Anti-Rationalism and Illumination in Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres

A new perspective on The Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim. While Cornelius Agrippa, for many years, maintained a marginalized position in European Intellectual History as the great unsettled thinker of the Renaissance because of the perceived paradoxical relationship between his two main works, the occult Three Books of Occult Philosophy from 1533, and the supposed skeptical work Declamation Attacking the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and the Arts from 1526, recent research from within the last 30 years has helped cast a new light on the authorship and in some ways even led to a reevaluation of Agrippa both as a thinker and as a historical character. However, Agrippa's work, The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, remains something of a mystery, and its literary style and bricolage-like character almost seem to lend credibility to the earlier perceptions of Agrippa as a credulous or confused thinker. But in this study, we will show that, far from just being a mere compilation of facts and alleged facts, The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, contains hidden depths and must be understood, both as a result of a rather impressive level of creativity in its design, and as an incredibly bold scheme to introduce the Hermetic discourse into the midst of the Northern European conflict between Catholicism, Protestantism, and Humanism, to show that a series of the themes and problems central to this conflict, could be addressed within the framework of the Hermetic traditions. All while teaching its readers magic.