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GYÖRGY E. SZÖNYI to attain such a state in order fully to understand Gods plan for creation. His role model was the biblical patriarch Enoch, who according to some canonized loci but discussed extensively in the apocryphal Books of Enoch was elevated to God in his lifetime and was privileged to talk face to face with the Creator.’ While analysing Dee’s esoteric practice I introduced the term exaltatio to denote a program to attain epiphanic ecstasy and offered a definition of it which I explain here. The term exaltatio was rather exceptional in Classical and Humanist Latin. The sense in which I use it, however, can be found in Latin dictionaries. The great Teubner, for example, lists meanings such as “mystical elevation” and “change of status or condition the opposite of which is humility.” So it can be an esoteric experience which results in the (transcendental) elevation of the subject, a spiritual equivalent to promotion in rank in the social world. However, like most signs that have symbolic connotations, the term also includes negative meanings (in malam partem). It may stand for superbia or elatio, i.e. “pride” and “conceit.” Allthese meanings play an important role in the concept of magical exaltatio.* Passive as opposed to active elevation on the one hand, assertive enthusiasm as opposed to conceitful delusion on the other all contribute to the complicated cultural history of occult aspirations which are in close connection with the initiation into the mysteries. I examine these concepts, drawing on the example of two Italian Humanists from the time of the Renaissance, Lodovico Lazzarelli and Giovanni da Correggio. Both were esoterically and hermetically minded Neoplatonists, like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, but they are not as well-known, in spite of the fact that Lazzarelli’s works in particular are no less intriguing than the writings of his great contemporaries. In the following I briefly introduce the ideas of these two eccentric early modern intellectuals and analyse some details of Lazzarelli’s main work, the Crater Hermetis. ! Some works on ecstatic epiphany: Proclus, On the Signs of Divine Possession (in lamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1989, 150); Gombrich, Symbolic Images (1975); Wind, Pagan Mysteries (1968). On Enoch: VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (1984) and also his Enoch, A Man for All Generations (1995); critical English edition of the three Books of Enoch: Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (1983); on Enoch in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Szönyi, The Reincarnations of Enoch... (2011). ? See my John Dee’s Occultism (2004), Introduction. + 140 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 140 6 2020. 06.15. 11:04:17
