[Pico della Mirandola] Magical and Orphic Conclusions (1486)
Added 2022-08-10 15:06:20 +0000 UTCHere are the 'Magical and Orphic' Theses from Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola’s “900 Conclusiones” in which he attempted to demonstrate the merits of magic as he understood it (i.e., as the summit of all natural science) in preparation for a debate before the Pope at Rome in 1486. A small handful of Pico’s theses were deemed heretical before he was allowed to hold this public debate, and he was promptly excommunicated from the Church after writing an Apologia defending himself against the accusations of his committee. Today these 900 theses stand as a monument to the breadth (more so than the depth) of Renaissance thought, and they provide us with a window into the mind of one of the Latin West’s most important philosophical perennialists.
For a copy of the full work including all 900 Conclusiones in both English translation and in the original Latin (by S. A. Farmer), click here. The translation read here is my own.
