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Conclusions where Pico states: ‘the world could be produced, and was
in fact produced according to Aristotle and the Commentator, from
eternity by God with an efficiency that produces a natural flow and
effectual succession’.
124
Pico then uses a reference to Aristotle that we
come across in Albertus’s On Minerals; ‘The Peripatetics do not deny this
but confirm it by their old saying that every work of nature is the work
of intelligence.’
125
Across Pico’s work, proximate instrumental causality
is assigned to the celestial bodies. In the Heptaplus the efficient cause is
referred to as the heavens, and emphasized as the active cause of gener-
ation in a manner reminiscent of Abu Ma‘shar’s and al-Kindi’s concepts
of astral causality.
126
Animals, plants and minerals are produced by the
heavens: by ‘whose force and influence they are formed from rarefied
earthly matter, that is, from vaporous exhalations’.
127
It is the celes-
tial powers that ‘channel’ and translate the ideas of the intellect into
inchoate forms. According to Albertus Magnus, it is the celestial bod-
ies that educe forms from the potentiality of matter.
128
For Pico, like
Albertus, the forming power of the heavens originates and collaborates
with the material forms and terrestrial causes to produce species and
individuals.
129
In the Disputations Pico references Aristotle and accepts
that the heavens are the active secondary causes of the generation of
The True Magic and Astrology of Pico della Mirandola
141
species (caelum autem efficientem causam).
130
In the Heptaplus Pico writes
that ‘what has been asserted of the sun and moon has been asserted
of the rest, since these two planets hold dominion over the heav-
ens and exercise a universal influence, while the virtue of the other
planets is particular’.
131
He retracts this in his Disputations and states
that astral causality determines only common and universal things,
species and not individuals. Individuals and particulars are determined
by material composition, the seminal reasons, the location of genera-
tion, and, in case of human beings, education too.
132
As astral causes
cannot be the direct causes of the particular and the individual then
they cannot signify them and therefore astrological practice is defi-
cient and astrologers cannot claim to draw specific predictions from
the sky.
133
However, Pico does not intend to discredit astral influences com-
pletely but seeks to reinforce some of their truer doctrines gathered
under the title of ‘speculative astrology’. So he describes how celestial
bodies act as universal efficient causes in a way that is consistent across
all his works. The celestial bodies act through motion and illumina-
tion and this conforms to natural philosophy and theology.
134
From
their motion all inferior movements originate. Moreover, this motion
contains all life. Light in itself is not life-giving but it is disposed and
disposing to life.
135
Life, which is a perfection of generated things, is the
property of soul and spirit. The soul ‘arises rather from a divine origin as
asserted by Plotinus, whom, to the public advantage, our Marsilio Ficino
will soon give us to read in Latin, illuminated by ample comments’.
136
This is Plotinus’s light which is an incorporeal formative power.
137
De
radiis could be the source too as there al-Kindi considers the vehicle of
this power to be radiation. The universe resonates with rays projecting
from all celestial bodies in all directions, infusing every substance and
soul with the ability to cause change, and also endowing them with
agency, both natural and volitional.
138
The light of heavenly bodies transfers heat that permeates all created
things; this is a celestial form of heat not elementary.
139
Pico writes in
the Heptaplus: ‘in our world there is the elemental quality of heat, in the
heavens there is a heating power’.
140
In a conclusion according to Isaac
of Norbonne, it is stated that ‘celestial bodies do not distribute anything
formally to inferior bodies except heat’.
141
In another conclusion accord-
ing to Abumaron the Babylonian – Avenzoar (d. c.1161) – the celestial
world heats inferior things through its light.
142
This is the same heating
power proposed by Abu Ma‘shar that draws form to matter. According
to Pico, this heat – ‘offspring of light’
143
– also makes the substance of
142
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