The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy: an Agrippan apocryphon

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim published in 1533 the complete version of De occulta philosophia in three books, the broadest Renaissance synthesis on natural, celestial and ceremonial magic. Two years later, in 1535, he was dead. In 1559 a Liber quartus de occulta philosophia appeared in print at Marburg under his name, presenting itself as the practical complement to the three theoretical books. Those who had known Agrippa well realised at once that it was not his work.

Weyer's judgement

The forgery was denounced by Johann Weyer, who had been Agrippa's pupil and collaborator. In De praestigiis daemonum, the treatise in which he criticised the persecution of witches, Weyer declared that the fourth book was not by his master and considered it an imposture published after his death. The testimony of a direct disciple has generally been accepted by historians, who regard the text as apocryphal.

The motive for the forgery is easy to guess. De occulta philosophia was famous but theoretical: it set out the principles of magic without providing a manual. A fourth book promising practice, backed by the prestige of Agrippa's name, had an assured market among readers eager to move from theory to operation, and publishers knew it well.

The content

The Fourth Book deals with the names of good and evil spirits and their relation to astrological tables, with their characters and seals, the forms in which they would appear according to the planets, consecrations and the so-called books of spirits. It is a compendium of ceremonial magic built partly on the tables of De occulta philosophia, with a more operative tone, which readers perceived as a revelation of the secrets Agrippa had kept silent.

In the Latin editions of Agrippa's works printed in Lyon and elsewhere between the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century, the Fourth Book was joined by other texts: the Heptameron attributed to Pietro d'Abano, the Isagoge on the nature of demons by the German physician Georg Pictorius, a treatise on geomancy and the Arbatel. This compilation formed a true corpus of Renaissance ritual magic, read throughout Europe.

Turner's translation

In 1655 the English translator Robert Turner published in London Henry Cornelius Agrippa's Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, which brought together in English the fourth book, the Heptameron, Pictorius's Isagoge, an astronomical geomancy and the Arbatel. The volume had great influence on the English compilers of magical manuscripts in the second half of the seventeenth century, the very circles in which the Lemegeton took shape.

This translation made available in the vernacular a corpus hitherto reserved for readers of Latin. It is a typical example of the English publishing season of the seventeenth century, when, during the years of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, the loosening of censorship encouraged the publication of astrological, alchemical and magical texts in great numbers.

The Fourth Book shows that even an attribution denied by a direct witness can secure centuries of success. Weyer was right, but the book went on circulating under Agrippa's name, helping to make him a legendary figure, the prototype of the learned magician that European literature and popular legend would long evoke.