On Marsilio Ficino, The Renaissance Astrologer
http://www.astroconsulting.com/FAQs/marsilio.htm
Edmond H. Wollmann Kepler University: Astrology in Medieval Civilizations Master's in Astrological Counseling Program, Lee Lehman advising Second Term, February 10, 2001
Marsilio Ficino was a philosopher. In a time when philosophy was an important position, he accepted an important duty. In anticipation of his own ideas of the rebirth of a Platonic Academy, Cosimo de Medici, whose banking and wealth was a controlling factor of Florentine politics and culture, purchased Greek manuscripts of Plato and gave them to Marsilio Ficino to translate. Perfecting his Greek at age 19-20 in 1452, Marsilio then proceeded to translate not only Plato, but Plotinus and the Corpus Hermeticum, and by 1489 had developed what would become De Vita Triplici. In his 3 books of Liber De Vita Marsilio Ficino had elaborated on Hellenistic aspects of astrology, and incorporated Hermetic and Platonic notions of the soul's development within the Christian context of the times.
As soon as Ficino had translated Plato, his friend Pico Della Mirandola arrived in Florence in 1484, and immediately suggested he translate Plotinus as well, in line with the wishes of Cosimo. The third book of what he would call Liber De Vita was initiated with a commentary on a section of Plotinus' Enneads. (1) Throughout his writings Marsilio expresses the thoughts of Plato and Plotinus with the concepts of the soul's perfection, entrance into the material world, and the maintenance of the spirit for its highest expression.(2) Writing extensively about colors, stones, plants and talismans in his revisitation of Plotinus, Ficino awakens the concepts of natural magic. But what about the tremendous developments in Christianity in the intervening centuries between Plato's views on astrology and the soul, and Ficino's translation of them? This is a profound test of Ficino's ability to ignore the socially accepted mind-set of the period (1470s) and incorporate this new knowledge into the renaissance collective perspective. Only the dry Aristotelian views had been trusted until this time. Now, the more metaphysical views of Plato, empowered views of Plotinus, as well as Hermeticism were about to intrude into this well ordered world. Knowing he would be attacked for these views, he still proceeded (albeit with obvious caution) to integrate many ideas about the soul, spirit, and psychology, into a physiological treatise delineating health through balance, and identification with archetypal energies rooted in astrology of the Hellenistic period. And attacked he was, reported to the Pope and chastised in 1489 he requested his friends help to argue that his magic was not demonic but natural.
In modern terms, Ficino was the first advocate for self-empowerment since Plotinus. Focusing on the understanding of the energies, and inciting the subject under consideration to take an active part in their own redefinition, Ficino forsakes pointless and dis-empowering stagnant delineations and prediction, and instead allows the world of the Gods to move through man and become of a part of his worldly experience. Knowing that the person makes his own destiny and health
