Despite all efforts of the Vatican to inhibit any scientific efforts, with travel and trade expanding beyond Europe into the New World and Asia, enterprising young minds yearned a broader scope of the world and life in general. Hence such pioneers as Leonardo Da Vinci, humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and astronomer Nikolaus Kopernikus were much inspired to incredible ideas, often way ahead of their time. One mustn't forget however, that a formal education in those days were property and product of monastic institutions. Thus its scholars were raised on the idea of existence and destiny as being of godly design. That meant that any attempt to experiment with that design stood a good chance of prosecution for heresy. For this reason Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa seldom settled down in one place for very long. Were it not for the discrete interests of the Hapsburgs and the Medicis in his works, these manuscripts would have long since disappeared. Nonetheless, while Rome had its hands full with the Protestant rebellion, alchemists and esoterics of the period did aspire to identify “divine creation” with a whole medley of goetic formulas derived from ancient Middle-Eastern tradition. Having read some of Agrippa's works from De occulta philosophia libri tres, there is no question in my mind that this is not only forms the basis of Western Hermetic Mysticism, but Wicca as well. The only difference is that Wicca tries to amalgamate it with folk cunning craft which Hermeticism, being elitaire, prefers to avoid.
http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/magic/Agrippa1.pdf
http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/magic/Agrippa2.pdf
http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/magic/Agrippa3.pdf
Being an abstract minded animist, that whole Pythagorean school of theosophy just gives me constipation, especially its mathematical dogmas that seriously fall short of the real dynamics of causality. They just can't come to terms with that simple law of relativity that Nature multiplies through division. In essence I'm talking about the infinitesimal here, that very fractal symmetry in which all things have their own algorithmic part in the whole spacetime continuum, albeit DNA, molecular lattice symmetry or quantum matrix. So if you're looking for the sublime in a multiverse where Nature abhors absolutes, bear in mind the old proverb “that which rests, rusts”; and don't give me any guff about vindictive hairy thunderers or karma if I don't commit myself to the ritual self infliction of reciting whole volumes of Ancient Babylonian hocum. I do not have that god-fearing persecution complex they got so bent on for that man in god's image nonsense, they had to proliferate the whole planet for some perverse sense of security in numbers. The irony is that Homo Sapiens Sapiens is really just another kind of simian, with much the same sexual displays and harem building hierarchy as the rest under all that artifice.
