The Second Book Of Occult Philosophy, or Magic
by Henry Cornelius Agrippa
Annotated by Donald Tyson
Chapter II
Of numbers, and of their power and virtue.
Severinus Boethius saith,1 that all things which were first made by the nature of things in its first age, seem to be formed by the proportion of numbers, for this was the principal pattern in the mind of the Creator. Hence is borrowed the number of the elements, hence the courses of times, hence the motion of the stars, and the revolution of the heaven, and the state of all things subsist by the uniting together of numbers. Numbers therefore are endowed with great and sublime virtues.
For it is no wonder, seeing there are so many, and so great occult virtues in natural things, although of manifest operations, that there should be in numbers much greater, and more occult, and also more wonderful, and efficacious, for as much as they are more formal, more perfect, and naturally in the celestials, not mixed with separated substances; and lastly, having the greatest, and most simple commixtion with the Ideas in the mind of God, from which they receive their proper, and most efficacious virtues: wherefore also they are of more force, and conduce most to the obtaining of spiritual, and divine gifts, as in natural things, elementary qualities are powerful in the transmuting of any elementary thing.
Again, all things that are, and are made, subsist by, and receive their virtue from numbers. For time consists of number, and all motion, and action, and all things which are subject to time, and motion.2 Harmony also, and voices have their power by, and consist of numbers, and their proportions, and the proportions arising from numbers, do by lines, and points make characters, and figures: and these are proper to magical operations, the middle which is betwixt both being appropriated by declining to the extremes, as in the use of letters.3
And lastly, all species of natuarl things, and of those things which are above nature, are joined together by certain numbers: which Pythagoras seeing,4 saith, that number is that by which all things consist, and distributes each virtue to each number. And Proclus saith, number hath always a being: yet there is one in voice, another in the proportion of them, another in divine things. But Themistius, and Boethius, and Averrois the Babylonian, togetehr with Plato, do so extol numbers, that they think no man can be a true philosopher without them.
Now they speak of a rational, and formal number, not of a material, sensible, or vocal, the number of merchants5 buying, and selling of which the Pythagoreans, and platonists, and our Austin make no reckoning, but apply it to the proportion resulting from it, which number they call natural, rational, and formal, from which great mysteries flow, as well in natural, as divine, and heavenly things. By it is there a way made for the searching out, and understanging of all things knowable. By it the next access to natural prophesying is had: and the Abbot Joachim proceeded no other way in his prophecies, but by formal numbers.
Notes - Chapter II
1. Boethius saith - See Boethius Consolation of Philosophy 3.9, the substance of which comes from Plato Timaeus 29-42.
2. time, and motion - "Time is the number of hte motion of the celestial bodies" (Proclus on motion 2. In Taylor [1831] 1976, 86).
3. use of letters - Agrippa seems to be saying that letters derive their efficacy from the numerical harmony of the voice and the numerical geometry of their written symbols.
4. Pythagoras seeing -
But the Pythagoreans have said in the same way that there are two principles, but added this much, which is peculiar to them, that they thought that finitude and infinity were not attributes of certain other things, e.g. of fire or earth or anything else of this kind, but that infinity itself and unity itself were the substance of the things of which they are predicted. This is why number was the substance of all things. (Aristotle Metaphysica 1.5.987a [McKeon 700])
Also Aristotle says:
...since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be modeled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number. (ibid. 985b [McKeon, 698])
The two principles of the Pythagoreans were limit and the unlimited, which they identified, respectively, with odd and even numbers.
5. number of merchants -
It is befitting, then, Glaucon, that this branch of learning should be prescribed by out law and that we should induce those who are to share the highest functions of the state to enter upon the study of calculation and take hold of it, not as amateurs, but to follow it up until they attain to the contemplation of the nature of number, by pure thought, not for the purpose of buying and selling, as if they wre preparing to be merchants and hucksters, but for the use of war and for facilitating the conversion of the soul itself from the world of generation to essence and truth. (Plato Republic 7.525c [Hamilton and Cairns, 757-8]).