Mrs Magic Piano is an intriguing and captivating musical drama that revolves around the life of a talented musician named Mrs Magic Piano. The story takes place in a small town where Mrs Magic Piano resides, and she is well-known for her extraordinary talent and magical piano playing. From an early age, Mrs Magic Piano displayed an immense passion and natural ability for music. Her piano playing was not only technically brilliant but also emotionally charged, leaving her audience spellbound. She had the ability to evoke a range of emotions through her music, taking her listeners on a journey of joy, sorrow, love, and hope. However, what set Mrs Magic Piano apart from other musicians was her secret magical powers.
However, what set Mrs Magic Piano apart from other musicians was her secret magical powers. Whenever she played her piano, a magical aura surrounded her, and the music seemed to come alive. It was as if the notes and melodies had a life of their own, enchanting those who were lucky enough to witness her performances.
Harnessing the natural forces of occultism
Reading Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s encyclopedic study of magic is like stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, where toad bones boil water, witches transmit misery through optical darts, and numbers, arranged correctly, can harness the planets’ powers. Anthony Grafton explores the Renaissance polymath’s occult insights into the structure of the universe, discovering a path that leads both upward and downward: up toward complete knowledge of God, and down into every order of being on earth.
Published
October 12, 2023
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Title-page portrait of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, from a 1533 edition of his De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three books of occult philosophy) — Source.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s manual of learned magic, De occulta philosophia (1533), explicated the ways in which magicians understood and manipulated the cosmos more systematically than any of his predecessors. It was here that he mapped the entire network of forces that passed from angels and demons, stars and planets, downward into the world of matter. Agrippa laid his work out in three books, on the elementary, astrological, and celestial worlds. But he saw all of them as connected, weaving complex spider webs of influence that passed from high to low and low to high. With the zeal and learning of an encyclopedist imagined by Borges, Agrippa catalogued the parts of the soul and body, animals, minerals, and plants that came under the influence of any given planet or daemon. He then offered his readers a plethora of ways for averting evil influences and enhancing good ones. 1 Some of these were originally simple remedies, many of them passed down from Roman times in the great encyclopedic work of Pliny the Younger and less respectable sources, and lacked any deep connection to learned magic.
Magic usually required the use of objects charged with power, and Agrippa’s book also offered a massive taxonomy of magical animals, plants, and stones, with ample instructions for their preparation and use. Sufferers from sore throat read in Agrippa that they could cure themselves by touching their necks to the hand of someone who had died prematurely. Those plagued by coughs learned to put spit in the mouths of green frogs and then let them escape. 2 Reading the book resembles walking through a vast princely chamber of wonders or a grand apothecary’s shop, ceiling, walls, and shelves hung with strange and thrilling creatures.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.A fold-out engraving that is thought to be the earliest illustration of a natural history cabinet or “cabinet of curiosities”, from Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’historia Naturale (1599) — Source.
Chapter after chapter of Agrippa’s work, accordingly, turned into a magnificently encyclopedic if associatively organized mountain of material, partly drawn from written sources and partly from oral tradition and current practice, as the author applied his scissors and paste to the fruits of his vast reading and vaster curiosity. When contemporary readers opened the book at random, as they often did, they would find themselves stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, whose contents Agrippa described with energy and economy:
They say also that a stone bitten by a mad dog has the power to cause discord, if it is put in a drink, and that one who puts a dog’s tongue in his shoe, under his big toe, will not be barked at by dogs, especially if it is added to the herb of the same name, cynoglossa [dog’s tongue]. And a membrane from the afterbirth of a dog has the same effect, and dogs will shun one who has a dog’s heart. And Pliny reports that there are red toads that make their home in briars, and are full of sorcery and do wonderful things. For the small bone that is in its left side, when cast into cold water, makes it immediately become hot. It restrains the attacks of dogs. Added to a drink, it arouses love and quarrels. When tied to someone, it arouses lust. On the other hand, the little bone that is in the right side cools hot water, and it will not become hot again unless the bone is taken out. It cures quartan fevers, when tied in a fresh lamb’s skin, and prevents other fevers and love and lust. And the spleen and heart of these toads make an effective remedy against the poisons that are drawn from those animals. All this Pliny narrates. 3
Any reader could find something of interest in this paroxysm of parataxis, a good bit of it taken directly from Pliny and none of it explicitly verified by anything resembling a test. Some of the time, at least, Agrippa served his readers as little more than a source of the homeliest of anecdotes and practices — which they both appreciated and, presumably, recycled in their turn. But sometimes readers indicated that they had tested the claims made by Agrippa and his ancient sources, or seen them tested, by practitioners who knew how to manipulate powerful things. The Benedictine monk Heinrich Duden, for example, liked Pliny’s story, which he read in Agrippa, about how the bone from the left side of a toad could make water hot or inspire love. He treated it, unexpectedly, not as a factoid that had already made an illustrious career passing from notebook to notebook but as a description of a familiar process. After underlining the two relevant bits of the sentence, he wrote: “I saw this done once.” 4
Even the little toads and their littler bones, moreover, were framed in a larger explanatory system, one that led the reader upward and outward. In classificatory chapters that dealt with the elements, the temperaments, the planets, and the zodiac, Agrippa made it clear that celestial influences shaped each being and object on earth, endowing it both with its powers and with the external marks that revealed these to the skilled eye of the magus. No one could hope to master the occult philosophy, in other words, without mastering the higher studies of astronomy and astrology. The magus also had to have the personal gifts and formal training that would enable him to interpret dreams and prophecies and the knowledge of mathematics required to detect the Pythagorean number patterns that gave the universe structure. In the end, moreover, he needed asceticism and self-discipline since the consummation of his art involved communication with angels. The most graphic parts of Agrippa’s work, the sections most densely involved with the powers of particular bones and plants, provided him with opportunities to introduce larger and more abstract themes that he could then pursue in the second and third books, as he moved on to describe in detail the powers of planets, angels, and daemons.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Two diagrams from Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533) demonstrating the proportion, measure, and harmony of human bodies. The first shows a man with his feet together as a “quadrature equilateral”, whose centre is in “the bottom of his belly”. The second shows a man with limbs perfectly bordered by the sides of a square, whose centre aligns with his navel, “the girdling of the body” — Source: left, right.
Agrippa, moreover, interspersed the homely segments of his work with materials of very different kinds, also drawn from diverse provinces of the country of magic. When he evoked the terrifying images of horses’ heads that certain special lamps and candles, made from the liquid exuded by copulating mares, could project, he was once again quoting Pliny, and Pliny in turn was quoting older sources. To judge from Duden’s note, however, preserved in the manuscript he began reading in 1550, Agrippa also described a contemporary magical practice: “I myself have experienced this, with great terror.” 5 When Agrippa described how witches could catch the eyes of their victim and, by projecting “darts or strokes”, induce fear, love, or misery in them, he recalled the descriptions of witches’ behavior in the book he loathed, Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum, and the normal beliefs of contemporary churchmen — as Duden noted when he wrote “a certain witch did this to the executioner at Hamburg in my time.” 6
The therapies on offer in Agrippa’s book often required the invocation of celestial or angelic powers, either to awake the slumbering, hidden forces of the magical things he wished to manipulate or to protect magus and clients against the more frightening sorts of supernatural powers. Agrippan magic, accordingly, regularly involved direct efforts to invoke the intervention of planetary daemons and other spirits. Talismans, carved from particular substances and engraved with particular signs; magic squares, which revealed the marvelous properties of numbers; and the names of angels, obtained by Christian Cabalistic methods of substitution and recombination — these, among other means too numerous to mention, would enable Agrippa’s readers to change themselves and the world for the better. 7
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.A series of illustrations of magical seals, characters, and numerical grids from James Freake’s 1651 English translation of Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia — Source.
Scroll through the whole page to download all images before printing.Two diagrams from Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia (1533) demonstrating the proportion, measure, and harmony of human bodies — Source: left, right.
Many of the practices Agrippa described in De occulta philosophia came directly from the magic that unfrocked clerics had practiced for generations. Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I has made one case in point famous. In this engraving, a magic square — the series of numbers from one to sixteen, arranged in the proper order in a square with sixteen cells — invokes the power of Jupiter, a beneficent planet, against the devastating influence of Saturn. Magic squares like this originated in the Arabic world, long before Agrippa’s time. Often they had their top row of cells filled with the letters of a divine name or with the first letters of a verse from the Koran, and the lower rows with permutations on them. Since Arabic letters, like Hebrew, have numerical values, each magic square automatically forms a mathematical figure, and it was in this form that they became most popular in the West.
The square in Melencolia I starts in the inverse way, with numbers that could turn into letters. If you take a square and enter the numbers from 1 to 16, you obtain the series that follows:
Reading Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s encyclopedic study of magic is like stumbling into a vast cabinet of curiosities, where toad bones boil water, witches transmit misery through optical darts, and numbers, arranged correctly, can harness the planets’ powers. Anthony Grafton explores the Renaissance polymath’s occult insights into the structure of the universe, discovering a path that leads both upward and downward: up toward complete knowledge of God, and down into every order of being on earth.
The townspeople were fascinated by Mrs Magic Piano's performances, and word of her extraordinary talent spread far and wide. Soon, people from neighboring towns and cities started flocking to her performances, eager to experience the enchantment of her music. She became a local celebrity and was loved and admired by everyone. But Mrs Magic Piano's life took an unexpected turn when she lost her ability to play. Overnight, her magical powers vanished, leaving her devastated and heartbroken. She tried desperately to find a way to regain her magical abilities, but all her efforts were in vain. Unbeknownst to Mrs Magic Piano, her loss of magical powers was a test by the musical gods. They wanted to see if she could still touch people's hearts through her music, even without the element of magic. Determined to prove herself, Mrs Magic Piano continued to practice and perform tirelessly. Slowly, as Mrs Magic Piano poured her emotions into her music, she discovered a new sense of connection with her audience. Her performances became more heartfelt and poignant, touching people's souls in a different way. Despite the absence of magic, Mrs Magic Piano's music continued to captivate and inspire. As time went on, the townspeople realized that Mrs Magic Piano's true power lay not in her magical abilities but in her sheer talent and dedication to her craft. They embraced her for who she was, celebrating her as a gifted musician who could move hearts using just her piano and her passion. Mrs Magic Piano's journey serves as a reminder that true talent extends beyond supernatural abilities. It is the determination, hard work, and the ability to connect with people on a deep emotional level that makes an artist truly magical. And so, Mrs Magic Piano's legacy lives on, not just as a magical pianist but as a symbol of the power of music to heal, inspire, and transform lives..
Reviews for "The Enduring Appeal of Mrs Mzgic's Piano: Why it Continues to Fascinate Today"
1. John - 2/5 - Mrs. Magic Piano was a disappointing experience for me. The plot felt disjointed and barely made any sense. The characters were one-dimensional and lacked depth. The musical numbers were forgettable, and overall, the film failed to captivate me. I had high hopes for this movie, but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations.
2. Emily - 1/5 - I can't even begin to explain how much I disliked Mrs. Magic Piano. The story was convoluted and confusing, with unnecessary subplots that added nothing to the main narrative. The acting was mediocre at best, and the music was bland and unremarkable. The film was a complete waste of my time and money. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
3. David - 2/5 - Mrs. Magic Piano had potential, but it failed to deliver. The pacing was all over the place, making it difficult to stay engaged. The characters lacked development and were difficult to connect with. The musical performances were underwhelming and lacked the magic one would expect from a film with "magic piano" in its title. Overall, I found the film to be mediocre and forgettable.
4. Sarah - 2.5/5 - Mrs. Magic Piano had a promising premise, but it was executed poorly. The story had potential, but it lacked depth and failed to explore its themes fully. The performances were lackluster, and the musical numbers were forgettable. There were moments of sweetness, but they were overshadowed by the film's overall shortcomings. I wouldn't recommend this movie unless you have nothing else to watch.