Veterum Sophorum Sigilla et Imagines Magicae (pseudo-Trithemian, 1612; e-rara witness)

Veterum Sophorum Sigilla — untranslated chunk full_chunk_0015

Style C scholarly rendering. GPT-5.5 fresh translation with footnoting against the angels / planets reference table. Source register: ocr_damaged_prose; OCR quality estimate: 2/5.

Magic: Occult Influence, Characters, and Sigils

The passage defends the natural and theological legitimacy of occult operations performed through characters and engraved images, arguing that their efficacy comes not from material shape alone but from divine power mediated through celestial influence, names, letters, and nature.

Magic

To seek the source of this occult influence from primary, manifest qualities, from temperament, or from the whole substance is not so much absurd as ridiculous, since the actions of those beings from whom these powers flow are not corporeal, and are poured in from heaven without a body.^1 Therefore there is no need here for any measuring by the senses, no little contest of words, and no empty attempt at demonstrations. That the beginning of every philosophical demonstration cannot be sought from the senses and from qualities, but must be sought elsewhere, is clear even from this common example: if someone asks about the color of a white rose, namely whence it derives its origin, and wishes to assign its cause to a colder temperament, what, I ask, will he say about a red one?^2 Will you say that species of endive pour out milky juice for this reason, because they are cold? Yet there are many very hot plants, such as [unclear], which swell with and drip the same juice. And is aloe bitter for this reason, because it is hot? But in opium, which kills by a most destructive coldness, there is an extraordinary bitterness.^3 And although it may be granted that such things proceed from the property of the whole substance, nevertheless in our mystery a more exalted and more excellent artificer, engraver, and former must be placed and sought above that property.^4 Therefore they have labored in vain who, with Alexander, have attempted to refer all things to manifest qualities; Scaliger, in Exercise 318, says that this is the height of shamelessness, and that at least in the case of poisons they ought to have grown more acute.^5 We see certain things burst forth from the womb of nature and [conjectured: from one source], whose causes, even if they are plainly inexplicable to us, nevertheless in the meantime it is useful and pleasing for Philiatros, an industrious and sagacious investigator of natural things, to devise probable explanations.^6 If he does not fully attain them, he nevertheless does not withdraw credibility from manifest things, nor does he malign their effects, but pursues nature and its maker with admiration.

Hence it is clear that not everything is vain which has been elicited concerning characteristic healing, which accomplishes natural operations through engraved images hung from the neck, by the marvelous influence of the heavenly properties of the stars agreeing with our bodies.^7 I say that those things are not wholly vain which the most ancient investigators of nature committed to letters and monuments concerning the written word, or characters and sigils, fashioned at definite times according to the power and influx of heaven, without any superstition of the sort fashioned only by ignorance of this mystery, without profanation of the divine name, without scandal, and without any base violation of God and religion.^8 Although these things have up to now, and especially in these last times, lain hidden and concealed among certain people who have abused them rather than used them lawfully, falling into superstitions and not understanding their beginnings, and daring to attribute more to them than God, the creator of all things, granted and willed to be made manifest through them.

Yet I am so far from attributing any power to these images in themselves, or from affirming that a character or a named constellation has virtue by reason of the sign itself, since configuration, number, size, position, continuity, and separation are not principles of any action, that unless another agent is present and gives warning, by whose power the characters are effective, I plainly deny it.^9 God through the prophets heals human beings by the spoken word alone.^10 For God is living, and the name of God is also living; the letters of the living name are also living. God lives through himself; his name lives through him; and the letters live through the name. And just as God has life in himself, so also in his own name he gave it to have life in itself, and the name in turn gave life to the letters.^11 Images or characters, therefore, are effective by reason of the virtue or office ordained by God or by nature for such a name or character. For there is no power, whether in heaven or on earth, that does not descend from God. Thus medicines are visible bodies, words invisible bodies; whether herb or word heals, God is in the cause, that is, the Spirit of God assists nature through the word "Let it be."^12 Hence the herb itself is not the medicine; rather, the medicine lies hidden invisibly in it, implanted there by God. For this reason, things more remote from the senses and having hidden causes should not immediately be condemned all the way down to Orcus, nor foolishly mocked.

End.

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^1. “Occult influence” here means a hidden causal power not reducible to the manifest Aristotelian qualities hot, cold, wet, and dry. The passage aligns such efficacy with incorporeal celestial mediation rather than with bodily contact. ^2. The rose example attacks explanations that derive color from simple elemental temperament. The point is not botanical precision but the insufficiency of manifest qualities for accounting for particular natural forms. ^3. Aloe and opium are stock examples in early-modern debates over occult properties: their observable effects do not map neatly onto a single manifest quality such as heat or cold. ^4. “Property of the whole substance” translates proprietas totius substantiae, a scholastic-medical category used when an effect could not be explained by the four manifest qualities alone. ^5. “Scaliger” is Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), whose Exotericarum exercitationum liber XV de subtilitate criticized explanations of natural effects by manifest qualities alone; “Exercise 318” is cited explicitly in the text. “Alexander” is most probably Alexander of Aphrodisias, a major Aristotelian commentator invoked in Renaissance natural philosophy. ^6. Philiatros is a Greek-derived learned persona or title, “lover of medicine,” here meaning the physician or medical naturalist who searches for probable causes without denying observed effects. ^7. “Characteristic healing” renders cura characteristica: healing by written, engraved, or inscribed characters. The passage presents such operations as natural-astrological rather than demonic when properly ordered. ^8. “Characters and sigils” translate characteres et sigilla, technical terms for written signs, seals, or images whose efficacy was thought to depend on form, timing, celestial influence, and divine ordination. ^9. The denial that figure, number, magnitude, position, continuity, or division act by themselves is meant to distinguish licit sign-use from superstition: the sign is not autonomous but depends on a higher agent. ^10. The reference to healing by the prophets evokes biblical prophetic miracles performed through divine command rather than material medicine; the passage uses this as an analogy for efficacious sacred speech. ^11. The claim that God “has life in himself” echoes John 5:26, where the Father has life in himself and grants the Son to have life in himself; the author adapts this theological language to divine names and letters. ^12. “Let it be” translates Fiat, the creative word of Genesis 1. The argument makes all natural efficacy, whether herbal or verbal, derivative from God’s creative speech.