34 The Asclepius of Hermes Trismegistus according to Ficino. Quoted by Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1991), p. 37.
35 Yates, Giordano Bruno, op.cit., pp. 40-41. The scholarship of Yates, who died in 1981, has mostly stood the test of time, being esteemed a modern classic in spite of detraction from Wouter J. Hanegraaff. He denies that Renaissance magic was Hermetic or that Ficino was a Hermeticist (cf. Esotericism and the Academy, 2012, pp. 332-334). He cites D.P. Walker’s Spiritual and Demonic Magic (Pennsylvania State University, 2000), as an antidote to Yates. Yet on pp. 40-42 of Walker’s book we find the core of Frances Yates’ thesis confirmed. Walker describes Hermes as “undoubtedly a capital source for Ficino’s general theory of magic…” (Our own bone of contention with Yates is with her naivete, not her scholarship per se. Her estimation of much of the Catholic-Hermetic and Catholic-Kabbalistic theurgy was that it constituted benign “white” magic).
36 Ioan Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 127-128.
37 Angela Voss, op cit. p. 17.
38 Angela Voss, op cit. p. 19 and 25-26.
39 “Proclus was—after Plato, Plotinus and the Aeropagite—the Platonic authority to whom Ficino was most indebted, even though he often concealed the debt.” Michael J.B. Allen, “Marsilio Ficino as a Reader of Proclus,” in Essays in Renaissance Thought and Letters (2015), p. 183.
40 D.P. Walker, op. cit., pp. 41-43.
41 Thomas De Quincey argued that after Rosicrucianism arrived in England it evolved into Freemasonry. Cf. “Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origins of the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons” (1824); reprinted in De Quincey’s Collected Writings (1890), vol. 13, pp. 384-448: “Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Cabalism, Theosophy, and Alchemy had overspread the whole of Western Europe…” (pp. 440-401). Tobias Churton wrote, “On April 16, 1658, five years after receiving the great secret, (Elias) Ashmole (1617-1692) finished writing the preface to the alchemical text The Way to Bliss…The publication included suspected heretic Doctor Everard’s transcript and notes. John Everard, D.D. (ca. 1575-ca. 1650), made the first printed English translation of The Divine Pymander, published in 1650. The Pymander contained the first four books of the Corpus Hermeticum, anciently attributed to Hermes Trismegistus…Hermes was an ancient ‘patron’ of the Freemasons…and a ‘star’ of Andreae’s Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz…” The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians (2009), p. 356. (Ashmole was made a Freemason on Oct. 16, 1646).
42 Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1986) p. 96.
43 Cf. McIntosh, The Rosicrucians, op.cit., pp. 11-14.
44 Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, op. cit., p. 38.
45 Michael Maier (1569-1622), Count-Palatine at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II; poet-laureate at the University of Padua, and Rosicrucian leader.
46 Roland Edighoffer, “Rosicrucianism I,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, (2006), p. 1011.
47 Mageia is a word freighted with significance in the occult text Corpus Hermeticum, attributed to Mercury/Hermes. It is part of the famous phrase from that text, “philosophia men kai mageia,” which “bears on the quest for gnostic salvation.” Cf. Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum (2000), p. xv.
48 Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy (2012), pp. 85-86; (emphasis supplied). Hanegraaf is a good source for raw data and we salute his work ethic, but like many liberals he views the investigation of a Neoplatonic conspiracy seeking the destruction of Christianity during the Renaissance as a figment of a “paranoid imagination” (p. 40). He describes the radical religious syncretism posited by the philosophia perennis as “a deeply conservative…perspective,” contrasted with what he regards as its revolutionary opposite, the prisca theologia. We can see no drastic difference between the two; both of them are pagan survivals. Furthermore, though he concedes on p. 71 of Esotericism that the revolutionary-syncretist Catholic Bishop Agostino Steuco claimed that the “One Truth” had always been available through Zoroaster and Hermes, Hanegraaff nevertheless describes Steuco as a “conservative intellectual” (p. 70), who “sought to reveal Catholic doctrine as the hidden core of paganism” (p. 73). What is conservative about a Catholic Bishop (which Steucho was), identifying Catholicism as the hidden core of paganism? Steuco’s statement is anything but. Hanegraaff further defines Steuco’s “conservatism” in terms of his having spurned “a return to the sources of revelation (the Bible and the apostolic community).” Hanegraaff imagines that the rejection was reflective of Steuco’s “solid orthodoxy” (p. 70 and 72). Hanegraaff would seem to be part of the “popular trend in Renaissance and Byzantine cultural and social history of rehabilitating all ideological dissenters (heretics) into a vague, all-inclusive Christianity.”
49 On Plato in this context cf. Niketas Siniossoglou, Radical Platonism in Byzantium pp. 154-155.
50 Raymond Franz et al., Aid to Bible Understanding (1971), p. 1552.
51 Partisans of the Medici in Church and State were known as Palleschi, a reference to the red balls (palle) of the Medici coat of arms.
52 Brigitte Tambrun, “Plethon,” in Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism (2005).
53 “One might…define later Pythagoreanism as Platonism with the Socratic…element amputated. In fact, Plato remained the principal source for all later Pythagoreans—Plato’s myths, and in particular the Timaeus…neo- Pythagoreanism converges, in the philosophical realm, with Neoplatonism.” Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, p. 96.
54 Mary Tompkins Lewis, Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2016, p. D5.
55 The earliest formal reference that we have been able to locate to the “Illuminism” from which the Illuminati derived their name, is in reference to the work of the medieval Persian Neoplatonic-Hermeticist Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi (b. 1154), who was sentenced to death and executed in Aleppo, Syria in 1191. In his principal writing, Hikmat al-Ishraq (“The Philosophy of Illumination”), he placed the “science” of the individual’s subjective mystical experience, above revealed dogma: “This science is the very intuition of the inspired and illuminated Plato.and of those who came before him from the time of Hermes.” The school of theology developed in Suhrawardi’s name was termed the “School of Illuminism.” Cf. Von Stuckrad, op. cit., p. 28.
56 Maude Vanhaelen, “Ficino’s Commentary,” in The Rebirth of Platonic Theology (2013), pp. 205-206.
57 Clement Salaman, “Echoes of Egypt in Hermes and Ficino,” in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (2002) p. 122.
58 Clement Salaman, op. cit. p. 128.
59 P.O. Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino and his Work after Five Hundred Years,” in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone (1986).
60 Critics say that Ficino’s enterprise amounted to nothing more than an “informal intellectual gymnasium.” However, Fr. Ficino himself refers to his Platonic Academy in the preface to his translation of Plotinus (ca.1490-1492) and also in a September, 1462 letter to Cosimo de’ Medici. The conspiracyminimizers can quibble about what constitutes an “academy,” but the fact is, Ficino was handsomely paid by Medici to “draft translations, and in his lectures, commentaries, treatises and letters, he explained Plato to the Florentine public.” He had numerous students and an extensive audience. Cf. Arthur M. Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy.
61 Historia de los heterodoxos espanoles, (1992), vol. 2, p. 437.
62 Susan Byrne, Ficino in Spain (2015), p. 27.
63 Cf. http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=3703
64 There is a reference to “falsehood” in Pinto’s litany of the occult agents who he says, following Ficino, had formed the basis of the law of Catholic nations. When he says “falsehood” Pinto is alluding to the Islamic claim of Muhammed to law-giving inspiration from the Angel Gabriel.
65 Magne Saebo (ed.), Hebrew Bible Old Testament: The History of Its Interpre
tation from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (2008), p. 244.
66 Ibid., p. 237.
67 G. Lloyd Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England: A Third Language (Manchester University, 1983), pp. 52-53. Prof. G. Lloyd Jones wants us to believe that the rabbis, in the person of Saaida Gaon, through “scientific study of the Scriptures and of the Hebrew language…gave Rabbinic Judaism superiority in the special province of Karaism” (p. 3). There you have it, the rabbinic deceivers and Scripture twisters immersed in the traditions of Babylon and the Pharisees, have bested the sola Scriptura Karaites. How do we know this? By professorial proclamation: the ipse dixit of G. Lloyd Jones. Saaida Gaon (882-942 A.D.) specialized for purposes of polemics against the Christians and the Karaites (Judaics who rejected both the Talmud and the New Testament), in arguing from the peshat, or literal meaning of the Bible (even though the secret rabbinic teaching decrees that the literal meaning is the most inaccurate of all possible readings). Saadia is said to be the founder of Hebrew philology, producing a Hebrew dictionary and a Hebrew grammar.
68 Luther, though opposed to the Kabbalah (he formally denounced it in his treatise, Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi), supported the Catholic Reuchlin mainly out of spite—he accepted at face value the Cryptocracy’s cover story (in play even now), that Reuchlin was being “rigorously persecuted” by the Catholic hierarchy. The reverse was true: on almost every occasion in which a Dominican inquisitor attempted to expose Reuchlin in a church court, and sought Reuchlin’s condemnation as a heretic, it was the inquisitor who was stymied, harassed and libeled by the ecclesiastical mafia operating under Leo X.
69 Most notably by the University of Heidelberg’s Lutheran philologist, Prof. Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, in his magisterial Entdecktes Judenthum (two volumes, 1700), which represented the inaugural and nonpareil forensic demolition of rabbinic Judaism in western letters, unsurpassed even in our time (the volumes was seized and banned by the Holy Roman Emperor).
70 G. Lloyd Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew, op.cit., pp. 64-65.
71 The English Reports Volume XXXVI, Chancery XVI (Edinburgh, 1904), p. 718).
72 The Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England Vol. XX [London, 1757], pp. 476-477).
73 G. Lloyd Jones, p. 91.
74 “Simeon ben Johai” is Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, reputed founder of the Kabbalah who decreed, “Even the best of the gentiles should all be killed.”
75 G. Lloyd Jones, p. 96.
76 Cf. “Slow Rot at Supermax, Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2006.
77 Roberto de Mattei, Corrispondenza Romana, October 22, 2014.
78 Niketas Siniossoglou, op. cit., p. 53.
79 Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (2002), pp. 140-144; 148.
80 Catholic Stuart King James II who had fled England for Ireland, was a creature (like his late brother, the English King Charles II), of the king of France, which made James despised in his native land, including among English Catholics, as well as at the court of Pope Innocent XI, who was an enemy of the Gallicanist French King Louis XIV, the butcher of the Huguenots. The Battle of the Boyne was a defeat for French interests and for James, who proceeded to flee Ireland. For a pioneering account of the calamitous French and French-Jesuit influence on James II, and revisionist data on Catholic-Protestant relations in England, including Innocent XI’s amity toward King William of Orange, cf. “Gallicanism, Innocent XI and Catholic Opposition,” in Shaping the Stuart World, 1603-1714. [Some researchers have suggested that the Protestant William of Orange was financed by the Catholic usury banking house of Odescalchi, operated by Pope Innocent XI’s family. Cf. “The Pope and the Sun King,” The Scotsman, September 5, 2009].
81 “Clement VII (1523-34), whom Joseph ben David Yehaf, in his commentary on the Five Megillot (p. 41b, Bologna, 1538), calls ‘the favorer of Israel,’ displayed particular interest in the internal affairs of the Jewish community, which had been divided into contending parties. Within the community there existed no authority that could settle these quarrels, and an invitation to go to Rome was therefore issued to Daniel ben Isaac of Pisa, who was highly esteemed by the pope…When David Reubeni and his follower Solomon Molko came to Rome, Clement VII not only offered them protection, but provided them with letters of recommendation. While in Rome Reubeni lived in the houses of Cardinal Ægidius (Giles of Viterbo), R. Joseph Ashkenazi and R. Raphael, Joseph Zarfati, the physician Moses Abudarham, and Isaac Abudarham.” Cf. Joseph Jacobs and Schulim Ochser, “The Community Organized,” in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), topic, “Rome.” http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12816-rome
Chapter III
The Serpent in the Garden of the Quattrocento
Much of what we are about to recount concerning the occult incubator that was the Catholic republic of Florence would not have occurred to the extent that it did, had it not been for the Medici family, whose members are today known mainly as patrons of fabulous Renaissance art works, and progenitors of two pontiffs, Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici (Leo X), and Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici (Clement VII). While Medici diabolism and usury are comparatively little known, their criminal politics are difficult to conceal.
“After the banishment of the main representatives of the Albizzi faction in 1434, Cosimo de’ Medici worked aggressively to consolidate his power. By directly controlling the officials in charge of voting procedures (the accoppiatori), he made sure that only his supporters were appointed to the key positions of the city government…In addition, Cosimo and his descendants further strengthened their rule by creating special executive commissions (balíe) whenever their power seemed to be at risk. The balíe passed laws and made crucial decisions regarding the fiscal system, the commune’s foreign politics, and the administration of the law. The establishment of new councils controlled by members of the ruling party diminished the republican character of the Florentine government and intensified discontent among the opponents of the Medici. Modern scholars have rightly described the Council of Seventy as a sort of life senate. It was created by Lorenzo the Magnificent (Cosimo’s grandson) in 1480 and held Florentine politics in check until Piero de’ Medici’s fall in 1494. But this pattern of Mediciean interference in the government of Florence helps explain why in his dialogue On Liberty, composed shortly after the Pazzi’s attempt to overthrow the Medici, Alamanno Rinuccini commends the conspiracy as a glorious act. He believed that the conspirators deserved the highest praise, for they had tried to restore the citizens’ liberty, which Lorenzo, ‘the tyrant of Florence,’ had usurped.
“…Self-promoting intellectuals in the Medici court had celebrated Lorenzo’s government as the culmination of early quattrocento humanist civic ideals; yet Florentines perceived that behind the republican facade held up by official propaganda, their liberty had been severely restricted by the Medicean regime. It need not surprise us that within a city disappointed by the betrayal of long-shared ideals, Savonarola’s movement met with enormous success. During the last decade of the quattrocento, many citizens followed Savonarola’s call not only in response to its religious appeal, but also in the hope of seeing their political aspirations as a free city realized at last.” 1
Magic, paganism and the proto-modernist pseudo-Christian religion of syncretism did not simply arise out of nowhere and manifest overnight during the Catholic Renaissance. It had been a seed awaiting germination, even in the thirteenth century of the Catalan Ramon Lull (now deemed “Blessed” by the Vatican and regarded as a figure of wisdom by “traditional” and conservative Catholics), who was a would-be germinator. From Lull the virus moved to the University of Padua in the fifteenth century, where the “rigid” Aristotelian tradition was challenged by humanists. In the years 1417-1423, Nicholas of Cusa rejected scholasticism and took up Lull’s ideas in Padua, where he “encountered Lull’s new vision of human dignity.” By 1430, Cusa was germinating the alien “New Philosophy” under the pious cloak of proving the doctrine of the Trinity. In his treatise, De Tr
initate, St. Augustine had asserted that the Holy Trinity had left its mark on every part of creation. Augustinian Trinitarianism was exploited by occult-Catholics to provide cover for their magic and paganism: it was “of great importance to the Platonic theology of the Renaissance because it sanctioned the peculiar zeal with which Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and other humanists searched for rudimentary trinities among the pagans…with special reference to the foreknowledge of the Trinity supposedly shown by Orpheus, Plato and Zoroaster…Ficino…fully exercised the gentle art of piloting these thoughts into a Christian haven…Strange to say, this foible…was shared by so intransigent a Dominican as St. Antoninus of Florence, who not only accepted the doctrine of the ‘vestiges of the Trinity’ in its theological aspects…but went out of his way to quote pagan witnesses, in testimonia Trinitatis in doctrinis ethnicorum, among them Hermes Trismegistus, the Sibyls and Plato…” 2
Almost always these syncretic bridges to the pagan realm were “piloted into a Christian haven” with a great show of Catholic rhetoric and ostentatious declarations of devout faith in Jesus and His Church. There was no limit to the far-fetched fantasies the Neoplatonists would mount so as to convince the Catholic world that pagan magicians and diabolic beings of antiquity were heralds of Christian truth. “As a Christian Platonist, Cusanus (Nicholas of Cusa) was not frightened by polymorphic views of the deity; he had learned from Proclus to accept them as preparatory stages of initiation…In their enthusiasm for mystical triads, Renaissance Platonists accepted Iamblichus’s view, De vita pythagorica xxviii, that the tripod of Apollo was a trinitarian symbol…that (the goddess Diana) shared in the same mystery seemed indicated by her name Trivia, and by the ‘three faces’ attributed to her in Aeneid IV…
“The Ovide Moralisé 3 blandly called her a trinitarian goddess, and she still appeared as such, with the inscription Theologia, on the Tomb of (Pope) Sixtus IV, looking up toward the Christian heaven where three heads are surrounded by-sun rays. As pagan goddess of the moon she foreshadows the triple glory of the Christian sun.” 4
The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome Page 16
