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Behind the great artistic and philosophic accomplishments of the
renaissance, can be found the more than remarkable person of Marsilio Ficino
(1433-99) and his circle. His action and contribution caused a deep and
lasting change in the European society. The renaissance took its more important
intellectual and spiritual inspiration from him and his academy. For Ficino, the writings of Plato and his followers had the key to the most important knowledge for the man: the knowledge of himself, meaning the knowledge of the divine and immortal principle in him. In this time, and in spite of the fact that the name of Hermes and his ideas were known in the magic-occultist circles, a reborn of the hermetic knowledge occurs from the translations that Ficino, while performing his platonic studies, does after finding Greek manuscripts that later would compose the CORPUS HEMETICUM. More than any other person, he enhanced the importance of the hermetic current as occidental tradition, taking it back through Greece to Hermes Trismegistus and Egypt. Ficino seems to understand the principles of all arts and to embody in himself the renaissance ideal of the complete man. He translated Plato, Plotinus and the neo-platonic theurgists, and he tried to show the continuity of the divine Revelation throughout the times. He also translated the orphic, and thanks to him all correspondences and images in the works included in the hermetic current become important again, recognizing his debt to the not well reputed Picatrix. |
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