1. What is Ficino's opinion of using astronomy and astrology for medical purposes? [Hint: The answer is not a straightforward 'It's good' or 'It's bad.']
2. What is the relation between:
(a) World-soul,
(b) seminal reasons,
(c) Ideas in the divine Mind, and
(d) matter?
3. How does one draw down or collect the influence of a particular celestial body (for example, the Sun)?
4. According to Ficino, what is the relationship between Christianity and astrological magic?
5. What is the relationship between:
(a) Ideas [basically, Platonic Forms]
(b) God,
(c) The soul of the World,
(d) Seminal forms,
(e) Celestial bodies, and
(f) matter?
Hint: Use your answers to question 2 above to help with this one.
6. What does Agrippa mean by "occult vertues"? [Hint: look at the list of occult virtues he gives at the start of Ch. xiii.]
7. How does Agrippa (claim to) reconcile/ unite the apparently contradictory views of "Plato and his Scholars," "Avicen" [an Islamic scholar of Aristotelian doctrine], "Hermes" [Trismegistus], and "Albertus" [Magnus, a priest who was also an Aristotle scholar]?
8. According to Agrippa, can miracles be explained by magical or occult virtues of objects?
9. Why according to Agrippa, do certain philosophers attribute soul or divinity (or both) to material things?
10. How did the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus influence science, medicine and alchemy in the Renaissance?
11. What is alchemy? (See also Agrippa, end of ch. xiv)
12. What was Paracelsus's attitude toward the established, university views of medicine at his time (views which were based primarily on the Hippocratic writings as well as a later Greek physician, Galen)?
13. According to Paracelsus, what is the relation between the cosmos and an individual person?
14. How, specifically, did the Paracelsians remain (in Debus's words) "wedded to the ancient vitalistic world view"? (last paragraph of the section titled The Chemical Philosophy)
15. Which Paracelsian doctrines ran directly counter to the medical establishment (the "Galenic authority) of the 1500s? Give three specific examples.