Agrippa – De Occvlta Philosophia. Vol. IV – The Fourth Book (Black Letter Press)

Description

Then rise to your feet and turn around your circle, from east to west, until your head spins and you fall to the ground and be still; like that, you will be enraptured, and the spirit you seek will appear and tell you all you want to know.

Volume Four of our Agrippa collection comprises new translations of two texts closely related to the Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

The first is the 1565 Liber Quartus de Occulta Philosophia, which is a Pseudo-Agrippan gloss on some of Agrippa’s themes, which was published with a version of Pietro D’Abano’s Heptameron, which served as a gloss upon the gloss. This apocryphal work went on to lead an interesting and influential afterlife, accompanying the Three Books like an ugly rumour.

The second is an expanded selection from De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientarum of c.1530. The 1533 first edition of the Three Books concludes with extracts from The Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences touching upon the books’ themes; we have expanded upon that to encompass a more complete sample of Agrippa’s commentary on magic in that book. Rather than being at odds with the Three Books, The Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences is the context within which Agrippa published his famous magical textbook.