This poison was disseminated throughout the hierarchy of the Roman Church, including the Renaissance papacy. From that starting point, Catholic occultists who had a mysterious near immunity from prosecution by the Inquisition, inseminated it into the elite intellectual current of the West, which gave birth to the man-is-god sects like Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry and Mormonism, to denominate but three of the numerous, major institutional manifestations of the envenomed fruit of Catholic-Hermetic magic and self-worship.
Frances Yates: “The best guide to what Ficino thought of the Asclepius is…the (A)rgumentum before his translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, called by him Pimander, where he says that of the many works of Hermes Trismegistus, two are ‘divine,’ the one the work on the Divine Will, and the other on the Power and Wisdom of God. The first of these is called the Asclepius, the second Pimander.
“Thus the Asclepius is for Ficino, a ‘divine’ work on the Will of God, intimately associated with other ‘divine’ work by this most holy and ancient Egyptian, the Pimander, on the Power and Wisdom of God…for Ficino and his readers, what they thought to be the Mosaic piety of the Egyptian Genesis, and the Christian piety of Egyptian regeneration, would have rehabilitated in their eyes the Egyptian religion of the Asclepius…So it would become a legitimate practice for a (Christian) philosopher, even a devout practice associated with his religion, to ‘draw down the life of the heaven’ by sympathetic astral magic, as Ficino advised in his work on magic, the De vita coelitus comparanda.
“The rehabilitation of the Asclepius, through the discovery of the Corpus Hermeticum, is, I believe, one of the chief factors in the Renaissance revival of magic.” 35
For Rev. Fr. Ficino, Hermes Trismegistus is more than the personification of magic. He represents the secret gnosis that harmonizes all creeds into one Kabbalistic, Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Catholic unity. In these pages we see Ficino’s attraction to sorcery. How to reconcile this with the Gospel? Fr. Ficino concludes that its dangers can be avoided if its study and practice are confined to a select society (“a learned, philosophical circle”), and kept secret from “the ignorant vulgus, who would distort it into idolatry and superstition.” (Presumably only the ignorant have the perspicacity to call a spade a spade).
Renaissance sorcery is concealed under a layer of rhetoric about “good magic”:
“The spiritual magic of the Renaissance—Marsilio Ficino being its…most influential representative—is built on the principle of universal pneumatic sympathy. The first corollary of this principle is that man endowed with a hegemonikon located, generally speaking, in the heart, the organ corresponding to the sun in the cosmos, has the capacity to impart voluntary changes to his own phantasy. These changes, due to the continuity of the pneuma, are transmitted to the objects aimed at by the manipulator. This phenomenon (is based on) links between individuals according to the transcendental information that the pneumatic conveyances of their souls have accumulated during their descent through the planetary heavens. As for the magic proper, it represents knowledge permitting the performer to exploit the pneumatic currents which establish occult relations between the world’s parts…Renaissance magic (has its) point of departure in Ficino’s treatise De vita coelitus comparanda (the third book of Ficino’s De vita), which specifically states the following principles: just as the soul of the world is concentrated in the sun, whence it radiates to all parts of the universe through the quinta essentia (which is the ether or the pneuma), the human soul is concentrated in the heart and enters the body through the spirit…(In De Vita, Book 3, Chap. III Ficino writes that) ‘the Platonists by adapting our spirit to the spirit of the world by means of the magic and talismans (ars physica) and emotions (affectum), try to direct our soul and our body towards the blessings of heaven. That causes the strengthening of our spirit by means of the world spirit, through the action of the stellar rays acting beneficently upon our spirit, which is of the same kind as these rays, this lets it attract to itself celestial things.” 36
“As befitting his role as high priest, Hermes’ authority extended to the domain of ritual magic. Ficino states in his introduction to the Corpus Hermeticum that Hermes was identified with the Egyptian Thoth, the god who invented hieroglyphs, and that his writings are concerned with ‘secret mysteries’ and ‘stupendous oracles.” 37
Ficino was in favor of the use of magical amulets for good luck and protection from harm (whether to the soul or the body). But he camouflaged his beliefs behind a smokescreen of doublespeak:
“Although clearly attracted by…the talismanic magic of the theurgists, Ficino had to deny approval of them, affirming Thomas Aquinas’s condemnation of artificial images as lures for evil daemons. In his On obtaining life from the heavens he carefully hides behind Iamblichus, Proclus and Synesius in suggesting that ‘in materials which are naturally akin to the things above and have been collected from their various places and compounded at the right time and in the proper manner, you can receive forces and effects which are not only celestial, but even daemonic and divine.’
“Much of what previous scholars have referred to as Ficino’s ‘self-contradiction or ‘inconsistent views’ ceases to be problematic when we realize how adept he is at using different contexts for different purposes…He keeps his pagan and Christian voices separate, moving effortlessly between them…as a Platonist, he will see through the cosmos to the Divine Mind; as an orthodox Catholic, he will locate God beyond the limits of the stars; as a Hermetic magician, he will use images and invocations to sympathize with the world-soul; as a faithful follower of Aquinas, he will deny the legitimacy of talismanic magic; as a physician, he will claim that the powers sown in the world by the anima mundi are natural, healthgiving properties; along with Plotinus, he will suggest that they are gods; and as a true occultist, he will remain silent when necessary.” 38
And as an astrologer he will denounce astrology (in his Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum), while doing his own version of it. Ficino also concealed the ideological debt he owed to Proclus, among the Platonic authorities. 39
Truth is not in the occult or occultists. They justify deception by secretly stating that humans need to be tricked into seeing what is real. The tricksters themselves become inured to deception in the process, and subsequently have difficulty distinguishing between truth and lies, or in perceiving the hypocrisy and duplicity in a reputed enemy of astrology who in actuality is only exposing a version of astrology which is not to his liking.
According to historian D.P. Walker, who adds further insight into Ficino’s many-layered duplicity, the god-making passages in the Asclepius of Hermes Trismegistus are “undoubtedly a capital source for Ficino’s general theory of magically influencing the spirit so it may become receptive to celestial influences. In the summary of this theory, with which De Triplici Vita ends, he presents a paraphrase of the… (Asclepius) as a source of Plotinus’ Ennead…which…is the ‘liber Plotini’ on which the whole De Vita coelitus comparanda is supposed to be a commentary.
“This chapter of Plotinus, as Ficino interprets it, states that one can attract into, and retain in, a material object ‘something vital from the soul of the world and the souls of the spheres and the stars,’ that is, celestial spirit, if the object is of a material and form which reflects the celestial source of spirit in question. This passage and the Asclepius one, fit in with, and connect together, Ficino’s astrological medicine, music and talismans; and he is plainly using them to reinforce his own theory. He cannot, however, quite pass over the fact that Hermes is talking about pagan idolatry and demons, and therefore goes on to a worried and muddled defense of his own magic. He admits that the Egyptians’ magic was ‘illicit,’ because the demons in the statues were worshipped as gods; but implies that demons are alright if used as means and not worshipped as ends. He then provides an alternative line of defense by citing Thomas Aquinas to show that purely astrological magic could not produce demon-inhabited images; therefore, we are left to imply, his
own talismans and Orphic singing have nothing to do with demons.
“…When he is trying to defend his own magic, Ficino frequently cites Thomas Aquinas. Now Thomas’ position with regard to magic is, in the genuine works, quite clear. Natural substances, such as herbs and gems, may have certain powers connected with their astrological affinities, and it is legitimate to use these in medicine; but, if letters or characters are engraved on the stones, or invocations and incantations are used with the herbs, any resultant effect is the work of bad demons, and the operator has entered into an express pact with the Devil. Thomas associates the Asclepius with magic, and quotes Augustine’s emphatic condemnation of the passage on idols. Thomas’ view thus plainly condemns both Ficino’s talismans and his astrological magic, and Ficino makes his defense against the condemnation very weak by quoting the idolatrous Asclepius passage and connecting his own magic with it.” 40
St. Augustine in The City of God Against the Pagans (the last three words of the title are usually omitted by modernists), attacked Hermes for being “friendly to the tricks of demons” and for mourning the decay of paganism on the eve of the birth of the Christian Ecclesia.
The authentic books of the Bible comprise the most unique document on earth, which is as it should be, given its divine authorship. Alone among the religious texts venerated by mankind, it is completely separate from the eternal pagan psychodrama and forbids every form of magic, sorcery and divination in every one of its forms: Lev. 19:26; Ex. 22:18, Deut. 18:9-14; Isa. 47:12-15; Dan. 1:20; 2:2, 4:7, 5:11; Gal. 5: 19-21; Rev. 18:23, 21:8, 22:15. This disenchanting function of the Word of God is execrated by the opponents of the Bible. They preach and convey what is supposed to be a great contrarian secret, that the Bible is actually no different than many other “wisdom” texts of the prisca theologia—yet another compilation of secret traditions, written in code, that are part of the long inventory of primordial, pantheistic knowledge that underlies all creeds, from Animism, Shamanism, Buddhism and Hinduism, to Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The “truths” of this “perennial wisdom” are almost always conveyed gradually, to a privileged elite, under secrecy. This is the conceptual foundation of virtually all occult organizations and secret societies in the West, and of the syncretic theology which has clandestinely ruled the papacy with an iron hand inside a velvet glove since the late fifteenth century. The god of what was officially condemned by the sadly compromised Pope Pius X as “modernism” in his 1907 encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, held dominion over his predecessors for 400 years. About this fact he said nothing. His concealment in itself constituted the crime of misprision.
Many Catholics will register shock at these assertions and dismiss them on the basis of past programming and conditioning. Stereotypes of the popes as the enemies of Freemasonry, witchcraft and Judaism, for which they supposedly endured the enmity of the world, will come to mind. This book does not entertain stereotypes or appearances, however.
What many readers have accepted all of their lives as “Catholic truth” is in some cases founded upon the disingenuous subtleties of confidence tricksters and the mutating virus of deception they have planted under cover of religious mysticism. It is true that some times the popes of the Renaissance burned, banned or seized the Talmud in some manner, or executed occultists like Giordano Bruno, who had become a rebel against the occult system which placed the pontiffs at the head of the esoteric work. These medieval atavisms were undertaken by popes of the Renaissance for purposes of reculer pour mieux sauter — to step back (temporarily) in order to jump forward (into the occult program).
We study, in addition to the conspiracies of subversive, heretical popes, the crimes of their agents, without which the papal magnum opus could not have succeeded. Among the popes’ leading clerical and lay co-conspirators, were Ficino with his talismanic and astral magic, Giovanni Pico and his magical and Kabbalistic theses, Reuchlin with his “Catholic Kabbalah,” Giles of Viterbo, Agrippa, Giorgi, Lazzarelli, Patrizi, Steucho, Trithemius, Galatino, Ricius, d’Estaples, Foix de Candale, Benci, Nesi, Benivieni, Di Domenico, Del Nero, and lesser conspirators. This may appear to be a list of mostly obscure Catholic theologians and intellectuals, but everyone of these were giants of the occult imperium who would influence the thinking of the West for centuries. With regard to Reuchlin, against his conservative critics he had the protection of both Leo X and a proto-Protestant cabal whose secret members authored an influential satire Epistolae obscurorum virorum (“Letters of Obscure Men”) mocking the opponents of the Catholic Kabbalah as pedantic and grossly ignorant poseurs.
Out of the Neoplatonic-Hermetic Catholic networks would coalesce an early form of Rosicrucianism, an ancestor of Freemasonry, with roots in the covert alliance of Protestant and Catholic defenders of Reuchlin.41 During much (though not all) of the period encompassing the controversy over Reuchlin’s writings, Pope Leo X was his secret protector.
Rosicrucianism has been misrepresented as an almost exclusively Protestant off-shoot, through the simple but effective ruse of dating its beginnings from after the Protestant Reformation, and identifying its progenitors as proto-Protestants and fellow-travelers. In fact, the leaders of the early Rosicrucian movement were inspired by a dramatis personae of papist occultists. What began in Florence under the Medici was transmitted to the early Rosicrucians, who were “deeply imbued with Magia and Cabala, with the works of Henry Cornelius Agrippa and Johannes Reuchlin…the De Harmonia Mundi of Francesco Giorgi, and the works of ‘Marsilius Ficinus Theologus.” 42
It was Catholic Neoplatonic-Hermeticism that was the seedbed of Rosicrucianism. 43 Henricus Khunrath’s 1609 Rosicrucian manifesto, Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom, was a key text of the Rosicrucian fraternity: “In Khunrath’s work we meet with the characteristic phraseology of the manifestos…the stress on Magia, Cabala and Alchymia as in some way combining to form a religious philosophy which promises a new dawn for mankind.” 44
“The authors of the (Rosicrucian manifesto) Confessio Fraternitatis agree with the astrologers that their epoch is entering into the sign of Mercury, who is assimilated by Michael Maier 45 with Hermes Trismegistus….Hermes as the mediator par excellence between gods and men, (is) a function also ascribed to him by the alchemists and by Heinrich Khunrath…Thus it is normal for astrologers to regard Mercury as ‘the lord of the word,’ and for the Confessio Fraternitatis to proclaim the coming of ‘the age of the tongue.” 46
It was important for the Church of Rome, as part of its dialectic process, to control, or at least shape, the inevitable conservative backlash and reaction to the infiltration of the Vatican by Neoplatonic-Hermetic forces. Beginning around the time of the Council of Trent and the “Counter-Reformation,” the occult popes planted their men in the ranks of those who were sounding an anti-occult alarm. Take for example the deep cover infiltrator Johann Weyer, the always faithful disciple of the Catholic occultist Cornelius Agrippa, the practicing sorcerer and author of De occulta philosophia, deeply implicated in the Hermetic doctrine of gnosis. His headspinning Jekyll-and-Hyde disciple Weyer has come to be known in popular history as a writer who mercifully modified the witch hunt by suggesting that some accused witches were merely mentally unbalanced. This signature caricature of Weyer’s biography omits his pivotal role in the sixteenth century as an explainer of the occult, rather than the supposed leader of the attack on the occult infiltration of the Church. From 1530 to 1534 Weyer had been Agrippa’s collaborator in sorcery. Watch for it: in 1563 Weyer’s celebrated anti-occult book De praestigiis daemonum, was published in the final year of the Council of Trent, intended as a guide for the inquisitors. Parts of it read as though we had written it. In its pages Weyer surgically deconstructs the diabolic lineage of the “idolatrous magic” of the Egyptians, the Babylonians and of Zoroaster, who “transmitted the arts of idolatrous magic on to other peoples, so that the whole world came to be filled with the fumes of impiety as though from a furnace or factory of wickedness.”
So far so g
ood; here was rhetorical red meat for churchmen who had been deeply disturbed by the rise of the new order of occultism which they had glimpsed in the hierarchy of the Renaissance Church. Now, at last, it appeared that a cleansing counter-reaction was setting in that would chase the infiltrators out of the Church. That hollow legend has had very durable legs ever since, aided by liberal media and academia which hold to it uncritically.
The truth is, Weyer was one of the Renaissance Vatican’s occult agents; a secret member of the “sublime religion” ever since he had been apprenticed as an adolescent to Agrippa. Weyer was one of several Catholic advisors to the Inquisition who was controlling the anti-occult opposition: shaping it and directing it:
“Wyer had not…forgotten Agrippa’s insistence on differentiating between the sublime religion known as mageia47 among the ancients, and the sacrilegious practices that had come to be confused with it. He…admits that there must be such a thing as natural magic, not least because of the gospel account of the Magi from the East who followed a star…Interestingly, and probably due to the formative influence of Agrippa, Weyer’s genealogy of demonic magic…does not include the Florentine platonists or their sympathizers. Moreover, Plato is not given a place of any special prominence.” 48
The pope’s foundational sorcerers and theorists of magic are given a pass by Wyer. His intentional myopia remains intact in the twenty-first century. Weyer misdirected Catholic investigators away from “Florentine platonists or their sympathizers.” 49 His counsel to the inquisitors misled them and led them away from the chief culprits. In the land of the occult nothing is as it seems.
The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome Page 12