Defining the Meanings of Magic

In his critique of Paracelsian magia, Andreas Libavius (1555–1616) focused on the taxonomic differences between forms of magic, and concentrated especially on the conceptual semantic structures that underpinned those taxonomies (the sorts of language, associations, and meanings used to support them). In one text in particular, his Examen Philosophiae Novae (1615), he centered on the semantic roots of several key terms in the Paracelsian vocabulary (namely, knowledge, art, nature, the meaning of making, and the notion of harmony) and sought to dislocate them from their claimed associations and to transplant them into realms of fiction and the diabolical. In particular, Libavius paid attention to the ways in which Paracelsian definitions related to magia elided natural and supernatural, and impinged upon realms of the divine. In contrast, he insisted on a rule-based system of definitions, structured upon Aristotelian principles, that made the language of natural magic, viewed as natural knowledge, codifiable.