Three Books of Occult Philosophy

Three Books of Occult Philosophy is Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's great synthesis of Renaissance magic, the most comprehensive occult treatise of its age. It organises the magical worldview into three ascending tiers — the natural, the celestial, and the intellectual or divine.

Natural magic works through the hidden virtues of stones, plants, and elements; celestial magic through number, harmony, and the influence of the stars; and ceremonial magic through the powers of the intelligible world, names, and spirits. Binding all three is the doctrine of correspondence — that the human being, as microcosm, is linked to every level of the cosmos and can act upon it through knowledge.

For centuries the standard sourcebook of Western magic, it transmitted the Hermetic-Kabbalistic vision of a unified, mind-answering universe to every later occult revival.