Study of the occult arts October 16, 2009
Posted by egabriel in History of Magic.Tags: fascination, magic, occult, practices, renaissance, ritual, sorcery, superstition
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Well, times for magic were certainly changing during Renaissance. Magic saw a resurgence in hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of ceremonial magic. The Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, on the other hand, saw the rise of science. Chemistry was substituting alchemy, astronomy was slowly dethroning the Ptolemaic theory of the universe assumed by astrology. There was the some development of the germ theory of disease, that restricted the scope of applied magic and threatened the belief systems it relied on. A nice gentleman wrote to us recently, explaining that there was seven arts of magic prohibited by canon law during the period of Renaissance: necromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, spatulamancy. Here we go, I named them all! I even published an article for my web analytics company, explaining in details which means what.
Both bourgeoisie and nobility in the 15th and 16th century showed great fascination with these arts, which exerted an exotic charm by their ascription to Arabic, Jewish, Gypsy and Egyptian sources. There was great uncertainty in distinguishing practices of vain superstition, blasphemous occultism, and perfectly sound scholarly knowledge or pious ritual. The intellectual and spiritual tensions erupted in the Early Modern witch craze, further reinforced by the turmoils of the Protestant Reformation, especially in Germany, England, and Scotland.
Study of the occult arts was intellectually respectable in the Renaissance, and remained so far into 17th century. At the peak of the witch trials, there was a certain danger to be associated with witchcraft or sorcery, and most learned authors take pains to clearly renounce the practice of forbidden arts. Thus, Agrippa while admitting that natural magic is the highest form of natural philosophy unambiguously rejects all forms of ceremonial magic. Indeed, the keen interest taken by intellectual circles in occult topics provided one driving force that enabled the witch hunts to endure beyond the Renaissance and into the 18th century. As the intellectual mainstream in the early 18th century ceased to believe in witchcraft, the witch trials subsided almost instantaneously.
