The Mirific Word

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

THE MIRIFIC WORD.

Now, as the creative light runs round each upper world before coming to ours, it comes to us charged with supernal influence, and such an idea lies at the foundation of cabalistical magic. By what secret to have power over this line of communication with superior worlds it is for practical cabalism to discover.

The secret consisted chiefly in the use of names. God, it was said, gave to all things their names; He could have given no name that was not mystically fit; every such name, therefore, is a word containing divine power, and especially affecting that thing, person,

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A NEWLY ARRANGED TABLE OF THE TAROT AND CABALA.

☞ Five Hebrew Letters, Caph, Mem, Nun, Phe, and Tsadhe, denote 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900, when final.

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or spirit to which it belongs. The Scripture tells us that there are names written in heaven; why, it was said, should they be written there, if they be useless. Through the knowledge of such divine names, it is affirmed, Moses overcame the sorcerers of Egypt, Elias brought fire from heaven, Daniel closed the mouths of lions. But of all names by which wonders can be wrought, the Mirific Word of Words (here we come to the main thought of Reuchlin's book, and to the central topic of the oratory of Cornelius) was the concealed name of God—the Schem-hammaphoraseh. Whoever knows the true pronunciation of the name Jehovah—the name from which all other divine names in the world spring as the branches from a tree, the name that binds together the sephiroth—whoever has that in his mouth has the world in his mouth. When it is spoken angels are stirred by the wave of sound. It rules all creatures, works all miracles, it commands all the inferior names of deity which are borne by the several angels that in heaven govern the respective nations of the earth. The Jews had a tradition that when David was on the point of fighting with Goliath, Jaschbi, the giant's brother, tossed him up into the air, and held a spear below, that he might fall upon it. But Abishai, when he saw that, pronounced the holy name, and David remained in the air till Jaschbi's spear no longer threatened him. They said, also, that the Mirific name was among the secrets contained in the Holy of Holies, and that when any person having entered that shrine of the temple learnt the word of power, he was roared at as he came out by two brazen lions, or bayed by brazen dogs, until through terror he lost recollection of it. Some Jews accounted also by a fable of this nature for our Savior's miracles. They said that, having been admitted within the Holy of Holies, and having learnt the sacred mystery, he wrote it down upon a

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tablet, cut open his thigh, and having put the tablet in the wound, closed the flesh over it by uttering the name of wonder. As he passed out the roaring lions caused the secret to pass from his mind, but afterwards he had only to cut out the tablet from his thigh, and, as the beginning of miracles, heal instantly the wound in his own flesh by pronouncing the Mirific Word. Such Jewish details were, of course, rejected by the Christians, who accepted the essential principles of the Cabala.

As the name of all power was the hidden name of God, so there were also names of power great, though limited, belonging to the angels and the evil spirits. To discover the names of the spirits, by applying to the Hebrew text of Scripture the symbolical Cabala, was to acquire some of the power they possessed. Thus, it being said of the Sodomites that they were struck with blindness, the Hebrew word for blindness was translated into Chaldee, and the Chaldee word by one of the symbolical processes was made to yield the name of a bad angel, Schabriri, which, being written down, was employed as a charm to cure ophthalmia. A common mode of conjuration with these names of power was by the use of amulets, pieces of paper or parchment on which, for certain purposes, certain names were written. At his first entrance into the world such an amulet, with the names "Senoi Sansenoi, Semongeloph," upon it was slipped round the neck of the new-born child, so that the infant scarcely saw the light before it was collared by the genius of superstition.

Another mode of conjuration consisted in the use, not of names, but of the Psalms of David. Whole volumes were written upon this use of the Psalms. The first of them, written on doeskin, was supposed to help the birth of children; others could, it was thought, be so written as to make those who carried them invisible; others secured favors from princes;

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others extinguished fires. The transcription of a psalm for any such purpose was no trifling work, because, apart from the necessary care in the formation of letters, some having a mystical reason for being larger than others, it was necessary for the copyist, as soon as he had written down one line, to plunge into a bath. Moreover, that the charm might be the work of a pure man, before beginning every new line of his manuscript, it was thought necessary that he should repeat the plunge.