Author: Dr. Angela Voss
Abstract: . This paper addresses the question of the kind of knowledge which informed the astrological practice of Marsilio Ficino, and in so doing distinguishes between two modes of understanding the human relationship to the cosmos, the natural scientific and the magical. I will seek to show that Ficino’s critique of his contemporary astrologers derived from their lack of symbolic understanding, and I shall attempt to explore the nature of this understanding which for Ficino was fully revealed in the Platonic and Hermetic traditions. Finally I shall suggest that in his system of natural magic Ficino re-defined astrology as a unitive tool for healing, founded on both ‘scientific’ investigation into cosmic law and divinatory experience.
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Publication: Culture and Cosmos
Issue: Vol 4 No 2
Dated: Autumn/Winter 2000
Pages: 29 – 46
The Astrology of Marsilio Ficino: Divination or Science?
Posted in Free Research Abstract