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The Conjuror’s Magazine
No 9 (April 1792) pp.391-2.
This is included because of the
reference to B. CM has up to April only
published one true extract from Agrippa -
the lists of planetary numbers and names October 1791 p.80. The writer of this
article is probably also referring to the Arbatel
of Magic which was being serialised in the CM. Arbatel was from a volume
of pseudo-Agrippan works: Agrippa’s Fourth
Book of Occult Philosophy
See note to B's
Magic.
From LIVES OF
EMINENT MAGICIANS, &c..
HENRY CORNELIUS AGRIPPA.
HENRY Cornelius Agrippa was born at Cologne, in 1486. The prodigious compass of
his knowledge astonished everyone who conversed with him. He carefully informed
himself of every science, and of course was profound in the Rosycrucian and
Alchymical arcanas. He was celebrated throughout Europe,
most of the Courts of which he visited. The history of his life, as recorded by
Bayle, is curious and interesting:—Sometimes, in all the pride of literature,
he was disputing in schools and universities; at other times in Courts and
Camps; then in the shops of projecting mechanics, and in the laboratories of
hermetic philosophers. The prejudices of the times in which he lived often
brought him into trouble, and he was sometimes cited before the civil tribunal
for a sorcerer, and his poor dog was even dreaded as an evil demon. He was here
in England
in 1510; and in 1529 received an invitation from Henry VIII. to settle here, which
he thought proper to decline. He died in 1535. The most celebrated of his works,
which are in Latin, is his Treatise of Occult Philosophy, a rare work, the
greatest part of which is, and will be given in this Magazine, by our ingenious
and valuable correspondent B.