life, by St. Augustine the higher part, by David light, when he says 'In thy light shall we see light', and Pythagoras agrees with David in that celebrated precept, 'No man may speak of God without light.' Which light is called by Aristotle the intellectus agens, and it is that one eye by which all the three Gorgon Sisters see, according to the symbolic theologians. And Mercurius says that if we join ourselves to this mens we may understand, through the ray from God which is in it, all things, present, past, and future, all things, I say, which are in heaven and earth.
57Looking now at the image of the Golden Bough on the Gorgon Sisters grade of the Theatre, we may understand its meanings: the intellectus agens, Nessamah or the highest part of the soul, the soul in general, the rational soul, spirit and life.
Camillo erects his Theatre in the spiritual world of Pico della Mirandola, the world of Pico's Conclusions and Oration on the Dignity of Man and Heptalus, with its angelic spheres, Sephiroth, days of creation, mingled with Mercurius Trismegistus, Plato, Plotinus, St. John's Gospel, St. Paul's epistles—all that hetero- geneous array of references, pagan, Hebraic, or Christian, through which Pico moves with such assurance as though he had found the master-key. Pico's key is the same as that of Camillo. In this world, man with his mind made in the image of God has the middle place (compare the Gorgon Sisters grade in the middle of the Theatre).
He can move amidst it with understanding and draw it into him- self with subtle religious magics, Hermetic and Cabalist, which bring him back on to that divine grade which is his by right. Being organically related in his origin to the Seven Governors ('Oh what a miracle is man', cries Pico at the beginning of the Oration, quoting Mercurius Trismegistus) he can communicate with the seven planetary rulers of the world. And he can rise beyond these and hold communion, through Cabalist secrets, with the angels—
moving with his divine mind through all the three worlds, super- celestial, celestial, terrestrial.
58Even so, in the Theatre, does Camil- lo's mind range through all the worlds. These things must be hidden under a veil explains Pico. The Egyptians sculptured a sphinx on their temples, signifying that the mysteries must be kept inviolate. The highest revelations made to Moses are kept secret
57
Camillo, Tutte le opere, ed. of Venice, 1552, pp. 42-3.
58
Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate> ed. E. Garin, Florence,
1942, p p . 157, 159.
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in the Cabala. In exacdy the same vein, Camillo, in the opening pages of the Idea del Theatro speaks of its hidden mysteries.
'Mercurius Trismegistus says that religious speech, full of God, is violated by the intrusion of the vulgar. For this reason the ancients . . . sculptured a sphinx on their temples . . . Ezechiel was rebuked by the Cabalists . . . for having revealed what he had seen . . . let us now pass in the name of the Lord to speak of our Theatre.'
59Camillo brings the art of memory into line with the new cur- rents now running through the Renaissance. His Memory Theatre houses Ficino and Pico, Magia and Cabala, the Hermetism and Cabalism implicit in Renaissance so-called Neoplatonism. He turns the classical art of memory into an occult art.
Where is the magic in such an occult memory system as this, and how does it work, or how is it supposed to work ? It was Ficino's- astral magic
60which influenced Camillo and which he was attempt- ing to use.
Ficino's 'spiritus' magic was based on the magical rites des- cribed in the Hermetic Asclepius through which the Egyptians, or rather the Hermetic pseudo-Egyptians, were said to animate their statues by drawing into them the divine, or demonic, powers of the cosmos. Ficino describes in his De vita coelttus comparanda ways of drawing down the life of the stars, of capturing the astral currents pouring down from above and using them for life and health. The celestial life, according to the Hermetic sources, is born on air, or spiritus, and it is strongest in the sun which is its chief transmitter.
Ficino therefore seeks to cultivate the sun and his therapeutic astral cult is a revival of sun worship.
Though the Ficinian influence is everywhere present in Camil- lo's Theatre, it is in the great central series of the Sun that it is most apparent. Most of Ficino's ideas on the sun are set out in his De sole,
61though they also appear in his other works. In the De sole, the Sun is called the statua Dei and is compared to the Trinity.
On the Banquet grade of the Sun series, Camillo places the image of a pyramid, representing the Trinity. On the gate above this,
59
L'Idea del Theatro, pp. 8-9.
60
On Ficino's magic, see Walker, Magic, pp. 30 ff.; Yates, G.B. and H.T., pp. 62 If.
61
Ficino, Opera, ed. cit., pp. 965-75; see also De famine, ibid., pp. 976- 86; and cf. G.B. and H.T., pp. 120, 153.
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where is the main image of Apollo, Camillo sets out a 'light' series: Sol, Lux, Lumen, Splendor, Color, Generatio. Ficino has a similar hierarchical light series in the De sole. The Sun is first of all God; then Light in the heavens; then Lumen which is a form of spiritus; then Heat which is lower than Lumen; then Generation, the lowest of the series. Camillo's series is not quite the same; and Ficino is not quite consistent in the way he sets out the hierarchy of light in different works. But Camillo's arrangement is completely
Ficinian in spirit, in its suggestion of a hierarchy descending from the Sun as God to other forms of light and heat in lower spheres, transmitting the spiritus in his rays.
Going further up the gates in the Sun series we find on the Cave grade, the image of Argus with, as one of its meanings, the whole world vivified by the spirit of the stars, suggestive of one of the basic principles of Ficinian magic, that the astral spiritus is transmitted mainly by the sun. And on the Sandals of Mercury grade, the image of the Golden Chain expresses the operations of going to the sun, taking in the sun, stretching out towards the sun, suggestive of the operations of Ficinian solar magic. Camillo's suns series shows a typically Ficinian combination of sun mysticism with magical solarianism.
And it is significant that with the image of the Cock and Lion on the Cave grade, Camillo recounts the lion story, which we have already heard in a slightly less flattering form from another source:
When the author of this Theatre was in Paris in the place called the Tornello, being with many other gentlemen in a room the windows of which overlooked a garden, a Lion escaped from imprisonment came into this room, and coming up to him from behind, took hold of him by the thighs with his claws but without harming him, and began to lick him. And when he turned round, having felt the touch and breath of the animal—all the others having fled hither and thither—the Lion humbled itself before him, as though to ask his forgiveness. This can only mean that this animal recognised that there was much of Solar Virtue in him.62 62 L'Idea del Theatro, p. 39. The 'Cock and Lion' might have been suggested by Proclus's De sacra et magia in which it is stated that of these two solarian creatures, the cock is the more solarian since it sings hymns to the rising sun. Cf. Walker, Magic, p. 37, note 2.
There is possibly an allusion to the French King in the cock. Cf. Bruno on the solar French cock, quoted in G.B. and H. T., p. 202.
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The behaviour of this unfortunate lion evidently proved, not only to the bystanders but to Camillo himself, that the author of the Theatre was a Solar Magus!
The reader may smile at Camillo's lion, but he should not look too patronisingly at the great central Sun series in the Theatre.
He should remember that Copernicus, when introducing the heliocentric hypothesis, quoted the words of Hermes Trismegistus in the Asclepius on the sun;63 that Giordano Bruno when expound- ing Copernicanism at Oxford associated it with Ficino's De vita coelitus comparanda;64 that the Hermetic view that the earth is not immobile because it is alive, quoted by Camillo with the Argus image on the Cave grade of the Sun series,65 was adapted by Bruno for his defence of the movement of the earth.66 The Sun series of the Theatre shows within the mind and memory of a man of the Renaissance the Sun looming with a new importance, mystical, emotional, magical, the Sun becoming of central significance. It shows an inner movement of the imagination towards the Sun which must be taken into account as one of the factors in the heliocentric revolution.
Camillo, like Ficino, is a Christian Hermetist, who endeavours to correlate Hermetic teachings with Christianity. Hermes Trisme- gistus in these circles was a sacred figure, who was believed to have prophesised the coming of Christianity through his allusions to a 'Son of God'.67 The sanctity of Hermes as a Gentile prophet helped to make easy the path of a Magus who wished to remain a Christian. We have already seen that the sun as the most powerful of the astral gods and the chief transmitter of spiritus is, in his highest manifestation an image of the Trinity, for Camillo as for Ficino. Camillo is, however, rather unusual in identifying the spiritus proceeding from the Sun, not with the Holy Spirit, as was usually done, but with the 'spirit of Christ'. Quoting from Corpus Hermeticum, V, 'That god is both apparent and inapparent', Camillo identifies the divine spirit latent in the creation, which is
63 Cf. G.B.andH.T.,p. 154.
64 Ibid., pp. 155, 208-11.
65 L'Idea del Theatro, p. 38, quoting Corpus Hermeticum, X I I .
66 Cf. G.B. and H.T., pp. 241-3. Bruno quotes the same passage from Corpus Hermeticum X I I when arguing in favour of earth movement in the Cena de le ceneri.
67 Cf. G.B. and H.T., pp. 7 ff.
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the theme of this treatise, with the Spirit of Christ. He quotes St. Paul on 'Spiritus Christi, Spiritus vivificans' adding that 'about this Mercurius made a book, Quod Deus latens simul, ac patens sit' (that is Corpus Hermeticum, V).68 That Camillo was able
to think of the spiritus mundi as the spirit of Christ enabled him to impart Christian overtones to his ardent adoption of Ficino's spiritus magic with which his Theatre is redolent.
How would the Ficinian magic be supposed to work within a memory system using places and images in the classical manner ? The secret of this is, I believe, that the memory images were regarded as, so to speak, inner talismans.
The talisman is an object imprinted with an image which has been supposed to have been rendered magical, or to have magical efficacy, through having been made in accordance with certain magical rules. The images of talismans are usually, though not always, images of the stars, for example, an image of Venus as the goddess of the planet Venus, or an image of Apollo as the god of the planet Sol. The handbook of talismanic magic called the Picatrix, which was well known in the Renaissance, describes the processes through which talismanic images were supposed to be made magical by becoming infused with the astral spiritus.69 The Hermetic book which was the theoretical basis of talismanic magic was the Asclepius in which the magical religion of the Egyptians is described. According to the author of the Asclepius the Egyptians knew how to infuse the statues of their gods with cosmic and magical powers; by prayers, incantations, and other processes they gave life to these statues; in other words, the Egyptians knew how to 'make gods'. The processes by which the Egyptians are said in the Asclepius to make their statues into gods are similar to the processes by which a talisman is made.
Ficino made some use of talismans in his magic, as described in his De vita coelitus comparanda, where he quotes descriptions of talismanic images, probably derived, some of them, from Picatrix.
It has been shown that the passages in Ficino's book on talismans are derived with some modifications, from the passages in the Asclepius on how the Egyptians infused magical and divine powers into the statues of their gods.70 Ficino was using this magic with
68 L'Idea del Theatro, pp. 20-1.
69 Cf. G.B. and H.T., pp. 49 ff.
70 Cf. Walker, Magic, pp. 1-24 and passim.
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caution, and somewhat disguising its basis in the magical passages in the Asclepius. Nevertheless there can be no doubt that this was his source, and that he was encouraged to take up talismanic magic through his respect and reverence for the divine teacher, Mercurius Trismegistus.
Like all his magic, Ficino's use of talismans was a highly subjective and imaginative one. His magical practices, whether poetic and musical incantations, or the use of magicised images, were really directed towards a conditioning of the imagination to receive celestial influences. His talismanic images, evolved into beautiful Renaissance forms, were intended to be held within, in the imagination of their user. He describes how an image drawn from astralised mythology could be imprinted inwardly on the mind with such force that when a person, with this imprint in his imagination came out into the world of external appearances, these became unified through the power of the inner image, drawn from the higher world.71
Such inner, or imaginative, use of talismanic imagery, would surely find a most suitable vehicle for its use in the occultised version of the art of memory. If the basic memory images used in such a memory system had, or were supposed to have, talismanic power, power to draw down the celestial influences and spiritus within the memory, such a memory would become that of the 'divine' man in intimate association with the divine powers of the cosmos. And such a memory would also have, or be supposed to have, the power of unifying the contents of memory by basing it upon these images drawn from the celestial world. The images of Camillo's Theatre seem to be supposed to have in them something of this power, enabling the 'spectator' to read off at one glance, through 'inspecting the images' the whole contents of the universe.
The 'secret', or one of the secrets, of the Theatre is, I believe, that the basic planetary images are supposed to be talismans, or to have talismanic virtue, and that the astral power from them is supposed to run through the subsidiary images—a Jupiter power, for example, running through all the images in the Jupiter series, or a Sun power through the Sun series. In this way, the cosmically based memory would be supposed, not only to draw power from the cosmos into the memory, but to unify memory. All the details
71 Cf. G.B. and H.T., pp. 75-6.
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of the world of sense, reflected in memory, would be unified organically within the memory, because subsumed and unified under the higher celestial images, the images of their 'causes'.
If this was the theory of underlying the images of Camillo's occult memory system, it would have been based on the magical passages in the Asckpius. The 'god making' passages in that work are not quoted or referred to in L'Idea del Theatro, but in a speech about his Theatre, which he probably delivered in some Venetian academy, Camillo does refer to the magic statues of the Asckpius, and gives a very subtle interpretation of their magic.
I have read, I believe in Mercurius Trismegistus, that in Egypt there were such excellent makers of statues that when they had brought some statue to the perfect proportions it was found to be animated with an angelic spirit: for such perfection could not be without a soul. Similar to such statues, I find a composition of words, the office of which is to hold all the words in a proportion grateful to the ear . . . Which words as soon as they are put into their proportion are found when pronounced to be as it were animated by a harmony.72
Camillo has interpreted the magic of the Egyptian statues in an artistic sense; a perfectly proportioned statue becomes animated with a spirit, becomes a magic statue.
This seems to me to be a pearl of great price with which Giulio Camillo has presented us, an interpretation of the magic statues of the Asckpius in terms of the magical effect of perfect proportions.
Such a development could have been suggested by the statement in the Asckpius that the Egyptian magicians maintained the celestial spirit in their magic statues with celestial rites, reflecting the harmony of heaven.73 Renaissance theory of proportion was based on the 'universal harmony', the harmonious proportions of the world, the macrocosm, reflected in the body of man, the micro- cosm. To make a statue in accordance with the rules of proportion could thus be a way of introducing into it the celestial harmony, thereby imparting to it a magical animation.
Applied to the inner talismanic images of an occult memory system, this would mean that the magical power of such images would consist in their perfect proportions. Camillo's memory
72 Giulio Camillo, Discorso in materia del suo Teatro, in Tutte le opere, ed. at., p . 33.
73 Quoted in G.B. and H.T., p. 37.
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system would reflect the perfectly proportioned images of Renais- sance art, and in this their magic would consist. One becomes seized with an intense desire to have that opportunity of inspecting the images in the Theatre which was rather wasted on the friend of Erasmus.
These subtleties did not save Camillo from the charge of having dabbled in dangerous magic. One Pietro Passi, who published a book on natural magic at Venice in 1614, warns against the statues of the Asclepius, 'of which Cornelius Agrippa has dared to affirm in his book on Occult Philosophy that they were animated by celestial influences.'
And Giulio Camillo, otherwise a judicious and polite writer, is not far off from this error in the Discorso in materia del suo Theatro, where, in speaking of the Egyptian statues, he says that the celestial influences descend into statues which are constructed with rare proportions. In which both he and others are in error .. .74
Camillo thus did not escape the accusation of being a magician which any dabbling in the magical passages of the Asclepius always brought with it. And Passi's accusation shows that the 'secret' of the Theatre was indeed supposed to be a magical secret.
The Theatre presents a remarkable transformation of the art of memory. The rules of the art are clearly discernible in it. Here is a building divided into memory places on which are memory images. Renaissance in its form, for the memory building is no longer a Gothic church or cathedral, the system is also Renaissance in its theory. The emotionally striking images of classical memory, transformed by the devout Middle Ages into corporeal similitudes, are transformed again into magically powerful images. The reli- gious intensity associated with mediaeval memory has turned in a new and bold direction. The mind and memory of man is now 'divine', having powers of grasping the highest reality through a magically activated imagination. The Hermetic art of memory has
74 Pietro Passi, Delia magic'arte, ouero delta Magia Naturale, Venice, 1614, p. 21. Cf. Secret, article cited, pp. 429-30. One wonders whether the eccentric eighteenth-century German sculptor, F. X. Messerschmidt, who combined an intense religious cult of Hermes Trismegistus with intense study of an 'old Italian book' on proportion (see R. and M.
Wittkower, Born under Saturn, London, 1963, pp. 126 ff.) had picked up some tradition descending from the Venetian academies.
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