Still Running Off at the Keyboard

FRANCES YATES ON OCCULTISM

When it came time to select something to take along on vacation, I took a look at the book on the top of the pile--1,000 pages of Sabbatai Zevi--and decided I needed something thinner. Next one down was THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHY IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE by Frances Yates, and so that one got packed.

Although said to be "controversial", Yates' work is respected enough for Mariana Banchetti to teach a graduate course at Florida Atlantic University based on her work. The book draws a lot of disconnected pieces of occultism into a system that hangs together rather well. I was particularly interested in how she related Christian Cabala to Jewish Kabbalah.

In reading about Rosicrucianism, I have not been able until now to place it into any particular religious context. It has elements of Judaism and elements of Catholicism but does not conform entirely to either faith. It does tease the reader with hints of a secret contained within its teaching which is only available to the initiated. Yates clarifies.

Here is one of the more significant statements she offers:

The Rosicrucian manifestos call for a universal reformation of the whole wide world through Magia and Cabala. The mystical 'Christian Red Cross' (Christian Rosencreuz), the opening of whose magical tomb is a signal for the general reformation, may perhaps, in one of his aspects, be a teutonised memory of John Dee and his Christian Cabala, confirming earlier suspicions that 'Christian Cabala' and "Rosicrucianism' may be synonymous. (p. 104-105)

In no particular order here are the Cabalists discussed by Yates in the book:

Marsilio Ficino
Pico della Mirandola
Giordano Bruno
John Dee
Francesco Giorgi
Henry Cornelius Agrippa
Johannes Reuchlin
Cardinal Egidius of Viterbo
Ramon Lull

She claims that Pseudo-Dionysius was the source of the channeling of angels which is essential to Cabala:

Lull belongs into the tradition of medieval Christian Platonism, based primarily on Augustine; the Lullian dignities can nearly all be found listed as divine attributes in Augustine's works. Like all medieval Platonists, Lull is also strongly influenced by the work on the celestial hierarchies of angels by Pseudo-Dionysius. The nearest parallel to his association of dignities or attributes with the elements is to be found in the De divisione naturae of the early Christian Platonist, John Scotus Erigena. Lull's dignities have the creative capacity of Scotus's primordial causes. Moslem forms of Platonic, or Neoplatonic, mysticism had also reached him. Yet perhaps the strongest influence on the formation of the Art was that of the Jewish Cabala. (pp. 14-15)

The Cabalist side gave powerful support to the whole movement. Through the intensive cult of angels, Cabala reaches up into religious spheres and cannot be avoided in approaches to the history of religion. (p. 4)

...the angelic thought-structure within which Agrippa operates is really the same as that which supports Giorgi's mysticism, and Agrippa, too, can be called a Renaissance Neoplatonist, and a Christian Cabalist deeply interested in religious reform. (p 5)

...how was it that John Dee, the philosopher of the Elizabethan age, could base himself on Agrippa's occult angelology whilst at the same time believing himself to be the ardent supporter of a widespread Christian reform? The answer surely is that Dee believed himself to be, like Giorgi and Agrippa, a Christian Cabalist. (p. 6)

...Pico divides Cabala into two main branches (as did the Spanish Cabalists). One is the...art of combining Hebrew letters, which Pico thought rather similar to the Art of Ramon Lull. The other is 'a way of capturing the powers of superior things', or the powers of spirits and angels. Pico carefully warns that this kind of Cabala is good and holy, attaching itself to angels and to good and holy powers, and that it has nothing to do with bad practices through which demons and devils are attracted. If the Cabalist mystic is not himself holy and pure, he may run into spiritual dangers. This warning, and this fear, were always present to the Christian Cabalist who knew that in attempting to scale the heights he might fall into the depths. (p. 23-24)

For [Reuchlin], Cabalist magic did away with this fear for it was concerned with holy forces, with angels, with the sacred names of God. The demonic powers of ancient magic were cleansed of evil, made safe through the angels who cast out demons. Hence...the concentration on angel-summoning in Reuchlin's system. (p. 29)

Pico is basically a mystic, deeply attracted by the hope held out of communicating through Cabala with God and holy spirits. (pp 23-24)

Reuchlin quotes Pico's Cabalist Conclusions. He repeats the names of the
Sephiroth in Hebrew, and shows great interest in the Hebrew names of angels, and how to summon them. (p. 28)

Chapter 1 is titled "Medieval Christian Cabala: The Art of Ramon Lull". In this chapter I noted the similarity to the trend today, best expressed in United Religions Initiative, to unify all religions in the interests of peace.

To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis. (p. 12)

For of all the countries of Europe, Spain was the best placed for making a liberal approach to the three great closely related religions. (p. 17)

I can easily imagine John Paul II making a similar statement, focused as he was on the common ground of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. That focus continues, though perhaps somewhat abated, in the thinking of Benedict.

Modern scholarship has familiarised students of the Renaissance with the fact that Renaissance Neoplatonism had a Hermetic, or magical, core, and that the Renaissance adoption of Cabala could also involve 'practical Cabala', a form of magic. (p. 21)

Consider that just recently I have posted quotes from Jewish sources concerning practical Kabbalah. Based on Yates, could it also be said that modern Judaism involves "a form of magic'?

As we have seen, the Hebrew Cabalists believed that their teachings went right back to Moses through a secret doctrine which had been handed down through initiates. And since, for Pico, Cabala confirmed the truth of Christianity, he believed it to be a Hebrew-Christian source of ancient wisdom which corroborated not only Christianity, but the Gentile ancient wisdom which he admired, particularly the writings of 'Hermes Trismegistus'. Thus Christian Cabala is really a key-stone in the edifice of Renaissance thought on its 'occult' side through which it has most important connections with the history of religion in the period. (p. 22)

It is, I believe, worth noting here that Blavatsky's book is titled the SECRET DOCTRINE. Is her book based on Christian Cabala?

Though Pico's Cabalist Conclusions were formulated by 1486, some years before the actual date of the Expulsion [of the Jews from Spain], there seems little doubt that his instructors were Spanish Jews. Chief among them was the mysterious character known as Flavius Mithridates who...encouraged Pico in the Christian interpretation of Cabala, even to the point of inserting into the texts interpolations of his own pointing in a Christian direction. (p. 22)

To be continued...