Chapter LXVIII. How Our Mind Can Change and Bind Inferior Things to the Ends Which We Desire

The Philosophy of Natural Magic, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, L. W. de Laurence ed. [1913], at sacred-texts.com

CHAPTER LXVIII.

How Our Mind Can Change and Bind Inferior Things to the Ends Which We Desire.

There is also a certain virtue in the minds of men of changing, attracting, hindering, and binding to that which they desire; and all things obey them when they are carried into a great excess of any passion or virtue, so as to exceed those things which they bind. For the superior binds that which is inferior, and converts it to itself; and the inferior is, by the same reason, converted to the superior, or is otherwise affected, and wrought upon. By this reason, things that receive a superior degree of any star, bind, or attract, or hinder things which have an inferior, according as they agree or disagree amongst themselves. Whence a lion is afraid of a cock, because the presence of the Solary virtue is more agreeable to a cock than to a lion. So a loadstone draws iron, because, in its order, it hath a superior degree of the Celestial Bear.

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So the diamond hinders the loadstone, because, in the order of Mars, it is superior to it. In like manner any man, when he is opportunely exposed to the celestial influences (as by the affections of his mind and due applications of natural things), if he become stronger in a Solary virtue, he binds and draws the inferior into admiration and obedience—in the order of the Moon, to servitude or infirmities; in a Saturnine order, to quietness or sadness; in the order of Jupiter, to worship; in the order of Mars, to fear and discord; in a Venus order, to love and joy; in a Mercurial order, to persuasion and obsequiousness, and the like. The ground of such a kind of binding is the very vehement and boundless affection of the soul with the concourse of the celestial order. But the dissolutions or hinderances of such a like binding are made by a contrary effect, and that more excellent or strong; for as the greater excess of the mind binds, so, also, it looseth and hindereth. And, lastly, when the mind feareth Venus, it opposes Saturn; when Saturn or Mars, it opposes Venus or Jupiter; for astrologers say that these are most at enmity, and contrary the one to the other (i. e.), causing contrary effects in these inferior bodies. For in the Heavens, where there is nothing wanting, and where all things are governed with love, there can in no wise be hatred or enmity.