Aristotelianism, the alchemical world view had in fact
permeated medieval consciousness to a significant degree. Aristotle's
doctrine of natural place and motion, for example, was part of the
magical doctrine of sympathy, that like knows like; and the notion that
the excitement of "homecoming" causes a body in free-fall to accelerate
as it nears the earth is certainly an expression of participating
consciousness. Furthermore, the highly repetitive and meditative nature
of alchemical operations (grinding, distilling, and so on), which would
induce altered states of consciousness through a prolonged narrowing of
attention, was duplicated in hundreds of medieval craft techniques such as
stained glass, weaving, calligraphy, metalworking, and the illumination
of manuscripts. In general, medieval life and thought were significantly
affected by animistic and Hermetic notions, and to some extent can be
discussed as a unified consciousness.7
What were the common denominators of that consciousness? What
did knowledge consist of, given the epistemological framework of
sixteenth-century Europe? In a word, in the recognition of resemblance.8
The world was seen as a vast assemblage of correspondences. All things
have relationships with all other things, and these relations are ones
of sympathy and antipathy. Men attract women, lodestones attract iron,
oil repels water, and dogs repel cats. Things mingle and touch in an
endless chain, or rope, vibrated (wrote Della Porta in "Natural Magic")
by the first cause, God. Things are also analogous to man in the famous
alchemical concept of the microcosm and the macrocosm: the rocks of
the earth are its bones, the rivers its veins, the forests its hair and
the cicadas its dandruff. The world duplicates and reflects itself in
an endless network of similarity and dissimilarity. It is a system of
hieroglyphics, an open book "bristling with written signs."
How, then, does one know what goes with what? The key, as one might
imagine, consists in deciphering those signs, and was appropriately
termed the "doctrine of signatures." "Is it not true," wrote the
sixteenth-century chemist Oswald Croll, "that all herbs, plants, trees
and other things issuing from the bowels of the earth are so many
magic books and signs?" Through the stars, the Mind of God impressed
itself on the phenomenal world, and thus knowledge had the structure of
divination, or augury. The word "divination" should be taken literally:
finding the Divine, participating in the Mind that stands behind
the appearances. Croll gives as one example the "fact" that walnuts
prevent head ailments because the meat of the nut resembles the brain
in appearance. Similarly, a man's face and hands must resemble the soul
to which they are joined, a concept retained in palmistry even as it
is practiced today, and in the common proverb (in many langnages) that
"the eyes are the windows of the soul."
One of the clearest expositions of the doctrine of signatures is found
in the work of the great Renaissance magician Agrippa von Nettesheim, his
"De Occulta Philosophia" of 1533.9 In chapter 33 of this book he writes:
All Stars have their peculiar natures, properties, and conditions,
the Seals and Characters whereof they produce, through their rays,
even in these inferior things, viz., in elements, in stones, in
plants, in animals, and their members; whence every natural thing
receives, from a harmonious disposition and from its star shining
upon it, some particular Seal, or character, stamped upon it; which
Seal or character is the significator of that star, or harmonious
disposition, containing in it a peculiar Virtue, differing from
other virtues of the same matter, both generically, specifically,
and numerically. Every thing, therefore, hath its character pressed
upon it by its star for some particular effect, especially by that
star which doth principally govern
permeated medieval consciousness to a significant degree. Aristotle's
doctrine of natural place and motion, for example, was part of the
magical doctrine of sympathy, that like knows like; and the notion that
the excitement of "homecoming" causes a body in free-fall to accelerate
as it nears the earth is certainly an expression of participating
consciousness. Furthermore, the highly repetitive and meditative nature
of alchemical operations (grinding, distilling, and so on), which would
induce altered states of consciousness through a prolonged narrowing of
attention, was duplicated in hundreds of medieval craft techniques such as
stained glass, weaving, calligraphy, metalworking, and the illumination
of manuscripts. In general, medieval life and thought were significantly
affected by animistic and Hermetic notions, and to some extent can be
discussed as a unified consciousness.7
What were the common denominators of that consciousness? What
did knowledge consist of, given the epistemological framework of
sixteenth-century Europe? In a word, in the recognition of resemblance.8
The world was seen as a vast assemblage of correspondences. All things
have relationships with all other things, and these relations are ones
of sympathy and antipathy. Men attract women, lodestones attract iron,
oil repels water, and dogs repel cats. Things mingle and touch in an
endless chain, or rope, vibrated (wrote Della Porta in "Natural Magic")
by the first cause, God. Things are also analogous to man in the famous
alchemical concept of the microcosm and the macrocosm: the rocks of
the earth are its bones, the rivers its veins, the forests its hair and
the cicadas its dandruff. The world duplicates and reflects itself in
an endless network of similarity and dissimilarity. It is a system of
hieroglyphics, an open book "bristling with written signs."
How, then, does one know what goes with what? The key, as one might
imagine, consists in deciphering those signs, and was appropriately
termed the "doctrine of signatures." "Is it not true," wrote the
sixteenth-century chemist Oswald Croll, "that all herbs, plants, trees
and other things issuing from the bowels of the earth are so many
magic books and signs?" Through the stars, the Mind of God impressed
itself on the phenomenal world, and thus knowledge had the structure of
divination, or augury. The word "divination" should be taken literally:
finding the Divine, participating in the Mind that stands behind
the appearances. Croll gives as one example the "fact" that walnuts
prevent head ailments because the meat of the nut resembles the brain
in appearance. Similarly, a man's face and hands must resemble the soul
to which they are joined, a concept retained in palmistry even as it
is practiced today, and in the common proverb (in many langnages) that
"the eyes are the windows of the soul."
One of the clearest expositions of the doctrine of signatures is found
in the work of the great Renaissance magician Agrippa von Nettesheim, his
"De Occulta Philosophia" of 1533.9 In chapter 33 of this book he writes:
All Stars have their peculiar natures, properties, and conditions,
the Seals and Characters whereof they produce, through their rays,
even in these inferior things, viz., in elements, in stones, in
plants, in animals, and their members; whence every natural thing
receives, from a harmonious disposition and from its star shining
upon it, some particular Seal, or character, stamped upon it; which
Seal or character is the significator of that star, or harmonious
disposition, containing in it a peculiar Virtue, differing from
other virtues of the same matter, both generically, specifically,
and numerically. Every thing, therefore, hath its character pressed
upon it by its star for some particular effect, especially by that
star which doth principally govern
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