it.
Given this system of knowledge, modern distinctions between inner and
outer, psychic and organic (or physical), do not exist. If you wish
to promote love, says Agrippa, eat pigeons; to obtain courage, lions'
hearts. A wanton woman, or charismatic man, possesses the same virtue
as a lodestone, that of attraction.10 Diamonds, on the other hand,
weaken the lodestone, and topaz weakens lust. Everything thus bears the
mark of the Creator, and knowledge, says Agrippa, consists of "a certain
participation," a (sensuous) sharing in His Divinity. This is a world
permeated with meaning, for it is according to these signatures that
everything belongs, has a place. "There is nothing found in the whole
world," he writes, "that hath not a spark of the virtue [of the world
soul]." "Every thing hath its determinate and particular place in the
exemplary world."
During his lifetime Agrippa was branded a charlatan and conjurer, and as
we have noted, magic and Hermeticism were in continual conflict with the
church. But this conflict, like the theory of knowledge that underlay it,
was also one of resemblance, for the medieval church (as we shall discuss
below) was steeped in magical practices and sacraments from which it
derived its power on the local level. Consequently, it would tolerate
no rivalry on this score.11 The important point, however, is that all
premodern knowledge had the same structure. As Michel Foucault tells us,
divination "is not a rival form of knowledge; it is part of the main body
of knowledge itself." Erudition and Hermeticism, Petrarch and Ficino,
ultimately inhabited the same mental universe.
It is the collapse of this mental universe, beginning (if such a thing
can be dated) in the late sixteenth century, that so radically marks
off the medieval from the modern world; and nowhere is this more clearly
portrayed than in Cervantes' epic, "Don Quixote."12 The Don's adventures
are an attempt to decipher the world, to transform reality itself into a
sign. His journey is a quest for resemblances in a society that has come
to doubt their significance. Hence, that society judges him to be mad,
"quixotic." Where he sees the Shield of Mambrino, Sancho Panza can make
out only a barber's basin; where (to take the most famous example) he
perceives giants, Sancho sees only windmills. Hence the literal meaning
of 'paranoia': like knowledge. The division of psychic and material,
mind and body, symbolic and literal, has finally occurred. The madman
perceives resemblances that do not exist, that are seen as not signifying
anything at all. By 1600 he is "alienated in analogy," whereas four
or five decades earlier he was the typical educated European. For the
madman the crown makes the king, and Shakespeare captured the shift in the
definition of reality in his line, "All hoods do not monks make." Given
the meaninglessness of such associations, practices such as conjuring
could no longer be regarded as effective. "I can call spirits from the
vasty deep," says Glendower to Hotspur in "Henry IV, Part I." "Why so
can I, or so can any man," replies the latter; "But will they come when
you do call for them?"
Hotspur's words are the first steps toward a relationship with the world
with which we are very familiar. Glendower, on the other hand, sounds
the last chords of a world largely lost to our imaginations; a world of
resonance, resemblance, and incredible richness. Yet these chords may,
even today, echo vaguely in our subconscious minds. Before turning to
a more extended discussion of the collapse of original participation,
then, it will be worth our while to stay with it a bit longer, and see
if we cannot feel our way into this manner of thinking.
Participation is self and not-self identified at the moment of experience.
The pre-Homeric Greek, the medieval Englishman (to a lesser extent, of
course), and the present-day African tribesman know a thing
Given this system of knowledge, modern distinctions between inner and
outer, psychic and organic (or physical), do not exist. If you wish
to promote love, says Agrippa, eat pigeons; to obtain courage, lions'
hearts. A wanton woman, or charismatic man, possesses the same virtue
as a lodestone, that of attraction.10 Diamonds, on the other hand,
weaken the lodestone, and topaz weakens lust. Everything thus bears the
mark of the Creator, and knowledge, says Agrippa, consists of "a certain
participation," a (sensuous) sharing in His Divinity. This is a world
permeated with meaning, for it is according to these signatures that
everything belongs, has a place. "There is nothing found in the whole
world," he writes, "that hath not a spark of the virtue [of the world
soul]." "Every thing hath its determinate and particular place in the
exemplary world."
During his lifetime Agrippa was branded a charlatan and conjurer, and as
we have noted, magic and Hermeticism were in continual conflict with the
church. But this conflict, like the theory of knowledge that underlay it,
was also one of resemblance, for the medieval church (as we shall discuss
below) was steeped in magical practices and sacraments from which it
derived its power on the local level. Consequently, it would tolerate
no rivalry on this score.11 The important point, however, is that all
premodern knowledge had the same structure. As Michel Foucault tells us,
divination "is not a rival form of knowledge; it is part of the main body
of knowledge itself." Erudition and Hermeticism, Petrarch and Ficino,
ultimately inhabited the same mental universe.
It is the collapse of this mental universe, beginning (if such a thing
can be dated) in the late sixteenth century, that so radically marks
off the medieval from the modern world; and nowhere is this more clearly
portrayed than in Cervantes' epic, "Don Quixote."12 The Don's adventures
are an attempt to decipher the world, to transform reality itself into a
sign. His journey is a quest for resemblances in a society that has come
to doubt their significance. Hence, that society judges him to be mad,
"quixotic." Where he sees the Shield of Mambrino, Sancho Panza can make
out only a barber's basin; where (to take the most famous example) he
perceives giants, Sancho sees only windmills. Hence the literal meaning
of 'paranoia': like knowledge. The division of psychic and material,
mind and body, symbolic and literal, has finally occurred. The madman
perceives resemblances that do not exist, that are seen as not signifying
anything at all. By 1600 he is "alienated in analogy," whereas four
or five decades earlier he was the typical educated European. For the
madman the crown makes the king, and Shakespeare captured the shift in the
definition of reality in his line, "All hoods do not monks make." Given
the meaninglessness of such associations, practices such as conjuring
could no longer be regarded as effective. "I can call spirits from the
vasty deep," says Glendower to Hotspur in "Henry IV, Part I." "Why so
can I, or so can any man," replies the latter; "But will they come when
you do call for them?"
Hotspur's words are the first steps toward a relationship with the world
with which we are very familiar. Glendower, on the other hand, sounds
the last chords of a world largely lost to our imaginations; a world of
resonance, resemblance, and incredible richness. Yet these chords may,
even today, echo vaguely in our subconscious minds. Before turning to
a more extended discussion of the collapse of original participation,
then, it will be worth our while to stay with it a bit longer, and see
if we cannot feel our way into this manner of thinking.
Participation is self and not-self identified at the moment of experience.
The pre-Homeric Greek, the medieval Englishman (to a lesser extent, of
course), and the present-day African tribesman know a thing
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