Path: typhoon.sonic.net!feed.news.sonic.net!sfo2-feed1.news.digex.net!dca6-feed1.news.digex.net!intermedia!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!nycmny1-snh1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!panix!news.panix.com!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail From: glass@panix.com (Robert Scott Martin) Newsgroups: alt.magick Subject: Re: A quick question. Date: 2 Dec 2001 22:36:33 -0500 Organization: House of Graves Lines: 34 Message-ID: <9ues01$9dd$1@panix3.panix.com> References: <20011202214352.14722.00000372@mb-fw.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: panix3.panix.com X-Trace: news.panix.com 1007350594 25381 166.84.1.3 (3 Dec 2001 03:36:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@panix.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 Dec 2001 03:36:34 GMT Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.magick:278516 In article <20011202214352.14722.00000372@mb-fw.aol.com>, Tsettock wrote: >In Robert Tyson's version of Agrippa's "Three Books of Occult Philosophy", he >says that Frances Barrett's "The Magus" is just a plagerism of the third >book of the former and part of the fourth book of Occult Philosphy, credited to >Agrippa. Can anyone verify or discredit this, I was going to get a copy of >"The Magus" but if that is true then I won't waste my time or money. Hello, Tsettock -- There's almost nothing original or unique in the Barrett book -- Joscelyn Godwin calls it "nothing but a plagiarism in disguise" -- but it does include a bit more than Agrippa. Godwin sums up the book's table of contents nicely in THE THEOSOPHICAL ENLIGHTENMENT: "Three quarters of THE MAGUS consists of selected chapters ... from Henry Cornelius Agrippa's THREE BOOKS ON NATURAL MAGIC ... and of the spurious FOURTH BOOK of Agripa ... which included Peter of Abano's HEPTAMERON.... The section on Magnetism comes from the English edition of J.B. van Helmont's works ... that on Natural Magic, from Agrippa and from Giambattista Porta (MAGIA NATURALIS)" The van Helmont and Porta are fairly hard to come by and, each in their way, fairly influential in their era. I suppose someone trying to collect them piecemeal might get some value out of Barrett's excerpts, as a stopgap if nothing else. The book's crown jewel is probably its ten engravings of important demons by Henry Fuseli (http://www.artmagick.com/artist.asp?artist=fuseli), although if you're really interested in that you'll probably be better served combing the various books about Fuseli for them.