notes/layout for Dionysius bit

Why are angels a "problem" for Dionysius?
they translate the emanations from an ineffable Godhead
and illuminate man who does not have capacity to receive.
passivity of Dionysian interaction with angels no different in Pico?

when Pico describes the life of angels as a contemplative one he doesn't
explain much because he's taking for granted Dionysian notions (blanks get filled by angel magic interpretations)
angelic theoria - contemplation of angels is better than humans b/c not discursive, but worse than God still needs ritual--angels do theurgy on each other
angelic illumination points to passivity of things illuminated, but doing the illuminating makes angels godlike

Dionysius did not lift Neoplatonic angelology unaltered, but adapts Neoplatonic principles to his new and original view.
Dionysian hierarchy is not the same hierarchy
theurgy language an inspiration for the way angels do providential and anagogical work, but Christology changes the angel hierarchy considerably
Dionysius' system is not a thin veneer of Christianity pasted onto Neoplatonism, but a reworking. Pico's interest in Neoplatonism can be compared--he's not trying to import, but to transform and Christianize like Dionysius did.

Wear on Dionysius - God and Angel as Henad

Wear/Dillon 73 PD "refers to God, among a string of other epithets, as a "henad unifying every henad." With this one phrase he seems to betray a knowledge of the whole later Neoplatonic system, according to which the One contains within itself, and gives unity to, a multiplicity of entities which have not yet properly proceeded forth from it. What Dionysius has in mind here is not clear, since he has no use for a system of henads as such. However, later in the work, at DN 892D, we find the most interesting phrase "the immortal lives of the angelic henads," which the power of God preserves "unharmed."

How can it be that Dionysius refers to the angels as "henads," since by definition they have proceeded forth from God? ...Dionysius has adopted Porphyry's view of the relation between the subjects of the first two hypotheses of the Parmenides, which makes the subject of the second hypothesis also God in his creative and procreative aspect, enabling Dionysius to introduce the Trinity within the realm of the One. The divine classes of entity depicted there will therefore still count as "henads," as being intimately connected with God, despite their various degrees of plurality.
On the other hand, however, the three triads of angelic beings in the celestial hierarchy can be assimilated also to the three levels of beings distinguished within the realm of Intellect, first by Iamblichus, and then after him, more elaborately, by Syrianus and Proclus. Dionysius is not, of course, concerned to reproduce as such the distinction between the intelligible, intelligible-intellective and intellective levels of being, but he does make it clear that his three levels of angelic being differ in degrees of purity and illumination, thus differentiating them in an analogous manner to the Neoplatonic entities. So we may conclude, after all, that these inhabitants of the Dionysian universe are enjoying the best of both levels of being.
n.86 J.P. Sheldon-Williams (1972) has postulated a relationship between PD's use of variations of the term "henad" and the NP concept of henad, drawing a relationship between henad and Form for PD

more subsection outlines

Pico's Proclus
1. Crofton Black on importance of Proclus in Heptaplus
2. Edelheit? Proclus gets the most conclusions -- digesting sentences work alone impressive philosophical contribution, but he's interpreting and arranging in meaningful ways, showing us things about his philosophical motivations
3. Pico is looking at "angelology" of Proclus, really what Dionysius took from Proclus and creatively applied to angelology
4. Pico is making creative use of neoplatonism just as Dionysius did.
5. Pico is spinning Proclus by selectively using as source for angelology, theological themes of Dionysius -- just as contemporary scholars spin Proclus as proto-Christian "mystical theology and angelology" in explaining Proclus influence on Dionysius
6. Pico explores theme of participation
7. Syrianus in Plato Conclusions (from Proclus) "theology" confirms Dionysius on CH->EH, more on metaphysics of orders
8. Pico doesn't select theurgic material of Proclus (for whom angelology wasn't a big deal, didn't even use archangel of Iamblichus)
9. Pico uses certain metaphysical principles of Proclus, but doesn't read his metaphysics in Neoplatonic spirit, gives Christianized Proclus translated into angelology and scholastic format philosophical theology

Pico and Neoplatonic angelology
1. Dionysius and logic of triads.
2. Participation
3.



Heptaplus
1. Angelology extracted using hermeneutics - Crofton Black
2. development of Angel Mind from Commento
3. development of Angel Comparison from Oration
4. Angelic imperfection (Number) leads to De Ente









Conclusions
1. what it is
2. Dougherty on scholastic forms
3. Craven on interpretations making too much of "hints"
4. Edelheit on Apology, probability vs. faith
5. scholastic angelology
6. Kabbalist angelology
7. Encounter with Neoplatonic angelology less studied than scholastic and kabbalistic strands
8. Influence of Neoplatonists on Dionysian angelology.
9. Dionysius made use of Proclan triads, which Pico studies here.

Commento
1. "begins with ontological preoccupation"
2. angelic level of being
3. Angelic Mind is Neoplatonic Intelligible
4. Plotinus vs. Dionysius
5. Angelic Mind as first created thing
6. Angelic Mind and the Forms
7. Angel Comparison in Commento consistent with Oration.
8. (Kabbalah in Commento merely example of esoteric transmission, makes no impact on angel metaphysics--kabbalah is an esoteric source of angel metaphysics)

outline of Pico's Iamblichus bit

Pico's Iamblichus
1. In Oration "occult philosophy" doesn't mean what it meant after Agrippa
2. in Oration authority on Pythagoras, golden chain of philosophy
3. Conclusions - Plato's unparticipated soul placed in the middle of the world. Iamblichean innovation on theology - unparticipated One explaining individuality of things - applied to thinking about cosmic soul
4. Conclusions - numeration of Binah -- neoplatonic number theory linked to Kabbalah, theology of number (philosophical topic) as well as practical magic/theurgy of number
5. Conclusions - "no force in celestial stars is evil" recalls Dionysius' debt to Proclus on evil.
6. Heptaplus - Iamblichus linked to bible quote and Christian spirituality, notion of needing a higher power (Iamblichus on gods/superior beings becomes Dionysian angels)
7. De Ente - Pico finds Dionysian/Thomistic approach better resolution of Aristotle/Plato problem than Iamblichus on prime matter.
8. Pico sees Pico as a pious metaphysician and mystical theologian, not an idolatrous sorceror or occultist.
9. Pico ignores Iamblichus on theurgy, focuses on philosophical side, "divine Jam" as pioneer of late Neoplatonic theology and angelology principles

Angelology and Kabbalah in Pico's Heptaplus

Does Pico's Heptaplus represent an abrupt shift from the "Angel Comparison" of Oration, or a continuation of the same basic angelology? Scholars have remarked on the lack of magic, now-silent use of Kabbalah, and emphasis on the limitations of man present in the Heptaplus. Do these elements make it different from the "becoming angel" system of Oration? If we don't understand what Pico is doing in Oration and Conclusions as angel magic, then understanding Heptaplus as a consistent development of earlier angelology foundation is much easier, makes much more sense. Kabbalah is not being abandoned, but revealed for what Pico takes it as--an esoteric hermeneutics which teaches how to discover theology, cosmology, and angel metaphysics in the text of Moses. Looking at what Pico is doing with angel in Commento helps contextualize how angelology in 900 Conclusions leads to developments in Heptaplus. Pico is still working with a concept of Angelic Mind, drawing on Plotninian insights of Dionysius for this as well as Proclan ones he uses to discuss hierarchical cosmos.

Pico says he will not explore the Hebrew concept of angels, but rather spends his time remarking on how the Dionysian concept of angels can be found in the biblical text. It is when he links the Angel to the concept of Number that he gets into territory reminiscent of Proclan and Iamblichean theology of Number, although he's clearly making arguments in the light of Dionysian and Thomistic developments in order to defend and confirm Christian theology. Neoplatonic theories of Number are no longer being used to understand the radical individuality of gods, which would be a problematic approach to angels for Pico, but rather the unique ontological status of Number is used to build a concept of angel as having an exalted but ultimately imperfect ontological status. Angelic Mind is first created thing, but deficient to God like Number is to One.

more Pico and Iamblichean/Proclan angel

presence of the angels plays a limited role in Proclan/Iamblichan theurgy, appropriate to their place in hierarchy. no new center for Pico.

Bradshaw: tendency in Proclus to understand procession and return in less dynamic terms than Plotinus

radical individuality of henads/gods in pagan polytheist late neoplatonism mitigated by Christian theological constraints when app to angel

Pico sees faith and prayer driving the mystical ascent of Iamblichus and Proclus, not ritual magic or angel conjuring.

Thus for Proclus faith (pistis), necessary for theurgy and mystic experience, becomes more important

a superficially Christianized version of the theological and angelological speculations of Proclus http://bit.ly/f2nFsq

This is the itinerary of Gnostic angelology (particularly in its theurgical aspects), http://bit.ly/eLFlNE Cacciari, the necessary angel

theological reflection on angels came to be measured against new conceptions/Against metaphysicizing+naturalistic conception of angelology,

Proclus is more interested in Homer's support for his own elaborate angelology+demonology than in his support for Pythagorean dualism.

in particular Dionysius' angelology seems too reminiscent of the Athenian School's order of gods.

In its purest form it helped to give theological expression to Christian dogma regarding the Godhead; in a more dubious shape it helped to systematize angelology and psychology.

At Variance: Marsilio Ficino, Platonism, and Heresy http://bit.ly/dVBd5r Michael J.B. Allen

Al-Suhrawardi interpreted the theory os Platonic Ideas in terms of Zoroastrian angelology

Louth: "it looks as if Denys's distinctive contribution to Christian angelology is of Neoplatonic inspiration." http://bit.ly/dME676

Angelology has no place in the system of Plotinus. According to Iamblichus, Plato did not consider archangels worth mention

Iamblichus provides explanations for the workings of divination, which in its best form involves divine illumination.

Shaw, "Iamblichus argued that each divine genre defined itself, and its activity neither exhausted nor determined ... "

while I don't want to get too bogged down with theurgic/occultist interpretations, I do need to spend some time w/ Pico's magic+KBL, "hints"
sacrifices directed towards angels have an angel presiding http://bit.ly/i7SGCo Iamblichus De Mysteriis V.25 p.273

But of course Iamblichus could have denied separate existence to such beings, had he been so inclined

Dillon's list of Proclus Elements of Theology concepts that Dodds traced to Iamblichus http://bit.ly/dEYOIy

"can ascend to rank of angels" is first mention of angels http://bit.ly/gvQTHo Dillon again

Iamblichus distinguishes demons from gods http://bit.ly/hwaKF4 Iamblichi Chalcidensis By John M. Dillon, Iamblichus 16 minutes

even in Iamblichean theurgy humans who "become angels" don't become better than the gods, would be a mistake to say Pico's resorting to this

Pico seems to be trying to constrain interpretation of Kabbalah to licit, orthodox, Christian speculative philosophy--clearly he failed.

Since Pico only hinted at profitable research that might be made into Kabbalah as source for Dionysian mysticism, later Cabalists freely dug

Pico may have had an ingenious plan to explain Kabbalistic angel in terms of Dionysian neoplatonic angelology as he promised, but he didn't.

In any case Pico doesn't deal much with Kabbalistic angel lore/doesn't give us enough information to judge how it fits into his own "system"

Kabbalah may resonate with Pico's Neoplatonism, mysticism, magic, but he's reaching when he claims to discover same metaphysics of angels in

for Pico to be singled out as having a problematic attitude toward angels requires some explaining, but I have not encountered such an expl.

"The Iamblichan cosmos was therefore a magical one,populated by a great diversity of superhuman spiritual beings,influencing natural events"

when Pico mentions abstract/concrete being in de ente cite Mark Delp paper

Gersh 169 Angels 'have simple and blessed cognition . . . human souls possess rationality discursively' http://bit.ly/h55dVQ

Pico is working with Proclan principles already Christianized by Dionysius, mapped+analyzed by Aquinas, before he finds more stuff in Procl.

RT @EPButler Specifically, angels in pagan NP are divinized intelligences, daimons divinized immortal souls, heroes divinized mortal souls.
RT @EPButler If not Proclus, via Ps-D, then who? It's just that Ps-D's angelology comes, not from P's angelology, but his henadology,tweaked
RT @EPButler Since he uses the term "angel", yes. Granted, there's not much there, but it is part of the architecture of his system.
RT @EPButler Xtian ideas about angels prior to Ps-D may have more in common with Proclus' thought about angels than that coming after.
@EPButler Dionysius looks at angels/God in a more Proclan way than Thomas Aquinas did when interpreting Dionysius in ST, Pico follows Thomas
@EPButler my guy Pico definitely sees angels in the Dionysian-Thomistic way, and I don't think he's trying to go back to Proclan henadology.
@EPButler That's interesting about earlier ideas--can you say more or refer me? Have you read Arthur on Ps-D as Polemicist? But as for Pico-
@EPButler angels don't play same architectural role in Proclus as in PD? was angel important to Iamblichus? or just yet another class of ent
@EPButler what's interesting to me is how much Proclus is there to fill in the blanks left by tiny biblical angel traditions, for Dionysius.

Iamblichus' Hierarchy of Spiritual Entities http://www.kheper.net/topics/Neoplatonism/Iamblich-beings.htm

there is a number proceeding from each of the principle hypostases http://bit.ly/gU8MHp

how are angels and daemons said to energise providentially

lamblichus replies that it is impossible to perform divine works without the assistance of a god [i.e. not merely an angel] ibid

If one is to obtain participation in the divine light, the recurrent theme of Proclus' hymns, one has to fully ... http://bit.ly/em8GIp

Iamblichus (Taylor): God, who is thus invoked in the sacrifices, is their author, +the gods+angels around him constitute ...

"And about every God there is an appropriate number of angels, heroes and daemons" Proclus, Platonic Theology http://bit.ly/eZ9sjd

Proclus, "For what the monad is among gods, this a number is among angels" http://bit.ly/ifgcT7 Timaeus commentary p.233

going to bed early, waking up in the middle of the night, is like finding the secret bonus levels of sleep

Dionysius' angelology was also sculpted by those approaches he rejected--especially alchemical/hermetic/magical angel traditions(see Arthur)

# xxxv While the theurgist may, at his most elevated, ascend to the order of angels... he can never be regarded as above+beyond status of gods

Dionysian angel predates, can't be reduced to his choice to use Proclan mechanics/henad to philosophize about?

"philosophical exegesis is not all that was going on in Dick’s life and mind in this period"

@EPButler Would you call the discussion of divinized intelligences in Proclus an "angelology" simply b/c he uses the word angel?

@EPButler I'm not saying PD's angelology doesn't come from Proclus (sure does), just that he doesn't quite mean the same thing by angel.

honest commentators have admitted that Pico's uses of Kabbalistic lore of angels are inscrutable, Copenhaver on system int is out on a limb?

Angels don't play anything like same role in Neoplatonism b/c different theological needs, angel not used to set divine apart as transcend.

Angelology is anachronistic term applied to pagan Neoplatonists, who spoke of gods, with angels a lower level--wouldn't be same angelology.

Like Aquinas+Dionysius, Pico talks about angels as images of God, functionaries of the divine, most perfect created thing, illuminating man.

"In the intelligible world God, surrounded by nine orders of angels, unmoved Himself, draws all to Himself ...

When Pico discusses the importance of biblical/Dionysian angelic assistance(which he finds in Iamblichus)he's not talking about angel magic.

according to pseudo-Dionysius, love makes the cosmos a unity [deliberate misunderstanding of Proclus?] http://bit.ly/fKNN9Z poetics of conv.

a principle Proclus set forth in comment on Alcibiades... thinking of planetary motion, but Dionysius transposed this language to angelology

Olivi's main drive was inspired by what he perceived as an abuse of Greek philosophy within theological issues http://bit.ly/dVy5Sa

"they discussed them as if they were some kind of gods, as one can clearly see from the book of Proclus and the Liber de causis"

such theological errors suffice to invalidate at once all endeavour to use pagan cosmology as a basis for angelological discussion

This notion of triads is something that Pseudo-Denys derives from Proclus but then expands.

Aquinas debt to Dionysius - divine attributes, angelology http://bit.ly/fkqw4D

philosophical program led Aquinas to fnt.of Arabian angelology for an extensive study+criticism of Proclus, pseudo-Dionysius+Liber De Causis

Corbin: "the complicity between angelology and cosmology" that was to be decisive

Copenhaver overstates case when he says Pico "professes" magic

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22387891/Corbin-Suhrawardi-s-Angelology-by-Roberts-Avens

@EPButler so in late neoplatonism angels aren't all part of the same universal "celestial hierarchy" but proper to separate hier's of henads


Bradshaw on Proclus, Elements of Theology http://bit.ly/fNGl0O in Aristotle East and West

Rappe 168: Proclus sets out to enumerate the successive orders of gods along the axis of the Parmenidean ontology

schools of Syrianus+Proclus in City and School http://bit.ly/gvSUj1

relative importance of Orpheus versus the oracles for the exposition of Platonic theology was under dispute during Proclus' days at Academy

while Syrianus deemed Aristotle study indispensable to Platonists, rated Plato above him+denied to Aristotle true understanding of theology

the final impetus that Proclus gave Syrianus's theology consisted in confronting it systematically with the Chaldaean Oracles

Syrianus could have considered Aristotle inventor of theology... undoubtedly true that Syrianus calls the Metaphysics a theological treatise

The author of De Causis drastically reduced Proclus' complex hierarchy,

Goodrich-Clarke: Syrianus wrote a “symphony” of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato with reference to the Oracles.

Rappe on neoplatonic "divine hierarchy" http://bit.ly/hsSSWW Proclus relied on Syrianus for the enumeration of this divine hierarchy

Finamore Syrianus and Proclus accepted Iamblichus' metaphysical hierarchy and his emphasis on theurgy almost without question.same 4 vehicle

restructured type of intelligible hierarchy associated with lamblichus

O'Meara: now we know that it is Syrianus who, in his interpretation of the first and second hypotheses of the Parmenides,

invented the doctrine of the divine henads as the first degree in the hierarchy of the gods below the One, True God.

A.H. Armstrong on The Divine Mind in Plotinus http://bit.ly/gQUcqF

It seems likely that Syrianus is basing his interpretation on Iamblichean principles.

Syrianus' revolutionary interpretation of the second hypothesis [of Parmenides] as a theogony http://bit.ly/gGAXP4

Syrianus' defence of the ontological status of limits

for myth group: compare Pico's revival of neoplatonic allegory to decode Scripture with PKD revival of gnostic/hermetic allegory to read PKD

Pico vs. Ficino / many profitable contrasts: different takes on magic, Proclus, Plotinus, Aquinas, absent angel, absent Kabbalah, talismans

This Intelligible Living Being and this demiurge are both situated at a relatively low degree in the hierarchy of beings.

Wear p.59 Despite Dionysius' use of scriptural exegesis to manipulate the names of angels
...to his own categories of beings in the celestial hierarchy, his system is plainly based closely on that of Syrianus and Proclus

Angel in Iamblichus

Book V. CHAP. XXV.

If, therefore, these things were human customs alone, and derived their authority through our legal institutions, it might be said that the worship of the Gods was the invention of our conceptions. Now, however, divinity is the leader of it, who is thus invoked by sacrifices, and who is surrounded by a numerous multitude of Gods and angels. Under him, likewise, a certain common presiding power, is allotted dominion according to each nation of the earth. And a peculiar presiding power is allotted to each temple. Of the sacrifices, also, which are performed to the Gods, the inspective guardian is a God; but an angel, of those which are performed to angels; and a daemon, of such as are performed to daemons. After the same manner, also, in other sacred operations, the presiding power is allotted dominion over each, in a way allied to his proper genus. When, therefore, we offer sacrifices to the Gods, accompanied by the presiding Gods, who give completion to sacred operations, then at the same time, it is necessary in sacrifices to venerate the sacred law of divine sanctity; and at the same time, also, we ought to be confident, as sacrificing under the Gods who are the rulers of such works. We ought, likewise, to be very cautious, lest we should offer any gift unworthy of, or foreign from, the Gods. And, as the last admonition, we should in a manner entirely perfect, pay attention to all that surrounds us, and to the Gods, angels, and daemons that are distributed according to genera in the universe. And to all these, in a similar manner, an acceptable sacrifice should be offered; for thus alone sanctity can be preserved in a way worthy of the Gods who preside over it.

[elsewhere...]

THE DIVINITIES PRESENT AT THE RITES

Another controversy now awaits us, not less in significance than the one which has just been finished. Thou introducest it at once in regard to the divinities that are the causative powers in the art of divination, by questioning "whether a god or angel or demon, or some other such being, is present at the manifestations (epiphanies) or at the divinations or at any of the Sacred Performances."

The simple reply which we make to this is that it is not possible for the Divine Performances to be carried on in a manner befitting sacred matters without some one of the superior races being present, beholding and making the Sacred Performances complete.

shorts - Pico and Iamblichus - Neoplatonic Angelology

When Pico discusses the importance of biblical/Dionysian angelic assistance(which he finds in Iamblichus)he's not talking about angel magic.

Dulles: In the Heptaplus, for example, Pico writes that an angel cannot be absolute unity, otherwise it would be God.
ibid In the Conclusiones he declares that the subject of theology is that which is "absolutely One."

Pico in Poetry and the fate of the senses - Page 371 Susan A. Stewart

In support of his contention that the Heptaplus is Pico's essay on man, Trinkaus points out that the principal discussion of man occurs ...

Maggi: The angels are luminous beings because they are enlightened by the divinity This intellectual splendor is the angels' actual ...

"White Magic" (Porta_ in The occult sciences in the Renaissance: a study in intellectual patterns http://bit.ly/hQWsmL By Wayne Shumaker

Farmer: Linguistic reversals like this, as we have seen, were one of Pico's favorite devices

Proclan principles applied to thinking about angels having different perfections at different levels of hierarchy

but can't say angelology depends on Proclus

And albeit that in the excellent company of angels all were not of like perfection, but ordinately divided into ...

Benivieni devotes one stanza (4) to love among the angels. a psalm in praise of creation (perhaps a subtle way of praising Pico's Heptaplus)

Touches of sweet harmony: Pythagorean cosmology and Renaissance ... S. K. Heninger - 1974

Trapp: Pico usually stops at the angelic level, as in the Heptaplus and also in the Commento alia canzone d'amore

Lindsay Jones (enc religion) Pico's apologia for them was not accepted, but Alexander VI subsequently vindicated his orthodoxy.

Samuel Dresden: Allegory: Pico's Heptaplus is in many ways one of the most striking examples of this method.

That is why every angel exults with joy at the repentance of one sinner.

n the hierarchy of being which he describes in the fifth expositio of the Heptaplus, Pico makes man the unifying ...

"Magic and Kabbalah" are not central to Pico's Oration in ways that have been claimed. He does not see man as Magus resorting to angel conj.

If On the Dignity of Man emphasizes man's greatness, Pico's later Heptaplus remarks his insufficiency. http://bit.ly/hn5w56

quote below from Neoplatonism article in The Eclectic, 1853 http://bit.ly/hffEIl

Pico, Admirable Crichton of his time, endeavored to combine scholasticism w/Cabala, to reconcile dialectics of Aristotle+oracles of Chaldaea

Copleston: Pico della Mirandola opposed the magical conception of nature

Pico's Heptaplus, therefore, is an appropriate companion-piece in the large folio published by the LeFevre freres.

even the most audacious self-creator was confined by a tradition that lodged human felicity in the attempt to resemble the angels 1981

Pico's theology... was syncretist, ... His spirituality was renaissance http://bit.ly/gaoRsm

The cosmographical glass: Renaissance diagrams of the universe S. K. Heninger - 1977

Two Concepts of Allegory: A Study of Shakespeare's The Tempest and the Logic ... By A. D. Nuttall

monadic-triadic cosmos

"Pico's syncretism... is well known" http://bit.ly/gtkVlu more like widely misunderstood

Trinkaus Pico's Heptaplus, published in 1489, is at once the most finished and the most brilliant of his writings

Pico is not suggesting that man is outside the definite structure and order of creation http://bit.ly/hn5w56

Pico's frequent praise of man's angelic powers breaks down in the detailed system of the Heptaplus, an esoteric sevenfold interpretation

Pico's three chief zones of cosmology

Mebane "Cabala as a means of invoking the influence of the angels as a stage in our ascent toward complete knowledge of and unity"

Pico della Mirandola discusses the problem of conversion in angels in the Heptaplus. ... and the assistance of angels to man in this process

"it is said that even the angels themselves take pleasure in their bodies of light" -Lord Byron on Star Trek Voyager

# taramayastales @t3dy If Pico had seen it as Jewish, he likely wouldn't have felt he could use it.

if Pico did look at Iamblichean theurgy, did he see it in the light of Dionysian theurgy/as mystical theology? he's charitable to magic?

Craven+Copenhaver have debunked various ways Pico has been twisted by historians seeking to present him as typical of some Renaissance ideal

Pico describes Kabbalah as a foundation of Christian faith. it's not a supplement, just a way of describing lore already assumed to be there

Pico doesn't see Kabbalah as different from Christianity. It's pre-biblical wisdom given to Moses, not what he purchased in Jewish books.

If Pico wasn't interested in the finer points of the philosophical differences between Kabbalah+Christianity, why respect alterity of magic?

Whatever Pico thought about the philosophical-theological value of Kabbalah/it wouldn't be some alien theurgy or magic in itself that he dug

Pico never got the chance to explain how Kabbalah worked in terms of his confirming and commenting projects, but his view was idiosyncratic.

But Pico's hints are nothing more than that. Whatever else he may have understood from his readings+conversations, he failed to write down.

It is true that Pico hints at Kabbalistic practices which are troublingly magical--but religious studies theory doesn't know what to do...

Pico fails to develop implications that seem obvious to later commentators based on anachronistic idea of what Kabbalah meant to Renaissance

Pico didn't think he saw theurgy, practical magic, manipulation of angel names as central to Kabbalah/he saw it as tools of a Dionysian myst

Pico does little more than hint at various Kabbalistic ideas/rather than look at KBL itself as if he "got it" we should look for what he saw

we can't say on the basis of Pico's Conclusions that he has integrated merkabah mysticism into a humanist framework. he mentions w/o knowing

merkabah lore into a humanistic paradigm?

CB elsewhere in the Heptaplus Pico notes that although intelligible forms are accidental to an angel's intellect and not part of its essence

Yates GB p. 121 As Pseudo-Dionysius was immensely important to Ficino for the synthesis of Neooplatonism with Christianity... so, too, he helped Pico to build the bridge between Jewish Cabala and Christianity.

Craven p.30 Kristeller has argued in several of his lectures that the Heptaplus echoes the doctrine of man in the Oratio

When Pico discusses the Proclan principle of higher entities being simpler he puts this notion in the words of Dionysius+Aquinas on angels.

anger of the Gods not an indication of their inordinate passions,but demonstrates our lack of aptitude to participate in their illuminations

Pico does not see Iamblichus as Copenhaver describes--having chosen theurgy over contemplation--but as source of Late NP theology/angelology

Theurgy was not Iamblichus' only contribution to Late Neoplatonic philosophy. pioneered hierarchy, unparticipated, henads, Plato study order

Blavatsky on Iamblichus, theurgy http://bit.ly/hh1Msk

The Gods,' says Iamblichus, ' did conceive the whole work within themselves before it was brought forth by them.'

Analogy in Iamblichus denotes a certain psychic state, a suitability for receiving gods, while Proclus elaborates this notion to indicate...

how some are fit for participation in a particular Form, so some receive more or less power depending on their status. http://bit.ly/fVR1DT

Noel Brann: Pico anticipating Trithemius http://bit.ly/hqDZ8z

Conceived by its adherents as having originally been transmitted to human beings through the mediation of angels

Later on in De Mysteriis, Iamblichus returns to the topic of the nothingness of the human soul. http://bit.ly/i6p8Uy

Apollo as "the first angel of Zeus" http://bit.ly/hpR41i in Pagan monotheism in late antiquity By Polymnia Athanassiadi, Michael Frede

"nor does anything hold matter back from participating in the superior natures" http://bit.ly/fIsaWp

Louth Iamblichus has (usually) four ranks of beings mediating between the gods and human souls: archangels, angels, daemons, and heroes

Iamblichus in The tongues of angels: the concept of angelic languages... http://bit.ly/euMvmj

Iamblichus is the first pagan to describe the Chaldaean angels in any detail. http://bit.ly/hozZWC

In the Chaldaean Oracles, the virtuous soul is said to be rewarded by becoming an angel after death.

For Iamblichus and Proclus, beings higher than human souls also include in themselves some form of space and time

they have angels as the powers that perfect and unfold them into light. ...

Let it be granted, therefore, that a God, a daemon, or an angel, gives completion to more excellent works

"Theurgic Mysticism clutches at the marvellous, and works wonders by the aid of angel, saint, or talisman" (1857)

“The arrival of the archangels is preceded by the appearance of light.”

Pure souls, according to the ancients, ascend "to angels and angelic souls" -Iamblichus' De Anima

America mytho-poesis at it's static filled lo-fi best: Long John Nebel Presents the Flying Saucer Story http://ow.ly/3LJFi

Finamore: Iamblichus' mention of angels at De An. I, p. 458, 20, helps to clarify the position of such purified souls

angel in Iamblichus http://bit.ly/hrp7UR

Pico article http://bit.ly/eMZejp in The Classical Tradition By Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, Salvatore Settis

Pico anticipated the modern view of Dionysian mysticism as being clarified by attention to resonance with Proclus, modern view of Plato vsNP

secondary sources set up, Pico knocks down

I want to use many quotations and show how Pico's angelology in his own words contradicts theurgic readings+clues to philosophical motives.

quotes from Dougherty, Pico:New Essays on Occultist Approach, Deification, Angel and Cognitive Ascent

Dougherty
141 increasingly popular approach has been to see the Oratio's views on the human condition to be grounded in Hermetic and Kabbalistic texts. On this interpretation, Pico champions the human being as a powerful magus who, released upon the world, can act upon it with an array of mysterious magical and occult powers... This occultist account... has been the most controversial approach to Pico's thought and has been the target of historical criticism.

144 this goal of becoming "one spirit with God" is premised on Pico's prior claim that human beings are devoid of an intrinsic limiting metaphysical principle or form. By including divinity in the range of actualizations open to multipotential human beings, Pico appears to escape a particularly thorny metaphysical problem vexing to some medieval thinkers, namely, how the intrinsic limitations of nature are to be overcome in the divinization or deification of human beings in becoming one with God.

145 Pico explains that with the advent of theology, "we shall no longer be ourselves, but the very One who made us" ... the advent of theology... is to be identified with deification

150 this reading allows us to take seriously Pico's concession in the Oratio that the discipline of philosophy cannot bring ultimate peace, although philosophy is a necessary component of his account of ultimate deification... Pico's highly original solution to a significant medieval problem concerning the possibility of ultimate human deification

Still
182 While the Latin scholastics recognized that the rational soul contained within it the power of purely intellectual thought associated with the angels, Pico follows the Platonists, for whom there is an "intellectual and angelic part" of the human soul above the rational soul. This appeal to intellect and reason as distinct parts of the soul and not merely powers of the same part serves Pico's purpose of sewing together Platonic and Aristotelian accounts of the soul while also illustrating the distinction of levels in the human being, from the bestial (corresponding to the senses) to the human (reason) to the angelic (intellect). The inclusion of a power in the soul above the human level per se also sets the stage for the cognitive ascent featured in Pico's celebrated Oration

183 As poised between the senses and intellect, reason apparently has no resting place in its own right but is continually pulled up to the angelic level or, more frequently, down to the bestial level. As a central exhortation of the philosophical life is for the human creature to climb to the heights of its intellectual capacities, understanding the relationship of reason to intellect is crucial to the fulfillment of that imperative. On this theme, Pico appeals to the Platonic analogy of sight to intellectual vision and at the same time employs Aristotle's dictum that intellect is related to soul as sight is to the body. Yet when we readily rely on sight which takes the lead in our perception of corporeal objects, the power of pure intellectual vision is difficult of access and unknown by the majority. Pico accounts for this disanalogy by appealing to the Platonic claim that our souls are so ensconced in their bodies that, unlike heavenly souls, they cannot use both their sensible and intellectual vision at the same time.

Angels and Neoplatonism -- Selected Conclusions

24.3. The name of God applies simply and absolutely to one, who is the God
of gods; simply not absolutely to anything supersubstantial; according to
essence to anything intellectual; according to participation to divine souls;
according to contact and conjunction to demons; according to similitude to
human souls.

24.5. In intelligibles number does not exist but multitude, and the paternal and
maternal cause of numbers; but in intellectuals number exists according to
essence and multitude communicatively.

24.7. By the one/many, whole/parts, finite/infinite, in the Parmenides, we
have to understand the second order of the intelligible-intellectual trinity, fol-
lowing the triple division of that order.

24.17. Granted, as theology teaches, the divine hierarchies are distinct, it
should be understood that all exist in all in their own mode.

24.18. Just as the paternal property exists only in intelligibles, so the produc-
tive or formative property exists only in the new gods; the paternal and
productive property simultaneously in the intelligible exemplar; the productive
and paternal property in the demiurge.

24.21. It is the property of the supermundane gods to assimilate and transmit
to beings that sympathy and reciprocal communion that they possess firom
their similarity to one another.

24.55. Just as a perfect understanding should be sought firom intelligibles, so
the power that leads upwards should be sought firom intellectuals; an operation
that is absolute and cut off firom matter firom the ultramundanes; a winged life
fi-om the mundanes; the true expression of the divine firom the angelic choirs;
its fulfillment, whose inspiration comes firom the gods, firom good demons.

SIX CONCLUSIONS ACCORDING TO THE OPINION OF THE CHALDEAN THEOLOGIANS.

26.1. The principal order of separated things is not the first order, as the Egyp-
tians suppose, but over it exists the fontal order, unitively exalted over all.

26.2. Fate is not the necessity of the first seminal power but is an intellectually
participated habit of animate reasons — unbending in respect to superior things,
inevitable in respect to inferior things.

26.3. The substantial quahties of visible things do not reflect downwards from
a particular separated power, as the Egyptians believe, but firom the first recep-
tacle of the font of hght, through animate splendor.

26.4. Partial souls are not illuminated immediately by the splendor of intellect,
as the Egyptians say, but through the mediation of total demonical souls.

26.5. The intelligible order does not subsist within the intellectual order, as
Ahmose the Egyptian said, but over the whole intellectual hierarchy, unparti-
cipatively hidden in the abyss of the first unity, and under the cloud of the
first darkness.

26.6. Whatever exists firom the moon upwards is pure light, and that is the
substance of the mundane spheres. (345)

FOURTEEN CONCLUSIONS ACCORDING TO
THE MATHEMATICS OF PYTHAGORAS.

25.2. In participated numbers some are images of numbers, others the unions
of images.

The Magic in the Orphic Hymns

10>7. Anyone who does not know how to intellectuaHze sensible properties
perfectly through the method of secret analogizing understands nothing sound
from the Orphic hymns.

10>9. Guardians in Orpheus and powers in Dionysius are the same.

10>13. Typhon in Orpheus and Samael in the Cabala are the same.

NINE CONCLUSIONS ACCORDING TO IAMBLICHUS.


23.1. The speculative intellect is a separated form in regard to substance and
mode [of operation]. The practical intellect is separated in regard to substance,
conjoined in regard to mode. The rational soul is conjoined according to sub-
stance, separated according to mode. The irrational soul is conjoined according
to substance and mode.

23.2. The demiurge of the sensible world is the seventh of the intellectual
hierarchy.

23.3. Corporeal nature exists in the intellect immovably, in the first soul
through itself movably, in the animal soul through itself movably participa-
tively, in heaven through another movably in an orderly way, below the
moon through another movably in a disorderly way.

23.4. The elements are found in the eight heavenly bodies in two celestial
modes, which anyone will find if he proceeds in reverse order through that
numeration of Binah. (265)

Farmer: Hints as to Pico's sense here can be gathered from 11>67 in his Cabalistic theses.

23.6. When the soul is assimilated to the intellect in an elevated fashion,
motion in the vehicle becomes perfectly circular.

23.7. There is no force in the celestial stars that in itself is evil.

23.9. unparticipated soul


Angels in Pico's 900 Conclusions (includes the 2 Syrianus gems from "doctrine of Plato" section)
Thomas Aquinas

2.18. Aeviturnity exists subjectively in more beatified angels.

2.21. No multiplicity of angels exists in the same species.

Henry of Ghent
5.6. Operations of angels are measured in discrete time.

5.7. Angels understand through a knowing habit that is co-natural with them.

Giles of Rome

6.5. Angels were not created in grace.

6.6. The [fallen] angel is obstinate and impenitent, because specific divine
forces were withdrawn from it. (110)

6.7. A superior angel illuminates an inferior not because it presents to it a
luminous object, or because it particularizes and divides for the other what is
united in itself, but because it strengthens and fortifies the intellect of the
inferior.

Proclus
24.41. Insofar as the demiurge in the form of the one sees the oneness of what
is essentially one, he makes the mundane gods firom that part. Insofar as he
sees the being of what is essentially one, he makes angels in the same part.
Insofar as he sees the oneness of one being, he makes demons there. Insofar as
he sees the existence of one being, he makes animals in the same place.

Hebrew Cabalist Wisemen

28.2. There are nine hierarchies of angels, whose names are the Cherubim,
Serafim, Hasmalim, Haiot, Aralim, Tarsisim, Ofanim, Tefsarim, Isim.

28.28. By the winged creatures who were created on the fifth day we should
understand the mundane angels who appear to men, not those who do not
appear except in spirit.

28.30. No angel having six wings is ever transformed.

Paradoxical Reconciliative Conclusions

1>8. In this article taken from their commentaries [on the Sentences], Whether
an angel can desire divine equality in a simple sense, Thomas and Scotus do not
disagree.

1>17. On the way in which angels exist in place, Thomas and Scotus do not
differ.

Philosophical Conclusions Dissenting from the Common Philosophy

2>65. Granted that the intellective power in us is an accident, in angels it is
a substance.

Paradoxical Conclusions Introducing New Doctrines in Philosophy

3>12. Just as an angel is necessarily composed out of essence and existence, so
the soul is necessarily composed out of substance and accident.

3>43. The act by which the angelic and rational nature is bestowed with
the greatest happiness is an act neither of the intellect nor of the will, but
is the union of the unity that exists in the otherness of the soul with the
unity that exists without otherness.

3>49. It is more improperly said that God is intellect or that which has
intellect, than that the rational soul is an angel.

3>63. Although in the soul there exists in act an intellectual nature, through
which it convenes with the angel, just as a rational nature exists in it, through
which it is distinguished from that, there is nothing intrinsic in it through
which it is able, without the appropriate image, to understand something dis-
tinct from itself.

Theological Conclusions Opposed to the Common Mode of Speaking
4>17. The first sin of the angel was the sin of omission, the second the sin of
voluptuousness, the third the sin of pride.

Conclusions on the Doctrine of Plato
5>13. If we follow the theology of Syrianus, it is rational [to claim] that priests
in the ecclesiastical hierarchy correspond to the analogous powers in the celes-
tial hierarchy.

5>21. When Plato says that Love was bom from the union of Poverty and
Plenty in the garden of Jove, on the birthday of Venus while the gods feasted,
he means only this, that then the first love, that is, the desire of beauty, was
bom in the angelic mind when in it the splendor of ideas, though imperfecdy,
began to shine.

5>17. If we follow the doctrine of Syrianus, it is appropriate after the unity of
total intellection, which is also divided triply into substantial, potential, and
operative intellection, to posit another triad of intellection, namely, partial,
participated, and imagerial.

5>26. Beauty exists in God as its cause, in the total intellect truly essen-
tially totally, in the particular intellect truly partially essentially, in the
rational soul truly participationally, in the visible accidents of the heavens
imagerially essentially totally, in subcelestial visible qualities imagerially
partially essentially, in quantities imagerially participationally.

Questions to Which He Will Respond through Numbers

7a>28. What is the difference between the mode of understanding of angels
and of rational souls. (710)
7a>29. What is the difference between the mode of understanding of God and
of angels.
7a>30. WTiether the angelic nature is in some way all things.

Farmer 70-71
11>10. That which among the Cabalists is called Metatron
is without doubt that which is called Pallas by Orpheus, the paternal mind
by Zoroaster, the son of God by Mercury, wisdom by Pythagoras, the
intelligible sphere by Parmenides.

Pico conclusions -- Ammonius, Simplicius, Alexander, Plotinus

AMMONIUS.

16.1. The definition of the soul given by Aristotle...should be accepted causally, not formally.

SIMPLICIUS.

17.2-6 the active intellect / possible intellect.


ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS.

18.6. When Aristotle in the ninth book of the Metaphysics says that separated
and divine things are either totally known or totally unknown to us, this
should be understood of that cognition achieved by those who have finally at-
tained the highest actuation of the intellect.

THEMISTIUS.

19.1. There are many possible intellects that are illuminated only. There are
also many participated active intellects that are illuminating and illuminated.
But there is only one active intellect that is illuminating only.

19.2. I believe that the active intellect that is illuminating only in Themistius
is the same as Metatron in the Cabala.

PLOTINUS

20.7. Man's greatest happiness exists when our particular intellect is fully
conjoined to the first and total intellect.

Pico on Kabbalah

Oration
These are the very words of Esdras. These are the books of cabalistic wisdom. In these books, as Esdras unmistakably states, resides the springs of understanding, that is, the ineffable theology of the supersubstantial deity; the fountain of wisdom, that is, the precise metaphysical doctrine concerning intelligible and angelic forms; and the stream of wisdom, that is, the best established philosophy concerning nature. Pope Sixtus the Fourth, the immediate predecessor of our present pope, Innocent the Eight, under whose happy reign we are living, took all possible measures to ensure that these books would be translated into Latin for the public benefit of our faith and at the time of his death, three of them had already appeared. The Hebrews hold these same books in such reverence that no one under forty years of age is permitted even to touch them. I acquired these books at considerable expense and, reading them from beginning to end with the greatest attention and with unrelenting toil, I discovered in them (as God is my witness) not so much the Mosaic as the Christian religion. There was to be found the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Word, the divinity of the Messiah; there one might also read of original sin, of its expiation by the Christ, of the heavenly Jerusalem, of the fall of the demons, of the orders of the angels, of the pains of purgatory and of hell. There I read the same things which we read every day in the pages of Paul and of Dionysius, Jerome and Augustine. In philosophical matters, it were as though one were listening to Pythagoras and Plato, whose doctrines bear so close an affinity to the Christian faith that our Augustine offered endless thanks to God that the books of the Platonists had fallen into his hands. In a word, there is no point of controversy between the Hebrews and ourselves on which the Hebrews cannot be confuted and convinced out the cabalistic writings, so that no corner is left for them to hide in. On this point I can cite a witness of the very greatest authority, the most learned Antonius Chronicus; on the occasion of a banquet in his house, at which I was also present, with his own ears he heard the Hebrew, Dactylus, a profound scholar of this lore, come round completely to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.


Oration
Indeed, even the most secret Hebrew theology at one time transforms holy Enoch into an angel of divinity, whom they call Metatron, and at other times it reshapes other human beings into other spirits.

Conclusions
19.2. I believe that the active intellect that is illuminating only in Themistius
is the same as Metatron in the Cabala.

10>13. Typhon in Orpheus and Samael in the Cabala are the same.

11>10. That which among the Cabalists is called Metatron
is without doubt that which is called Pallas by Orpheus, the paternal mind
by Zoroaster, the son of God by Mercury, wisdom by Pythagoras, the
intelligible sphere by Parmenides.

72 Kabbalistic Conclusions, own opinion
1. sephiroth et semot - similar to speculative and practical knowledge
2. Kabbalah corresponds to four divisions of philosophy
3. The knowledge that is the practical part of Cabala puts into practice all of formal metaphysics and lower theology.
4. Ensoph is not to be numbered with the other Numerations because it is the unity of those Numerations, removed and uncommunicated, not a coordinate unity.
11. The way (though the Cabalists leave it unspoken) in which rational souls are sacrificed to God by an archangel happens only by the soul's parting from the body, not the body's parting from the soul -- except accidentally, as it may in the death of the kiss, of which it is written: the death of his saints is precious in the sight of the Lord.
13. One who works at Cabala and mixes in nothing extraneous, if he stays long at the work, will die from binsica, and if he makes a mistake in the work or comes to it unpurified, he will be devoured by Azazel through the attribute of Judgement.
63. Aristotle/Maimonides interpreting mysteries
72. Just as the true astrology teaches us to read in the book of God, so Cabala teaches us to read in the book of the Law.

47 according to secret teaching of the wise hebrew cabalists (Copenhaver)
1. Just as a human being and lower priest sacrifices the souls of irrational animals to God, so Michael, a higher priest, sacrifices the souls of rational animals. [angel in priestly role]
2. There are nine hierarchies of angels...
28. By the flying fowl created on the fifth day we should understand the angels of the world who appear to humans, not those who do not appear except in spirit. (Recanati/Zohar)
30. No angel having six wings is ever changed.

magic, own opinion
9. "There is no science which gives greater proof of Christ's divinity than magic and Cabala"

Apology: distinction between "prima et vera Cabala" and "that part of Cabala which is a science and is not revealed theology"

Commento
This principle was very religiously observed among the ancient Hebrews, and for this reason, their secret doctrine, which contains an explication of the abstruse mysteries of the law, is called Cabala, which means Receiving, because they receive it from each other, not by writings, but by oral transmission. It is a doctrine which is clearly divine, and worthy of being shared with only a few; it is a very important foundation of our faith. (Quoted in McGinn via Google Books)

big compilation of recent notes

"Iamblichus had less confidence in philosophy" -Copenhaver [I don't see Pico presenting Iamblichus as anti-philosophy but pro, if occult]

Hugh Trevor-Roper "the pseudo-Dionysius was a Christian Platonist of the sixth century who plagiarized Proclus"

Farmer notes that Pico was as attentive and penetrating a reader as those who later deconstructed Dionysius due to Proclan influence.

Farmer: Pico's identification of the sefirot with the henads was not thus simply the wild fantasy of a Renaissance syncretist.

Farmer: Similarly, when Pico suggested that Proclus's "guardians" (a henadic order) and Pseudo-Dionysius's "powers"

Dionysius made clever use of Platonic terminology for his own purposes, a lesson not lost on Aquinas.This is Pico's metaphysical inheritance

Dionysius was philosophizing about problem of Biblical angel, mitigating dangers of magic+Platonism, Pico follows this trend of careful read

does Pico imply theurgy w/ "higher part of mind/soul convenes w/ angel" or is this simply the kind of angelic presence that is PD's problem?

if all we need theurgy for is mystical ascent,why use term? if special category between magic+mysticism,problem of Pico's magic's uniqueness

Did Pico turn away from Plotinus in later works, or remain faithful to what he valued in Plotinus, although from his post-Dionysian Ar. pov?

In Pico's Plotinus conclusions we don't see a development of theory of magic mentioned in ration, but rather metaphysics of Int. cons.w/Comm

@taramayastales Pico was annoyed at the concept of astrological influence in general;he wanted to be illuminated by angels not planets/stars

@casuist All I know about Pico's love life is he got some retainers killed in a battle trying to flee after kidnapping a Medici's wife.

Pico was not a Renaissance Magus, and his contribution to Renaissance Magic Theory was limited--his criticisms of magic just as important?

due to the popularity of mistaken theurgic/magical scholarly interpretations of Pico in the late 20th century, Pico widely considered magus.

Heptaplus gives us plenty of information about the kind of writing Pico was planning on doing when he collected all those Proclan sentences.

Pico's work on Proclus in the 900 Conclusions (most cited/used thinker) must be understood as ground for Proclan method/interp in Heptaplus.

in Commento Pico experiments with a new philosophical approach to "Angelic Mind" but didn't intend to exposit a new theological doctrine.

Allen in Dougherty 93-94 Pico specifically cites Proclus, Hermias,+Syrianus (Proclus's teacher), along w/the Areopagite http://bit.ly/hmEfnB

Edelheit 161 We know from Marinus' Vita Procli XII that Proclus studied De anima, as preparation for Phaedo,in a private seminar w/Damascius

Neoplatonic metaphysics, understood as a doctrine of the One, established itself as a critique of the Aristotelian metaphysics of spirit.

# Pico adopts many of Ficino's opinions.Yet there is one significant difference, rooted in Pico's Aristotelian background http://bit.ly/hNPd1A

We should expect Pico to be "at play" with theurgy in the 900 theses just as he is tentative, probable + problematical about the rest of it.

Better historians emphasize Pico's subtlety, difficulty, ambiguity and play. Theurgic interpretations don't take seriously PLAY with theurgy

Savonarola... opposed an outright demonization to Pico's subtle interplay between reform and rejection. http://bit.ly/ezNf8w

Pico emphasized the carelessness of astrologers towards their texts as an example of their general ignorance. http://bit.ly/hr9QtW

Pico's conclusions don't tell us what he believed from Proclus, but rather give us information about what parts from Proclus interested him.

best summaries of Pico's philosophy are Craig in Routledge, Copenhaver in SEP http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/

One the one hand undeniably humanists...On the other hand, both Pico and Ficino were also connected with scholasticism. http://bit.ly/gylwHg

It is not my intention to do a Craven-style scolding or Copenhaverian de-Kanting of Pico scholars, I want to look at Pico's angel directly.

Garber/ Ayres "Yates puts too much emphasis on the exotic side of Renaissance Platonism,"

Hadot has drawn attention to the subtle insights of profound ancient philosophers such as Proclus, ... http://bit.ly/fll9JN

In his view Pico's veiled discourse, far from being the contrivance that struck Wind as unnecessarily obscure... http://bit.ly/fll9JN

Cambridge:Proclus' point in De sacrificio was that magic had a metaphysical and cosmological basis in various interactions between heavenly

I don't think Pico was so much concerned with the "rediscovery" part of the pagan mysteries he wrote about; what excites him is confirmation

to rediscover the 'secret mysteries' of pagan theology using Neoplatonic metaphysics as a key

Pico's harmony/concord of Plato+Aristotle can't be reduced to simple siding with or against Ficino on Plotinus vs. Proclus, but this matters

criticized the Neoplatonists for misreading the Sophist, in which—according to Pico—Plato actually maintained that one and being were equal

Moshe Idel on Pico's version of Jacob's Ladder, possible Jewish influence via Alemanno or Bahya http://bit.ly/gb2zVf

Pico's dependence on and extreme respect for Plotinus... "Pythagoreanized" Plotinus. http://bit.ly/e7Tp2k

Pico's reception of Proclus is complex. As with Aquinas, he applies certain philosophical principles (all in all), criticizes others (B/U).

Pico della Mirandola seized the general thought of Proclus on this point+applied it specially to philosophical theology http://bit.ly/hWB0ak

Debus: Proclus' concept of mathematical knowledge is drived directly from the intermediate place of mathematics in ... http://bit.ly/hyEhJp

Catana 124 Hereby Pico probably means, like Proclus, that the hypostasis Mind indirectly contains being http://bit.ly/ik7SHZ

Grafton: Pico neatly transformed Proclus' defense of ethically unacceptable behavior into a defense of grammatically unacceptable language.

Farmer: in Pico's thought—as in Proclus'—consistency+detail with which its implications are developed in the most disparate areas of thought

Kristeller: Proclus states, again in accordance with Plotinus, that
... in the intelligible world all things are in all things, that is, that each idea represents all others in its own particular way

C.Black: In mapping the lines of thought which led to Pico's position in the Heptaplus, we should start with Proposition 103 of Proclus's ET

"All things are in all things, but properly in each"

Edelheit 347 Pico's familiarity with Proclus is beyond dispute.Among the theses taken from other authors,the largest number are from Proclus

1676 edition of H.C. Agrippa, "The Vanity of Arts and Sciences" http://www.archive.org/details/vanityartsandsc00unkngoog

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/agrippa-nettesheim/

http://esotericarchives.com/kircher/cabala.htm

Pico selected sentences for his 900 Conclusions that he thought would be useful for discussion, wasn't trying to replace/alter faith w/them.

Corbin: In the strongest possible contrast to this are the Neoplatonic "angelologies" of Avicenna and Suhrawardi,

...which on the contrary assure "a secure foundation for the radical autonomy of the individual."

"being has primacy over the good for Thomas+it is in an Aristotelian sense that he interprets "goodness tends to be diffusive of itself"

"This influence is nonetheless carefully filtered at certain decisive points: forThomas, God is not beyond being...subsistent being itself."

influence of Dionysius on Summa of Aquinas http://bit.ly/epqqphhttp://bit.ly/epqqph

Chase: In that Christianity has always been syncretic in its formulation of theology, spirituality, and liturgy,

...the fact that Neo-Platonic cosmological views influenced its angelology does not detract http://bit.ly/hqM5CV

Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, "pseudo-Dionysius transposed this language to angelology, adding a third or oblique" http://bit.ly/eEM6pz

Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, in Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Approaches http://bit.ly/gy4KWi

Pico is trying to solve Aristotle vs. Plato by using Aquinas+Dionysius to build a bridge between Plotinian and Proclan "angelology"

Perl: As in Plotinus, intellect is being itself at its highest, most perfect level.

"in participation of the thearchic impartation" (Celestial Hierarchy IV.2 180A)

"Angels are not merely the highest in a univocal series of beings;

...rather, they are *beings* in the fullest, most complete, and therefore paradigmatic sense." ibid

Eric Perl, "Angelology becomes ontology." http://bit.ly/gdWHQp Theophany p.70

the Pseudo-Areopagite's elaborate angelology omits the topic of fallen angels http://bit.ly/fVidu7

roots of the angelology of Aquinas in Iamblichus http://bit.ly/fKUJOp

"Iamblichus distinguished divine entities following Aristotle's distinction of Plato's Ideal Numbers and his own Unmoved Movers" G.Shaw p.76

Milton's Neoplatonism is not likely to have come from any one source—neither from Spenser, nor Dante, nor his own interpretation of Plato.

Rahner " the subordination of angelology to Christology (an explicit theme with Paul) does not receive its due"

"It is well known that Neoplatonic demonology and angelology originated with Porphyry." http://bit.ly/gXlCnp

Angelology has no place in the system of Plotinus. According to Iamblichus, Plato did not consider archangels worth mention

Louth p.37 "A Neo- platonic interest in triads is doubtless in the background." http://bit.ly/fVZazi

new edition of Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy http://bit.ly/e72NxS

quote below from The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism - Page 118 Denys Turner http://bit.ly/hSmHBI

Neoplatonism in almost all its Greek+Arabic forms from Proclus onward was an angelology rather than an anthropology in its central interest.

Rough outline of Pico's angel is Dionysius/Aquinas (many cites/silent uses) but there are also the unusual uses he makes of angel philosophy

a superior angel knows more about the types of the Divine works than an inferior angel+concerning these the former enlightens the latter DN4

@EPButler right I'm with you there. so why do Neoplatonist scholars feel justified in using the term angelology? reading as proto-Christian?

Harkness:In his copy of Dionysius, Dee noted that angels were granted divine enlightenment+became responsible for passing arcane information

RT @EPButler Rappe's using "angelology" here to refer to Proclus' discourse about entities HE calls "Gods";that's what I'm calling polemical

notes - outlining subchapters

primary source review - precursors to Pico's angelology in Dionysius and Aquinas-proclan iamblichean principles already in Christian NP trad
do quick review of angel text in Pico before discussing interpretations, then conclusion with what I think we can learn from the disc.

Dionysius and Theurgy intro subchapter will explain the Christian theurgy that I suggest might be better explanation than other theurgies.

intro subchapter will give my argument on "Pico, Aquinas and Dionysius" context for angelology, theological commitments, philos. motivations

emphasize passivity of Dionysian angelic reception, concern for preserving hierachy/distance which Pico shares, although he's funkier than T

Dionysius and Theurgy bit - this activity of Celestial Hierarchy is theurgic in sense of divine works done by God/Jesus/Angels, part. by man

intro Dionysius - problem of angelic knowledge making it to humans via illumination/translation process of Celestial Hierarchy led by Jesus.

are Thomistic "each angel its own species" discussed by Pico in 900 theses and "angel as number" vestigial traces of Proclan henadology?

Kabbalah in Oration bit will look at how Pico uses Dionysian terms to translate Cabala, bring in some Copenhaver and Idel but not 900 yet...

Oration "sed contra" bit will look do philosophical reading of angels in Oration as model of contemplative life

Oration literature review will cover Copenhaver's theurgy theory, then skeptical/philosophical readings seeing Oration as rhetoric not magic

Copenhaver mitigates theurgy+magic by arguing that they are preliminary stages of mystical
initiation for Pico, but finds more than Craven.

De Ente is not as ambitious as Heptaplus formally, but similarly marshals an impressive array of authorities to make a powerful "Ar/PD" arg.

Heptaplus is a masterpiece of literary construction, weaving huge number of influences into tight+overdetermined structure to support theory

Heptaplus and De Ente represent Pico's more mature, longer-format thinking, whereas Commento/Oration/900 were merely notes+sketches, ideas.

Conclusion - Pico's philosophical angelology in Hep/Comm/Ente/Disp might be a better starting point than theurgic speculations about Ora/900

Pico demonstrates his commitments to "ontotheology" post-Aquinas in Commento, Heptaplus, De Ente in ways not possible in 900 short sentences

review of angelology in Commento - angelic level of being seen as a whole (Pico's take on Plotinian style) as "Angelic Mind" / forms stories

if we don't need magic to explain angelology of Heptaplus+Commento,maybe we don't need magic to explain angel mysteries of Pico's 900 Theses

my main point in Comm/Hep/BU/Disp chapter: Pico is paying consistent attention to Neoplatonic Angelology although magic no longer an issue.

Heptaplus and Commento, Disputations are not subject to same degree of theurgic interpretation, Mebane argues vs. Heptaplus-centric readings

Later texts chapter lit review -- Commento+Heptaplus in recent groundbreaking scholarship of Michael Allen, Crofton Black, other evaluations

900 last half, review "Pico's Encounter with Neoplatonic Angelology" and how it relates to better studied scholastic+cabalistic angel theses

900 "sed contra" bit -- short lit review on why 900 can't be seen as Pico system, his own views can't be extracted. Black,Edelheit,Dougherty

900 Kabbalah bit, Copenhaver on angelic talisman theory, Wirszubski on KBL sources+distranslation, Craven on Pico's KBL is clearly stated.

900 Literature review -- Farmer ex. of large scale theurgic interpretation of Theses as a whole, Copenhaver vs. Idel+Craven on theurgy/magic

Henads are the superessential angels of participation, transmitting individuality from the unparticipated One to its ontic fellows in unity.

rather Pico correlates sefirot with NP "gods" b/c it seems like a philosophical precursor to Dionysian angelology and theology of henads

Pico correlates sefirot with "gods" of ancient theology ("Guardians" of Orpheus) not to import pagan diety conjuring, which he warns against

does Pico correlate sefirot with angels, divine mind, forms, henads, intellectuals or intelligibles? it's not entirely clear what he means.

for Pico, as Aquinas+Dionysius, angels indispensable part of story of procession from One to multiplicity, resonant w/Proclus+Cabala sefirot

are Thomistic "each angel its own species" discussed by Pico in 900 theses and "angel as number" vestigial traces of Proclan henadology?

Henad in Proclus commentary on Parmenides http://bit.ly/eAvr5D "each henad has a multiplicity dependent on it"

Conclusion, Aquinas and Dionysius didn't allow for becoming angel. If Pico really is "breaking hierarchy" in Oration this would be serious!

Hankins+Allen Pico+F. "more comprehensive ways of theologizing in contexts outside of, if ancillary still to, Christian analysis+exposition"

Theurgy in Neoplatonism is a subject of difficulty and complexity, obviously a simple answer on Pico's theurgy is not to be expected.

Levi: Pico della Mirandola, whose dependence on Proclus was clearly shown by Michael Allen's studies of Ficino ... http://bit.ly/fuNXMh

Szulakowska:recent research of Allen into Ficino's Pythagorean numerology has revealed his interest in optical geometry as a theurgic device

"Where Galileo wanted detachment, Pico looked for coincidence"

Whether or not theurgy is the right term, we will still have many problems to sort out concerning Pico's philosophical motivations in using.

Pico looks to ancient theology not because they share some universal truth that transcends Christianity/but b/c he sees them pointing toward

Ficino believed that Mercury was the original theologian http://bit.ly/fGecbA

Alemanno "Let us come to wisdom and union only by the way of intellectual speculation or by sudden intuition, but not by magical actions"

Pico is clearly working on Dionysian + Thomistic problems in philosophical angelology in his texts/Any theurgic hints are secondary to this.

Angelic influence matters to Pico, as it did for Aquinas+Dionysius, but his writings on this influence do not suddenly change it into magic.

Dougherty shows how attention to the scholastic forms Pico is using in 900 Conclusions clears up misconceptions about his motivations+style.

Pico seems to contradict himself in the 900 Conclusions because he was not giving his own opinion, but preparing sentences for a debate.

it is not clear how a theurgic interpretation of Pico gives us any help in understanding the problems of his epistemology, cognitive models.

On Pico's Kabbalah and Language/Knowledge problems see Stuckrad's Textures of Renaissance Knowledge (cite his W Eso survey on Pico earlier)

God is not intellect (or life, etc.) but is better than that

in the long ch5 of De Ente he came back to this fundamental difference

Blum PRR134 on Commento "this can get Platonists in trouble" Pico attacks this kind of Platonism by underscoring mp gap b/t cr.hum.mind+God

Blum in Dougherty suggests that the reason for Pico's theses being condemned is his failure to respect a boundary between nat.phil+theology.

Blum interprets Pico as a critic of pagan Neoplatonic revival, conservatively defending Christian metaphysics vs. Ficino (Phil.Rel.Renaiss.)

Blum: This intermediate level--name it Sefiroth, Angelic Mind, First Created--keeps world and God apart and together. (Phil.Rel.Ren. 133)

Blum 133 Agreement between Pico's critique of Neoplatonist emanation and Elia's critique of misrepresented cabalism proof Pico an Averroist?

Blum: this very view is the main message in Pico and it is very much at odds with Ficino. Phil.Rel.Ren 132

"the order we find in the world is that of the Sefirot" Del Medigo, ibid

"they believe that in the Infinite there is no thinking or apprehension" Del Medigo letter to Pico(explains why for Pico Kabbalah=Dionysius)

Del Medigo letter to Pico: the order in which the produced beings are produced +maintained within the order is Sefirot...flow from infinite

Petrarch's hope that the study of ancient mythology might enhance reverence for Christian faith was shared by Ficino and Pico. Blum (ibid)

rather than hints of theurgy Blum speak of "hints against poluarizing pagan Platonism"

p.135 Oration should be read as an appeal to spiritual conversion to which knowledge of all sorts of wisdom contributes if properly applied.

Pico understands the Dionysian problem of angelic knowledge and does not neglect the Dionysian concern to preserve the hierarchy/gap between

thesis - Pico's philosophical angelology deserves to be taken more seriously than it has been (magic/kbl/theurgy needs a fair treatment too)

however, recent groundbreaking work has been done that when taken into account allows for a much richer picture of Pico in context

Marshall Angels in EM World "Pico believed that practical Cabbal led to the ... both angel magic and the peril of entrapment by the demonic."

Moshe Idel: A disentanglement of theosophy from theurgy recurred in the Christian version of Kabbalah

Sheppard argues against Dodds's thesis that by accepting theurgy Neoplatonism abandoned its rational basis of Plotinian mysticism

Sheppard elaborates on Smith's analysis by distinguishing three levels of theurgy in Proclus' writings; forms of "white magic" -Majercik

Proclus integrated his response to Iamblichean theurgy into his grand (proto-scholastic?) system of philosophical "theology"+ph."angelology"

Iamblichus' defense of theurgy was very important, but so were his theories of religion and metaphysics of the One/philosophical angelology.

I don't think "theurgy" should be seen as a defining (limiting...) theme for Iamblichus, Proclus, or Dionysius, w/out a great deal of care.

Sheppard makes theurgy central to Proclus' philosophical theology + "mystical experience" ...would certainly be mistake to do so w/Dionysiu

Whatever Pico means by introducing Kabbalah,he describes it as primarily theology+angel metaphysics/secondarily as ground of magic operation

In suggesting philosophical motivations I don't mean to downplay influence of KBL angel, but Pico sees KBL as "exact metaphysics of angels."

Pico's angelology is Biblical and Christian angel read through Neoplatonism (as it was already in Dionysius/Aquinas)+Kabbalah--seen as NP...

Crofton Black suggests that Pico weaves 49 Gates of Kabbalah into Heptaplus structure -- is there a practice here as well as an hermeneutic?

the simplicity of material objects makes it easier to contact divinity

Watts "While it was controversial, theurgy held a strong appeal for those with a philosophical inclination."

Theurgy was a development w/in the Platonic tradition, but a development that on some points was difficult to harmonize http://bit.ly/g8k2sU

as one scholar puts it "The invocations can raise us to union with God."

theurgic interpreters have put too many words in Pico's mouth/really we don't understand theurgy or Pico well enough to say w/certainty

some theurgic interpretations clearly based on misinterpretation, but Copenhaver and Stuckrad understand Pico well

more on ascent see Couliano Psychanodia and "Out of this World"

Moshe Idel discusses Pico's theory of ascent in light of kabbalistic precursors/possible influences in Ascensions on High

on theurgy and "elevation" see Lewy "chaldaean oracles and theurgy" ch.3

theurgic interpreters have not said what theurgy means for Pico's doctrine of Angelic Mind or angelic cognition--"gnostic" is a cop-out

Theurgy is a controversial issue that I'm not bringing up to make an argument resolving/but only to note for important context to angelology

the magic of the Renaissance in general—and Bruno's magic in particular—is a science that primarily (if not solely) works in the imagination

magical interpretations are no excuse for not studying Pico's magic

Language, immateriality, and prayer. http://bit.ly/dLjybZ in Word and meaning in ancient Alexandria.

Like Dionysius Pico doesn't dare to describe the angels as they are, but rather focuses on traditional medieval accounts of their functions.

Pico isn't really theorizing mystical union in a theurgic way--like Dionysius and Aquinas he leaves the details up to God, Jesus, Angelic CH

Theurgy resists being theorized, although Iamblichus, Proclus, Dionysius do an admirable job of mapping what can be said about it/Does Pico?

is a philosophical spirituality more of a problem than a magical spirituality? Pico's philosophical angelology harder to deal w/than theurgy

The only "magical arts" Pico consistently seems to want to apply are the ones that exhort his reader to a Christian sprituality of philosoph

Pico's is a poetic theology not a magical one

I suggest that rather than seeing Pico as structuring his texts like a talisman, might make more sense to see him structuring like PD hymn.

Pico may have intended some number magic, or he may have just been making numerological jokes for the initiated to grin about when reading.

But Copenhaver's talisman is quite quite speculative... many other ways Pico's organizational arts structuring his texts could be understood

Copenhaver's angel magic talisman is an interesting speculation. We'd need a whole new category of textual talisman method, owing to Pico...

Copenhaver If Pico wanted his seventy-two conclusions to form an angelic talisman for repelling Azazel by summoning Metatron...

... As a device for doing angel magic, this figure derives its power from its hexagonal form, ...

French p87 follows Yates "it was cabalist angel-magic that, he thought, enabled him to operate in the supercelestial or angelic world"

Yates “Through Reuchlin, Pico's kabbalist magic leads straight on to the angel magic of Trithemius or of Cornelius Agrippa, ...

http://bit.ly/fyLZa0 The western esoteric traditions, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Planetary and Angel Magic in the Renaissance

Shadduck "One alternative tradition-encouraging the desire for ontogenic elevation-appears in Pico della Mirandola" England's amorous angels

RC digest: "Important developments which Reuchlin gave to angelology cleansed it of the demonological suspicions which..."

ibid p20 "medieval tradition of commenting on Dionysius as a theologian's rite of passage"

In the anteroom of divinity: the reformation of the angels from from Colet to Milton By Feisal Gharib Mohamed - http://bit.ly/gqrBjN

Avery Dulles: His views on this question, because of their consequences in angelology, brought Pico into conflict with the Church. ...

even the self is a social relation, however blind we like to make ourselves to its otherness

what is the difference between mode of cognition of angels / rational souls? difference between God+angels? sensible forms int'ly in angel?

I don't think Pico's 900 Conclusions should be seen as a source for Pico's finished ideas about these matters, but start of his problems w/.

Crofton Black (echoing Craven) describes efforts to render Pico's 900 Conclusions under a single unifying schema in a harsh critical light.

Theurgic interpretations have made too much of Pico's "influences" -- he was indeed eclectic but not determined by any of his many sources.

Dionysian theurgy seems like a good place to look for more light on what Pico means by turning to magic and especially to kabbalah.

Challenge for philosophical reading of Pico remains how to integrate magical, kabbalistic,+possibly theurgic interests w/Pico's Christianity

Pico's angelology is not a finished system, but it is a marvellous effort and was profoundly influential on later esoteric Christians+QBList

Surveys of Renaissance+Medieval Angelology tend to dismiss Pico on the basis of magical interpretations that are not current with P scholars

Philosophical approaches to Pico have problem of not wanting to deal w/ possible implications of theurgy/how Pico really meant to use magic.

Tentative nature of 900 Conclusions I want to emphasize above any insight they may offer. Can't jump to "Conclusions" about Pico's magic...

Pico theorized language as a conduit of divine power as explaining magic+kabbalah/but not necessarily things he wants readers to actually do

Pico gives rhetorical celebration of exalted place of man using Christian+Aristotelian philosophy, not offering a radical magus alternative.

Many have remarked that Heptaplus focuses on fallen+limited state of man, a surprising bummer for those who ignored Christianity of Oration.

Dionysian theurgist is like angel in the sense of illuminating those lower than his position on the church hierarchy. Pico's Syrianus notes.

Dionysius had to deal with problem of human participating in angelic theurgic activity when presiding as hierarch over liturgic rituals.

Can we see Pico's biblical angel comparison problem as similar to Dionysian problems in explaining angel to human interactions?

When Dionysius discusses human participation in Church liturgy or scriptural interpretation as "becoming theurgic" doesn't mean magically...

For Dionysius (emphatically for Aquinas) human does not become angelic b/c stays w/in human limit at position in hierarchy, tho'participates

Dionysius understands theurgy as magical metaphor for saving "Divine Work" performed by Jesus+angels, human participation a special case.

Theurgy is needed to explain Iamblichus-something needed to get past soul's material stuckness-but this is different problem post-Dionysius.

things to remember - Pico doesn't really need magic+KBL, only brings them up to celebrate philosophy and solve theology problems/not rad-ize

remember - stuff from end of De Ente which gives final summation of Pico's mystical program that shows consistent interest in imitate divine

quotes to remember - Yates on taking magic up to supercelestial, Heptaplus compared to 12th cent cosmotheology, Mebane etc. theurgy schools

theurgy might be better term used for Pico if disentangled from magic, seen in NP/PD terms as mystical theology/ascent practice via liturgy.

Pico's angelology is first+foremost a reaction to angelologies of Aquinas+Dionysius. Rest is just resources+tools Pico deploys to develop em

Allen says Angel has lost central role, philosophical explanatory value in Ficino. Why does it remain central for Pico? Magic isn't the key.

Pico sees philosophizing about angels as a natural part of his Christian project that gives him information about how to become angelic/div.

We see in Pico's Conclusions first experiments in translating Neoplatonic philosophical angelology into Christian terms, later refined in H.

juiciest problems of Pico's theurgy I don't even want to touch. but see Mebane, Stuckrad for interesting takes,Copenhaver for best th.interp

listening to all my old Pico tweets being read by the Kindle's rich robot tenor. hypnotic and galvanizing my muscle memory to write more key

Participation is now seen as a key to Aquinas' metaphysics (Wippel). Pico's grok of participation involved detailed study of NP use of term.

need to remember for first half: Paul, Library, Proclus on theurgy of number, Copenhaver on seriousness of Proclus' magic, Pallas angel knot

Pico's 900 Conclusions cannot be seen as giving us Pico's final systematic opinions, but it can help us understand angel phil. motivations.

It should be obvious from the fact that Pico circumscribes a limited place for magic, yet devotes much text to angelology, which is central.

The corporeal imagination: signifying the holy in late ancient ... - Page 194 Patricia Cox Miller - 2009

I don't have an answer to theurgic interpretation, but prefer to bracket the question until philosophical angelology of Pico better studied.

Pico saw himself as doing Christian Neoplatonic philosophical angelology in same style as Dionysius+Aquinas/original Christianized Platonism

Edelheit: Di Napoli's defense of Pico's sincerity/orthodoxy neglects his inventiveness. But do we need to sacrifice orthodoxy to see as inv.

Approaching Pico from "scholastic influences" angle just as dangerous as "occult influences" name of the game is what he did creatively with

I can only confess that philosophical approach to Pico has flaws in not being able to handle the theurgic+magical on its own medieval terms.

Haeffner "angel magic was a sophisticated science in the Renaissance Cabala of Pico della Mirandola and HC Agrippa" http://bit.ly/gqyGb5

Brann "debate/genius" inviting the angel magic of Cabala into Ficino's blend of Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic principles...

if following Dionysian/Thomistic capacity+image/participated being constraints, perhaps Pico's talisman deals w/angelic being at human level

Pico might be structuring his text as a talisman in ways that don't get angels involved?

Theurgy is a controversial issue that I'm not bringing up to make an argument resolving/but only to note for important context to angelology

the magic of the Renaissance in general—and Bruno's magic in particular—is a science that primarily (if not solely) works in the imagination

magical interpretations are no excuse for not studying Pico's magic

"Theurgy of Number" in Iamblichus(Shaw)+Proclus(Wear)might be a great place to look for philosophical motivations behind Pico's Number magic

the life of the angel is not perfect (De Ente) it is left to Angel to be a Number (Heptaplus) we should imitate their life (Oration) but how

Copenhaver approaches Pico from history/philosophy of science perspective, but resorts to theurgic explanation b/c can't integrate Pico M+K?

Marshall Angels in EM World "Pico believed that practical Cabbal led to the ... both angel magic and the peril of entrapment by the demonic."

Like Dionysius Pico doesn't dare to describe the angels as they are, but rather focuses on traditional medieval accounts of their functions.

Pico isn't really theorizing mystical union in a theurgic way--like Dionysius and Aquinas he leaves the details up to God, Jesus, Angelic CH

Theurgy resists being theorized, although Iamblichus, Proclus, Dionysius do an admirable job of mapping what can be said about it/Does Pico?

is a philosophical spirituality more of a problem than a magical spirituality? Pico's philosophical angelology harder to deal w/than theurgy

The only "magical arts" Pico consistently seems to want to apply are the ones that exhort his reader to a Christian sprituality of philosoph

Pico's is a poetic theology not a magical one

I suggest that rather than seeing Pico as structuring his texts like a talisman, might make more sense to see him structuring like PD hymn.

Pico may have intended some number magic, or he may have just been making numerological jokes for the initiated to grin about when reading.

But Copenhaver's talisman is quite quite speculative... many other ways Pico's organizational arts structuring his texts could be understood

Copenhaver's angel magic talisman is an interesting speculation. We'd need a whole new category of textual talisman method, owing to Pico...

Copenhaver If Pico wanted his seventy-two conclusions to form an angelic talisman for repelling Azazel by summoning Metatron...

... As a device for doing angel magic, this figure derives its power from its hexagonal form, ...

French p87 follows Yates "it was cabalist angel-magic that, he thought, enabled him to operate in the supercelestial or angelic world"

Yates “Through Reuchlin, Pico's kabbalist magic leads straight on to the angel magic of Trithemius or of Cornelius Agrippa, ...

http://bit.ly/fyLZa0 The western esoteric traditions, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Planetary and Angel Magic in the Renaissance

Shadduck "One alternative tradition-encouraging the desire for ontogenic elevation-appears in Pico della Mirandola" England's amorous angels

RC digest: "Important developments which Reuchlin gave to angelology cleansed it of the demonological suspicions which..."

ibid p20 "medieval tradition of commenting on Dionysius as a theologian's rite of passage"

In the anteroom of divinity: the reformation of the angels from from Colet to Milton By Feisal Gharib Mohamed - http://bit.ly/gqrBjN

Avery Dulles: His views on this question, because of their consequences in angelology, brought Pico into conflict with the Church. ...

even the self is a social relation, however blind we like to make ourselves to its otherness

what is the difference between mode of cognition of angels / rational souls? difference between God+angels? sensible forms int'ly in angel?

# I don't think Pico's 900 Conclusions should be seen as a source for Pico's finished ideas about these matters, but start of his problems w/.

Crofton Black (echoing Craven) describes efforts to render Pico's 900 Conclusions under a single unifying schema in a harsh critical light.

Theurgic interpretations have made too much of Pico's "influences" -- he was indeed eclectic but not determined by any of his many sources.

Dionysian theurgy seems like a good place to look for more light on what Pico means by turning to magic and especially to kabbalah.

Challenge for philosophical reading of Pico remains how to integrate magical, kabbalistic,+possibly theurgic interests w/Pico's Christianity

Pico's angelology is not a finished system, but it is a marvellous effort and was profoundly influential on later esoteric Christians+QBList

Surveys of Renaissance+Medieval Angelology tend to dismiss Pico on the basis of magical interpretations that are not current with P scholars

Philosophical approaches to Pico have problem of not wanting to deal w/ possible implications of theurgy/how Pico really meant to use magic.

Tentative nature of 900 Conclusions I want to emphasize above any insight they may offer. Can't jump to "Conclusions" about Pico's magic...

Pico theorized language as a conduit of divine power as explaining magic+kabbalah/but not necessarily things he wants readers to actually do

@aureliomadrid Pico only describes Aquinas+Dionysius as "glory of our theology" has lesser praise for other influences in their image mostly

@aureliomadrid I posted a link below to argument that NP distorts Pico's theology. I disagree b/c NP is crucial to Aquinas+Dionysius "glory"

@soundhunter Dionysian "sacramental theology" is all about how the invisible+transcendental must be seen as entering through senses, body...

@soundhunter there's great stuff in Dionysius--he's following Neoplatonists on need for divine to be infused into matter to help us ascend.

Since "all is in all" but hierarchical levels are still distinct, man gets angelic being at his proper level. Swedenborg emphasized this.

while Dionysius influence still a problem, constraints of Dionysian "becoming theurgic" help contextualize Pico's "becoming angelic" model.

@aureliomadrid my strategy is to cover a few theurgic interpretations at beginning and show why I like them. Yates for highlighting mystical

@aureliomadrid But those looking for an angel magic or theurgy in Pico would do well to first understand his philosophical angelology texts.

@aureliomadrid I'm saying theurgic interpreters are correct to want to look at this stuff, there is something we can learn about religion...

@aureliomadrid I still think there's a problem with magic+theurgy. I'm only bracketing them really, not explaining them away or minimizing.

Heptaplus: like angels we cannot go in a circle and come back upon ourselves" crucial Proclan insight Pico gets via Dionysius + now directly

@aureliomadrid How can I be sensitively treating these delicate problems? I want to account for Pico's commitments + strange interests.

Pico gives rhetorical celebration of exalted place of man using Christian+Aristotelian philosophy, not offering a radical magus alternative.

Many have remarked that Heptaplus focuses on fallen+limited state of man, a surprising bummer for those who ignored Christianity of Oration.

Dionysian theurgist is like angel in the sense of illuminating those lower than his position on the church hierarchy. Pico's Syrianus notes.

Dionysius had to deal with problem of human participating in angelic theurgic activity when presiding as hierarch over liturgic rituals.

Can we see Pico's biblical angel comparison problem as similar to Dionysian problems in explaining angel to human interactions?

When Dionysius discusses human participation in Church liturgy or scriptural interpretation as "becoming theurgic" doesn't mean magically...

For Dionysius (emphatically for Aquinas) human does not become angelic b/c stays w/in human limit at position in hierarchy, tho'participates

Dionysius understands theurgy as magical metaphor for saving "Divine Work" performed by Jesus+angels, human participation a special case.

Theurgy is needed to explain Iamblichus-something needed to get past soul's material stuckness-but this is different problem post-Dionysius.

Theurgy theory of Iamblichus rests on difficult problem not being philosophical or theological account. Pico doesn't need a theurgy between.

Theurgy of Neoplatonists now seen as Religious, not coercive, passive participation in rituals given by gods who plant symbols,but crucially

Theurgy studies have already been set back long enough by confident misreadings that explain it as something else "theurgy is really magic."

Theurgic interp. has to deal w/problem of Pico not using term theurgy, getting far from his actual text. Why not use his own terminology?

# Theurgy interpretations have problem accounting for why Pico would feel the need to conjure angels when already in contact acc. to PD story.
Magic+Theurgy problems much harder to solve (KBL work already had pioneering studies) but angel philosophy grounding will only help matters.

There is plenty of easy and moderately difficult work to be done on Pico's Encounter with Neoplatonic Philosophical Angelology before magic.

Philosophical approach has tools to offer future theurgic interpretations, which can't rest on misunderstandings of Pico's motives+tool use.

@toastbeard Yeah, Pico is absolutely pointing to language of tools. Cabalists show how divine creation key language can be mined by artists.
@toastbeard Pico's is definitely a magic of real uses, whatever they are. But it could be he just imagines natural philosophy is useful...

over 12,000 words, I have 24 hours to sculpt http://angelologyofmirandola.blogspot.com/2011/01/almost-everything-all-together-outline.html

@aureliomadrid I'm not arguing for his orthodoxy. I am arguing for his sincerity. It's not just rhetorical cleverness to avoid accusations.
@aureliomadrid But I'm arguing we can take Pico's word for it that he's only exploring this stuff, not implying any conjuring, finds useful.
@aureliomadrid Big part of problem which may clear up eventually is we don't understand how magic stuff fits into Pico's theology project.
@aureliomadrid It seems like Pico was jazzed on Kabbalah bc he thought it was Dionysian mysticism, feels free to leave out what don't agree.
@aureliomadrid My last insight is to admit that my philosophical approach has issues of not yet being ready to deal with all the magic+KBL/T
@aureliomadrid Wirszubski points out that all Pico's kabbalistic sources have divine language power as source of Kabbalistic operations.
@aureliomadrid I point at selections he's making. In 900 leaves out theurgy of Iamblichus+Proclus. Heptaplus omits sefirotic interpretation.

@t3dy ...this seems so difficult to untangle because of all the mystical/hermetic & kabbalistic teachings pico embraced.

@aureliomadrid yeah it's a toughy. as I polish my final i'm pained to give my opinion a shape as argument.got any more thoughts on sensitiv?

I can't say Dionysius is not dangerous or possibly controversial, but Pico thought situating his angel mysticism in PDian mode made it safe.

Pico presents a Neoplatonic cosmology+anthropology...that was notably modified by his knowledge of the medieval Jewish magical tradition. CT

Renaissance transformations of late medieval thought Front Cover Charles Edward Trinkaus p.326 treats Aristotelian Pico

Trinkaus, Charles. “Cosmos+Man: Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico on the Structure of the Universe+the Freedom of Man,” Vivens Homo 5 (1994)

Pico sees his angelology as a Biblical problem, situated in the thinking of Paul, Dionysius, and Thomas Aquinas.

Pico sees Dionysius as giving the angelology of Paul

Pico’s texts might be read as Dionysian style theurgic hymn/prayers rather than magical talismans

Copenhaver sees Kabbalistic angel as possible place where Pico imports novel practices but no practices are mentioned in Pico's later texts.

I will look at Idel, Copenhaver, Wirszubski on Pico's Kabbalah, which is only a problem for Oration+Conclusions, later texts don't treat K-A

I will devote some attention: Copenhaver's use of the term theurgy, Allen's study of Commento angel, Crofton Black on Dionysius in Heptaplus

Stuckrad: Alemanno had "intensive intellectual exchange" with Pico. W.Esotericism p 72

Stuckrad: Pico doesn't regard this KBL as Jewish--rather expropriates Jews w/reproach they hadn't understood true meaning of own teachings."

Craven has good rips on Pico misreaders "He is far from giving his own opinion" "no hint of theurgy" ... impatient historiography

Pico's "Dignity" only seems like radical new role for man in hindsight; in context it is clearly a standard medieval role (however enthused)

things to remember - Pico doesn't really need magic+KBL, only brings them up to celebrate philosophy and solve theology problems/not rad-ize

remember - stuff from end of De Ente which gives final summation of Pico's mystical program that shows consistent interest in imitate divine

quotes to remember - Yates on taking magic up to supercelestial, Heptaplus compared to 12th cent cosmotheology, Mebane etc. theurgy schools

theurgy might be better term used for Pico if disentangled from magic, seen in NP/PD terms as mystical theology/ascent practice via liturgy.

Pico's angelology is first+foremost a reaction to angelologies of Aquinas+Dionysius. Rest is just resources+tools Pico deploys to develop em

Allen says Angel has lost central role, philosophical explanatory value in Ficino. Why does it remain central for Pico? Magic isn't the key.

Pico sees philosophizing about angels as a natural part of his Christian project that gives him information about how to become angelic/div.

We see in Pico's Conclusions first experiments in translating Neoplatonic philosophical angelology into Christian terms, later refined in H.

juiciest problems of Pico's theurgy I don't even want to touch. but see Mebane, Stuckrad for interesting takes,Copenhaver for best th.interp

listening to all my old Pico tweets being read by the Kindle's rich robot tenor. hypnotic and galvanizing my muscle memory to write more key

Participation is now seen as a key to Aquinas' metaphysics (Wippel). Pico's grok of participation involved detailed study of NP use of term.

need to remember for first half: Paul, Library, Proclus on theurgy of number, Copenhaver on seriousness of Proclus' magic, Pallas angel knot

Pico's 900 Conclusions cannot be seen as giving us Pico's final systematic opinions, but it can help us understand angel phil. motivations.

It should be obvious from the fact that Pico circumscribes a limited place for magic, yet devotes much text to angelology, which is central.

Whatever Pico means by introducing Kabbalah,he describes it as primarily theology+angel metaphysics/secondarily as ground of magic operation

In suggesting philosophical motivations I don't mean to downplay influence of KBL angel, but Pico sees KBL as "exact metaphysics of angels."

Pico's angelology is Biblical and Christian angel read through Neoplatonism (as it was already in Dionysius/Aquinas)+Kabbalah--seen as NP...

Crofton Black suggests that Pico weaves 49 Gates of Kabbalah into Heptaplus structure -- is there a practice here as well as an hermeneutic?

Blum, Philosophers of the Renaissance
p.5 The Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato, which found its most important support in his Parmenides and Timaeus, received considerable impetus from the gradual discover of Plotinus, Proclus... The proposed solutions varied on individual points, but all agreed in assuming the presence in time and in the finite world of the Eternal and the Infinie, to which the knowing human soul must draw near. Even the debate over the immortality of the soul was a debate over the methodological versus the cosmological approach to knowledge. The immortality debate... gained momentum during the Renaissance and led to the early modern contention between rationalism and empiricism. This is why epistemology always tended to be cosmology as well; and indeed, it tended to be ethics, because the process of knowledge, understood in this way, contained a volitional element, an intentional opening up of oneself or a drawing near to the Infinite.

[nice passage on the background of neoplatonism to renaissance philosophy--Pico's texts exhibit this connection between cosmology and epistemology-ethics, the end of felicity etc.]
...
The cosmological aspect of the problem of creation led to an intensive search to identify the principle (or at any rate, as few principles as possible) by which everything that takes place is governed. For the sake of finitude, this principle may not be directly God himself (the accusation of pantheism was occasionally leveled) This is why... Agrippa and Bruno, under the influence of Ficino, speak of the world-soul, monads, and Pythagoerean numerical structures, while light and spirit or other forms of soul are the candidates in Ficino, Pico... and others.
[Alemanno scholar on the cosmological bent of his sefirot, Idel on characterizing the specific moment of Italian Renaissance Kabbalah and Jewish Philosophy, just as interested in magic as Christians were]

Pico in spring of 1486
Toussaint in Blum Page 72
he read the Cabbalists, newly discovered Hebrew philosophers such as Levi ben Gershom, Maimonides, Nachmanides and others, Plotinus, Hermes Trismegistus, the Chaldaean Oracles, Simplicius, Themistius, Philostratus, Iamblichus, Averroes, Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent, among others, and the number of Conclusiones grew from seven hundred to nine hundred. In this short space of time, Pico not only composed the Conclusiones, but also the Commento, in which he developed an independent theory of the nature of the beatiful in Plate, and the celebrated Oratio, which is regarded as the manifesto of the new Renaissance thinking.

Toussaint warns against watering or dumbing down Pico's Renaissance Philosophy
Blum 81 Against this background, the various recent attempts to reduce Pico's work to a purely humanistic scholarship and rhetoric, or to a Scholastic, or even "reactionary" interpretation, must be regarded as a throough watering down of the philosophical Renaissance that Pico embodies, and as a gradual philosophical dumbing down of his thinking.

[While I think Toussaint may overemphasize the magical and "radical" Pico, he has a point. In looking at his scholastic interestings and emphasizing the religious and philosophical commitments evidenced in Pico's treatment of angelology, I do not want to seek to reduce Pico to some medieval paradigm. In looking to Pico's magic and theurgy, we must not exaggerrate any detail but we also must not ignore
the hints. What we have is, as Copenhaver points out, much closer to the medieval angel of Dionysius and Aquinas. But we also have a Renaissance angelology and a "re-platonizing" in the light of Pico's contemporary theological ambience as well as his particular original brilliance.]

Blum, Philosophers of the Renaissance
p.5 The Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato, which found its most important support in his Parmenides and Timaeus, received considerable impetus from the gradual discover of Plotinus, Proclus... The proposed solutions varied on individual points, but all agreed in assuming the presence in time and in the finite world of the Eternal and the Infinie, to which the knowing human soul must draw near. Even the debate over the immortality of the soul was a debate over the methodological versus the cosmological approach to knowledge. The immortality debate... gained momentum during the Renaissance and led to the early modern contention between rationalism and empiricism. This is why epistemology always tended to be cosmology as well; and indeed, it tended to be ethics, because the process of knowledge, understood in this way, contained a volitional element, an intentional opening up of oneself or a drawing near to the Infinite.

[nice passage on the background of neoplatonism to renaissance philosophy--Pico's texts exhibit this connection between cosmology and epistemology-ethics, the end of felicity etc.]
...
The cosmological aspect of the problem of creation led to an intensive search to identify the principle (or at any rate, as few principles as possible) by which everything that takes place is governed. For the sake of finitude, this principle may not be directly God himself (the accusation of pantheism was occasionally leveled) This is why... Agrippa and Bruno, under the influence of Ficino, speak of the world-soul, monads, and Pythagoerean numerical structures, while light and spirit or other forms of soul are the candidates in Ficino, Pico... and others.
[Alemanno scholar on the cosmological bent of his sefirot, Idel on characterizing the specific moment of Italian Renaissance Kabbalah and Jewish Philosophy, just as interested in magic as Christians were]

Pico in spring of 1486
Toussaint in Blum Page 72
he read the Cabbalists, newly discovered Hebrew philosophers such as Levi ben Gershom, Maimonides, Nachmanides and others, Plotinus, Hermes Trismegistus, the Chaldaean Oracles, Simplicius, Themistius, Philostratus, Iamblichus, Averroes, Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent, among others, and the number of Conclusiones grew from seven hundred to nine hundred. In this short space of time, Pico not only composed the Conclusiones, but also the Commento, in which he developed an independent theory of the nature of the beatiful in Plate, and the celebrated Oratio, which is regarded as the manifesto of the new Renaissance thinking.

Toussaint warns against watering or dumbing down Pico's Renaissance Philosophy
Blum 81 Against this background, the various recent attempts to reduce Pico's work to a purely humanistic scholarship and rhetoric, or to a Scholastic, or even "reactionary" interpretation, must be regarded as a throough watering down of the philosophical Renaissance that Pico embodies, and as a gradual philosophical dumbing down of his thinking.

[While I think Toussaint may overemphasize the magical and "radical" Pico, he has a point. In looking at his scholastic interestings and emphasizing the religious and philosophical commitments evidenced in Pico's treatment of angelology, I do not want to seek to reduce Pico to some medieval paradigm. In looking to Pico's magic and theurgy, we must not exaggerrate any detail but we also must not ignore
the hints. What we have is, as Copenhaver points out, much closer to the medieval angel of Dionysius and Aquinas. But we also have a Renaissance angelology and a "re-platonizing" in the light of Pico's contemporary theological ambience as well as his particular original brilliance.]

Craven's minimizing account of Magic+Kabbalah in Pico
Craven p.57-58 in the Apologia, Pico explains that the purpose of the thesis on the divinity of Christ was to demonstrate that natural virtues could be discounted as possible explanations for the miracles. Magic and Kabbalah, science which dealt with natural virtues, could be used to show their limits. Pico can hardly be said to have "concentrated" on degending this thesis... It is, moreover, a sketchy treatment... Pico makes the conventional distinction between natural and bad magic... gives very little idea of the kind of magic Pico has in mind. It concerns little more than the virtues of numbers.

In his Oration Pico is careful to define magic as dealing with the natural world only.
In contrast to "demonic" forms of magic which involve conjuring, and he claims the church rightly hates,
Pico suggests a magic that is the operative part of natural philosophy, and serves a purpose of generating religious wonder.

However, although Pico attempts to distinguish between the bad and good kinds of magic, when he waxes eloquent about the value of magic to philosophy and theology, he is nevertheless getting into dangerous territory. Blum suggests that Pico got himself into trouble over magic because he was crossing a boundary that the Renaissance chuch wanted to maintain between natural philosophy and theology. Pico was not suspected of the kind of sorcery that theurgic interpreters have tried to read into him, but for a dangerous concept of natural philosophy, according to this view.

many scholars have put the becoming angelic part together with the theological value of magic.
Yates and French, even COpenhaver ________
Bono and Mebane

Pico's relationship to Aquinas is a controversial issue that has been unnecessarily confused.

Craven's historiography - impatient with historians who should have known better, read Pico more carefully, didn't understand theological issues before making accusations of gnosticism/heresy/magic.

Angel inspires Pico to mystical action, but not because his ultimate goal is to become infused at his human level with angelic being for magical purposes, but in order to escape his human state.

Dionysius "theurgical understanding"
"Seeing that our hierarchy, most sacred of sacred sons, [consists] of the inspired and divine and theurgical understanding and energy and perfection..."
EH 1.1

EH 3.3.12 How might the imitation of God become ours differently if not by the memory of the most holy theurgies being renewed always by both the hierarchical sacred words and hierurgies? This we do, as the oracles say, in remembrance of [the theurgy]. This is why the divine hierarch standing at the divine altar hymns the aforementioned sacred theurgies of Jesus, most divinely provided for us, which are provided for salvation of our kind by the goodwill of the most all-holy Father in the Holy Spirit in order to to fulfil the oracle. Having praised also the awful majest [of the theurgies] and perceived a theoria with noetic eyes, he proceeds to the divinely-ordained symbolic hierergy of them; then after the sacred praises of the theurgies, the hierergy so far above him, both reverently and hierarchically crying out, he apologises as he sacredly approaches it.

EH 5.2 theoria is given as the commen element linking the activity of our hierarchy with that of heaven

Eh 3.3.15 In theses things the whole of the sacred order has gathered hierarchically and communicated with the most divine [gifts]; it ends with a sacred thanksgiving, having acknowledged and praised propotionately the grace of the theurgies.

EH 4.3.12 The theurgy is super-celestial and super-essential, of all our theurgical sanctification it is source and being and perfecting power... For it is a sacrament of God also, since for our sake in human form he is sanctified and theurgically perfects and sanctifies everything being perfected.

Dionysius "theurgical understanding"
"Seeing that our hierarchy, most sacred of sacred sons, [consists] of the inspired and divine and theurgical understanding and energy and perfection..."
EH 1.1

Early Medieval Phil 480-1150
By John Marenbon
19
A complex, metaphysical angelology was not the pseudo-Dionysius' only bequest to the Middle Ages. In two of his works, DN and the brief MT, he confronts a problem which was to trouble many a Christian thinker. How can one speak at all of a God who is beyond human understanding and description? The problem was particularly acute for the PD because, as a much more faithful NPist than Augustine, he held that God could not even be described as "being." The PD turned to the pagan NPists for helf, but the solution which he found was to a problem rather different from his. In commentaries on Plato's Parmenides, it had become the practice to apply the series of negations found in Plato's dialogue to the One (whose absolute transcendence had been stressed ever since Plotinus), and the series of positive statements to the hypostases which emanated from the One. Despite his adoption of the Neoplatonic scheme of hierarchies, the PD was a Christian, who had to accept both that God was immutable and transcendent, and yet that it was he, directly, who created and who administers the universe. He could not therefore equate God with the positively indescribable One; nor could he directly transfer every description of God to some lower emanation. Consequently, he applied both series of statements, positive and negative, to God himself. God is at once describable by every name, but only metaphorically, by reference to his manifestation of himself in his creation; and he can be described by no name--every attribute may be more truly negated of him than applied to him positively.

Occultist interp - gnosis dictionary


from Pico article in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism
950 Of particular importance in this regard is the role played by theology in Pico's attempt to creat an all-comprehensive system of knowledge, intended to embrace and reconcile the most difference rational and religious disciplines. His project of establishing a harmonius syncretism (concordia) between barious theological and philosophical doctrines was certainly based on intellectual foundations. For this reason, modern scholars have often considered Pico's thought to have been a strongly mundane achievement; but a closer inspection of Pico's texts allows us to perceive how closely connected Pico was to contemporary Christian religious position. As a matter of fact, all Pico's speculation expresses his faith and willingness to adhere to Christian orthodox views, although some scholars have assumed that for a man whose work was suspect to the Roman Church this was just a strategy in order to hide his real intellectual concerns. Nevertheless, his program of universal salvation obtainable from an intellectual knowledge starts from an elitist attitude, according to which esoteric doctrines are the unique way for the initiate to better understand his relationship with nature and God.
951 Following Ficino, Pico wanted to establish a beneficent magic based on ancient authorities, which might involve the celebration of special reituals for summoning angels; in this manner the human soul could be united with higher entities thus creating a path leading to Christ or directly to God. In his approach to kabbalistic mysteries, Pico highlighted the meaning of letters and angelic names, widely employing mystical techniques which were diffed within medieval Jewish mileus and were mostly available to the humant through Abraham Abulafia's treatises...
952 trend of comprehending Pico's speculation as an attempt to transcend physical limits by means of occult kabbalistic techniques at the theurgical production of a spiritual descent of efflux from above. However, it is also possible to explain the humanist's attitude in purely rational terms, if we maintain that the intellect of the wise man is attributed the privilege of raising itself up to the degree of the Active Intellect, where God's grace will meet it and lead it to the supernal realms of knowledge.

Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism
Number Symbolism -Jean-Pierre Brach
876
In order to bridge the gap betwen the immutable realm and the material world,
subject to change, Plato introduces, as manifesting an intermediary order of
reality, a series of "musical" proportions structuring the world-soul, which
is itself a middle-term between the intelligible Forms and the corpus mundi.
876 [Neoplatonism] On the theurgic, ritual side, numbers served as one of the mainstays of a
"sacramental" approach to Nature, in which each level of being provides a
rung sustaining the gradual ascension of the soul towards direct spiritual
contact with the divine entities; concurrently, numbers represent the
intellectual offering par excellence, something the soul must eventually
sacrifice to the higher deities, in order to transmute all cosmological
bounds which fetter its essentially spiritual essence.
876-877 in order to exactly understand the mathematical tenets contained in Plato's
dialogues and in order to ascribe to mathematics their correct place within
the general hierachy of knowledge and, accordingly, assess the ontological
status of number, the later strands of neoplatonism consciously "pythagorized"
the philosophical approach to reality.
877 If... the mathematical archetypes are no longer represented by the platonic
"Forms and Ideal Numbers", they become "essences" coextensive with the divine
mens and, as such, presiding over the creation. However, one may easily observe
that, according to both doctrines, numbers nevertheless continue to reflect
higher principles, as well as serve as models of the lower levels of reality.
Yet although influenced by neoplatonism like the rest of Augustine's general
thinking, his number-symbological speculations never depart from an exclusively
Christian perspective, structured at least around threefold correspondences...

880 Pico has done much for the "formal" (qualitative) aspect of
number to regain cultural favour, insisting on its importance
as regards "natural philosophy" or theology, as well as
highlighting its magical and kabbalistic functions

Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age: The Occult Tradition and ...
By John S. Mebane
38-39 Pico perceived the Cabala as a means of invoking the angels as a stage in our ascent toward complete knowledge of and unity with God, and in Reuchlin, Agrippa, and Dee there was increasing emphasis upon the Cabala as a source of techniques for a form of Christian theurgy.
Mebane uses the term theurgy in a chapter title but never really explains why he's using it, what he means in context of Pico's specific texts. Doesn't justify invocation of angels--seems to have uncritically accepted Yates' conjuring vision. Craven argues against the Yates conjuring vision, "no hint of theurgy is justified." Kabbalah according to Craven has been misinterpreted as a "source of techniques" rather Pico recognizes Christian doctrines in it not some Other magic that he can "mix" with Christianity. Yates had thought Pico's "magic and Cabala" led straight to the theurgy of these latter Cabalists, Reuchlin, Agrippa, and Dee. But regardless of whether they make more "Christian theurgy" out of Kabbalah, Pico does not seem to be getting angel magic from Kabbalah. He is clear about how he's using it in the Oration and 900, and doesn't use Kabbalah in the Heptaplus or BU.