The Three Kinds of Magic
New in 1533Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (1:3): new
This chapter, 1:3 (“The Three Kinds of Magic”), occupies a significant place in Agrippa's systematic exposition of occult philosophy. In the 1533 Cologne printed edition (De occulta philosophia libri tres, sigla K in Perrone Compagni's critical apparatus), the text represents Agrippa's mature formulation of the ideas it addresses, the product of over two decades of reading, travel, and revision since the composition of the Würzburg draft.
According to Perrone Compagni's table of comparison, this chapter is entirely new in the 1533 edition: it has no antecedent in the Würzburg draft (W). Its presence marks one of the conceptual expansions that distinguish K from W — the addition of material reflecting Agrippa's subsequent reading and intellectual development.
The absence of this chapter from the Würzburg draft invites reflection on what prompted its insertion in the mature edition. Agrippa's intellectual biography between 1510 and 1530 — including his engagement with Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Hermetism, and scholastic natural philosophy — provides the context for understanding such additions. The partial edition A (sigla A in Perrone Compagni) may offer clues about when the material was composed.
Agrippa's Argument
This chapter's argument turns on Platonic elemental theory: earth alone, among the four elements, resists fundamental transmutation — it is intransmutabilis (not convertible into other elements, only dissolved or mixed). Agrippa draws on Plato's Timaeus and the Neoplatonic commentary tradition, but his emphasis on earth's unique ontological stability is oriented toward an alchemical conclusion: a substance that persists through elemental change without being converted is a candidate for the prima materia, the universal substrate underlying elemental differentiation. The chapter belongs to the systematic argument of I:3–6 establishing the cosmological conditions for occult virtues, and specifically for the reception of celestial rays and the seminal virtues Agrippa will invoke throughout Book I's natural-magic programme.
Scholarly Perspectives
Newman's engagement with Book I, Chapter 3 offers one of the most philologically precise interventions in recent Agrippa scholarship. Newman (2004) cites DOP I.iii to establish Agrippa's adherence to a Platonic doctrine in which earth alone among the four elements resists fundamental transmutation, being only dissolved or mixed rather than converted into other elemental forms. The argument carries significant historiographical weight because Newman simultaneously exposes a textual corruption: the Lyon 1600 edition altered Agrippa's 'intransmutabilem' to 'transmutabilem,' inverting the philosophical claim entirely. Newman demonstrates that Müller-Jahncke's anti-alchemical reading of Agrippa was built, in part, on this corrupted text, rendering that interpretation methodologically unsound at its foundations. This philological recovery serves Newman's larger revisionist thesis — that Agrippa was not hostile to alchemy as such but rather distinguished a legitimate, philosophically grounded metallurgical alchemy from its vulgar counterfeits. Within that argument, Chapter 3's doctrine of terrestrial non-transmutability is load-bearing: earth's unique ontological stability makes it a plausible candidate for the alchemical prima materia, the undifferentiated substrate that precedes elemental differentiation.