Opening the imagination - expressing the heart

The 'Zoroastrian' origins of the Chaldean corpus was much debated throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Patrizzi's criticisms notwithstanding, the name of the ancient Persian sage remained firmly linked to the Chaldean Oracles until the seventeenth century where, with Martin del Rio's 'Disquisitionum Magiacarum', Zoroaster and Orpheus are the fathers of a natural science bordering on black magic, though as the magician Agrippa was to point out, no religion is so full of error that it does not contain any wisdom at all ("..nulla enim religio tam erronea, quae non aliquid sapientiae contineat.." De Occulta Philosophia, 1533).

If the Jew Elissaeus was indeed Gemistos Plethons teacher in the matter of the Chaldaean Oracles, it might be remarked why no mention of traditional Jewish mysticism finds its way into any of Plethons writings. True, much of what we now term Cabbala spread mainly from the west to the east, yet Jewish emigres in the Byzantine Empire were in communication with all parts of the Jewish diaspora, indeed Constantinople proved one of the most fertile grounds for the spread of the Sabbatean heresy two hundred years later. Gemistos seems therefore to have been either unaware of the Cabbala, or perhaps merely uninterested in the same fashion as he was uninterested in Islam and the Christian faith. Gemistos was intent on re-discovering and re-animating the pagan teachings of the ancient Hellenic sages and of theMagi, which he saw preserved in the riddles of his 'Zoroastrian' verses.

Although the charge of practising occult arts was never formally levelled against Gemistos Plethon, he certainly practised astrology and cannot have been unaware of the magical nature of his own studies. Gemistos had many enemies in the church, not least the Patriarch Gennadios, and it is perhaps the fate of his personal tutor Elissaeus (burnt to death in his own dwelling, a judicial execution for religious dissent) which forced Gemistos to maintain such reserve about his own beliefs and practises. As a Christian, nominally at least, it would have been a capitol offence for Gemistos to openly advocate his views regarding the ancient cults, to 'Hellenize' as the legal code of the fourteenth century 'Hexabiblos' of Harmenopoulos has it. Gemistos' advocacy of sun-worship, his veneration for the high priests of pagan learning and his personal zeal for the clearly daemonic 'Chaldaean Oracles' would have brought him ultimately to the stake. Plethon somehow managed to avoid serious catastrophe both in life and after death; buried on the Greek island of Mistra just before its invasion by the Turks, his body was exhumed and carried away to Rimini by one of his most ardent admirers, the Italian warlord and unashamed lover of pagan learning Sigismond Malatesta. Plethons remains were finally entombed in the walls of the Tempio Malstestiano, a reconstructed church designed by Leon Battista Alberti as a quasi-pagan temple, and dedicated to Sigismond's mistress Isotta. The 'Prince' of Rimini kept himself in power by a mixture of genuine erudition, youthful arrogance and military brilliance, yet his reputation for adultery, heresy, and murder caused Pope Pius II to have his effigy twice burnt at Rome.

Magical writings existed in abundance in the Constantinople of Plethos' day, from Byzantine texts of the 'Testament of Solomon' and the 'Exorcism of Athanasios' with their lists of demonic spirits, to the more highbrow writings of Michael Psellus and the fifth century philosopher-magician Proclus Diadochus, penultimate head of the Platonic academy at Athens. The twelfth century sorcerer Gabrielopoulos is said to have kept his magic 'Book of Solomon' inside tortoise shells polished "like pearls", whilst the Solomonic textbook found in the possession of one Isaac Aaron in 1172 was designed to summon legions of demons at once, which fact no doubt led to his demise. The connection between these Byzantine treatises and the later 'Solomonic' textbooks of Northern Europe has been little studied, but certainly the passage from ancient to modem magic lies partly in this field. The famous 'Triangle of Art' in which the spirits are said to appear in the English 'Lesser Key of Solomon' is inscribed with three 'Hebrew' words which on examination are plainly Greek: the "ANAPHAXATON:PRIMEUMATON:TETRAGRAMMATON" written around the exterior of Solomons' Triangle is the usual wizards request for the spirit to "appear in a fair form" with the commanding name of the Most High God appended lest the demon should in any way miscontrue the meaning."[ Anphaneintai] preumenous ap'ommaton.." as a Byzantine clerk might have cobbled together from the "..idoito ..preumenous ap'ommatos.." of Aeschylus. "..May the god appear in a fair shape by this sign.." as one ancie;nt magicains' abbreviated scrawl in the margin of a greco-Egyptian papyrus reads, and there is every reason to believe that the terrible deity summoned ("..the Headless One.. awesome and invisible spirit..") frightened him to death for that particular piece of stupidity. The printed English text of Solomons 'Key' mentioned even includes variants for' Anaphaxeton' ('anapazaton' and 'anaphanaton') which utterly preclude the possibility of its being a Hebrew inscription, 'Primeumaton' is merely a contraction such as would be found in early manuscripts, or such as any Byzantine magician would have quite naturally made themselves.

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Last modified: November 09, 2003