Of Images and Seals of the Planets
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (2:50): W, 2: 16 + a substantial addition at the end
This chapter, tiones vero ad huiusmodi imagines et consimiles observandas docet nos ea pars astrologiae, quae de electionibus inscripta est. De observationibus quibusdam coelestibus et practica quarundam eiusdem (“Of Images and Seals 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.
Based on W 2:16 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.
Agrippa's Argument
The chapter culminates the mathematical-magic programme with its most ambitious claim: that the magus who 'the elements being restrained, nature being overcome, the heavens being overpowered,' transcends even the angelic orders and comes to the Archetype itself, can 'give a soul to an image.' This is not conjuring but theurgic participation — the magus becomes a 'cooperator' of God, replicating through his own operations the divine creative act by which God gave soul to the cosmos. Agrippa draws on Neoplatonic theurgy (Iamblichus, Porphyry) and on Ficino's use of talisman-making as cosmological mediation. His distinctive move is to connect this to a clear hierarchy of three kinds of magic-image in the chapter: planetary images for specific effects, images for prophetic dreams, and images animated by divine cooperation. The third category establishes that mathematical magic has a theurgic culmination — it points toward Book III before Book III has begun.
Scholarly Perspectives
Lehrich (2003) treats De occulta philosophia II:50, 'Of certain celestial observations and the practice of some images,' as one of the two pivotal practical exempla of mathematical magic in Book II, and reads its tripartite structure as the moment where his broader argument about the operative magus receives its fullest demonstration. Applying Panofsky's tripartite distinction of pre-iconography, iconography, and iconology, Lehrich argues that the magus-constructor does not merely interpret an image but predetermines its reference structure, thereby controlling the iconological content and fixing a sign that carries indexical power over the world. The chapter's climactic passage — that only the one who, 'the elements being restrained, nature being overcome, the heavens being overpowered,' transcends the progress of angels and comes to the Archetype itself can 'give a soul to an image' — is for Lehrich the crux of his semiotic reading: mathematical magic is about enacting rather than merely understanding the celestial hierarchy. He further observes that this passage connects II:50 forward to Book III's ceremonial magic, revealing that all three varieties of Agrippan magic share the same telos of divine cooperation, the magus becoming what the text calls 'a cooperator' of the Archetype. The chapter thus occupies a hinge position in the historiographical debate about whether Agrippa's system is primarily theoretical or operational: Lehrich's reading insists that II:50 is precisely where the speculative architecture resolves into a practical and theurgic programme continuous with the angelic and divine magic of Book III.