Of the Virtue of Places, and What Stars Dominate What Regions
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (1:46): W, 1: 36 + an addition at mid-text
This chapter, De alligationibus et suspensionibus physicis (“Of the Virtue of Places, and What Stars Dominate What Regions”), 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.
This chapter corresponds to W 1:36 in the Würzburg draft, with shorter additions in the 1533 text. The core argument is preserved from W, but Agrippa refined it with supplementary passages, qualifying or extending particular points.
The extent of revision in this chapter illustrates the dynamic character of Agrippa's rewriting process. Rather than simply updating facts, he appears to have substantially reconfigured the argument. Comparison with the partial edition A — which represents an intermediate stage — may reveal whether the additions were introduced gradually or in a single later revision.
Scholarly Perspectives
Daniels (1964) identifies Agrippa's numerological reasoning as grounded in a practical empiricism: number is privileged because numerical regularities are the most reliably observable form of occult correspondence. Lehrich (2003) traces the intellectual tradition to Iamblichus and Pico, for whom numbers are ontological principles rather than merely abstract quantities — a position that elevates the scales of correspondence from mnemonics to cosmological architecture.