ABSTRACT
In the Renaissance the syncretists of the Florentine Academies saw in the theology of the ancients an affirmation of the coming of Christ. This prisca theologia or ancient theology incorporated the Orphic hymns, the Sibylline prophecies, the Chaldaean Oracles, the teachings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus and Zoroaster, Pythagorean number mysticism, the Platonism of the Timaeus, the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and Proclus, and the corpus of Jewish mystical writings known as the Kabbalah. It was the foundation-stone upon which Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola built their works. Ficino’s and Pico’s texts were assimilated by Henry Cornelius Agrippa who in turn influenced Paracelsus, whose theories deeply impressed the German mystic Jacob Boehme, who exerted a profound influence upon the thought of TheaurauJohn Tany.
