Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

Bruno was one of the most original and colorful thinkers of the Renaissance. The Inquisition considered him a dangerous heretic, and had him burned at the stake in 1600.

The Italian philosopher and mage Giordano Bruno was born in Nola, near Naples, in 1548. He became a Dominican friar in 1563, but was forced to leave the order after accusations of heresy in 1576. From 1576 to 1585 lived in Paris where his book De Umbris Idearum, “the Shadows of Ideas” published in 1582 and lectures on the Art of Memory attracted the attention of the French King Henry III. Bruno took the ars memoria or Art of Memory, a classical technique of mnemonic coding using the measured placement of visual images to new heights exploiting its philosophical and magical possibilities. Here is a translation by Nigel Jackson of forty nine of Bruno’s planetary images from De Umbris Idearum.

From 1583 to 1585 he lived under the protection of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. While in England he published a number of works including Cena de le Ceneri, “The Ash Wednesday Supper”, Spaccio della bestia trinofante, “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” and De l’Infinito, Universo e Mondi, “On the Infinite Universe and Worlds”. The latter work and his support of a Copernican heliocentric astronomy earned Bruno an entirely undeserved reputation as an early “scientist” and “modern” thinker. In fact, Bruno was clearly a figure of the late medieval and Renaissance, a mage who sought what he saw as the restoration of the true religion, that of Egyptian Hermeticism.

Bruno lived and lectured throughout Germany from 1586 to 1591 when he made the mistake of going to Venice where he was arrested by the Inquisition. After initially recanting his views, after being sent to Rome he abjured his recantation and was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600.

A number of Bruno’s works are available on-line at Jonathan Peterson’s excellent web site, Esoteric Archives though many are in Latin. The Ash Wednesday Supper and the Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast are available in English translation as is “On Magic” and “A General Account of Bonding” which appear in Cause, Principle and Unity edited by Blackwell and De Lucca (Cambridge, 1998). Two excellent secondary sources on Bruno are Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Yates (Chicago, 1964) and Eros and Magic in the Renaissance by Ioan Coulianu (Chicago, 1987).

Bruno’s magic can be considered under two basic categories, that of memory and phantasmic images and that of bonding or enchaining. Bruno has been described as an artist of memory and in his forty nine planetary images we can see his poetic skill at visual description. The scenes described by Bruno are often full of action and are a focused and detailed evocation of the various planetary natures. These visual images are meant to penetrate into the pneuma, the spirit or astral body. There reflected in the mirror of the spiritus they can be apprehended by the soul and the knowledge and wisdom contained in them accepted by it. Bruno emphasizes the importance of the creation of bonds or chains, called vincula in magic. Of these the Erotic bond is supreme. Vinculum quippe vinculorum amor est or “Love is the bond of bonds”.

“All affections and bonds of the will are reduced to two, namely aversion and desire, or hatred and love. Yet hatred itself is reduced to love, whence it follows that the will’s only bond is Eros.”

Giordano Bruno, Theses de Magia, Vol. LVI quoted in Coulianu, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago, 1987) page 91.

Bruno goes on to say that, “There are three gates through which the hunter of souls [animarum venator] ventures to bind: vision, hearing and mind or imagination. If it happens that someone passes through all three of these gates, he binds most powerfully and ties down most tightly.”

“A General Account of Bonding” from Cause, Principle and Unity, ed. Blackwell & Lucca (Cambridge, 1997) page 155.

We can see the importance of this to the creation and consecration of our astrological images,  “He who enters through the gate of hearing is armed with his voice and with speech, the son of voice. He who enters through the gate of vision is armed with suitable forms, gestures, motions and figures. He who enters through the gate of the imagination, mind and reason is armed with customs and the arts.”

“A General Account of Bonding” from Cause, Principle and Unity, ed. Blackwell & Lucca (Cambridge, 1997) page 155.
Thus images are magical, not only in their ability to communicate with the soul, but also in their use by the magician in the creation of the vincula or chains that are indispensible to this art.

Here are two examples of actual talismans and elections for their construction that rely on Bruno’s planetary images, a Venus talisman and a Sun talisman. Here is a Jupiter image created by Nigel Jackson using Bruno’s planetary description.

Some works

• De Umbris Idearum (‘The Shadow of Ideas’) (1582) (Latin)
• Ars Memoriae (‘The Art of Memory’) (1582) (Latin)
• Cantus Circaeus (“Incantations of Circe”) (1582) (Latin)
• Ars Reminiscendi — Triginta Sigilli (1583) (Latin)
• Explicatio triginti sigillorum (1583) (Latin)
• The Heroic Frenzies (English)
• De Magia (Latin)
• Theses De Magia (Latin)
• Magia Mathematica (Latin)
• De vinculis in genere (Latin)
• De Imaginum Compositione (Book I, Latin)

Books in print

• The Ash Wednesday Supper
• The Cabala of Pegasus
• Cause, Principle, and Unity, ed. Blackwell et al.
• Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast