Magic and the Supernatural - Lancaster University

Juan Pablo Maggiotti
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that by which the body is ruled, there is an innate love of procreation for preserving
life eternally.» 10
It is evident at this point that, for Ficino, love induces to continuous generation,
in a definitive proof of the soul’s desire for eternity. But this doesn’t mean just a
proof for the immortality of the soul, it shows up in addition that the lover wants to
give eternity to the beloved one.
Therefore, in order to keep our possessions permanently, by
whatever means, we try to reproduce those which pass away.
Reproduction is effected through procreation. Hence the instinct
for procreation is innate in all things. But since procreation
renders mortal things like divine things in continuity, it is
certainly a divine gift. Since divine things are beautiful, ugly
things are their opposite, but beautiful things are like divine
things and have an affinity with them. 11
When bringing together empathic things, the artist restores and gives them
eternity. In doing so, he makes them equal to God and makes himself equal to God,
as he’s propagating his own perfection to exterior things. It is this divine gift what
Ficino remarks as the «true magic» of love, out of which what is multiple becomes
one, and what is mortal receives immortality.
Art and magic are two ways of divinization through amorous action over the
world, because both restore the harmonies between things, functioning as copula
mundi and elevating the finite realities to the Creator.
Ficino’s magical theory supposes his cosmology, in which everything is
interconnected. And it’s from these correspondences that magical operations are
possible, for they grant that what’s going on in one part of the cosmos is passed on
to other parts. So the cosmos surfaces as magical because nothing happening
anywhere stays isolated from the whole, as previously bond together by a divine
creative love.
But the parts of this world, like the parts of a single animal, all
deriving from a single author, are joined to each other by the
communion of a single nature. (...) From this common
relationship is born a common love; from love, a common
attraction. And this is the true magic. 12
1 De amore II, 9, p. 58.
2 De amore VI, 11, p. 130.
3 De amore II, 7, pp. 53-54.
Notes
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