Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago Original Paperback) [Paperback]

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance is an outstanding book. The work is essentially about phantasms (not to be confused with "fantasy") and how, in the past, these phantasms were believed to operate within the soul. Of course, if one accepts for the sake of discussion that phantasms exist and operate within the soul, then discussion of the mechanics of phantasmic operation (e.g. the art of memory, erotic magic, manipulation of desire) naturally follow.

Culianu brilliantly reviews the history of thought regarding the movement of images within the soul and goes yet further to discuss the history of how men believed manipulation of individuals and "the masses" through this process might be effected. Naturally enough he touches on advertising, misinformation, spin and censorship. These very subjects got the conspiratorial Giordano Bruno (who occupies a significant position in the book) burned alive in 1600 by the Catholic Church (an organization understandably averse to anyone tinkering about in the very realm of imaginal manipulation they had such a stake in).

It seems that these issues are still very sensitive to a number of groups with a vested interest in imaginal manipulation. There were a number of people in Rumania after the coup who began to worry about Culianu (a Rumanian expatriate) and his penetrating understanding of the rigid "Police State" with its enforcement of laws and the more flexible "Magician State" with it's enforcement of *desires* (all discussed in this book). That is most likely why Professor Culianu had his head blown off in The University of Chicago Divinity School.

Anyone with an interest in how mankind has enslaved itself with the empty images of manufactured need and sterile consumerism will find Eros and Magic in the Renaissance to be the center of a web of ideas shedding light on this subject. Outstanding Book!

The "eros" of Renaissance magic started out with optical theory and other medical concerns with Aristotle (and perhaps Plato), who held that there was a substance called the "pneuma." In Aristotle's thinking, the pneuma was a substance that was located as a thin shield around the body. In Stoic medical theory, this became a substance commesurate with the "soul" or "spirit." This substance was a "prima materia," a fundamental substance that contained the physiological ability to transmit information to the senses, especially the ocular sense. The heart was the center for a generational organ that in turn centered the pneuma, This pneumatic organ was called in Greek --- the "hegimonikon." Forming images in the pneuma for sensory transmission was necessary before a person could percieve something or someone. Through the works of late antiquity, such as the Corpus Hermeticum and medieval physicians such as Albert the Great, the doctrine of the pneuma became common discourse and was incorporated into popular culture such as the courtly love tradition. Taken by the bishop Synesius's (d. ca. 415) synthesis of previous pneumatic doctrine and courtly love practices, Ficino develops a universal doctrine of the relation of man to the universe through Eros mediated by the Universal and Particular pneuma. While mentioning Pico della Mirandola as a sparring partner of Ficino, the main emphasis in this narrative turns to Giordano Bruno, whom Couliano believes modified and perfected this doctrine in terms of personal manipulation and excitation through the powers of Eros.

Couliano, in the last part of the book, strives to develop an alternate account of the "fall" of magic by highlighting the role of the Reformation. Having defended the notion that the Renaissance was about a revival of pagan culture, he in turn emphasizes the role of imagery and "phantasy" in the doctrine of the pneuma. The Reformation and the Counter Reformation were primarily about the eradication of pagan culture from Christiandom. As such they were about the eradication of imagery, manifested in terms of Luther's accusations of Catholic "magic" in the Eucharist, iconoclasm, the witch hunts. For Couliano the witch hunts are a social counterpart to the eradication of religious-magical imagery--- both are manifestations of "human phantasy." When "qualitative" statements become suspect (as they involve imagery) then strictly "quantitative" science becomes the only legitimate route for knowledge. When these scientists wax inductive, they are threatened by the Church(es).

Better than Keith Thomas's 'Religion and the Decline of Magic" but if you're looking for the real explanations of how Renaissance Magic worked, then you should read D. P. Walker's "Spiritual and Demonic Magic" instead.

The book begins by discussing theories of cognition which developed in classical antiquity. Followers of Plato believed that the only way humans came to know anything was the result of the soul (pneuma) receiving projections, or phantasms, of objects in the physical world. These ideas were rediscovered in Western Europe in the late middle ages. Two Renaissance philosophers of magic, Marsilio Ficino and his successor, Giordano Bruno, theorized that people could be bent to a magician's will if the magician could project such phantasms: in order to do so the magician manipulated the desires of his victims.

During the Reformation, however, such thinking was condemned and Couliano uses Calderon de Barca's play, "El Magico Prodigioso", as an example of the new attitude toward magic. The book concludes with Couliano's assertion that the modern era is still blinkered by Reformation thinking.

The book is dense but readable and often entertaining. It is exclusively concerned with Christian Neoplatonism and interprets magic as a psychological medium. Although other Renaissance philosophers of magic are mentioned Ficino and Bruno are the principal sources of Couliano's thesis.