Of the Name of God, Tetragrammaton and Its Virtue
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (3:9): W, 3: 6
This chapter, Quae sit vera de Deo et sanctissima Trinitate orthodoxa fides (“Of the Name of God, Tetragrammaton and Its Virtue”), 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 3:6 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 divine-name chapters are the Kabbalistic apex of DOP's ascending programme. Lehrich (2003) reads them as Agrippa's most serious engagement with the question of how human language can approach divine reality: the divine names are the points at which the infinite descends into the finite, and the magician who knows them participates in the divine creative act. Miles (2008) provides the crucial qualification: the names work only through the faith of those who use them, not through any intrinsic linguistic property — a position Agrippa states explicitly in III:11 but which structures the entire Kabbalistic section.