Giordano Bruno (1548-1600): Cosmic Orders in the Hermetic Tradition; Francesco Giorgi (1466-1540): Harmonia Mundi
Presented on: Thursday, December 15, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
Italian Renaissance
Presentation 11 of 13
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600): Cosmic Orders in the Hermetic Tradition; Francesco Giorgi (1466-1540): Harmonia Mundi
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, December 15, 1983
Transcript:
December 15, 1983, Roger Weir's lecture on Giordano Bruno who lived 1548 to 1600: Cosmic Orders in the Hermetic Tradition.
There is one more scheduled lecture after this in the series. Next week will be the culmination of the Italian Renaissance. And there are two figures that go together just as there are two that go together tonight. The two figures are Tommaso Campanella, who translated the last gasp of intelligence into a utopian scheme. Which influenced Sir Francis Bacon enormously. And Bacon's New Atlantis gains clarity by being seen in terms of The City of the Sun by Campanella. The other figure was Galileo, who was the last Renaissance figure.
Tonight, we plunge into a story and a scene which has repercussions for us still today. And is very difficult to talk about with comprehension. That is to say, the more comprehension one has the less able one is to sound coherent in outlining what happened. In fact, the whole quarter for January, February, and March of next year, which will be called The European El Dorado, its subtitled 1560 to 1660, The Century of a Golden Mystery of Man. And ostensibly the course will take the European reaction to the discovery of the new world. That's too simplistic. It's the European mind in its Renaissance formation colliding with the experiential field of the American Indian. Not as a savage or barbarian but as a sophisticated civilization. In many ways exceeding his own grasp of comprehension. It's a difficult course to give because all of the elements have not yet been sorted out. And they have been purposely blurred from the beginning.
I have not covered the major figure in any lecture so far because I still am unable to understand the complete story of his position. The major figure was Sir Walter Raleigh. Who for his efforts was imprisoned in the Tower of London by Elizabeth. She didn't kill him outright because she was hoping to get the whole story out of him before she killed him. Shakespeare was involved and kept a poignant anonymity throughout his life because he would have been killed. Sir Francis Bacon understanding the situation very well kept agilely out of the limelight as long as he could. Cervantes who understood a great deal wrote Don Quixote in prison. The figure that we're taking tonight, Giordano Bruno, was dragged naked to the stake and burned in 1600 for his part. John Dee was muffled ostensibly sent up to Manchester to keep track of a little community college of the Elizabethan time and then finally put into the limbo of a retirement home as they called it.
There are indications that the whole construct of the United States, the whole phenomenon of America, is completely bound up in this mystery. And the only thing I can say at this time is that the major political figure, Sir Walter Raleigh, was on the verge of setting up a power base in the new world using the American Indians as a constituency. And none of the European powers of papacy, the Queen of England, the German Princes, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, nobody in Europe wanted this to happen. Because a freed independent Renaissance mentality liberated in the new world with a power base not based upon the entanglements and the strings of European back-room finagling would have been intolerable. It would have signaled as it did finally signal when it happened in 1776 the end of European hegemony in the world. Not all at once but very quickly.
Many of you perhaps don't realize that as late as the Civil War, the English Prime Minister wanted very, very much to come in on the side of the Confederate States to break up the power base of the United States because it could be seen quite clearly by 1863 that the United States was a new phenomenon. It was not just a country but a new phenomenon. It was a new world organization of mankind. And for the last hundred and twenty years everything has been done to scramble the coherence of the unity of the Indian people and the immigrants from around the world come here to make a new kind of man.
Giordano Bruno was one of the first beacon lights in European thought to comprehend what this might mean in terms of man as a phenomenon. and in terms of a cosmology which would permit this to happen. So, it's very difficult to talk about this with comprehension. As you'll see they kept Bruno in prison in Venice, and then in Rome, for eight years hoping to get the story out of him and they never did.
We have traced in the course a rather complex story. One that does not fit with the Sunday School version of the Renaissance. It was not just a wonderful time when good pictures were made for the entertainment of the cultured few. We've seen how it was initiated by the colossal integrity and mystical vision of Dante. And how Dante's Divine Comedy is not taught. You are given parts of The Inferno to tell you that this is what is supposed to be great about this epic. It's a classic of world literature. In order to be content with thinking that it's so far beyond you to master the whole that isn't it wonderful you only have a test on Tuesday on two or three cantos of The Inferno. It is this kind of garbage that produces the automata of our times. Which is a populace of people unable to even comprehend the tensions of history. Wrangling like frayed nerve endings and the psyche of every intelligent and sensitive human being. It was poignantly true all along the line for those who are conceiving of this. And if Dante is to be remembered in one succinct image, it's not some craggy faced Italian walking through the flames of a symbolical, anagogical hell. It's one of the world's great visionaries standing at the core of a vision of paradise. And seeing through the mystical eye of the eagle of heaven, that man's place is to complete the journey in this phenomenal time-space. and he's going to have to be a hero, a mystical hero, to get through and do that. Which means he will have to knit back together all the strands of intelligence and excellence and put that pattern back together. Put that robe of symbols of comprehension back together and wear it. Because it's the only diadem that will allow him safe passage through. that's what the myths say.
The story tonight begins with Francesco Giorgi, who like Bruno was a major influence on the spread of the Italian Renaissance. The spread of the vision from Dante to Ficino and its maturation, it's filling in. The realization of what civilization was all about. What a fulsome human nature might be if it were expressed adequately. Francesco Giorgi is born about 1466 and he lives all the way to 1540. Because I want to spend a lot of time on the Bruno, there's a wonderful chapter on him in The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. It's right down there in that library. You can go down there, you can find it, it's chapter four. The author is very trustworthy. Dame Francis Yates, who passed away a few years ago, was an independent mind, a wonderful woman, a great scholar who was at the Warburg Institute in London and for about 50 years this tall, very full voice woman investigated a series of interlocking problems and the central figure through that interlocked problem was Giordano Bruno.
Now most of the information on Bruno was not known until the middle of the 19th century because it was locked up in the Vatican. And it was only with the Italian revolutions of 1848 that brought in Mazzini. And Mazzini opened the doors of the Vatican Library to secular scholars. He said go and find what you can and publish it. And finally in the 1860s the basic facts, the basic case of Giordano Bruno's incarceration came out. And through the eight years of gestapo-like interrogation, we can read the story of how Bruno was trying to educate the Inquisition heroically. Realizing that it was his task. He had already been a hermetic pilgrim across the face of Europe. Everywhere he could go. Some people who wrote biographies of him called him indiscreet. He spoke the truth at all costs. He was indiscreet, or they said he didn't understand human nature. As if someone with a comprehensive cosmological view that would still hold up today didn't understand human nature. The old saw that the intelligent person must be naïve. The old hack caught of sour grapes.
And Bruno was born in 1548 just two years before Giorgi died. And so, there's this slight overlap in the two lives. And there's an enormous overlap in the ways in which the books of these individuals influence, in particular, the Elizabethan Renaissance. They made the comprehension. They made the background of comprehension which permitted the emergence of such sophisticated forms as Hamlet and King Lear to come out. and acclaim a quality of human nature that had been invisible in the most ironic way because it had been ascribed only to divinity. Man could not have this capacity only the divine mystery has it therefore pray earnestly and ask few questions. but the truth is man needs to know because he can't take any more steps in ignorance.
Giorgi was from Venice. Almost everything that we've taken in the course has been from Florence. We haven't had time to move over to Venice to bring the Venetian story in. Perhaps sometimes we will.
For those who were in the hermetic science course you remember that Salomon Trismosin was in Venice in 1475. Giorgi was only nine years old. For those who have had the quote smattering of art history, you realized that Titian, one of the great Venetian artists, his capacity to portray human nature on the canvas; Giorgione another. So, the Venetians should be looked at.
Giorgi was a Kabbalistic friar. That as he was a Franciscan friar who had worked on the intuition of Pico della Mirandola. That the core of the Kabbalistic system was the esoteric Christianity that had been hidden by the doctrinaire authoritarian church structure since the 4th century AD.
And those that wish to follow some of that I gave two lectures on the orders of the secret tradition. One of them at the Beachwood Theosophical Lodge. And one of them here.
Because the 4th century AD was when the Christian Roman Empire troops went into Alexandria and destroyed the seraphim, burnt the library. It wasn't the Calif Omar who burned the library, it was the troops of Theodosius in 365 AD. And the destruction of the center of learning of the world at that time sent the whole tradition underground; Sent those who knew - the magi, the sages, out across Lake Mareotis bearing what few books they could. What few mnemonic codes they could carry and fled into the Natrium desert. Finally ended up along the Nile in monastic Christian communities under Saint Petronius.
And their secret code was the rosy cross. It is Saint Petronius who makes the visionary image of the red cross, the rosy cross. It is when that is passed to Constantine that he gets the vision. And putting that on his soldiers shields at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and ensured his mystical victory. Which was usurped by the interminable doctrinaire theological councils that packed away and ground up over a period of about three hundred years until there was nothing left of the Christian experience; There was nothing left of the old wisdom.
And when the Second Council of Nicaea decided in 737 - in the middle of the Dark Ages - that they had finally got some pablum that they could work with. They tried to feed this back into the first strongman that came along, Charlemagne, and reconstituted the whole empire all over again. And it happened again and again. And it happened in the 16th century.
So that by the time we get to the Italian Renaissance bringing back the old tradition. Because when they rediscovered the classical world, they didn't rediscover the fact that Horace's lyrics are very nicely set in the meter. What they discovered was the spiritual integrity of man was known. It was understood. it was the main tradition. And when this was resurfacing under Ficino, as long as he had an educated prince like Lorenzo to defend him all was well. As soon as Lorenzo was gone the ravens, those out of office and sensing they might not ever have power again. If man were free why you'd have to convince every single person individually to go your way. It's only when man is snow balled and packed tight that you can handle the mass by mob rule, that man is handleable at all.
So, Giorgi, one of the last of those on the surface to carry the Renaissance of Plutonian man in a Pythagorean universe, wrote a large book called the Harmonia Mundi, The Harmony of the World. The Harmonia Mundi was seized as soon as it could be. The copy that's in the British Museum still shows the warning by the censor on the cover. These are dangerous Platonistic doctrines and ideas. And every page has the crossed-out portions by the censor. There are seven lines left on this page that are not crossed out. But that wasn't enough. The books were burnt as soon as they could be found. The authors were burnt when they could be found. And it was hoped that the message would not come through. It's as if the Liberty Bell is always cracked. This sank down slowly because there was an underground operating.
There was the tremendous story that we've already told of Trithemius and Trismosin in making the occult underground, organizing it not in an organizational way, card-carrying members but in an occult way. They sent out a projection shadow figure, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and his publication De Occulta Philosophia was a ruse. It was one of these trial balloons that are sent out to decoy so that everybody attacks that. And the integrated, highly powerful material was put in Paracelsus' hands. And he made it so gnarled and dynamic that it took somebody committed to stay with it to learn it. You try and read Paracelsus the original. You have to really be committed. And then there were trained individuals who were the pilgrims, the hermits. who with cowl hood and staff in hand and their spirits intact made the long trek across the face of Europe. Holding it all together personally like the good shepherd should, tending their flocks by night. And Bruno was the best of them.
Bruno was born in the south of Italy near Naples in Nola. The golden fields of Nola. Nola is about 20 miles inland from Naples. And it's about ten miles south of Vesuvius. And when Bruno was a youngster, we know this because we can read it in the account in the Inquisition, when they were grilling him. They drew, they drew out. As people do when they're under a psychological stress, images and symbols of hope come up. Childhood images that change their character. They're no longer simply the accurate reportage of memory but they are infused with a golden promise. One of these observations by Bruno was that as a youngster he remembered going up on the Mount Cicada that Nola was on. And looking across and seeing Vesuvius looking very bare and grim. Dark blue in the mist. Thinking how fertile his home was and how barren Vesuvius was. And then the mountain telling him, I'm not barren. I am a giver of life just like the mountain you are on. Come and see me. And Bruno as a youngster making the long trek to Vesuvius and climbing Vesuvius and standing on the crest and the cone of the great volcano. And looking back across at his home. And from his new perspective it looked barren and dreary, dark blue. And he realized that it's all relative.
And as a youngster he got his first great lesson in comprehension. That any viewpoint is partial and is necessary to the integration of the whole. But one must move one's perspective through the whole in order to have the integration. And that there is no way to have it from one place, one point. So that the comprehension motion through the whole is the integration. Later on, in the great Rosicrucian enlightenment the codification of that would be [inaudible words]. The minds life is secretly this. The life lived is the doctrine received.
Bruno as a youngster was extraordinarily open having this feel for nature. one thinks of the young Karl Jung sitting on a rock and having a dialogue with the rock as he recounted in memories dreams and reflections. Bruno the same way. but he was put into a monastery when he was 17 years old. They didn't know quite what to do with him. His parents were really not all that capable. As parents usually are not. And so, he spent eleven years of his life in a Dominican monastery. And he learned to read Latin passably well. But he always wrote if he could in Italian. He was colloquial. and while he was in this monastery, he began to realize that just as the world of nature was relative, the world of men's minds was also relative. He began to realize that the theological doctrines that had been handed to him all nicely folded. All the council's for a thousand years have ground it so that it's monolithically smooth. It is one large pill and he couldn't swallow it. Increasingly could not swallow it. Increasingly began to direct his reading to a remarkable individual, who we have covered, Ramon Llull. And Ramon Llull above all else was that hermetic doctor who brought back the ancient art of memory. The mnemonics. the way by which man schools his mind to be a theater of truth.
And the art memory such a tremendous asset. Dame Frances Yates has a book on The Art of Memory. It's downstairs right next to the occult philosophy in the Elizabethan age. The Art of Memory translates itself into the theater. Greek drama, Roman drama, Elizabethan drama. The Memory Theater of Giulio Camille. The Globe Theatre of Shakespeare. That when all of the world's a stage and man's memory is intact, he remembers who he is because he can see it written in every flow and every atom, every molecule, and every star. Every pattern of nature tells him who he is. he's the key. That in his motion, his equilibrium circulated through the whole unlocks the key to it all. He becomes the integration of nature. He himself in his life. the doctrine received is the life lived.
The Theater of the World is Francis Yates' follow-up to The Art of Memory. And this is a diagram of the Globe Theatre and the floorplan of most of the stages that have been built by man since the theater of Dionysius in Athens. Theater of Dionysius. Dionysius was the god of inebriation and irrationality. And in his theater in Rome the irrationality was overcome. Not by any particular truth but by the structure of ongoing experience that saluted the problems. Even irrationality. So that alchemy was in fact a physical ancient science of Egypt hermetic because it taught how to transform the outer world just like drama transforms the psychological inner world.
All of this began to occur to Bruno. He was incapable of keeping still. When one sense is that there is comprehension the juices of life almost impelled one to share. And so, he would talk to his fellow monks. And they would report and those people who got reported to would report and finally the Pope sent for Bruno. He said I somewhat like this; I hear you have a memory system would you teach me? Well, they noted down. they circled his name. if you've ever seen the film Viva Zapata, they circle your name. They keep track of you. He got wind that they were preparing a dossier on him. they're gonna set him up in trial.
And so, Bruno left. He left in 1576 and never voluntarily returned. He was 28 years old. He had largely been self-taught. He had reconstructed for himself. He had read Giorgi's book. He had read Ficino's books. He knew where he was. He knew what he should do. And so, he headed north. He went through his period of finding parallels. That is when you first start in hermetic pilgrimage you go for parallels. So, he found a city in the north of Italy outside of Genoa called Noli. Instead of Nola, Noli. And so, he just went there one looks for parallels and polarities and this kind of indication. One begins to move in the old hermetic pattern which is found like this. that's the symbol of the, of the ongoing journey. The great chain of being is many lives of this integrity.
So, while he was in Nola for a while, he realized that what was calling him was the Alps. Just like Vesuvius had talked to him, the Alps were calling him. So, he went into the alpine regions, and he found himself finally in Calvin's glorious little kingdom, Geneva. And of course, they had their brand of truth, their organization. And they said are you going to join us. And if not keep moving. So, Bruno found himself going down on the other side of the Alps into Lyon. And Lyon was at that time a center of publishing. And he was given an indication that he should go to the South of France. So, he went all the way down to Toulouse. He spent two years in Toulouse. And he tried to teach. France was bedeviled by religious wars at this time. The late 1570s. They were killing each other as fast as they could. Montón was so disgusted with it all that he barred himself, jailed himself voluntarily in his library. And spent the rest of his life looking out his window at the incomprehension that all this could go on in the midst of all the learning that had been rescued and was there.
After two years he had to leave. And so, he left to lose, and he went to Paris. And when he got to Paris, he found beginnings of some friends. Paris of course had the old French occult tradition. Lawlism(?) was and was alive in late 16th century Paris. Bruno found a few friends including the King. King Henry the third of France gave personal permission to Bruno for the first time to really publish something. And so, he published and what was the title. His first publication was called On the Shadow of Ideas. This world is the shadow of ideas. Bruno sites his famous sources, he says the wisdom, tradition of the Old Testament. What is that wisdom tradition? The wisdom of Solomon. Where is that wisdom of Solomon? Well, it was written in Alexandria about 50 BC. It was written at about the time that the Essenes were putting their communities together. The wisdom of Solomon. It's an Alexandrian sophisticated urban understanding of the Hermetic tradition. It's so suspect that it was left out of some Bibles by some committees in Christianity. He cites that. He cites the pre-Socratics. He cites the Neoplatonists. He cites them all.
So, the King of France made sure that Bruno was protected. And gave him the right to publish a play. The play was called The Torchbearer. And in the play the new, so-called new thought, new philosophy of the time received its explication. He writes at the beginning. This is a translation, little excerpts are broken up, but you can get the tone of Bruno from this. This is about 1580. He's about 32 years of age. '"This is a kind of fabric in which warp and woof are one. He who can, will understand. You must imagine yourselves in the most royal city, Naples perhaps. Near the Nile Square.'" He got his symbolism. '"Contemplating the action and speech with the mind of a Heraclitus. You will find cause to laugh or rather to weep. There are three principal themes woven into this comedy. The love of Bonifacio. The alchemy of Bartolomeo. The pedantry of Montefiore.'" Love, alchemy, pedantry. '"We present the savorless and laggard lover, the niggardly miser, the foolish peasant. The laggard is not without stupidity and foolishness. The miser similarly as savorless and foolish. While the fool is no less niggardly and savorless than he is foolish. You will see in mixed confusion, snatches of cut purses, wiles of cheats, enterprises of rogues, also delicious repulsiveness, bittersweets, foolish decisions, mistaken faith, crippled hopes. Judges, Nobles serious for other men's affairs with little ruth in their own. Virile women, effeminate men. And voices of craft and not of mercy. So that he who believes most is most fool. And everywhere the love of gold.
In the Hermetic tradition alchemists used to hold up a ruse all the time so that the profane would grab and show their gimme attitude. So, the alchemists would say we're making gold. We're making money. Money is the logic of empire. We gotta have it, right. Just like Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia was a ruse. Trithemius told him, told Agrippa as I mentioned once, said this is very, very nice but you've got to get out of the kindergarten. You've gotta quit thinking that it's here and there. The spiritual wrong is not physical and it's not psychic. It's other.
So, he's writing this play, The Torchbearer, creating a mirror of conditions which obtain. He says, '"I think I hear the persons of this play heaven keep thee.'" And then the play begins. The Torchbearer of course was extraordinary as a production. And some of his little philosophic tracks were extraordinary and they began to disclose the fact that Bruno was a self-elected hermetic pilgrim of the first quality. And so, arrangements were made for him to go to the hot spot - to England, to London.
And so, he went to London in 1583. When he was in London he was put up at the French Embassy. Now the ambassador of France to England at this time was a very powerful sophisticated man. Powerful in the sense that he had a lot of comprehension and was chosen well for his task. A very honest man. Michel de Castelnau, the Marquis de Mauvissiere. He died in 1592. He would shelter Bruno as long as he could for two years. Finally, de Castelnau was recalled to France. He had been set up and framed. He had loaned almost all of his funds, the funds he could get ahold of, to Mary Queen of Scots. She had not repaid him so that he would become shaky in a creditor sort of a way. The King of France realizing that his ambassador was set up for some kind of a ploy, a game, brought him back. On the way back across the English Channel all of de Castelnau's goods were stolen from him. So, he arrived impoverished and was unable to protect Bruno anymore.
This was going on all the time. Europe was seething. When we get to the course on the European Eldorado you'll understand why. Not only was the mind of Europe seething. But the collective consciousness of Europe was seething because all this has a reality. When somebody knows the truth, the world responds. It brings all of the presents up and gives them back to man. You've matured here. Here are the energies. Here are the forces. Here's the dynamism that makes this universe happen. And when it's in the air and most people don't know what to do about it, they experience it as anxiety. Or as tension. Or as confusion. Or they modify it and translated as soon as they can and to greed or lust or anger. Because they can't handle the power. The energy.
So, Bruno went to England. And he had a specific task. It's been found out, just a few years ago, somebody's obscure memoirs surfaced. Bruno was sent to accompany the Prince of Poland to a meeting in Oxford England that was held in June of 1583. In 1580 Sir Walter Raleigh had begun the setting up of a colony in the New World. He had financed several expeditions of many ships. Had sent more than a thousand colonists there. The new world was then being prepared as a base for a new liberated group of people to leave Europe and set up a new human community with a new vision. They could see that the old Europe, as Goethe would write a couple hundred years later in his advice to Americans, tell your children no ghost stories. Tell them nothing about castles and goblins. Old Europe is mad with these images.
So, by 1583 the plans for getting the group together to go were underfoot. Who was at the meeting. Sir Philip Sidney was there. Walter Raleigh, Lord Burleigh. Most of the hermetic elite of Europe. Emissaries from Rudolph's the second. Prince [John] à Lasco of Poland. And Giordano Bruno. Oh, the Earl of Leicester was there. Envoys from Sir Edmund Spenser were there. Sir Francis Bacon was there. It was a collection of minds and ostensibly it was to go and have a series of debates at Oxford. Oxford at this time was run by Aristotelian pedants. You think the Oxford Dons today are the most corrupt monkhood in the world? You should have seen them then. They were even worse. After the conference was over and Bruno was in the entourage of Prince à Lasco. Called à Lasco in English but called Laski or Laksa in Polish. His descendants would figure prominently in the development in the late 17th century of the colonization of America all over again by hermetic groups that arrived in Philadelphia in 1694 in June. They always favor the summer solstice. You can always tell a hermetic master when the summer solstice figures. because it's the truth of the year. It's the motion.
When the conference was over Sir Philip Sidney and his great friend Sir Edward Dyer and Prince À Lasco went down the Thames River to John Dee's house at Mortlake. And John Dee within weeks left for Europe for a series of experience. And when he left England Bruno stayed. And it happened almost like one bogus displacing the other. So that one home base was covered while the other one to experiment. What did they experiment with? Well, the whole situation was miscarried and slandered from the beginning and still is today.
The book that came out that was published and supposedly made very rare. And has been kept very rare is another one of these trial balloons. It's called On Some Relations with Spirits. John Dee's diary of occult experiments with angel magic with his friend Edward Kelly. Alchemy and Angel magic. South of Prague. It's not there. It's not in there. This is only another ruse. Just like the Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio were ruse documents. Broadsides meant to serve as leading people's eyes away from the center of action. Where was the center of action? It was in the new world - is in the new world.
When we get next year, the next sequence, will see that in the Shakespearean play cycle ending with The Tempest. That there's the disclosure of cosmic man. Ending in Bermuda. Ending there because that was to be the place. In the real first great American magis came from the Bermuda colony, a man named Starkey. Who then went back to England. All of this story gets very complicated. The first governor of Connecticut John Winthrop Jr. was a hermetic master. So, the country, this country has a peculiar poignant history.
Bruno what he stayed in England immediately sat down and wrote out six of his most powerful books in less than 18 months. He wrote them three in English. I mean three in Italian and three in Latin. He didn't know English so well. So, he couldn't use English. Two of the Latin trilogy were dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. Who would have been the center of the literary revival had of lived. He died in his early thirties. He just didn't live long enough. So, they had to find and other people, someone else.
Bruno, in his six documents, records an extraordinary explosion of comprehension. So that the only conclusion that we can have is that he was a master of the material and just wrote it out from himself. Because there are books that are incapable of being just written off-the-cuff. One of them has been translated by a socialist publisher about 20 years ago. International publishers in New York.
Cause, Principle, and Unity, the formative elements in reality. Cause, Principle, and Unity: Five Dialogues by Giordano Bruno. And in these five dialogues there's an enormous emphasis, almost like in the Corpus Hermeticum or in The Platonic Dialogues, to involve the reader into the process. They are dialogues because they are stageable. Because the theater is a memory training institute. Always has been. And what happens when the memory is trained? The audience begins to put themselves into the play. They involve themselves into to play. When all the worlds play then we have a unification of all of the levels of reality. And then comprehension can flow. Then the images that come up from deep down or from the celestial realms have a reflecting pool in man's mind that they can display themselves in all their fullness. We never have a lack of images. We have a lack of a comprehensive pull of intelligence wherein those images can form themselves completely so we can see what they are. The whole purpose in meditation is to clear out the rough spots so that you can see the universal images clearly. It's not to lose weight.
So, Bruno in England writes this of the Oxford people. He says, '"They spoke Latin well. They were proper men. Fairly competent learning but mediocre in education. One hand for 12 rings on two fingers. He had the appearance of a rich jeweler rather than a scholar. Somebody who would really wrench the eyes and heart from an amorous beholder. That they know a Greek, yes. And also, beer. One was the herald of an idol of obscurity and the other the bailiff of the goddess of presumption. And let them recount to you what happened there.'" He says, '"Let them tell you what happened when the noland(?) came. When he disputed publicly with those Doctor of Theology in the presence of the Polish Prince à Lasco and others of the English nobility. Would you hear how they were able to reply to his arguments? How fifteen times by means of fifteen syllogisms a poor doctor, whom on this solemn occasion they had put forward as a very corypheus [sp?] of the Academy was left standing like a chick entangled in tow.'" His Elizabethan hyperbole to say he showed him up badly. '"Would you learn with what incivility and discourtesy that pig comported himself.'"
Would you learn with what incivility and discourtesy that pig comported himself. And the patience and humanity of him who showed himself to be a born Neapolitan and nurtured under a more benign sky. Are you informed how they closed his public lectures both those on the immortality of the soul and on the fivefold sphere.'"
After à Lasco went back to the continent and after Dee went to the continent, Bruno went back up to Oxford and gave a series of lectures on truth in reality. And caused a lot of consternation. he had to physically flee back to London for safety. Because he showed them up.
Well, we need a little break. And I have to sell some cassettes down there so I can buy food for myself. So, let's take a break a minute.
...are interested in what is available. One of the best books on Bruno is called Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Francis Yates. It's in paperback and is available. And a book that's available but very expensive from Cornell University Press. only in hardcover, The Cosmology of Giordano Bruno. The name Giordano was given to him in the monastic role. His name at birth was Filippo. the cosmology, this is translated from the French and actually is quite good. Francis Yates is the prime source for Bruno in our time.
I always outline about three times as much material as I can use. for the material on his life Dorothea Whaley Singers, Bruno: His Life and Thought is so-so. She has absolutely no appreciation for Ramon Llull. She castigates Bruno for wasting his time on Llull. you can't throw away half of a man's mind and say that he was wasting it, with the other half he was great. That's impossible.
In the back of this book is translated on the infinite universe in worlds. For Bruno was the first one to realize that the universe is infinite. It was the corollary of realizing that all is relative. You see there's also a corollary that polarities synthesize. They unify. In a finite universe polarities could remain like railroad tracks that never meet. But in an infinite universe they always meet. And so, the union of opposites is a proof positive of the infinity of the universe. They go together. There are stars of wisdom that shine together. So that is a source.
They are collecting together the writings of Francis Yates. They've gotten two volumes so far. The first one is called Llull and Bruno. And in here, Dame Francis is one of the first individuals to trace the Hermetic tradition back to John Scotus Eriugena because he was very, very important. Eriugena was the only man in a period known as the Dark Ages who could read Greek well enough to understand the subtle spiritual nuances. And read Plotinus. And read Dionysius the Areopagite.
I've gone through this in several lectures. If you just review some of these cassettes that are available. We have now over 200 cassettes available. All of this information flows. It's all meant to flow. These aren't just lecture series. This is reestablishing the chronologica mystica, the way by which reality moves person to person. And Bruno understood and used for the first time the word monad. Le monas(sp?), the unity. Human being is a monais [?], is a unity. Later on, Liebniz would use monad because he to read Bruno. So that reality moves person-to-person. Certain persons become important at certain stages.
One of Bruno's writings when he was in England has the title Spacio Della Bestia Triumphante, written in 1584. It wasn't one of the six major works. It was a political pamphlet. And Dame Francis has this to say about it. that the Spacio Della Bestia Triumphante contains a vehement defense of the French King Henry the third. Against the machinations of Spain and the league. And offering to Elizabeth of England his friendship and alliance against their common enemy Spain.
This is 1584. In four years, the crisis would come when the whole power of Spain financed from the new world would send the largest Armada ever assembled against a country. The Spanish Armada. And it was meant in one death blow aimed at the juggler of Elizabethan power, its nascent growing maritime sea power, to snuff out Britain, the English, in one fell stroke. Fortunate for Elizabeth she had a lot of individuals that we call today's Sea Dogs, tough old captains, who knew their way around. who were not going to be beaten. No matter what the numbers were. Sir Francis Drake among them. And the Elizabethan sea-captains out to marshal the Spanish Armada and defeated it in 1588. It was one of the great changes in world history. It's on a par with the Battle of Actium where Marc Anthony lost his power base to Augustus.
So, in 1584 Bruno is writing a political pamphlet trying to set up the alliance of France with England against Spain. He's important. The history books are supposedly telling us what's important. They're not even in terms of politics telling us what's important, who's important. even today. She writes in another aspect it is an outline. In another aspect this political pamphlet is an outline of some vast movement of ethical and religious reform embracing the entire cosmos. what man does is important. It isn't flighty. It isn't just what appearances would declaim what is happening. This is a real drama. Man has a role. This whole vast movement of ethical and religious reform embracing the whole cosmos in which the beast of evil is finally dethroned, and a virtuous harmony reigned supreme.
In this apocalyptic vision, apocalyptic vision. On the cover of The Occult Philosophy and the Elizabethan Age is Albrecht Durer's great engraving. He was one of the group early in the sixteenth century, it's called Melancholia One. Very famous. The angel, the angelic guarding the spirit world, is sitting like in a wandering posture. With all of the implements and tools of the Renaissance around, wondering is man going to understand. Is man going to come through? And above the head where there should be a halo there's a Magic Square. And magic squares made hermetic alchemical figures when you follow the pattern of their solution. And it's the alchemical figure for the ultimate harmony. It's the same magical square that appears above the head of Paracelsus in the famous portrait of him done at the end of his life. Well instead of having his chin on his hand, he has his hands down on the sword of truth. Whose handle was named Azoff.
So, all of this was in the air during the entire 16th century. And at the culmination of it in the early 1580s they felt, they saw, they understood that all of this dynamic, all of the energies and powers, all of the events that had been in motion now for many centuries were coming to a head. It was in the air that some triumphant or some tragic combination was happening.
So, he writes in here. In this apocalyptic vision a monarch henry the third is crowned with the constellation of the corona australis. He wears a starred crown. But there's another constellation, the Corona borealis which still await some great liberating hero. The king to come. The once and future king. The one who will lead the harmony. If you read Sir Walter Raleigh's great production, it's called The History of the World. Its two great big, huge volumes. We have them down in the hall. and you read Raleigh's history of the world and he shows enormous learning and comprehension. These were the people who were retranslating the Bible. They're making the King James Version. Sir Philip Sidney did the first translations of the Psalms. You can read them. Sir Philip Sidney's collected works. Trying to find an English meter that could carry the spiritual message that was in there. Because the form of language is just as important as the vocabulary of the language. And this is why Elizabethan poetry was such a quantum jump in comprehension. Because they were trying to make a form to float a spiritual understanding that transcended any metaphysical unity that had been sense before. Something new. A whole new dimension. And Bruno was that wandering pilgrim hermetic philosopher who was seeding and helping to knit together the finer spirits and minds of Europe of that time. This is why he was seized friends. This is why he was seized. They don't burn you at the stake for nothing. So, the Corona borealis still awaits some great liberating hero all of this material that came out at this time from Bruno. Who was an attempt to bring together the notion that man invokes comprehension by making an intelligible arrangement. He invokes. He has done it on a material basis. He has done it on an intellectual basis. The task now is to do it on a spiritual basis.
Dee, John Dee went to Europe to experiment not just with alchemy but using alchemy as a guide. The process as a guide to develop what was known as angel magic. Who was the author of the manual for this, Trithemius. Steganographia here is the manual for preparing man for the spiritual adventure to use the angelic comprehension that he has. One of the ways in which this happens is that he must learn to leave the mental field that he has constructed for himself. He has to transcend his own mind. And part of this he is realizing that the universe is infinite.
He writes, '"To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither centered nor boundary.'" It's an obvious implication but it's one that doesn't occur to the naive mind. If the universe is infinite there is no center and there is no boundary. Now what kind of a geometry exists where there is no center and no boundary? You have to have a whole new recodification. You have to cut perception all over again to have a sense of structure if that is so. This is the difficulty in the 20th century. Because the relativity of Einstein's universe meant that we had to rethink the whole way in which thought is carried on. It's very difficult to do. It was really difficult to do 400 years ago when there was no mathematics to use. It would be a hundred years before Leibniz would, and Newton would make the first calculus.
'"To a body of,'" Bruno is writing this, '"To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither center nor boundary. Just as we regard ourselves is at the center of that universally equidistant circle, which is the great horizon and the limit of our own encircling ethereal region. So doubtless the inhabitants of the moon believe themselves to be at the center of a great horizon that embraces this earth, the Sun, and other stars and is the boundary of the radii of their own horizon. Thus, the earth no more than any other world, anywhere in the cosmos is the center.'"
The textbooks harp upon Copernicus saying that the earth is not the center, but the Sun is the center. Bruno outstrips the whole notion of the Sun at the center by a million-fold. He dismisses the whole idea that there's a center. There is no Copernican revolution that can even hold a candle to the Hermetic insight. It outstrips in its conception the feeble attempts to displace one clumsy model with another by infinite lightyears. It's like trying to say that one is going to run a race with a horse instead of a donkey. When one could use a starship. It just has no relation. It's fool's play.
So, he writes -this is four hundred years ago - '"Thus the earth no more than any other world is at the center. Moreover, no points constitute determined celestial poles for our earth. Just as she herself is not a definite and determined pole to any other point of the ether or the world of space.'" Now what happens if you get rid of the whole notion of celestial poles? What goes out the window? The whole concept of the relativity and the relationship of celestial object patterns from the earth. Yeah, astrology goes. Becomes a will of the wisp. '"From various points of view these may all be regarded either a centers or as points on the circumference as poles or zenith and so forth.'" In other words, the entire universe is relative. And any place, any locus, is the center. The omnipotence of the divine means the omnipotence anywhere. That's the center. Therefore, if a human intelligence in its angelic capacity comes to an awakening of its sense as a center, the whole universe has a coordination then and there from that. that's the meaning of Christos. Thus, the earth and not any theological doctrine. Not any argument made up by specialists in logic. What good are the church rules, the council edicts and so forth when one has the ability to see. So, he says, '"Thus the earth is not the center of the universe. This is central only to our own surrounding space.'"
Well, he goes on. The cosmology of Bruno runs very deep. His books are very, very deep. They're hundreds of pages long. One more example and then let it be. '"To investigate'", this is Bruno translation. '"To investigate whether there be beyond the heaven, space, void, or time. For there is a single general space, a vast immensity which we may freely call void. In it are innumerable globes like this in which we live and grow. This space we declare to be infinite. Since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense, perception, or nature assigned to a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own. for there is no reason nor defect of nature's gifts either of active or a passive power to hinder the existence of other worlds throughout space. Which is identical and natural character with our own space. Beyond the imaginary convex circumference of the universe is time.'" The capital T. '"For there is the measure and nature of motion. Time.'" Why is time the measure of motion because it is a durational reality since similar moving bodies are there. If this is so, if this is so all durations move in an infinite unity and the paradox is complete. The Bruno's cosmology resounds. Its implications for man are enormous.
He traveled across the face of Europe. We can follow city after city. He was in Prague for a long time with finally received an invitation to go to Venice. Something told him not to go. But when you have work you go. So, he went to Venice. The man there, a wealthy man was going to set up a school. He said I want you to teach in the school. Why don't you teach me first I'm so anxious to learn. And Bruno sensed something was wrong after a couple of months. And said that he had forgotten some books in Prague or Paris somewhere. And a man turned him in so that Bruno didn't have a chance to leave. So, the church took him in to the interrogation rooms in Venice. They kept him there for a while. Bruno tried to explain to them about the identity of contraries. About the inherent necessity in the universe. About cosmic metabolism and all is sounded very heretical to them. So, they arranged for him to be taken to Rome. And he was taken to Rome in 1593.
I think I'll spare you all of it, but I'd like to read you some of it from Mrs. Singers book just to get the sense of the way in which a great spirit was dragged through the mud. We need to know this also. this is a report from the records freed from the Vatican by Manzini's order in 1849. '"Almost two years have passed, December 1593, brought before the assembled illustrious Cardinals and general inquisitors brother Giordano's, son of the late John Bruno of Nola. Apostate from the order of friars, preachers, priests imprisoned in the prisons of the Holy Office. Cross-examined on heresies and other matters. His judges visit him often in prison. They graciously hear him concerning his necessities.'" That is what are his necessities. He needs some food. He needs maybe a blanket. He needs a little exercise. Necessities. Why would they graciously hear about necessities. Well, he needs them. Why does he have to ask for them? While he's not getting them. This is 1593.
April 1594 about a year later. A little over a year later. Bruno is again visited and heard. That is, they let him say what he needed, and they heard it. They determined to proceed with his trial and the order is given for the preparation of documents. The order is repeated on the 31st of May. In September the inquisitors again enact that the proceedings against Bruno should be pursued. In December 1594 Giordano is yet again visited and heard. He's been there for several years now. Pages of writings rebutting the accusations against him are collected. January 1595 accusations again considered at two meetings of the Inquisition. The following month the case is read once more before the holy Congregation. March 1595 brother Giordano's was brought before the Lord Cardinals and was visited and interrogated by them and heard concerning his necessities. The visits and the appearance in court as well as the consideration of his necessities were repeated in April 1596. In September his propositions and defense of himself were censured. That is, these cannot be admitted therefore they're crossed out, scrapped. You may not hold these views even in defense of yourself. So, everything goes back to square one. We have to begin again. So, in December the process was repeated he was heard concerning the merit of his cause and concerning food. Very often the items now appear that he talks a lot about needing food. It was decided that he should be examined concerning the propositions extracted from his writings and concerning the censures on him. In March 1597 Bruno was again brought before the August congregation. They visited him yet again. They again heard him, heard him, concerning his necessities. Is it admonished that he should relinquish the vanities concerning diverse worlds. And it was commanded that he be strictly cross-examined. Therefore, judgment should be delivered. In December of 1597 the ghastly process is repeated again. After another three months it is decided that his cause cannot be determined before the departure of His Holiness, the Pope. December 1598, a year later, it has commanded that Brother Giordano's be given writing paper and advice how to use it. With the bravarium(sp?) as used by the friars preachers being set beside him. 14th of January 1599, 8 heretical propositions are extracted from his works and read back to the prisoner. 18th of January he's given just six days to make his decision. On the 25th of January he declares his readiness to accept the personal decision of his holiness but still insists on defending his views. On the 4th of February is decreed by the Pope in full congregation after mature and diligent consideration of the charges against brother Giordano Bruno that there should be pointed out to him by the theological fathers, namely by the general of his order by Cardinal Bellarmini and by the father commissar. All those propositions abstracted from his works that are not only heretical but have been declared so by the earliest fathers, by the church and by the apostolic see. If he will recognize these propositions as heretical then, well and good. If not, he should be condemned after forty days for repentance to the treatment usual for impenitent and pertinacious persons. On the 18th of February 1599 the propositions are read to the prisoner. In April the inquisitioners return, Bruno shows something written in his hand. His name figures and two lists of prisoners in the Holy Office apparently drawn up in the same month. In August he is given pens, paper, ink, and the pencils. But no knife and no compass. And is commanded to retract to heretical propositions shown the previous April. In August he's told to retract, we said in April after eight years in papal prisons. In September and again in November his case is under consideration. On the 21st of December he's visited but declares that he neither should nor will retract. Nor has he anything to retract. Then on the 20th of January 1600, Bruno sends a memorial to the Pope, but it is not opened. On the 8th of February 1600, the inquisitors once more summon their prisoner and long indictments are read. The accused was reminded that already some eight years ago he's been accused of naming as blasphemy belief in transubstantiation of the Holy bread. And finally, they read to him. And this is from the papal document. Having invoked the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and of his most glorious mother Mary ever-virgin in the cause and aforesaid causes brought before this holy office between on the one hand reverend Giulio Monto Rossini, Doctor of Laws Procurator Fiscal of the said Holy Office. And on the other hand, thy self the aforesaid Giordano Bruno. The accused examined brought to trial and found guilty in penitent abstinent and pertinacious. He was dragged naked from his cell on the 16th of February and burned at the stake.
Well, his writings survived. And in his writings, there was a tremendous impetus for comprehension to still find its way. And I think for the full story we need more than just the follow-up lecture next week. Which is about someone else who was seized. Galileo was seized. Galileo as we will find out simply had published the results of what he had seen. Bruno as we have seen published the results of what he knew. Sorry to present this before you. but we have to know that this happens. That we don't make the same mistakes.
The material is available. And I hope that some of you will avail yourselves of the cassettes because they are made to be of service in thinking through these enormous spans and durations of activity. I know it's difficult without some sort of guideline. But at least these cassettes are trustworthy presentations from one voice that has no particular song. And no particular bias other than just the naivete a limited experience.
Well, I'll see you next week.
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