Mood And Body Quotes

“By this time, [Agrippa] had written his major work, the three-volume treatise On Occult Philosophy, although this had to wait more than twenty years for publication. It is a remarkable work for a man of twenty-four. He begins by stating clearly that magic is nothing to do with sorcery or the devil, but with various occult gifts—prophecy, second sight and so on. A typical chapter of the first volume is entitled ‘Of Light, Colours, Candles and Lamps, and to what Stars, Houses and Elements several Colours are ascribed.’ The ‘houses,’ of course, refers to the signs of the zodiac; each planet has two, one for the day and one for the night. But his central belief is stated at the beginning of the sixty-third chapter: ‘The fantasy, or imaginative power, has a ruling power over the passions of the soul, when these are bound to sensual apprehensions.’ That is to say, when my passions are bound up with physical things, rather than with ideas, my imagination begins to play a large part in my feelings. Some slight depression sends my spirits plummeting; I become a victim of a see-saw of emotion. The next sentence is slightly obscure, but expands this idea: ‘For [imagination] does, of its own accord, according to the diversity of the passions, first of all change the physical body with a sensible transmutation, by changing the accidents in the body, and by moving the spirit upward or downward, inward or outward…’ This is a remarkable sentence to have been written in 1510. It not only recognises the extent to which human beings, especially stupid ones, are the victims of auto-suggestion, but also that these moods affect the body directly. There is always present in hermetic literature this suggestion that man’s body is more dependent on his will than he ever realises. Agrippa goes on to point out that lovers can experience such a strong tie that they feel one another’s illnesses. People can die of sadness, when the will becomes inoperative. These doctrines of Agrippa might be compared with the assertion of Paracelsus, seven years his junior, that ‘Resolute imagination is the beginning of all magical operations,’ and that ‘It is possible that my spirit…through an ardent will alone, and without a sword, can stab and wound others.”
― Colin Wilson, The Occult