Abstract
Ficino’s vision is of a universe held together by love. Love is the energy or circuitus spiritualis that binds everything together and connects it to God. This love is a combination of Christian love (agape and caritas) and Platonic love (eros). It comes from God and is reflected back to Him by what He has created. God is also the Form that moulds matter, but He does not completely transform all of the material at hand. He is a point of singularity (Unity or the One). From that single point, he extends out as through a series of mirrors or emanations that reflect and multiply Him. By the time God’s reflection reaches out as far as our world, the effect has been partially distorted and diffused by the journey into matter. We have moved from singularity to the world of the multiple, from the perfection of unity to the complexity and distortions of ambiguity. But if we can only look up, then God’s love will reach down, and what is scattered and imperfect can be gathered back to Him.
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Notes
- 1.
M. Ficino (1985) Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love (trans., ed. and introd.) S.R. Jayne (Irving, Texas: Spring Publications), p. 63. This translation supersedes Jayne’s first translation (1944). It will be used throughout as the source for quotations from Ficino’s Commentary on ‘The Symposium’ (1475), unless otherwise specified.
- 2.
Chastel argues that ‘l’univers de Ficin est celui d’un poète visionnaire’ so that ‘les grands symboles qui dominent sa construction’ effected ‘une révolutionsensibilité’. Marsile Ficin, pp. 44 and 123, and quoted by M.J.B. Allen (1984) The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino: A Study of his ‘Phaedrus’ Commentary, its Sources and Genesis (University of California, Los Angeles: University of California Press), p. xi.
- 3.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, Jayne, p. 38.
- 4.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, Jayne, p. 47.
- 5.
‘...nova lux virtusque infusa divinitus non prius intellectum divino splendore complet quam amore mirifico accenderit voluntatem. Quae quidem sui accensa per ipsam translatoriam caloris amorisque efficaciam mentem traducit in Deum, ubi amor ipse cuius est in universo generationis officium regenerat animum efficitque divinum.’ Ficino, ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 486–9, letter to Paolo Orlandini (1496).
- 6.
Allen Synoptic Art, p. 184.
- 7.
Amos Edelheit argues that eros and agape (in Latin, amor and caritas) ‘are used by Ficino as synonyms.’ This union of ‘divine love’ and love of God with passion or desire ‘received already its Christian formulation through Augustine and also some of the monastic and scholastic theologians’. Ficino is using ‘…a combination of the penitential style of exhortation to divine love and Neoplatonic cosmology’. Ficino, Pico, pp. 167–8.
- 8.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, Jayne, p. 39. As Ernst Cassirer comments ‘…the Florentine Academy always return to the miracle of beauty, to the miracle of artistic form and of artistic creation. And upon this miracle it founds its theodicy’, Individual and the Cosmos, p. 63.
- 9.
‘Si non sit in rebus primum aliquid, res quaelibet emanabit ab alia; omnes igitur fluitabunt. Quapropter nusquam erit unitas, aequalitas, similitudo, status, ordo et restitutio.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 110–1.
- 10.
‘Super unitatem nihil est aliud, quia nihil est unitate potentius, quandoquidem unio perfectionem cunctis praestat atque potentiam.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 92–3.
- 11.
Pico argues the case from a more Aristotelian prospective, and in both his Commentary on Benivieni and Of Being and the One says that Being and the One are synonymous, and even attempts to divide Plato from the Plotinian inheritance (Monfasani, ‘Marsilio Ficino and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy’, in Allen Marsilio Ficino, p. 192) by saying that in the Parmenides, Plato is simply performing a dialectical exercise to differentiate the two (see Letters, VII, p. xxii).
- 12.
‘Denique quanto simplicius quiddam significat unitas quam ens, in quo essentia et esse clauduntur, tanto magis primo rerum principio congruit.’ Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 36–7.
- 13.
Allen argues that whilst later Aristotelian tradition says Being is at the apex, it also acknowledges that Being is One and so can be thought of as the One. Allen Icastes, p. 38. Cusanus has an alternate idea of alterita (‘other’/‘otherness’) or mutabilitas (multiplicity) as the category below the One (De Docta Ignorantia I.7.18): ‘All things that are not absolutely one must in some sense be other than the one.’ What is multiple is always temporal, not eternal, and always changing (De Docta Ignorantia I.7.20) D. Moran (2008) ‘Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464): Platonism at the Dawn of Modernity, Hedley and Hutton Platonism at the Origins, p. 25.
- 14.
‘Unum igitur omnino sit rerum principium. Vocetur unitas, quia per excellentissimum simplicitatem supereminet omnia; veritas, quia producendo esse dat omnibus; bonitas, quia producta ad se revocando praestat et bene esse.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 112–3.
- 15.
‘Quando vero unum bonumque dicunt, idem semper intellegunt. Sicut enim in ordine rerum bene esse in unione consistit, quoniam malum dissensione et divisione contingit, sic et super ordinem universi idem est unum ipsum atque bonum’, Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 38–9.
- 16.
‘But above this beauty, they contend, is the one, since beauty is composite.’ (‘Supra quam pulchritudinem esse unum probant, quia illa composita sit.’) Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 38–9.
- 17.
‘Rursus, super eam esse bonum, quia omnia et semper bonum appetunt; pulchritudinem vero sola quae cognoscunt eam et postquam eam noverint.’ Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 38–9.
- 18.
‘Omnia bonum appetunt; mentem vero non omnia.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 86–7. See also ‘We seek wisdom and mind only through the impulse of reason, but we seek the good even before any incitement of the reason.’ (‘Quin etiam sapientiam mentemque solo petimus rationis impulsu; bonum vero etiam ante omne rationis incitamentum.’) pp. 88–9.
- 19.
See Ficino ‘Symposium’, Jayne, p. 38.
- 20.
K.B. Moore discusses Ficino’s use of ‘ornament’ as both something added on to the core building, and something that has grown out of the original ‘idea’ of the building—so it is born from the design. This use of ornament also corresponds to the architect Alberti’s definition of ornament as ‘something attached or additional’. Moore, ‘Ficino’s idea of architecture’.
- 21.
Ficino ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 402–3.
- 22.
Plato’s theory on the infinite is in Philebus 23C ff, see Ficino, ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 402–3.
- 23.
Ficino ‘Philebus’, pp. 402–3.
- 24.
See Ficino Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Allen, p. 120 where it is a world, then Ficino Commentary on ‘Philebus’, Allen, which makes both arguments.
- 25.
‘Because body is undetermined with regard to any particular species and is by its own nature endlessly divided, so its matter, they claim, would be in flux infinitely if form did not call it to a halt and give it unity.’ (‘Quia corpus ad quamlibet speciem indeterminatum est et suapte natura sine fine dividuum, cuius materiam in infinitum fluxuram inquiunt, nisi forma sistat et uniat.’) Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 212–3.
- 26.
‘Ex illo bonum, ex hac malum sive decrementum boni, quia ex illo actus, ex hac privatio. Ex illo pulchritudo, ex hac deformitas…’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 408–9. Identifying incorporeal prime matter with privation is a Plotinian tradition (Enneads 2.4.14–16), Allen Icastes, p. 76.
- 27.
‘…inchoatio ibi, hic est perfectio. Materia quidem ut a Deo processus, forma ut in Deum conversio. Melior conversio in Deum quam a Deo. processio. Illa enim disiungit a bono degenerareque compellit. Haec bono coniungit, detrimentum restaurat, reformat in bonum.’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, pp. 388–91.
- 28.
‘…because matter and unformed potency must be said to participate more in the one and the good than in being. For being comes about through form, but matter is without form, yet is said to be one and desirous of the good.’ (‘...materia siquidem informisque potentia magis unius bonique particeps est dicenda quam entis. Siquidem esse fit per formam, materia vero est informis, una tamen materia dicitur et avida boni.’) Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 36–7.
- 29.
‘...His [God’s] opposite is the highest evil, deprived of all good. He will not be capable, therefore, of action or knowledge; will not be alive; will be entirely without existence. For existence, life, and understanding are all good and are covered as goods.’ (‘ita contrarius, summum malum, omni bono privatum. Hic igitur neque aget quicquam, neque cognoscet, neque vivet, neque erit omnino, siquidem esse, vivere, cognoscere bona expetendaque sunt.’) Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 106–7. Allen argues that Ficino is deviating from the Plotinian perspective that matter is absolute not-being, Icastes, p. 69. Matter cannot be both non-being and absolute evil.
- 30.
Theologia Platonica, VI, p. 204–5.
- 31.
‘Proportion is not quantity, but the limit of quantity.’ Ficino ‘Symposium’, Jayne, p. 174.
- 32.
Ficino ‘Symposium’ (1944 edition), p. 129. Though note once more that beauty as a Form is from the world of Being, not an attribute of the One.
- 33.
‘Prima actus forma est.’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, pp. 300–1.
- 34.
‘Sic universali artifici atque naturae subest universalis materia, formarum quarumlibet indifferens susceptaculum. Haec prima vocatur materia, quae elementorum aliorumque corporum formis aeque subiicitur, et modo hanc a vi naturali accipit, modo illam, neque ullam natura sua habet propriam.’ Theologia Platonica, II, pp. 18–9.
- 35.
‘If it is the characteristic of body to receive and to be acted upon, but characteristic of incorporeal nature to give and to act, then in corporeal nature dwells what we call potency (the potency the theologians call receptive or passive), and incorporeal nature act, that is, the capacity for action.’ (‘Porro, si corporis proprium est suscipere atque pati, naturae autem incorporalis proprium dare et agere, in natura corporali dicitur esse potentia, potentia scilicet, ut aiunt theologi, susceptiva atque passiva: in natura incorporali actus, id est efficacia ad agendum.’) Theologia Platonica, I, p. 216–7.
- 36.
Ab actu pure potentia pura.’ ‘Philebus’, pp. 390–1.
- 37.
See Allen, ‘Cultura Hominis’, 173–96.
- 38.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, p. 38.
- 39.
‘This is what Plato means in the Philebus when he says that God is the limit of all things and is free from the infinite, while all things besides God are composed of the limit and the infinite. The limit God calls act and the infinite, potency (potency, in itself undetermined, is limited and given form by act).’ (‘Atque hoc est quod in Philebo vult Plato, ubi ait deum esse rerum omnium terminum, infiniti expertem; res autem alias praeter ipsum omnes ex termino et infinito componi. Terminum vocat actum, infinitum vero potentiam, quae secundum se indeterminata terminatur et formatur ab actu.’) Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 218–9.
- 40.
Allen Icastes, p. 61.
- 41.
‘Infinitum termini indigum voca materiam; terminum, materiae formam.’ ‘Philebus’, pp. 390–1.
- 42.
As we shall see, there is sometimes five and sometimes six ‘elements of universal being’ (‘elementa universi entis’), Allen Icastes, p. 63. ‘Existence’ (esse) is the sixth and sometimes left aside ‘because existence is what is primarily meant by the concept of being itself’ (‘Posuit autem quinque et esse praetermisit, quia in expressione entis esse praevalet’),‘Philebus’, p. 404–5. Plato describes essence as ‘the infinity upon which the limit bestows existence’. Allen Icastes, p. 61.
- 43.
‘Si solus inesset terminus, solus actus, status, identitas. Si sola infinitas, sola potentia, motus atque diversitas.’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, pp. 408–9. In The Platonic Theology, act is ‘being’ and potentiality is ‘essence’, Theologia Platonica, VI, pp. 12–13.
- 44.
‘…the form in matter, as in a mirror, results from a certain beneficent glance of the divine countenance’. (‘Forma vero in materia velut in specula ex quodam benefico divini vultus aspectu resultat.’) Ficino ‘Philebus’, pp. 388–9.
- 45.
P.R. Blum ‘The immortality of the soul’ in Hankins Cambridge Companion, p. 214.
- 46.
’...nihil oriri nisi a superiori aliquo valeat.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 30–1.
- 47.
Celestial hierarchy (c500 CE), translated by Ficino in 1497. Cited by Bruce Gordon (2006) ‘The Renaissance Angel’, in P. Marshall and A. Walsham (eds) Angels in the Early Modern World (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 48.
- 48.
‘Sic ergo quia esse in se antecedit esse in alio, et quod in se est, perfectione sua exuberat quoque in aliud, factum est ut sit bonum in se, bonum in mente, mens in se, mens in anima, anima in se, anima in corpore...’. Theologia Platonica, V, pp. 36–8.
- 49.
‘Proinde, sicut vultus unius imago in multis tota simul est speculis et quolibet fracto fit ex una multiplex, ita tota imago cuiusque ideae est in suis individuis et ob materiae dimensionem divisionemque fit multiplex.’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 210–1.
- 50.
‘Platonicos mentes supra nos innumeras posuisse, in quibus nominandis non solum angelorum, sed etiam archangelorum et principatuum nomina a nostris Iamblichus accipit, lumenque divinum per omnes quasi per virra putat ad nos usque descendere. Quamobrem per innumerabiles paene spirituum mediorum gradus radius ille divinus formator mentium ad infimas usque devenit mentes, quales sunt hominum animae.’ Theologia Platonica, V, pp. 236–7.
- 51.
‘Neque veras res vident, qui in materiam vertunt oculos, sed verisimilia quaedam et verarum rerum inanes quasdan adumbrationes.’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 210–1. See also Plato Phaedo, 109C–110B.
- 52.
‘Sunt autem formae in corporibus nihil aliud quam idearum imagines divinarum, sicut figurae quae imprimuntur in cera sigilli aurei sunt imagines.’ Theologia Platonica, V, pp. 28–9.
- 53.
‘Si movetur aliquid, per motum nanciscitur quo ante caruerat. Ut carebat, potentiam illam habet, quam susceptivam et quodammodo passivam potentiam nuncupamus. Ut agit movendo nonnihil, est actus, et dum acquirit aliquid, etiam actus efficitur.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 216–9.
- 54.
J.G. Snyder (2011) ‘Marsilio Ficino’s critique of the Lucretian alternative’, Journal of the History of Ideas, LXXII, 2, pp. 165–81. Proquest 2015g, http://search.proquest.com, accessed 5 January 2015. Snyder is quoting The Platonic Theology.
- 55.
‘The Neo-Platonist conceived the passage from one hypostasis to the next highest, less as the passage from one reality to the next than as the ever deepening, ever unifying vision of one and the same universe.’ Bréhier History of Philosophy, p. 221.
- 56.
‘Quo fit, ut quisquis dum haec inspicit illa quoque non suspicit somniare a Platone dicatur… quae imagines sunt res esse veras existimat.’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 210–1.
- 57.
‘Nec per mundum deus, sed mundus per deum, quatenus potest, extenditur.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 126–7.
- 58.
See Allen Commentaries on Plato vol 1, p. 209.
- 59.
Allen Icastes, p. 50.
- 60.
‘Angel is the receptacle of [all] the species and is an immobile plurality.’ (‘Angelus receptaculum specierum est et multitudo immobilis.’) Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 212–3.
- 61.
Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 160–1.
- 62.
‘But since angel itself is nothing other than mind, and since for the very reason it is mind it shuns matter when it acts, in what manner will angel’s substance adhere closely to matter?’ (‘Cum vero angelus ipse nihil aliud sit quam mens et, qua ratione mens est, operando materiam fugiat, quonam pacto angeli substantia materiae proxime inhaerebit?’) Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 262–3.
- 63.
‘God’s light created angel but under the shadow of God. God’s light created soul but under the shadow of angel. From God’s single act angel acquires its stable unity, while under God’s shadow it slips into plurality. From God’s light soul obtains stability, while under His shadow it has plurality, and under the shadow of angel, mutability.’ (‘Lux dei producit angelum, sub dei scilicet umbra; lux dei animam sub umbra producit angeli. Angelus a dei uno actu unitatem stabilem adipiscitur, sub dei umbra cadit in multitudinem. Anima a dei luce statum nanciscitur, sub umbra dei multitudinem, sub angeli umbra mutationem.’) Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 222–3.
- 64.
‘Profecto in eo uno quod genitum est et circa materiam est diffusum nihil mirum est, si a perfecta unitate degeneret oppositaque patiatur et multitudinem.’ Ficino ‘Philebus’, pp. 174–5. But angel does not experience ‘opposites’, simply ‘multiplicity’. Opposites or diversity (disparate parts) is experienced by us and is the result of further degeneration, closer proximity to matter.
- 65.
‘Qualis convenit intellectui, hoc est ut essentiam habeat atque esse vim intellegendi, intellectionis actum rerumque intellectarum species plurimas.’, Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 80–1.
- 66.
‘angelum unum multa’, Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 212–3.
- 67.
‘Angel, which immediately precedes soul, cannot be a motionless unity; because the distance between these particular things—one a plurality in motion, the other a motionless unity—appears to be too immense. Unity is, of course, the opposite of plurality, and what is motionless, of what is moved. But since in every respect these two are the opposite of each other, they cannot come one immediately after the other: they need some connecting link. Now angel precedes soul, which is plurality in motion, without any intermediary.’ (‘Angelus qui proxime hanc antecedit, esse nequit immobilis unitas, quia duae quaedam huiusmodi res, quarum una sit mobilis multitudo et altera immobilis unitas, longissime inter se distare videntur. Unitas siquidem multitudini opponitur, immobile mobili. Quoniam ergo res illae ab omni parte invicem opponuntur, proxime sibi non succedunt, sed medio quodam indigent copulante. Animam vero ipsam, quae est mobilis multitudo, angelus absque medio antecedit.’) Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 78–9.
- 68.
‘That Platonic saying is strongly confirmed, that the fabric of the universe is so connected with itself, that not only are there celestial things in earth in an earthly condition; and terrestrial things in turn in the heavens in celestial dignity; but also in the secret Life of the world and in the Mind, Queen of the world, there are celestial things in both a vital and an intellectual property and dignity.’ (‘confirmatur dictum illud valde Platonicum: hanc mundi machinam ita secum esse connexam, ut et in terris coelestia sint conditione terrena et in coelo vicissim terrestria dignitate coelesti, et in occulta mundi vita menteque regina mundi coelestia insint, vitali tamen intellectualique proprietate simul et excellentia.’) Ficino (1989) Three Books on Life, trans., ed. and introd. by C.V. Kaske and J. R. Clark (Binghamton, New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies), pp. 318–9.
- 69.
Always pointing ‘to one common and unvarying truth’, E. H. Gombrich (1985) Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance 3rd edn (Oxford: Phaidon Press), p. 165.
- 70.
‘Quasi Deus ipse ita sit in verbis suis etiam per prophetas prolatis, sicut mentis acies in conceptione nominis etiam praeter mentem in ipsa imaginatione prolati….Vim vero divinam per mentes superiores ad nostram, qua concipitur similiterque nominatur nomine vivo...’, Ficino ‘Philebus’, Allen, pp. 142–3.
- 71.
‘That a specific and great power exists in specific words, is the claim of Origen in Contra Celsum, of Synesius and Al-Kindi where they argue about magic, and likewise of Zoroaster where he forbids the alteration of barbarian words, and also of Iamblichus in the course of the same argument. The Pythagoreans also make this claim, who used to perform wonders by words, songs, and sounds in the Phoebean and Orphic manner. The Hebrew doctors of old practiced this more than anyone else; and all poets sing of the wonderful things that are brought about by songs’ (‘In verbis autem certis vim esse certam atque magnam Origenes asserit Contra Celsum, et Synesius atque Alchindus de magia disputantes; item Zoroaster vetans barbara verba mutari; Iamblichus quoque similiter. Item Pythagorici verbis et cantibus atque sonis mirabilia quaedam Phoebi et Orphei more facere consueti. Quod Hebraecorum antiqui doctores prae ceteris observarunt; omnesque poetae miranda canunt carminibus effici.’). Ficino Three Books on Life, Kaske, pp. 354–5. See also Allen ‘Philebus’, p. 24: ‘the belief that a word has power over its referent and the proper manipulation of words can result in the manipulation of things’.
- 72.
Though ‘Strictly speaking these allegorical images neither symbolize nor represent the Platonic Idea. It is the Idea itself, conceived as an entity, which through these images tries to signal to us and thus to penetrate through our eyes into our mind’. Gombrich Symbolic Images, p. 177.
- 73.
This is what Ernst Cassirer calls ‘mythic thinking’. This is a particularly fruitful phrase because the use of mythology by Ficino as a source for his symbols and Hieroglyphs, and his selection and the Academy as a source for their symbols and Hieroglyphs, and their selection of mythological figures to represent particular Ideas or Forms read as a universe created by and for the imagination. Cassirer suggests that ‘for mythic thinking there is much more in metaphor than a bare “substitution”, a mere rhetorical figure of speech; that what seems to our subsequent reflection as a sheer transcription is mythically conceived as a genuine and direct identification’. See E. Cassirer (1953) Language and Myth, S.K. Langer (trans.) (America: Dover Publications), p. 94. Further, the union of a referent that may be described as ‘Other’ (belonging to another world) and the signifier, or Reality and the word, which transports us immediately to that other-worldly referent upon apprehension of the signifier, is described by Cassirer as ‘that genuine “radical metaphor” which is a condition of the very formulation of mythic as well as verbal conceptions’, Language and Myth, p. 87. Indeed, ‘the notion that name and essence bear a necessary and internal relation to each other that the name does not merely denote but actually is the essence of its object, that the potency of the real thing is contained in the name—that is one of the fundamental assumptions of the mythmaking consciousness itself.’ Language and Myth, p. 3.
- 74.
Gombrich Symbolic Images, p. 265.
- 75.
See Chap. 6 for further discussion.
- 76.
An analogy with Jungian psychology is useful at this point. The polytheistic psyche is the Jungian unconscious, the realm of the imagination. Except that the unconscious is the reality here. The Ideas may be called Archetypes or the ‘deepest patterns of psychic functioning, the roots of the soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves and the world’. From the anthropocentric view they are, like God, fundamental metaphors: ‘All ways of speaking of archetypes are translations from one metaphor to another.’ In literary terms, they are genres and topoi. J. Hillman (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology, (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row), p. xiii.
- 77.
R. B. Harris ‘A brief description of Neoplatonism’ in R.B. Harris (ed.) (1976) The Significance of Neoplatonism (Norfolk, Virginia: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, Dept. of Philosophy, Old Dominion University), p. 6.
- 78.
Ficino (1981) Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer, trans., ed. and introd., M.J.B. Allen (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press), pp. 118–20. Referred to hereafter as ‘Phaedrus’.
- 79.
Allen, ‘Two Commentaries’, p. 113. Allen also refers to the division of the Plotinian intelligible world into intelligible and intellectual spheres, the division of gods into ultra- and intramundane and the further division of the latter into angels, demons and heroes.
- 80.
Allen points out that in Theologia Platonica, mathematics ‘is the particular domain of the daemon and that skill with numbers is in essence a daemonic skill and the gift of the daemons’, Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 16.
- 81.
Ficino Theologia Platonica, I, p. 295.
- 82.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 30.
- 83.
Gombrich Symbolic Images, p. 127.
- 84.
Allen Synoptic, p. 180.
- 85.
Ficino does change his language from commentary to commentary, but in most commentaries (just not ‘Phaedrus’), Ficino portrays eight gods ruling eight heavenly spheres and anything related to those spheres, and then four head gods of four elemental spheres, Allen Phaedrus and Ion, p. 211.
- 86.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, p. 53.
- 87.
Allen explains that the soul ascends to the supracelestial through Capricorn, Saturn’s constellation and ‘the gate of the gods’, and comes down from the World Soul to the world of nature via the constellation of Cancer, belonging to the moon, ‘the gate of the mortals’ Allen, ‘At Variance’, p. 43.
- 88.
Letters, VI, p. 53, Letter to Jacopo Antiquari, Secretary to the Duke Sforza of Milan.
- 89.
See Letters, VI, p. 18, ‘A Fable’.
- 90.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, p. 54.
- 91.
Letters, IV, pp. 62–3.
- 92.
Letters, VII, p. 37, Letter to Braccio Martelli.
- 93.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, p. 127.
- 94.
Ficino ‘Symposium’, p. 127.
- 95.
Allen Synoptic, p. 131.
- 96.
‘Sed eiusmodi invidorum ambitiosorumque daemonum violentiam expugnari Platonici per philosophiam et sacrificia posse putant, quod Orphici nobis Hymni demonstrant. Christus autem, verus medicus animorum, ieiunio atque oratione hoc fieri praecipit. Si dei ipsius oraculum philosophice liceret exponere, ieiunium interpretarer abstinentiam ab his rebus quae talem aut talem vel augent humorem vel imaginem affectumque movent. Orationem vero exponerem tam vehementem in deum conversionem, ut et animus stimulos daemonum non advertat, et daemones expugnare mentem deo deditam se posse diffidant.’ Theologia Platonica, V, pp. 310–1.
- 97.
‘...in qua fingit extremas quasdam atque umbratiles similitudines idearum, quemadmodum lumen fingit imagines colorum in speculo, immo quemadmodum per lumen umbrae corporum designantur in terra. Tales autem similitudines sive umbrae discedunt ab ipsa divinitate quamplurimum, nam ex puris impurae fiunt, dum a contrariis inquinantur, ex unitis dissipatae, ex communibus singulae, ex stabilibus prorsus instabiles.’ Theologia Platonica, V, pp. 256–7.
- 98.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 12.
- 99.
Allen Icastes, p. 144.
- 100.
Allen Icastes, p. 145.
- 101.
‘Neque vero diffidere debet quisquam nos atque omnia quae circa nos sunt praeparamentis quibusdam posse sibi vendicare coelestia.’ Ficino Three Books on Life, Kaske, pp. 248–9.
- 102.
‘Per haec insuper confirmant nonnulli etiam illud magicum: per inferiora videlicet superioribus consentanea posse ad homines temporibus opportunis coelestia quodammodo trahi, atque etiam per coelestia supercoelestia nobis conciliari vel forsan prorsus insinuari’, Ficino, Three Books on Life, Kaske, pp. 318–9.
- 103.
‘Ubique igitur natura maga est, ut inquit Plotinus atque Synesius, videlicet certa quaedam pabulis ubique certis inescans, non aliter terrae gravia trahens....’ Ficino, Three Books on Life, Kaske, pp. 384–7.
- 104.
‘...ne putes nos impraesentia de stellis adorandis loqui, sed potius imitandis et imitatione captandis’, Ficino, Three Books on Life, Kaske, pp. 356–7.
- 105.
Hillman Re-Visioning, p. 199.
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Howlett, S. (2016). An Anatomy of the Universe. In: Marsilio Ficino and His World. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53946-5_3
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