Thesis 9>13
Latin
Magicam operari non est aliud quam maritare mundum.
Copy-text Farmer 1998 (farmer1998:25280), after the Rome print of 7 December 1486 (colophon farmer1998:28040-28042). Akopyan and Mandosio quote the same words (akopyan2018:613; mandosio2012:569).
English
To work magic is nothing else than to wed the world.
'magicam' is the accusative of the adjective used as a noun, 'the magical [art]', object of 'operari' (editorial inference from farmer1998:25280). 'maritare' is the vinedresser's verb for training a vine on a tree, the sense of the Oration's image of the farmer who 'marries' elms to vines (busi2014:1567-1568; copenhaver2019:17517-17519).
Doctrine
The thesis defines the whole of magical operation by one act, marriage: the magus joins what is divided in the world (farmer1998:25280). Farmer reads 9>10-14 as one series whose point is that the purified soul of the magician gathers the rational forces scattered through the celestial and terrestrial worlds and raises them, so that 'homo magus functions as a cosmic priest' (farmer1998:25295-25297). The same series joins the idea of man as microcosm to the soul's redemption and to the actuation, union and marriage of the world (farmer1998:7290-7293). On this reading the purified magus receives the power to raise fallen nature with himself, 'to marry the world', just as Christ marries the soul prepared by philosophy for the mystical ascent (farmer1998:7284-7287). The Oration spells the image out: as a farmer weds elms to vines, so the magus weds earth to heaven, the lower things to the endowments and powers of the higher (busi2014:1567-1568; copenhaver2019:19650-19652). Magic in this sense does not make its effects but serves nature as she makes them, calling into the light powers sown by God and scattered through the world (copenhaver2019:19637-19640).
Context
Copenhaver traces the axiom to Plotinus, for whom an art of magical love-drawing knits soul to soul as one might train two separate trees towards one another (copenhaver2019:17509-17516). Pico, he writes, turned this into plainer words with help from Roman poets (copenhaver2019:17517-17518). He points to Ovid's Vertumnus, who carried a ladder to climb the elms that bore the ripe fruit of his vineyard, so that the farmer, like the magus, climbed high to bring fruit from above to below (copenhaver2019:17521-17524). Mandosio makes the marriage of the world 'the scope of the magical work', the union of what is above with what is below (mandosio2012:512-514).
Reception
Mandosio argues that for Pico the magus who wishes to perform this marriage needs cabalistic skill to attract the divine emanations and direct their influence to the physical world (mandosio2012:512-518). Akopyan reads the image as an alchemical marriage, used by alchemists and made popular by Carl Gustav Jung (akopyan2018:613-614); in his monograph he qualifies the analogy as 'probably' alchemical (akopyan2021:1317-1318). Ebgi uses the same verb for the power of magical characters, which, unlike the signs of conventional languages, can marry the world of things to the world of thought (busi2014:9776-9780; busi2014:10199).
Historiography
Farmer's reading is eschatological: the operative side of Pico's magic belongs to a plan for cosmic salvation fitted to the goals of the Vatican debate (farmer1998:7287-7289). He sets this reading of the magus as cosmic priest against Yates's claim that Pico's magic prepared scientific attitudes to the world (farmer1998:7345-7347). Busi reads the thesis thus: the Piconian magus, like a broker of the cosmos, rejoins what is unpaired and celebrates the nuptials of matter (busi2014:1538-1543). Copenhaver's contribution is philological, identifying the Plotinian axiom and the Roman poets behind the verb (copenhaver2019:17509-17524; copenhaver2019:24166-24167). The disagreement is over what is married: souls and cosmos in a drama of redemption for Farmer, the lower and higher powers of nature in Copenhaver's Plotinian reading, matter paired with matter for Busi (editorial comparison of farmer1998:7284-7287, copenhaver2019:17509-17520 and busi2014:1541-1543).
Pico's sources
- Oration: 'Et sicut agricola ulmos vitibus, ita magus terram caelo, idest inferiora superiorum dotibus virtutibusque maritat': Pico's own expansion of the image (busi2014:1567-1568)
- Plotinus, Enneads 4.4.40, on magical love-drawing that knits soul to soul like trees trained towards one another: the philosophical source Copenhaver identifies for the axiom (copenhaver2019:17509-17518)
- Virgil, Georgics; Horace, Epodes 2.9-10; Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.623-697 (Vertumnus and Pomona): the Roman poets behind the vine-and-elm image (copenhaver2019:24166-24167)
Quotations cited
- “homo magus functions as a cosmic priest” — Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486) (farmer1998:25297)
- “Et sicut agricola ulmos vitibus, ita magus terram caelo” — Giulio Busi and Raphael Ebgi, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, Qabbalah (busi2014:1567)
- “a farmer marries elm to vine, so a magus joins earth to heaven” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory (copenhaver2019:17518)
- “This image of alchemical marriage was used by several alchemists” — Ovanes Akopyan, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Astrology (1486-1493): From Scientia Naturalis to the Disputationes (akopyan2018:613)
Not established
- Whether Pico had any alchemical source in view: not established by the sources consulted; Akopyan's alchemical reading is offered without a Piconian source (akopyan2018:613-614).
- Any direct use of the verb 'maritare' in a magical text known to Pico: not established by the sources consulted.
Discussed in
- Ovanes Akopyan, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Astrology (1486-1493): From Scientia Naturalis to the Disputationes (2018)
- Ovanes Akopyan, Debating the Stars in the Italian Renaissance: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem and Its Reception (2021)
- Jean-Marc Mandosio, Beyond Pico della Mirandola: John Dee's formal numbers and real cabala (2012)
- (unidentified), Self-Knowledge, Illumination and Natural: notes on Pico sources (n.d.)
Farmer's cross-references
- 10>3 Nomina deorum quos Orpheus canit non decipientium demonum, a quibus malum et non bonum prouenit. Sed naturalium uirtutum diuinarumque sunt n
- 11>12 Non potest operari per puram Cabalam, qui non est rationaliter intellectualis.
- 5>45 Sensus naturae quem ponunt Alchindus, Bacon, Guilielmus Parisiensis, et quidam alii, maxime autem omnes magi, nihil est aliud quam sensus ue
- 5>50 Ista propositio in Phedro: Omnis anima totius inanimati curam habet, simpliciter de quacunque uere anima intelligenda est.
- 8>3 Quod dicunt interpretes super dictum secundum Zoroastris, de duplici aere, aqua, et terra, nihil aliud sibi uult nisi quodlibet elementum qu
- 9>10 Quod magus homo facit per artem, fecit natura naturaliter faciendo hominem.
- 9>11 Mirabilia artis magicae non sunt nisi per unionem et actuationem eorum quae seminaliter et separate sunt in natura.
- 9>12 Forma totius magicae uirtutis est ab anima hominis stante, et non cadente.
- 9>14 Siqua est natura immediata nobis quae sit uel simpliciter_uel saltem ut multum rationaliter rationalis, magicam habet in summo, et eius part