A magus in context

I bought this book from Amazon almost exactly eight years ago. Now I'm finally ready to review it…

Giordano Bruno hopefully doesn't need a detailed introduction. Most people know (or should know) that Bruno was an Italian freethinker who was imprisoned, tried and executed at the Inquisition's orders in AD 1600. More exactly, Bruno was publicly burned alive in Rome. I heard about Giordano Bruno and his tragic fate already in high school (or perhaps even earlier). According to the standard textbooks, the Inquisition had Bruno executed due to his defense of heliocentrism and the infinite number of worlds. In other words, he was a martyr for science. However, one of our teachers explained that the heroic Italian had actually been a “pantheist” and executed for that reason. At the time, I had only the haziest idea what a “pantheist” might be…

“Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition” is a book originally published in 1964. Frances Yates was a historian who specialized in esoteric traditions. The Bruno book was one of her early attempts in the genre. Yates' most well known work is probably “The Rosicrucian Enlightenment”, first published in 1972. I'm not a scholarly expert on Bruno, and it's certainly possible that Yates' theories have been superseded on a number of points. She admits that some of her conclusions concerning the Italian freethinker are speculative, since all archives hadn't been mined for relevant material back in 1964. However, Yates' main thesis is surely correct: Giordano Bruno really was an esoteric mystic. Yates would have agreed with my high school teacher and in fact goes even further in her book…

Yates believes that Bruno was a militant advocate of Hermetism, an esoteric tradition rediscovered by Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino during the 15th century Renaissance. Hermetism (or Hermeticism) has similarities with Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism. The “Corpus Hermeticum”, a collection of ancient Hermetic writings promoted by Ficino, contains both philosophical, mystical and magical tractates. They are attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, who was supposedly a wise Egyptian priest-king. The Thrice-Great Hermes is a purely mythical character, but many enthusiastic readers of the Hermetic corpus assumed that he was a real historical figure, contemporary with or even earlier than Moses and Plato. Since the writings sometimes sound “Christian”, Hermes could be seen as a quasi-canonical prophet. It could also be interpreted to mean that the ancient Egyptian religion in its pristine purity foreshadowed Christianity. Ficino, at least outwardly, attempted to harmonize Platonism, Neo-Platonism and Hermetism with Christianity. This wasn't always easy, since the “Corpus Hermeticum” contained texts on magic, astrology and idols. The Catholic Church condemned all three. Ficino's friend and associate, Pico della Mirandola, tried to square the circle by combining Hermetism with a Christianized version of the Cabala, originally a Jewish esoteric tradition. However, this wasn't always easy either, since the Cabala included advanced ritual magic directed at communication with “angels” (which critics could easily reinterpret as demons). Indeed, the influential 16th century Hermetist and Cabalist Cornelius Agrippa was accused of conjuring demons despite the “Christian” character of his books on occultism. Agrippa could be seen as a successor to Ficino and Pico.

By contrast, Bruno seems to have “bit the bullet” and preached a de-Christianized version of Hermetism, which was frankly magical and mystical in character. He did away with the Cabala as a metaphysical system, but he kept the “demons” (or daemons) as part of his magic. Metaphysically, Bruno was a kind of pantheist, believing that a world-soul animates all beings, including those that look “dead”. Through “the art of memory” (clearly not just a mnemonic technique, although it could be used that way, too), the mystic can drawn down the entire universe into his body and mind and thereby become one with the cosmos. This is apparently done through meditation on various archetypal images associated with the constellations of the zodiac. As for heliocentrism, Bruno believed that Copernicus didn't understand the true significance of his discovery. To Bruno, the idea that the Earth moves around the sun was a deep Hermetic truth. He connected the movement of the Earth with a kind of evolutionary perspective based on metempsychosis (the transmigration of souls).

Bruno, who seems to have been a somewhat erratic character prone to bouts of aggression, saw himself as a prophet or even Messiah figure with a mission to restore the pristine religion of ancient Egypt, destroyed by the official Church. He had a political mission, as well. The goal was reform and religious tolerance, and to this end Bruno tried to influence Protestant and moderate Catholic rulers. The enemy was Spain, with its militant Catholicism and imperialist ambitions. For a while, Bruno probably had the blessing of the French king Henry III, since he stayed at the French embassy during his visit to Elizabethan England. During another period of his life, Bruno lectured in Wittenberg! Even Bruno's fateful journey to Venice (where he was betrayed by his host and arrested by the Inquisition) had a certain logic, since many reformers apparently believed that the papacy could be swayed to adopt a Hermetic-inspired reform program (they were wrong). Bruno did eventually reach Rome, but in chains rather than triumphantly proclaiming the new eon before his holiness.

Curiously, another reformer was more successful than Bruno. His name was Tommaso Campanella, most known for his utopia “The City of the Sun”. Imprisoned in 1599 (the year before Bruno was burned at the stake) for his role in a failed revolt against Spanish rule in southern Italy, Campanella was pardoned by Pope Urban VIII in 1626, and became the Pope's intimate advisor in matters astrological and magical! He even carried out an elaborate magical ritual together with Urban in the Vatican. Somewhat later, Campanella found himself in France, where he expressed strong support for Cardinal Richelieu and hailed the birth of the Dauphin Louis, the future “Sun King” Louis XIV. Yates believes that Campanella was at bottom a Hermetist, that “The City of the Sun” is a Hermetist and pseudo-Egyptian utopia, and that the revolt in southern Italy was an attempt to set up a utopian state. In contrast to Bruno, however, Campanella was a real Christian. His project was to combine Catholic theology with a strong dose of Hermetism, while kicking out Aristotle from any theological synthesis.

As already indicated, “Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition” is a scholarly work. It's well written, but can nevertheless feel dragging if you're not interested in the subjects covered. Some Latin and Italian quotations aren't translated. More than half of the book isn't about Bruno, instead dealing with both earlier and later representatives of the Hermetic tradition. It also contains a lengthy summary of the Corpus Hermeticum itself. I'm not saying this is bad. Quite the contrary, the expositions on everyone from Ficino to Campanella are necessary to place Bruno in his proper context. Yates has also included shorter sections on Isaac Casaubon, who demonstrated that the Hermetic writings weren't as ancient as their admirers had supposed, and other opponents of Hermetism and magic. She also ventures the speculative guess that both Rosicrucians and Freemasons are heirs of Bruno's legacy, being descended (or identical?) with Bruno-inspired groups formed in Germany and England, respectively, after the Mage's visits to those countries. One subject *not* dealt with at length in this book is the mysterious “art of memory”, but don't worry, Yates later wrote an entire volume devoted to just that aspect of Giordano Bruno's hermetic tradition…

In the end, I give this book four stars. Incidentally, the peculiar figures on the book cover come from one of Bruno's works, titled “Against the Mathematicians”!