Pico della Mirandola, Hermetic magic and the Cabala
One of the most brilliant minds of the Renaissance belonged to a young Florentine scholar named Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. The scion of a noble family of Modena, Pico was much influenced by the ideas of Marsilio Ficino on Hermeticism and, more especially, Hermetic magic which Pico not only completely accepted, by would propagate with even more fervour and enthusiasm.
Whilst wholeheartedly sharing Ficino's view that Hermes Trismegistus was a ‘gentile’ prophet of Christianity, Pico della Mirandola went further. What he saw in the Hermetica was a form of mystical teaching and ‘natural magic’ which he also associated with the Jewish Cabala. The reader will recall from Chapter Two that this was a system of mysticism rooted in esoteric Judaic traditions, that had received its most extensive elaboration and development amongst the Jewish communities of coastal Occitania during the 12th century. Now, more than 300 years later, Pico felt with all his heart that these two types of Cabalistic magic, Jewish and ‘Egyptian’, needed to be merged and used for the benefit of the Christian Church.
According to Frances Yates, ‘the marrying together of Hermeticism and Cabalism’ was an invention of Pico della Mirandola, who also ‘united the Hermetic and Cabalistic type of magic’ to create a powerful intellectual brew loosely termed the Christian Hermetic-Cabala which was to have far-reaching consequences amongst Renaissance theologians, reaching even as far as the Vatican itself.36 And although magic, in the medieval sense, was abhorred and virtually outlawed by the Church, Pico successfully argued that what the Church had in mind concerned the diabolical ‘modern’ type of magic which, he agreed was detestable. What he was advocating, he explained, was something quite other – the beautiful, ancient and innocent magia naturalis, i.e. the ‘natural magic’ of the wise Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. This was seen by many, not just Pico, as a form of ‘sympathetic magic’, which could establish a benevolent link between heaven and earth. In short, what Pico had in mind was that ‘Egyptian’ form of talismanic magic as found in the Hermetica and, more especially, in the Asclepius.37 But unlike Ficino, Pico believed that this ‘Egyptian’ magic must be ‘supplemented’ by ‘practical Cabala’, i.e. Cabalistic magic. And precisely this, says Yates, is the intellectual contribution to Renaissance magic that Pico was to develop with amazing success.38
Cabala in fact, literally means ‘tradition’, namely that special Jewish mystical tradition that was supposedly handed by God to Moses in the sacred Hebrew language and which, according to Cabalists, conveys mystical and magical meaning encoded in the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Hebrew letters and the words they form are viewed by Cabalists in very much in the same way as the statues and objects of the Egyptians were most likely viewed by their devotees – that is to say as talismans charged with magical and mystical meaning that can be released through a form of ‘magic’. Thus, according to Pico, both the Hermetic-Egyptian and Cabalistic-Hebrew magical systems – which supposedly had emanated, respectively, from the Egyptian lawgiver Hermes Trismegistus and the Jewish lawgiver Moses – complement one another. The next step, surely, was to merge them? And since both these ancient sages received their wisdom from God and were thus ‘prophets’ of Christianity, then, in Pico's logic, the now merged Hermetic-Cabalistic magic rightfully belonged to the Christian Church!
It is not within the scope of this book to review and elaborate on the complex ‘science’ of Cabala, nor is it possible to enlarge and give details on how Pico proposed to merge this system with the Hermetic magic of the Asclepius or, indeed, incorporate it within the Catholic religion. Briefly, however, Pico essentially saw his Christian Hermetic-Cabala as the means through which the ‘truth’ of the Trinity could be proved and confirmed to the people. Or as Pico himself was to put it, his Christian Hermetic-Cabala was the means of ‘confirming the Christian religion from the foundations of Hebrew wisdom.’39
It also did not take much imagination for the Church to see that Pico's clever variant of the ancient Jewish mystical tradition could serve as a ‘conversion tool’ to bring Jews into the Catholic faith. One example of such a simple but devastatingly effective ‘tool’ was Pico's very forceful argument that the name of Jesus, Iesu in Hebrew, if interpreted through Cabalistic principles and methodologies, could be proved to mean ‘God’, the ‘Son of God’, and also the spirit or ‘wisdom of God’, i.e. the Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.40 In short, Pico proposed to win the Jews over using their own mystical game. And indeed with such seemingly simple but convincing manipulation of Hebrew words using ‘Christian Hermetic-Cabala’, it seems that many Jews living in Italy were persuaded that ‘Christian truths’ were locked within their own religious scriptures and thus felt compelled to convert to the Catholic faith.41
Not surprisingly, Pico's bold but unwise claim ‘that there is no science that gives us more assurance of Christ's divinity than magic and the Cabala’ was bound to attract the somber attention of the papal Inquisition whose henchmen missed the point of Pico's ‘good intention’ and promptly accused him of heresy.42 Matters got progressively worse between Pico and the Church, and he had to take refuge in France and seek the protection of Charles VIII. He eventually returned to Italy bearing letters from the king of France, and soon found himself under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the powerful Medici ruler of Florence from 1469 – 92. In the tradition of his grandfather Cosimo, Lorenzo gave the fugitive political support and interceded on his behalf with the pope.43 Pico spent his last years in Florence where he died in 1494, at the youthful age of 31.
Perhaps it should be mentioned that, coincidently, Pico had been born in the same year that Marsilio Ficino had completed the first Latin translation of the Hermetica. These propitious coincidences seem to have been part of Pico's life. The year before his death, Pope Innocent VIII, who had condemned Pico for heresy, was succeeded by the infamous Pope Alexander VI who, unlike his predecessor, was rather open, indeed even sympathetic, towards magic, Cabala and Hermeticism. In June 1493 Alexander VI gave his absolution to Pico della Mirandola, revoked the charges against him, and even wrote him a personal letter in which he describes Pico as a ‘faithful son of the Church’ inspired by a ‘divina largitas’ (‘divine bounty’).44
Suddenly and, for a brief moment, there was a crack in the doors of the Vatican. Through it, quietly but surely like a thief in the night, the wisdom and magic of the ‘Egyptian sage’, Hermes Trismegistus, slipped quickly inside …
The Borgias, orgies in the Vatican, Isis and Osiris on the ceiling
Pope Alexander VI’s family name was Rodrigo Borgia. Born in the former Cathar stronghold of Aragon in northeastern Spain, he came from an immensely wealthy, powerful and ultimately notorious family. His uncle the bishop of Valencia (later to become Pope Calixtus III), had supervised his education in Bologna in Italy and later made him a cardinal of the Roman Church. Through bribery and intrigue he thereafter succeeded in amassing a huge personal fortune. Father of an unknown number of illegitimate children, he also had four legitimised children from a Roman noblewoman, Vanozza de’Cattanei. These included the twisted Cesare Borgia and the beautiful Lucrezia Borgia, whose names would come to epitomise intrigue and foul play.
In spite of his licentious reputation – and somewhat amazingly, all things considered – Rodrigo was elected pope in 1492 and adopted the name of Alexander VI. He immediately began to manipulate and control the Vatican through bribery and by appointing members of his own family in key positions. Cesare Borgia, his celebrated evil son, was promoted to cardinal while still in his teens, along with another young man of the Borgia clan, Alessandro Farnese, the future Pope Paul III. The latter was the brother of the pope's favourite mistress, Giulia Farnese, known as ‘Giulia la bella’, (from whom the pope had at least one illegitimate child). There are contemporary accounts of wild orgies at the Vatican, and historians have even traced at least two assassinations by poisoning directly related to Pope Alexander VI. Inde
ed, so corrupt and evil was the papacy of Alexander VI that after his death, even the Vatican itself could not avoid condemning him as the worst of the so-called bad popes – a polite understatement to describe the huge damage to the reputation of the Catholic Church done by the Borgias.
There is another, yet more bizarre story about Alexander VI which, we think, might explain his interest and even sympathy for Christian Hermetic-Cabala and the ‘Egyptian’ magia naturalis of Hermes Trismegistus which Pico had so fervently expounded …
A Dominican abbot called Giovanni Nanni – also known as Annius of Viterbo – was a renowned historian who also acted as the personal secretary to Alexander VI.45 In his better known work concerning the chronology of man from the Flood to the fall of Troy, Nanni advanced an extraordinary theory that the Borgia family of Pope Alexander VI were descendants of the Egyptian god Osiris, also known in Nanni's days as the ‘father of the Egyptian Hercules’.46 Using such classical authorities as Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus and others – as well as the ‘authority’ of certain ancient texts which Nanni himself had forged – Nanni presented an astoundingly convincing theory that the ‘wisdom of the Egyptians’, that is the Hermetic wisdom, had been transferred directly to the Italian people by Osiris when he had roamed the world in ancient times on a great civilising-mission.47 According to the Danish scholar, Erik Iversen, Nanni then ‘provided a heroic genealogy for his papal patron by demonstrating that the Borgia family descended directly from the Egyptian Hercules, the son of Osiris, and that the bull on the family crest was, in fact, the Osirian Apis.’48
The pope must have taken such ideas very seriously indeed, for he promptly commissioned the renowned Renaissance painter Pinturicchio to decorate the ceiling of the Borgia apartments at the Vatican with scenes of Hermes Trismegistus along with the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Osirian Apis bull – i.e. Serapis, the composite Graeco-Egyptian deity of ancient Alexandria. One such scene is clearly an allegory of the Hermetic ‘natural’ or ‘astral’ magic found in the Asclepius, where Hermes Trismegistus stands under a huge sky-globe with a large star dangling over his head, and is surrounded by various wise-looking men or sages, probably representing the classical philosophers, who are standing in reverence around him as if receiving his teachings.49
This strange episode of Nanni and the Borgia Pope is, of course, somewhat farcical and has nothing or little to do with the erudite and scholarly approach that Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and other savants applied to the Hermetic writings. Nonetheless, it stands as evidence of how deep the Hermetic influence had penetrated in those Renaissance days in Italy and the rest of Europe. More importantly, it testifies to the strange lure that its mysterious Hermetic-Cabalistic talismanic ‘magic’ had on those seeking the divine secrets through the rediscovered ancient wisdom believed to be incorporated in the writings of the ‘Egyptian’ Hermes Trismegistus.
The mystery of the Picatrix and the star-people
Although it can be said with absolute certainty that Ficino developed his own brand of talismanic and ‘natural magic’ from his readings of the Asclepius, some scholars, such as Frances Yates for example, also think that he was much influenced by another Hermetic book on magic entitled Picatrix50 – a book that is not normally associated with the canon of the Corpus Hermeticum although versions of it had been circulating in Europe since at least the 13th century. Indeed, a copy of the Picatrix was found in Pico della Mirandola's private library, and it is also almost certain that Ficino and others of his group possessed copies or, at the very least, knew where to find such copies.51
The Picatrix was first translated into Latin from an Arabic version, now lost, which is believed to have been written in the 12th century in Spain, although some scholars think that it might have been originally composed in Egypt in the mid-11th century. In the Arabic version this book bore the title Ghayat Al Hakim, which means the ‘The Aim of the Sage’ (also sometimes translated as ‘The Goal of the Wise’) and no one really knows why Italian Renaissance scholars named it Picatrix.52
With its source said to be 224 ancient manuscripts on Hermeticism, astrology, magic, Cabala and alchemy, the Picatrix is considered one of the most complete works on ancient talismanic magic in existence. There are, today, various European translations available: in German by Helmut Ritter in 1933; in Spanish by Marcelino Villegas in 1982; in Latin by David Pingree in 1986; and in Italian by Davide Arecco and Stefano Zuffi, also in 1986. A partial English translation was published in 2002 by Hashem Attallah, and we understand that, David Pingree, has been working on an English translation in recent years.53 Pingree published an extensive article on the Picatrix in the Journal of the Warburg Institute in 1981, and there are some very useful commentaries on it, supported by extensive quotations, in Frances Yates's book Giordano Bruno and The Hermetic Tradition published in 1964, on which we have mostly based our investigation. Yates, who studied the German and Latin versions of the Picatrix, concluded that this work must be associated with the Hermetic tradition, since not only is much reference to Hermes Trismegistus made in it but also it almost certainly draws from the ideologies of the Sabaeans – Arabs of Harran (a location in the southeast of modern Turkey) who had adopted the Hermetica as their own ‘religion’ in the ninth century AD and who also practiced the talismanic magic of the Asclepius.54
The Sabaeans’ venerated the moon-god Sin, and they are known to have been avid stargazers and astrologers. An interesting theory of how they got their name has been put forward by Selim Hassan, an Egyptologist who worked at the Giza pyramids in Egypt in the 1930s.55 Hassan proposed that the name Sabaeans, which is Saba'ia in Arabic, may have come from the ancient Egyptian word saba'a which means ‘star’. Apparently the Sabaeans of Harran had performed yearly pilgrimages to the Giza pyramids from time immemorial until at least as late as the 11th century AD. At the pyramids they are known to have conducted astronomical observations and rituals which may have been remnants from the old astral religion of ancient Egypt. Hassan believed that the Sabaeans had recognised the Giza pyramids as monuments dedicated to the stars, which probably inspired them to take the name Saba'ia i.e. the ‘star-people’.56
There is, however, another possible explanation. When the Hermetic and Gnostic sects were persecuted in Egypt by the Roman Church, some initiates may have fled to Harran carrying with them copies of the Hermetic and Gnostic writings. Harran, with its moon-worship cult – note in Egypt that Thoth-Hermes was also a moon-god – and its star-worship and astral magic, would have been an obvious place for the Hermetists and Gnostics seeking refuge and protection from the Roman and Christian persecutions. At any rate, whatever the true origins of the Sabaeans, it seems clear that their astral and talismanic magic was passed on to Arab scholars in Spain and Occitania, and that much of it survived in books such as the Picatrix. It is not within the scope of this investigation to pass into review the whole content of the Picatrix, but suffice to say here that it served as a sort of practical manual for talismanic magic or, to be more specific, it provided a step-by-step explanation of how to make talismans by pulling into them the power of the spiritual and astral world.
Perhaps an example may be useful here. Imagine two identical AA batteries, the sort we use everyday to power electronic equipment such as CD players, penlights, cameras and the like. One of the batteries, however, is fully charged while the other is empty. The charged battery has the potential to release energy to power music, light and so forth; the other is simply an inert object that produces nothing. In a similar way any object can be charged with intellectual, spiritual or emotional energy, just like the battery can be charged with electrical energy. In short, a talisman can be created. Imagine a young man who takes his lover to a restaurant dinner by candlelight and, at the appropriate moment, after having made a full declaration of love, pulls out a small box with a diamond ring in it and offers it as a token of his love. Whatever the reaction, that ring is henceforth not just a ring; it is a talisman.
Today we use the wo
rds ‘sentimental value’, but an ancient Egyptian or Sabaean or, if you prefer, a Hermetic thinker, would use the words ‘talismanic value’. We all have our talismans: rings, necklaces, bracelets, amulets, crystals and so forth. And we generally would be quite disturbed and unhinged should they get lost or stolen. Many cutting-edge researchers have long accepted that ancient Egyptian art, statuary, obelisks, pyramids and even whole cities were meant to act as powerful talismans. It is also recognised that the subliminal effect of such talismans can be increased manifold by adding a variety of sensual stimuli other than mere visuals. Carefully chosen music, for example, will almost certainly enhance the experience, as well as perfumes, incense and lighting conditions. We all know how vastly different it is to visit a cathedral with a noisy group of tourists and again alone when a choir is singing hymns in soft candlelight with the smoke of incense filling the air.
It should be noted also that such talismanic environments do not necessarily have to be artificial. The natural environment can, and often does, act as a ‘temple’. Just think of a Scotsman after years of absence returning to his beloved Highlands, or a Berber returning to the desert after a long spree in a city, and you will get the idea. This, in part, is what Ficino and Pico called natural magic.
The Master Game Page 26