I'm rather struggling to 'get' Agrippa.
My take, influenced by my studies and insights, is that to "get Agrippa" you need to understand the progression of what he was trying to teach.
First you need to understand the cosmology of his day, namely that there are "three worlds". Book 1 is about the sublunary world, the world beneath the sphere of the Moon, or world of the senses and physical things. Book 2 covers the world of the stars and their rays or influences and what to do with them. Book 3 covers the spiritual world that exalts the magician to knowledge of the Divine and union with this power. To become a Magus, you must master three things outlined in the The Three Books:
1. Mastery of the powers of the natural world. You can call it "eye of newt, toe of frog" magic."
2. Mastery of the powers of the celestial or astral world - meaning, the influences of the stars upon this world. The ability to work with spirits, make talismans, do astrology, etc.
3. Mastery of the spiritual world through the rites and ceremonies of religion, especially Kabbalah, and bolstered by the powers of the prior two worlds. Now you're Jesus!
And I'm wondering, does anyone know of any 'guide to Agrippa' books out there, commentaries on the 3 books, or something of that sort?
Donald Tyson's notes in his republication of the JF version of the Three Books can still be useful. As I have heard Purdue point out in a podcast with Chris Brennan, Tyson does make some errors with regards to the astrology. One case is his misunderstanding of the term "perfections" in relation to planetary movements. However, the appendices in Tyson's edition have a lot of useful things.
As far as a break down and commentary of Agrippa, I haven't seen anything yet in English either. The most important thing to remember about the Three Books is that is an attempt to bring
all occultism up to his time into a synthesis that somehow jives with Christian theology. This follows a perspective with the movement of perennialism of the day that held that the truest approach to the realization of Christianity was through Magic.
But The 3 books, a lot of the time, seems... just... nonsense.
Yes, a lot of his references, in particular, Pliny the Elder, come off as sounding like silly wive's tales. I myself have a hard time believing that a soldier like Agrippa would think that fire and swords could not kill a wolf, but that if you throw a rock at it, it will die from a festering wound. The way I take it is that he uses these examples in two senses.
On the one hand, they demonstrate his learning, although Purdue and Sledge point out that a lot what is in his books are plagiarized - but in his day, this wasn't considered a problem. The other sense is that he presenting parables by using these examples in a manner one might find in alchemical texts. In the case of the wolf, as a symbol of Mars, you can't defeat the force of Mars with Mars, but Saturn will defeat it through slow decay as the two malefics are often opposed.
Justin Sledge is running a weekly look at Agrippa's life, philosphy and works,
I just finished episode 4 this morning, and I really appreciate what Sledge is doing. Some of the biographical info in #1 threw me off a bit, but I have caught Sledge making some little errors like confusing names, or telling a story wrong here or there - but he's trying to get it all out and this is a lot of detail to cover. Anyways, none of that matters - someone is finally attacking this subject as broadly as can be done.
The only bio I can find on Agrippa that even tries to explore the depth of the man prior to Sledge is Henry Morley's Life, which I uploaded some time ago. It was written mid 19th century but I enjoyed reading it, though for every answer I have a question. Tyson dismissed some of his ideas as "conjecture" - but I bite my tongue.
https://mega.nz/file/5K9xkCiJ#OVqslqTk3z6dUVUwJSm336l7Oi46i00eEUIMLfsqgs0
wizardforums.com
It is not meant to be a "course" that should be followed.
I agree certainly in the modern sense. I think people in his day would have viewed it as a philosophical guide to working with the materials they already had at hand. There were definitely things he could not say and instructions he could not give, so maybe a point of entry for the university student who was following a similar course as he did. I honestly think it is a basket of breadcrumbs for people working in the shadows, some of whom he may been the front man for.
I think it would be really helpful is someone would translate his
Opera, which is a collection of his letters still in Latin. These are referred to a lot in Morley and the likes of Yates. I have it in PDF but it is printed in difficult text and is a strain on the eyes.
