Agrippa, Henry Cornelius

(Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim) (1486-1535). German writer, soldier, physician, and magician, for many years involved in politics as well as occultism. It was the latter which aroused the Inquisition against him. His major works are De occulta philosophia (On occult philosophy) written about 1510 and published in 1531, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum (The uncertainty and vanity of the sciences: 1531) and De nobilitate et praecellentia feminei sexus (On the nobility and excellence of the feminine sex: 1532). He is identified by HPB as a “Christian Kabalist” (CW III:209 and 264; XIV:167) who was interested in the occult properties of numbers as applied to geometric figures, names, and Hebrew gematria (CW III:195-6; XIV:95, 98). She has a quotation in French (with English translation) about his “Kabalistic” articulation of the Hermetic doctrine “As above, so below” (CW XI:520; trans. p. 543) and extended discussions of his ideas of the afterlife, which are very similar to (possibly identical with) those found in theosophical literature (cf. CW IV:594-5, vol. 7, pp. 203-4, 207, 210, and 212-3).

R.W.B.