De occulta philosophia is the name Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa gave to his most important work, to which he dedicated about twenty years, from 1510 to 1530. The text was published in four books, the first of which was in Paris in 1531.
Occult philosophy is magic, considered "the true science, the highest and most perfect philosophy, in a word the perfection and fulfillment of all natural sciences". The author describes the existence of three worlds: the Elementary, the Celestial and the Intellectual, to which three sciences correspond, Physics or natural Magic which investigates the essence of earthly things, Mathematics or celestial Magic, which he studies the motion of the stars and theology, which deals with God and religion, as well as with the devil, with rites, festivals and mysteries. The expression occult philosophy wants to underline its nature as a science, since philosophy is the science of material and spiritual things, but also the fact that, as it is occult, it is reserved for a few.
The elements that make up the earthly bodies are four: water, air, earth and fire. Each of them stands in opposition to its opposite. Referring to Platonic philosophy, Agrippa describes six further properties of bodies: clarity, rarefaction and movement, darkness, density and immobility. easily work wonders and excel in natural magic "
Agrippa distinguishes the elements in three orders, to the first belong the pure and incorruptible elements, to the second impure elements and, to the third which is also the most mysterious, it is made up of dissimilar elements that continually change one into the other: "through they can work wonders in all natural, celestial and supra-celestial things, as well as in both natural and celestial magic one comes to know and predict the future and from them the extermination of evil demons and reconciliation with good spirits descend "
Not only the elements have a certain power, but also the objects, powers that we say occult since we do not know the causes nor the human spirit cannot understand them. The occult powers derive from the ideas, Platonically understood as pure and eternal forms, which are infused into things by the Soul of the World: "all occult qualities spread over herbs, stones, metals and animals through the sun, the moon , the planets and stars that are superior to the planets. And this spirit will be all the more useful to us, the more we know how to separate it from the other elements and the better we know how to make use of the things in which it will have penetrated more abundantly ».
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