Part 3 - 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.
