Ceremonial Magic
Enter Agrippa’s world of sacred names, angelic speech, and the discipline of prayer.
Turn the book’s pages
Preparing the reader
Read two everyday occupations on page 346 as an explanation of how Agrippa believes religious discipline prepares a person for knowledge.
Who may hear a sacred teaching?
Compare a poem, a temple ceremony, and a rule about giving books to readers.
What makes a magician qualified?
Separate presumed natural aptitude, achievement through study, and standing conferred by a rite.
Why would someone excommunicate a locust?
Read the cases of locusts and bells beside his instructions about borrowing from other authors.
Three different jobs for love, hope, and faith
Identify the direction of love, the persistence of hope, and the source Agrippa assigns to faith.
How many powers can one God have?
Reconstruct the image of rays going out from one source and apply it to the pair Pallas and wisdom.
How Agrippa reads Amen
Read the Hebrew type on page 372, extract the three initials, and follow Agrippa from the lettering of a name to its use in prayer.
Why give God a garment?
Follow the different meanings Agrippa gives to a divine member and to the hem of a garment.
Who governs, who guards?
Sort three angelic duties by their reach, from contemplating divine wisdom to caring for a single living thing.
A guardian for birth and another for a calling
Separate the guardian of the soul, the genius of a nativity, and the patron of a chosen profession.
Could an angel whisper?
Follow the body parts, shrinking distances, and scriptural exception that make up Agrippa’s argument on page 413.
Three rows, seventy-two names
Build a miniature version of the letter arrangement before returning to the three verses of Exodus.
A human being as a lesser world
Follow two different comparisons on one page, from the universe to a human being and from divine reason to a human mind.
The chariot of the soul
Build the sequence Agrippa puts between a divine soul and a living hand, beginning with what he calls its chariot.
A planet as an instrument
Read a catalogue of virtues as an account of mediation by comparing the entries under Jupiter and Mars.
Where can a good influence go wrong?
Read Agrippa’s argument about reception against the accusation voiced in his quotation from Homer.
From a thought to an image
Trace a single idea through mind, reason, and imagination before examining the bodily claim Agrippa adds.
What the Muses give a mind
Read the paired motions of detachment and attachment, then follow a lunar stone into Agrippa’s account of the Muses.
Why is Love without eyes?
Read the Venus chapter alongside its figure of eyeless Love to distinguish intense affection from a theological account of resemblance.
Grain and chaff in a dream
Compare the two stories involving Joseph on page 514 to see what repetition and imperfect fulfillment mean to Agrippa.
What can a lot decide?
Compare the appointment of Matthias with the sailors’ lot in the story of Jonah to distinguish selection from diagnosis.
What does feeding a stranger have to do with purification?
Follow Agrippa from an inward change of heart to an outward act of mercy, then compare his Christian and Homeric examples.
Can a vow be made in silence?
Read his comparison of a maker and an instrument to locate the roles of worshipper and divine agent.
Why bless water with a river story?
Follow the passage from the Red Sea to the burning bush and work out why changing the material changes the prayer.
Who dedicates the sacred thing?
Use his examples of the Lord’s Prayer and a vow to trace two ways in which something acquires sacred standing.
Inside Book III
Read all 65 chapters in the archive. Open a section below to choose a chapter.
CH. 1–9The religious reader
Examine the qualities Agrippa expects of a reader before he turns to divine names and spirits.
CH. 10–22Divine names and spiritual orders
Notice which traditions Agrippa brings together when he describes the steps between God and the earthly world.
- 10The ten sefirot and divine names
- 11Divine names and their letters
- 12How divine names act through intermediaries
- 13Divine and human members
- 14Pagan gods and sacred places
- 15Theologians on celestial souls
- 16Kinds of spirits and intelligences
- 17Theologians on spiritual orders
- 18The fall and orders of evil spirits
- 19The bodies of spirits
- 20Guardianship and the danger of spirits
- 21The personal genius
- 22Three guardians of a person
CH. 23–33Angels, names, and characters
Compare a name assigned from a spirit’s office with a name derived from letters, stars, or revelation.
- 23The speech of angels
- 24How spirits receive names
- 25Letters and the seventy-two angelic names
- 26Names inferred from celestial positions
- 27Calculating names
- 28Names derived from offices
- 29Characters and seals of spirits
- 30Characters from letter arrangements
- 31Revealed marks and characters
- 32Calling good spirits and resisting evil
- 33Bonds, adjurations, and exorcism
CH. 34–44Human beings and the fate of the soul
Read the human soul as the meeting point for Agrippa’s questions about divine likeness, moral responsibility, and mortality.
- 34Heroes and the order of souls
- 35Mortal and terrestrial gods
- 36Human beings in the image of God
- 37How soul and body are joined
- 38Gifts from the spiritual orders
- 39How good influences can yield evil
- 40The divine mark on a person
- 41Views of life after death
- 42Accounts of calling the dead
- 43Mind, reason, and imagination
- 44Degrees of soul and immortality
CH. 45–53Inspiration, dreams, and oracles
Compare the kinds of authority that Agrippa gives to a poet, a dreamer, and someone interpreting a lot.
CH. 54–65Devotion and consecration
Attend to the part played by generosity, promises, and ritual time in Agrippa’s final account of devotion.
- 54Ritual cleanliness
- 55Solitude, abstinence, and contemplation
- 56Penitence and almsgiving
- 57Outward acts of purification
- 58Adoration and vows
- 59Sacrifices and offerings
- 60Words and rites of ancient sacrifice
- 61Offerings to God and lesser beings
- 62The manner of consecration
- 63Holy things and sacred times
- 64Perfuming and anointing
- 65Agrippa’s concluding address