Of the Virtue of One's Own Name
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (1:70): W, 2: 46 + a substantial addition at mid-text and summarizing W, 2: 47
This chapter, De virtute propriorum nominum (“Of the Virtue of One's Own Name”), 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.
Based on W 2:46, W 2:47 of the Würzburg draft, this chapter was significantly augmented. Perrone Compagni identifies one or more substantial additions, indicating that Agrippa supplemented the original argument with new material, possibly drawn from sources encountered after the 1510 composition.
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
The language and sign chapters of Book I form the first part of Agrippa's extended meditation on magical signification. Miles (2008) argues that these chapters appear to endorse a 'natural language' model in which signs directly embody power, but that this surface reading is complicated by deeper passages in Book III that deny intrinsic power to all human linguistic signs. Lehrich (2003) reads the sign-chapters as steps in the ascending movement from material signatures to celestial characters to the divine Word.