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Volume
4 Number
2
Angela Voss
The Astrology of Marsilio
Ficino: Divination or Science?
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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