Hitchhiker's Guide to Religion
Esoteric

Cornelius Agrippa

The Encyclopedist of Magic

Esoteric Natural, celestial, and ceremonial magic; the systematization of Renaissance occultism
Attribute Value
Combat
ATK 60
DEF 70
SPR 80
SPD 65
INT 95
Rank Renaissance magus / Soldier / Physician / Court secretary
Domain Natural, celestial, and ceremonial magic; the systematization of Renaissance occultism
Alignment Esoteric / Renaissance
Weakness Hounded across Europe by ecclesiastical authorities; dies in poverty in Grenoble in 1535; his *De Vanitate* (1530) public retraction of magic was probably tactical rather than sincere
Key Act Wrote *De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres* (drafted 1510, published 1533) -- the systematic encyclopedia of Renaissance magic. Combined Hermetic philosophy, Christian Kabbalah, Neoplatonism, and the medieval grimoire tradition into a single coherent system. The textbook of Western magic for the next 400 years
Source Agrippa, *De Occulta Philosophia* (1533); *De Vanitate* (1530)

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim — soldier, doctor, lawyer, court secretary to Margaret of Austria, and full-time troublemaker — wrote the book that taught Europe how to do magic systematically. De Occulta Philosophia organizes magic into three tiers: the natural (stones, plants, planetary correspondences), the celestial (numerology, astrology, talismans), and the ceremonial (angels, divine names, spirits). The book is so comprehensive that virtually every later Western magical text quotes or assumes it. The Golden Dawn syllabus assumed Agrippa as background reading. His public renunciation of magic in De Vanitate fooled no one; he kept revising De Occulta Philosophia up to the year of its publication.


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