Glimpses of the Left..

The realm of demonic magic was instead the one of ceremonial magic,
witchcraft, a magic dealing with other worlds and dimensions of existence,
and so much more dangerous for the Church, who wanted to keep an'
exclusive grasp on the extra-mundane theology. This diatribe has anyway .
been exposed in detail elsewhere52; what is of interest for us is that under ·
the label of " Natural " or " Spiritual " magic many practicioner of the occult .
arts where hiding their unhortodox experiments. Trithemius himself - and .
others - were public ally throwing scorn on " black magic " , only to dive
deep into demonic magic experiments in the safety of their laboratories.
One of the most interesting and underestimated figure of the Italian .
Renaissance was the Italian philosopher and magician Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola (1463-1494). The main non-Jewish figure to have studied and
introduced the Qabalah into the western culture, he synthesized the '
Qabalistic and the Medieval Hermeticism into a complete system of .
practical magic very close to the ones that more than 400 years later would :
have dawned on the Western Occultism.
Since childhood an unquiet and passionate student, he always looked forth
for a foundation of knowledge able to trascend the simple dogmas of
Christianity; he became fond of the philosphical and esoteric sciences and,
despite his young age, mastered the Hebrew language as no other
contemporary scholar, learning Chaldean and Arabian as well. In a first
moment he saw the Jewish mysticism as something that could help him
gain new insights into the mysteries of Christianism; therefore he
approached with enthusiasm the study of the more theoretical foundations
of the Qabalah, to accomplish his life-long project: a complete syntheis of j
human knowledge and arts.
I I
His main insights came with the discovery of the works of Abraham Abu'l- l
'Afiya, a Spanish Jew of the thirteenth century that followed the Spanish i
branch of Qabalism known as " Shemot " or " of the Names " , the practical :
part of the Qabalah. Abu'l-' Afiya developed meditation techniques linked
to the different associations of the Hebrew alphabet, whose aim was, on a
side, the mystical and gnostic knowledge of God, and - on a less orthodox
side -, it was meant to use the words of power of the Hebrew language to
52 D.P. Walker: Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella
- 74 -