From among the classical seven planets visible
to the naked eye, Saturn, the first in the
Chaldean order – that dim and slow-moving
planet riding the outermost sphere – will
be our topic. We’ll be unpacking some of
the ways this planet is represented in the
Latin Picatrix, a text which had a great impact
in the latter half of the fifteenth century
on humanist conceptions of astrological bodies
and their many associations with the things
of this world. Composing between 954-959,
the author of the Arabic original, Ghāyat
al-Ḥakīm (The Goal of the Sage, غاية
الحكيم), Abū l-Qāsim Maslama al-Qurṭubī
(d. 964), claims to have relied on 224 books
of ancient sages. It was translated into Castilian,
as the Picatriz, and then on into the Latin,
as the Picatrix, shortly thereafter. This
four-book compendium was read with varying
degrees of [dis]approval by such giants in
the history of Western esotericism as Marsilio
Ficino (d. 1499), Yohanan Alemanno (d. 1504),
Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola (d. 1494), and
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (d. 1535). Ultimately,
the Picatrix played a significant role in
reinforcing and fleshing out these Renaissance
philosophers’ respective thoughts about
astral magic and the highly correlative nature
of the cosmos. Their inheritance was a world
centered not on the interaction of physical
particles in an endless expanse of space,
but on the hidden sympathies between the human
soul and all the things of this world hanging
down from God in a great hierarchy of being
– a kind of enclosed system held together
through a complex network of imperceptible
stellar rays. For many of the magically-minded
from al-Qurṭubī to Ficino, to plumb the
inner workings of these sympathies along what
Arthur O. Lovejoy later dubbed ‘The Great
Chain of Being’ was to attain to the very
height of philosophy itself since it was by
this scientia or knowledge alone they believed
that man could perfect himself and ultimately
be reunified with God. Within this paradigm,
every planet above the firmament represented
a kind of ‘network hub’ amid this web
of sympathies, and as such, knowledge of planets
served as a pathway to self-actualization.
This discussion, therefore, first provides
an overview of ancient and medieval perceptions
regarding Saturn in order to elucidate some
of the general historical changes and the
continuities which colored that planet’s
gradual transformation from a god into an
object of astral magical ritual. Following
this, the discussion contrasts these perceptions
with the image of Saturn and his correspondences
as they appear in the Picatrix. Thereafter,
special attention is given to the conceptualisation
of Saturn in the thought of Marsilio Ficino,
highlighting the ways in which he appropriated
and reformulated ideas in a careful process
of sanitizing “idolatrous” and “abominable”
elements from the books he studied. We’ll
see that all this was done within the context
of Ficino’s magico-medical project which
was produced at the summit of a long career
in studying the philosophy of body-soul management.
His therapeutically-oriented project, through
the medium of print, would spread quickly
throughout the Latin West during the 16th
century, carrying his complex conceptions
of Saturn and all the other celestial bodies
further than ever before eventually losing
its popularity throughout the period of the
Scientific Revolution. Leading Ficino scholar
Michael J. B. Allen has recently written about
this subject in his essay Marsilio Ficino
on Saturn, the Plotinian Mind, and the Monster
of Averroes (2010), but his article deals
more so with how Ficino adopted the identification
of Saturn with the second hypostasis (Mind)
from Plotinus’ metaphysics, and as such
leaves plenty of room for a brief history
of that planet’s magico-medical correspondences
as they pertain to Ficinian cosmology in the
De Vita.
Although I could’ve used any one of the
seven planets as the object of a general case
study on the seven planets in Picatrix, I
settled on Saturn in particular because he
is the planet most relevant to the scholar.
This is an association clearly expressed in
the Picatrix itself, but one can find it especially
emphasized and elaborated in Ficino’s writings,
which further helped to sublimate the almost
purely negative perceptions of Saturn and
melancholy from the medieval European perspective
rooted in Galenic humoural theory and Ptolemaic
astronomy into a more ambivalent force: something
potentially more productive and less fatalistic.
To use the words of Eric Zafran who did his
own study on the changing role of Saturn in
the Renaissance with an eye toward his link
with Judaism, Saturn had long been “the
representative of the lowest rung of medieval
society. Individuals born under his influence
were held in scant regard until, with the
last quarter of the fifteenth century, the
Neoplatonic elevation of the deity somewhat
reformed their character.” This ‘Neoplatonic
elevation’ Zafran mentions is doubtless
a stand-in for the medico-philosophical and
astro-magical work done by Ficino. Ficino
himself claimed that his work in the third
book of De vita libri tres – De vita coelitus
comparanda (On Attaining Life From The Heavens)
– began as a reaction and commentary to
Plotinus. Nevertheless, the kind of work he
produced should strike readers less as a work
of Neoplatonic philosophical commentary, and
more so as a ‘mirror for princes’ in the
style of the Secretum Secretorum (Sirr al-Asrār),
the kind of work which compiled together a
broad range of advice for rulers in matters
ranging from statecraft and ethics to medicine,
astrology, and even the optimal use of talismanic
magic. In addition to this pseudo-Aristotelian
medieval classic, Ficino was deeply indebted
to his readings of astrological works like
the De Radiis of Al-Kindī, the Great Introduction
of the Persian Abū Maʿšar (d. 886), and
the book known as Picatrix, which unbeknownst
to him was written by Maslama Al-Qurṭubī.
Where Zafran focused his attention on the
connection between the negative elements of
Saturn and anti-Semitic portrayals of Jews,
this paper will attempt to trace out some
of the steps in that so-called “Neoplatonic
elevation” of Saturn and the sources by
which this process was made possible. What
we’ll find is that the most important of
Ficino’s sources could only really be said
to be “Neoplatonic” in part, being rather
more emphatically informed by the influence
of pseudo-Aristotelian, Aristotelian, and
Hermetic sources (especially in matters pertaining
to spiritus), whose opinions of Saturn were
noticeably more ambivalent.
During the Renaissance, astrological speculation
was no mere tabloid trifle or isolated discipline.
Powerful families like the Este in Ferrara
commissioned complex astrological murals replete
with decanic images drawn from Picatrix and
personifications of the planets to decorate
their palaces. In Florence, the Signoria hired
professional astrologers to elect the most
fortunate days and hours for the condottieri
to be awarded their baton of command. Moreover,
the physicians of princes throughout Italy
had long relied on astrological data to make
medical prognostications and offer cures.
To use the words of Eugenio Garin, the Middle
Ages had been greatly concerned with:
Astrology and religion, astrology and politics,
astrology and propaganda, but also astrology
and medicine, and astrology and science: a
philosophy of history, a conception of reality,
a fatalistic naturalism, and an astral cult
– astrology was all this and more.
What came to a head in the Renaissance, as
Garin emphasized, was the sheer volume of
all these different astrological ideas – with
all their internal contrasts and contradictions
building up. All this was happening precisely
while those practitioners of the studia humanitatis
began re-envisioning the character of the
planets with imagery of pagan deities drawn
up from the classics. During this period,
Saturn, in his many guises difficult to reconcile,
was certainly one such figure fraught with
internal contrasts and contradictions.
Saturnus Redivivus: From Ancient God to Celestial
Agent
In order to understand Saturn as he was understood
in the fifteenth century, through the eyes
of the “Arabs” or the “Platonists”
read by Ficino, we need to soften our modern
materialism which sees that planet as a massive
ringed object hurtling through space around
the Sun, taking 29.5 years to complete a single
orbit. Instead, we need to see Saturn as a
star – a luminous celestial soul, endowed
with a will of his own, surrounded by invisible
spirits, and put in his place by God as part
of the mechanism which weaves the fabric of
the microcosm or ‘lesser world,’ connecting
all elements, minerals, vegetables, animals,
and of course, the humors which constitute
human beings. In his own words, Ficino explained:
For since they [the Chaldeans, Egyptians,
and Platonists] believe the celestials are
not empty bodies, but bodies divinely animated
and ruled moreover by divine Intelligences,
no wonder they believe that as many good things
as possible come forth from thence for men,
goods pertaining not only to our body and
spirit but also overflowing somewhat into
our soul, and not into our soul from their
bodies but from their souls. And they believe
too that the same sort of things and more
of them flow out from those Intelligences
which are above the heavens.
Given that from within this paradigm Saturn
can only be understood through an analysis
of his relations, from his transfer of ‘goods,’
I here wish to illustrate some of the correspondences
that were traced out between this planet and
the things of this world leading up to Ficino’s
considerations on traditional astrology and
medicine. Perhaps the most fundamental of
these correspondences concern Saturn’s relationship
to the concept of time. The reason Saturn
is associated with time in his imagery is
twofold: 1) because as the outermost planet
of the Chaldean order, his orbit encapsulates
all other orbits, and was thus believed to
have been the first planet set in motion,
initiating time by subsequently setting every
other planet in motion in the spheres below,
and 2) because in his form as a Latin god,
he was thought once upon a time to have ruled
over a golden age – an age which is fundamentally
different from that of the observer’s – an
idea which creates a sense of temporalization
in the face of historical discontinuity over
long spans of time.
On account of his mythological portfolio,
his physical distance from Earth, and the
length of time it takes for him to transit
across the firmament, Saturn most closely
reflected the Platonic concept that ‘time
is the moving image of eternity.’ Plato’s
Timaeus first presented the idea that the
Demiurge had created an unmoving image of
eternity called Aion. Once set in motion,
however, the moving image of eternity became
known as Kronos (Κρόνος). Over centuries,
this Greek figure for time itself was syncretized
with Saturnus, the Latin god of a pre-lapsarian
agricultural golden age who ruled prior to
the reign of Zeus-Jupiter. Cicero – incidentally
a translator of Plato’s Timaeus – elaborated
on this with a Stoic reading of the myth in
De natura deorum 25, a text which was readily
available to readers in the Medieval Latin
West. Both Cicero and Plutarch explained that
the Greek name “Kronos” (Κρόνος)
is synonymous to the word “Chronos” (Χρόνος,
a span of time) on account of the fact that
the god sustains the cycle of the seasons
and the periodization of time. Meanwhile,
Cicero also told us that the name Saturnus
denotes how saturated he was from devouring
his children (a folk etymology based on the
Latin saturaretur annis with the implication
that time devours all). Cicero adds that “Saturn
was bound by Jove in order that Time’s courses
might not be unlimited, and that Jove might
fetter him by the bonds of the stars.” Other
classical authors tended to rely more on Varro
for their folk etymology, looking to the word
“sero, serere, sevi, satus” (to sow),
placing Saturn’s agricultural origins at
the root of his namesake. Neither of these
etymologies are ultimately correct, but they
betray the early presence of a matrix of ideas
that surrounded these various divinities,
the Greek embodiment of time, the Latin god
of their golden age, who was also the Etruscan
god of the underworld (and even syncretized
with the Carthaginian Ba’al Hammon). All
of these eventually played some small role
in the syncretic personas which astrologers
and star-worshippers mapped onto that dim
and distant planet.
It is around the Latin Saturnus that the Saturnalia
had emerged, that great festival of licentious
joy concerned with the temporary inversion
of social order (and I emphasize temporary),
when the world of the dead spilled out among
the living and chaos overturned order, only
for those boundaries to be triumphantly re-established
once again shortly thereafter. For these reasons,
the classical form the god Saturnus had a
strong symbolic association with spending
time in otium, while in his more negative
medieval portrayal as a planet, he became
a sign of those trapped in negotium (ploughing,
digging, banking, imprisonment, etc.). Saturn’s
relation to slavery and slaves existed among
the Latins on account of his jurisdiction
given to him by the Etruscans as lord of the
underworld. This jurisdiction included dominion
over both the dead and the quasi-living (that
is, the Romans did not consider slaves as
wholly among the living, and thus attributed
them to Saturnus’ dominion). This Saturnus
was also the husband of Ops (Wealth), the
guardian of the treasury, the inventor of
weights and measures and of money itself,
and as such was already perceived very ambiguously
in Antiquity. This ambiguity fed into the
planet’s image in the Middle Ages, but it
faded toward the more negative side, not to
reemerge in the Latin West until the humanists
recovered it as a byproduct of their astrological
studies which were shaped by their love of
the classics and their disdain for both determinism
and astral magic’s more ‘demonic’ facets.
From Roman antiquity, then, through a process
of what we might call “the astrologisation
of the planets,” Saturn’s dark light became
interconnected with time, toil, wealth (or
the absence thereof), the longue durée, and
– by extension through the correlative imagination
of the pre-modern mind – elderliness, decrepitude,
melancholy, disease, foul odours, and misfortune.
For this among other reasons, he became lord
of the removed, the contemplative, the sedentary,
and in keeping with this train of thought,
of scholars. Perhaps based on observations
of patterns in nature, the passing of time
became associated with the humoral qualities
of coldness and dryness, and these became
inextricably associated with Saturn from a
very early period. Animal and vegetable things
left exposed to the elements simply tended
to change from hot and moist states to cold
and dry states through the mere passage of
time. Saturn, however, wasn’t only an emblem
of time’s passage, but also an emblem of
timelessness. As the planet closest to the
edge of the known universe, Saturn straddled
the boundary between the worlds of immutability
and change, of wholeness and corruption. His
peculiar relation to both prophecy and Judaism,
for example, can in part be explained on account
of perceptions regarding their mutually shared
nearness to a state of timelessness. Following
the Platonic dichotomy between divine and
human knowledge, it was understood that true
prophecy was a kind of madness that came from
a level of intellection which transcended
the ostensibly cyclical motion of ‘normal
time.’ Human knowledge was largely concerned
with the changing and the mutable, while divine
truths (like geometry or Scripture) dwelt
outside of time, in the Mind of God Himself
where past, present, and future folded into
one eternity. This point is important because
it emphasizes an aspect of Saturn’s dual
nature as both a transcendent and an immanent
figure, and consequently, a good and a less-good
figure from the perspective of an Augustinian
framework. It is that same dual nature which
would allow someone like Ficino to perceive
in Saturn both a light and a dark side: one
aspect to be retained and one to be rejected
in putting together his system for drawing
down only the goods which that planet might
offer without exacerbating the ills.
Despite Saturn’s various and fundamentally
ancient roots, we mustn’t allow too much
of the mythology from pagan Antiquity to colour
our views of either tenth or fifteenth-century
astral magic, just in the same way we mustn’t
allow too much of our understanding of today’s
astronomy to anachronistically color our views.
Though some influences remained, much of the
knowledge of what these influences linked
back to had been forgotten. By the Middle
Ages, the planets had long lost their status
as gods and been demoted into celestial objects
made of ‘fifth essence’ whirling about
within a more Stoic conception of nature,
set in place by God for the execution of His
will. In the words of Dieter Blume:
The bridge leading back to the gods of Antiquity
was thus definitely burned. Even educated
readers would not have made the connection
anymore. So in the field of planetary astrology,
there was in fact no survival of the pagan
gods.
Although much of the character of the Greek
Κρόνος or the Roman Saturnus had persisted
in abstraction in the astrological character
and imagery of Saturn, today’s widely recognized
image of a winged, child-eating “Father
Time” from Greek mythology did not reappear
until the early fifteenth century. It was
Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Gods that played
a significant role in reconnecting the mythical
and astrological personas of Saturn in Europe
during the Renaissance. Until the humanists
had re-envisioned him in the light of his
more ancient ambivalence, Saturn’s image
in Europe was essentially that of a poor crippled
farmer, or a Jew, leaning on a crutch (an
image drawn up from translations of Abū Maʿšar).
By at least the first century BC though probably
since an even earlier time, thanks to a “Chaldean”
influence, the planets had been systematically
divided into “fortunate” and “unfortunate”
planets, with Venus and Jupiter being auspicious,
Mercury being neutral, and Mars and Saturn
being inauspicious. By the time Ptolemy composed
his Tetrabiblos in the second century AD,
most astrologers had defined their science
in line with naturalistic principles: either
it was a quest to understand of causal influences
from the pneumatic, aethereal world down into
the world of matter, or alternatively, a quest
to read the heavens as omens, portents, and
signs. To most Stoics, astrology was a divinatory
practice of reading signs which allowed a
given sage to foresee his future and to make
peace with it, not to alter its course by
affecting chains of causality, as was later
attempted by those who developed the science
of talismans in a ‘Chaldean’ mode. Here
the planets acted like nodes within networks
of similitudes, radiating particular influences
down to earth through the aether, connecting
all things under their dominion. This now
‘mathematizable’ cosmos was taken up by
natural philosophers, some of which held more
emphatically to the Stoic principles of fate
and determinism than others. This outlook
left little room for flexibility in negotiating
with the gods. Although the pagan cults faded
out gradually under the pressures of Christian
or Islamic persecution, the gods’ names
and some ideas associated with them endured,
especially so in the lands of the Eastern
Roman Empire where religious institutions
were less successful (or less determined)
in snuffing competition.
As first-hand memory of the pagan gods gradually
faded over centuries, the planets consequently
began to be perceived as natural rather than
supernatural powers, and thus those mysterious
luminaries became the subject of widespread
speculation by natural philosophers. On into
the Arabic tradition, we find that it was
the Andalusian alchemist and astral magician
Maslama al-Qurṭubī who first brought the
occult sciences as exemplified by Muslim thinkers
like al-Kindī (d. 870), Abū Maʿšar (d.
886), and later, the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān
al-Ṣafā), to Muslim Spain. Here the combined
efforts of various Islamic, Christian, and
Jewish scholars were employed in a multigenerational
process reconcile the various systems whose
texts had been inherited: the Aristotelian
and pseudo-Aristotelian, the Stoic, the Platonic,
and the Hermetic. In this seemingly paradoxical
blend of many divergent philosophical schools,
the world they imagined wasn’t one of strict
determinism: it left wiggle room for the agency
of the will. Rather than a cosmos populated
by autonomous divinities, these men employed
Plato’s idea of ‘celestial souls’ for
the planets, and these were further attributed
with retinues of ray-transmitting spiritual
entities (or later, rūḥāniyyat), each
of whom were also endowed with their own wills
(which could be invoked and placated in the
name of God). These beings were thought of
as agents of creation – that is, channels
for God’s creative energies – but they
were far from being eternal and uncreated
creators themselves. The rays they transmitted
did indeed shape material reality, but they
did so volitionally, not mechanistically,
and could therefore be persuaded by certain
techniques to alter the dynamics of generation
and corruption in the terrestrial world. It
is for this reason that by the High Middle
Ages, to quote Blume again, “when it was
decided to depict these astrological powers
[in the Latin West], the appropriate images
first had to be invented. And it wasn’t
Ovid, but Abū Maʿšar who was consulted.”
Here the formerly independent gods of various
pagan pantheons were now interpreted as aethereal
and supralunary agents of generation and corruption
set in motion by the Prime Mover, and whose
effects could be understood only through the
astronomical calculation of the rays that
their retinue of spirits transmitted. This,
then, is how the reader of the Picatrix was
meant to conceptualize the planets: not as
ancient gods, or a massive material objects
in the sky, but as luminous ensouled forces
of nature surrounded by spirits with wills
of their own, which were then draped in syncretic
imagery drawn up from the teachings of the
ancient sages in whom were maintained some
traces of their former godlike characteristics,
or conversely, in whom new foreign accretions
from distant lands were passed along.
During the Renaissance, all of these tensions
and conflicting viewpoints over the nature
of the planets came to a head. In an attempt
to free himself from the potential of public
disgrace that might arise through any trace
of involvement with idolatry or demonology,
our priest-physician Marsilio Ficino ultimately
came to hold the heavenly bodies more emphatically
as spiritual signs (i.e., objects that impress
themselves upon the human spirit) than direct
physical causes (which impress themselves
on matter via heat, or supernaturally through
demonic agency). Nevertheless, he would never
wholly get away from the model provided by
his more immediate influences, in whom the
boundaries between the causal and the semiotic
facets of astrology were blurred together.
In his unpublished Disputatio contra iudicium
astrologicum, composed in 1477 a few years
after finishing his Theologia Platonica, Ficino
unambiguously stated in a rebuke of traditional
astrological doctrine that the mathematizable
portion of astrology, the planetary “aspects,”
are nothing but a fiction (“non sunt tantum
quinque aspectus nisi ex hominum fictione”),
and that the significance of each planet exists
through poetic metaphor, not through reason
or science (“poetica metaphora est, non
ratio vel scientia”). This tension arose
in Ficino chiefly on account of the conflicting
influences that he read, both in Plotinus,
the Platonist for whom the stars were emphatically
signs alone and not causes, and in the works
of the Arabic astrologers, for whom the stars
were both. To Plotinus, wise astrologers used
the signs in the heaven to understand providence,
not to delude themselves into believing that
they are prisoners in a web of irresistible
causal action. Try as he might, however, Ficino
could not fully escape the belief of celestial
causation, especially in dealing with and
in extracting valuable medical matters from
the Arabic books of the astral magicians.
Medicine, after all, is a search for understanding
causes and their effects within the body,
while astrology was doing much the same but
outside of it. This medical side of Ficino’s
work was particularly an interest among “the
Arabs” which he read, but not of “the
Platonists” who “scorned materialistic
ends such as the bodily health at which Ficino
aimed.”
Saturn and Picatrix
So what does the Picatrix itself, hidden under
the vague label of the “astrologi Arabes”
by Ficino despite being so central to his
development, have to say about Saturn? In
order to understand this, we can turn to one
of our best sources as laid out in Book 3,
Chapter 1, “On the Roles of the Planets
in Plants, Animals, and Metals.” Prior to
the rise of Picatrix in the Latin West, Saturn’s
malefic nature was exacerbated by the widespread
image presented of that planet in Abū Maʿšar
who wrote:
With regard to Saturn, his nature is cold,
dry, bitter, black, dark, violent and harsh.
Sometimes too it is cold, moist, heavy, and
of stinking wind. He eats much and is honest
in friendship. He presides over works of moisture
[i.e. waterworks/ditches], husbandry, and
farming; over owners of land, works of construction
on estates, lakes and rivers; over measuring
things, division of estates, land and much
property, and estates with their wealth; over
avarice and bitter poverty; over domiciles,
sea travel and long sojourn abroad; over far,
evil journeys; over blindness, corruption,
hatred, guile, craftiness, fraud, disloyalty,
harmfulness (or harm); over being withdrawn
into one’s self; over loneliness and unsociability;
over ostentation, lust for power, pride, haughtiness
and boastfulness; over those who enslave men
and rule, as well as over every deed of wickedness,
force, tyranny and rage; over fighters (?); over
bondage, imprisonment, distraint, fettering,
honest speech, caution, reflection, understanding,
testing, pondering ... over much thinking,
aversion from speech and importunity, over
persistence in a course. He is scarcely ever
angry, but when he becomes angry he is not
master of himself; he wishes no one well;
he further presides over old men and surly
people; over fear, reverses of fortune, cares,
fits of sadness, writing, confusion. . . affliction,
hard life, straits, loss, deaths, inheritances,
dirges and orphanage; over old things, grandfathers,
fathers, elder brothers, servants, grooms,
misers and people whose attention women require
(?); over those covered with shame, thieves,
gravediggers, corpse robbers, tanners and
over people who count things; over magic and
rebels; over low-born people and eunuchs;
over long reflection and little speech; over
secrets, while no one knows what is in him
and neither does he show it, though he knows
of every dark occasion. He presides over self-destruction
and matters of boredom.
The correspondences presented in this passage,
as we shall see, were as deeply influential
to al-Qurṭubī as to intellectuals of the
Latin world in later centuries. Nevertheless,
al-Qurṭubī’s image of Saturn was also
tempered by different sources which maintained
a more ancient, pagan element of Saturn’s
ambiguity. By and large, these were sources
concerned with planetary prayers, more coloured
by Near Eastern, Chaldean, and Indian influences
than Hellenistic ones. These were works like
Ibn Waḥshīya’s Chaldean/Nabataean Agriculture
or the pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica (e.g.
Kitāb al-Isṭamākhīs) whose authors unfailingly
persisted in looking to Saturn as a source
of both good and ill. In the following passages
written by al-Qurṭubī, we can see the distinctive
influence of the correspondences present in
Abū Maʿšar, but so too that of the more
“Hermetic” authors:
Saturn is the source of retentive power. He
governs an aspect toward profound knowledge;
the science of law; the search for causes,
effects, and the origins of things; the utterance
of magical words; and the knowledge of deep
and occult properties. From the languages,
he governs Hebrew and Chaldean. From the external
appendages, he governs the right ear. From
the internal organs, he governs the spleen,
which is the source of melancholy conjoining
all organs. From the religions, he governs
Judaism. From cloth types, he governs all
black cloth. From the crafts, he rules working
the soil, ploughing, digging, extracting and
working minerals, and the building trades.
From the tastes, he governs the bitter. Among
locations, he governs black mountains, murky
rivers, deep wells, ditches, and desert places.
From the stones, he governs onyx and all black
stones. From the metals, he governs lead,
iron, and all black musty metals. From the
trees, he governs elderberries, oaks, carobs,
palms, and vines. From the herbs, he governs
cumin, rue, onions, and all the plants that
have deep leaves. From the kinds of aloe,
myrrh, and similar things, he governs white
lead and colocynth. From the incenses, he
strongly governs cinnamon and storax gum.
From the animals, he governs black camels,
pigs, monkeys, bears, dogs, and cats. From
the birds, he governs all those with a long
neck and a powerful cry, like cranes, ostriches,
duga, and crows. He governs all the animals
that live beneath the earth, all the tiny,
juicy, and foul-smelling creatures [i.e.,
insects]. From the colors, he governs every
black and tawny color (3.1.3).
The text goes on to state that the colour
of Saturn is like burnt wool (3.3.2), and
that his talismanic image (the figure through
which one draws upon Saturn’s spiritual
power) is “the shape of a black man wrapped
in a green cloak with a dog-like head and
a sickle in his hand” (3.3.4). When Saturn
is in a favorable astrological position – that
is, when he sits in Libra (his exaltation),
in Aquarius (the house of his planetary joy),
or in Capricorn (his second house) – and
when you wish to pray to him, Picatrix 3.7.16
says: Dress yourself in all black clothes
with a black cape tailored in the manner of
a professor. Wear black shoes. Go to a place
assigned to such a task, remote from mankind
and humbly chosen. Walk there with a humble
will, in the fashion of a Jew, for Saturn
was the lord of their Sabbath. Hold an iron
ring in your hand and carry an iron censer.
In it, place burning charcoal upon which you
should set the suffumigating mixture whose
recipe is this: Take equal parts of opium,
actarag (which is an herb), saffron, laurel
seed, carob, wormwood, lanolin, colocynth,
and the head of a black cat. Grind them up
and mix everything together with the urine
of a black she-goat in equal parts, then make
some tablets out of it. When you wish to operate,
place one of these on the burning coals of
the censer. Then, turn your face toward Saturn
and while smoke rises from the censer, say
this prayer:
O lord on high whose name is great and stands
firm in a place above all the heavens’ planets,
he whom God placed sublime and lofty! You
are lord Saturn, cold and dry, dark, author
of good, honest in your friendship, true in
your promises, enduring and persevering in
your amity and hatred. Your perception is
far and deep; honest in your words and promises,
alone, lonely, removed from others in your
works, with sadness and pain, removed from
rejoicing and festivities. You are old, ancient,
wise, the despoiler of good intellect. You
are a doer of good and of evil. Wretched and
sad is he who is cursed by your misfortunes.
The man who attains your fortunes is blessed
indeed. In you God placed power and strength
and a spirit doing both good and evil. I ask
you, father and lord, by your lofty names
and wondrous acts, that you should do such-and-such
a thing for me.
We are then instructed to speak our requests,
prostrate ourselves on the ground toward Saturn
with humility, sadness, gentleness, and a
purified will. If we do this many times on
Saturday, in the hour of Saturn, then know
that our requests will be fulfilled with effect.
From passages such as these it should be clear
that, thanks to a revival of Ṣābian influence
in al-Qurṭubī, Saturn is again emphasized
for his ambivalent, rather than wholly negative
nature. Here he is praised as “a doer of
good and of evil” and his dual nature is
strongly emphasized in a number of ways. Up
in his lofty seat he is a liminal figure,
a sign of eternity’s descent into normal
time, or vice-versa, a sign of the last rung
in one’s ascent from normal time into eternity.
He is both an evil sorcerer and a holy prophet;
with his old age comes both wisdom and senility;
with his perseverance comes enduring good
and evil; with his honesty, great hope and
great fear are mixed in together. For as much
misfortune as Saturn is shown to be responsible
for in Abū Maʿšar, in due proportion Picatrix
highlights the hidden treasures he hides behind
his somber disposition, and it was this two-fold
nature of Saturn which would become so prominent
in Ficino.
In addition to these passages so essential
to elucidating Saturn’s nature, the Picatrix
contains a number of other operations dedicated
to or pertaining to that planet which according
to al-Qurṭubī were drawn from the Ṣābian
teachings of a mysterious figure named al-Ṭabarī
(Latin: Athabary). Here al-Qurṭubī, our
“man of charms and talismans,” warns practitioners
of nigromancia to keep in mind one of the
most important fundamentals of astral magic:
that one must “never seek anything from
a planet unless it is attributed to its dominion.”
As such, from among the petitions which here
fall under Saturn’s jurisdiction, we are
told to:
Seek Saturn in petitions concerning the elderly,
generous men, elders, kings of cities, hermits,
those who work the lands, returns to cities,
inheritances, exceptional men, farmers, builders
of buildings, slaves, thieves, fathers, grandfathers,
and great-grandfathers. If you were caught
up in deep thought and grief, in melancholy
or grievous illness, in all these things or
affairs, seek petitions from Saturn, and request
things assigned to his nature.
Here Saturn not only signified, but could
also help to cure many of the negative things
traditionally assigned to his nature – one
simply had to invoke and petition him in a
ritual. Doubtless this is the kind of information
Ficino not only took to heart, but also passed
on in his De Vita Libri Tres (and without
explicit citation) to the most powerful man
in Italy, his patron Lorenzo de’ Medici.
He did so, however, with some modifications:
namely, by not retaining a single trace of
the more questionable ‘pagan’ material
which accompanied such lists of correspondences.
Section 3.7.17 in Picatrix goes on to state
that there are other sages who used to pray
to Saturn with different prayers and suffumigations,
but here we are getting deeper into the kinds
of material which made Ficino nervous. In
one prayer, Saturn is invoked by all his names:
in Arabic, Zohal; in Latin, Saturnus; in “Phoenician”,
Keyhven; in “Roman”, Koronez; in Greek,
Hacoronoz; in “Indian,” Sacas. We are
then instructed to sacrifice a black goat
by cutting off its head and gathering the
blood for keepsake, but not before removing
its liver and burning it, thus fully scattering
the animal’s constituent rays back into
the universal matrix and fulfilling the ritual
conditions required to bring down the spirits.
Yet another sacrifice (3.7.38) entails taking
an unblemished cow, reared on grass handpicked
by young maidens every morning, then crowning
its horns with golden chains and cutting off
its head with a sword, while suffumigating
it with the mixture attributed to Saturn,
and speaking “in the manner of the Greeks.”
Ultimately, this particular set of instructions
– which should strike us as a description
of a generic Greco-Roman styled pagan religious
sacrifice – seems to be more a description
of an operation that ancient sages did in
the past than something al-Qurṭubī necessarily
exhorted his readers to do under the jurisdiction
of Islamic law which had enacted rules against
siḥr (if we are indeed to take him at his
own word). The text goes on to say that a
priest would then cut out the cow’s tongue,
ears, snout, and eyes; while the rest of those
present took their share of the meat. Afterward,
they’d stare into the blood which had been
collected into the saucer and examine the
froth rising up from the blood. “From that
froth,” it is said that “they understood
the dominion and motion of Saturn, which according
to them is the first motion, because in him
motion begins and ends.” This kind of sacrifice
they used to make only when Saturn entered
the sign of Taurus.
In another set of operations contained in
Picatrix, this time drawn up from Ibn Waḥshīya’s
Nabataean or Chaldean Agriculture, there are
instructions for making a suffumigation of
old hides, fat, sweat, dead bats, and mice
(14 bats and 14 mice to be exact). We are
told the Chaldeans would take the ashes from
this sacrifice and sprinkle them over the
head of the ritual image they had crafted
in the appropriate astrological hours. Then,
“they threw themselves down around the image
on a black stone floor.” From these efforts,
they warded off his [that is, Saturn’s]
malefic or unfortunate effects, since every
evil, every cursed thing, and every tear shed
upon the earth were believed to proceed from
him. “He is lord of all poverty, misery,
pain, imprisonment, turpitude, and lamentation”
says the text (3.7.2); “He signifies these
things while descending and unfortunate. When
he is in a good disposition and in his exaltation,
however, he signifies purity, lifespan, social
standing, rejoicing, honor, riches, inheritance,
and the durability of inheritance in sons
and grandsons.” So here we can see again
that Saturn wasn’t all harm and damage among
the “Chaldeans” as he might’ve been
considered otherwise by a typical Hellenistic
astrologer informed by tables of essential
dignities and debilities; rather, whether
he acted as a malefic or a benefic planet
was here entirely dependent upon a whole slew
of astrological and ritual factors. Later
in the Picatrix, we are told in a list of
aphorisms allegedly drawn from the Secretum
Secretorum that the best things for which
to entreat Saturn are “delaying movement,
concealing purity, the destruction of cities,
humbling hearts, and calming waters” (4.4.5),
all of which (except perhaps the destruction
of cities) could be considered morally neutral
acts. I am highlighting Saturn’s ambivalence
here in the Picatrix and in some of its constituent
astro-magical sources, because I wish to make
the case that it is thanks to the influence
of such passages as these that Ficino was
prompted to conceptualize his relationship
with that dark star ruling so prominently
in his birth chart in less fatalistic terms.
He avoided recommending the invocatory and
sacrificial practices just cited, demonic
as they would appear to a Christian audience,
but he was aware of them, and most importantly,
he was still informed by the correspondences
which the ancient sages therein presented.
In relating all these ostensibly pagan magical
operations and planetary prayers, the author
of the Picatrix had explicitly mentioned the
caveat that:
We have included this prayer here solely for
demonstrating the common agreement between
the ancient sages concerning the planetary
operations and the constant protection of
their bodies by means of planetary natures.
We include that prayer in this book such that
nothing intelligible in this work of ancient
sages be lacking… Now, since this prayer
is forbidden in our law, we included it here
merely for uncovering the ancient sages’
secrets, since they performed this ritual
in ancient times before the law was given.
For this reason, no one must reveal these
things since, despite everything I have said
about this and other rituals, I am and shall
always be a teacher with good intentions (3.8.4).
Here, in stressing his good intentions, al-Qurṭubī
hints to us that he was flirting with the
boundaries of legitimacy in relating this
sort of information, but that it seemed at
least valuable enough to him to assume the
risk of relating it. Some five centuries later,
Ficino’s Apology that accompanied his De
vita (dated September 19th 1489) was written
for a Christian audience, and its arguments
would hardly differ: priest-craft, medicine,
magic, and astrology were all seen as inseparable
disciplines among the sages of old, and as
such, one could not with any degree of authority
deal with one of these elements in isolation
from the others. It wasn’t his fault the
ancient sages living without the knowledge
of the gospel had gotten so many of the truths
of natural philosophy mixed up with idolatry,
but he knew he’d have to work hard to extract
what he thought valuable.
Saturn in Transit: The Case of Ficino
Starting in the late twelfth century, the
Latin West began to see new developments in
theories of theology, astral magic (nigromancia)
and natural philosophy which gradually coalesced
into the idea that, although individuals were
certainly influenced by celestial bodies,
with the help of specific kinds of practical
magic passed down by such beloved ancient
sages as Aristotle, they could manipulate
the boundaries of their respective destinies.
Naturally, one of the foremost arenas for
the expression of this idea was in the field
of human health. Not long after the twelfth-century
introduction of Arabic image magic into the
Latin West, Christian theologians were quick
to react against it with the argument that
simple prayers and good works could act just
as well, if not better, as effective substitutes
for such potentially dangerous magical operations
as those offered up in a text like the wildly
popular pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum
(Sirr al-Asrār). The Franciscan Roger Bacon
(d. 1292), for example, who’d published
his own edition of that partly astro-magical
text, in no way denied that the arrangement
of the heavenly bodies above conditioned the
world below. Nevertheless, he believed that
through the power of simple pieties “even
a poor little old woman by her prayers and
merits, if supported by the benevolence of
God, can change the order of nature.” Prayers
were addressed straight to the Creator in
His supercelestial domain, and thus thought
to bypass any of the intermediary mechanisms
of fate, rendering all prayers and offerings
to intercessory beings in the celestial world
frivolous (or at worst, blasphemous). These
sensibilities could be said to have begun
in Late Antiquity with the Church Fathers’
disparaging writings about the Hermetic Asclepius,
and merely to have come to a head in the university
debates of the thirteenth century, subsequently
setting the haunting tone for all later debates
about the nature of planetary influences in
Europe’s places of power. Once the scholastics
had effectively stripped the science of nigromancia
from all its ostensibly demonic characteristics,
what was left behind was essentially magia
naturalis, an innocuous and inoffensive pursuit
(e.g. experimentation with the healing properties
of plants and stones, or research into the
iron-attracting powers of the lodestone),
the study of which has often been touted as
one of the chief tributaries feeding into
the Scientific Revolution.
Apart from his role as translator and court
philosopher, Ficino became a major figure
in this narrative as a practitioner of both
magic and medicine. There is no doubt that
Ficino read the Secretum Secretorum, al-Kindī,
al-Qurṭubī, and Abū Maʿšar in Latin
translations. While his use of al-Kindī and
Abū Maʿšar is self-evident from his De
vita libri tres (since he explicitly uses
formulations like “Abū Maʿšar and some
others [say]” when citing his authorities),
his selective use of Picatrix is confirmed
by a letter he dictated to Michele Acciari
to be sent to Filippo Valori. In it he discussed
his cautious borrowing of Picatrix material
in the composition of his De vita. In response
to Valori’s request to borrow his copy of
the book, Ficino explained that there is no
use in reading it since everything of value
in it had been “transferred” to his De
vita coelitus comparanda – the third instalment
of the self-help series he was writing in
1489 for his melancholic patron Lorenzo De
Medici. “If you read it diligently,” says
the letter, “you’ll be left wanting nothing
from… that Picatrix.” As one among a handful
of definitive examples demonstrating his use,
we can see Ficino drew from Picatrix (2.10.14
and 41) his instructions on how to craft a
sapphire (feyrizech) ring for life-extension
using an image of Saturn, in his hour, while
he is ascending and fortunately placed. Ficino
justified his own use of these kinds of magical
objects with the kinds of arguments one could
find being made as early as the Speculum astronomiae,
a work he himself attributed (albeit incorrectly)
to Albertus Magnus in response to the 1277
condemnations of Averroean and Aristotelian
philosophy at the University of Paris and
rising of anxieties over texts like the Secretum
Secretorum. So long as he avoided the addressative
magic which involved conjuring spirits, he
felt he was merely manipulating impersonal
forces of nature by using tools like astrological
talismans and lifestyle changes, not making
compacts with demons. In light of these recommendations,
he put the following disclaimer in the introduction
to the third book:
The whole [of my book] forms an epitome of
Medicine which will assist your life as much
as possible, that it may be both healthy and
long; and it employs at every point the resources
of doctors, aided by the heavens. This shop
of ours displays various antidotes, drugs,
fomentations, ointments, and remedies, according
to the differing mental capacities and natures
of men. If in some way they happen to displease
you, pass over these, by all means, but do
not for that reason repudiate the rest. Finally,
if you do not approve of astronomical images,
albeit invented for the health of mortals
– which even I do not so much approve of
as I report – dismiss them with my complete
permission and even, if you will, by my advice.
To deal more clearly with this complication
in the face of scrutiny after the publication
of his De Vita, Ficino wrote an Apology which
broke down magic into two categories: the
demonic, which he called “inquisitive,”
and the natural, which he called “necessary.”
The latter he claimed to practice exclusively,
purely as a means to achieving optimal health,
while the former he claimed to reject wholeheartedly
(in spite of the numerous operations he conveyed
in De vita unambiguously enacted for manipulating
spirits).
Throughout the De vita, however, Ficino exhibited
the nervous tendency to hide behind his authorities
“the Arabs” and “the Platonists” whenever
recommending suspect procedures, particularly
talismanic operations, and therefore only
recommended to his readers the operations
he deemed salubrious and in line with established
Christian principles and the conceptual guidelines
of magia naturalis as set down in scholastic
polemics from the Middle Ages. Although our
melancholic priest began his De vita coelitus
comparanda as a commentary on Plotinus (Enneads
4. 3. 11), this pretense was quickly dropped
as the work expanded far beyond this initial
scope, and admittedly, Plotinus himself had
never himself been interested in practical
magic, talismans, or writing medical advice
for princes. As such, if he really was drawing
upon “Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Platonists”
to give theoretical support to his image of
a perfect sage, he did so from Iamblichus’
(d. 325) De mysteriis Agyptiorum, Synesius’
(d. 414) De Somniis, Proclus’ (d. 485) De
sacrificio et magia, and Michael Psellos’
(d. 1078) De daemonibus. Despite all these
sources, and although hesitant to admit it,
it wasn’t chiefly from these figures but
from the astrologi Arabes, especially the
Secretum Secretorum, al-Kindī, Abū Maʿšar,
and al-Qurṭubī/Picatrix, that Ficino drew
the specifics for his ideas on how to achieve
his “Perfect Nature.” Perfect Nature is
an important concept that sits at the heart
of the Picatrix, and it constitutes a kind
of spiritual illumination experienced by the
perfected sage at the summit of all learning
in both the sciences and in philosophy. It
was thought to comprise the fulfilment one’s
inborn telos or purpose, and this could be
accomplished solely by living in accordance
with one’s personal astrological allotment
(as defined by the conditions in one’s natal
chart). In Picatrix, Perfect Nature manifests
itself as a kind of knowledge and conversation
with one’s higher genius, which could be
invoked through the fulfillment of certain
ritual conditions (described in Picatrix 3.6).
Without explicitly naming this teleological
concept in his own work, Ficino appropriated
the idea of the self which strove to rise
above the ebbs and flows of cosmic forces
through the marriage of scientific and philosophical
pursuits. What Ficino did differently, however,
was to reinterpret his quest for the fulfilment
of human entelechy – the realization of
one’s potential – as a medico-physiological
process rather than one which was necessarily
brought about through the invocation of spirits.
The Picatrix itself belongs to a pseudo-Aristotelian
‘causal-and-semiotic’ tradition in the
vein of such ray-oriented astrological systems
of al-Kindī and his student Abū Maʿšar,
and later the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān
Al-Ṣafā), all of whom were steeped in such
literature as the talismanic pseudo-Aristotelian
Hermetica (e.g. the Libri al-Isṭamākhīs,
al-Isṭamāṭīs, al-Usṭuwwaṭās, etc.)
, and all of whose views on practical magic
were also framed by translations into Arabic
of such works as the Theology of Aristotle
(a paraphrased versions of Porphyry’s rendition
of Plotinus’ Enneads IV-VI) and The Book
of the Pure Good (a paraphrase of Proclus’
Elements of Theology also known later as the
Liber de causis in Europe). The Picatrix might
be said to be “Neoplatonic” insofar as
its astrology and talismans were thought to
operate within a Neoplatonic cosmological
system consisting of hypostatic divisions
emanating outward from the One, but this is
merely one of its many constituent influences,
and to call it purely Neoplatonic would efface
the diversity of its sources (Hermetic, Peripatetic,
Galenic, Jabirian, pseudo-Empedoclean, etc.).
If we are to understand Ficino’s wariness
in dealing with a book like Picatrix, we must
keep in mind how ideas about Saturn and the
operations pertaining to him (alongside those
dealing with any other planets) were transplanted
from a Hellenistic and Hermetic context into
a Late Medieval Christian one with strong
eschatological, anti-Islamic, and anti-demonic
sensibilities. The rituals, operations, and
ingredients in Ficino’s sources were professed
to acquire their power from existing within
a natural philosophical system that implied
the hidden actions of spiritual, volitionally-charged
beings with whom it was long forbidden to
associate. Nonetheless, in order to remain
free from the stains of demonology, Ficino
reconceptualized and passed on much of the
Picatrix’s magic as effectively naturalistic
and medicinal, meaning all the associated
idolatrous baggage was unnecessary and could
be left out.
It is by this reconceptualization that we
can see Ficino, according to the teachings
of [pseudo-]Aristotle (Problemata 30.1), call
his own saturnine nature “a unique and divine
gift” in a letter to his friend Giovanni
Cavalcanti. As a philosopher, priest, and
a melancholic individual, Ficino understood
himself to be a veritable “child of Saturn,”
but this to him wasn’t necessarily a negative
lot as it would’ve seemed to many other
astrologers of his day. He would use the metaphor
of “hidden gold” in referring to the gift
that this astral configuration signified to
those who were specifically on a philosophical
path, that is, the path leading to “The
Goal of The Sage” – the fulfillment of
their natures through a complete knowledge
and understanding of creation’s inner workings.
Ficino’s sun sign was in Scorpio (ruled
by Mars), but more importantly for the astrology
of the period, his ascendant (i.e., what lay
on the eastern horizon at the time of his
birth) was comprised of Saturn in Aquarius
(the house of his “joy”). Perhaps the
most detailed passage Ficino wrote about Saturn
is the following:
You certainly should not neglect the power
of Saturn. For the Arabic writers [i.e. Picatrix]
say he is the most powerful of all; that we
know planets submit their powers to those
[planets] whom they are approaching, but that
all approach him, rather than vice versa [because
he is the slowest]; and that planets in conjunction
with him act according to his nature. For
he is of all planets the head of the widest
sphere. . . Saturn is also neighbor to the
innumerable [fixed] stars; and indeed, he
is very similar to the Primum Mobile because
he travels a lengthy circuit. He is the highest
of planets; hence they call that man fortunate
whom Saturn fortunately favors. And although
most people are terrified of him as alien
from the ordinary life of man, nevertheless
the Arabs consider he is agreeable even to
the common life whenever he has very great
power and dignity as he ascends, or his Jupiter
[his temperer] aspects him favorably or receives
him well in his terms. Otherwise, unseasonably
received in matter, particularly gross matter,
his influence is like a poison, just as by
putrefaction or adustion an egg may become
poisonous. From such influence, certain people
are born or become impure, lazy, sad, envious,
and exposed to impure daemons. Flee far from
the company of these. For in other places
the poison of Saturn lies hidden and dormant
like sulfur far from flame; but in living
bodies it often blazes up and, like kindled
sulphur, not only burns but fills everything
around with noxious vapor and infects the
bystanders. Against this influence of his,
generally alien to, and in a way unsuitable
for, human beings, Jupiter arms us by means
of the following: with his natural quality,
with certain foods and medicines of his, with
images (as they think), and with behavior,
business dealings, studies, and affairs properly
pertaining to himself. But it is not only
those who flee to Jupiter who escape the noxious
influence of Saturn and undergo his propitious
influence; it is also those who give themselves
over with their whole mind to the divine contemplation
signified by Saturn himself.
Here among the host of sources Ficino employed,
we see him trusting in Picatrix – hidden
behind the simple label of Arabes – in renegotiating
the consequences of being born beneath the
malefic influences of Saturn, especially as
it pertained to being endowed by nature with
a cold and dry, melancholic complexion. Saturn,
being the loftiest most spiritually rarefied
of the planets, occupied a liminal position
between the celestial and the supercelestial,
between the intelligible and the unintelligible,
between what can be understood through the
senses and what is only accessible through
“divine contemplation.” Ficino put his
faith in the notion held by “the Arabic
writers” that on the very account of Saturn’s
loftiness “they call that man fortunate
whom Saturn fortunately favors.” In the
same breath he claims that, on one hand, a
Saturnine influence at one’s birth is like
living with a potential poison within one’s
body, but on the other, he rests assured that
since the Arabs consider Saturn agreeable
“as he ascends” or if he is well tempered
by Jupiter. Here then we can see from where
our Florentine physician established the foundations
of his ideas on how to combat melancholy.
In this way, although “Saturn ascending
in Aquarius” still signified ill-health
when Ficino looked at his birth chart, the
positive side was that decrepitude or crippling
depression would also force him into deskbound
contemplation, to rise up and out of his body
toward the immutable realm of perfect ideas
in the study of philosophy. A life devoted
to the study of divine truths was most natural
for a person of a saturnine disposition, and
to act in accordance with one’s nature was
simply the optimal way to live.
Ficino tells us in concluding Chapter 22 of
his De vita coelitus comparanda entitled Seven
Ways in Which We Can Accommodate Ourselves
to Celestial Things which is his section devoted
to the various types of people for whom Saturn
is either malign or propitious, whom Jupiter
defends from Saturn, and most importantly,
“how the heavens act on the Spirit, the
Body, and the Soul.” There Ficino writes:
Just as the Sun is hostile to nocturnal animals…
Saturn is hostile to those people who are
either leading publicly an ordinary life,
or even to those fleeing the company of the
crowd but not laying aside their ordinary
emotions.
To Ficino, perfecting one’s nature – as
it is in Picatrix or in the Secretum Secretorum
– was to be achieved by working along with
the conditions of one’s astrological allotment
rather than giving in to despair on account
of one’s ill-fated natal chart marred by
malefic aspects. The mechanism by which this
perfection could be accomplished was through
balancing one’s humoural complexion. One
of the ways of achieving this balance was
naturally, by modifying one’s diet, lifestyle,
and exercise regimen, and the other was astro-magically,
with talismanic images, sacrificial invocations,
or through similar means of drawing upon the
planetary powers one can find in the Picatrix.
Though there are numerous operations relating
to the powers of Saturn therein which might
be thought of as purely medicinal, there are
also many of them which fall under the category
of “addressative” or “inquisitive”
magic, and it is these operations which were
for the most part responsible for Picatrix’s
nefarious reputation. These were expressly
avoided by Ficino, but the descriptions of
Saturn’s character and the things of this
world which he governed remained useful in
matters pertaining to medicine and altering
one’s complexion and physiology.
Fully conscious of Saturn’s dangerous, albeit
ambivalent character, Ficino made it clear
in De Vita that: “Saturn cannot easily signify
the common quality and lot of the human race
[which is Solar], but he signifies an individual
set apart from others, divine or brutish,
blessed or bowed down with the extreme of
misery.” To understand this “elevation”
of Saturn through his application of astro-magical
principles, we need to revisit briefly the
question of semiology and causation in the
context of the Neoplatonic, Peripatetic, and
Hermetic sources at his disposal. Debates
as to whether stars were signs or causes ranged
back to the Hellenistic period and were not
new. Though the concepts of signs and causes
cannot necessarily be said to be mutually
exclusive in the pre-modern mind, Ficino had
begun his project struggling to see the things
of this world more in line with his favorite
ancient sage Plotinus (which is, for example,
why he held the science of planetary aspects
as chiefly “metaphora”). Plotinus’ own
perspective had differed from the claims of
the more Stoically-minded astrological determinists
of his own day: that is, he saw the things
of this world as signified, but not caused
by the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies.
Nevertheless, this perspective as juxtaposed
with the perspective contained in Picatrix
(e.g., in Picatrix 1.3.1, where the rays are
both vectors of spirit and of elementary heat)
forced Ficino to complexify his thinking.
Had Ficino been operating purely on ‘Neoplatonic’
foundations in his conception of the cosmos,
he would’ve ignored the idea of planetary
rays altogether and stood with Plotinus in
the belief that the stars are strictly signs
and not causes. To get around this idea which
was problematic for the degree to which Ficino’s
system was physical and medical, he employed
the idea of spiritus – a kind of malleable
semi-substance animated by the soul – so
as to retain the idea that stellar influences
acted upon the medium of spirit before affecting
the body, thus avoiding a rigidly mechanistic
system without room for the exercise of free
will. The nature of this spiritus – hot
and moist – he associated chiefly with Jupiter
and the Sun, claiming that:
A healthy spirit does not have much in common
with Saturn, Mars, or the Moon; otherwise
it would be foolish as a result of the first,
mad from the second, and insensitive from
the last. In line with this, Lunar things,
being too heavy and moist, are very foreign
to the subtle and volatile nature of the spirit.
Things which are very Saturnine and too Martial
are like poisons, naturally hostile to the
spirit... When, therefore, the case demands
that you help some one of the three spirits,
the poor “client” will be difficult to
help at a time when its patron [the planet
ruling in his or her nativity] is unfortunate
or debilitated.
If the celestial world caused an actor with
a free will to do anything, then Ficino believed
that it had first to go through the medium
of spiritus before affecting the body. This
idea came not from Plotinus, but from passages
like Picatrix 4.1.1. Ficino took therefrom
the notion that the celestial souls or planets
impressed themselves chiefly on human souls
through the transmission of their spirits
by means of rays. Such rays emanating from
the universal circle of the spirit cascaded
through the heavens down into the spirit of
the individual human. He explained the mechanism
as such:
Whenever we say ‘celestial goods descend
to us,’ understand: (1) that gifts from
the celestial bodies come into our bodies
through our rightly prepared spirit, (2) that
even before that, through their rays the same
gifts flow into a spirit exposed to them either
naturally or by whatever means, and (3) that
the goods of the celestial souls partly leap
forth into this our spirit through rays, and
from there overflow into our souls and partly
come straight from their souls or from angels
into human souls which have been exposed to
them – exposed, I say, not so much by some
natural means as by the election of free will
or by affection.
In this more humorally-oriented and psychologically-restricted
approach to astral influences, Ficino could
uphold both his sense of orthodoxy and his
learning in astral magic. With a modified
or ‘Christian-friendly’ version of the
causal-and-semiotic perspective from Picatrix,
Ficino could interpret contemporary astrological
theory with an emphasis on the mediating role
of the spirit, man’s predisposition to it,
and the freedom of the will, all while maintaining
the existence celestial and supercelestial
intelligences. In accordance with the teachings
of al-Kindī’s De Radiis, the Secretum Secretorum,
and Picatrix, however, Ficino believed that
if the human spirit was properly disposed
through the consumption or avoidance of specific
natural things, then it would more easily
receive the influence of specific celestial
souls. Since Ficino believed that he felt
Saturn’s influence “by the election of
free will or by affection,” through the
medium of spirit, he gave himself good incentive
to perceive Saturn as not all malefics and
misfortunes in the way which he had been popularly
perceived through the system of essential
dignities and debilities stretching back to
Alexandrian astrology. In line with the teachings
of Picatrix, Ficino chose to perceive Saturn
more explicitly as the noblest star, as that
which is furthest from the earth, and therefore
closest God, who is immutable and transcendent.
This choice he enacted by tempering Saturn’s
hostile nature rather than beseeching him
directly. By means of various techniques that
mitigated Saturn’s spiritually poisonous
effects, Ficino disposed himself to Saturn’s
more edifying qualities. This lofty and noble
Saturn, now medically placated as it were,
thus became an ambivalent rather than a malefic
star. If Saturn was unfortunate to a given
individual, Ficino would’ve argued that
it was because that individual refused to
exercise their free will and learn how to
align, condition, and prepare their spirits
against his malignant effects.
In the maintenance of optimal health, therefore,
Ficino advised melancholics (himself included
among them) to counterbalance their saturnine
natures with jovial and venereal qualities,
whether through conscious exposure to the
rays of Jupiter and Venus, or through the
use of talismanic images, music, and medicine
made from substances that impress similar
effects upon the soul through the influx of
the planets’ spiritual rays. He did not,
for example, advise his clients to reenact
the rituals of al-Ṭabarī (3.7.1-2), but
he did make use of the many lists cataloging
what kinds of things pertain to what planets,
which could then be employed in tempering
all kinds of undesirable planetary influences.
In dealing with this issue, Ficino denied
that the malefic planets were intrinsically
harmful by necessity, holding instead to the
notion that ‘the dose makes the poison’:
If anyone wishes to convict Saturn and Mars
of being harmful by nature, which I never
would believe, still they also are to be used
just as doctors sometimes use poisons; Ptolemy
endorses this in his Centiloquium [one of
Picatrix’s many sources]. The force of Saturn,
therefore, cautiously taken, will sometimes
profit, just as doctors say those things do
which are astringent and constrictive, even
those things which stupefy, as opium and mandrake…
The Magi, Brahmans, and Pythagoreans seem
to have been most prudent in this, in that
when they feared that Saturn would oppress
them on account of their sedulous zeal for
philosophizing, they’d wear white clothes,
use Jovial or Phoebean sounds and songs every
day, and live continually in the open air.
Here drugs and medicinal plants become Ficino’s
chief metaphor for understanding planetary
influences, and the very effects of Saturn
were thought to work analogously to those
‘stupefying’ plants which that planet
so appropriately governed. Again, Ficino wasn’t
merely making up the advice he gave. Rather,
his advice was variously rooted in the authority
of ancient sages: men of renown and athletes
of asceticism whom our humanist philosopher
revered and who were all included in that
carefully collected compendium made up of
over 224 sources called Picatrix. These included
the operations of such renown sages as Ptolemy,
Jabir Ibn Ḥayyān (Geber), Ibn Waḥshīya,
Plato, Aristotle, and Hermes Trismegistus,
and their perceived antiquity significantly
reinforced Ficino’s confidence as to their
veracity and effectiveness.
In the De vita, Ficino set himself to the
task of explaining why it is that men like
the “Magi, Brahmans, and Pythagoreans,”
namely scholars, always find themselves suffering
from their “sedulous zeal for philosophizing.”
He concluded that cogitation, long wakefulness,
and worry create an excessive dryness in the
human body which thereby exacerbates a cold
and dry, or melancholic, complexion. This
humoural complexion produced various effects
in the human spirit, which then predisposed
the body and soul to receive effects that
were associated with Saturn power. Although
Ficino provided a natural pathology for the
scholar’s suffering and looked to treat
symptoms with natural remedies, his list of
things for patients to consume or avoid correspond
with the lists of things that correspond with
planetary influences in Picatrix or Abū Maʿšar.
Ficino’s anti-melancholy therapies were
made up of things traditionally signified
by those planets which countered Saturn’s
malefic influences, like the use of gold,
lyre music, walks through the garden, leisure,
and the company of agreeable people (i.e.,
jovial and venereal things). Such cures were
passed on by Ficino as non-magical, medicinal
information – as the wisdom of ancient sages
– but his sources in this regard were discreetly
astro-magical, based on ideas from a science
of aspects which he largely disbelieved, and
a system of demonic conjuration he found abhorrent,
but which he felt produced positive effects
regardless. These weren’t the teachings
of Alexandrian Neoplatonists. In writing about
how to avoid “that most awful kind of black
bile,” Ficino suggested avoiding the following
saturnine things:
Heavy and thick wine, especially if it is
dark; food which is hard, dry, salted, bitter,
sharp, stale, burnt, roasted, or fried; beef
and the meat of the hare, old cheese, foods
pickled in brine, vegetables (especially the
broad-bean, the lentil, the eggplant [“melongia”],
the colewort, cabbage, mustard, the radish,
the garlic, the onion, the leek, the black
medic, and carrots), and whatever causes warmth
or cold, and likewise dryness and everything
that’s black; anger, fear, pity, sorrow,
idleness, solitude, and whatever offends the
sight, smell, and hearing, and most of all,
darkness. Moreover, excessive dryness of the
body increases black bile, whether it be the
result of long wakefulness or much agitation
of the mind, or worry, or frequent sexual
intercourse and the use of things which are
very hot and dry, or the result of any immoderate
flux and purgation, or strenuous exercise,
or fasting, or thirst, or heat, or a too dry
wind, or cold. Since, indeed, black bile is
always very dry and also cold – although
not equally so – it must certainly be resisted
with things which are moderately hot but as
moist as possible, and with foods that have
been thoroughly boiled, since they are easily
digested and produce blood which is subtle
and very clear.
By tempering the body through the avoidance
of these things, one tempered the spirit,
making it hot and moist as it ought to be,
and thereby counteracting the negative effects
of a Saturnine disposition, which is cold
and dry. Here Ficino the physician, who plundered
books of magic to find cures for his saturnine
Medici patron, further softened the image
of Saturn as a pitiless source of misfortune.
He showed through the sanitized techniques
he appropriated from astral magic how that
dark star’s negative effects could naturally
and wilfully be mitigated, leaving behind
only the positive ones. He did not make sacrifices
and invocations to Saturn in order acquire
these effects, instead he simply avoided those
things which conditioned the spiritus to receive
more saturnine influence, and countered natural
predispositions with anti-saturnine activities,
foods, jewellery, and materia medica. Through
this distinctly non-addressative medical or
therapeutic approach to manipulating astral
influences, he softened the image of Saturn
as malefic spirit or stellar demon whose veneration
the schoolmen had been decrying since the
13th century in their repudiations of the
Secretum Secretorum. Ficino’s idiosyncratic
synthesis of contemporary medicine, Christian
theology, Neoplatonic philosophy, and Hermetic
astral magic further sublimated Saturn not
only by reemphasizing his ambivalent nature,
but also by paving a way for intellectuals
to think about Saturn as signifying natural
phenomena which caused harm and disease (like
darkness, miasmas, bogs, and insects), without
causing them directly through unimpeded demonic
or supernatural influence.
What’s important to keep in mind is that
Ficino, being inspired by but also going beyond
“the Arabs” and “the Platonists” that
he read, saw Saturn as a figure who – unlike
any other planet – was a Janus-faced lord
of dualism and a governor of extremes, of
great riches and great poverty, of thriving
crops and ruin, of safety and of restraint.
Through this inherited feature, an individual
held under the sway of Saturn’s dominion
could create for himself a significant amount
of flexibility within their own fated allotment
which could form the basis for a whole new
picture of how the cosmos operates. Klibansky,
Panofsky, and Saxl, therefore, were very much
correct to note that in regards to Saturn,
“the birth of this new humanist awareness
took place… in an atmosphere of internal
contradiction.”
Conclusion
Throughout this article, we have looked at
a number of associations attributed to Saturn
in texts spanning from Greco-Roman Antiquity
to Ficino. We saw how although many of these
associations had their roots in the polytheistic
imagery of Antiquity, the very concept of
what a planet is and how it operates underwent
dramatic change throughout the Middle Ages
as such ideas coalesced and transformed. We
saw how this ancient divinity with all his
attendant mythology, part chthonic and part
celestial, was from a rather early time demoted
from his lofty place as an ambivalent god
to a largely malefic force of nature by the
more deterministically-minded among the Hellenistic
astrologers, those who needed purely unfortunate
planets to make their mathematical “point-based”
system of aspects operational. After this,
we saw how this largely malefic/unfortunate/negative
image of Saturn was gradually restored to
a state of ambivalence through a synthesis
of the “Platonists” and the “Arab astrologers”
envisioned by Marsilio Ficino. Though Ficino
styled himself more so as an orthodox Catholic
philosopher, priest, and physician when dabbling
in magical matters, the authors from which
he read were more steeped in the “inquisitive”
or “addressative” practices of the pagan
world. Most of these practices Ficino considered
transgressive, and so he borrowed ideas cautiously,
adopting only what he believed salubrious
and in keeping with his ideas about natural
philosophy and medicine. We looked at some
of the prayers, suffumigations, sacrifices
pertaining to Saturn’s spirits as laid out
explicitly in the Picatrix. From among these,
we distinguished two distinct kinds of operations,
one which could be adapted to become acceptable
to Christian intellectual circles – namely,
the therapeutic kind – and one which was
considered abominable – the kind which made
recourse to spirits in order to manipulate
the forces of generation and corruption and
thereby enact various unfulfilled material
desires. The former kind Ficino passed along
with pride, the latter kind he passed over
in silence, or at least drew from them what
he thought valuable, namely the correspondences,
and excluded the rest. Although divorced from
the pagan context in which he originated,
this return of an ambivalent Saturn played
a lofty role in the Ficinian cosmology.
