The Fathers of Renaissance Esoteric Magic with Ronnie Pontiac

Ronnie Pontiac was the personal research assistant for Manly P. Hall at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. He is author of American Metaphysical Religion: Esoteric and Mystical Traditions of the New World. He is coauthor with Tamra Lucid of The Magic of the Orphic Hymns: A New Translation for the Modern Mystic.

This interview focuses primarily on three significant contributors to Renaissance esoteric culture: Marsilio Ficino, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus. Their life spans covered a period of 100 years during which European culture experienced a great awakening, triggered initially by Ficino’s translations of lost texts from ancient Greece. Other important figures are also discussed including Pico Della Mirandola, John Dee, Trithemius – as well as the backlash against the Renaissance, triggered by the Dominican Friar Savonarola.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:05:53 Ficino’s early career
00:12:16 Rebirth of Plato’s Academy
00:33:38 Bonfires of the vanities
00:52:28 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
00:58:07 Johannes Trithemius
01:15:16 Negative images of Agrippa
01:26:13 Paracelsus
01:49:58 Negative images of Paracelsus
02:03:45 Conclusion

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science.

(Recorded on November 16, 2024)

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