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THE PLATONIC FRENZIES IN MARSILIO FICINO

Wouter J. Hanegraaff

In several publications, Jan Bremmer has—thoroughly and, in my opin-


ion, convincingly—deconstructed Karl Meuli’s and E.R. Dodds’ idea of
an ancient Greek shamanism.1 In so doing, he has contributed consid-
erably to critical revision of a concept which, while originally derived
from a specific Siberian context, was promoted as a universal complex
of presumably archetypal patterns in a bestselling book by Mircea Eliade
in ,2 and got considerably out of hand ever since.3 However, if we
follow Bremmer and discard the concept of an ancient Greek ‘shaman-
ism’, this does not mean that we have gotten rid of the ‘archaic techniques
of ecstacy’ of Eliade’s subtitle: Bremmer’s discussions and references leave
no doubt about the fact that ecstatic or trance-like states, experiences and
techniques were frequently reported in ancient Greece as they have been
in many other parts of the world; and we might add that they were often
valued highly, as necessary conditions for, or means of access to, superior
or even absolute knowledge.
In short, to study and interpret the references to ecstatic or trance-like
states we need no grand cross-cultural framework of shamanism: on the
contrary, we may be better off without it. In the present article I hope to
demonstrate this at the example of Plato’s concept of mania, and the way
it was interpreted by the great Florentine Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino
(–) as a means of ecstatic access to superior knowledge.

1 J.N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, ), –; idem, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife: The  Read-Tuckwell
Lectures at the University of Bristol (London: Routledge, ), –.
2 M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, ; reprinted London: Arkana, ).


3 As documented abundantly by the three-volume anthology by A.A. Znamenski,

Shamanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology (London: Routledge, ). For the devel-
opment of ‘shamanism’ from a Siberian to a global concept, see especially R. Hutton,
Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination (London and New York:
Hambledon & London, ), K. von Stuckrad, Schamanismus und Esoterik: kultur- und
wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (Leuven: Peeters, ), and A.A. Znamenski,
The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western Imagination (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, ).
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 wouter j. hanegraaff

Introduction: The Meaning of Mania

It is well known that in Plato’s Phaedrus, we find not only the famous
‘mythical hymn’ of the Charioteer, but also a brief and tantalizing descrip-
tion of four ‘frenzies’, ‘furies’, or ‘madnesses’. The considerable problems
of interpretation which these passages pose for the modern reader begin
with the very term: mania in Greek, later translated as furor in Latin. Plato
himself begins by explaining to Phaedrus that the concept of ‘madness’
could easily be misunderstood, pointing out that what he has in mind is
not the madness of insanity, but on the contrary, a ‘heaven-sent’ state that
is in fact superior to normal sanity.4
That a supposedly superior state of divine inspiration therefore does
not have a technical terminology of its own, but must be explained
indirectly by turning a negatively connotated term like ‘madness’ into
a positive one, is highly significant. As formulated elsewhere in the
Phaedrus, it reflects a notion of ‘esoteric’ truth that will be understood
only by the elite of true philosophers, who are believed to be out of their
minds by the common man:
Standing aside from the busy doings of mankind, and drawing nigh to
the divine, (the true philosopher) is rebuked by the multitude as being
deranged, for they do not realize that he is full of God (!ν#ουσι(ζων).5

For modern scholars intent on explaining the concept of mania to the


‘multitude’ of their colleagues—not to mention the general public—, the
problem is still the same: all the available options for translating the
term mania have pejorative or at least doubtful and hence misleading
connotations, and we simply do not have an English word that directly
conveys what Plato had in mind.
It is peculiar that this fact has not been a greater cause of concern for
scholars. How can we justify a situation in which the most influential
philosopher of our intellectual tradition tells us that knowledge superior
to that of ‘sane’ reason is given to us in a state of divine inspiration,
but after more than two and a half thousand years we still have not
come up with a word for it? For in the Phaedrus at least, Plato leaves
no doubt about the priority of ‘frenzied’ insight over merely profane,
rational argumentation. His previous argument, in which he had coolly
defended the ‘sanity’ of the non-lover, turns out to have been a lie and

4 Plato, Phdr. a–d.


5 Plato, Phdr. d.
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an offence against the gods, for which they might well punish him with
blindness as they did in the case of Stesichorus.6 Such punishment would
be fitting because the cynical rationality of the non-lover is the reflection
of spiritual blindness: it is only in the lover’s state of mania that our eyes
are opened to the truth.
If there is no neutral technical terminology for what Plato meant by
mania, we might ask ourselves how we would be likely to call it today.
My suggestion may seem somewhat radical at first sight but will, I hope,
appear less so after due consideration: the closest contemporary equiva-
lent I can think of is that of altered states of consciousness (ASCs). As is
well known, this term was introduced during the s in an attempt to
make sense of the ‘frenzies’ or ‘madnesses’ induced by LSD.7 Significantly,
LSD was described by some psychologists as a ‘psychotomimetic’ sub-
stance, that is, it mimicked psychotic madness; but its defenders claimed
that what might look like psychosis was in fact a higher state of spiritual
insight.8 The structural parallel with Plato’s statement could therefore be
hardly more exact. The feelings of resistance that such comparisons may
evoke with some academics are understandable enough; but they are not
very helpful if we want to understand the ‘ecstatic’ dimension in Plato
and many later Platonists, who were faced with a quite similar kind of
scepticism against their contemporary equivalents to ‘altered states’, and
were at pains to try and refute it.9
Plato’s discussion of the four ‘frenzies’ belongs within a much wider
and more complex discursive field, usually referred to by the general

6 Plato, Phdr. a.


7 The classic reference is C.T. Tart (ed.), Altered States of Consciousness (second edi-
tion; Garden City, NY: Anchor and Doubleday, ). Although the concept of ASCs
was undoubtedly developed in an effort to make sense of the phenomenology of LSD
experiences, it is important to realize that Tart’s volume also included non-drug expe-
riences such as hypnagogic states, dream consciousness, meditation, and hypnosis. The
same is true of a recent landmark study, I. Barušs, Alterations of Consciousness: An Empir-
ical Analysis for Social Scientists (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association,
), which has chapters for “Wakefulness”, “Sleep”, “Dreams”, “Hypnosis”, “Trance”,
“Psychedelics”, “Transcendence” and “Death”.
8 For a well-researched and very readable study that discusses these various perspec-

tives, see M. Lee and B. Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD. The CIA,
the Sixties, and beyond (New York: Grove Press, ); for the intended parallel with Plato,
see esp. pp. –.
9 That already Plato knew he had to be on the defensive is evident from e.g. Phaedr.

b–c, which implies that whereas the ancients who gave things their names did not
consider madness ‘appalling or disgraceful’, contemporaries do look at it as shameful.
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label of ‘ecstasy’ (ekstasis).10 In the classical Greek context it includes


such terms as alloiôsis, kinêsis, entheos and enthousiasmos, daimonismos,
theiasmos, apoplexia, ekplexis; and we will see that in later authors such
as Ficino it is connected with such terms as alienatio, abstractio, vaca-
tio, occupatio, instinctus, and raptus. What should be emphasized here
is that these unusual states were not seen as mere psychological or psy-
chiatric anomalies, but as phenomena with considerable epistemological
relevance for philosophers, for the simple reason that they were believed
to give access to a ‘superior’ knowledge of some kind.
Plato’s first frenzy was the prophetic one, represented by such examples
as the Delphic oracle or the Sibyls, who were claimed to have made their
predictions while in some kind of ecstatic altered state.11 What Plato
means by his second frenzy is quite mysterious from the Greek text,
the linguistic complications of which have defeated most translators,12
but in one way or another this so-called ‘telestic frenzy’ had to do with
the performance of rites and purifications for purposes of healing.13
Third comes the poetic frenzy: Plato emphasizes that technical skill does
not suffice for real poetry, which is created only when the Muses have
seized and taken possession of the poet’s soul, inspiring him to ‘rapt
passionate expression’.14 Finally, Plato describes the fourth and highest
of the frenzies: the frenzy of passionate love (eros), inspired by visual
beauty and the desire to reach its ultimate source.15 The final culmination
of the erotic quest is described most eloquently elsewhere, by Diotima
in a famous passage of the Symposium;16 but it should be noted that
what she described there can be called a ‘vision’ only by analogy, for

10 See the exhaustive overview and terminological analysis, with abundant references
to classical sources for each term, by F. Pfister, “Ekstase”, in RAC  (), –.
11 Plato, Phdr. b.
12 Plato, Phdr. d–e. On the difficulties of the passage, see I.M. Linforth, “Telestic

Madness in Plato, Phaedrus de”, University of California Publications in Classical


Philology  (): –, who describes the sentence as ‘so conceived and composed
that most commentators and probably most readers have found it baffling’ (p. ) and
quotes Wilamowitz: ‘Eine Erklärung habe ich nirgend gefunden und bin selbst ratlos’
(p. ).
13 See Linforth, “Telestic Madness” for his own interpretation and for his disagreement

with F. Pfister, “Der Wahnsinn des Weihepriesters”, in Cimbria: Beiträge zur Geschichte,
Altertumskunde, Kunst und Erziehungslehre (Dortmund: Ruhfus, ), –. See also
Pfister’s discussion in his “Ekstase”, –.
14 Plato, Phdr. a.
15 Plato, Phdr. d–e.
16 Plato, Smp. e–b.
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the platonic frenzies in marsilio ficino 

Plato’s text stipulates that what is perceived is not actually visible, nor can
its contents be described by words.

Divine Frenzy

How were the Platonic frenzies interpreted by Marsilio Ficino, the great
Florentine humanist who translated Plato’s complete dialogues into Latin
and thereby launched the revival of Platonism in the Renaissance? Not
only did Ficino believe, like Leonardo Bruni before him, that the Phae-
drus was the first of Plato’s writings; but apart from describing the four
frenzies, he saw the dialogue itself as a product not merely of philosoph-
ical reasoning, but of poetic inspiration in a state of mania.17 As formu-
lated by Michael J.B. Allen, Ficino’s Phaedrus was ‘the protodialogue’ par
excellence,
the seminal work from which (Plato’s) later works take their origin and in
which they are potentially contained
and ‘a cipher to Plato’s subsequent mysteries’.18 Ficino’s discussions of
the four frenzies can be subdivided into four texts or groups of texts,
which will be discussed here in that order:19 his famous letter De divino
furore (dated as  but probably written in ),20 a group of closely

17 M.J.B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer (Berkeley: University of
California Press, ), . See in this regard the beginning of Ficino, In Phedrum: ‘Our
Plato was pregnant with the madness of the poetic muse (. . .). In his radiance, Plato
gave birth to his first child, and it was itself almost entirely poetical and radiant’ (quoted
according to Allen, Marsilio Ficino, ; the ‘first child’ is of course the Phaedrus).
18 Allen, Marsilio Ficino, .
19 To this list one might add two letters, which both refer to the frenzies in order to

praise a contemporary person, but do not contain a substantial discussion. The first is by
Ficino and Giovanni Cavalcanti, and addressed to Naldo Naldi (Ficino, Opera, ); dated
by Kristeller between the end of  and beginning of , it mentions the four frenzies
and states that Naldo is inspired by the highest one, love (see also A. Sheppard, “The
Influence of Hermias on Marsilio Ficino’s Doctrine of Inspiration”, Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes  []: –, esp. –). The second letter is to Pietro
Dovizi da Bibbiena (Ficino, Opera, ) and dated . It states that Lorenzo was moved
by the poetic and erotic frenzies in his youth, by the prophetic one in his mature years,
and finally by the hieratic one (see also M.J.B. Allen, The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino:
A Study of His ‘Phaedrus’ Commentary, Its Sources and Genesis [Berkeley: University of
California Press, ],  [n. ]).
20 See R. Marcel, Marsile Ficin: Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon (Paris: Belles

Lettres, ), –; and Sheppard, “Influence of Hermias”, . Marcel notes that
the date  is missing in several manuscripts and suggests that the copyist miswrote
MCCCCLVII as MCCCCLXII. Marcel’s dating seems convincing in the light of details
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 wouter j. hanegraaff

related passages written during the second half of the s, chapter two
of the thirteenth book of the Platonic Theology (), and finally some
commentaries written as late as .
Ficino’s letter De divino furore, addressed to Peregrino Agli, explains
how the soul, having recovered its wings, is separated from the body
and flies upwards to the heavens. This abstractio takes place by means
of the divine frenzy, which is divided into four parts: note, therefore,
that whereas Plato speaks of four frenzies, Ficino—here and elsewhere—
sees them as four aspects of one and the same frenzy. He continues
by discussing all four of them, but with a very strong emphasis—as
he himself admits—on the frenzy of love, aroused by physical beauty
perceived by the eyes, and the frenzy of poetry, aroused by harmonious
music21 that reflects the numerical order and motions of the universe.
Inspired poets or musicians literally become vessels or instruments of
the divine:
they often utter such supreme words when inspired by the Muses, that
afterwards, when the rapture has left them, they themselves scarcely under-
stand what they have uttered.22
Plato’s enigmatic second frenzy, the ‘telestic’ one, is interpreted by Ficino
as centred in the ‘mysteries’; it consists of
a powerful stirring of the soul, in perfecting what relates to the worship of
the gods, religious observance, purification and sacred ceremonies.23

such as Ficino’s discussion of Hermes, which is more than just name-dropping and clearly
suggests he had read Corp.Herm. .–, which was not yet available to him in . As
for Ficino’s familiarity with the Phaedrus: Sheppard (“Influence of Hermias”, ; cf. Allen,
Platonism, ) argues that he possibly did not yet know the Phaedrus in Greek, but relied
on Leonardo Bruni’s partial translation of . As pointed out by Allen (Marsilio Ficino,
 [n. ]), no one has as yet attempted to compare Ficino’s and Bruni’s Plato translations.
21 As explained by Allen (Platonism, –), Ficino’s ‘conception of a poem was

essentially musical’.
22 Ficino, Lettere , ed. S. Gentile (Florence: Olschki, ), : (. . .) eosque poetas

qui celesti inspiratione ac vi rapiuntur adeo divinos sepenumero Musis afflatos sensus
expromere, ut ipsimet postmodum extra furorem positi que protulerint minus intelligent.
English translation in The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, vol.  (New York: Gingko Press, ),
.
23 Ficino, Lettere , ed. Gentile, : Primum quidem furorem diffinit vehementiorem

animi concitationem in iis que ad deorum cultum, religionem, expiationem sacrasque


cerimonias pertinent perficiendis. Translation in Letters of Marsilio Ficino, vol. , . The
corresponding, notoriously difficult sentence in the Phaedrus was later translated by
Ficino as follows: Atqui adversus morbos et labores maximos ob antiqua delicta quandoque
divina indignatione mortalibus inminentes gentibus quibusdam alicunde furor adveniens ac
predicens quibus opus erat remedia adinvenit, confugiens ad vota cultusque deorum; unde
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And finally, there is the frenzy proper to divination and prophecy,


which is possible
when the mind, withdrawn from the body, is moved by divine inspiration
(divino instinctu).24

Ficino presents the four frenzies more systematically than Plato had
done, and emphasizes the deity assigned to each of them: Venus for the
erotic frenzy, the Muses for the poetic one, Dionysus for the mysteries,
and Apollo for the prophetic frenzy. Most innovative, however, is that he
also systematically distinguishes between a true and a false manifesta-
tion of each of the four frenzies.25 Against Plato’s ‘divine love’ stands the
‘irrational’, ‘common and completely insane’ love of bodily pleasure, or
sex;26 against true poetry and music stands the ‘superficial’ and ‘vulgar’
music based merely on technique; against the mysteries stands supersti-
tion; and against true prophecy stands ‘foresight or inference’ (coniectio)
based merely on human ingenuity. This procedure clearly expands upon
Plato’s distinction between the madness of insanity and the madness
of divine inspiration, and carries the same connotations of an ‘esoteric’
understanding reserved for the elite. The multitude indulges in physical
sex, vulgar music, and superstitious practices, and puts its faith in mere
human predictions; but the true philosopher is oriented towards spiri-
tual beauty, tries to be in harmony with the celestial and divine order,
practices the true mysteries, and may attain a prophetic vision no longer
bound to the restrictions of time.

Soul Therapy

A second group of three texts discussing the Platonic frenzies originated


in the period –. The earliest one was Ficino’s Ion argumentum,

expiationes propitiationesque consecutus, incolumem reddidit possidentem et in presens


tempus et in futurum, absolutionem presentium malorum recte furenti occupatoque adeptus
(here quoted according to Allen, Marsilio Ficino, –). Note that in his translation of
Plato’s description of the erotic frenzy (Phdr. d–e) Ficino switches the order of some
sentences, which actually results in a more logical order (Allen, Marsilio Ficino, ).
24 Ficino, Lettere , ed. Gentile, . Translation in Letters (above, n. ), vol. , .
25 Ficino would repeat this in De amore ..
26 For Ficino’s views on sexuality and their relation to his philosophy or eros, see

W.J. Hanegraaff, “Under the Mantle of Love: The Mystical Eroticisms of Marsilio Ficino
and Giordano Bruno”, in Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western
Esotericism (eds. W.J. Hanegraaff and J.J. Kripal; Leiden: Brill, ), –.
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dated by Kristeller between July  and April .27 The commentary
on the Phaedrus is dated, again by Kristeller, between April  and
November .28 And Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on
Love, usually referred to as De amore, which discusses the frenzies in
speech seven, chapters fourteen and fifteen, was composed between
November  and July .
The Phaedrus commentary itself contains little of interest for us: Ficino
merely lists the frenzies in Plato’s original order,29 and devotes a few
sentences to the distinction between divine and ‘bestial’ love.30 Much
more interesting are the two other texts, which are practically identi-
cal,31 and where Ficino—possibly following Hermias’s fifth-century com-
mentary32—puts the frenzies in a new hierarchical order: ‘first the poetic,
then the mysterial, third the prophetic, and fourth the amatory’.33 Now I
believe it is essential here to see that Ficino proceeds as a ‘doctor of souls’
in the most literal sense of the word. His stated intention is to cure his
patients from the sick delirium of insanity and restore them to soberness
and clearmindedness. His basic perspective would be formulated with
perfect clarity much later, in the Platonic Theology:
As the Pythagoreans and Platonists believe, during the whole time the sub-
lime soul lives in this base body, our mind, as though it were ill, is tossed to
and fro and up and down in a kind of perpetual restlessness, and is always
asleep and delirious; and the individual movements, actions, and passions
of mortal men are nothing but the dizzy spells of the sick, dreams of the
sleeping, deliriums of the insane ( . . . ). But while all are deceived, usually

27 Ficino, “In Platonis Ionem, vel de furore poetico . . .”, in Opera, –. See also

the fundamental analysis by M.J.B. Allen, “The Soul as Rhapsode: Marsilio Ficino’s Inter-
pretation of Plato’s Ion”, in idem, Plato’s Third Eye: Studies in Marsilio Ficino’s Metaphysics
and Its Sources (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, ), chapter  (– in original pagi-
nation). For the question of dating, see p.  (n. ).
28 Ficino, In Phedrum, edited and translated by Allen as “Texts II, chs. –”, in idem,

Marsilio Ficino, –. On the question of dating, see p. .


29 Ficino, In Phedrum, in Allen, Marsilio Ficino, –.
30 Allen, Marsilio Ficino, .
31 Cf. Allen, Plato’s Third Eye, chapter  (–).
32 As argued by Sheppard, “Influence of Hermias”, ; but cf. M.J.B. Allen, “Two

Commentaries on the Phaedrus: Ficino’s Indebtedness to Hermias”, in idem, Plato’s Third


Eye, –, esp.  (n. ), , who is sceptical about the influence of Hermias’s
commentary in this period of Ficino’s life.
33 Ficino gives the same sequence, but in reverse order, in the letter to Naldo Naldi

(see n. , above). Here I will quote De amore according to the edition and translation of
the relevant chapters in Allen, Marsilio Ficino, –. Allen recognizes the difficulty of
translating mysterialis and chooses to translate it as ‘hieratic’ (Allen, Marsilio Ficino, );
here I prefer to write ‘mysterial’.
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the platonic frenzies in marsilio ficino 

those are less deceived who at some time, as happens occasionally during
sleep, become suspicious and say to themselves: ‘Perhaps those things are
not true which now appear to us; perhaps we are now dreaming’.34
This quotation is important for a proper understanding of what Ficino
has in mind when he discusses the frenzies. It is not just that the multi-
tude confuses a state of divine madness with insanity—the real problem is
much more serious: all of us, in Ficino’s opinion, are profoundly confused
about the relation between normality and abnormality. The very state of
consciousness that we consider ‘normal’ is in fact an abnormal one: we
are trapped in a sick delirium without even realizing it, and therefore if
someone begins to wake up to reality we believe he is going mad!
Ficino begins by giving his basic diagnosis of the human condition,
and then proceeds to outline the therapy. By having fallen into the body,
the soul has lost its unity; its higher faculties are virtually asleep, and its
lower ones are afflicted with severe perturbations. As a result, the entire
soul is in a delirious state of confusion and discord, and can no longer tell
illusion from reality. Ficino then presents the frenzies as four successive
phases of one single, integrated method of healing:
. He begins with music therapy. By means of musical sounds the
higher part of the soul is wakened from its torpor; and simultane-
ously, the lower part is brought from a state of discord and disso-
nance to one of concord and harmony. Here it should be noticed
that, in terms of Ficino’s theory, it is not the mere physical effect of
sounds by which the healing is effected: after all, not the body but
the soul is the patient here, and the healing process will be expe-
rienced subjectively as an alteration of one’s habitual state of con-
sciousness.35
. Although harmony is now restored to the soul, it is still in a state
of multiplicity. The second phase of the therapy consists of focusing
the various individual parts of the soul into one single direction, by
means of worship of the one God. Whereas the first phase might
be seen as essentially passive, this second phase takes the form of

34 Ficino, Theologia Platonica .. My translation is a mixture of the one given by


P.O. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York: Columbia University Press,
), –, and the new standard translation by M.J.B. Allen and J. Hankins: Ficino,
Platonic Theology, vol.  (Cambridge, MA: The I Tatti Renaissance Library & Harvard
University Press, ), –.
35 See also Allen, Platonism, , where it is pointed out that what Ficino has in mind

as the highest state of harmony is the music of the spheres, which ‘could only be heard
(. . .) by the inner ear, the ear in an ecstasy of auditory trance or rapture’.
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 wouter j. hanegraaff

active ritual practice: atonement, purifications, sacrifices, and other


kinds of sacred rites. Again, the theory implies that mere outward
observance is useless: the whole point is to achieve a new state of
consciousness focused only on the divine.
. We now have a situation where the soul is in harmony and the mind
is properly directed; but the mind is still separate from its own unity,
that is to say, from the (now awakened) higher part or ‘head’ of the
soul. This situation, Ficino writes, Apollo remedies by means of the
prophetic frenzy, which unifies the soul. As a result of this process,
the soul now regains its ability to predict the future. It should be
noted that—both in Plato and Ficino—the prophetic frenzy differs
from the other three in that it is not intrinsically connected to some
‘trigger’. The erotic frenzy is aroused by visual stimuli, the poetic one
by auditory ones, and the mysterial one by ritual acts. The prophetic
frenzy, however, seems unique in that it is presumably a gift of divine
grace.
. The prophetic frenzy has allowed the soul to regain its essential
unity, but it is still separate from the superessential One, God him-
self. It is by means of the fourth and final frenzy, that of love, that the
unified soul is recalled back to its source. Ficino here defines love
not only (in line with Plato) as desire for divine beauty, but also (in
a more Christian vein) as a moral ‘ardour for the good’. Presum-
ably, then, the final phase in the healing of the soul culminates in a
state of transcendent vision, as described by Diotima in the famous
Symposium passage referred to earlier.
If we consider this four-phase therapy closely, we might better under-
stand why it is that Ficino always pays most attention by far to the poetic
frenzy. It is by means of music and poetry that the soul (or rather, its
higher part) receives its basic ‘wake-up call’, short of which no healing is
possible at all; and this first therapeutic phase is in many respects the most
fundamental one as well.36 If completed successfully, the soul is awake
and restored to harmony; after that decisive step, it may still have a long
way to go, but because the essential illness has been cured, one may trust
the rest of the healing process to take its natural course. Ficino closes his
discussion in De amore . by linking the four frenzies with four phases
in the progress of the Phaedran charioteer. The starting point is the char-

36 Here I differ from Allen (Platonism, –), who argues that the role of poetry in
this sequence ‘was clearly subordinate’ because ‘it marked the beginning stage only’.
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the platonic frenzies in marsilio ficino 

ioteer’s obviously chaotic trajectory caused by the unruly bad horse. The
charioteer successively becomes aware of his situation, takes control of
the unruly horse, unifies himself, and finally heads towards and reaches
the universal One.

Affective States of Reason

The relevance to our topic of Ficino’s Platonic Theology (published in


) might easily be overlooked, since it does not explicitly devote a
chapter to the frenzies. They are in fact central, however, to chapter two
of book thirteen, which purports to demonstrate how the soul dominates
the body. This chapter amounts to a catalogue of the various altered states
associated with ‘ecstasy’, defined in general as ‘affective states of reason’.37
Ficino discusses them under four headings: those of the philosophers,
the poets, the priests, and the seers or prophets.
The last three of these are clearly equivalent to the first three of the
frenzies, in the order of succession that Ficino had established in the Ion
argumentum and De amore. One might therefore be surprised not to find
a final section devoted to those who are inspired by the fourth and highest
frenzy, the erotic one. However, there are several plausible explanations
for this omission. First, as is evident from Plato’s two dialogues on love

37 The title chapter refers to them as the ‘second sign’ of the soul’s dominance over

the body, hence Signum secundum: ab affectibus rationis. I find it unfortunate that the
explicit reference to ‘affects’ is lost in the Allen and Hankins translation (above, n. ),
which renders the second part as ‘from what the reason accomplishes’. The same term
affectus is also used in the title of ., ab affectibus phantasiae, translated by Allen and
Hankins as ‘the phantasy’s emotions’. Presumably, Allen and Hankins found a translation
like ‘the emotions of reason’ confusing or even contradictory, but the result is nevertheless
that the clearly intended parallel between . and . is lost. The term affectus is in fact
difficult to translate. Marcel has ‘les affections de la raison’, but whatever dictionaries may
say, the romantic associations of the English ‘affection’ (one may experience ‘feelings of
affection’ for a person) make it unsuitable as a translation of affectus. In Dutch the word
can be translated quite accurately as ‘gemoedsaandoening’. Literally this means something
that affects the ‘gemoed’, a rather old-fashioned term which is so close to the term ‘ziel’
(‘soul’) that it could be used as a synonym (hence in the Dutch language we actually find
‘zielsaandoening’ as a close equivalent to ‘gemoedsaandoening’). The usual dictionary
translation of ‘gemoedsaandoening’ is, in turn, ‘emotion’, so if we wish to find an accurate
English term this does not help us much further. If we would take the word ‘emotion’
literally as meaning something that ‘moves’ the soul, it could be considered quite accurate;
but unfortunately, due to its common occurrence in everyday language it has lost much
of its original connotations of a specific state of the soul. My solution ‘affective state’ is
certainly not perfect, but I believe it is closer to what Ficino meant to convey.
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 wouter j. hanegraaff

and from Ficino’s De amore, the erotic drive is in fact the fundamental
drive of the true philosopher: it is eros, the desire for beauty, that spurs
on the soul in all the phases of its quest for the divine. Hence, Ficino’s
first section ‘On the philosophers’ can be read as pertaining to all those
who are driven by this force, thereby making a fifth and final section
‘On the lovers’ redundant: these lovers, after all, are philosophers in the
literal sense of lovers of wisdom. Second, according to the logic of Ficino’s
therapy for ‘healing the soul’, exemplified by the charioteer, the fourth
and final frenzy pertains to the flight of the unified soul to the One. In
this phase, the mind has already been unified with the soul, and thus
no longer exists as a separate entity; as a result, it would not have been
correct to discuss it in this chapter as one of the ‘affective states of reason’.
Ficino first discusses how in the case of the philosophers, these ‘affec-
tive states of reason’ demonstrate the soul’s power over the body. His
argument boils down to a list of ecstatic states as reported of Epimenides,
Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Socrates, Plato, Xenocrates, Archimedes of Syra-
cuse, Plotinus, Heraclitus, and Democritus, most of whom he believes to
have been melancholics. His conclusion states in no uncertain terms that
the acquisition of important new knowledge seems to require such states:
all those
who have discovered something important in any of the more noble arts
have principally done so when they have abandoned the body and taken
refuge in the citadel of the soul.38

The rest of the chapter follows the order of the frenzies as established
in the Ion argumentum and De amore. As for the poetic frenzy, Ficino
demonstrates its divine origin by emphasizing that it may cause wholly
unskilled men to produce great poetry, and by repeating that after their
frenzy has abated, they themselves no longer understand what they have
sung. It was in fact God himself who spoke loudly through them ‘as
through trumpets’.39 Ficino’s section on the priests again consists of a
long series of reports about altered states: St Paul himself ascended to
the third heaven in a state of abstractio, the uneducated apostles were
transformed into ‘sublime theologians’ by divine inspiratio, many ancient

38 Ficino, Theologia Platonica ., translation Allen and Hankins, Platonic Theology,
vol. , .
39 As recently demonstrated by M. van den Doel, Ficino en het voorstellingsvermogen:

Phantasia en Imaginatio in kunst en theorie van de Renaissance (diss. University of Ams-


terdam, ), –, this detail was adopted in the most literal sense by Michelangelo
in his De sogno.
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the platonic frenzies in marsilio ficino 

priests danced in a frenzy and proclaimed marvels due to a state of


instinctus caused by daemons, St Augustine describes the trance state of
a priest of Calama, and so on and so forth. Ficino finishes by referring
again to the Phaedrus passage about the man filled with God whom the
rabble believes to be mad.
Finally, in a lengthy and complex section, Ficino discusses seers and
prophets. Essential is that when the bonds with the body are loosed in
a state of vacatio—of which Ficino distinguishes seven kinds40—their
rational soul is no longer bound by the constraints of time and space,
having regained its natural state of being ‘everywhere and always’ (ubique
et semper). The prophet is of course defined by his ability to see the future,
and Ficino adds that he can see the past as well; but in addition, he
alludes to a passage in Corpus Hermeticum  to emphasize that the seer
can also freely travel to ‘a multitude of places, even the most remote’.41
Again, we would seriously misunderstand Ficino if we were to dismiss
such references to ‘out-of-body experiences’ and clairvoyant abilities
as mere oddities belonging to the fringe domain of the paranormal;
on the contrary, he consistently presents them as avenues of superior
knowledge, belonging to the very highest level of perception that may
be attained by the rational soul.
A few years before his death, in , Ficino published a series of Com-
mentaria in Platonem, including two further commentaries on the Pla-
tonic frenzies, written a few years earlier.42 Both are somewhat rambling
and sketchy, and can be discussed here briefly.43 In the first commentary,
Ficino’s focus is again on the poetic frenzy—which requires a ‘tender’,
‘soft’ and ‘intact’ soul44—and he now asks himself why it is that Socrates
chose to put poetry third. Plato, he proceeds to explain, had specific rea-
sons for presenting the frenzies in the order that he chose. Prophecy per-
tains mainly to knowledge, the mysteries to volition, poetry to hearing,
and love to seeing. Apparently, then, these four have emerged in that
order: for we first know God, then we wish to worship him, next we
sing hymns to him, and finally we love him after having gazed at sen-
sible beauty. Reading Ficino’s explanation here, one cannot help think-

40 Final section of Theologia Platonica .: “Septem vacationis genera”, translation

Allen and Hankins, Platonic Theology, vol. , –.


41 Ficino, Theologia Platonica ., translation Allen and Hankins, Platonic Theology,

vol. , . The reference is to Corp.Herm. .–.


42 See Allen, Marsilio Ficino, –.
43 Allen nevertheless devotes an entire chapter to them (Platonism, –).
44 Ficino, “De furore poetico . . .”, in Allen, Marsilio Ficino, –.
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 wouter j. hanegraaff

ing that the logic of the argumentation is less compelling than the one
that guided his earlier sequence of poetry, mysteries, prophecy and love.
Ficino himself was aware of the contrast, for he points out that whereas in
the Ion Argumentum and De amore he arranged the frenzies ‘in the order
pertaining to the soul’s restoration’, he has now arranged them in accor-
dance with the actual origin of frenzy.45 Finally, in the second of these
late commentaries, Ficino merely touches briefly on some points already
made earlier, and further refers the reader to his Ion Argumentum, De
amore, and Platonic Theology. It suffices to point out, he writes, that Plato
and the Platonists ‘put the divine frenzy far before human wisdom’.

Concluding Remarks

What, then, can we conclude about the Platonic frenzies in Ficino’s


work? First, I would like to repeat that we should seriously consider the
terminological problem with which I began this article: the absence of an
adequate technical terminology for what Plato and Ficino referred to as
mania and furor is a major obstacle that must be removed first, or at the
very least, recognized. Although admittedly not unproblematic,46 using
the terminology of ‘altered states of consciousness’ might be a step in the
right direction.47

45 Ficino, “De furore poetico . . .”, in Allen, Marsilio Ficino, –. It might be interest-

ing here to mention a further observation about the poetic frenzy. Any of the four frenzies
has a power so overwhelming that the one who experiences it ‘raves, exults, and exceeds
the bounds of human behaviour’; in short, he really does behave like a madman. But no
madman is content with simple speech: he typically bursts out in non-discursive forms of
expression such as songs and poems. Hence, one might say that in fact, each of the four
frenzies expresses itself in the form of poetic madness (Allen, Marsilio Ficino, –).
46 Even apart from the problem of defining ‘consciousness’ as such, the term ‘altered

states of consciousness’ would seem to imply the assumption of a stable baseline state;
but since the existence of any such stability in our normal psychological functioning is
questionable to say the least, one might prefer to speak of ‘alterations of consciousness’
(Barušs, Alterations, –). Another problem with the ASCs terminology might be its
close association with the countercultural agendas and spiritual concerns of the s, as
a result of which it is often seen carrying a hidden agenda of going beyond the scholarly
or scientific study of ASCs to such non-academic concerns as promoting psychedelics as
avenues to the attainment of ‘higher consciousness’.
47 The only Renaissance scholar, to my knowledge, who has seriously addressed the

terminological problem and its theoretical corollaries, is G. Tomlinson, in his fascinating


study Music in Renaissance Magic: Towards a Historiography of Others (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, ), – (chapter ), where he makes good use of anthro-
pological perspectives on trance and possession states. A discussion of his general dis-
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the platonic frenzies in marsilio ficino 

Second, the case of the frenzies forces us to examine our background


assumptions about what counts as ‘knowledge’. I have been arguing
that for Ficino as for Plato, the various altered states falling within the
semantic range of ‘ecstasy’ were means of access to superior knowledge
inaccessible to a ‘normal’ sober state of consciousness. Since this reduces
normal rationality to a subordinate and merely propaedeutic role, it has
far-reaching implications for how we look at the many pages which
Ficino devotes to straightforward ‘normal’ philosophy: to put it briefly,
how could he ever have been confident that, from a superior ‘prophetic’
perspective, rational discourse would be anything more than (to repeat
his own formulation) ‘the sick delirium of the insane’?
Finally, Ficino’s frenzies confront us head-on with a basic hermeneuti-
cal truth: the problem of correctly understanding him does not so much
lie in what he has written, but rather, in ourselves. Trying to put our-
selves in a frenzy like Socrates will certainly do nothing to solve that
problem—although some readers might be surprised to learn that quite
some scholars belonging to the ‘religionist’ branch of religious studies
would claim precisely that48—, but adopting what is essentially the per-
spective of Stesichorus will leave us equally blind. Somehow, then, we
might need to steer a course that avoids both the Scylla of frenzy and
the Charybdis of soberness if we want to do justice, as scholars, to what
Ficino would like us to discover.

tinction between possession and ‘soul loss’ and their relation to the frenzies would have
required another paper (see, however, my review in Aries  []: –); and all
the more so because of their complex relation to the notoriously problematic concept of
‘shamanism’ which I mentioned (with reference to Jan Bremmer) in the introduction of
this contribution.
48 The classic (or notorious) statement of this position is R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy:

An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the
Rational (fourth edition; London: Milford, ), : ‘The reader is invited to direct his
mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious experience, as little as possible qualified by
other forms of consciousness. Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments
in his experience, is requested to read no further’.

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