Abstract
Abstract
This chapter explores plants, animals, and intermediate organisms as they appear in occult writings and practise including the Hermetic tradition, Gnostic texts, alchemy, mystery-books, and magic. Plants and animals were only loosely demarcated in Hermetic and Gnostic texts. Building on Neoplatonic cosmology, Hermetic texts described a web of occult sympathies and antipathies that link macrocosm (the cosmos) and microcosm (man), and might be exploited for good (e.g. healing) or evil. On the eve of the Italian Renaissance, an extensive occult literature acknowledged only animals, vegetables, and minerals. Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco Pico, and Agrippa considered zoophytes to have a distinct nature. Paracelsus ignored zoophytes, but many later alchemists followed Agrippa. Minerals, vegetables, and animals were first called Kingdoms in Novum lumen chymicum (1614) and Tractatvs de svlphvre (1616). Bruno but not Fludd held zoophytes to be intermediate beings. Francis Bacon abandoned macrocosm-microcosm theory in 1605.
Publisher
Oxford University PressNew York
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