From the Tree to the Labyrinth (74 page)

Let us consider this fundamental moment in the
Apologia
. The trouble is that, in drawing this parallel between the
ars combinandi
and the
ars Raymundi
, Pico is more interested in the differences than in the similarities. In the passage cited, Pico makes a distinction between a Kabbalah of names and a theosophical Kabbalah. Now the first part of the Kabbalah, or the first way of understanding the Kabbalah, is the
ars combinandi
, which Pico has already (in the
Conclusiones cabalisticae
) dubbed the
revolutio alphabetaria
. Observe that, in the Abulafian tradition, the word
revolutio
stands for combination in general (Wirszubski 1989: 137), but the term certainly implies a rotatory connotation, which calls to mind the Kabbalistic or Llullian wheels (or, as we will see, steganographic wheels, à la Johannes Trithemius). In any case, the term could be also used metaphorically, as a more or less visual image of the combinatory swirling typical of the Kabbalistic technique of the anagram or Temurah. Frances Yates, while recognizing that Pico’s
ars combinandi
is derived from the combinatory practices of Abulafia, decides to deal only with the second type of Kabbalah—something she has of course every right to do—dismissing the first by saying that Pico considers it to be somehow similar to the art of Raimon Llull (Yates 1964: 113).

However that may be, a combination of letters cannot help recalling the techniques of Llull, and this is why Pico says that the two practices are similar. Whereupon, however, he points out that the similarity is only apparent: “licet
forte
diverso modo procedant” (“even though
by chance/perhaps
they may proceed in a different manner”). The ambiguous adverbial expression
forte
(“perhaps” or “by chance”) is a teaser. If Pico had wished to allude to a substantial difference, he would have had his good reasons: as we have seen, the letters in Llull’s combinatory system refer to theological entities, to divine Dignities, and they therefore refer to a system of combinations which, though it appears to occur at the alphabetical level, in fact subsists in the realm of contents. The Abulafian Kabbalistic system, on the other hand, is exercised on the substance of the expression, on letters of the Torah, or on those elements of the form of the expression that are the letters of the alphabet.

Still, this explanation could easily be confuted on the basis of the Kabbalistic belief that every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a meaning, at least a numerological meaning. So the Kabbalah too, though it may seem to be combining and permutating alphabetical elements, is really permutating and combining concepts. Apart, then, from their different theological backgrounds,
ars Raymundi
and
ars combinandi
are not
substantialiter
different from each other. They are so
forte,
“by chance,” or with regard to their outcomes, or the way they are used.

It is our conviction that Pico had understood that what distinguished Kabbalistic thought from that of Llull was that the reality that the Kabbalistic mystic must discover is not yet known and can reveal itself only through the spelling out of the letters in their whirlwind permutations. Consequently, though it may be only in a mystical sense (in which the combinations serve only as a motor of the imagination), the Kabbalah pretends to be a true
ars inveniendi,
in which what is to be found is a truth as yet unknown. The combinatory system of Llull, on the other hand, is (as we saw) a rhetorical tool, through which the already known may be demonstrated—what the ironclad system of the forest of the various trees has already fixed once and for all, and that no combination can ever subvert.
¹⁶

That Pico had understood perfectly, with his aside, this point, is also confirmed by his
Conclusiones cabalisticae:

Nullae sunt litterae in tota lege, quae in formis, coniunctionibus, separationibus, tortuositate, directione, defectu, superabundantia, minoritate, maioritate, coronatione, clausura, apertura, & ordine, decem numerationum secreta non manifestent. (There are no letters in the whole Law which in their forms, conjunctions, separations, crookedness, straightness, defect, excess, smallness, largeness, crowning, closure, openness and order, do not reveal the secrets of the ten numerations.) (Farmer 1998: 359)

Furthermore, if we bear in mind that these
numerationes
are the Sephirot, we can appreciate the revelatory power with which he endows his
ars combinandi.
What results this whirling dervish of an art leads him to, well beyond all philological common sense, but evincing without question a combinatorial energy that knows no limits, we may gather from the famous passage in the
Heptaplus
dedicated to the
Bereishit.

Here for the first time we encounter what will turn out to be a distinguishing feature not only of Kabbalism but of the whole later hermetic tradition: given a discourse that already in and of itself dares to enunciate unfathomable mysteries, it is assumed to allude even further, to mysteries still higher and more occult. For Pico, in the Second Proem, the Mosaic account of the creation of the world alludes, in every one of its parts, and according to seven different levels of reading, to the creation of the world of the angels, of the celestial world and the sublunar world, as well as to man as microcosm: “Thus indeed this book of Moses, if any such, is a book marked with seven seals and full of all wisdom and all mysteries” (Pico della Mirandola 1965: 81). In the sixth chapter of the
Third Exposition
(“On the Angelic and Invisible World”), for instance, the creation of the fish, birds, and earthbound animals is seen as a revelation of the creation of the angelic cohorts. If there are unfathomable and unfathomed mysteries to discover, nothing must be taken as known. The combinations must be venturesome and, at least as far as intentions go, innocent and open-minded. Here is the famous passage, typically Kabbalistic in tone, in which Pico launches into the most uninhibited permutational and anagrammatical operations:

Applying the rules of the ancients to the first phrase of the work, which is read
Beresit
by the Hebrews and “In the beginning” by us, I wanted to see whether I too could bring to light something worth knowing. Beyond my hope and expectation I found what I myself did not believe as I found it, and what others will not believe easily: the whole plan of the creation of the world and of all things in it disclosed and explained in that one phrase.… Among the Hebrews, this phrase is written thus:
בראשיח
,
berescith
. From this, if we join the third letter to the first, comes the word
אב
,
ab
. If we add the second to the doubled first, we get
בבד
,
bebar
. If we read all except the first, we get
ראשית
,
resith
. If we connect the fourth to the first and last, we get
שבת
,
sciabat
. If we take the first three in the order in which they come, we get
כרא
,
bara
. If, leaving out the first, we take the next three, we get
ראש
,
rosc
. If, leaving out the first and second, we take the two following, we get
אש
,
es
. If, leaving out the first three, we join the fourth to the last, we get
שת
,
seth
. Again, if we join the second to the first, we get
רב
,
rab
. If after the third we set the fifth and fourth, we get
איש
,
hisc
. If we join the first two to the last two, we get
ברית
,
berith
. If we add the last to the first, we get the twelfth and last word, which is
תב