Of the Violent and Temperate Winds and Their Signs
New in 1533Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (2:22): new (still recorded as part of 2: 21 in the Tables of Contents attached to A; henceforth numbering of all following chapters in A differs from K by one)
This chapter, 2:22 (“Of the Violent and Temperate Winds and Their Signs”), 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.
According to Perrone Compagni's table of comparison, this chapter is new in the 1533 edition and has no direct counterpart in the Würzburg manuscript (W = MS M.ch.q.50). The description notes: \u201c(still recorded as part of 2: 21 in the Tables of Contents attached to A; henceforth numbering of all following chapters in A differs from K by one).\u201d Its addition reflects the conceptual enrichment Agrippa undertook between approximately 1510 and the early 1530s, incorporating sources and arguments unavailable or unexplored in the juvenile draft.
The absence of this chapter from the Würzburg draft invites reflection on what prompted its insertion in the mature edition. Agrippa's intellectual biography between 1510 and 1530 — including his engagement with Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Hermetism, and scholastic natural philosophy — provides the context for understanding such additions. The partial edition A (sigla A in Perrone Compagni) may offer clues about when the material was composed.
Agrippa's Argument
The chapter demonstrates Agrippa's mathematical-magic programme in technical detail: the planetary magic squares contain spirit-names encoded through Hebrew gematria, and the sigils derived from tracing the gematria values across the grid are simultaneously mnemonic devices and operative instruments. Agrippa appears to devise at least one original construction rule (for the solar square), showing that this is not mere compilation but active engagement with the mathematical tradition he inherits. The chapter is absent from the 1510 draft, indicating a mature deliberate addition. The philosophical point is that mathematical structure generates magical writing — the sigils are not arbitrary symbols but traces of the spirit's position in the cosmic grid, which is itself a projection of celestial numerical order onto a material surface. This is the fullest practical demonstration of Agrippa's claim that the celestial register operates through number and that number can be written.
Scholarly Perspectives
Lehrich (2003) provides the most sustained technical engagement with this chapter, treating it as the primary demonstration of Agrippa's mathematical magic and as the foundational exemplum for his theory of analog signification in the DOP. Lehrich shows in careful detail how the planetary demonic sigils are generated by tracing the Hebrew gematria values of spirit-names across the magic squares, and how the planetary characters function as mnemotechnical instruments for reconstructing those squares from memory — a procedure that reflects deliberate editorial selection and at least one apparently original construction rule devised by Agrippa for the singly-even solar square. The chapter's absence from the Juvenile Draft and its projected table of contents, appearing only in the 1533 final redaction, reinforces Lehrich's claim that it represents a mature, considered addition rather than encyclopedic padding. The larger argumentative weight Lehrich places on II:22 is semiotic: the sigils exemplify what he calls a hieroglyphic mode of signification, in which signs are simultaneously transparent in structure and radically opaque to the uninitiated. This positions II:22 at the center of the historiographical debate about whether Agrippa is best understood as a compiler of Renaissance occult commonplaces or as an original systematic thinker. Against the encyclopedist reading implicit in earlier scholarship, Lehrich uses this chapter to insist on Agrippa's originality and on the internal coherence of DOP as a semiotic system whose full meaning is deliberately withheld from the uninstructed reader.