Imagination or Phantasia

According to a tradition derived from Aristotle, the imagination (Greek phantasia; Latin: imaginatio) is a faculty of knowledge intermediary between the senses and the intellect or rational intelligence. Together with the “common sense” (to krinon or sensus communis) and the memory it belongs to the so-called “interior senses”; but one also sometimes encounters it as equivalent to these different senses taken together. Aristotle says that phantasia derives from φῶς (light, or glow) and is primarily visually oriented. Its function is to transform sensory impressions into images. The imagination stands under the dominion of reason, which distinguishes man from other creatures. Whenever reason loses its vigilance, for example during illness or sleep, the phantasmata can use the opportunity to lead their own life and create disturbing effects.
In the Latin and Arab tradition there has been much speculation about how the imagination can influence a person's own body, but it was sometimes believed to have the power to influence the spirit or body of other persons as well, and in a magical context it could even be the medium by means of which the magus could cause epidemics, heavy rains or other natural disasters. Due to the imagination's power over the spirit or body of other persons, it plays a role in theories of love. And frequent reference was made to the example, which has its origin in Quintilianus (35-96/8), of the influence exerted on the fetus of what the mother was seeing at the time of conception, either in her mind or in reality. For example, if she had been thinking of an Ethiopian, the child would be born black; but if she had been looking at certain images or paintings, the child would be beautiful, even if the father was ugly. The imagination was also believed to have an influence on animals; a frequent example was the story of Jacob, whose cattle produced striped or speckled offspring because he had put patterned rods in the water troughs (Gen. 30:25-43).
Finally, in a mystical and esoteric context the imagination has been believed to give access to levels of reality deeper than those that can be experienced by the senses, and thus to function as a domain of mediation between different ontological planes. As such it enables man to transcend the material world and gain access to the divine. In other words, the imagination could become a bridge between microcosm and macrocosm.

1. Classical Theories

In Greek philosophy and in later Latin traditions, three main currents can be distinguished concerning theories of the imagination: an Aristotelian, a Galenist, and a Neoplatonic one.

a. Aristotelianism

The Aristotelian current has been most influential. Aristotle limits his treatment of the concept of phantasia to the part of the soul that is concerned with perception. In his Parva naturalia and De anima he adds to the five senses a sixth function, called the sensus communis, which compares the experiences of the senses with one another and bestows unity on them. Qualities such as time, size, number and movement, which influence more than one sense, belong to the sensus communis. To this, Aristotle adds the term phantasia (De Anima III, 3, 429 a 1-2). On the one hand, it stands for a sense impression which differs from other sense experiences, in that it continues to exist even when the object that caused it is no longer present. On the other hand, it stands for the cognitive power by means of which we can make an image appear in our mind.
Aristotle's most consistent statement about phantasia is that it forms a bridge between perception and intellect, because the soul does not think without images (De Anima III, 7, 431 a 16). In De Memoria he remarks that the memory and the imagination are both connected with the “common sense”, and thus with the “primary perceptive power” (to proton aisthetikon). The latter is located in the heart, which is the most important organ and the source of all bodily functions. Sensory impressions are led from the senses to the heart by means of the spirit or pneuma (to symphyton pneuma; De insomniis, 3, 461 b 13-25): a vaporous substance consisting of the same matter from which the stars are made. Having arrived in the heart, the messages originating in the five bodily senses are transformed there in such a manner that they can be understood by the soul. This is done by the phantasia, which translates the information received from the senses into phantasmata.
As for the pneuma, it is also the instrument that makes it possible for the soul to communicate with the body, and to cause it to perform all vital activities, including movement. Referred to as proton organon, it bridges the gap between the physical and the nonphysical: it is so subtle that it comes close to the immaterial soul but it is nevertheless material, so that it can communicate with the world of the senses. Without the pneuma, body and soul would not be aware of one another. Ontologically, the soul has no window towards the material world; and as for the body, it is merely a combination of natural elements that would immediately fall apart without the soul.
Aristotelian concepts of pneuma were based upon the medical theories of authors such as Alcmaeon of Croton (ca. 500-450 BC), Empedocles (ca. 450 BC) and Hippocrates (460-377 BC). After Aristotle, the idea that spiritual processes can be explained physiologically was further developed by the Stoics, and in particular by Zeno of Citium (333-264 BC). The theory of pneuma is central to the analogical worldview which provided a foundation for the magic of late antiquity. For the Stoics, the pneuma permeates the entire body and governs its activities. The “governing power” (hegemonikon) resides in the heart; there it receives the pneumatic currents from all the senses and converts them into phantasmata that can be understood by the intellect. The hegemonikon organizes the information it receives, and produces impressions in the human soul.
According to Couliano the phantasm has primacy over the word because in terms of classical theory, the soul dominates the body; accordingly, thinking precedes language. It follows that, next to a grammar of spoken language, there must exist a grammar of thought independent of language. Only the intellect is capable of understanding this “phantastic grammar”. The attempt to understand this grammar and thus gain access to the hidden powers of the soul would become basic, Couliano concludes, to ‘all the phantasmic processes of the Renaissance: Eros, the Art of Memory, theoretical magic, alchemy, and practical magic’ (1987, 6).

b. Galenism

Galenus (129-ca. 201), court physician of Marcus Aurelius, further develops the aristotelian approach. According to him, the power of perception is not located in the heart but in the brain. The brain functions consist of perception, movement and the hegemonikon. The latter is threefold, consisting of a phantastic part (phantastikon), a rational part (dianoetikon) and the memory (mnemoneutikon) (De symptomatum differentiis, 3). All these brain functions make use of the “spirits” or pneuma psychikon as their instrument (De locis affectis, III, 9; note that whereas the pneuma psychikon is located in the brain, Galenus distinguishes it from the vital pneuma, located in the left ventricle of the heart. He believes that through the arteries there flows a mixture of blood and pneuma).
For Galenus, the phantasia seems to have a function similar to that in Aristotle: it enables the soul to store sensory impressions, and it contains mental images. Like other bodily functions, the phantasia is subject to physical disturbances, which in Galenus' theory are almost invariably linked to a disbalance of the bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, and red and black bile. A surplus of black bile, or melancholy, leads to a cold and dry spirit and may cause the imagination to degenerate into hallucinations (De locis affectis, III, 10).
Galenus' threefold hegemonikon was adopted by later authors, and located in the brain ventricles. Thus the Syrian bishop Nemesius of Emesa (4th century CE) writes in his De natura hominis that the phantastikon is located in the brain's front part, the dianoetikon in the middle, and the mnemoneutikon in the back. This theory was adopted by Johannes Damascenus (670-ca. 753 CE) in his De fide orthodoxa, and by early Arabic medical authors.

c. Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism assigned a much more important role to the imagination than the Aristotelian and Galenist currents. According to Plotinus, at birth the human soul descends from the intelligible world, that consists of the so-called “three first principles” or hypostases: the One, the Intellect (Nous) and the (World-)Soul (Psyche). All the individual human souls emanate from the Nous in order to unite with the lower material world. In death, but also in states of contemplation during life, they can return to the splendour of the intelligible world. Note, however, that according to Plotinus a small part of the human soul always remains in the intelligible world (Enn. IV.8.8.1-4; IV.3.12.1-5; I.1).
In Plotinus, the soul's functions are intellect (dianoia), reason (nous) and the imagination (note that the distinction between reason and intellect is obscured by the fact that sometimes Plotinus uses the word nous for both, next to the already mentioned hypostasis Nous [Blumenthal 1996, 91]). The lower part of the imagination deals with sensory perception, and is sometimes referred to as “nature” (physis); the higher part of the imagination consists of the phantastikon. All these functions of the soul are located in the brain, the phantastikon being the connecting link between the lower and higher part of the soul. On the one hand it is connected with thinking, but it belongs to the lower part of the soul and cannot be separated from matter, the experiences of the body and the humors that influence the body. The soul as a whole again plays a mediating role between the higher and the lower world.
Although Plotinus speaks of “parts” of the soul, he repeatedly emphasizes its essential unity. According to him, man must submit his imagination to the intellect in order to escape the lures of the body. For only if the imagination is held in check, will the soul be able to leave the material world behind and ascend to the intelligible world.
There is a peculiar ambiguity in Plotinus' descriptions of the soul, which has its background's in Plato. In the Phaedo we find the idea that the soul resides in the body as though in a prison, and is liberated from it at death (Phaedo 63-69, 81a); a similar idea is also found in the Phaedrus. But later, in the Timaeus, Plato is much more positive about the material world, which has been carefully built by the demiurge, in imitation of a prototype in his own spirit (Timaeus 29-30). Accordingly, in Plotinus one may find passages according to which the soul is dragged down by matter, as well as others according to which the soul moulds formless matter into a splendid reflection of the higher world.
The Neoplatonists who followed in Plotinus' footsteps developed theurgical practices in order to restore the contact between man and the divine, and here the phantasia played an important role. Iamblichus and Proclus identify the “phantastic pneuma” of the Aristotelian and Galenist tradition with the ethereal body or ochêma, the subtle substance that according to Neoplatonic metaphysics surrounds the soul. Because the ethereal body has a subtle material nature, the phantasia that resides in it can react to sensory impressions such as smells, vapours and sounds; accordingly it can be influenced by ritual practices that involve e.g. fasting, incense and spoken formulas. As part of the ethereal body, the phantasia continues to exist after the death of the material body.
In De insomniis of the bishop Synesius of Cyrene (ca. 373-ca. 414) the imagination gains cosmic importance: even prior to incarnation it has the capacity of storing information that derives from the planetary spheres and the metaphysical realm. Dreams, visions, prophecies and other functions of the phantasia are given a key role in philosophical discussion and religious practice. Generally speaking, the Neoplatonists believed that the imagination, being part of the ethereal body, can be influenced by smells, vapours and sounds; these are also capable of attracting powers from the world soul. Plotinus also speaks about attracting the world soul by means of statues, which like a mirror can receive its image (Enn. IV, 3, 11). This idea was transmitted by several important Arabic thinkers, and it has also influenced Renaissance philosphers like Ficino. Thus the imagination came to play a functional role in magical practice.

2. Medieval Theories

a. Arabic Thinkers

The works of Aristotle, Galen and the Neoplatonists were translated into Arabic, and from the 9th century onwards philosophy and the sciences were flourishing in the Islamic world. This created a fertile context for further theories about the imagination and the faculties of the soul.
In → al-Kindi's theory of rays, the imagination plays an important role in explaining magical effects. According to al-Kindi every thing in the machina mundana has a center that, like the stars, sends out rays. The human imagination also sends out such rays, by means of which it can imprint forms into matter; as a result, man is able to exert a strong influence on matter.
According to → Avicenna, as well, the soul has significant power over matter, which is subject to it. The soul, if properly cleansed of bodily impurities, can function like a mirror that receives the astral powers and reflect them on to the environment. Whatever is present in the imagination, it can transmit to matter, thereby becoming a dator formarum. By virtue of the imagination, the soul can also cure illnesses or produce rain and fertility, as well as natural disasters or epidemics. The magus can use the powers of the soul to act at distance, thus becoming like an earthly god. All this is possible because the soul is related to the formative principles. Avicenna also adopts Aristotelian theories about the powers of the soul, and orders them within a comprehensive hierarchy. Parallel to the five senses of exterior perception, there are five inner senses: the sensus communis (common sense), the imaginatio (which contains images), the phantasia (which combines them), the vis aestimativa (which judges them) and the memoria (which remembers them). These five functions are located in the three parts of the brain, which is reminiscent of Galen.
Al-Ghazali (ca. 1059-1111) likewise discusses the far-reaching powers of the soul, which is ontologically superior to matter and can imprint forms onto it at will. Just like the astral powers influence the sublunar sphere, the soul can influence the material world. The magus would even be able, or so he claims, to force a camel into a turkish bath. Like other Arabic thinkers, he considers several options to account for these powers of the soul: they might be mediated by vapours, particles, spirits, or rays. Al-Ghazali considers that the imagination is put into action by means of fascinatio, which has a power of enchantment like love, and works by means of sympathy and antipathy. The lover seeks to enchant the beloved by whispering sweet words, and the magus works similarly, transmitting by way of his eyes the particles by means of which he submits a weaker mind to his own. Al-Ghazali believes that by means of fascinatio one can disturb another person's mind, and even kill him (something which, by the way, was emphatically denied by → Albertus Magnus). The magical imagination has its place within a “holistic” universe in which influences can move into all directions, whereas the scholastic worldview recognized only an influence of the higher over the lower.
According to Rahman (1964, 168-169), some Arabic thinkers assigned to the imagination an ontological status much more important than what is found in the classical Neoplatonists. For example, Porphyry described how after death the soul leaves the body by means of the ochêma, which eventually is left behind as well. Avicenna, however, believed that the soul takes the imaginatio with it; it is by means of the imagination that the soul can experience the pains of hell or the state of heavenly bliss. These pains and pleasures are both real and unreal, in a manner comparable to dreams. Al-Suhrawardi (1154-1191) discussed the “realm of suspended images” as a world in between the material and the spiritual, where the soul after death experiences the quasi-physical pleasures of paradise or the pains of hell. The imagination here takes over the role of sensory experiences. Moreover, images from this realm can manifest themselves in the material world as demons or devils.
Finally, the powers of the soul are also discussed in the famous Picatrix (Ghayat al-Hakim fi'l-sihr). It claims that man has not only a vegetative and an animal soul, but also a “logical soul” that distinguishes him from other creatures (III, 6). The logical soul produces the arts (artes), makes what is absent present in thought, and creates images, such as those seen in dreams. The Picatrix also presents the pneuma as a magical force, referring in that regard to such authorities as → Hermes Trismegistus, and applying it to subjects such as talismans; as is well known, such elements have influenced the thinking of Marsilio Ficino.

b. Latin Authors

From the end of the 11th century, the major Greek and Arabic works were translated into Latin; and there was a revival of philosophical discussion about the soul and its faculties. Two main periods may be distinguished: one from ca. 1100-1220, largely dominated by Christian Neoplatonism, and one from 1220 on, when Aristotelianism gained the upper hand.
The most influential work on the soul and the imagination from the first period is the Liber de spiritu et anima, ascribed to Alcher of Clairvaux. It is a collection of various Christian thinkers, including → Augustine (354-430), Alcuinus (ca. 732-804) and Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141), but Alcher also appears to be familiar with Plotinus. The soul's ascent and liberation from the material world is presented as the goal that gives meaning to human life; and this is described as a process of interior ascent through the realms of the soul. Along the lines of Boethius (ca. 480-ca. 525), the powers of the soul are presented as sensory perception, imagination, reason, and intellect. Again, the imagination here plays the role of mediator between the material world and the world of the intellect, thereby highlighting man's inner duality. In order to see God, the soul must separate itself from the imagination that binds it to matter; the result is a christianization of Neoplatonic theurgy, which has become an inner mystical ascent by means of contemplation. The Liber de spiritu et anima also contains Galenist elements, such as the notion that the imagination is subject to the bodily fluids. To give one example, it is claimed that the dreams of cholerics are different from those of melancholics.
During the second period, theories about the imagination take the form of commentaries on Aristotle's De anima. → Albertus Magnus provides discussions about the soul with an Aristotelian foundation, referring to authors like Avicenna. He adopts the latter's series of five inner senses (see above). The imaginatio makes it possible to perceive the qualities of an image if its original is absent, and it produces a reservoir of images that can be used for thinking, dreams and visions. The phantasia's function is to distinguish such images and re-combine them, thereby creating new images (e.g. that of a centaur). In terms of Aristotelian philosophy of nature, imaginatio is preferably “cold and hard”, because it must be able to solidly retain the forms (in this context the imagination is frequently compared with wax); phantasia, on the other hand, must be “warm and moist” so as to enable the images to flow into one another. Albertus also describes the location of these functions in the brain ventricles: the sensus communis and imaginatio are in the first ventricle, the phantasia and vis aestimativa in the second, and the memoria in the third. The connecting element is, again, the pneuma or spiritus, which flows from the last ventricle to the spinal sinews and thus mediates between the brain and the bodily movements. Due to this connection certain physical disturbances may cause hallucinations. Albertus's theory of the inner senses is dependent on classical as well as Arabic thinkers, and may also reflect the influence of Costa ben Luca's (864-923) De differentia animae et spiritus. Albertus's model was adopted inter alia by Thomas Aquinas (ca.1225 - 1274).
The imagination also influenced Franciscus of Assisi's theory about the stigmata, as reflected in particular by Jacobus of Voragine (ca. 1230-1298) and Thomas of Celano (ca. 1200-ca. 1255). Its concomitant physio-pathological theories spread beyond university circles and influenced literary theories about love, for example in Andreas Cappelanus (De amore, ca. 1185), Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung (Roman de la Rose, 1230-1275), and → Dante and the Dolce Stil Novo (ca. 1300). In these traditions we find the idea that a woman's phantasmata may take possession of her lover's pneumatic system. Complex games may be played with the relation between illusion and reality, and sometimes the literary work is presented as a dream.

3. The Renaissance Synthesis

Since the 15th century, new translations of ancient authorities and the discovery of previously unknown authors caused the theory of the imagination to develop into new directions. For example, the physician Niccola Tignosi da Foligno (1402-1474) used a new translation of Aristotle's De anima by Johannes Argyropoulos (1410-1487). He remarked that Aristotle in fact mentioned only three inner senses (sensus communis, imaginatio, memoria), since – contrary to Avicenna and Albertus Magnus – he considered the imaginatio, the phantasia and the vis aestimativa as one single function. This point was developed even more pronouncedly by his pupil → Marsilio Ficino, who builds upon Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, Galenist and medieval traditions, but whose ideas about the imagination constitute an important new phase of development. Due to Ficino's translations of Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum, → Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Iamblichus, Synesius and → Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, Neoplatonic notions came to play a dominant role in his concept of the soul. Ficino discusses the imagination particularly in his Theologia Platonica XIII, his commentaries on Priscianus Lydus and on Plato's Phaedrus, and his De vita coelitus comparanda. A certain ambivalence about the soul and the imagination that we already found in Plotinus can be encountered in Ficino as well.
Ficino's less than positive opinions about the imagination are particularly clear in his Theologia Platonica and his commentary on the Phaedrus. In the former, Ficino adopts Boethius' powers of the soul (sensory perception, imagination, reason, intellect) and associates them with the steps by means of which the soul can gradually elevate itself to the divine world (see e.g. Theol. Plat. XVI, 3). He describes an eternal process of descent and ascent, in which light moves downward from the divine world down to the world of matter and the soul reversely moves upwards to reunite with the divine light. As emphasized by Michael Allen (1984, 61), this ascent of the soul is primarily a spiritual and internal one. The highest part of the human soul is the intellect, which directly reflects the divine light like a mirror; in relation to it, reason and imagination are like shadows of the intellect. Referring to the Phaedrus' famous image of the soul's chariot, Ficino compared the imagination with the bad horse.
However, the imagination and the senses also have more positive functions in Ficino's thought. Since man is created after God's image, his soul contains the images of the basic principles or ideas after which the world has been created. Knowledge of these ideas is therefore potentially present in the soul, and can be actualized by the experience of sensual beauty, as a result of which the soul remembers the beauty of the divine ideas. Thus it is by means of the senses and the imagination that man is reminded of his divine origin. Furthermore, the soul may ascend by means of the so-called furores (frenzies): states of ecstasy particularly associated with melancholics, whose high concentration of black bile in the body amplifies their faculty of imagination. Ficino's De vita coelitus comparanda (written shortly after his translation of Synesius, who among the Neoplatonists attaches most importance to the power of the imagination) describes how one may attract the astral powers by means of smells, vapours, sounds, and images. If, in such contexts, one merely relies on the → correspondences between materials and their astral counterparts, the effect is less strong than if one adds the power of the imagination. Furthermore, Ficino describes the beneficent effect of making and contemplating an imago mundi: an image of the universe. As suggested by Frances A. Yates, such passages may reflect the influence of the Corpus Hermeticum, particularly C.H. XI, 18-22, which describes how one should imagine oneself to be present in the entire universe; and she also brings them in connection with the classical art of memory [→ Mnemonics].
Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola's (1469-1533) De imaginatione is largely Aristotelian, and strongly influenced by Savonarola (1452-1498). In the context of a strongly ascetic type of personal piety, it emphasizes that without divine grace and revelation the human mind is incapable of gaining access to religious truth. Like Ficino, Gianfrancesco Pico adopts Boethius' four powers of the soul, with the imagination as the connecting link between corporeal and incorporeal realities. Because the imagination connects the soul with matter, it can be seen as “the human faculty as such”: it may be used for good as well as for evil (cf. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's similar emphasis on man as located in the centre of creation, and free to direct himself upwards to the divine or move downwards to the level of beasts). Gianfrancesco Pico was the first to call attention to the shift of meaning that had taken place from the Greek phantasia, literally meaning “sense impression”, to the Latin translation imaginatio, which refers rather to a faculty of the soul. Like Ficino, Gianfrancesco Pico tends to unite all the inner senses under the heading of “imaginatio”. Our imagination depends on the bodily temperaments, on our perceptions of things, on our faculty of judgment, and on the influence of demons or angels. As regards our faculty of judgment, we can and should allow it to be led by our intellect (dianoia) and our reason (nous). With reference to the Enchiridion of the Stoic author Epictetus (then recently translated from the Greek by Angelo Poliziano [1454-1493]), Gianfrancesco describes how these functions can be used against the irrationality of the imagination. It is through the intellect that man can have access to the angels and pure spirits who serve God.
Gianfrancesco Pico's De imaginatione was translated into French by Jean-Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589), member of the Pléiade and one of the founders of the Académie de poesie et de musique. Influenced by Ficino, the main goal of this academy was to use → music so as to have a beneficent effect on the moral and emotional faculties of the listener. Music could do this by means of the imagination. Ficino had already discussed the imagination in relation with music and poetry; and indeed, already in late antiquity connections with the arts had been drawn by e.g. Quintilianus and Philostratus (ca. 171-ca. 247), who were much read in 15th-century humanist circles. Connections between the imagination and the visual arts began to be drawn in 15th-century Italian art theory, notably with Filarete (ca. 1400-1469) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who discussed the imagination as an “inner sense”. From the 16th century on, the imagination became a topic in art-theoretical treatises by authors such as Gian Paolo Lomazzo (1538-1600) and Federico Zuccari (1540-1609). Simultaneously, of course, it played a prominent role in the new tradition of Renaissance magic that developed in the wake of Ficino, with → Cornelius Agrippa's De occulta philosophia (esp. I, 61-68; III, 43) as a particularly prominent example. In all the authors associated with this trend, traditional notions of the imagination are routinely described as an obvious part of what magia naturalis is all about; but with the notably exception of a new tradition started by → Paracelsus (see below), no important innovations seem to have taken place on the theoretical level.
Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola must also be mentioned as an important early representative of the “anti-hermetic reaction” that developed during the 16th century in reaction to the new popularity of magia naturalis, and that questioned the alleged “transitive” powers of the imagination (i.e., its ability to influence the external world). Pico's De rerum praenotione (1506-1507) contains a general attack on the magical tradition, with an entire chapter devoted to al-Kindi's theory, and his Strix, sive de ludificatione daemonum (1523) addresses the → witchcraft controversy with frequent references to the imagination. Another crucial author in this context, the protestant Thomas Erastus (1524-1583), strongly refuted belief in the transitive powers of the imagination in the first volume of his Disputationes de medicina nova Paracelsi (1571). Alain Godet (1982, 49) emphasizes the political implications: if the natural faculty of the imagination was not capable of influencing the outside world, the magical powers that witches were believed to possess could only be explained by help from the devil. Refutations of magia naturalis in the Ficinian tradition could therefore function as legitimation for the witchcraft persecutions. The essentials of Erastus' criticism of the imagination were repeated by a whole series of later Protestant authors, such as e.g. Georg Gödelmann (Tractatus de Magis, Veneficis et Lamiis…, 1591) or Otto Casmann (Angelographia, 1597); but the transitive powers of the imagination are also rejected by authors in the Roman Catholic camp, such as e.g. Martin del Rio (Disquisitiones magicae [1599-1600], I, 3) and, perhaps surprisingly, → Tommaso Campanella (De sensu rerum et magia [1620], IV, 2).

4. The Creative Imagination

The authors discussed so far typically belonged to highly educated intellectual elites, and developed their theories by means of the essentially conservative method of exegetical commentary on earlier authorities. This changes with the visionary rather than exegetical and erudite discourse initiated by Paracelsus, who lay the foundations of what might be called the “creative imagination”. Although traditional perceptions of Paracelsus as a wholly independent creative genius are untenable (and reflective of Third Reich ideologies: Paracelsus as the quintessentially Germanic hero, the “Luther of medicine” uninfluenced by Galenic, Arabic, or, most of all, Jewish traditions), he is nevertheless at the origin of an innovative discourse of the imagination that can be traced through Christian theosophical authors up to German → Romanticism and beyond. Clearly indebted to Florentine (neo)platonism and the occult philosophies that emanated from it, Paracelsus did inherit the full range of traditional notions of the imagination considered as a cognitive faculty of the soul or as a power that could “magically” influence one's own body or the external world, and he abundantly used them in his medical work. He went beyond them, however, in presenting the imagination as not just a human faculty but a fundamental cosmic power of creation, crucially connected with will and desire. Using a strongly organic and sexualized language – replete with images of conception, generation, birth and incarnation – Paracelsus describes how the soul, spurned by desire, uses the power of the imagination to create images, which are, quite literally, the “bodily” incarnations of thought. As formulated by Alexandre Koyré (1971, 98): ‘The image is a body in which the thought and the will of the soul are incarnated. The soul that gives birth to thoughts, ideas, and desires, gives them an existence sui generis by means of the imagination’. It is likewise by means of the imagination that God's primal will or desire “magically” created – or rather, gave birth to – the world; and the creation of the macrosmic heaven is mirrored by that of the human microcosm: ‘…just like a human being builds earth according to his will and by means of his body, by means of his imagination he also builds heaven in his own Gestirn… the imagination is confirmed and completed by faith… Fantasy is not Imaginatio, but a cornerstone of fools…’ (Sudhoff ed., X, 474-475). The latter distinction would remain a staple of the imagination discourse in the following centuries: fantasy, according to Paracelsus, merely consists of unconnected images floating around in our mind, which may lead us astray but are devoid of inherent power. The imagination, in sharp contrast, is grounded in the very nature of being; focused and carried by the will, it is the magical power par excellence for which almost nothing is impossible.
This amplification of the imagination into a creative power of cosmic proportions, within an organic, sexualized and visionary (rather than exegetical) discourse, is abundantly present in a variety of later Paracelsian authors. For → Joan Baptista van Helmont, for example, the power of the imagination is central to all life processes (generation, birth, and the maintenance of organic life) as well as to the uniquely human power of bringing forth new creative ideas; and for Oswald Croll, it is due to his “vis imaginativa” that the human microcosm has unlimited power to work in the macrocosm (Godet 1982, 90-94). Typical for later paracelsian and related discourses is the strong emphasis on “incarnational” language, suggesting that by means of the imagination the human mind is capable of creating “entities” with a quasi-autonomous existence. Such a notion is, however, certainly not rooted in Paracelsus alone. For example, already Ficino suggested that by means of music one may create ‘a kind of airy and rational animal’ (De vita coelitus comparanda 21, 81-85; cf. Allen 1989, ch. 5); he could find support for such notions already in al-Kindi, who wrote that ‘when man, using his imagination, conceives of some corporeal thing, this thing acquires an actual existence according to the species in the imaginative spirit’ (De radiis V); and → Lazzarelli believed that the regenerated “new man” is capable of literally creating souls (Crater Hermetis 27.1ff). According to later authors such as e.g. Fabio Paolini, ‘feelings and conceptions of our souls can by the force of the imagination be rendered volatile and corporeal, so that, in accordance with their quality, they can be carried up to certain stars and planets [and] will come down again to us and will obey us in whatever we want’ (Hebdomades, 1589; see Walker 1958, 136). More research would be needed to trace the precise historical development of such notions, and to determine the relative importance of neoplatonic, kabbalistic and paracelsian notions.
The paracelsian combination of imagination with desire came to full development in → Jacob Boehme's cosmology. The “birth of God” as described by Boehme begins with the primal desire awakening in the Ungrund, that wants to know itself. First, it is by means of the imagination that the Ungrund conjures up the image of Wisdom (Sophia), as a mirror in which it can contemplate itself; and next, burning with desire to unite with that image, it takes possession of it and uses the creative power of the imagination to give it concrete form, thereby literally engendering and giving birth to “Eternal Nature” – the manifestation of God as a pleromatic body of light. While originally desire and imagination were inextricably linked, they became separated when the paradisical unity was broken and desire degenerated into what Boehme calls Begierde; as felicitously formulated by Faivre (2000, 106), ‘the original fall was nothing more than a perversion of desire by the imagination’.
Here we see clearly how, mediated by Paracelsus, the imagination has become, first and foremost, the theogonic and cosmogonic power of creation itself. Diametrically opposed to common present-day notions of “reality versus (mere) imagination”, the (divine) imagination and its products are the very essence of reality. This fundamental notion would, eventually, lead to the opposition typical of German Romanticism (paradigmatically in authors such as → Schubert or → Kerner) between “Nature” [Natur] and “Reality” [Wirklichkeit]: the former refers to the deeper spiritual being of the world, to which the human soul has access by means of the imagination, whereas the latter is a limited and artificial illusion created by the blindness of the merely rational mind. Thus the cold and hard light of reason causes reality to petrify into an impoverished caricature of its actual being; but this “daylight perspective” dominated by mere rationality is opposed against the “nightside of nature” (Crowe 1848) dominated by the soul and its deep imaginative powers, that awaken during our sleep and cause us to experience dreams, but are also evident in various “occult” phenomena considered anomalous from a rationalist perspective. The terms magia and imagination are considered etymologically related, as reflective of their profound interconnection in terms of an “enchanted world”. This Romantic perspective was the outcome of a long development, leading from the time of Boehme through the various representatives of → Christian theosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries, many of whom (e.g. → Jane Lead, → John Pordage or → Johann Georg Gichtel), were primarily visionaries who, one might say, are actually describing the contents and products of their own creative imagination. The theosophical discourse on the imagination was further developed by important 18th- and 19th-century theosophers such as → Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin and → Franz von Baader (see Faivre 2000, esp. 143-149), and continued beyond the Romantic period in various late- and postromantic forms, such as e.g. Baudelaire. The red thread in this complex historical development consists of an emphasis on the human faculty of imagination as safeguarding the possibility of overcoming the effects of the Fall – whether caused by Lucifer's rebellion or reflected in the hubris of mere human reason – and finding the way back to the reintegration with (and of) Eternal Nature, the body of God.

5. Developments in the 19th and 20th Centuries

In the wake of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the theme of the imagination has been taken up by a variety of authors, especially in the field of literature and literary criticism. It is as yet far from clear to what extent the ideas of e.g. Voltaire (who distinguished between the undisciplined “passive imagination” and the “active imagination” characteristic of genius), Diderot (who denied that the imagination has any creative powers), Coleridge (with his famous distinctions between the primary imagination, secondary imagination, and fancy – distinctions that are commonly, although incorrectly, assumed to have been invented by him), Wordsworth (who criticized Coleridge's distinction between imagination and fancy), and many others must be seen as re-enactments of positions derived from the traditions outlined above, or as relatively independent new departures. Generally speaking, scholars investigating such authors have tended to concentrate on how they reacted to well-known philosophical debates and authors, notably Hume and Kant. While the great importance of those backgrounds is not in any doubt, the relevance of pre-critical neoplatonic, paracelsian and theosophical traditions has traditionally been underestimated, and requires more research.
In the present context we will have to restrict ourselves to the role of the imagination specifically in esoteric and occultist contexts, but not before having emphasized that such a focus is mostly inspired by pragmatic considerations and is in fact artifical to a considerable degree: the boundaries between Western esotericism and the fields of art and literature in the 19th and 20th centuries are often vague and shifting (with a figure such as → William Blake, in whose personal mythology the imagination is personified by the entity Los and associated with Christ, participating equally in all three domains), and the frequent phenomenon of a migration of ideas and discursive transfers occurring between these various domains is of particular relevance and importance.
The status and powers of the imagination played an important role in the debate around mesmerism [→ Animal Magnetism / Mesmerism] investigated by a French committee in 1784. As explained by Méheust (1999, I, 322-328, 333), the committee members found themselves faced with a dilemma. They rejected Mesmer's notion of an invisible “fluid”, and hence found themselves incapable of explaining the spectacular paranormal and healing phenomena claimed by him, other than as products of “the imagination”, a term that had obviously negative connotations from their Enlightenment perspective; but ironically, in doing so they ended up attributing to the imagination powers that, from that same perspective, it was not supposed to have. They thus opened up a “pandora's box” that made it possible for some mesmerists – referred to as the “imaginationist” current – to argue that the magnetizer's will had the effect of liberating the powers of the patient's imagination, which were considered capable of completely re-organizing his/her psycho-organic system (Méheust 1999, I, 138, 330-334).
The close connections that had been drawn, ever since Paracelsus, between the “imagination” and the “will” – the latter being the active agent by means of which the former's formative and creative powers are focused and concentrated – were taken up and further developed in the context of the mesmerist discourse. This combination came to play a central role in the magical theory of → Éliphas Lévi, whose debt to mesmerism can scarcely be overestimated. According to Lévi, the universe is permeated by an “astral light” (clearly modeled after Mesmer's invisible fluid, but also strongly influenced by Paracelsus, to whom he often refers in this connection), and it is by means of the imagination coupled with the will that one can establish contact with this hidden dimension of reality. It was only a small step, but an important one, to see this hidden and mysterious but universally present “astral light” not only as an invisible “life force” or psycho-physical agent of mediation (similar to Ficino's “spiritus”), but associate it with the actual experiential realities to which the imagination gives us access, for example in visions and dreams. Reasoning along those lines, occultist authors came to draw the conclusion that this “world of the imagination” is – like the “nightside of nature” of the German Romantics – superior to and, therefore, somehow more “real” than the mere three-dimensional world of the five senses. The “disenchanted” world of the post-Kantian rationalist, subject to the restrictions of time and space, is more illusionary than the world of the imagination, in which those limitations no longer obtain. Thus the stage was set for the concept, central to all forms of 19th and 20th-century occultism, of a “magical plane” parallel to the every-day world.
A central role in this regard was played by the → Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, one of whose most important practices focused on attaining “spirit vision” by means of “astral projection”. According to the Golden Dawn teachings, specific occult and ritual techniques make it possible to project one's spirit out of the “sphere of sensation” and into the “astral plane” of the reified imagination; and essentially the same approach has become a standard element of occultist magic in the 20th century. As pointed out by its most profound analyst, Tanya Luhrmann, the concept of a “separate-but-connected” magical plane, existing on a different level of reality parallel to the world of the senses, is crucial for understanding how contemporary magicians legitimate magic in a disenchanted world. Its function ‘lies in keeping unhappy bedfellows apart’ (Luhrmann 1989, 276) and allowing the magician to “live in two worlds” while avoiding cognitive dissonance: the rules that apply in the disenchanted world of the senses simply do not apply in the world of the imagination, and the reverse (cf. Hanegraaff 2003). Moreover, since there is no meta-level with rules that apply to both levels, there is no basis for denying the world of the imagination a “reality” at least equal to that of the world of the senses.
The imagination also plays an important role in various other 20th-century forms of esotericism, but all of them seem to be individual variations on the basic approaches that emerged from the 19th-century Romantic, mesmerist and occultist contexts, and their “para-paracelsian” and Christian-theosophical backgrounds. One example is → Carl Gustav Jung's concept of the “active imagination”, which plays an important role in his psychotherapeutic system. Another is → Rudolf Steiner's system for “attaining knowledge of higher worlds”, where the imagination is the lowest in a series of three spiritual faculties (followed by inspiration and intuition). And finally, → Henry Corbin – with primary reference to Islamic esotericism, especially Ibn ʿArabi (Corbin 1969) – introduced a theory that has become highly influential not only in various esoteric currents, but has also left its mark on scholars of Western esotericism of a “religionist” orientation. The imagination, according to Corbin, is both a means of knowledge and a modality of being, and as such it constitutes a mundus imaginalis, a “mesocosm” or intermediary reality between the intelligible sphere and the realm of the senses. Corbin coined the term “imaginal” to distinguish his concept from the merely “imaginary” (yet another variation on Paracelsus' and Coleridge's distinction between fantasy and imagination), but its ontological status is predictably ambiguous: the imaginal is neither a place nor a non-place, but although Corbin insists on its “reality”, he remains elusive in referring to it by terms such as ‘le pays du non-où’ (the land of no-where; see Berger 1986, 146). To what extent Corbin's mundus imaginalis is indebted to the currents outlined above is a question that would require further investigation. In any case, as formulated by Steven M. Wasserstrom (1999, 148), the ‘emphasis on the reality of the imagination's objects has made Corbin a favorite of theorists of poetics for decades, culminating in his preeminent influence on James Hillman's post-Jungian archetypal psychology’. By such channels, the Corbinian imagination entered various “counter-cultural” and even → New Age discourses in the wake of the famous Eranos meetings; as such, it continues to influence popular perceptions of Western esotericism.