Of the Various Orders of Spirits and How They Are Governed
Perrone Compagni — Table of Comparison
1533 edition (3:11): W, 3: 49 + four substantial additions
This chapter, De divinis nominibus eorundemque potentia et virtute (“Of the Various Orders of Spirits and How They Are Governed”), 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 3:49 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
This chapter conceals what is arguably the most philosophically significant claim in the entire De occulta philosophia: that sacred words 'have not their power in Magical operations, from themselves, as they are words, but from the occult divine powers working by them in the minds of those who by faith adhere to them.' The claim is embedded between lengthy lists of divine names and diminishing spells — a reader attending to the lists will not notice the doctrinal statement that transforms their meaning. Agrippa draws on Augustinian sign theory (words as conventional signs whose efficacy depends on shared understanding) and Neoplatonic theurgy (divine power as the ultimate cause, mediated through the practitioner's faith). His move is to apply this anti-magical sign theory to magic itself, dissolving the apparent contradiction between a philosophy of language that denies inherent word-power and a practice that deploys words for operative ends. The resolution: the words work, but not for the reasons a naive reader would suppose.
Scholarly Perspectives
The central historiographical dispute surrounding Book III, Chapter 11 concerns whether Agrippa's treatment of sacred language belongs to a tradition of autonomous sign-power — the view that occult names act by virtue of their inherent properties — or whether it encodes a more sophisticated theology of mediated divine action. Lehrich (2003) draws on this chapter twice, finding in it the clearest expression of what he calls the 'conduit pipe' theory: the chapter's explicit declaration that sacred words derive their power not from themselves as words but from 'the occult divine powers working by them in the minds of those who by faith adhere to them.' For Lehrich, this passage demonstrates that DOP's semiotic is not a theory of sign-autonomy but a theology in which the sign functions only as a vehicle for divine power channeled through the practitioner's faith and spiritual elevation. He further notes that both key passages appear only in the final 1533 draft, suggesting deliberate late-stage theological refinement. Miles (2008) converges with Lehrich on the import of the same quotation, but presses its implications further, arguing that Agrippa's position constitutes a 'remarkably modern' recognition of the arbitrariness of the sign — a direct refutation of the denotative fallacy that Brian Vickers had attributed to Renaissance occultism. Where Miles extends Lehrich's reading is in his attention to the chapter's structural rhetoric: the arbitrary-sign argument is deliberately embedded within densely compendious lists of Divine names, diminishing spells, and Hebrew seals, so that an inattentive reader might mistake Agrippa for asserting the very identity of signifier and signified that the chapter's doctrinal core explicitly denies. For Miles, the chapter thus enacts on a formal level the concealment it thematizes, making III:11 not merely a theoretical statement but a rhetorical performance of its own thesis.