Of Things Said About Prodigies and Portents
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (1:57): W, 2: 56 (with a modification in the sequence of passages) + a passage from W, 2: 50 + some addi tions (one still absent from A)
This chapter, divinationibus (“Of Things Said About Prodigies and Portents”), 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 closely to W 2:56, W 2:50 in the Würzburg draft and appears to be substantially preserved in the 1533 edition. The direct correspondence shows that Agrippa regarded this material as settled relatively early and did not feel compelled to revise it significantly.
The stability of this chapter across the manuscript and printed versions suggests it belongs to the secure core of Agrippa's natural-magical argument as it was constituted by 1510. Such chapters allow scholars to reconstruct the intellectual foundation on which the more elaborate structures of the 1533 edition were built.
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.