e
plan of Wisdom, the creative ideas, and the astral soul become visibly
and concretely revealed. Man unites all the worlds in himself, and in
his unfallen state as Adam-Cadmon combined all men in one ideal,
undifferentiated Man. The visible world is full of hints and symbols
of the invisible, and the initiated learn to read the _signs_ of things
seen, the meanings of sacred letters, and so to discover the secrets
and mysteries of the inner world. The Cabala is full of unrestrained
oriental imagination, of fancies run riot, and of symbolisms ridden to
death. Its confusion of style and thought and its predilection for
magic unfortunately proved contagious, and played havoc with the
productions of those who came under its spell. Its marvels, however,
powerfully impressed the minds of its German readers. Through it they
believed they were privileged to share in mysteries which had been hid
from the creation of the world, and {136} they conceived the idea that
they had at last discovered a clue that would eventually lead them into
all the secrets of the universe.[2]

Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1487-1535) by his writings increased
the prevailing fascination for occult knowledge and pushed this
particular line of speculation into an acute stage. He was a man of
large learning and of heroic temper, and, possessed as he was of
undoubted gifts, in a different period and in a different environment
he would, no doubt, have played a notable part in the development of
human thought. But he became enamoured in his youth with the
adventurous quest for the discovery of Nature's stupendous secrets, and
under the spell of the Cabala, and under the influence of eager
expectations entertained in his day by men of rank and learning, that
fresh light was about to dawn upon the ancient mysteries of the world,
he took the false path of magic as the way to the conquest of the great
secret. It was, however, not the crude, cheap magic of popular fancy,
a magic of mad and lawless caprice, to which he was devoted; it was a
magic grounded in the nature of the deeper inner world which he
believed was the Soul of the world we see and touch. The English
translator of Agrippa's _Occult Philosophy_ in 1651 very clearly
apprehended and stated in his quaint "Preface to the Judicious Reader,"
the foundation idea of Agrippa's magic: "This is," he says, "true and
sublime Occult Philosophy--to understand the mysterious influence of
the intelle