Marsilio Ficino and Vatic Myth

This essay analyzes the relationship of charismatic authority to different kinds of remythicization in the work of Marsilio Ficino, using the theories of Max Weber and Hans Blumenberg as background. Ficino had unorthodox views on poetry and rejected the human component of composition, reducing even the vatic poet to a mere instrument of divine will. Paradoxically, however, Ficino manipulated the myths of the prisci poetae and the furor poeticus, along with the myth of Orpheus, in creating his own personal charismatic agency among the members of his inner circle of Neoplatonists. The essay discusses Ficino's means of reconciling this paradox, drawing on such texts as the De amore, the De divino furore, and the Platonic Theology.