There is much more of this sort of spiritual arithmetic (the technique was normally called gematria) to be found in Kabbalah that strengthened Pico in his belief that it was the most holy practice of magic, and in fact formed the groundwork for the miracles of Christ. Language is the most potent part of magic, because it is God’s speech that informs and moves nature, and magic has power only in so far as it is shaped by God’s voice. But not only letters and numbers were important, also the shapes of letters (some Hebrew letters had to be either “open” or “closed” depending on their position in a word or sentence) served to confirm the awesome divinity of the Torah and God. A blueprint for Pico’s own theory of deification could also be found in Kabbalah. After all, it was the apocryphal Enoch who was turned into the “angel of divinity” Metatron according to the Kabbalists and Pico refers to this when discussing the possibility of being reborn into the world of the intellect as an angel after dying in the sensible world.
Nevertheless, also the Kabbalist had to be careful to practise his gematria in a pious manner, for those who failed to do this would be pounced upon by the fallen angel Azazel, who for Pico symbolized the unclean forces in our reality. The mystical union that Pico espoused, and wanted to make known to the theological world in Rome in 1487, runs like a thread throughout his work and finds it origin for an important part in the Kabbalah. Pico’s theses are replete with numerological symbolism (the final section consists of 72 conclusions), as are other works such as Heptaplus and On Being and the One (1491). The number 900 is no coincidence therefore, because for Pico it was “the symbol of the excited soul turning back into itself through the frenzy of the muses”, as he gushes in a letter to Benivieni. It had driven Pico to meditate on the passage of the Gospel of John which foretells the coming of the Holy Spirit and the peace and enlightenment it will bring along with it. This peace was what Pico wanted to establish trough his Christo-syncretic reading of all cultures, and bring to its spiritual end through the death of the kiss.
Pico’s methodology was thus fully pious in its aims and practices. Through Kabbalah Pico believed to have recovered the true path towards union with God. Furthermore, it is the rational soul that makes mystical union possible and by taking its inspiration from revelation and careful contemplation this defining part of human nature can properly ascend the heavenly ladder by imitating the angels that are part of the divine intellect illuminating man. However, the intellect is both something inherent to human beings, as we have seen, and a higher level of reality which beckons and inspires us. Imaginative and meditative practice on this reality, and the material world as well, is necessary to recognize our own share in divinity. Moral philosophy, dialectic, natural philosophy and theology, then, are the proper steps to take when we want to begin the journey towards holy unification.
The activation of the intellect, however, is no easy affair. It relies on a total disengagement from the senses (indeed, we have to leave the entire body behind) and can only be attempted by those sufficiently enlightened. The life of the angels is therefore exemplary. By imitating them and calling on their power, our rational soul can break free from the body and reach into the sphere of the intellect. But as much as Pico stresses the need to mimic the ways of the angels, we eventually move upwards by our own strength, as we possess everything necessary to do so already by ourselves. Moreover, even though the angels may be the inhabitants of a higher plane of reality, this does not mean that they are higher in the cosmic hierarchy than humans. As Pico cautions, angels do not exist by themselves and also do not understand by themselves. They draw their being, life and perfection from God, and as such they only participate in being.
So even though angels illuminate our soul, we are eventually elevated over them by way of Jesus Christ. As Jesus was the full embodiment of divinity we possess the grace to go beyond the angels and become one with being itself. So as the rational soul is the instrument through which we can cultivate our imagination and rise to God, the intellect that informs it is both a spiritual force coming from within as well as without.
Hang in there, overzealous wisdom herbivores! Next thursday the concluding chapter of the Pico-saga, and then we will move on to higher planes of understanding and intelligence!
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