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Agrippa Von Nettesheim, Heinrich
Cornelius
German mystic and
alchemist,
born of a once-noble family near
Cologne in September 14, 1486 and died in 1535, almost certainly at
Grenoble.
His books on magic and occultism were widely known and he was both
famous and infamous at the courts and universities of western Europe.
His real name was Heinrich Cornelis. After the fashion of
the time, he latinized Cornelis into Cornelius and awarded himself the bogus noble title
of Agrippa Von Nettesheim, from the Roman founder of Cologne and the name of a place near
Cologne. Undisciplined, unstable and erratically brilliant, Agrippa was often forced to
live by his wits and played at different times the roles of occult scholar and alchemist,
faith healer and demonologist, court astrologer, theologian, lawyer and
doctor (he studied both medicine and law at Cologne, apparently without taking a degree), historian;
town orator, financial adviser and secret political agent. He worked now for the Pope and
now for his rival the Emperor, switching sides as opportunity offered. He founded secret
societies whose members he was not above exploiting. He mixed with royalty at one moment,
only to find himself in prison for debt the next.
Educated at the
University of Cologne, while still a youth Agrippa served
under
Maximilian I, of Germany. In 1509,
when lecturing at the
University of Dole, a charge of heresy was brought
against him by a monk, John Catilinet, and to avoid
any prosecution and probable harsh punishment, Agrippa left Dole and resumed
his former occupation of soldier. The following year Agrippa was sent to
England, on a diplomatic mission, and on his return followed Maximilian to
Italy, where he spent 7 years serving various noble patrons. After
practicing medicine at
Geneva, he was appointed physician to
Louise of Savoy,
mother of
Francis I.
After that he took a position under
Margaret, Duchess of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands,
but not before falling out of favor with his former patroness. His capacity
to assemble bitter foes was a constant throughout his life.
Agrippa moved restlessly about Europe
until his enemies caught up with him at Grenoble. Prison and torture
left him so broken that he only survived his release a matter of weeks. Much
of his career is shrouded in mystery and even before his
death he had become
the center of stories in which he figured as a master
black magician.
Goethe
drew on some of these stories for the title character of his play
Faust.
Agrippa's best-known work,
De Occulta
Philosophia (Occult Philosophy) was published in three
volumes in 1531 but had been written much earlier, in 1510, possibly during
a visit to England. It is based on ideas current at the time: that man is a
miniature copy of God, made in the image of God' as the Bible says; that
the whole universe, taken together, is God; and that man is therefore a
miniature copy of the universe. The universe (the macrocosm or 'great
world') is built on the model of man (the microcosm or 'small world') and
so, like man, it has a soul. Agrippa said that everything which exists has a
'soul' or spiritual component, part of the total world soul, which shows
itself in the magical properties of herbs, metals, stones, animals and other
phenomena of Nature. For instance, the magnet attracts iron, whoever wears
the stone called heliotrope becomes invisible, and a sure contraceptive for
a woman is to drink mule's urine every month because mules are sterile.
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