultantem, tum etiam secumdum imaginationis affectum huic sideri respondeat aut illi, non minorem inde virtutem quam quaelibet alia compsitio traiicit in cantantem, atque ex hoc in proximum auditorem, quosque cantus vigorem servat spiritumque canentis, praesertim si cantor ipse sit natura Phoebeus, vehementemque habeat vitalem cordis spiritum atque insuper animalem. For a general discussion of how Ficino’s magical songs worked, see G. Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic, Chicago, 1993, pp. 101-144. 79 Dvcc, XXI, 97-99: ex electa temporis opportunitate 80 Dvcc, XX., 109-113: Unde sicut res quaedam non alibi quam hic nec alias quam tunc proprie nascuntur feliciter et coalescent atque servantur, sic et materialis action, motus, eventus talis aut talis non alias efficaciam sortitur effectumque perfectum quam quando coelestium harmonia ad idem undique consonat. 81 Dvcc, XII, 121-4: Albertus quoque Magnus inquit in Speculo:“Non enim libertas arbitrii ex electione horae laudabilis coercetur, sed potius in magnarum rerum inceptionibus electionem horae contemnere est arbitrii praecipitatio, non libertas”. Ficino himself tells us that he elected the time for beginning ‘De vita longa’: “my purpose was that our work, born under life-giving planets, with Mercury dominant, might bestow longer life on those studying philosophy...” (ut compositio nostra vitalib.nata Planetis, regnante Mercurio, Philosophantibus conferret ad vita [Opera, p. 901, Letters, vol. 8, p.24]).

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suffering events as adverse ‘fate’.82 In so doing, Ficino would say that one is aligning

oneself with a deeper law at work in creation, which he identified with Divine Providence.

By willingly working with what is given, in terms of one’s own horoscope and current

celestial configurations, fate becomes transformed into destiny and the human soul is

free.83 Ficino has rightly been given credit as the founder of a humanistic and

psychological approach to astrology, with his internalisation of the planetary archetypes

and active imagination techniques;84 yet the planets are not only metaphors, they also

have a literal, empirical dimension without which they would not function as true

symbols. Ficino’s ‘rules’ for composing his astrological music involved aligning space-time

planetary positions with the archetypal cosmos of astrology via an individual’s horoscope,

and this seems to have facilitated an awakening of the soul to a previously hidden sense

of unity.85 In fact the synchronistic conjunction of imaginal activity with earthly effect—a

moment of revelation, or rather realisation—was, for Ficino, the basis of prophetic and

miraculous phenomena and thus could be seen as the foundation of his theology.86 Amos

Edelheit has recently explained why:

Man needs these moments of revelation, prophecies and miracles, which represent the border between the human and the divine, but at the same time, by marking this border, they already signify the possibility of crossing it, since these revelatory moments represent a revival of the relation between man and God; they are realisations of revelation, and thus,

82 On the self-direction of the rational soul, see Plotinus, Enneads, IV.4.40-43. 83 This is a major theme in Ficino’s work, see e.g. De fortuna vulgaris, in Supplementum Ficinianum ed. P.O. Kristeller, vol. 2, pp. 169-172 where he emphasises the role of human will in overcoming fate by “going willingly where it indicates, in order that she should not drag us there by force” (Optimo e fare con lei o pace o trequa, conformando la volunta nostra colla sua et andare volentieri dove ella accenna, acciocche ella per forza non tiri [Supp. Fic, 2 p.172]) and Letters, vol.3, 1981, p. 63: “[fate] may be opposed as easily as one wishes to oppose it, since by that very opposition one may immediately overcome what one wishes (facile posse hoc impugnari , ut quando quispiam impugna re voluerit, tunc primum eo ipso quod vult expugnet [ Opera p. 776]). The wise astrologer transcends a fatalistic approach by putting the spheres under examination, guided by the Providence of God and by the freedom of the mind, thereby profiting by their movements and influences. See also Ficino, Theologia Platonica XIII.II, 17, 19 for the relationship of the soul to the orders of Providence, fate and nature. 84 As demonstrated in his letter to the young Lorenzo de’ Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Letters vol. 4, p. 63: “if ... you prudently temper within yourself the heavenly signs and the heavenly gifts, you will flee far from all the menaces of the fates and without doubt will live a blessed life under divine auspices” (si hac ratione prudenter tibi ipse in te coeloestia tum signatum cum munera temperaveris, omnes fatorum minuas procul effugies, auspiciisque divinis vitam absque dubio beatam agas [Opera pp. 805-6]). 85 See Dvcc, XXI, 54-73, where Ficino gives his three “rules for composition”: these require a detailed knowledge of both astrology and music theory and are based on the principle of imitating the planetary alignments of a horoscope with improvised or composed songs and appropriate lyrics. It is possible that Ficino also used his translations of the Hymns of Orpheus for this purpose, although this is not mentioned in Dvcc, perhaps as it would have led to accusations of worshipping the planets. See M.J.B. Allen,‘Summoning Plotinus: Ficino, Smoke and the Strangled Chickens’ in Plato’s Third Eye, Studies in Marsilio Ficino’s Metaphysics and its Sources, Aldershot, 1995, XIV, pp. 63-88. For an experimental recreation of Ficinian planetary invocations, see Secrets of the Heavens, The Marini Consort, Riverrun Records RVRCD53, 2000. 86 This theme is explored in Voss, ‘Father Time and Orpheus’.

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realisations of the notion of divinity in human beings, which reached its total perfection in the figure of Christ.87

Furthermore, Ficino would have read in Iamblichus that perfect timing is the key to

opening the door to the highest possible dimensions:

[The Egyptians] recommend that we ascend through the practice of sacred theurgy to the regions that are higher, more universal and superior to fate, towards the god who is the creator, without calling in the aid of matter or bringing to bear anything other than the observation of the critical time for action.88

Astrological elections then may facilitate much more than psychological well being. Ficino

too, at the end of Dvcc is tempted by the possibility that as a result of his magical

incantations and operations the anima mundi may convey spiritual gifts not just from

planetary daemons but from the Ideas in the Divine Mind, but he quickly assures the

reader, in the final words of the book, that he will write further on the “superstition of

the heathen” and the “piety of the Gospel.”89 The question remains an ontological one,

for when a channel to higher worlds has been opened, who is to distinguish between a

revelation from a Venereal daemon, or one bestowed by God Himself?

Intention

Ficino devotes a chapter of Dvcc to the power of images and the emotional state of the

magician,90 attributing the power of desire in astral attraction again to “the Arabs”:

The Arabs say that when we fashion images rightly, our spirit, if it has been intent up on the work and upon the stars with imagination and emotion, is joined together with the very spirit of the world and with the rays of the stars through which the world-spirit acts.91

He has in mind here Al-Kindi’s ‘ray’ theory, whereby each star sends influences to the

world by means of radiations. The ‘rays’ are dynamic and animate, says Ficino, imprinting

in images “marvellous gifts from the imaginations and minds of the celestials” and “a very

87 A. Edelheit, Ficino, Pico and Savonarola: The Evolution of Humanist Theology 1461/2-14, Leiden-Boston , 2008, p. 208. 88 Iamblichus, De mysteriis VIII.4 (Clarke et al., On the mysteries p. 317). 89 Dvcc, XXVI, 132-139: Qua de re alibi nos opportunius disputabimus, ubi etiam apparebit quam impure superstitio populi gentilis extiterit, contra vero quam pura pietas evangelica fuerit.. 90 Dvcc, XX, Quantam imagines vim habere putentur in spiritum, et spiritus in eas. Et de affect utentis et operantis. 91 Dvcc, XX, 36-39: Tradunt Arabes spiritum nostrum quando rite fabricamus imagines, si per imaginationem et affectum ad opus attendissimus fuerit et ad stellas, coniungi cum ipso mundi spiritu atque cum stellarum radiis, per quos mundi spiritus agit ...

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intense force from their strong mental disposition”;92 indeed, not only the stars, says Al-

Kindi, but “the entire universe, from the most distant stars to the humblest blade of grass,

makes its presence known by its radiations at every point in space, at every moment in

time”.93 Al-Kindi stresses that human emotions (“imagination, intention and faith”) also

direct their potency in the form of invisible rays, and have the power to effect changes in

the world. Focussing the imagination on the object one wishes to affect, followed by

judgement, wish and desire, fulfil the operation:

The man who wishes to perform something first imagines the form of the thing he wishes to impress by action in a given manner; having conceived the image of the thing, after he has judged this thing to be useful or useless, he either wishes to have it or feels contempt for it in his soul. And if he has judged the thing to be worthy of his desire, he longs for accidents to occur, in consequence of which, according to the opinion he has reached, the thing may actually come to pass.94

The reason for this, says Ficino, is because “love has the power to transform” and will

stimulate the efficacy of any remedy:

If anyone ... wears an image that has been properly fashioned, or certainly if anyone uses a rightly made medicine, and yearns vehemently to get help from it and believes with all his heart and hopes with all his strength, he will surely get a great deal more help from it.95

We are here in the realm of Platonic eros, the desire aroused by the reflection of

divine beauty in human beings or their creations, through which the soul may gain an

intuition of its true source and begin the journey back.96 Love is in this sense an initiation,

and the very word ‘desire’ (de-sidere, from the star) suggests that at root, it is a longing

for return to a world beyond this one.97 In his commentary on Plato’s Symposium, Ficino

describes the erotic attraction between all things as the true work of magic, and the

92 Dvcc, XVI, 42-45: dotesque mirificas secum ferunt ab imaginationbus mentibusque coelestium, vim quoque vehementissimam ex affectu illorum ... 93 See Al-Kindi (c. 800-870 CE), De radiis, ed. M.-T. D’Alverny and F. Hudry in Archives d’histoire doctrinal et literature du moyen age, 41, 1974, pp. 139-260; this trans., Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, Chicago, 1987, p. 120; see pp. 117-127 on Al-Kindi’s radiations. Couliano also acknowledges Ficino’s debt to the Picatrix on a technical level, but judges that “the imposing structure of the spiritual magic of the Renaissance is not comparable to the mediocre pile of empirical procedures that make up the Picatrix” (p. 118) with which I tend to agree. Ficino refers to the ray theory in Dvcc, XVI. 94 Quoted in Couliano, p. 121. 95 Dvcc, XX, 57-61: ut si quis imaginem (ut aiunt) gestans rite factam, vel certe medicina similiter utens, opem ab ea vehementer affectet, et proculdubio credit speretque firmissime, hinc certe quam plurimus sit adiumento cumulus accessurus. 96 See Plato, Symposium ,210a-212a; Phaedrus, 246a-256e; Proclus, In Cratylem, 30.19-32.3, quoted in Struck, p. 237, on the symbolic properties of images which “move everything towards the desire of the good, and this wanting produced in things is unquenchable.” 97 See Plato, Timaeus, 41d-e, on the Demiurge creating human souls from the substance of the world soul and allotting each soul to a star.

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mighty daemon Love as the operator of attractions and affinities in the world: “no one

can doubt that love is a magician, since the whole power of magic consists in love, and

the work of love is fulfilled by bewitchments, incantations and enchantments”.98 The

astral magician then will be working with a knowledge of affinities and sympathies

through occult resonances, the astrological skill to determine when such affinities form

alignments between terrestrial and celestial realms, and will have cultivated a clear inner

intention and complete faith in the beneficial outcome. It is only then that the divine

oracle may be heard.

Divina sors

The question of prophetic knowledge in relation to the astrological imagination is first

raised by Ficino in his unpublished Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum of 1477,99 in

which he clearly distinguishes between determinist and divinatory approaches to

astrology, firmly condemning practitioners of the former as “petty ogres” (nefarios

gigantulos) who seek to deprive human beings of freewill.100 After a thorough critique of

the fatalistic astrologers’ reduction of astrological phenomena to a pseudo-rational

literalism,101 Ficino exclaims “All this is poetic metaphor, not reason or knowledge!”102

ostensibly condemning them for thinking they are doing ‘science’, whilst knowing all

along that astrology as poetic metaphor is precisely what enables it to point to deeper

truths than those accessed through rational speculation or inference. In appealing to the

imagination, astrology becomes “an endowment of the soul” (dos animae), freed from

the need to justify its workings in terms of natural science, and facilitating an innate

prophetic ability:

98 Ficino, De amore, VI.10, trans. S. Jayne, Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, Dallas, Texas, 1885, p. 127, Opera, p. 1348: cultu praeteria, et muneribus non aliter dubium est, quin aore consistat, et amoris opus fasinationibus, incantationibus, veneficiis expleatur. 99 Ficino,‘Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum’, in Supplementum Ficinianum , ed. P.O. Kristeller, Florence, 1937, repr. 1999, vol. II, pp. 11-76. Although this treatise was unpublished, Ficino included large extracts in both the Theologia Platonica and his commentaries on Plotinus, as well as in a letter to the Duke of Urbino (see n. 102 below). It should be noted that Kaske and Clark mistranslate the title as ‘Disputation against Judicial Astrology’ (Kaske and Clark, Three Books on Life, p. 31); Ficino was not however condemning the practice as such, but the pretentions of certain practitioners. 100 Ficino, letter to F. Ippoliti in Opera, p. 781 (Letters, vol. 3, p. 77). See also Voss, ‘The Astrology of Marsilio Ficino, Divination or Science?’, Culture and Cosmos vol. 4, no.2, 2000, pp. 29-45. 101 Ficino here uses the classic arguments of the scholastics against predictive astrology; for a summary of his position and a translated excerpt of the text, see Voss, Marsilio Ficino, pp. 33-38, 71-81. 102 Ficino, Supp. Fic. II, p. 43: Tota hoc poetica metaphora est, non ratio vel scientia; see also p.68: non est magna scienta astrologia, quia nec scientia est.

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... through whatever art future things are questioned, they are foretold more completely from a certain gift of the soul than through judgement. Here those unlearned in art often judge more truthfully than those who are learned. Ptolemy said about this, “knowledge of the stars comes both from you and from them,” as if he were saying that you are truthful in judgement not so much through inspecting the stars as through a certain foreknowledge innate to you. For it is explained that you will follow this knowledge at one time through your diligence, at another you may possess it through the stars’ natural benevolent action.103

In his epitome on Iamblichus, he confirms, “I am of the opinion that most certain truth in

respect to the stars can be had through divine prophecy”, and that “we are unable to

understand the confluence of all causes, unless we grasp it through divine inspiration”;104

and in a letter to the Duke of Urbino in 1482 he again emphasises that when astrologers

‘see’ truthfully, it is not through any causal inference but through interpreting signs. Here

he explicitly states that when they gain a deeper understanding of universal harmony or

discord, “then I may truly say they prophesy”.105 In the key passage that follows, Ficino,

drawing on Plotinus, differentiates between the domains of ‘instrumentality’ and

‘intimation’ in respect to the function of heavenly bodies:

Plotinus .. teaches that almost all phenomena beneath the moon are somehow indicated by the heavens, yet they do not all depend on a heavenly body, for only physical phenomena can arise from a heavenly body or, rather, from the powers that move the heavens, through the instrumentality of a heavenly body. But those phenomena within us which go completely beyond the physical level and come close to our mind and to our divine nature proceed from the divine mind and from those minds in its train. Indeed, he says that the plans and purposes of these minds can often be intimated by celestial configurations and movements as though by glances

103 Ficino, Supp. Fic. II, p.50: Denique per quamcumque artem future querantur, plus admodum ex quadam anime singulari dote quam iudiciis presagitur. Hinc sepe indoctiores in arte verius iudicant quam doctiores. Quapropter Ptolemeus ait: Astrorum scientia et ex te est et ex illis, quasi dicat hoc ipsum quod sis in iudicando verdicus non tam illorum inspection quam presagio quodam tibi naturali habes. Sive potius exponatur quod hanc scientiam consequaris tum ex diligentia tua, tum naturali illorum possideas beneficio. This is reiterated in ‘In Plotinem’, Opera p. 1626, where Ficino says astrologers can approach the truth of things through a certain vim animae. 104 Ficino, Opera, pp.1905-6: Ergo vero censeo primum quidem haberi posse per divinum vaticiniu veritatem certissimam circa stellas ... est impossibile iudicare certos eentus, cum omnium causarum concursum comprehendere nequeamus, nisi per inspirationem divinam id assequamur. For Iamblichus the goal of ‘inspired divination’ was union of the theurgist with the gods, i.e. divinisation, achieved through a mode of insight in which the subject-object divide characteristic of rational knowledge was overcome. See C. Addey, ‘Oracles of the Gods: the role of divination and theurgy in the philosophy of Porphyry and Iamblichus, unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Bristol, 2009, pp.263-267. 105 Divina lex fieri a caelo non potest, sed forte significari in Opera, pp. 849-853 (Letters, vol. 6, 1999, pp. 23-31). See also Theologia Platonica , XIII.II, 8, ‘On seers and prophets’ where Ficino says the predictions of “augurers, diviners, soothsayers, astrologers and mages ... testify to their minds’ divinity”(augures, haruspices, auspices, mathematicos, magos ... Mentes vero divinas illa prae ceteris praesagia indicant). At II.10 Ficino describes the prediction of future events as possible because prophetic power “gathers the fleeting intervals of time into an eternal moment, is itself eternal” (praesaga virtus ... Est autem substantia haec aeterna quae in aeternum momentum ...)

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and nods. But to read clearly those intimations requires above all a wise man, a divine man.106

If indeed they can be understood at all from the human vantage point!107 We would

seem to find confirmation here that astrology, as a divinatory system, can lead to

realisations and revelations of a theological nature, of the divine itself, and this is when

the astrologer becomes prophet.108 The celestial configurations and movements here

function as symbolic images, their meaning grasped by the ‘divine nature’ in us—that is,

the higher, intellectual part of the soul—and yet this innate knowing, the divine oracle, is

in some way also from the stars.109

James Hankins has drawn attention to the fact that Ficino would have found

confirmation of the imaginative powers of the intellective soul to achieve prophetic

insight in his reading of the Arabic neoplatonists, particularly Avicenna, and that in Dvcc

he ‘conceals his debt’ to Avicenna whilst deliberately emphasising the less controversial

aspects of magic, those which rely on cosmic correspondence and the influence of the

imagination on the spiritus, the intermediary of body and soul.110

In his De anima Avicenna discusses three kinds of prophecy, deriving from the

imaginative faculty, the motive faculties and the intellect.111 When the soul and its

imaginative faculty are strong, there may be direct access to the divine realm, and this

access may also be achieved through developing a certain kind of will power or through

direct intellectual intuition.112 He also suggests that powerful intuitive apprehension of

spirit may find its expression through the imagination:

106 Divina lex , p. 26, (Opera, p. 851): Plotinus ... docet, effectus infra Lunam pene omnes a ceolo significari, non tamen omnes a ceolesti corpora dependoere, sola eim corporea posse vel a corpora coelisti, vel potius per coeleste corpus, quasi super instrumentum, ab ipsis coeli motoribus fueri. Si qua vero apud nos omnino corporeum genus excedunt, atque ad mentem divinitatemque accedunt, solum a mente divina mentibusque eam sequentibus proficisci. 107 Earlier in the letter to Federico Ficino puts forward the view of Plotinus and Avicenna that events on earth are the result of a mixture of corporeal and incorporeal causes, adding “But since no one is ever able to understand all these things, it is not surprising that no one can hold a definite view about anything of this kind.” (Ibid, p. 25, Opera p. 850: Cum autem cuncta haec nullus unquam comprehendere valeat, nimirum neminem certam ulla de re huiusmodi ferre posse sententiam. 108 I can only refer the reader to Cornelius’ ‘Field of Omens’ (see fn 25) for a thorough analysis of the oracular and prophetic dimension of astrology, and of the hermeneutics of divination in general. 109 Geoffrey Cornelius has drawn attention to the commentary on Ptolemy’s Centiloquy by Giovanni Pontano (In centum Ptolomei aphorismes commentatio, Basle, 1531), in which he discusses the phrase a te et a scientia—that knowledge of the stars derives both “from you and from the discipline/art [of astrology]”. Pontano interprets the a te as the intuitive inspiration of the astrologer, yet which is also “stimulated by the stars”. Whether or not Pontano derives this idea from Ficino, both men link prophetic vision with a cosmic intelligence that is both ‘within’ and ‘without’ (Cornelius, The Moment of Astrology, Bournemouth, 2003, ch. 16, ‘Astrology as a Gift of the Soul’, pp. 321-325). 110 Hankins, ‘Ficino, Avicenna’, pp. 2, 21. 111 See Hasse, Avicenna’s De anima , pp. 154-174. 112 Ibid., p. 155.

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It is not unlikely that some of these acts pertaining to the sacred spirit because of their powerful and overwhelming nature deluge the imaginative faculty which then reproduces them in terms of perceptible and audible linguistic images in the way in which we have previously indicated.113

The act of ‘imagining’ then, which is concerned with the combination and separation

of sense data, is a cognitive faculty which can turn towards the active intellect—the

highest divine intelligence—and convey its properties through images. These images are

then necessarily subject to the rational part of the soul which will “stabilise the visionary

images in the faculty of memory”.114 Hasse comments, “the core idea about imaginative

prophethood is that sense data are perceived as if they were real, whereas in fact they

are produced by the imaginative faculty”,115 and this helps to explain why the prophetic

soul can ‘see’ both literally and metaphorically simultaneously, and why Ficino, centred in

his imaginative faculty, could make seemingly factual or causal statements about

planetary influences. His often apparently objective observations of astrological causality,

particularly in his letters to friends and associates,116 in fact disguise a different

philosophical register, using concrete metaphor to straddle the two realms of discourse.

The intellectual move to the ‘middle ground’ of the imagination is succinctly encapsulated

in Plotinus’ exhortation to the wise man to “profit by the significance” of the sidereal

system and not become “sunken in it and dragged along”.117 The ‘petty ogre’ astrologers

who Ficino condemns in the Disputatio for their short-sightedness are not able to raise

their consciousness in this way. As for pure intellectual prophecy, Avicenna’s description

is echoed in Ficino’s understanding of black bile, melancholy and Saturn as both causing

and signifying a superhuman intelligence:

(Avicenna) Thus there might be a person whose soul has been rendered so powerful through extreme purity and intense contact with intellectual principles that he blazes with intuition, i.e. with the ability to receive the inspiration in all matters from the active intellect ... this is a kind of prophethood—indeed its highest faculty—and the most appropriate thing is to call this faculty ‘sacred faculty’.118

113 Ibid., p. 157. 114 Ibid., p. 158. 115 Ibid., p. 160. Of relevance here is H. Corbin’s essay Mundus imaginalis, Ipswich, 1976, which delineates the ontological reality of the imaginal realm in the metaphysics of Suhrawardi and the Islamic illuminists. On the theme of imaginal perception and its relationship with sense-perception, see also W. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn ‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity, New York, 1994, chs 5 and 6. 116 See n.22. 117 Plotinus, Enneads II.3.9. 118 Hasse, p. 164, quoting Avicenna, De anima V.6.

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(Ficino) The soul [filled with the intelligence born of distilled black bile] .. always seeks the centre of all subjects and penetrates to their innermost core. It is congruent, moreover, with Mercury and Saturn, of whom the second, the highest of planets, carries the investigator to the highest subjects. From this come original philosophers, especially when their soul, hereby called away from external movements and from its own body, is made in the highest degree both a neighbour to the divine and an instrument of the divine. As a result, it is filled from above with divine influences and oracles, and it always predicts new and unaccustomed things and predicts the future.119

Ficino would be familiar from the Hermetic Poimandres of the initiatory journey of

the soul through the planetary spheres on leaving the body, to regain its divine

identity,120 and we have already seen that Saturn signifies the realm of the ‘contemplative

mind’, even if, on a worldly level, it signifies delays, hardships and ill-health. Ficino the

melancholic, plagued by black bile, thus plays music to incite an intelligence which will be

received as an oracle, yet is identical to the highest part of his own soul, and analogous to

Saturn.121 The idea that the individual could enhance his or her propensity for attracting

prophetic or revelatory knowledge through ritual means would not of course be

compatible with orthodox Thomist thinking, in which the influence depends solely on

divine will and is not commensurate with the preparation or ‘diligence’ of the subject.122

But then Ficino never claims explicitly that his ‘divine oracle’ is from God Himself—at

least, not in Dvcc.

In his commentary on Plato’s Symposium however, he gives a theological rationale for

the dual faculties of the soul using the metaphor of its higher and lower parts and the

119 Ficino, De vita sana, VI, 19- 28 (Three Books on Life, pp. 121-123): animus instrumento sive incitamento eiusmodi quod centro mundi quodammodo congruity, atque (ut ita dixerim) in suum centrum animum colligit, simper rerum omnium et centra petit, et penetralia penetrat. Congruit insuper cum Mercurio atque Saturno, quorum alter, altissimus omnium planetarum, investigantem evehit ad altissima. Hinc philosophi singulars eadunt, praesertin cum animus sic ab externis motibus atque corpora proprio sevocaatus, et quam proximus divinis et divinorum instrumentum efficiatur. Unde divinis influxibus oraculisque ex alto repletus, nova quaedam inusitataque semper excogitat et futura praedicit. 120 Ficino’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum was published in 1469 (on the journey through the spheres, see Opera p. 1837). In Dvcc he presents an image of the ‘seven steps to celestial things’ (septem gradibus perducendibus ad coelestia, XXI, 24-38) where each element of creation pertains to a particular sphere, from the Moon ‘resembling’ stones and metals, to Saturn corresponding to “the more remote and simple operations of the understanding” (secretiores simpliciores intelligentiae). Music is dedicated to central sphere of the Sun, and therefore to the god Apollo. 121 For an astrological interpretation of Saturn, see J. Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, trans. J. Rhys Brams, Ancient Astrology, Theory and Practice, New Jersey, 1975, pp. 89, 138-9, 184-5; for examples of Ficino’s own difficulties with Saturn, see Opera, p. 771 (Letters, vol. 3, pp. 50-51); Opera, p. 831 (Letters, vol. 5, pp. 59-60) and n. 22 refs. Yet “Our Plato placed the higher part of the soul under the authority of Saturn in the realm of mind and divine providence, and the lower part under Jupiter, in the realm of life and fate” (Partem quidem illam aimae superiorem Plato noster in regno Saturni, id est, in mentis et providentiae, inferiorem autem in regno Iovis, id est, vitae fatique locavit [Opera, p. 658, Letters, vol. 1, p.161]), referring to Plato, Timaeus 34b-36e. Key passages on Saturn in Dvcc include II,54-66, XXII, 59-90. 122 Thomas Aquinas de veritate 12. 1, Summa theologiae 2-2, qq. 171-4. Thomas distinguishes between divine and natural prophecy, which Ficino does not. See Hasse p. 173, Hankins pp. 19-20.

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need for their harmonisation.123 He distinguishes between the ‘two lights’ of the soul,

one innate, the other infused—the innate light is received from God by the soul

immediately after it is born, and it becomes “proper and natural to it”, enabling it to see

itself and “things inferior to it”. But after a while, it receives another, brighter spark, with

which it is able to ‘see’ heavenly things also. Armed with both human and divine sight

fused together, the soul is able “to fly through the heavenly region”.124 If it neglects the

divine light, it falls into the material world and loses sight of its divine origins; if it neglects

the light of reason, it deprives the earth of its divinity. Here we find an image for Ficino’s

project to unite philosophy and religion, to bring the two eyes into single focus,125 an

image that found symbolic expression in the heavens in the two planets Saturn and

Jupiter. By waiting for the exact moment of their conjunction in 1484 to publish his

complete translations of Plato, Ficino put his natural magic into action, deliberately

mirroring the unity of faith and reason in the heavens with the rebirth of its ‘divine’

champion on earth.126

All the ingredients of human diligence then—the concoction of medicines, the

technical language of astrology, the skill in music theory and performance practice, the

knowledge of sympathies and correspondences in nature and the cosmos, the cultivation

of a pure spiritus and focussed intent—came together for one underlying purpose; to

awake the eye “that all have but few use”127 and engage with the infused light of another

123 Derived from Plotinus, Enneads IV.43.31, and Aquinas, on the lights of reason and revelation, ST, 1.1,q.1. 124 Ficino,Opera, p. 1332 (Jayne, pp. 75-76): Sed primus hic fulgor in animae substantia per so prius in formi receptus fit obscurior, atque ad illius tractus capacitatem proprius ipsi et naturalis evadit. Deoque per aum utpote sibi aequalem, seipsam et quae ifra se sunt, id est, corpora omnia anima videt quidem Deum vero et alia superior non videt. Se denim per primam hanc scinteillam deo facta propinquior aliud iterum clarius incipit lumen, quo etiam superna cognoscat. Lumen igitur habet geminum: naturale alterum, sive ingenitum: divinum alterumet infusum: quibus una coniunctis, ceu duabus alis per sublime pervolare valeat regionem. 125 In his Philebus commentary Ficino refers to the right eye as the eye of divine wisdom, and the left as the eye of human knowledge, which together constitute the intelligence of the soul (see Ficino, The Philebus Commentary, ed. M.J.B. Allen, California, 1975, p. 164) 126 On the significance of the 1484 conjunction for Ficino, see J. Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden, 1991, pp. 302-304, who quotes Ficino, Platonis opera 1491, f. 327vb, on the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn as signifying the joining of power and wisdom. See also S. Toussaint, ‘Ficino, Archimedes and the Celestial Arts’ in Marsilio Ficino: his Theology, his Philosophy, his Legacy eds. M.J.B. Allen and V. Rees, Leiden, 2001, p. 308, also P. Berry, ‘The Voice of the Daemon’, Poetiques de la voix, vol.7, 2005, pp. 16-17. Great conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter (which occur every 18-20 years) were considered highly significant by astrologers; Ficino would have been familiar with Abu Ma’shar’s De magnis coniunctionibus (2 vols, ed.-transl. K. Yamamoto, C. Burnett, Leiden, 2000). Ficino attributed great significance to the coincidence of astrological cycles with events on earth. He found astrological significance in the fact that his young colleague Pico della Mirandola came to Florence on the very day that his Plato was published, to inspire him to translate Plotinus, and that Pico was also born with Saturn in Aquarius, 30 years after himself (Opera, p.1537). In relation to the Saturn-Jupiter opposition in his own chart, he writes to the Archbishop of Amalfi that he would like the bitterness of Saturn to be alleviated by “the sweet fellowship of someone born under Jove”(Vaticinatus es, (arbitror) quam vehementer optarem iamdiu penes aligquem Iovialem vitam agere (Opera, p. 812, Letters, vol.4, p.60). 127 Plotinus, Enneads, I.6.8.

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order entirely. This higher imaginative faculty, suggests Leonard George, “adds a

theophanic dimension to the lower faculty’s sense image”, as through celestial figure,

sound, colour, smell, and taste it opens to the living presences in—and beyond—the

cosmos:

But it is not only those who flee to Jupiter who escape the noxious influence of Saturn and undergo his propitious influence; it is also those who give themselves over with their whole mind to the divine contemplation signified by Saturn himself. The Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Platonists think that by this method one can avoid the malice of fate. For since they believe the celestials are not empty bodies, but bodies divinely animated and ruled moreover by divine lntelligences, no wonder they believe that as many good things as possible come forth from thence for men, goods pertaining not only to our body and spirit but also overflowing somewhat into our soul, and not into our soul from their bodies but from their souls. And they believe too that the same sort of things and more of them flow out from those Intelligences which are above the heavens.128

The question of stellar intelligence—whether the stars and planets are daemons or

gods, and whether they bestow their gifts through intelligent action or natural propensity

is left ambiguous, if not confused, in Dvcc. This is not surprising, as Ficino clearly perceives

them as alive and yet as a Christian must not appear to be worshipping them, or allowing

them wilful choice.129 Yet he grants them “imaginations and minds”130, and spirits—

although deliberately not defining this further: “some regard the spirits of the stars as

wonderful celestial forces, while others regard them as daemons attendant upon this or

that star”.131 But whether living stars, daemons or spirits, the ‘seminal reasons’ sown in

the cosmos by the world soul are necessarily distinguished by Ficino from “divinities

wholly separate from matter”, despite the fact that the seminal reasons can be

receptacles for the Divine Ideas themselves He concludes Dvcc by referring again to

Plotinus, this time suggesting that the seminal reasons can be called ‘gods’ “since they are

never cut off from the Ideas of the Supreme Mind”, and we are left uncertain as to the

128 Dvcc XXII, 81-90: Noxium vero influxum Saturni effugiunt subeuntque propitium, non solum, qui ad Ioven configuiunt, se etiam qui ad divinam contemplationem ab ipso Saturno significatam tota mente se conferunt. Hoc enim pacto malignitatem fati devitari posse Chaldaei et Aegyptii atque Platonici putant. Cum enim coelestia nolint esse corpora vana, sed divinitus animata atque insuper mentibus recta divinis, nimirum illinc ad homines non solum quam plurima ad corpus et spiritum pertinentia, sed multa etiam bona quodammodo in animam redundantia proficisci volunt, non a corporibus in animam se dab animis. Magis autem haec pluraque eiusmodi a mentibus superioribus coelo profluere. 129 Dvcc I, 25; XXI, 56-57: Neque rursum de donis agere credas, quae stellae sint electione daturae, sed influx potius naturali. 130 Dvcc XVI, 42-3. 131 Dvcc XX, 23-24: Spiritus autem stellarum intelligent alii quidem mirabilis coelestium vires, alii vero daemonas etiam stellae huius iliusve pedissequos. Ficino does refer to “Venereal daemons” at XXI, 10.

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distinction between gods and immaterial divinities.132 But Ficino wants to bring to our

attention that through the Ideas, “higher gifts too may descend into matter”,133 although

he dare not say more. We can however infer from his fascination with Hermetic statue

magic that he was intrigued by the possibility of animating material images through

attracting the daemonic spirits of the stars.134 That the higher powers of the human soul

might be involved in manifestations of various ‘miraculous’ phenomena was not explored

further by Ficino in Dvcc, but as James Hankins has pointed out, he had addressed this

possibility more fully in the Theologia Platonica, where his debt to Avicennan metaphysics

is more apparent.135

Conclusion

In Theologia Platonica XIII, Ficino analyses the nature of the rational soul. Its highest part,

the intellectual, “which is the soul’s head and charioteer”, he says “by its very nature

imitates the angels, attains what it desires not in temporal succession but in an

instant”.136 When the lower part, the normally agitated and preoccupied reason, is quiet,

then “what is stopping some angelic process of thought from stealing into our rational

powers, although we cannot see where it is subtly coming from?”137 This intellectual

power is described as a ray, sent down into the soul. 138 So the divina sors now invites

another interpretation: that the oracle is not given by a daemon, planetary spirit or

celestial divinity, but by the Angelic intelligence, which embraces yet also transcends the

realm of cosmic sympathy. Now for Avicenna, whose presence is felt throughout

Theologia Book XIII,139 the intellect prepares itself for the Angelic illumination by

132 Dvcc XXVI, 126-127: Quas quidem rationes appellat etiam deos, quoniam ab ideis supremae mentis unquam destituuntur. 133 Dvcc XXVI, 132-134: Fieri vero posse quandoque, ut rationibus ad formas sic adhibitis sublimiora quoque dona descendant ... 134 Ficino mentions statue magic twice in Dvcc, at XX, 21-35 and XXVI, 77-98. See n. 49. 135 Hankins posits that Ficino derived a theory of magic from Avicenna that derives from the highest power of the human soul, and that this more ambitious magic has been ignored by commentators on the Dvcc (Hankins, ‘Ficino, Avicenna’, p. 2). 136 TP, XIII.II, 18:Mens autem illa, quae est animae caput et auriga, suapte natura angelos imitate, non successione sed momento quod cupit assequitur ... ‘Angel’ in Ficinian metaphysics is equivalent to the neoplatonic nous ; on the relationship between the angel and the soul, and the problematic of fitting the Christian angel into the Plotinian hypostases see M.J.B. Allen,‘The absent angel in Ficino’s philosophy’ in Plato’s Third Eye, I.219-240. 137 TP, XIII.II, 22: Ea vero vacante, quid prohibit angelicam aliquam rationalibus viribus cogniationem irrepere, licet unde surrepat non videamus? 138 TP, III.IV, 3. 139 Hankins notes that “the fact that Avicenna is rarely named throughout this book despite his omnipresence in it may be a sign that Ficino was uncertain how his views would be received by ecclesiastical authorities.” (Hankins, ‘Ficino Avicenna’, p. 11).

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perception of sensible things, but as Henry Corbin describes it, the moment of revelation

itself requires a suspension of the rational faculty so that the soul is open to a presence

beyond it:

This illumination is then, an emanation coming from the Angel, a presence of the Angel; it is not an abstraction performed by the human intellect. It is this relation that makes possible a direct intuition of the angelic operation, already supernatural as such, in the soul. No sooner is the Angel’s intervention replaced by abstraction by the intellect than direct, immediate contact with the “celestial” world of the Angel is broken off.140

We find the same idea in Iamblichus, that intellectual abstraction distracts the soul from

realising its primordial, divine identity.141

Where is all this leading? Ficino asks in the Theologia, answering that in the end, the

soul’s burning desire for God will lead it to it lay aside all its earthly activities and become

angelic: “He who commits himself entirely to this inspiration ceases to be a soul and

becomes, being reborn from God, a son of God, an angel.”142 It will then not only be able

to heal, but will “govern the spheres of the elements” with the power of the anima mundi

herself.143 James Hankins quotes a remarkable passage from Avicenna which I believe

provides an authentic context for Ficino’s natural magic of physical and psychic balancing,

where “imitating the heavens” through working with the images of astrology leads to a

“realisation of the heavens” in the soul of its own god-like powers:

But when a person expends all his efforts to purify [his rational soul] through knowledge, acquires the propensity for contact with the divine effluence, has a balanced temperament, and lacks those opposites that hinder his reception of the divine effluence, then there comes about in him a certain similarity to the celestial bodies and he resembles in his purity the seven mighty ones, that is the seven celestial spheres.144

So finally, I would like to suggest that the strategies and techniques of Ficino’s astral

magic are directed towards the achievement of a prophetic ability—hinted at by the

divina sors—which derives from the highest part of the soul, beyond the natural or the

daemonic, and even towards the eventual freeing of the soul into its angelic or god-like

nature, and that the first steps of this process take place through the engagement of the

140 Corbin, Avicenna p. 105. 141 See Iamblichus, De mysteriis, I.3. 142 TP, XIII,IV, 12 Qui hinc inspirationi totum se committit, cessat esse anima fitque, deo regenerante, dei filius, angelus. 143 TP, XIII.IV, 13; Hankins, ‘Ficino, Avicenna’ p. 18. 144 In D. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, Leiden, 1988, p.76, quoted in Hankins, ‘Ficino, Avicenna’, p. 28.

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imaginative faculty with astrological images and music. As the cosmos is interiorised and

integrated, in the manner of Avicennan ta’wil the soul “performs as it were a

transmutation of the physical cosmos that rehabilitates it as a universe of symbols”,145 a

universe that has an objectivity but not a literality. It is little wonder then that Ficino felt

constrained by orthodoxy, for “theology would combat all emanationism, claim the

creative act as a prerogative of God alone, [and] end the human soul’s soliloquy with the

Angelic Active Intelligence.”146

It is my conviction that we should not extricate Ficino’s imaginal astrology from the ‘big

picture’ of his Christian neoplatonism and his fundamental concerns about the ultimate

purpose and destiny of the soul, for to do so would be to distort the integrity of his

mission to lead human beings to a realisation of their immortality.147 In this context,

astrological symbolism becomes the means by which the soul unites in itself the two eyes

of sense perception and imagination—analogous to diligentia et divina sors—and begins

its journey towards gnosis.148

[Melancholy] is the nature of Mercury and of Saturn, and when through that nature they gather our spirits around a centre, they recall the mind’s attention in a way from alien matters to its own concerns, and bring it to rest in contemplation, and enable it to penetrate to the centres of things. Yet the planets and such humours do not do this as efficient causes: they only provide the occasion or remove impediments. It is the rational soul itself, unhindered and invited, that perfects these things.149

145 Corbin, Avicenna p. 259. Ta’wil means to penetrate to the hidden meaning of a sacred text, beyond its literal sense. 146 Corbin, Avicenna, p. 101. 147 See Ficino, TP, XIV, 3, Opera, p. 311 (trans. courtesy J.L.Burroughs): “by means of the intellect and will, says Ficino, the soul will fly towards God, making progress every day through its desire to achieve union, until it is perfected. “Hence our soul will sometime be able to become in a sense all things, and even to become God.” (animam nostrum per intellectum et voluntatem tanquam geminas ilas Platonicas alas, idcirco volare ad Deum, quoniam per eas volat ad omnia. Per primam omnia sibi applicat, per secundam se applicat omnibus. Itaque anima cupit, conatur, incipit Deus fieri; proficitque quotidie. Motus autem omnis qui ad terminum aliquem directus, incipit quidem primo, pergit deinde, intenditur paulatim, et proficit, profecto quadoque perficitur. Eadem namque facultate intenditur, qua coepit. Eadem postea perficit, qua et intendebatur. Eadem tandem perficitur, qua proficit. Quamobrem animus noster quandoque fiery poterit quodammodo omnia, ac Deus quidam evadere. 148 Geoffrey Cornelius has pointed out (‘Astrology’s Hidden Light, pp. 121-122), that astrology as a practice unites the two lights as modes of vision: “we understand that Sun, Moon and planets are visible in two lights, and not one; the world of sense, where they may be measured by the astronomer, and the world of imagination, where they reveal their hidden light to the astrologer”. 149 Ficino, TP, XIII.II,3: Mitto quod talis quoque est natura Mercurii atque Saturni, per quam, dum spiritus in centrum colligunt, animi aciem quodammodoab alienis ad propria revocant sistuntque in contemplando et ad centra rerum conferunt penetranda. Neque tamen planetae vel humores eiusmodi tamquam efficientes causae id operantur, sed vel praebent occasionem vel impedimenta repellent. Animus autem ipse et invitatus et expeditus talia perficit.