HEINRICH CORNELIUS AGRIPPA von Nettesheim (1486-1535) was a German polymath, physician, legal scholar, soldier, theologian, and occult writer. Entering the University of Cologne at the age of 13, he graduated with a Master of Arts at 16 and went on to study with abbot Johannes Trithemius, famous as the teacher of Paracelsus. Acclaimed for his lectures on Reuchlin and the Corpus Hermeticum at universities across Europe, Agrippa acted as archivist for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Defying accusations of heresy and scrutiny by the Inquisition of Cologne, he published the final version of Three Books of Occult Philosophy two years before his death. Agrippa is considered one of the most influential occultists of the early modern period. ERIC PURDUE has studied metaphysics and the occult and has practiced magic and astrology for more than thirty years, with a particular focus on practical folk and astrological magic. Through his lectures and writings on traditional astrology and talismanic magic, he has been a notable voice on the subjects of medieval astrology, traditional magical systems, and the legacy of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. His new translation of Three Books of Occult Philosophy was more than 10 years in the making.

Publisher’s Preface by Ehud C. Sperling
Foreword by Christopher Warnock
Acknowledgments
Translator’s Introduction

Three Books of Occult Philosophy
To the Reader
Letter from Agrippa to Trithemius
Letter of Response from Trithemius to Agrippa
Dedicatory letter to Count Hermann of Weid

Book One
The Natural World
1 How magicians collect virtues of the threefold world will be shown in these three books.
2 What magic is, what are its parts, and what is required of a professor of magic.
3 Of the four elements, their qualities, and their mixtures with each other.
4 Of the rationale of the threefold consideration of the elements.
5 Of the wonderful natures of fire and earth.
6 The wonderful natures of water, air, and wind.
7 Of the types of compounds, how they are according to the elements, and how the elements agree with each other, with the soul, the senses, and behavior.
8 How the elements are in the heavens, the stars, in daemons, in angels, and finally in God Himself.
9 Of the virtues of natural things most closely depending upon the elements.
10 Of the occult virtues of things.
11 How occult virtues are infused into kinds of things by ideas through the World Soul, the stellar rays, and which things are most abundant with this virtue.
12 How different virtues are infused into different individuals and species.
13 From where occult virtues of things proceed.
14 Of what the World Spirit is and how it binds occult virtues.
15 How we must investigate and test the virtues of things by way of acceptance and similarity.
16 How the operations of different virtues are transferred from one thing to another, and how they are shared with each other.
17 How the virtues of things are investigated and tested by hatred and friendship.
18 Of the inclinations of enmities.
19 How the virtues of things are investigated and tested, which things belong to the entire species, or what things are developed by being granted to particular individuals.
20 How natural virtues in some [things] are throughout their entire substance, but in other [things] in certain parts or members.
21 Of the virtues of things that belong to themselves only in their lifetime, and those [virtues] that remain in them even after death.
22 How inferior things are under celestial bodies, and how the human body, activities, and customs of man are assigned to the stars and signs.
23 How we shall know under which star natural things are and which things are Solar.
24 Of things that are under the Moon.
25 What is under Saturn.
26 That which is of Jupiter.
27 That which refers to Mars.
28 That which is of Venus.
29 Of what follows Mercury.
30 How the entire sublunary world, and that which is in it, is distributed among the planets.
31 How the planets are distributed among the provinces and kingdoms.
32 Of what is under the signs, the fixed stars, and their images.
33 Of the seals and characters of natural things.
34 How through natural things and their virtues, we can draw and attract influences and virtues of celestial bodies.
35 Of the mixtures of natural things with each other and their usefulness.
36 Of the union of mixed things and the introduction of more noble forms and the senses of life.
37 How with certain reliable natural and artificial preparations we may attract certain celestial and vital gifts from above.
38 How gifts are not only celestial and vital but are also received from certain intellectual and divine gifts from above.
39 That with certain reliable materials of the world we can draw the divine world and their divine ministering daemons.
40 Of what bindings are and how they are made.
41 Of sorceries and their power.
42 Of the wonderful virtues of certain sorceries.
43 Of fumigations, their reasoning, and power.
44 The composition of certain fumigations appropriate to the planets.
45 Of the virtues of collyries, ointments, and love potions.
46 Of natural alligations and suspensions.
47 Of rings and their composition.
48 Of the virtues of places, and the places corresponding to each of the stars.
49 Of lights and colors, lanterns, and lamps, and the colors distributed among the stars, houses, and elements.
50 Of bewitchings and their art.
51 Of certain observations producing wonderful virtues.
52 Of the face, gestures, habits, and figure of the body, to which stars these respond, and from where the arts of physiognomy, metoposcopy, and chiromancy have their foundations.
53 Of divination, auspices, and auguries.
54 Of some different animals and other things that have significations in auguries.
55 How auspices are verified through the light of the natural senses, and some rules for proving them.
56 Of soothsaying of lightning and flashes, and how to interpret portents and prodigies.
57 Of geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, and pyromancy; divinations of the four elements.
58 Of reviving the dead, sleeping, and fasting for a long time.
59 Of divination through dreams.
60 Of frenzy and divinations that happen when awake, of the power of the melancholy humor, which sometimes also allures daemons in the human body.
61 Of the forming of man, of the outer and inner senses, of the mind, of the threefold appetite of the soul, and the passion of will.
62 Of the passions of the mind, their origin, difference, and kinds.
63 How passions of the mind change one’s own body by exchanging accidents and moving the spirit.
64 How the passions of the mind change the body by the imitation of a likeness; also of the transformation and transference of man, and the strength of imaginative power held not only in the body but also in the soul.
65 How the passions of the mind also operate outside of themselves in another’s body.
66 That the passions of the mind are most helped by the proper timing of the celestials, and how the perseverance of mind is necessary in all works.
67 How the human mind can connect with the celestial mind andintelligences, and likewise with them impress certain wonderful virtues on inferior things.
68 How our mind can change and bind inferior things to that which is desired.
69 Of speech and the virtues of words.
70 Of the virtue of particular names.
71 Of complex speeches and songs, and the virtues and bindings of incantations.
72 Of the wonderful power of incantations.
73 Of the virtue of writings, and of making imprecations and inscriptions.
74 Of the proportion, correspondence, and reduction of letters to the celestial signs and planets according to various languages, with a table indicating this.

Book Two
The Celestial World

Dedicatory Letter to Count Hermann of Weid

1 Of the necessity of the discipline of mathematics and its many wonderful operations, which only the arts of mathematics can perform.
2 Of numbers, their power, and virtue.
3 That numbers possess such great virtues in natural things as well as transnatural things.
4 Of one and its scale.
5 Of two and its scale.
6 Of three and its scale.
7 Of four and its scale.
8 Of five and its scale.
9 Of six and its scale.
10 Of seven and its scale.
11 Of eight and its scale.
12 Of nine and its scale.
13 Of ten and its scale.
14 Of eleven and twelve, with a twofold scale of twelve, and the kabbalistic and Orphic.
15 Of numbers above twelve, their powers and virtues.
16 Of notable numbers placed in certain gestures.
17 Of various marks of numbers observed by the Romans.
18 Of the marks of the Greeks.
19 Of the marks of the Hebrews and Chaldeans, and certain other marks of magicians.
20 Which numbers are assigned to letters and of the divination of the same.
21 Which numbers are sacred to which gods and which are appointed to the elements.
22 Of the tables of the planets and their virtues and principles, and which divine names, intelligences, and daemons are placed in charge of them.
23 Of geometric figures and bodies, of what magical virtue they exert their influence, and which [figures] agree to each element and the heavens.
24 Of musical harmony, and its strength and power.
25 Of sound and harmonies, and from where their wonderfulness in operation comes.
26 Of the agreement of [sounds and harmonies] with the celestials, and how each harmony of sound responds to each star.
27 Of the proportion, measure, and harmony of the human body.
28 Of the composition and harmony of the human soul.
29 That the observation of the celestials is necessary in all magical operations.
30 When the planets are the most powerfully influential.
31 Of the observation of the fixed stars and their natures.
32 The Sun and Moon and their magical reasoning.
33 Of the twenty-eight mansions of the Moon and their virtues.
34 Of the true motion of the celestials to be observed in the eighth sphere, and the rationale of the planetary hours.
35 How artificial things, such as images, sigils, and the like, obtain some virtues from celestial bodies.
36 Of the images of the zodiac that accept virtues from the stars when engraved.
37 Of the images of the faces and their virtues, and of those images that are outside the zodiac.
38 Of the images of Saturn.
39 Of the images of Jupiter.
40 Of the images of Mars.
41 Of the images of the Sun.
42 Of the images of Venus.
43 Of the images of Mercury.
44 Of the images of the Moon.
45 Of the images of the Head and Tail of the Dragon of the Moon.
46 Of the images of the mansions of the Moon.
47 Of the images of the fixed Behenian stars.
48 Of the figures of geomancy, which are the medium between images and characters, and its table.
49 Of...