Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy: Three Books and a Disputed Fourth

Title leaf of a later occult compendium naming Agrippa and a disputed fourth book — This public-domain title leaf belongs to a *later compendium* bearing Agrippa’s name and the disputed Fourth Book. It is not the 1533 Cologne title page. View its Commons record ↗

De occulta philosophia libri tres is the three-book work named in a surviving Cologne print of 1533. Book I treats natural correspondences; Book II turns to numbers and celestial patterns; Book III develops a religious and ceremonial argument.

A later Fourth Book was attributed to Agrippa, although it was not part of the three-book 1533 print.

The University Library Freiburg holds a digitized copy of that earlier print.

First complete Latin print: Cologne, 1533
English witness: John French, 1651
Later collected volume: Robert Turner, 1655

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Why editions matter

The Freiburg copy identifies the earlier three-book print. The Basel library’s 1550 copy has a navigable table of contents and a retractation after Book III. The 1651 English translation is a later textual witness. Turner’s 1655 collection gathers several separately attributed works around an advertised Fourth Book. Keeping those objects apart prevents a sentence from a later translation, or an image from an adjacent grimoire, from being assigned to the wrong author or date.

Explore the Occult & Esoteric History directory for related people, manuscripts, and ritual-history references. The grimoire bibliography helps compare shelfmarks and printed editions.

Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy: Three Books and a Disputed Fourth

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Why editions matter

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