Tuesday, October 02, 2007
BLACK MAGIC OR WHITE--IS THERE A DIFFERENCE ?
One of the questions that invariably arises when the subject is Kabbalah is whether there is such a thing as white magic that could be a legitimate pursuit of a Christian. For the Catholic the CCC 2115 to 2117 seems to address it, indicating that even forms of magic intended to restore health are forbidden.
In the Middle Ages, according to Yates, this teaching was not clear. She speaks of the Venetian Franciscan Francesco Giorgi who was inspired by Pico and by Hebrew studies of which Venice was an important center because of its Jewish community. Of Giorgi she writes:
Giorgi grafts the Cabalist influence onto the traditions of his order. He develops that correlation between Hebrew and Christian angelic systems, already present in Pico, to a high degree of intensity. For Giorgi, with his Franciscan optimism, the angels are close indeed, and Cabala has brought them closer. (p. 34)
The question of Giorgi and magic is a difficult one. He provides material for the practice of both natural and Cabalist magic....he expounds the manipulation of Hebrew letters as used in Cabalist magic. Yet it is difficult to decide whether Giorgi was actually a practising magus, or rather a holy man of (so to speak) magical sanctity....On the whole, one is inclined to the conclusion that Giorgi is a kind of magician, though a very, very white one, very ascetic and holy, with the magical core of his teaching so wrapped in folds of Franciscan piety and mysticism that it would be hardly visible to an earnest follower who might well wonder whether this was the outlook of a miracle-working saint, rather than of a magis. (p. 41)
Reuchlin believed that a magical philosophy could be made safe, guarded from demonic dangers, by the use of Cabala. Giorgi takes such a philosophy a step further by concentrating so heavily on the Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchies of angels. If Christian angels guard the processes of the magus, surely he cannot go wrong, surely he will be an angelic, not a demonic character. Christian Cabala did not escape suspicion, and Giorgi's works were to be condemned....
The longest account of Giorgi and his works given by a modern scholar is that by Cesare Vasoli. At the end of his essay, Vasoli suggests a comparison with Rosicrucianism, citing the vast work on world and human harmony by Robert Fludd, the Rosicrucian, as perhaps a close parallel to Giorgi...Certainly Fludd was heavily influenced by Giorgi and the thought that the Giorgi type of Christian Cabala may be a source of Rosicrucianism is suggestive. (p. 42)
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, according to Yates, was considered to be a black magician. Yet he also was influenced by Christian Cabalists:
The reputation of Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) has been a survival from the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which he figured prominently as a prince of black magicians and sorcerers....In the case of Agrippa, his De occulta philosophia is now seen as the indispensable handbook of Renaissance 'Magia' and 'Cabala', combining the natural magic of Ficino with the Cabalist magic of Pico...and...playing a very important part in the spread of Renaissance Neoplatonism with its magical core....
Agrippa was undoubtedly inspired by Reuchlin's Christian Cabala. (pp 43-44)
[Agrippa] dwells much on magic and its divisions. There is a natural magic and a mathematical magic. There is a bad magic which calls on bad demons; there is a good magic which calls on angels through Cabala. (p. 49)
Agrippa boldly advances into the intellectual and angelic worlds, and sets out schemes for reaching angels and spirits through Cabalist magic. This depends on manipulation of Hebrew letters, which have numerical values, so this...is a kind of mathematical magic...
Pico had said in his Cabalist Conclusions that the only name with which the Cabalist can now operate is the Name of Jesus. Agrippa repeats this, word for word. The famous magician undoubtedly believed that, like Pico della Mirandola, he could qualify as a Christian Cabalist. (p. 54)
The fear of demons had haunted Ficino, but Cabala eliminates this fear. It is an insurance against demons, a guarantee that bold attempts after unlimited knowledge and power will not lead to damnation.
Though the genuine Hebrew Cabalist might be shocked by Agrippa's interpretation of Cabala solely as white magic, yet this interpretation served a purpose in fortifying man for intellectual and spiritual endeavour. (p. 56)
Thus the, or at least some of the, Catholic scholars in the Middle Ages believed it was possible to practice a kind of angelic conjuring that was holy and would only bring forth good spirits. While they used the system of the Hebrew Kabbalists, they altered it to focus on the name of Jesus. This was the major difference between Kabbalah and Cabala as Yates presents it.
According to Yates Neoplatonism was seen, at least by Reuchlin, as a replacement for "dry and barren scholasticism" as a new Christian philosophy. (p. 55)
