Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition [Paperback]

 

 

Create your own review

I'm going to begin this review by explaining what the book is NOT about, since a number of reviewers seem to have been disappointed by what it contains. I will also include where to find information on some these topics.

"Giordano Bruno and The Hermetic Tradition" is NOT a biography of Bruno (1548-1600), who, according to the common view was burned at the stake for teaching Copernican astronomy (this was one of the charges, but was a side issue). There is a need for a modern biography, but this volume, first published in 1964, was a contribution to understanding Bruno, and not intended as a full account.

It is NOT a study of the traditions surrounding Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-great Hermes"), a Greco-Roman version of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek Hermes, among other things, who has had a long history in Western (and Islamic) tradition; it discusses some of them, in the context of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. Collected papers by Antoine Faivre, "The Eternal Hermes: From Greek God to Alchemical Magus," translated by Joscelyn Godwin, now approximate such a full account (paperback, 1995).

It is also NOT an historical account of the Greek and Latin (and Arabic, and some other) mystical / philosophical, magical, and alchemical texts purporting to be the works of Hermes and his disciples. For that, the historically-minded can turn to Garth Fowden's difficult, but rewarding, "The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind" (1986; with new Preface and corrections, as a MYTHOS paperback, 1993). The curious may also look to David Frankfurter's "Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance" (also a MYTHOS paperback, 1998.) Those who want to adopt Hermeticism as part of their personal religious experience may need to go elsewhere.

It is NOT a translation of those ancient texts, some of which it summarizes. For those important in Yates' account, see Brian Copenhaver's "Hermetica: The Greek 'Corpus Hermeticum' and the Latin 'Asclepius' in a new English translation, with notes and introduction" (1992; in paperback since 1995). The testimonies (references in other writers) and fragments (mainly excerpts preserved in a Byzantine anthology) are in the four-volume "Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings ..." (1924), edited and translated by Walter Scott (not the novelist). Yates warns against his high-handed editorial treatment of the main texts, but the testimonies, and most of the fragments, are given in more conservative forms; this too is (or was) available in paperback.

It is NOT an account of the Western Occult tradition in the Renaissance, with or without instructions for the would-be practitioner. For an account of the main texts and issues, the curious can begin with Yates' main authority in this matter, D.P. Walker's "Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella" (1958; there is a recent paperback). Walker and others are critically reviewed, with new hypotheses, in Ioan P. Couliano's "Eros and Magic in the Renaissance" (1987); a different perspective, and some important corrections to Couliano's data, are found in Noel P. Brann's "Trithemius and Magical Theology: A Chapter in the Controversy over Occult Studies in Early Modern Europe" (1999; both in paperback).

That being the case, what IS "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition," and is it worth reading?

Yates claimed that the book began as a translation of Bruno's Italian dialogue, "La Cena de le Ceneri," set in Elizabethan London, and grew. (The dialogue has since been translated, with useful notes, as "The Ash Wednesday Supper," by Edward A. Gosselin and Lawrence A. Lerner (1977; a Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts paperback, 1995).

The book is an attempt to restore a missing, or at least neglected, chapter, in Western intellectual history. The "Hermetic Tradition" in the title is the set of beliefs about the supposed Hermes Trismegistus which Renaissance Europe inherited from the Church Fathers. They variously saw him as an ancient Prophet, and the real source of Plato's philosophy, and perhaps the disciple of Abraham or Moses, maybe even their teacher; or as a wicked tool of Satan. When Greek manuscripts of supposed Hermetic texts became available in Florence, the Medici put a priority on translating them, instead of Plato or Plotinus, and Marsilio Ficino obliged, launching a wave of excitement among some European thinkers.

What these thinkers, including, but not limited to, Bruno, did with, and to, the material they were given is the burden of the book. The enthusiasm eventually went underground, especially as it came to be realized that the wonderful Hermetic texts were not only post-Platonic, but post-Christian. This view took centuries to permeate European thought, however, and true believers in the Hermetic texts are still around. ("The Magic Flute" is just one example of originally Hermetic ideas about Egypt surviving into the Enlightenment.)

Bruno himself knocked about Europe, promoting plans for reconciling Catholics and Protestants, spending time -- not very happily -- in Elizabethan England. The Holy Office of the Inquisition eventually became aware that his plan involved the restoration of Egyptian Sun-worship -- the True, Original Religion of Mankind, as revealed by the Divine Hermes. There was also more than a hint of plans to use magic to achieve this and other goals. The heliocentric theory was, for Bruno, just one more proof of the divine nature of the sun. One can understand their indignation.

It is this Bruno, the Hermetic, the Magus, and the very amateur scientist, which is Yates' centerpiece. She continues the story with some latter-day Renaissance Hermetics, including Campanella (whose utopian "City of the Sun" seems to have revived, perhaps independently, some of Bruno's pet projects).

As someone who was a college student in the early 1970s, I can recall the impact in several areas of this book (then in a mass-market paperback), and its 1966 follow-up on another neglected area of European history, "The Art of Memory." Although in later writings Yates tended to leap from bold insights to unsupported conclusions, these two volumes helped rewrite the way a generation of historians would look at the European past. Some of the volumes I have mentioned would not have appeared, or would have been very different, without Yates' contribution. And yes, the book is still worth the reader's time and attention.

Actually, this book can not be evaluated at once. Rather, you should concede four stars to the greater part of the book and not any star to the rest. For this is widely an excellent book. Yates does not only prove that Bruno is not the pioneer of modern science he is often stated to be, but convincingly exposes the background against which his works have to be understood. To that purpose, she shows the impact of the Hermetic writings, an ancient source written in the second and third centuries A.D., but by some Christian Renaissance writers such as Ficino or Pico della Mirandola held to be of an authority greater and older than even Moses, on Renaissance thought. Thus it is demonstrated in chronological order how the corpus Hermeticum was received by Renaissance writers, focussing on magic that was derived from some passages of the corpus Hermeticum. Bruno is placed within this tradition. Congeniously, Yates acknowledges the significance of Casaubon's exact dating of what had been held a prophecy of Christianism for more than two centuries and discusses the following dispute which finally made the type of the Renaissance magus disappear, although this tradition of thinking never completely vanished. So this is, without any doubt, the fundamental book about Giordano Bruno and the impact of Hermetism on Renaissance thought. It provides information clear and dear also on magic in general and thus illuminates even some passages of Shakespeare and (unconsciously) Goethe's Faust.Thus the book inspires to study Renaissance authors such as Pico or Ficino or more literature on Renaissance Thought ( I recommend the overwhelming collection „Renaissance Thought and the Arts" by Paul Oskar Kristeller).
All the more it is a pity that Yates, writing with transigating passion, is lead astray to some statements about science and antique thought in general that cannot be left uncommented upon. Ancient philosophy in the time when the corpus Hermeticum was written did NOT necessarily, not even realy, stagnate (p.4, p. 449). On the contrary, Plotinus, writing about 250 A.D., renewed philosophical thought in a way that he is now often considered to be one of the greatest metaphysicians that ever lived. Furthermore, the reason for this presumed stagnation is, according to Yates, that the ancient philosophers did not know the principle of experimentation. But this principle is completely alien to philosophy, be it ancient or modern (this is quite evident, but if someone still doubts, he should read e.g. Wenisch's „Die Philosophie und ihre Methode"). The exhausting prize of modern science at the end of the book (p. 447-55) is not to the point and ignores that ancient thought must not be treated as a failing attempt at Galileo's achievements (as the German scholar Jörg Kube emphasized). Her sideswipe against Descartes (p. 454-55), finally, seems to me completely out of place. So I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the truth about Giordano Bruno and the essence of magic, but you should not believe what is said about ancient philosophy and philosophy in general.

What is "Gordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition"?

Let me put it very simply: it is a succession of clumsily written reviews of the main Hermetic treatises, starting with the original manuscripts brought over from Byzantium after its fall and ending with the works of Bruno, Campanella and other more recent thinkers and magicians. Each chapter deals with a book or a series of books by one or several Hermeticists. Yates dutifully summarizes the book, adds a few more or less enlightened comments and biographical notes and then moves on to examine the writings of the following Renaissance crank. She makes a copious use of quotations, most of them in Latin and most of them not translated...

I want to make something very clear: this is by no way a biography of Bruno. It is not even an intellectual biography of the "Nolan philosopher": nowhere are we told by Yates why, when and how he became a Hermeticist.In fact, she starts her exposition on him when he is already a full-fledged magus in Paris, where he is trying to engratiate himself with King Henri III by publishing a treatise on mnemonics. The whole first chapter dealing with Bruno is an outline of that book. The following chapter describes another book and so on. Briefly, we never leave the libraries...

If you are looking for a insights into how Hermeticism influenced Renaissance painting, music, architecture and other aspects of civilization, you won't find them here. I repeat, this is a description of the Hermetic literature of the XVIth century in Italy and elsewhere, with a focus on the books written by Bruno.

You may now ask: OK, I understand that this is not a biography about Bruno. Does Yates do a good job in explaining the Hermetic treatises?

Would you believe a "History of Western Scientific Thought" written by a Tunguse shaman from Krasnoiarsk ? My guess is that you would at the very least take his exposition with quite a handful of salt.The reason is obvious: a Siberian sorcerer belongs to a world that is too different from ours to be able to really understand Newtonian science. And even if he could understand it, his own religious and cultural background is so hostile to mechanistic science that he is bound to be biased in his treatment of the subject.

Now why should one trust an account of Hermetic philosophy and its influence on XVIth century Catholic thinkers written by a modern historian coming from a Protestant and rationalistic tradition?

I for one do not believe that such a historian is capable of dealing properly with such a subject and Mrs Yates being precisely the modern, rationalistic, Protestant historian I am talking about(otherwise she would not be an award-winning sacred cow, see what happens to truly great but marginal historians like Hillaire Belloc who are writing from a Catholic perspective) fails in giving a truly enlightening, living picture of Hermeticism and Giordano Bruno.

To put it very simply, she does not understand what she is talking about! That is the reason why we get all those insipid summaries worthy of a first year college student.

Furthermore, although she shows on the whole more respect toward her characters than your average historian, Yates does regard the Hermetic thinkers of the Renaissance, including Bruno, as a bunch of crackpots and megalomaniacs. Deeply interesting they are but still they are crackpots as all pre-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment thinkers are bound to be in the mind of a mainstream Western historian.

Just see how she starts her book in a typical fashion: by condescendingly exposing the superstitious attitude of the ancients. Ficino, Pico, Bruno, they all believed that the Hermetic literature had been written at the time of the pyramids, before Moses! But, aha, WE know that they are in fact nothing more than pious forgeries dating from the 2nd century AD! Casaubon, an obscure Protestant Greek scholar of Swiss origin living in England has proved it. Never mind this bigot had a huge axe to grind, never mind Pico and Ficino, who believed in the remote antiquity of the Hermetic manuscripts, mastered the Greek language just as well as Casaubon, we should believe the Calvinist philologist because...because he comforts our prejudices, of course!

To say that there is absolutely nothing to be learnt from "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition" would of course be a gross exaggeration, for there are interesting pieces of information scattered throughout the book, specially when the author manages to raise her nose from her nine-point summaries and laborious sketches to give us a larger view of the fascinating world of the Renaissance but this is really such a minor aspect of "Giordano Bruno?that I wouldn't recommend it for that reason.

Much better to read Adrian Gilbert's The New Jerusalem", believe me.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 6 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

 

5.0 out of 5 stars The Hermetic Tradition is the basis of much of the Gospels
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1700 because he believed in the authenticity of the Hermetic Traditon that purported to be of ancient Egyptian origin. Read more

Published on Jan 15 2001 by Kenneth G. Ramey

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure trove of insight into the western esotericism
Interesting how a modest historian should happen to write a book of such critical interest to students and practicioners of the western esoteric traditions. Read more

Published on Aug 16 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, scholarly introduction to Renaisssance magic
This is Yates's masterpiece, a brilliant and lucid survey of a wide range of magical traditions in the Renaissance. Read more

Published on Oct 6 1998 by Christopher I. Lehrich

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 6 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Search Listmania!