Musical Sympathy and Occult Knowledge

The early sixteenth-century occult writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa proved useful to Athanasius Kircher, Robert Fludd and other later philosophers, as a means to understand music and its effects. The fact that this volume entered Queens’ library in the seventeenth century suggests the ongoing currency of magic as a component of philosophy in seventeenth-century England. Agrippa’s conception of magic as a universal philosophy and systematic route to a better understanding of the world gave prominence to music. Binding together Agrippa’s magical cosmos were the principles of harmony and sympathy which operate throughout all levels of being. In his view, knowledge of these harmonies and correspondences offered the philosopher (or magus) the means to manipulate different parts of the cosmos. The scientific revolution marks the period when the most powerful aspects of this occult tradition were absorbed into mainstream natural philosophy, above all in the experimental physics of Isaac Newton and his contemporaries in the Royal Society.

Author: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim
Title: De occulta philosophia [On occult philosophy] (Lyon, c.1550)
Shelfmark: H.20.30

16th century17th centuryH.20.30annotationsprovenance