summarize the author's engagement with the theories of frances yates and his discussion of hypnerotomachia polyphili
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The conflict between those two impor tant tradit ions also signifies the
relative dependence of the one on the other. Erotic myst ic ism becomes
distinct by contrast to the naturalistic trend, whereas the latter defines
its positions in controversy, explicit or impl ic i t , w i t h the idealism and
the intellectualism of the fai thful .
A th i rd trend, as meek and obscure as the others were famous and
persistent, almost passed unobserved or was close to being assimilated
by the two others. Indeed, there can exist phantasms unrelated to a real
object, but, thanks to the qual i ty of their images, there can be no phan-
Phantasms at Work 40
FIGURE 2. Bacchanalian revels. From Francesco Colonna, Discours du Songe de
Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy of the Wing Foundation, The
Newberry Library, Chicago.
tasms without physical support of one kind or another. That is why a
story about phantasms is always interpretable: we can see it either as the
symbol of adventures in the intelligential cosmos or as the allegory of
actual events.
Unfortunately, although there are many theoreticians of phantasmic
Eros, the number of writers who have tried to describe phantasms at
work is very limited. One of them surely is the respectable monk from
Treviso, Francesco Colonna, who, having become sacristan of the mon-
astery of St. John and St. Paul in Padua, died in 1527 at the age of ninety-
four.39 He is the author of a work almost unique of its kind, the Hyp-
nerotomachia Poliphili, which, as the author points out in the book's ex-
plicit, had been finished May 1, 1467, but was not published until 1499
by Aldo Manuzio; it was paid for by a magistrate of Verona, called
Leonardo Crasso.40
The contents of the Hypnerotomachia tally with the date 1467. Indeed,
the work is external to the current of ideas circulated by Marsilio Ficino
41 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
FIGURE 3. ״Two wretched damsels, naked and disheveled.״ From Francesco
Colonna, Discours du Songe de Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy
of the Wing Foundation, The Newberry Library, Chicago.
Unfortunately, although there are many theoreticians of phantasmic
Eros, the number of writers who have tried to describe phantasms at
work is very limited. One of them surely is the respectable monk from
Treviso, Francesco Colonna, who, having become sacristan of the mon-
astery of St. John and St. Paul in Padua, died in 1527 at the age of ninety-
four.39 He is the author of a work almost unique of its kind, the Hyp-
nerotomachia Poliphili, which, as the author points out in the book's ex-
plicit, had been finished May 1, 1467, but was not published until 1499
by Aldo Manuzio; it was paid for by a magistrate of Verona, called
Leonardo Crasso.40
The contents of the Hypnerotomachia tally with the date 1467. Indeed,
the work is external to the current of ideas circulated by Marsilio Ficino
41 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
FIGURE 3. ״Two wretched damsels, naked and disheveled.״ From Francesco
Colonna, Discours du Songe de Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy
of the Wing Foundation, The Newberry Library, Chicago.
beginning more or less in 1463.41 From our point of v iew, the fact that i t
escapes Ficino's influence is invaluable. Even when expressing a person-
al point of v iew on love, wh ich rarely happens, Pico della Mirandola,
Pietro Bembo, Baldesar Castiglione, Leo the Hebrew, and Melanchthon
bear the indelible mark of Ficino's thought. O n the contrary, Colonna
(though he, too, treats of the phantasmic Eros) is original and inimitable,
less in his ideas—a common heritage of the period, of wh ich Ficino is to
become the systematic organizer—than in the l i terary and didactic quali-
ty of his work.
(iv) Phantasms at Work
Let us make the acquaintance of phantasms.
Taken literally, the title Hypnerotomachia means a ״ love f ight dur ing
sleep.״ This leads us to expect that a person dreams of phantasms in-
volved in an erotic f ight, perhaps his o w n erotic phantasm. That is pre-
cisely what happens: two phantasms, that of the dreamer—Pol iphi lus—
and that of the gir l he loves—Polia—are at the center of the scenario.
The tale is not constructed so as to be easily understood. It is an enigma
Phantasms at Work 42
whose solution is given only at the end. The reader is informed that
Poliphilus seeks Polia, but does not know w h y or how. Of the 311 pages
of the Guegan-Kerver edition, the first part takes up 250 whereas the
second, which provides indispensable explanations, takes up only 60.
Notes to Pages 91-113 236 236
and of measuring h im by the standards of another era, and historians of ideas
can never be sufficiently grateful to Yates for having patiently explained the
difference. That does not prevent her f rom labeling as ״Hermeticism״ all sorts of
doctrines of Late Ant iqu i ty of which Hermeticism d id indeed make use but
wh ich d id not have a ״Hermet ic״ origin. The quotations in the text and in the
footnotes conform to the editions of Bruno's works mentioned at the beginning
of this footnote. The passage concerning the interrogation of May 30, 1592, is
reproduced by Gentile, I I , p. 211, no. 1.
33. These biographical data are indisputable. They are to be found in nearly
all the works cited in n. 32 above.
34. J.-R. Charbonnel, L'Ethique de Giordano Bruno et le deuxième dialogue du Spac-
cio . . . Contribution à l'étude des conceptions morales de la Renaissance (Paris, 1919),
p. 35.
35. Ibid., p. 276.
36. Henninger, p. 44.
37. See Keller's observation in Le Soleil à la Renaissance, pp. 63-64. On Digges's
infinite empyrean heaven—an idea that was, at bottom, merely traditional—see
also Debus, pp. 87-88.
38. Cf. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, (Harmondsworth
[1971], 1978), p. 412. On John Dee in general, see Peter J. French, John Dee: The
World of an Elizabethan Magus (London, 1972).
39. Op. it., I, p. 21.
40. Ibid.; cf. De docta ignorantia, II, pp. 11-12.
41. Op. cit., I, p. 92.
42. P. Ramus, De religione Christiana, Frankfurt ed., (1577), pp. 114-15, cited
by Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 237.
43. Yates, ibid., pp. 234-35.
44. Ibid., p. 237.
45. Ibid., p. 261.
46. See n. 38 above.
47. Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 266 sq.
48. Quoted by Yates, ibid., p. 278.
49. G. Perkins Cantabrigensis, Antidicsonus (London, 1584), p. 45, quoted by
Yates, pp. 274-75. Fundamentally, Perkins was more correct than Yates thinks;
it is true that with respect to Peter of Ravenna an absolutely inoffensive practice
is at issue (he believes the image of an old love is particularly suited to being
recorded by the memory, due to its emotional charge).
Let us make the acquaintance of phantasms.
Taken literally, the title Hypnerotomachia means a ״ love f ight dur ing
sleep.״ This leads us to expect that a person dreams of phantasms in-
volved in an erotic f ight, perhaps his o w n erotic phantasm. That is pre-
cisely what happens: two phantasms, that of the dreamer—Pol iphi lus—
and that of the gir l he loves—Polia—are at the center of the scenario.
The tale is not constructed so as to be easily understood. It is an enigma
Phantasms at Work 42
whose solution is given only at the end. The reader is informed that
Poliphilus seeks Polia, but does not know w h y or how. Of the 311 pages
of the Guegan-Kerver edition, the first part takes up 250 whereas the
second, which provides indispensable explanations, takes up only 60.
The first part tells of the endless roaming of Poliphilus amid the ruins of
antiquity, of tr iumphs, emblems and impresae, each w i th its own secret
meaning. As Yates observed, it could be a matter of mnemotechnics
escaped f״ rom control and degenerated into w i l d imaginings.42״ In any
case, such oneirico-archeologico-mnemotechnics, however fascinating,
w i l l not preoccupy us here. In the end, Poliphilus finds Polia, and the
lovers plead their case before the heavenly tr ibunal of Venus. The sec-
ond part, wh ich contains two monologues, is therefore a tale within a tale,
and the end is destined to complicate the enigma still more: we learn
that everything that happened was only Poliphilus's dream, so that the
search for Polia and the appeasement of desire were but adventures in
phantasy.43
Neither mystical love nor vulgar love, Poliphilus's dream represents
the trite story of phantasmic desire that finds fulf i l lment.
The tale is saved f rom platitude and indecency by its phantasmic quali-
ty: desire, provoked by a phantasm, is appeased by the phantasm, after
a period of erotico-mnemotechnic tribulations.
(v) The Depth Psychology of Ficino
D E S C E N T OF T H E SOUL
Souls descend into the bodies of the Mi lky Way through the
constellation of Cancer, enveloping themselves in a celestial
and luminous veil which they put on to enter terrestrial
bodies. For nature demands that the very pure soul be united
w i th the very impure body only through the intermediary of a
pure veil, which, being less pure than the soul and purer than
the body, is considered by the Platonists to be a very conve-
nient means of uni t ing the soul w i th the terrestrial body. It is
due to that descent that the souls and bodies of the Planets
confirm and reinforce, i n our Souls and our bodies respec-
tively, the seven original gifts bestowed upon us by God. The
same function is performed by the [seven] categories of de-
mons, intermediaries between the celestial gods and men. The
gift of contemplation is strengthened by Saturn by means of
the Saturnian Demons.
In this case there w i l l be a fundamental contradict ion between the
medical concept of a phantasmic Eros that disturbs the equi l ibr ium of
the organism and demands p rompt assuagement to restore this equi-
l ibr ium, and the concept of the ״ fa i th fu l , -a complete denial of the for ״
mer, f ind ing expression through a semantic inversion valor iz ing the
disequil ibr ium in terms of a plenary spir i tual experience. This w i l l to
distort, first brought to bear on medical matters of the period, subse-
quently provoked much ribaldry directed against believers i n mystical
love whose ideas, bereft of sense, are to become synonymous w i t h an
erotic strategy in wh ich the purely verbal idealization of woman is mere-
ly an expedient to silence her resistance as quickly as possible.
The conflict between those two impor tant tradit ions also signifies the
relative dependence of the one on the other. Erotic myst ic ism becomes
distinct by contrast to the naturalistic trend, whereas the latter defines
its positions in controversy, explicit or impl ic i t , w i t h the idealism and
the intellectualism of the fai thful .
A th i rd trend, as meek and obscure as the others were famous and
persistent, almost passed unobserved or was close to being assimilated
by the two others. Indeed, there can exist phantasms unrelated to a real
object, but, thanks to the qual i ty of their images, there can be no phan-
Phantasms at Work 40
FIGURE 2. Bacchanalian revels. From Francesco Colonna, Discours du Songe de
Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy of the Wing Foundation, The
Newberry Library, Chicago.
tasms without physical support of one kind or another. That is why a
story about phantasms is always interpretable: we can see it either as the
symbol of adventures in the intelligential cosmos or as the allegory of
actual events.
36. On the Orphic myth, see W. K. C. Guthrie, Orphaeus and Greek Religion, 2d
ed. (London, 1952); H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos: Histoire du culte de Bacchus (Paris,
Payot, 1950).
37. Heraclitus, fr. 52. On the ״Orphic״ interpretation of this fragment, see V.
Macchioro, Eraclito, nuovi studi sull' Orßsmo (Bari, 1922). On the interpretation
pertaining to ״ ini t iat ion״ in the game of Dionysus, see Andrew Lang, Custom
and Myth (1885; reprint Ooserhout, 1970), pp. 29-44, esp. pp. 39-41; and R.
Pettazzoni, I misteri: Saggio di una teoria storico-religiosa (Bologna, 1924). On the
ludus mundi, by Karl Jaspers in particular, see D. L. Mil ler, Gods and Games (New
York, 1973), pp. 163-64. O n interpretation of fragment 52 by Heraclitus from
Nietzsche to Heidegger, see G. Penzo, II nichilismo da Nietzsche a Sartre (Rome,
1976).
38. La Forme et l'Intelligible, pp. 31-64.
39. On the biography of Brother F. Colonna, see M. T. Casella and G. Pozzi,
Francesco Colonna: Biografia e Opere, (Padua, 1959).
40. See the edition by G. Pozzi and L. A. Ciapponi, Hypnerotomachia Polifili
(Padua, 1964).
41. In 1463, Ficino, at thir ty, translated the Pimander attributed to Hermes
Trismegistus. Despite his precocity, his reputation d id not reach Treviso f rom
Florence before 1467.
42. Yates, pp. 123-24.
43. See Hypnérotomachie, ed. Guégan-Kerver, p. 309.
Notes to Pages 91-113 232 232
44. See my discussion of J. Flamant׳ s thesis, Macrobe et le néo-platonisme latin, à
la fin du IVe siècle (Leiden, 1977) in "Ordine e disordine delle sfere" (cf. also my
review of Flamands book in Aevum, 1979). Two other passages from Ficino's
work relate to the doctrine of the descent of the soul among the planetary
spheres and the acquisition of vehicles. In his Theologia platónica (XVIII, 4-5),
Ficino mentions three vehicles of the soul (celestial, aerial, and material), which
seems to refer to Synesius of Cyrene's distinction between a vehiculum divinioris
animae, which is ethereal, and a material vehicle, common to animals and to man
(cf. my Magia spirituale, note 103). Proclus also makes this distinction (see my
,Ordine e disordine delle sfere").
The tale is saved f rom platitude and indecency by its phantasmic quali-
ty: desire, provoked by a phantasm, is appeased by the phantasm, after
a period of erotico-mnemotechnic tribulations.
(v) The Depth Psychology of Ficino
D E S C E N T OF T H E SOUL
Souls descend into the bodies of the Mi lky Way through the
constellation of Cancer, enveloping themselves in a celestial
and luminous veil which they put on to enter terrestrial
bodies. For nature demands that the very pure soul be united
w i th the very impure body only through the intermediary of a
pure veil, which, being less pure than the soul and purer than
the body, is considered by the Platonists to be a very conve-
nient means of uni t ing the soul w i th the terrestrial body. It is
due to that descent that the souls and bodies of the Planets
confirm and reinforce, i n our Souls and our bodies respec-
tively, the seven original gifts bestowed upon us by God. The
same function is performed by the [seven] categories of de-
mons, intermediaries between the celestial gods and men. The
gift of contemplation is strengthened by Saturn by means of
the Saturnian Demons. The power of the government and
empire is strengthened by Jupiter through the ministry of the
Jovian Demons; similarly, Mars through the Martians fosters
the soul's courage. The Sun, w i th the help of the Solar De-
43 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
FIGURE 4. The ithyphallic god Pan. From Francesco Colonna, Discours du Songe
de Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy of the Wing Foundation,
The Newberry Library, Chicago.
Phantasms at Work 44
mons, fosters the clarity of the senses and opinions that makes
divination possible; Venus, through the Venereans, incites
Love. Mercury, through the Mercurials, awakens the capacity
for interpretation and expression. Finally, the Moon, through
the lunar demons, increases procreation. (Amore, VI, 4)
Except for the idea that the planets exert their respective influences on
the soul and the human body through the intermediacy of demons, this
passage f rom Ficino is inspired by the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio
by the Latin Neoplatonist Macrobius, who must have had as his source a
treatise by Porphyry.4 4 Macrobius׳s work had been circulated in the
Middle Ages, and it is possible that Ficino was acquainted w i th a com-
mentary attributed to Wil l iam of Conches, one of whose fourteenth-cen-
tury manuscripts is in the National Library in Florence.45 The author of
Philosophia mundi, in dealing w i t h procreation, divided the womb into
seven compartments retaining sperm in which ״the human form is im-
printed like a coin.4 -It is very likely that the seven divisions corre ״6
spond to the planets, whose influence on the development of the
embryo wou ld thus have been prepared in advance through divine
wisdom permeating nature.
(Padua, 1964).
41. In 1463, Ficino, at thir ty, translated the Pimander attributed to Hermes
Trismegistus. Despite his precocity, his reputation d id not reach Treviso f rom
Florence before 1467.
42. Yates, pp. 123-24.
43. See Hypnérotomachie, ed. Guégan-Kerver, p. 309.
Notes to Pages 91-113 232 232
44. See my discussion of J. Flamant׳ s thesis, Macrobe et le néo-platonisme latin, à
la fin du IVe siècle (Leiden, 1977) in "Ordine e disordine delle sfere" (cf. also my
review of Flamands book in Aevum, 1979). Two other passages from Ficino's
work relate to the doctrine of the descent of the soul among the planetary
spheres and the acquisition of vehicles. In his Theologia platónica (XVIII, 4-5),
Ficino mentions three vehicles of the soul (celestial, aerial, and material), which
seems to refer to Synesius of Cyrene's distinction between a vehiculum divinioris
animae, which is ethereal, and a material vehicle, common to animals and to man
(cf. my Magia spirituale, note 103). Proclus also makes this distinction (see my
,Ordine e disordine delle sfere"). Ficino does not hold this position invariably״
since in his commentary on Plotinus's Enneads (II, 6) we find this passage, akin
to Proclus, Macrobius and Servius: Ex eorum iterum animabus in nostris animis a
Saturno contemplatio cautioque et conservatio diligens augetur, ab Jove civilis et prudens
potissimum gubernatio, a Marte magnanimitas malorum iniuriarumque expultrix, a
Mercurio inquisitio quaelibet et expressio, a Venere charitas et humanitas, a Sole hon-
estatis cura pudorque et gloriae studium verioris, a Luna denique rerum vitae necessariam
cura et providentia diligens (Opera, II, p. 1619). The neo-Plotinian term ״vehicle״
does not appear here, nor do the planetary demons who appear in the text of the
Commentary to the Symposium. It is very characteristic that, in the eighteenth book
of his Theologia platónica, Ficino says he does not believe in the doctrine of the
soul's passage through the spheres, which he calls ״a phantasy of the Pla-
tonists.״ Since he sets it forth in his commentaries on Enneads and Symposium,
however, it is very likely he does subscribe to this theory. Stranger yet, he does
not even mention it where it deserves a place of honor, that is, in the book De
vita coelitus comparanda. Actually, no theoretical justification for astrological mag-
ic is as simple as the idea that, in the course of its descent, the soul is enveloped
in astral tunics that respond to the momentary influences of the planets.
1966.
. Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1975.
. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1979.
. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. London, 1972.
Index of Names
Arnold, Klaus, 165, 168, 169, 171-72
Asclepius, 65
Astruc, Jean, 189
Athenaeus, 9
Augustine, St., 152
Aulnoy, Countess of, 212-13
Averroës, 22
Avicebron, 14
Avicenna, 11, 19, 21-22
Bacon, Francis, xix, 183, 197
Bacon, Roger, 11, 117-19, 185, 186
Barbaro, Ermolao, 149
Baronius, 215
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 10-11
Baschwitz, Kurt, 163
Bashshâr ibn Burd, 16
Basilides, 25-27
Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre, 52
Beauvais, Vincent de, 216
Bellay, Joachim du, 81
Bellerophon, 51
Bembo, Pietro, 41
Benivieni, Girolamo, 12-13, 54
Berbiguer de Terreneuve de Thym, Alexis
Vincent Charles, 124, 126, 154-56
Bergamo, Jordanes de, 149, 153
Bernard of Gordon, 20-21
Bérulle, Pierre, Cardinal de, 61, 205-7
Betz, Hans Dieter, 117
Binswanger, Ludwig, 46
Boase, R., 16
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 39, 211
Boderie, Guy Lefèvre de la, 129
Bodin, Jean, 149
Bogomil, 14-15
Bostius, Arnoldus, 168
Botticelli, Sandro, 211-12
Bouchet, Guillaume, 72-74
Bouelles, Picard Charles, 168-69
Brahe, Tycho, 23
Brant, Sebastian, 168
Brantôme, Seigneur de, 81
Bresson, Robert, 198
Abano, Pietro d 1 6 ׳, 7
Abu Yahya al Sinhachi, 22
Agamben, Giorgio, 21-22, 48-49
Agrippa of Nettesheim, Henricus Corn-
elius, 125, 128, 136, 169, 181, 202, 218;
and Bruno, 159, 160; on evil eye, 30; on
melancholy, 49; and Renaissance sci-
ences, 195, 197-200; and Trithemius,
method of, 172, 174-75
Ficino's hieroglyphics, which we shall take up later, are symbols of in-
telligential awareness. But Ficino's successors go much farther: they
even assert that the rules of the phantasmic language that translates
intelligential relationships can be represented in the form of theater, to be
meditated upon and learned by anyone who so wishes. The idea of the-
ater came from the Friulan Giulio Camillo Delminio, born around 1480,
who spared no pains to see it realized. A professor at Bologna, Giulio
Camillo was not a charlatan. He managed to interest Francis I in his
theater and, subsidized by the king, settled in Paris in 1530. In 1532 he
was in Venice where Viglius Zuichemus, who corresponded with Eras-
mus, came to see him. His letter to Erasmus mockingly describes the
theater of our artist with the heavenly memory, which the humanist of
Rotterdam could neither appreciate nor understand. The year 1534
found Giulio Camillo again in Paris but never able to perfect his con-
struction, a wooden structure which, according to a letter of Gilbert
Cousin, Erasmus's secretary, was still at the French court in 1558. Mean-
while, he was invited in 1543 to the court of Alfonso Davalas, marquis of
Vastos, the Spanish governor of Milan. Giulio Camillo lived just long
enough to arrive there, for he died in 1544.15
Giulio Camillo, a modest and unassuming man whose Latin made
him the butt of Zuichemus's jokes, left us few writings. He worked on
rhetoric and translated Le Idee, overo Forme della Oratione, attributed to
Hermogenes of Tarsus,16 but it seems he had also studied the work of
Pico della Mirandola17 and perhaps also that of the Venetian Brother
Francesco Giorgi,18 which is based on Ficino. His main preoccupation
was adequately to depict a cosmic model. This cosmic model certainly
stems from Florentine Platonism.
Camillo set forth his schema in an obscure little treatise published in
Florence in 1550, L'ldea del Teatro. His construction, which had the form
of an amphitheater of seven sections, aspired to be an imago mundi in
which all ideas and objects might find their appropriate place by virtue
of their planetary classification. Like any artificial system, this was
doomed to be no longer understood as soon as the sets linking terrestrial
phenomena to corresponding planets fell into disuse. We shall see later
that they were constructed according to correlations between a planet
and certain animals, plants and stones and were transmitted by tradition
with inevitable changes from the very beginnings of Hellenistic astrolo-
gy. For the Renaissance mind there existed still a kind of internal evi-
Phantasms at Work 36
dence inherent in the fact that the lion, gold, and the heliotrope be-
longed to the solar set, but this was only evidence of a cultural kind,
becoming invalid as soon as astrology began to lose credibility. Giulio
Camillo's schema, as Frances Yates discerned,19 was magical.
Pliny, 219
Plotinus, 36, 51, 55
Pluche, 66-67
Plutarch of Chaerona, 29, 30, 80-81, 112,
114, 145
Pollaiuolo, Antonio, 211-12
Pomponazzi, Pietro, 129
Pontormo, Jacopo da, 52
Porphyry, 27, 44, 51, 145, 146
Porta, Giambattista della, 30, 156
Pott, Johannes Henricus, 149
Preisendanz, Karl, 117
Prieur, Etienne, 155
Proclus, 27, 48, 128, 144-47, 232 n.44
Proste, Auguste, 198
Protagoras of Cos, 7
Psellus, Michael, 117, 132, 145, 146, 148,
160
Pseudo-Madjritï, 118-19
Ptolemy, 23, 25, 60, 61, 142, 167, 205, 207
Quercia, Jacopo della, 211
Quintilian, 33
Quispel, Gilles, 215
Rabelais, François, 211
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 82
Ramée, Pierre de la, 201
Ramnoux, Clémence, 205
Ramus, Petrus, 6 2 - 6 4
Ranfaing, Elizabeth, 249 n.13
Raphael, 211
Index of Names 264
Walker, D. P., 108-10, 171-72
Warburg, Aby, 6
Weber, Max, xxii
Weyer, Johannes. See Wier, Johannes
Wier, Johannes, 30, 163, 169, 203, 214
William of Auvergne, 51, 52
William of Conches, 44
Willin, Georg, 163
Wind, E., 48
Wolfram of Eschenbach, 210
Xenophon, 38 Ximenez de Rada, Rodriguez, 14
Yates, Frances A., 32, 33, 36, 42, 63, 186,
235 n.32
Tansillo of Venosa, 65
Tassis y Villarroel, J. de Vera, 216-17
Tedeschi, John, 190
Temple, Sir William, 63
Theophrastus, 47
Thomas, St. (apostle), 217
Titian, 211
Todi, Jacopone da, 210
Toulmin, Stephen, xxiii
Tour, Frédéric-Maurice de la, 202
Tour, Henri de la, 202
Tozgrec, 167
Trithemius of Würzburg, 125, 136, 159-
60, 186, 199, 214; demonomagic of, 128,
156, 162-75
Tyard, Pontus de, 81, 129
Phantasms at Work 36
dence inherent in the fact that the lion, gold, and the heliotrope be-
longed to the solar set, but this was only evidence of a cultural kind,
becoming invalid as soon as astrology began to lose credibility. Giulio
Camillo's schema, as Frances Yates discerned,19 was magical. He was
inspired less by Pico della Mirandola's speculations20 than by Ficino's
treatise De vita coelitus comparanda (see below, chap. 4, sec. 3). The sub-
ject matter symbolized by the dramatic figures also came from Florentine
Platonism. For example, the idea of the incorporation of the soul was
represented by the image of Pasiphae and the Bull on the door of the
fifth level. Pasiphae symbolized the soul attracted by the body (the Bull),
a theme associated with black magic, goeteia,21 by Plotinus and also by
the Church Fathers. In its descent among the planetary spheres, the soul
was supposed to invest itself with an aerial quality (the pneuma) ena-
bling it to become incarnated in the material body.22 We can readily
understand that working out all the details of that plan, including not
only images but also cryptic formulas, was too much for one man. Once
he vanished, no one else could take his place to continue his work. At
bottom, Giulio Camillo's ambition amounted to no less than to forge a
figura universi,23 a cosmic form ex qua tamen beneficium ab universo sperare
videntur, through which it was hoped some profit might be obtained
from the universe.
Ficino himself, who describes in detail the realization of an universi
figura, was not one of those who, like Giulio Camillo, cultivated the art
of oratory. This is probably why it never occurred to him that the imago
mundi could have the aspect of a theater. For him, the phantasmic ex-
pression of the intelligential world did not assume forms as concrete as
Camillo's dolls. On the contrary, it ought to be something mysterious,
unreachable by the profane.
Egyptian hieroglyphics fulfilled those requirements wonderfully. In
the first place, they had the prestige of tradition: Plato himself had spo-
ken of them (Phaedo, 274c-75b) and Plotinus too, in his Enneads (5.8):
The Egyptian priests, in symbolizing divine mysteries, did
not use small characters but whole forms of plants, trees, and
animals, for it is clear that God's system of knowledge of
things does not take the form of multiple fancies [excogitatio-
nem multiplicem] about the thing but sees the thing itself in its
simple, stable essence.24
Ficino does not end his commentary on Plotinus with this; he continues
with a reference—arbitrary, moreover—to one of the hieroglyphics of
Horapollon.25
37 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
The treatise, Hieroglyphica, attributed to Horapol lon and ״translated״
into Greek by an unknown writer called Phil ip, was an attraction in Flor-
ence of rather recent appearance. The codex had been discovered by
Cristoforo Buondelmonti on the island of Andros and taken to Florence.
corresponds to transcendental reality. Two pages later, however (p. 193), Bruno
seems to refer to himself when he writes: Ego eum, qui timet a corporeis, numquam
divinis fuisse coniunctum facile crediderim; vere enim sapiens et virtuosus, cum dolorem
non sentiat, est perfecte (ut praesentis vitae conditio ferre potest) beatus, si rem rationis
oculto velis aspicere. That probably explains his indifference when confronted by
the death sentence.
70. Cf. S. Lunais, Recherches sur la Lune, I (Leiden, 1978), pp. 122 sq.
71. Cf. F. A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London
and Boston, 1975), p. 85.
72. See my article "Inter lunam terrasque . . . Incubazione, catalessi ed estasi in
Plutarcoin G. Piccaluga (ed.), Perennitas: Studi in onore di A. Brelich (Rome,
1980), now in the volume Iter in silvis, I, pp. 53-76; Expériences de l'extase, pp.
103-17.
73. See J. Festugière, La Philosophie de l'amour de Marsile Ficin et son influence sur
la littérature française au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1941).
74. See Magendie, La Politesse mondaine et les théories de l'honnêteté en France au
XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1925), s.a., vol. 1, p. 271; Emile Picot, Les Français italianisants
au XVe siècle (Paris, 1906-7); E. Bourciez, Les Moeurs polies et la littérature de cour
sous Henri II (Paris, 1886).
75. Cf. G. Weise, Videale eroico del Rinascimento e le sue premesse umanistiche
(Naples, 1961), II, p. 104.
76. Ibid., pp. 52-103.
77. Ibid., p. 105.
78. Ibid., p. 49.
79. Ibid., pp. 76-77.
80. Cf. H. Champion, Histoire poétique du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1923), I, p. 167,
quoted by G. Weise, II, p. 45. J. Festugière attributes this phenomenon to the
translations of courtly medieval romances: ״They were so popular that, once
again, the Cours d'amour were established among the entourage of François I and
Henri II, with the code of fine manners and the whole amorous jurisprudence so
dear to the ladies of the Middle Ages״ (p. 3). As to G. Weise, he fails to establish
the genetic connection, though an obvious one, between Ficino's Platonism and
French love poetry in the sixteenth century.
81. Yates, Astraea, p. 52.
82. Ibid., p. 77. About a similar symbolism at the French court, see now Sheila
38. Cf. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, (Harmondsworth
[1971], 1978), p. 412. On John Dee in general, see Peter J. French, John Dee: The
World of an Elizabethan Magus (London, 1972).
39. Op. it., I, p. 21.
40. Ibid.; cf. De docta ignorantia, II, pp. 11-12.
41. Op. cit., I, p. 92.
42. P. Ramus, De religione Christiana, Frankfurt ed., (1577), pp. 114-15, cited
by Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 237.
43. Yates, ibid., pp. 234-35.
44. Ibid., p. 237.
45. Ibid., p. 261.
46. See n. 38 above.
47. Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 266 sq.
48. Quoted by Yates, ibid., p. 278.
49. G. Perkins Cantabrigensis, Antidicsonus (London, 1584), p. 45, quoted by
Yates, pp. 274-75. Fundamentally, Perkins was more correct than Yates thinks;
it is true that with respect to Peter of Ravenna an absolutely inoffensive practice
is at issue (he believes the image of an old love is particularly suited to being
recorded by the memory, due to its emotional charge). However, in Bruno's case
the technique assumes a systematic character, as evidenced by this very interest-
ing passage from the Sigillus sigillorum (Op. lat., II, 2, p. 166): Excitent ergo, quae
comitante discursu, cogitatione fortique phantasia movent affectum, quibusque zelantes,
contemnentes, amantes, odientes, maerentes, gaudentes, admirantes, et ad sensuum tru-
tinam referentes, cum zeli, contemptus, amoris, odii, maeroris, gaudii, admirationis et
scrutinii speciebus, cum memorandae rei forma efficimur. Porro fortiores atque vehemen-
tiores fortius consequentia quadam atque vehementius imprimunt (21). Has autem si vel
tua vel rei concipiendae natura non adferat, industria citet affectus. In istis enim exer-
citatio nedum ad optimos pessimosque mores viam aperit, sed et ad intelligentiam et
(quantum per hominem fieri potest) omnium pro viribus eiusdem activitatem. Confxr-
matur hoc, quod populi et gentes, quibus promptior est libido et ira, sunt activiores; et ex
iisdem intense odientes et amantes apprime impios, aut si se se vertant quo divinus eos
agat amor atque zelus, apprime religiosos habes, ubi idem materiale principium summam
ad virtutem pariter proximum esse atque ad vitium potes agnoscere (22).
Camillo set forth his schema in an obscure little treatise published in
Florence in 1550, L'ldea del Teatro. His construction, which had the form
of an amphitheater of seven sections, aspired to be an imago mundi in
which all ideas and objects might find their appropriate place by virtue
of their planetary classification. Like any artificial system, this was
doomed to be no longer understood as soon as the sets linking terrestrial
phenomena to corresponding planets fell into disuse. We shall see later
that they were constructed according to correlations between a planet
and certain animals, plants and stones and were transmitted by tradition
with inevitable changes from the very beginnings of Hellenistic astrolo-
gy. For the Renaissance mind there existed still a kind of internal evi-
Phantasms at Work 36
dence inherent in the fact that the lion, gold, and the heliotrope be-
longed to the solar set, but this was only evidence of a cultural kind,
becoming invalid as soon as astrology began to lose credibility. Giulio
Camillo's schema, as Frances Yates discerned,19 was magical. He was
inspired less by Pico della Mirandola's speculations20 than by Ficino's
treatise De vita coelitus comparanda (see below, chap. 4, sec. 3). The sub-
ject matter symbolized by the dramatic figures also came from Florentine
Platonism. For example, the idea of the incorporation of the soul was
represented by the image of Pasiphae and the Bull on the door of the
fifth level. Pasiphae symbolized the soul attracted by the body (the Bull),
a theme associated with black magic, goeteia,21 by Plotinus and also by
the Church Fathers. In its descent among the planetary spheres, the soul
was supposed to invest itself with an aerial quality (the pneuma) ena-
bling it to become incarnated in the material body.22 We can readily
understand that working out all the details of that plan, including not
only images but also cryptic formulas, was too much for one man. Once
he vanished, no one else could take his place to continue his work. At
bottom, Giulio Camillo's ambition amounted to no less than to forge a
figura universi,23 a cosmic form ex qua tamen beneficium ab universo sperare
videntur, through which it was hoped some profit might be obtained
from the universe.
237 Notes to Pages 91-113
procul dubio nil tibi supererit difficile. Itaque, prout expedit, explicavimus, unde quasi
per artem non solum rerum memoriam, sed et veritatem atque sapientiam per universum
humanam possis assequi (23). Bruno does not deny that emotions open the way
toward the noblest as well as the most perverse customs; nevertheless, he is of
the opinion that all emotions—including those which might be considered nega-
tive or immoral—are favorable to mnemotechnics.
50. P.-H. Michel, quoting Sellers, is certain that John Charlewood was the
printer. See the foreword to Giordano Bruno, Des fureurs héroïques (Paris, 1954),
p. 8.
51. Yates, The Art of Memory, p. 284.
52. Ascl., IX; cf. Ficino, Op., II, p. 1865; Bruno, Op. it., II, p. 180.
53. Op. lat., II, 2, p. 133; in its entirety, the passage reads: Primus praecipuusque
45. Peuckert, Pansophie, pp. 72-73.
46. Georg Wil l in, Dissertatio historico-literaria de arte Trithemiana scribendi per
ignem (Uppsala, 1728), p. 33, quoted by Klaus Arnold, Johannes Trithemius, p.
180.
47. Kur t Baschwitz, Hexen und Hexenprozesse: Die Geschichte eines Massenwahns
und seiner Bekämpfung (Munich, 1963), pp. 17 sq.
48. See Peuckert, pp. 72-73.
247 Notes to Pages 131-142
49. Ibid., p. 77.
50. Fama confraternitatis, in Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
51. Primo Poeta celeberrimus . . . Secundo . . . Orator facundissimus . . . Ter-
tio . . . subtilissimus Philosophus . . . Quarto . . . Mathematicus . . . ingeniosis-
simus . . . Quinto . . . Historicus perfectus . . . Sexto . . . Theologus insignis
(Heidel, Vita Johannes Trithemius Abb., pp. 34-35).
52. The city of Würzburg, where tradition concerning Trithemius lasted about
two centuries, and the monastery of Sponheim are located near Heidelberg in
the Palatinate, where the ״farce״ (ludibrium) of the Rosicrucians took place at the
beginning of the seventeenth century. With respect to the ״inextinguishable
lamps״ found in the tomb of Father Christian Rosenkreuz, it is probable that the
authors of the Fama confraternitatis made use of an element of Trithemius׳ s leg-
end, according to information given by Bartholomeus Korndorff derived from
Servatius Hochel.
53. Trithemius's complete bibliography is recorded by Klaus Arnold, pp. 228
sq.
54. Peuckert, p. 75.
55. Heidel, Vita Johan. Trith. Abb., p. 1.
56. Arnold, p. 7.
57. Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven, Der wiener Humanist Johannes Cuspinian, Graz-
Köln, 1959, p. 16, quoted by Arnold, p. 56.
58. Arnold, p. 62.
59. Cited by Arnold, p. 61.
60. Ibid., m<58.
61. Antipmus, I, 3; Peuckert furnishes a list which is almost complete, Pan-
sophie, pp. 47-55.
62. The text of this letter is reproduced by Heidel, pp. 50-51; it is partially
The Ar t of Memory, also a phantasmic process whose principles and
history Paolo Rossi and Frances Yates have dealt w i th in their excellent
books, forms an intermediary l ink between Eros and magic. It concerns
us here only to the extent that, wi thout a general idea of it, we would be
at a loss to understand the ideological scope of Ficino and other theoreti-
cians of phantasmic love such as Francesco Colonna and Giordano
Bruno.8
The Ar t of Memory is a technique for the manipulat ion of phantasms,
which rests on the Aristotelian principle of the absolute precedence of
the phantasm over speech and of the phantasmic essence of the intellect
(see above, chap. 1, sec. 1). The precise inference drawn from it, ex-
33 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
pounded by St. Thomas in his commentary on Aristotle's De memoria et
reminiscentia, is that whatever is seen, thanks to its intrinsic quality of
image, is easy to remember, whereas abstract concepts or linguistic se-
quences require some phantasmic support or other to charge the memo-
ry.9 This is why St. Thomas recommends recourse to the mnemotechni-
cal rules contained in Ad Herennium, wrongly attributed to Cicero and
also called Rhetorica secunda.
It is certain that the Art of Memory had been utilized in the Middle
Ages in cloisters to foster teaching of abstract concepts but also as a very
important element of the monk's inner discipline. In the fourteenth cen-
tury, two treatises in Vulgar Italian deal with it, and even Petrarch was
acquainted with its rules.10
But times change, and, with the discovery in 1416 of Quintilian's In-
stitute oratoria (which, by the way, does not endorse mnemotechnics),
the humanists place the arts and virtues of the ancients on a pedestal.
Whereas the Middle Ages utilized the pseudo-Ciceronian treatise ad
maiorem gloriam Dei, the better to bring to mind the majestic structure of
theological concepts, humanism sees in the Ars memoriae an important
weapon for social success, to ensure, by means of an infallible memory,
advantage over others.11 It is along these lines that the jurist Peter of
Ravenna's treatise Phoenix, sive artificiosa memoria (Venice, 1491) was
written.
The reader of Rossi's or Yates's books doubtless recalls the function of
Art, which we shall try to reconstruct freely here without going into
detail. Owing to the fact that perceptions have an intrinsically phan-
tasmic character, and are thus readily committed to memory, the task is
to superimpose any contents linguistic or conceptual—for instance a
poem or classification of virtues—onto a succession of images. Now,
those images can come from some place, but this does not prevent them
from being, as well, phantasms produced for the circumstances by the
imaginative faculty. In the first instance, the place must be chosen with
care: truly, this Art demands a total concentration only possible in soli-
tude. It follows that mnemonic activity can only be pursued in a church,
a cemetery, a deserted palace, or at home, avoiding all company and
diversion. The parts of the place must be memorized in a certain order.
from Ficino to Campanella (London, 1958), p. 141.
17. That is Yates's opinion, p. 136.
18. Francisci Georgii Veneti Minoritae Familiae, De Harmonia Mundi Totius
Cantica Tria (Venice, 1525).
231 Notes to Pages 91-113
19. Yates, p. 155.
20. Ibid., p. 136.
21. Cf. J. Flamant, Macrobe (Leiden, 1977), pp. 544 sq.
22. Giulio Camillo, ״LTdea del Teatro,״ in lutte le opere (Florence, 1550), p.
67; cf. Yates, p. 140.
23. Ficino, Vita coeL, chap. 19.
24. Opera, II, p. 1768.
25. Cf. E. Gombrich, ״Icônes Symbolicae,״ in Symbolic Images: Studies in the
Art of the Renaissance II (Oxford, 1978), p. 222, no. 82, and pp. 158-59.
26. Cf. E. Iversen, The Myth of Egypt and its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition
(Copenhagen, 1961).
27. E. Garin, Storia della filosofia italiana, vol. 1 (Turin, 1966), p. 383.
28. Comp, in Timeaum, p. 27, in A. Chastel, Marsile Ficin et l'Art (Geneva,
1954), p. 105, no. 5.
29. Theol. Plat., XV, 13; see also Garin, pp. 401-2. The tradit ion of this ״ inner
eye״ comes from Plotinus, Enneads, I, 6, 9. For Ficino, this is a phantasmic organ
directed toward the summit (the intelligible world).
30. P. O. Kristeller, Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino, Italian translation
revised and augmented (Florence, 1953), pp. 218 sq.
31. See Verbeke, pp. 498-507.
32. For the history of the oculus spiritalis, see H. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and
Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire (Cairo, 1956;
repr. Paris, 1978, through the good offices of M. Tardieu), pp. 370 sq.
33. Chastel, Marcile Ficin et l'Art, p. 147.
34. Prooem. in Platonis Parmenidem (Opera, II, p. 1137). This is simply the Lat in
translation of an expression Xenophon had used to designate the Socratic meth-
od (paizein spoude). O n the custom of the ״serious games״ of Ficino and his
contemporaries, see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance 3d ed. (Ox-
ford, 1980), pp. 236-38.
Press, 1972.
Shumaker, Wayne. The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A Study in Intellectual
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Soleil. Le Soleil à la Renaissance: Sciences et mythes. Brussels and Paris: Presses
Universitaires, 1965.
Spence, Jonathan D. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Sifton/Pen-
guin, 1983.
Tedeschi, John. ״The Roman Inquisition and Witchcraft.״ Revue de l'Histoire des
Religions 200 (1983): 163-88.
Teirlinck, Isidore. Flora Magica: De plant in de Tooverwereld. Anvers: De Sikkel,
1930.
Le Temps chrétien de la fin de L'Antiquité au Moyen Age, IIIe-XIIIe siècles. Paris:
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Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental Science. Vols. 3-4, Four-
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Visible: 0% - 100%
Ioan P. Couliano engages with Frances Yates's theories mainly in relation to her work on memory, Renaissance magic, and her interpretations of figures like Giordano Bruno and Giulio Camillo. He acknowledges Yates's "undeniable merit" in placing thinkers like Bruno within their intellectual contexts, rehabilitating them from caricature as merely eccentric precursors of modernity【8:2†Ioan P. Couliano Eros and Magic in the Renaissance Chicago Original Paperback.pdf】. However, Couliano is critical of her tendency to lump diverse Late Antique doctrines under the umbrella of "Hermeticism" indiscriminately【8:2†Ioan P. Couliano Eros and Magic in the Renaissance Chicago Original Paperback.pdf】.
Couliano also comments on Yates’s interpretation of Giulio Camillo, noting her insight that Camillo’s memory theater was "magical" rather than purely mnemonic. Couliano nuances this by tracing Camillo’s system more directly to Ficino's influence rather than Pico's, emphasizing its Florentine Platonic roots【8:11†Ioan P. Couliano Eros and Magic in the Renaissance Chicago Original Paperback.pdf】. He also agrees with Yates that Camillo's endeavor to create an imago mundi through a theater of memory was inherently unstable once the cultural connections to astrology and planetary correspondences faded【8:11†Ioan P. Couliano Eros and Magic in the Renaissance Chicago Original Paperback.pdf】.
On Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Couliano presents it as a unique literary case of "phantasmic Eros." He distinguishes Colonna's work from the Ficinian tradition, emphasizing its independence from Ficino’s influence despite its alignment with broader Renaissance concerns about images, desire, and allegory【8:1†Ioan P. Couliano Eros and Magic in the Renaissance Chicago Original Paperback.pdf】. Couliano reads the Hypnerotomachia as a narrative about phantasms that blends allegory and empirical psychology—a story where erotic desire is both provoked and satisfied by phantasmic images. He finds its labyrinthine structure notable, with a first part dense with allegorical imagery and a second part that explains the dreamlike plot, underscoring its exploration of the interplay between erotic desire and memory【8:3†Ioan P. Couliano Eros and Magic in the Renaissance Chicago Original Paperback.pdf】.
Finally, Couliano echoes Yates's suggestion that the imagery in the Hypnerotomachia might be a case of mnemonic technique spun out into fantastical elaboration, though he distances his own analysis from dwelling on that dimension【8:3†Ioan P. Couliano Eros and Magic in the Renaissance Chicago Original Paperback.pdf】.
give me a more detailed discussion of everything he has to say about HP
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[Web browsing]
Unfortunately, although there are many theoreticians of phantasmic
Eros, the number of writers who have tried to describe phantasms at
work is very limited. One of them surely is the respectable monk from
Treviso, Francesco Colonna, who, having become sacristan of the mon-
astery of St. John and St. Paul in Padua, died in 1527 at the age of ninety-
four.39 He is the author of a work almost unique of its kind, the Hyp-
nerotomachia Poliphili, which, as the author points out in the book's ex-
plicit, had been finished May 1, 1467, but was not published until 1499
by Aldo Manuzio; it was paid for by a magistrate of Verona, called
Leonardo Crasso.40
The contents of the Hypnerotomachia tally with the date 1467. Indeed,
the work is external to the current of ideas circulated by Marsilio Ficino
41 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
FIGURE 3. ״Two wretched damsels, naked and disheveled.״ From Francesco
Colonna, Discours du Songe de Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy
of the Wing Foundation, The Newberry Library, Chicago.
beginning more or less in 1463.41 From our point of v iew, the fact that i t
escapes Ficino's influence is invaluable. Even when expressing a person-
al point of v iew on love, wh ich rarely happens, Pico della Mirandola,
Pietro Bembo, Baldesar Castiglione, Leo the Hebrew, and Melanchthon
bear the indelible mark of Ficino's thought. O n the contrary, Colonna
(though he, too, treats of the phantasmic Eros) is original and inimitable,
less in his ideas—a common heritage of the period, of wh ich Ficino is to
become the systematic organizer—than in the l i terary and didactic quali-
ty of his work.
(iv) Phantasms at Work
Let us make the acquaintance of phantasms.
Taken literally, the title Hypnerotomachia means a ״ love f ight dur ing
sleep.״ This leads us to expect that a person dreams of phantasms in-
volved in an erotic f ight, perhaps his o w n erotic phantasm. That is pre-
cisely what happens: two phantasms, that of the dreamer—Pol iphi lus—
and that of the gir l he loves—Polia—are at the center of the scenario.
The tale is not constructed so as to be easily understood. It is an enigma
Phantasms at Work 42
whose solution is given only at the end. The reader is informed that
Poliphilus seeks Polia, but does not know w h y or how. Of the 311 pages
of the Guegan-Kerver edition, the first part takes up 250 whereas the
second, which provides indispensable explanations, takes up only 60.
The conflict between those two impor tant tradit ions also signifies the
relative dependence of the one on the other. Erotic myst ic ism becomes
distinct by contrast to the naturalistic trend, whereas the latter defines
its positions in controversy, explicit or impl ic i t , w i t h the idealism and
the intellectualism of the fai thful .
A th i rd trend, as meek and obscure as the others were famous and
persistent, almost passed unobserved or was close to being assimilated
by the two others. Indeed, there can exist phantasms unrelated to a real
object, but, thanks to the qual i ty of their images, there can be no phan-
Phantasms at Work 40
FIGURE 2. Bacchanalian revels. From Francesco Colonna, Discours du Songe de
Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy of the Wing Foundation, The
Newberry Library, Chicago.
tasms without physical support of one kind or another. That is why a
story about phantasms is always interpretable: we can see it either as the
symbol of adventures in the intelligential cosmos or as the allegory of
actual events.
Unfortunately, although there are many theoreticians of phantasmic
Eros, the number of writers who have tried to describe phantasms at
work is very limited. One of them surely is the respectable monk from
Treviso, Francesco Colonna, who, having become sacristan of the mon-
astery of St. John and St. Paul in Padua, died in 1527 at the age of ninety-
four.39 He is the author of a work almost unique of its kind, the Hyp-
nerotomachia Poliphili, which, as the author points out in the book's ex-
plicit, had been finished May 1, 1467, but was not published until 1499
by Aldo Manuzio; it was paid for by a magistrate of Verona, called
Leonardo Crasso.40
The contents of the Hypnerotomachia tally with the date 1467. Indeed,
the work is external to the current of ideas circulated by Marsilio Ficino
41 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
FIGURE 3. ״Two wretched damsels, naked and disheveled.״ From Francesco
Colonna, Discours du Songe de Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy
of the Wing Foundation, The Newberry Library, Chicago.
36. On the Orphic myth, see W. K. C. Guthrie, Orphaeus and Greek Religion, 2d
ed. (London, 1952); H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos: Histoire du culte de Bacchus (Paris,
Payot, 1950).
37. Heraclitus, fr. 52. On the ״Orphic״ interpretation of this fragment, see V.
Macchioro, Eraclito, nuovi studi sull' Orßsmo (Bari, 1922). On the interpretation
pertaining to ״ ini t iat ion״ in the game of Dionysus, see Andrew Lang, Custom
and Myth (1885; reprint Ooserhout, 1970), pp. 29-44, esp. pp. 39-41; and R.
Pettazzoni, I misteri: Saggio di una teoria storico-religiosa (Bologna, 1924). On the
ludus mundi, by Karl Jaspers in particular, see D. L. Mil ler, Gods and Games (New
York, 1973), pp. 163-64. O n interpretation of fragment 52 by Heraclitus from
Nietzsche to Heidegger, see G. Penzo, II nichilismo da Nietzsche a Sartre (Rome,
1976).
38. La Forme et l'Intelligible, pp. 31-64.
39. On the biography of Brother F. Colonna, see M. T. Casella and G. Pozzi,
Francesco Colonna: Biografia e Opere, (Padua, 1959).
40. See the edition by G. Pozzi and L. A. Ciapponi, Hypnerotomachia Polifili
(Padua, 1964).
41. In 1463, Ficino, at thir ty, translated the Pimander attributed to Hermes
Trismegistus. Despite his precocity, his reputation d id not reach Treviso f rom
Florence before 1467.
42. Yates, pp. 123-24.
43. See Hypnérotomachie, ed. Guégan-Kerver, p. 309.
Notes to Pages 91-113 232 232
44. See my discussion of J. Flamant׳ s thesis, Macrobe et le néo-platonisme latin, à
la fin du IVe siècle (Leiden, 1977) in "Ordine e disordine delle sfere" (cf. also my
review of Flamands book in Aevum, 1979). Two other passages from Ficino's
work relate to the doctrine of the descent of the soul among the planetary
spheres and the acquisition of vehicles. In his Theologia platónica (XVIII, 4-5),
Ficino mentions three vehicles of the soul (celestial, aerial, and material), which
seems to refer to Synesius of Cyrene's distinction between a vehiculum divinioris
animae, which is ethereal, and a material vehicle, common to animals and to man
(cf. my Magia spirituale, note 103). Proclus also makes this distinction (see my
,Ordine e disordine delle sfere").
Let us make the acquaintance of phantasms.
Taken literally, the title Hypnerotomachia means a ״ love f ight dur ing
sleep.״ This leads us to expect that a person dreams of phantasms in-
volved in an erotic f ight, perhaps his o w n erotic phantasm. That is pre-
cisely what happens: two phantasms, that of the dreamer—Pol iphi lus—
and that of the gir l he loves—Polia—are at the center of the scenario.
The tale is not constructed so as to be easily understood. It is an enigma
Phantasms at Work 42
whose solution is given only at the end. The reader is informed that
Poliphilus seeks Polia, but does not know w h y or how. Of the 311 pages
of the Guegan-Kerver edition, the first part takes up 250 whereas the
second, which provides indispensable explanations, takes up only 60.
The first part tells of the endless roaming of Poliphilus amid the ruins of
antiquity, of tr iumphs, emblems and impresae, each w i th its own secret
meaning. As Yates observed, it could be a matter of mnemotechnics
escaped f״ rom control and degenerated into w i l d imaginings.42״ In any
case, such oneirico-archeologico-mnemotechnics, however fascinating,
w i l l not preoccupy us here. In the end, Poliphilus finds Polia, and the
lovers plead their case before the heavenly tr ibunal of Venus. The sec-
ond part, wh ich contains two monologues, is therefore a tale within a tale,
and the end is destined to complicate the enigma still more: we learn
that everything that happened was only Poliphilus's dream, so that the
search for Polia and the appeasement of desire were but adventures in
phantasy.43
Neither mystical love nor vulgar love, Poliphilus's dream represents
the trite story of phantasmic desire that finds fulf i l lment.
The tale is saved f rom platitude and indecency by its phantasmic quali-
ty: desire, provoked by a phantasm, is appeased by the phantasm, after
a period of erotico-mnemotechnic tribulations.
(v) The Depth Psychology of Ficino
D E S C E N T OF T H E SOUL
Souls descend into the bodies of the Mi lky Way through the
constellation of Cancer, enveloping themselves in a celestial
and luminous veil which they put on to enter terrestrial
bodies. For nature demands that the very pure soul be united
w i th the very impure body only through the intermediary of a
pure veil, which, being less pure than the soul and purer than
the body, is considered by the Platonists to be a very conve-
nient means of uni t ing the soul w i th the terrestrial body. It is
due to that descent that the souls and bodies of the Planets
confirm and reinforce, i n our Souls and our bodies respec-
tively, the seven original gifts bestowed upon us by God. The
same function is performed by the [seven] categories of de-
mons, intermediaries between the celestial gods and men. The
gift of contemplation is strengthened by Saturn by means of
the Saturnian Demons.
In this case there w i l l be a fundamental contradict ion between the
medical concept of a phantasmic Eros that disturbs the equi l ibr ium of
the organism and demands p rompt assuagement to restore this equi-
l ibr ium, and the concept of the ״ fa i th fu l , -a complete denial of the for ״
mer, f ind ing expression through a semantic inversion valor iz ing the
disequil ibr ium in terms of a plenary spir i tual experience. This w i l l to
distort, first brought to bear on medical matters of the period, subse-
quently provoked much ribaldry directed against believers i n mystical
love whose ideas, bereft of sense, are to become synonymous w i t h an
erotic strategy in wh ich the purely verbal idealization of woman is mere-
ly an expedient to silence her resistance as quickly as possible.
The conflict between those two impor tant tradit ions also signifies the
relative dependence of the one on the other. Erotic myst ic ism becomes
distinct by contrast to the naturalistic trend, whereas the latter defines
its positions in controversy, explicit or impl ic i t , w i t h the idealism and
the intellectualism of the fai thful .
A th i rd trend, as meek and obscure as the others were famous and
persistent, almost passed unobserved or was close to being assimilated
by the two others. Indeed, there can exist phantasms unrelated to a real
object, but, thanks to the qual i ty of their images, there can be no phan-
Phantasms at Work 40
FIGURE 2. Bacchanalian revels. From Francesco Colonna, Discours du Songe de
Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy of the Wing Foundation, The
Newberry Library, Chicago.
tasms without physical support of one kind or another. That is why a
story about phantasms is always interpretable: we can see it either as the
symbol of adventures in the intelligential cosmos or as the allegory of
actual events.
The tale is saved f rom platitude and indecency by its phantasmic quali-
ty: desire, provoked by a phantasm, is appeased by the phantasm, after
a period of erotico-mnemotechnic tribulations.
(v) The Depth Psychology of Ficino
D E S C E N T OF T H E SOUL
Souls descend into the bodies of the Mi lky Way through the
constellation of Cancer, enveloping themselves in a celestial
and luminous veil which they put on to enter terrestrial
bodies. For nature demands that the very pure soul be united
w i th the very impure body only through the intermediary of a
pure veil, which, being less pure than the soul and purer than
the body, is considered by the Platonists to be a very conve-
nient means of uni t ing the soul w i th the terrestrial body. It is
due to that descent that the souls and bodies of the Planets
confirm and reinforce, i n our Souls and our bodies respec-
tively, the seven original gifts bestowed upon us by God. The
same function is performed by the [seven] categories of de-
mons, intermediaries between the celestial gods and men. The
gift of contemplation is strengthened by Saturn by means of
the Saturnian Demons. The power of the government and
empire is strengthened by Jupiter through the ministry of the
Jovian Demons; similarly, Mars through the Martians fosters
the soul's courage. The Sun, w i th the help of the Solar De-
43 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
FIGURE 4. The ithyphallic god Pan. From Francesco Colonna, Discours du Songe
de Poliphile [Hypnerotomachia] (Paris, 1554). Courtesy of the Wing Foundation,
The Newberry Library, Chicago.
Phantasms at Work 44
mons, fosters the clarity of the senses and opinions that makes
divination possible; Venus, through the Venereans, incites
Love. Mercury, through the Mercurials, awakens the capacity
for interpretation and expression. Finally, the Moon, through
the lunar demons, increases procreation. (Amore, VI, 4)
Except for the idea that the planets exert their respective influences on
the soul and the human body through the intermediacy of demons, this
passage f rom Ficino is inspired by the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio
by the Latin Neoplatonist Macrobius, who must have had as his source a
treatise by Porphyry.4 4 Macrobius׳s work had been circulated in the
Middle Ages, and it is possible that Ficino was acquainted w i th a com-
mentary attributed to Wil l iam of Conches, one of whose fourteenth-cen-
tury manuscripts is in the National Library in Florence.45 The author of
Philosophia mundi, in dealing w i t h procreation, divided the womb into
seven compartments retaining sperm in which ״the human form is im-
printed like a coin.4 -It is very likely that the seven divisions corre ״6
spond to the planets, whose influence on the development of the
embryo wou ld thus have been prepared in advance through divine
wisdom permeating nature.
(Padua, 1964).
41. In 1463, Ficino, at thir ty, translated the Pimander attributed to Hermes
Trismegistus. Despite his precocity, his reputation d id not reach Treviso f rom
Florence before 1467.
42. Yates, pp. 123-24.
43. See Hypnérotomachie, ed. Guégan-Kerver, p. 309.
Notes to Pages 91-113 232 232
44. See my discussion of J. Flamant׳ s thesis, Macrobe et le néo-platonisme latin, à
la fin du IVe siècle (Leiden, 1977) in "Ordine e disordine delle sfere" (cf. also my
review of Flamands book in Aevum, 1979). Two other passages from Ficino's
work relate to the doctrine of the descent of the soul among the planetary
spheres and the acquisition of vehicles. In his Theologia platónica (XVIII, 4-5),
Ficino mentions three vehicles of the soul (celestial, aerial, and material), which
seems to refer to Synesius of Cyrene's distinction between a vehiculum divinioris
animae, which is ethereal, and a material vehicle, common to animals and to man
(cf. my Magia spirituale, note 103). Proclus also makes this distinction (see my
,Ordine e disordine delle sfere"). Ficino does not hold this position invariably״
since in his commentary on Plotinus's Enneads (II, 6) we find this passage, akin
to Proclus, Macrobius and Servius: Ex eorum iterum animabus in nostris animis a
Saturno contemplatio cautioque et conservatio diligens augetur, ab Jove civilis et prudens
potissimum gubernatio, a Marte magnanimitas malorum iniuriarumque expultrix, a
Mercurio inquisitio quaelibet et expressio, a Venere charitas et humanitas, a Sole hon-
estatis cura pudorque et gloriae studium verioris, a Luna denique rerum vitae necessariam
cura et providentia diligens (Opera, II, p. 1619). The neo-Plotinian term ״vehicle״
does not appear here, nor do the planetary demons who appear in the text of the
Commentary to the Symposium. It is very characteristic that, in the eighteenth book
of his Theologia platónica, Ficino says he does not believe in the doctrine of the
soul's passage through the spheres, which he calls ״a phantasy of the Pla-
tonists.״ Since he sets it forth in his commentaries on Enneads and Symposium,
however, it is very likely he does subscribe to this theory. Stranger yet, he does
not even mention it where it deserves a place of honor, that is, in the book De
vita coelitus comparanda. Actually, no theoretical justification for astrological mag-
ic is as simple as the idea that, in the course of its descent, the soul is enveloped
in astral tunics that respond to the momentary influences of the planets.
eye״ comes from Plotinus, Enneads, I, 6, 9. For Ficino, this is a phantasmic organ
directed toward the summit (the intelligible world).
30. P. O. Kristeller, Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino, Italian translation
revised and augmented (Florence, 1953), pp. 218 sq.
31. See Verbeke, pp. 498-507.
32. For the history of the oculus spiritalis, see H. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and
Theurgy: Mysticism, Magic and Platonism in the Later Roman Empire (Cairo, 1956;
repr. Paris, 1978, through the good offices of M. Tardieu), pp. 370 sq.
33. Chastel, Marcile Ficin et l'Art, p. 147.
34. Prooem. in Platonis Parmenidem (Opera, II, p. 1137). This is simply the Lat in
translation of an expression Xenophon had used to designate the Socratic meth-
od (paizein spoude). O n the custom of the ״serious games״ of Ficino and his
contemporaries, see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance 3d ed. (Ox-
ford, 1980), pp. 236-38.
35. Wind attributes them to Nicholas of Cusa's disciple John Andreas of
Bussi.
36. On the Orphic myth, see W. K. C. Guthrie, Orphaeus and Greek Religion, 2d
ed. (London, 1952); H. Jeanmaire, Dionysos: Histoire du culte de Bacchus (Paris,
Payot, 1950).
37. Heraclitus, fr. 52. On the ״Orphic״ interpretation of this fragment, see V.
Macchioro, Eraclito, nuovi studi sull' Orßsmo (Bari, 1922). On the interpretation
pertaining to ״ ini t iat ion״ in the game of Dionysus, see Andrew Lang, Custom
and Myth (1885; reprint Ooserhout, 1970), pp. 29-44, esp. pp. 39-41; and R.
Pettazzoni, I misteri: Saggio di una teoria storico-religiosa (Bologna, 1924). On the
ludus mundi, by Karl Jaspers in particular, see D. L. Mil ler, Gods and Games (New
York, 1973), pp. 163-64. O n interpretation of fragment 52 by Heraclitus from
Nietzsche to Heidegger, see G. Penzo, II nichilismo da Nietzsche a Sartre (Rome,
1976).
38. La Forme et l'Intelligible, pp. 31-64.
39. On the biography of Brother F. Colonna, see M. T. Casella and G. Pozzi,
RENAISSANCE
loan E Couliano
Translated by Margaret Cook
With a Foreword by
Mircea Eliade
EROS AND MAGIC
IN THE RENAISSANCE
loan P. Couliano
EROS AND M A G I C IN
THE RENAISSANCE
Translated by Margaret Cook
With a Foreword by Mircea Eliade
Chicago and London THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON
© 1987 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1987
Printed in the United States of America
07 06 05 04 03 02 01 6
This book was originally published in France under the title Eros et
magie ä la Renaissance, 1484, © 1984, Flammarion, Paris.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING־IN־PUBLICATION DATA
Culianu, loan P.
Eros and magic in the Renaissance.
Translation of: Eros et magie k la Renaissance, 1484.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Renaissance—Psychological aspects. 2. Magic.
I. Title.
CB367.C6813 1987 1 3 3 . 4 8 7 - 1 0 8 8 ׳094 2
ISBN 0-226-12316-2 (pbk.)
© The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Contents
Translator's Note ix
Foreword, by Mircea Eliade xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
PHANTASMS AT WORK
1. History of Phantasy 3
(i) On the Inner Sense 3
Some Preliminary Considerations 3
The Phantasmic Pneuma 6
(ii) Flux and Reflux of Values in the Twelfth Century 11
Acculturation of the West 13
How a Woman . . . 21
(iii) The Vehicle of the Soul and Prenatal Experience 23
2. Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of
Eros 28
(i) The Empirical Psychology of Ficino and Its Sources 28
(ii) The Art of Memory 32
(iii) The Phantasmic Eros and the Appeasement of
Desire 38
(iv) Phantasms at Work 41
(v) The Depth Psychology of Ficino 42
Descent of the Soul 42
Melancholy and Saturn 46
3. Dangerous Liaisons 53
(i) Pico della Mirandola, Continuator of Ficino 53
(ii) The Ambiguous Gods of Eros 58
Giordano Bruno, a Man of the Phantasmic Past 58
Scandal in London 60
v
Contents v i
Mnemonic Phantasms 65
Ambigui ty of Eros 67
A t the Heart of Bruno's Doctrine 70
Actaeon 77
Diana 79
The Parable of the Nine Blind Men 83
Circe 84
The Ar t of Memory, also a phantasmic process whose principles and
history Paolo Rossi and Frances Yates have dealt w i th in their excellent
books, forms an intermediary l ink between Eros and magic. It concerns
us here only to the extent that, wi thout a general idea of it, we would be
at a loss to understand the ideological scope of Ficino and other theoreti-
cians of phantasmic love such as Francesco Colonna and Giordano
Bruno.8
The Ar t of Memory is a technique for the manipulat ion of phantasms,
which rests on the Aristotelian principle of the absolute precedence of
the phantasm over speech and of the phantasmic essence of the intellect
(see above, chap. 1, sec. 1). The precise inference drawn from it, ex-
33 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
pounded by St. Thomas in his commentary on Aristotle's De memoria et
reminiscentia, is that whatever is seen, thanks to its intrinsic quality of
image, is easy to remember, whereas abstract concepts or linguistic se-
quences require some phantasmic support or other to charge the memo-
ry.9 This is why St. Thomas recommends recourse to the mnemotechni-
cal rules contained in Ad Herennium, wrongly attributed to Cicero and
also called Rhetorica secunda.
It is certain that the Art of Memory had been utilized in the Middle
Ages in cloisters to foster teaching of abstract concepts but also as a very
important element of the monk's inner discipline. In the fourteenth cen-
tury, two treatises in Vulgar Italian deal with it, and even Petrarch was
acquainted with its rules.10
But times change, and, with the discovery in 1416 of Quintilian's In-
stitute oratoria (which, by the way, does not endorse mnemotechnics),
the humanists place the arts and virtues of the ancients on a pedestal.
Whereas the Middle Ages utilized the pseudo-Ciceronian treatise ad
maiorem gloriam Dei, the better to bring to mind the majestic structure of
theological concepts, humanism sees in the Ars memoriae an important
weapon for social success, to ensure, by means of an infallible memory,
advantage over others.11 It is along these lines that the jurist Peter of
Ravenna's treatise Phoenix, sive artificiosa memoria (Venice, 1491) was
written.
The reader of Rossi's or Yates's books doubtless recalls the function of
Art, which we shall try to reconstruct freely here without going into
detail. Owing to the fact that perceptions have an intrinsically phan-
tasmic character, and are thus readily committed to memory, the task is
to superimpose any contents linguistic or conceptual—for instance a
poem or classification of virtues—onto a succession of images. Now,
those images can come from some place, but this does not prevent them
from being, as well, phantasms produced for the circumstances by the
imaginative faculty. In the first instance, the place must be chosen with
care: truly, this Art demands a total concentration only possible in soli-
tude. It follows that mnemonic activity can only be pursued in a church,
a cemetery, a deserted palace, or at home, avoiding all company and
diversion. The parts of the place must be memorized in a certain order.
André Chastel believes that the term hieroglypha, as used by Ficino,
does not refer to a form communicated by the soul to the faculty of
reason through the intermediary of the pneuma. Rather, it is a symbol of
meditation ״keeping the spirit in a state of tension propitious to a k ind
of meditation close to ecstasy, the talisman of the oculus mentis.33״
Pseudo-Egyptian hieroglyphics, emblems, and impresae were wonder-
fully suited to the playful spirit of Florentine Platonism, to the myste-
rious and ״myst i fy ing״ quality Ficino believed it had. ״Pythagoras,
Phantasms at Work 38
Socrates, and Plato had the habit of h id ing all divine mysteries behind
the veil of figurative language to protect their wisdom modestly from the
Sophists׳ boastfulness, of joking seriously and playing assiduously,
iocari serio et studiosissime ludere."34 That famous turn of phrase of
Ficino's—translation of a remark by Xenophon concerning the Socratic
method—depicts, at bottom, the quintessence of every phantasmic pro-
cess, whether it be Eros, the Ar t of Memory, magic, or alchemy—the
ludus puerorum, preeminently a game for children. What, indeed, are we
doing in any of the above if not playing with phantasms, trying to keep up
with their game, which the benevolent unconscious sets up for us? Now,
it is not easy to play a game whose rules are not known ahead of time.
We must apply ourselves seriously, assiduously, to try to understand
and learn them so that the disclosures made to us may not remain un-
answered by us.
In the Ball Game (De ludo globi, 1463) by Nicholas of Cusa, these verses
have been inserted although they do not belong to the author:35
Luditur hie ludus; sed non pueriliter, at sic
Lusit ut orbe novo sancta sophia deo . . .
Sic omnes lusere pii: Dionysus et qui
Increpuit magno mystica verba sono.
The ludus globi is the supreme mystical game, the game the Titans made
Dionysus play in order to seize h im and put h im to death.36 From the
ashes of the Titans struck down by the l ightning of Zeus, arose man-
k ind, a race guil ty wi thout having sinned because of the deicide of its
ancestors. But, since the Titans had incorporated part of the god, men
also inherited a spark f rom the murdered child, the divine child whose
game is the metaphor of the ages: ״A ion is a child who plays checkers:
the sovereignty of a chi ld!37״
(iii) The Phantasmic Eros and the Appeasement of Desire
Wherever Eros is at issue, so is desire. Where desire is at issue, so is its
appeasement.
The case of Pico della Mirandola, which we shall analyze in chapter 3,
is more complicated: it wou ld be called a striking example of the Oedi-
pus complex if that term had not fallen into disuse through repeated
abuse. Stimulated, or rather irritated, by Ficino׳s little masterpiece on
love, Pico abandons all courtesy and tries to refute it in toto. That is why
he attacks Guido Cavalcanti for lacking profundity and holds up as a
model for a love poem a canzona by his own fr iend Girolamo Benivieni
on which he undertakes a commentary. The example of Pico is highly
significant. The young man forgets what elsewhere he reveals he knows
only too well , in particular that a cultural era is not defined by the con-
tent of the ideas it conveys but by its interpretive filter. It demands of
Guido Cavalcanti that which Ficino, more subtle in this respect, would
13 History of Phantasy
never have asked: to wit, that he already use the Platonistic interpreta-
tion of the fifteenth century! Benivieni's Canzona only differs from a can-
zona by Cavalcanti in that it furnishes directly to Pico della Mirandola the
interpretation he would have made even in the absence of the poem
because it was his own interpretation of Eros in general. The Platonistic
reading of Cavalcanti signified, to Ficino, a hermeneutic bias which also
allowed him to pay tribute to a precursor and to the ancestor of someone
he liked. Now, in rejecting a real object for interpretation—because the
difference between his commentary and the text commentated is only
prosodie, the former being in prose, the latter in verse—Pico peremp-
torily rejects all hermeneutics. For Ficino, Cavalcanti exists to the extent
he said something interpretable; for Pico, he does not exist since he does
not provide something already interpreted as was the case with his friend
Benivieni. As for the rest of it, there is no great fundamental difference
between Ficino's and Pico's theories, although Pico latter constantly cen-
sures Ficino for the vulgarity of his approach to questions of love.26
Whether expressed in a polite or positive way, as by Ficino, or in the
contemptuous and negative manner of Pico, it is certain that the Floren-
tine Renaissance takes chronological precedence over the rediscovery of
the other Renaissance, that of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
31 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
are changed into phantasms. When Eros is at work, the phantasm of
the loved object leads its own existence, all the more disquieting be-
cause it exerts a k ind of vampir ism on the subject's other phantasms
and thoughts. It is a morbid distension of its activity which, in its re-
sults, can be called both concentration and possession: concentration,
because the subject's entire inner life is reduced to contemplation of
one phantasm only; possession, because this phantasmic monopoly is
involuntary and its collateral influence over the subject's psychosomat-
ic condition is highly deleterious.
Interestingly, the love object plays a secondary role i n the process of
establishing the phantasm: it is only a pretext, not a real presence. The
true object, omnipresent, of Eros is the phantasm, which has taken per-
manent possession of the spiritual mirror. Now, this phantasm repre-
sents a perceived image that has gone beyond the threshold of conscious-
ness, but the reason it has assumed such obsessional dimensions lies in
the deepest part of the individual unconscious. We do not love another
object, a stranger to ourselves, Ficino thinks (Amore, VI, 6), thus antic-
ipating the analytic psychology of Carl Jung. We are enamored of an
unconscious image.
,The lover carves into his soul the model of the beloved. In that way״
the soul of the lover becomes the mirror in which the image of the loved
one is reflected": Amans amati suofiguram sculpit in animo. Fit itaque aman-
tis animus speculum in quo amati relucet imago (ibid., II, 8). That entails
rather a complicated dialectic of love, in which the object is changed into
the subject ousting the subject who, tormented by the anxiety of pro-
spective annihilation due to being deprived of his state as subject, des-
perately claims the right to a form of existence.
The phantasm that monopolizes the soul is the image of an object.
Now, since man is soul, and since soul is totally occupied by a phan-
tasm, the phantasm is henceforth the soul. It fol lows that the subject,
bereft of his soul, is no longer a subject: the phantasmic vampire has
devoured it internally. But it also follows that the subject has now
grafted itself onto the phantasm which is the image of the other, of the
beloved. Metaphorically, therefore, it can be said that the subject has
been changed into the object of his love.
A strange situation wi thout a conclusion if it continues thus: a person
without a soul decays and dies (Ficino's subtlety does not go so far as to
imagine what happens to that soul after death; he only avers that the
beloved exists in duplicate and the lover no longer in any form). A solu-
tion does exist, however: that the beloved accept, in his turn, the offer of
love. In this case he w i l l also allow the phantasm of the lover to enter
Phantasms at Work 32
In the Ball Game (De ludo globi, 1463) by Nicholas of Cusa, these verses
have been inserted although they do not belong to the author:35
Luditur hie ludus; sed non pueriliter, at sic
Lusit ut orbe novo sancta sophia deo . . .
Sic omnes lusere pii: Dionysus et qui
Increpuit magno mystica verba sono.
The ludus globi is the supreme mystical game, the game the Titans made
Dionysus play in order to seize h im and put h im to death.36 From the
ashes of the Titans struck down by the l ightning of Zeus, arose man-
k ind, a race guil ty wi thout having sinned because of the deicide of its
ancestors. But, since the Titans had incorporated part of the god, men
also inherited a spark f rom the murdered child, the divine child whose
game is the metaphor of the ages: ״A ion is a child who plays checkers:
the sovereignty of a chi ld!37״
(iii) The Phantasmic Eros and the Appeasement of Desire
Wherever Eros is at issue, so is desire. Where desire is at issue, so is its
appeasement.
That applies to Dr. Freud as much as to the theoreticians of love in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance, w i t h one exception: the latter, some-
times revealing amazing knowledge through their freedom and candor
w i t h regard to human sexuality, nevertheless grant the existence of
other forms of satisfaction of desire. Indeed, Eros, being by nature spir-
itual, hence located at an intermediate level between the soul and the
body, the intelligential wor ld and the sensory wor ld, it can lean toward
one or the other of those cosmic regions. But, given that desire is the
39 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
pursuit of a phantasm and that the phantasm itself belongs to a wor ld ,
the imaginary wo r l d—the mundus imaginalis whose loftiness Henry Cor-
b in has so wel l described w i thou t dealing w i t h its penumbra—there is
also a th i rd possibil i ty, namely that Eros burns away altogether in a
phantasmic sphere.
The spir i tual Eros funct ion ing anagogically: that is what Dante pro-
pounds, as R. Kle in has so we l l demonstrated;38 the natural love that
descends to the body: that is the experience of many wri ters of the
school of Boccaccio, rediscovered in Freudian psychoanalysis w i t h the
stubborn intent of reducing to a single factor the mul t i tud inous man-
ifestations of Eros. I t goes w i thou t saying that those two tradit ions have
one point i n common: the recognit ion, i f not of the nature of Eros, at
least of its phantasmic techniques.
13 History of Phantasy
never have asked: to wit, that he already use the Platonistic interpreta-
tion of the fifteenth century! Benivieni's Canzona only differs from a can-
zona by Cavalcanti in that it furnishes directly to Pico della Mirandola the
interpretation he would have made even in the absence of the poem
because it was his own interpretation of Eros in general. The Platonistic
reading of Cavalcanti signified, to Ficino, a hermeneutic bias which also
allowed him to pay tribute to a precursor and to the ancestor of someone
he liked. Now, in rejecting a real object for interpretation—because the
difference between his commentary and the text commentated is only
prosodie, the former being in prose, the latter in verse—Pico peremp-
torily rejects all hermeneutics. For Ficino, Cavalcanti exists to the extent
he said something interpretable; for Pico, he does not exist since he does
not provide something already interpreted as was the case with his friend
Benivieni. As for the rest of it, there is no great fundamental difference
between Ficino's and Pico's theories, although Pico latter constantly cen-
sures Ficino for the vulgarity of his approach to questions of love.26
Whether expressed in a polite or positive way, as by Ficino, or in the
contemptuous and negative manner of Pico, it is certain that the Floren-
tine Renaissance takes chronological precedence over the rediscovery of
the other Renaissance, that of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Modern scholars, who sometimes confuse the rediscovery with the
summarizing or literal resumption of the same ideas, accord such prece-
dence only to Mario Equicola, interpreter of Provençal poetry in his Libro
de natura de amore, of which the Latin original—on which the Italian
translation of 1509-11 (published in 1525) was based—dates back to the
years 1494-96,27 right after the death of Pico. Now, it is true that Mario
Equicola refers directly to the lyric style of the troubadours, whereas
Cavalcanti, in whom Ficino discovers a precursor, is only the later repre-
sentative of an Italian school, which, also profiting from the lessons of
the Sicilian school28 and in competition with the school of Bologna, re-
places the code of the troubadours with one that is more rigid and ״sci-
entific." Of course, the two examples are not superimposable, but
stilnovism" and Provençal poetry both stem from the same existential״
root of courtly love.
ACCULTURATION OF THE WEST
The observer of ideas and currents taking place on the twelfth-century
stage is frustrated by their variety. A quick foray into the wings, which
few have yet dared to attempt, shows us that many strings are held in
the same hand, the same ״selective w i l l , " perhaps.29
The phenomenon that characterizes the movements of ideas in the
Phantasms at Work 14
39 Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of Eros
pursuit of a phantasm and that the phantasm itself belongs to a wor ld ,
the imaginary wo r l d—the mundus imaginalis whose loftiness Henry Cor-
b in has so wel l described w i thou t dealing w i t h its penumbra—there is
also a th i rd possibil i ty, namely that Eros burns away altogether in a
phantasmic sphere.
The spir i tual Eros funct ion ing anagogically: that is what Dante pro-
pounds, as R. Kle in has so we l l demonstrated;38 the natural love that
descends to the body: that is the experience of many wri ters of the
school of Boccaccio, rediscovered in Freudian psychoanalysis w i t h the
stubborn intent of reducing to a single factor the mul t i tud inous man-
ifestations of Eros. I t goes w i thou t saying that those two tradit ions have
one point i n common: the recognit ion, i f not of the nature of Eros, at
least of its phantasmic techniques. For all parties, the prel iminaries of
desire consist i n setting u p a phantasm w i t h i n the subject. For some,
this phantasm w i l l have the capacity to awaken their allayed desire, to
propel and accompany them on their t r ip th rough the intel l igential cos-
mos. This w i l l become a heroic passion ending in an ecstatic fusion of
the hunter and the object of his hunt—accord ing to an image employed
by Ficino and later revived by Giordano Bruno. For others, the phan-
tasm w i l l only point to a painfu l and urgent need for a physical release
which increases in propor t ion as its fu l f i l lment is postponed.
In this case there w i l l be a fundamental contradict ion between the
medical concept of a phantasmic Eros that disturbs the equi l ibr ium of
the organism and demands p rompt assuagement to restore this equi-
l ibr ium, and the concept of the ״ fa i th fu l , -a complete denial of the for ״
mer, f ind ing expression through a semantic inversion valor iz ing the
disequil ibr ium in terms of a plenary spir i tual experience. This w i l l to
distort, first brought to bear on medical matters of the period, subse-
quently provoked much ribaldry directed against believers i n mystical
love whose ideas, bereft of sense, are to become synonymous w i t h an
erotic strategy in wh ich the purely verbal idealization of woman is mere-
ly an expedient to silence her resistance as quickly as possible.
Dante goes farther in his erotic pneumophantasmology. In sonnet 21
of his Vita nova, he envisages the Lady as the recipient of spirit overflow-
ing through eyes and mouth, miracolo gentil.67 His experience does not
pine away in an interior pneumatic circle but represents, in a certain
way, a decanting of spirit which takes for granted, albeit involuntari ly,
some reciprocity of desire. Through a k ind of significatio passiva,68 what
was the object of covetous desire is transformed into a subject whence
Love emanates, but emanates wi thout being aware of it. Virginal inno-
cence that only increases the pangs of passion, the exquisite torment of
love's faithful.
23 History of Phantasy
With his Vita nova, Dante also enters a mysterious realm that our rudi-
ments of medieval psychology are inadequate to explain: dream, vision.
(iii) The Vehicle of the Soul and Prenatal Experience
That empirical psychology regarding Eros which w i l l recur in Ficino was
inadequate to satisfy Renaissance demands for depth in thought. The
theory of phantasmic knowing merely represented the last l ink in a huge
body of dogma relating to the pneuma and the soul.
As we shall see, the connection between Eros and magic is so close
that differentiation between them is a matter of degree. A phantasmic
experience carried out through the spiritual channels w i th which we are
already acquainted, magic makes use of the continuity between the indi-
vidual pneuma and the cosmic one. It is this same universal pneumatic
,that justifies the depth psychology of Eros (see below ״combination״
chap. 4, sec. 2).
Through the doctrine of incorporation of the soul, not only is the con-
t inuity of the pneuma demonstrated but also the cosmic nature of all
spiritual activity. It is of course a rather refined form of speculation on
the relations between microcosm and macrocosm, along w i th a dual pro-
jection that leads to the cosmization of man and to the anthropomorph-
ization of the universe.
Translator's Note ix
Foreword, by Mircea Eliade xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
PHANTASMS AT WORK
1. History of Phantasy 3
(i) On the Inner Sense 3
Some Preliminary Considerations 3
The Phantasmic Pneuma 6
(ii) Flux and Reflux of Values in the Twelfth Century 11
Acculturation of the West 13
How a Woman . . . 21
(iii) The Vehicle of the Soul and Prenatal Experience 23
2. Empirical Psychology and the Deep Psychology of
Eros 28
(i) The Empirical Psychology of Ficino and Its Sources 28
(ii) The Art of Memory 32
(iii) The Phantasmic Eros and the Appeasement of
Desire 38
(iv) Phantasms at Work 41
(v) The Depth Psychology of Ficino 42
Descent of the Soul 42
Melancholy and Saturn 46
3. Dangerous Liaisons 53
(i) Pico della Mirandola, Continuator of Ficino 53
(ii) The Ambiguous Gods of Eros 58
Giordano Bruno, a Man of the Phantasmic Past 58
Scandal in London 60
v
Contents v i
Mnemonic Phantasms 65
Ambigui ty of Eros 67
A t the Heart of Bruno's Doctrine 70
Actaeon 77
Diana 79
The Parable of the Nine Blind Men 83
Circe 84
I I T H E G R E A T M A N I P U L A T O R
4. Eros and Magic 87
(i) Identi ty of Substance, Identity of Process 87
(ii) Manipulat ion of Masses and of Individuals 89
(iii) Vinculum Vinculorum 95
(iv) Ejaculation and Retention of Semen 99
(v) Of Magic as General Psychosociology 102
5. Pneumatic Magic 107
(i) The Starting Point of Magic 107
(ii) ״Subjective״ Magic and ״Transitive״ Magic 108
(iii) The Conspiracy of Things 111
(iv) The Theory of Radiations 117
(v) Pneumatic Magic 127
6. In ter subjective Magic 130
(i) Intrasubjective Magic 130
(ii) Intersubjective Magic 137
Higher Presences 138
The Lures 141
Propitious Times 142
7. Demonomagic 144
(i) Some Concepts of Demonology 144
(ii) Demons and Eros 148
(iii) Witches and Demoniacs 151
(iv) Demonomagic f rom Ficino to Giordano Bruno 156
Classifications of Magic 156
Trithemius of Würzburg 162
vii Contents
III END GAME
8. 1484 179
(i) A Wingless Fly 179
(ii) Why Was the Year 1484 so Formidable? 184
9. Censoring Phantasy 192
(i) Abolition of the Phantasmic 192
(ii) Some Historic Paradoxes 195
(iii) The Controversy about Asinity 197
(iv) The Wiles of Giordano Bruno 200
(v) A Single Reformation 202
(vi) The Change in Ways of Envisaging the World 204
A l l of this means that the crowning wish of the historian of ideas is
Phantasms at Work 12
not, or should not be, to define the ideological contents of a given peri-
od, which are fundamentally recursive in nature, but to glimpse its her-
meneutic filter, its ״selective w i l l , which is, at the same time, a will to ״
distort.
A n ideology can be described; a system of interpretation—the only
one that counts because it alone can show what the originality of one
cultural moment in time relative to every other is capable of—is imper-
ceptible. A n implicit if not a hidden presence but also an objective and
ineluctible one, it is revealed stealthily in all its complexity only to imme-
diately escape the observation of the investigator. In order for h im to
practice the history of ideas, he is called upon to see not only what is
preeminently revealed, the ideas themselves, but precisely that which is
not revealed, the hidden threads that l ink ideas to the invisible wi l l of
the time, their producer. Ideas are seen by everyone; the historian of
ideas is supposed to look in the wings, to contemplate another aspect of
the theater, the stage seen from wi th in.
It is impossible to observe the Renaissance of the fifteenth century
wi thout having first glanced at the Renaissance of the twelfth.24 Theo-
ries about phantasmic Eros were developed in the course of the latter to
reach their apogee, which soon degenerated into affectation, in the poet-
ry of the Dolce Stil Novo.
The ״selective w i l l of the Italian Renaissance pays a good deal of ״
attention to the often fastidious works of its thirteenth-century precur-
sors in order to f it them into its own system of interpretation. It is not
purely out of kindness that Marsil io Ficino, whose treatise on love was
wr i t ten for use by a descendant of Guido Cavalcanti,25 sets forth in de-
tail some of Cavalcanti׳ s erotic theories. As one of the principal repre-
sentatives of the fedeli d'amore, Guido Cavalcanti developed an empirical
psychology of Eros that does not differ essentially f rom that of Ficino.
The case of Pico della Mirandola, which we shall analyze in chapter 3,
is more complicated: it wou ld be called a striking example of the Oedi-
pus complex if that term had not fallen into disuse through repeated
abuse. Stimulated, or rather irritated, by Ficino׳s little masterpiece on
love, Pico abandons all courtesy and tries to refute it in toto. That is why
he attacks Guido Cavalcanti for lacking profundity and holds up as a
model for a love poem a canzona by his own fr iend Girolamo Benivieni
on which he undertakes a commentary. The example of Pico is highly
significant. The young man forgets what elsewhere he reveals he knows
only too well , in particular that a cultural era is not defined by the con-
tent of the ideas it conveys but by its interpretive filter. It demands of
Guido Cavalcanti that which Ficino, more subtle in this respect, would
13 History of Phantasy
A t first glance, De gl'heroici furori is a series of sonnets w i th commen-
tary, of the type of Dante's Vita nova. Like Pico della Mirandola, f rom
whom he borrowed many of the themes of the Commento, Bruno does
not hesitate to copy certain poems which, according to F. Fiorentino,
belong to Tansillo of Venosa, the main character and Bruno's spokes-
man in the dialogue. But most of the sonnets are the creation of the
author himself, whether they be commentaries in verse on the represen-
tations of Eros or poetic expressions of the ״heroic furors."
In the Sigillus sigillorum, Bruno had already explained the deep reason
for ut pictura poesis, the equivalence between painting and poetry. Zeuxis
is the painter of internal images in the memory, who excels in phantastica
66 Phantasms at Work
virtus, imaginative power. In turn, the poet possesses powers of thought
out of the ordinary whose source is also spiritual. ״ I t follows that philos-
ophers are also painters and poets, poets are painters and philosophers,
and painters are philosophers and poets.53״ Indeed, since intellect is
phantasmic by nature, the philosopher must be able to manage phan-
tasms, to be a great painter of the spirit. D id not Aristotle say that ״to
comprehend means to observe phantasms?54״ The place where phan-
tasms are reflected, as we already know, is the mirror of the pneuma.
Philosophy, poetry, painting: these are the contents of De gl'heroici
furori. These three stages of phantasmic speculation are so inextricably
intertwined that it is impossible to separate them wi thout destroying the
uni ty of the subject. Unfortunately, being incapable, since the t r iumph
of rationalism, of understanding the phantasmagoric of the great artists
of Memory, we shall have to make a sharp dichotomy between what is
possible to grasp w i t h our mere logical, historical, and comparative
methods and that which, to avoid being drawn into the revived mne-
monics, we must leave aside after a concise description.
The f i f th dialogue in part 1 is a course in the Ar t of Memory applied to
intellectual processes, in fifteen chapters. The impresae symbolizing the
stages of love's sophistry are explained in sonnets, which, in turn, are
the subject matter of the prose commentary. To give an idea of the pro-
cesses uti l ized by the painter Zeuxis, it is enough to mention the third
mnemonic image appearing on the escutcheon of the ״heroic furor":
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Couliano devotes a concentrated section of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance to Francesco