Citations from Frances Yates: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition,
  2002 publication, Routledge Classics, London and New York,
  ISBN 0-415-27849-X
 
  From Chapter 4, Ficino's Natural Magic, pp. 66 & 67:

  Ficino, whose father was a physician, was himself a physician
  as well as a priest, and his Libri de Vita, divided into three books
  and first published in 1489, is a treatise on medicine. It was
  absolutely inevitable that a medical treatise of the Middle Ages
  or the Renaissance should make use of astrological presuppositions
  universally taken for granted. Medical prescriptions were normally
  based on assumptions such as that the signs ruled different parts
  of the body, that different bodily temperaments were related
  to different planets.
   ...
    The work is intended primarily for students who are liable
  through over-intense application to their studies to grow ill
  or melancholy. This is because the nature of their occupations
  brings them under the influence of Saturn, for contemplation
  and hard abstract study belong to Saturn who is also the planet
  of the melancholy temperament, and the star which is inimical
  to the vital forces of life and youth. Melancholy students
  who have used up their vital powers in their studies, and
  the old in whom these forces are in any case declining, are
  therefore advised to avoid as far as possible plants, herbs,
  animals, stones, and the like belonging to Saturn, and to use
  and surround themselves with plants, herbs, animals, stones,
  people, belonging to the more fortunate, cheerful, and
  life-giving planets, of which the chief are Sol, Jupiter,
  and Venus. Ficino has many enthusiastic passages on the valuable
  "gifts" making for health and good spirits to be obtained
  from these planets, which he poetically describes more than
  once as "the Three Graces".


  From Chapter 8, Renaissance Magic and Science, pp. 164-166:
 
  The combination of Cabalistic computation with Pythagoreanism
  is carried much farther by Reuchlin in his De arte cabalistica,
  and the concentration on number in the new magic is reflected
  in the long passages on number in Agrippa's guide.
  If we were to try to translate the tone of Agrippa's magic
  in terms of the "gifts" of the planets which it chiefly tries
  to attract, the answer might be that, whilst Ficino's magic
  avoids Saturn, Agrippa's magic seeks the Saturnian gifts of
  high abstract contemplation and pure mathematics.
  (Thus, as Botticelli's predominantly Venus talisman,
  the "Primavera", reflects the Ficinian type of magic,
  Dürer's predominantly Saturnian talisman, the "Melencholia"
  engraving, reflects the Agrippan type of magic.)
    Thus the Renaissance magic was turning towards number as
  a possible key to operations, and the subsequent history
  of man's achievements in applied science has shown that number
  is indeed a master-key, or one of the master-keys, to operations
  by which the forces of the cosmos are made to work in man's service.
    However, once again, neither Pythagorean number, organically
  wedded to symbolism and mysticism, nor Cabalistic conjuring with
  numbers in relation to the mystical powers of the Hebrew alphabet,
  will of themselves lead to mathematics which really work in
  applied science. Yet it is important to notice that within the
  scheme of Magia and Cabala as formulated by Agrippa there was
  a place for genuine mathematical sciences and for their
  application to produce operations.
    At the beginning of his second book, as we have seen,
  Agrippa emphasises that a magician must be versed in
  mathematics, for by mathematics there can be produced
  "without any natural virtue", that is by purely mechanical
  means, wonderful operations, such as the flying wooden pigeons
  made by Architas, the moving statues made by Daedalus, the
  speaking statues of Mercurius (= Hermes Trismegistus;
  here we have the wonderful statues of the Asclepius regarded
  as marvels of applied science), and the like. A magician
  who knows natural philosophy and mathematics and also
  understands mechanics can do wonderful things, says Agrippa,
  and the Magus must know the sciences which produce such marvels
  as a necessary part of his training.
    Tommaso Campanella, writing nearly a hundred years later,
  is recalling this passage in Agrippa. In his Magia e Grasia,
  a work chiefly devoted to religious magic, Campanella makes
  a classification of different kinds of magic, including a kind
  which he calls "real artificial magic".
 
    Real artificial magic produces real effects, as when Architas
    made a flying dove of wood, and recently at Nüremberg, according
    to Boterus, an eagle and a fly have been made in the same way.
    Daedalus made statues which moved through the action of weights
    or of mercury. However I do not hold that to be true which
    William of Paris writes, namely that it is possible to make
    a head which speaks with a human voice, as Albertus Magnus
    is said to have done. It seems to me possible to make a certain
    imitation of the voice by means of reeds conducting the air,
    as in the case of the bronze bull made by Phalaris which
    could roar. This art however cannot produce marvellous effects
    save by means of local motions and weights and pulleys or
    by using a vacuum, as in pneumatic and hydraulic apparatuses,
    or by applying forces to the materials. But such forces and
    materials can never be such as to capture a human soul.
 
  It is by putting "real artificial magic" in the context of
  Magia and Cabala that the apparently contradictory activities
  of a man like John Dee can be understood as all belonging
  quite naturally into the outlook of a Renaissance Magus.
  John Dee (1527-1608) was a genuine mathematician of considerable
  importance, intensely interested in all mathematical studies,
  and in the application of mathematics to produce results in
  applied sciences. He himself was a practical scientist and
  inventor, his activities in this field being many and varied;
  they included a flying crab for a college stage-play.
 
 
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