 The intellectual biography of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535) provides us with significant proof of a cultural crisis in the Renaissance. The most striking aspect of his heritage is the seemingly paradoxical coexistence of a comprehensive treatise on magic and occult arts, De occulta philosophia libri tres (Three Books on Occult Philosophy), written in 1510, but then reworked, substantially enlarged, and finally published in 1533, and a rigorous refutation of all products of human reason, De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum et artium atque excellentia verbi Dei declamatio invectiva (On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Arts and Sciences: An Invective Declamation), printed in 1530. Esoteric literature and inquisitorial handbooks invariably quoted Agrippa, the celebrated (or execrated) Archimagus; bibliographies on skepticism granted him a long lasting, but not entirely deserved, reputation as one “who professed to overturn all the science” (Naudé 1644: 44–45). Actually, both works, as well as all of Agrippa’s other writings, are clearly defined moments in a broader philosophical, religious, and moral meditation on the social significance of learning in his own time. The “paradox” with which Agrippa challenges his readers lies precisely in the simultaneous presence of two speculative concerns, which are scattered in different texts, but which express, in spite of their apparent inconsistency, a complex cultural and religious project. De vanitate performs the epistemological function of the pars destruens, identifying the causes and the historical responsibilities for the general spiritual wreckage of Christian society, and introducing the proposal contained in the pars construens. De occulta philosophia, recovering “true magic” in the framework of Neoplatonic metaphysics and Hermetic theology, offers humankind a wonder-working knowledge, one which is able to restore human cognitive and practical capacities.