Mods are asleep post the Agrippa wacked up hebrew table
Late medieval magic was largely characterized by two things: renewed interest in neoplatonism, and fringe theologians getting their hands on second or even third-hand kabbalistic ideas, specifically the ones that were useful to Catholic theologians.
These (largely catholic) occultists were trying to find the bridge between ontology and semiotics. Meaning; they were trying to figure out what the exact metaphysical relationship was between a dog, a picture of a dog, and the concept of a dog in the mind of God.
To vastly over-summarize; Jewish philosophers of the era basically said “language, specifically Hebrew, is what unites semiotics and ontology” and the neoplatonists said “they’re already unified, we just don’t know how, it’s probably geometry.”
What Agrippa is trying to do here is make the argument that all languages must descend from the original language of divinity -the one spoken by Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden- and that therefore all language shares some fragment of the divine will. So what we have to do is look for linguistic similarities between the oldest languages we know, and try to figure out how they might fit together. Then we might uncover that hidden magical unity between Hebrew/Latin/Greek/etc.
For his historical context, this was pretty damn groundbreaking. Which is only made funnier by the fact that his Hebrew, and to a lesser extent his classical Greek, are just complete garbage, can’t speak em to save his life. It’s why this is one of my favorite images in all of occult history.
