Of the Tables of the Planets
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (2:35): W, 2: 4
This chapter, aliquam sortiantur a corporibus coelestibus (“Of the Tables of the Planets”), 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 2:4 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
The planetary tables (magic squares) are the practical and theoretical centrepiece of Book II. Lehrich (2003) devotes sustained analysis to these chapters, arguing that the construction of sigils from magic squares — deriving written characters from the path of a spirit's name through a numbered grid — demonstrates Agrippa's most sophisticated attempt to make mathematical structure generate magical writing. The squares embody the celestial virtues of the planets in a form that can be transferred to physical objects; they are, in Lehrich's reading, the book's most complete illustration of how number mediates between the divine and the material.