Of Coloring in Magic and the Use of Colors
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (1:65): W, 1:41 + some additions (one still absent from A)
This chapter, bat. Verum de his abstractionibus latius in posterioribus dis seremus. ) Quomodo passiones animi etiam operantur extra se in corpus alienum (“Of Coloring in Magic and the Use of Colors”), 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 1:41 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.
Agrippa's Argument
The chapter is the capstone of Book I's argument and the point where natural magic touches the celestial register. Agrippa's claim — that 'the mind is far more powerful, strong, fervent, and more prevalent by its motion than vapours exhaling out of bodies' — identifies mental intention as a natural force stronger than material ones. The philosophical framework is Neoplatonic: the tripartite human being (mind / reason / sensory faculty) mirrors the tripartite cosmos, and the mind's celestial portion can act on natural bodies by the same logic that governs stellar influence. Mental magic is therefore not transgression but the natural magic of the highest human faculty. Agrippa cites Apollonius and Pythagoras as practitioners — invoking the Hermetic and Pythagorean traditions to ground the claim. The chapter's closing deferral ('the virtues of the fantasy are subordinated to reason, and reason to mind') establishes the hierarchy that ceremonial magic in Book III will complete.
Scholarly Perspectives
Lehrich (2003) reads Book I, Chapter 65 as the culminating argument of Agrippa's case for mental magic, and the chapter's position at the close of the first book gives it particular structural weight in the historiographical debate about what kind of thinker Agrippa was. The chapter's central claim — that 'the body, and soul of one may in like manner be affected with the mind of another, seeing the mind is far more powerful, strong, fervent, and more prevalent by its motion than vapours exhaling out of bodies' — allows Lehrich to press a thesis against the influential reading offered by Frances Yates: where Yates's 'Man the operator' is a figure animated by quasi-religious Hermetic enthusiasm, Lehrich argues that Agrippa's operator has a philosophically rigorous, structurally necessary grounding. The chapter demonstrates that the threefold division of the world (elemental, celestial, intellectual) is replicated within the human being, so that the celestial portion of the mind can act upon natural bodies by the same logic that governs celestial influence over earthly matter. Mental magic is therefore not an exceptional intrusion but a consequence built into the system's architecture. Lehrich further emphasizes the chapter's function as a 'teaser,' in which the passions of the fantasy are subordinated to reason and reason to mind, with the miraculous works of Apollonius and Pythagoras invoked as evidence of what the higher faculties can achieve.