Of Lots and Marks, and How Lots Are Drawn
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (1:55): W, 2: 52 + short additions and a substantial one at the end (some passages still absent from A)
This chapter, aliquot regulis (“Of Lots and Marks, and How Lots Are Drawn”), 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 2:52 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
Agrippa's treatment of divination connects the practical programme of natural magic to the theory of the soul's prophetic capacities developed more fully in Book III. Daniels (1964) notes that Agrippa's empiricism applies here as elsewhere: the evidence for divination's efficacy comes from accumulated testimony, not theoretical demonstration. Lehrich (2003) situates the divination chapters at the boundary between natural and celestial magic, where material operations begin to shade into the soul's capacity to receive information from higher sources.