Renaissance Magic

Plotinus and the Moving Image

2015-03-27T00:28:00.001-07:00

Call for Contributions Plotinus and the Moving Image: Neoplatonism and Film Theory Edited by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and Giannis Stamatellos To be published by Brill/Rodopi in the “Philosophy of Film” Series Can Neoplatonic philosophy be used for film studies? Given the often-stated parallels between Plotinus’ and Bergson’s philosophies, it is surprising that Neoplatonism has provided relatively little input on philosophy of film. Curtis Hancock writes that the effects of Bergsonism are evident in pragmatism, psychology, and theology and that the decedents of Bergson have created a vestige of Neoplatonism that perdures into the late twentieth century. This vestige must also exist in film studies. Today, with the newly emerging observative “Cinema of Contemplation,” this Neoplatonic vestige is worth exploring. The following points (as well as others) can be developed: · Contemplation. Plotinus’ search for the “intelligible” that can be grasped neither by mere sense perception nor by abstraction or analysis, leads to “simple” contemplation: “Such vision is for those only who see with the soul’s sight—and at the vision, they will rejoice, and awe will fall upon them and a trouble deeper than all the rest could ever stir, for now they are moving in the realm of Truth” (“On Beauty,” Enn. I, 6, 4). Can a theory of “contemplative cinema” be built upon those ideas? Who contemplates? The viewer? The film? · Closely linked to contemplation is the question of the cinematic image and grace. For Plotinus, grace is not an object; as a consequence, it does not require objective contemplation. Instead, it is immediately linked to a simple presence that bestows beauty on all material things (I, 6, 2). For Hadot it is a “je ne sais quoi.” Grace is perceived by those “who see with the Soul’s sight” (I, 6, 4). It is like looking at matter without searching for it because it is simply present. For any theory of perception, exploring the contemplative way of seeing this must be of interest. · Against materialism. Does Plotinus’ skepticism towards the material world lead to an art whose images “express themselves all alone”? Plotinus portrays matter as a mirror reflecting the movements of the soul as bodies (Enn. II, 4 and III, 6). Bodies are intermediate reflections of the soul. Does this have any significance for film theory? · Plotinus’ conception of the One as power-of-all-things beyond any kind of intelligence (Nous) leads to the seeing of the world without adapting those things to any definite perspective; neither to that of subjectivism nor to that of epistemological objectivism. This is what interested Deleuze. In a Bergsonian way, Deleuze puts forward cinematic experience as a means to perceive time and movement as a whole. In cinema, our mind does not need to put together the successive percepts or sensations it perceives, but receives them as a whole. · This is linked to the idea of the overcoming perspectival seeing. Plotinus’ expression of the first effluence of the One (which is intelligible matter) as an “indefinite sight” before becoming “definitive” in Nous, might announce a way of seeing that overcomes perspective. Also the fluent spatial experience avoiding geometrical divisions that we can observe in the contemplative cinema of, for example, Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr can be described as a negation of perspective. · Bergson’s “time-image” (Matière et mémoire) is supposed to be superior to “concepts” because the image is able to evoke thought content in a more fluent and less abstract fashion. For Deleuze, the pre-signifying “signaletic material” that films are made of cannot be assimilated to models of semiotics. Is this idea of “time-image” compatible with Plotinus’ theory of time as a transitory intelligible movement of the soul (Enn. III, 7)? In other words, does the conception of the soul as an intermediate and restless entity between the intelligible and the perceptible world reflect the “time-image?” And how does this relate to Plato’s definition of time as the “moving image of eternity?” · Realism. The “time-image” is based on pure thinking. It emerged in cinema after WWII mainly with Italian Neo-Realism and French New Wave cinema. It does not follow the scheme of action-reaction, but it can evoke a time that is prior to movement (Deleuze). It is useful to revisit, in this context, Kracauer’s “Kamerarealität.” Does this concept express the quasi-Plotinian fusion of eye and object, a vision where reality and camera fuse? · The virtual in Deleuze and Plotinus as well as its significance for film offers many points of comparison. For Plotinus “the soul creates living beings not by merging into body but by giving forth, without any change in itself, images or likenesses of itself like one face caught by many mirrors” (Enn. I, 1.8. See also III, 6 and IV, 2). · Organicism. For Plotinus, expressions are not constructed: “If nature creates these organisms, this will be an immediate art. Nature is like a painter who contents himself with looking at his model, while the image draws itself on the canvas all alone” (Hadot). Does this suggest the conception of an image manifesting an organic link between matter and form, a link that is potentially important for contemplative cinema? The distinction between matter and form which, according to Heidegger, has served as the conceptual schema par excellence for any theory of art since Plato and Aristotle was previously undermined by Tarkovsky. The conception of the image as an organic link between matter and form is indeed reminiscent of the image as a constructed body in terms of the Plotinian hylomophism. We will also be interested in proposals on video art. Send abstracts (ca. 800 words) to thorstenbotz@hotmail.com and gstamap@yahoo.com. Chapter length: 5500-6500 words including endnotes and bibliography. Deadline for abstracts: Sept. 30 2015. Deadline for final papers: June 30 2016. All full-length texts will be peer reviewed. Proposals will not be accepted on the basis of abstracts. Link to the Brill “Philosophy of Film” Series http://www.brill.com/forthcoming-series-philosophy-film

Esoterica, Religion, Philosophy, and Literature Shelfies

2015-02-14T01:17:00.001-08:00

CFP - Material Culture of Magic

2014-05-23T11:59:00.001-07:00

Call for Chapters - The Material Culture of Magic

Book project, ed. by Dr Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie and Dr Leo Ruickbie

Magic is a wide field of research comprising what we might call the occult, paranormal events, anomalous experience, spirituality and other phenomena throughout human history. However, research has often been focused more narrowly on the historical analysis of written sources, or the anthropology and occasionally sociology of practitioners and their communities, for example. What is often overlooked are the physical artefacts of magic themselves.

In all areas of research, ‘material culture’ is becoming increasingly important – the ‘material turn’ as it has been labelled. This is particularly the case for disciplines that traditionally have not focused on object studies but on theory such as historical or social sciences. However, it is self-evident that the objects emerging from a culture provide valuable information on societies and their history. This is also and particularly the case for magic and related phenomena. Magic, especially, became divorced from its concrete expressions as academic study focused on problems of rationality and functionalist explanation.

When studying magic it is crucial to look at the objects that have been produced and what purpose they had, who made them and in what period, whether they represent only a certain historical period or are a long-lasting phenomenon, etc. This volume hence aims to ‘re-materialise’ magic, to re-anchor it in the physical things that constitute ‘magic’ and recover the social lives, even biographies, of these things.

The envisaged academic book aims to cover a wide range of subjects, periods, geographical areas, as well as methods: firstly, because an interdisciplinary approach is essential to adequately encompass the subject; secondly, to investigate whether similar objects were used in different cultures in parallel or over a long period; and thirdly, to serve as a starting point for future research. This will be the first book on the material culture of magic and consequently has the potential to become a foundational text.

Therefore, we invite contributors from different disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, art history, ethnology, folklore, parapsychology, religious studies, sociology and others. Subjects could be, for example, case studies focusing on particular objects, museum collections, or mass market items labelled as magical; analysis of classes of embodied magical functions, such as charms, amulets, talismans, magical jewellery, icons, relics, poppets (Voodoo dolls), etc.; consideration of classes of materials, such as bone, wood, metal, precious and semi-precious stones, etc. In addition, it is important to understand people-object relations, spatial-temporal aspects of magical objects, the dialectics of transference (projection and introjection), the role of narratives and social performance, cultural trajectories, and the processes of commodification and fetishisation (reification). These can be addressed in a variety of contexts from traditional religion to popular culture, and historically situated anywhere from prehistory to the present day.

Any physical representation of magical ideation or anything imbued with supernatural meanings by its creator, such as found objects, animal/human parts, and man-made artefacts, can be considered in this context. What matters is a central focus on the physicality of the magical object; its material existence.

The volume will present an overview of current research in this field. It will comprise approximately 20 of the best and most relevant contributions on this subject. Contributors will be asked to submit a finished chapter of around 6,000 words (inc. references) with publication planned for 2015.

In the first instance, an abstract of no more than 300 words should be sent, together with a brief biography, to the editors before 1 August 2014 at Bosselmann-Ruickbie@uni-mainz.de. We are also happy to answer any questions.

In order to get the best possible response, we would appreciate your help in re-distributing this call for chapters. Email it to colleagues, other relevant mailing lists, or print it out and stick it up on the department noticeboard!

***

Dr Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie is a lecturer in the Department for Christian Archaeology and Byzantine Art History, Institute for Art History and Musicology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany.

Dr Leo Ruickbie is the published author of several books, as well as the editor of the Paranormal Review, the magazine of the Society for Psychical Research, and a Committee Member of the Gesellschaft für Anomalistik (Society for Anomalistics).

Hegel on Plotinus

2014-03-31T19:35:00.002-07:00

It is very difficult to give a systematic account of his philosophy. For it is not the aim of Plotinus, as it was of Aristotle, to comprehend objects in their special determinations, but rather to emphasize the truth of the substantial in them as against the phenomenal. The point of greatest importance and the leading characteristic in Plotinus is his high, pure enthusiasm for the elevation of mind to what is good and true, to the absolute. He lays hold of knowledge, the simply ideal, and of intellectual thought, which implicitly life, but not silent nor sealed. His whole philosophy is on the one hand metaphysics, but the tendency which is therein dominant is not so much an anxiety to explain and interpret and comprehend what forces itself on our attention as reality, or to demonstrate the position and the origin of these individual objects, and perhaps, for instance, to offer a deduction of matter, of evil; but rather to separate the mind from these externals, and give it its central place in the simple, clear Idea. The whole tenor of his philosophy thus leads up to virtue and to the intellectual contemplation of the eternal, as source of the same; so that the soul is brought to happiness of life therein. Plotinus then enters to some extent on special considerations of virtue, with the view of cleansing the soul from passions, from false and impure conceptions of evil and destiny, and also from incredulity and superstition, from astrology and magic and all their train. This gives some idea of the general drift of his teaching.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpalexandrian.htm

from a review of Klaassen's new book Transformations of Magic

2013-11-22T14:24:00.003-08:00

"His attentiveness to the volumes ultimately sheds light on the
intellectual frames of reference that result in the transformations he
documents. Regarding image magic the framing question was whether an
image worked because of occult natural powers or demonic intervention.
In the former case, use of the image would be lawful; in the latter,
unlawful. The urge to make image magic lawful then situated it
alongside or even in the field of natural philosophy. The alignment
shaped the debate and can be seen in the placement of the texts of
image magic, which in collected volumes and on library shelves were
found among the naturalia. Prof. Klaassen determines that this
trend was shaped by certain authoritative works, most famously the
Speculum astronomiae, that became increasingly used as a guide
for scribes in their immediate discernment of the philosophical and
moral lawfulness of particular magical texts. Their use had a
constraining effect, and the number of texts of image magic
correspondingly decreased."

Klaassen, Frank F. Transformations of Magic: Illicit Learned Magic
in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance. Series: Magic in History.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. Pp. x,
280. $69.95. ISBN-13: 9780271056265.

Reviewed by David J. Collins, S.J.
Georgetown University

The Medieval Review
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3631

Renaissance Magic as the root of 19th century Magic

2013-11-22T14:21:00.004-08:00

At first glance, it might seem that Renaissance magicians such as Ficino and Agrippa had embraced the image magic tradition through their own astrological magic systems and shunned the ritual magic. What Renaissance magic represented, however, was the subsuming of image magic into a broader system that shared the goals of ritual magic. This new breed of magus seems to have accepted the basic tenets and procedures of the ritual magic genre while dissociating themselves from the particular texts that came before. It was this particular mixture that powered the ceremonial magic traditions that came to prominence in the nineteenth century, and that are perpetuated even today.
From a review of Frank Klaassen's dissertation

Kiekhefer on the rationality of magic

2013-09-04T20:05:00.002-07:00

"We cannot begin with the assumption that magic is irrational; we must ask ourselves why it was that for people whose rationality was otherwise unimpeachable it seemed to fit into a rational view of the universe, and the first step toward answering this question is listening carefully to their formulations, their definitions."
from Magic in the Middle Ages

decline of magic -- fragmentation?

2013-09-02T21:27:00.001-07:00

"I suggest that there was a fragmentation of the occult arts and sciences during the Renaissance and early modern periods, as some aspects of the magic tradition became appropriated into the new philosophy, or new science. To a large extent it was the input from magic that made the new philosophies what they were, not only with regard to the experimental method and the new ethos that natural knowledge should be pragmatically useful, but also with regard to the substantive content of those new philosophies. At the same time,however, other aspects of the magical tradition were ﬁrmly rejected. These historical changes are perhaps best understood in terms of what sociologists of science have called ‘boundary work’, the process of demarcating supposed legitimate and valid procedures and presuppositions in establishing natural knowledge from those that are deemed invalid and illegitimate. From the Renaissance through the period known as the Scientiﬁc Revolution there was a complete rearrangement of the boundaries of what was magic or occult and what was not, which in turn involved a redrawing of the boundaries which determined what was natural philosophy and what was not.Furthermore, it is my contention that this led to a decline in the fortunes (among orthodox thinkers at least) of what was left behind in the realms of magic."

from The Fragmentation of Renaissance Occultism

Culianu's interest in Renaissance Magic

2013-07-04T10:57:00.002-07:00

The security police, known as Securitate, tried to recruit him. He won a scholarship to study in Italy but was turned down for an exit permit. Culianu took refuge from these stifling circumstances by studying Indian mysticism, astrology, the haunting stories of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges and, most important, a few Renaissance philosophers of magic, eros and the occult whose works he pondered for the rest of his life. ''Here he found the possibility of meaningful rebellion for him -- not outward, but inward,'' Mr. Anton writes. ''Culianu found in magic a potential release from all forms of power, even the limit of time or identity.'' http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/27/books/the-murder-of-a-scholar-swept-up-in-dark-forces.html

Great post on the seriousness of astrology in the Renaissance

2013-04-03T00:11:00.002-07:00

"With the advent of Humanist Renaissance in the fifteenth century astrology enjoyed a major revival centred around astro-medicine, or as it was also known iatro-mathematics, a discipline that like astrology had its roots in fourth century BCE Greece. This form of medicine believed that the causes and cures of diseases were controlled by celestial influences and that a medicus must study the horoscopes of both the patient and the disease to determine the correct course of treatment. Chairs of astrology were established at the Northern Italian humanist universities and also in Cracow in Poland, later in other parts of Europe. By the end of the century astrology was the central discipline studied and practiced by the Renaissance mathematicus. This revival in the fortunes of astrology was also made possible because the new astrologers interpreted horoscopes as being indicative and no longer deterministic. That is a horoscope indicated a possible course for the future but one that could be altered by the subject of the horoscope if he took the right actions. Actions defined by the astrologer, of course, for a further fee."
http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/what-was-when-modern/

McGinnis on Avicenna's Cosmology

2013-03-19T14:53:00.001-07:00

Avicenna's modal ontology yet again provides him with a neat solution to this problem of medieval cosmology. From the necessary Existent there emanantes fro Avicenna the Intellect associated witht eh outermost celestial sphere. This Intellect must itself already be composite, for it is something possible in tiself but necessary through another. Now, continues Avicenna, when this Intellect contemplates the Necessary Existent, there emanates from that first Intellect another Intellect-let this second Intellect be the one associated with the fixed stars. In addition to contemplating the Necessary Existent, the first Intellect also contemplate itself, but, as has already been seen, it si something composite consisting of its won possible existence and the necessary existence it has from another. Thus, according to Avicenna's own unique emanative scheme, when the first Intellect contemplates itself as something merely possible in itself, there emanates from it a certain celestial body, whereas when it contemplates itself as necessary through another, it emanates that celestial body's soul. This process continues at the level of the second Intellect. Now, however, the second Intellect contemplates its relation the first Intellect and the Necessary Existent. This emanative process continues cascading downward with new Intellects, souls, and clestial bodies being produced until reaches the Active Intellect or Giver of Forms, which is the Intellect that produces the Moon and lunar soul.

(thanks to Michael Chase for posting this on the Neoplatonism list)

notes for a review of Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy

2013-03-02T10:24:00.002-08:00

Hanegraaf does an archaeology of theory of esotericism, looking at
constructions of "magic" and other forms of rejected knowledge in
the early modern philosophical discourse that prefigures and often
haunts modern scholarly understandings of what is now discussed
under the umbrella of "Western Esotericism." Looking at theoretical
approaches from an historical lens with penetrating insight and a
welcome rigor, he explains where his discipline came from and with
great clarity elucidates many problems that still plague the field.
The result is a great success that will be invaluable to both the
theorist and the historian.

Platonic orientalism -- role of Renaissance magical theories
how occult sciences eventually became understood from unifying perspective

tainted terminologies

critiques Brian Vickers' understanding of the occult sciences

navigates the complexities of the historiography of alchemy

examines Faivre's position in relation to the religionism of Esalen

what Segal has done for Myth and Fanger for Theurgy

Adam Gopnik on John Dee

2013-02-07T20:30:00.000-08:00

“The Arch-Conjuror of England” (Yale), Glynn Parry’s entertaining new biography of Galileo’s contemporary the English magician and astrologer John Dee, shows that Dee was, in his own odd way, an honest man and a true intellectual. He races from Prague to Paris, holding conferences with other astrologers and publishing papers, consulting with allies and insulting rivals. He wasn’t a fraud. His life has all the look and sound of a fully respectable intellectual activity, rather like, one feels uneasily, the life of a string theorist today. The look and the sound of science . . . but it does have a funny smell. Dee doesn’t once ask himself, “Is any of this real or is it all just bullshit?” If it works, sort of, and you draw up a chart that looks cool, it counts. Galileo never stopped asking himself that question, even when it wasn’t bullshit but sounded as though it might well be. That’s why he went wrong on the tides; the-moon-does-it-at-a-distance explanation sounds too much like the assertion of magic. The temperament is not all-seeing and curious; it is, instead, irritable and impatient with the usual stories. The new stories might be ugly, but they’re not crap. “It is true that the Copernican system creates disturbances in the Aristotelian universe,” Salviati admits in the “Dialogue,” “but we are dealing with our own real and actual universe.”

from What Galileo Saw

see also the thorough drubbing Gopnik received at the hands of the Renaissance Mathematicus
http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/gopnik-galileo-and-ed-yong-galileo-not-admitting-being-wrong/
http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/help-ive-just-been-savaged-by-a-toothless-american-bulldog/

Failures of Neoplatonic Memory Magic

2013-01-14T13:37:00.001-08:00

I explore the failures of Prospero’s magic in the context of the public conflict over memory systems that pitted Giordano Bruno’s image-rich magical system (propagated by Alexander Dicson) against the iconoclastic methods favored by the Cambridge Ramists (spearheaded in print by Rev. William Perkins) in late Elizabethan England. The strongly visual and theatrical strategies employed by Prospero (most notably in the play’s two masques), coupled with the dependence of his magic on memory and the forced rewriting or imposition of memory, suggest that his magic is both neo-Platonic in form and specifically linked to the magical memory system described by Bruno. As a magician, Prospero tries to assert his power by controlling memory, revising history to reflect his desired narrative. However, his attempts to superimpose his own narrative are repeatedly resisted, interrupted, and rejected. Given these failures to control either his own plans or his subjects, I’d like to suggest that Prospero’s magic, most particularly in its image-rich masques and focus on memory, stages a parodic interrogation of this debate over memory and memory systems. And while resistance does not itself invalidate his magical theories, Prospero’s attempts at memory manipulation notably succeed only in altering his own interpretation of events; his inability to recognize his failure thus points to the inherently self-deceiving nature of his art. This frame enables us to consider Prospero not simply a positive or negative figure, but as one who calls into question not simply his own skill, but the basic validity of the magical system he employs.

Calder on Dee and the search for a "real character"

2013-01-06T00:44:00.003-08:00

It is of interest to note the intellectual and historical relation between Dee's approach in the Monas and the search for a real character (Francis Bacon in the Advancement of Learning, called for one which would represent "neither letters nor words but things and notions," and would "serve for an antidote against the curse of the confusion of tongues") and the universal language which occupied so many in the succeeding century - Kircher, Dolgarno Hartleb and through him Boyle, Wilkins (who declared "As men do generally agree in the same Principles of Reason, so do they likewise agree in the same internal Notions or Apprehensions of things") and others, and received in England the attentions and encouragement of the Royal Society (94); Dee's manner of regardig his hieroglyph and its constituent parts approaches in some respects Leibniz' conception of the universal character which underlay, though it has been inevitably overshadowed by his more fruitful vision of a general logical calculus, for this latter implied the possibility of the reduction of all scientific concepts, by analysis, into a small number originally constitutive of them, to be expressed in ideographic symbols, revealing their nature and the operations they allowed of and from which all scientific knowledge might be then deduced
http://www.johndee.org/calder/html/Calder6.html

Calder on John Dee's answer to Socrates in the Cratylus

2013-01-06T00:42:00.002-08:00

Such a position provides an answer to Socrates' objection to such procedures at the end of the Cratylus (89) that the far better and surer way to knowledge is to avoid such an attempt to learn from the image (word or sign), however exact an imitation it may be, and to examine the things themselves, that are supposedly represented. For to Dee, the figures he examines would appear to stand for intelligible concepts, employed by God in creation, principles not directly manifest to sense through particular objects, complex symbolic syntheses of the universal law. This also applies in part to his more conventional "Cabalism," using words and letters, in the Monas, while the way in which other standard objections - as those raised in theCratylus - were thought to be adequately answered has already been discussed (90). It is interesting however that Roger Bacon relies on the same text as Dee cites in the prefatory letter, to justify such practises; writing "For the Lord says, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the alw till all be fulfilled. And therefore there is an admirable exposition in the book on the meanings of the scriptures stating how the individual letters of the Hebrew Alphabet had significance respecting the ancient people, and how they show the number of centuries through which the state of that race passed as regards its different periods and ages, in accordance with the special powers and potencies ofthe letters....I cannot sufficiently admire the manner in which the examination was derived, although it may seem to the uninitiated to have a weak basis in the letters of the alphabet which are the first rudiments of children. But according to the teaching of the Apostles lesser things are more necessary and are to be accorded greater honour...."(91) Bacon, as Dee here also, gives equal status to the Greek and Latin alphabets. Agrippa does the same, declaring that it is God who has given man discourse in different languages, of which the written characters have a fixed order, and particular shapes which are not the result of chance, or human invention, but divinely formed in accordance with the celestial bodies and angelic powers and the virtue of these. In a manner very close to the method of Dee's Monas, he attempts the reduction of letters to zodiacal and planetary signs (92). Tymme sums up the case in his preface to his proposed translation of Dee's book. Adam he says gave names to creatures "agreeing with their nature," he inscribed in two tablets of stone with prophecies and philosophy in hieroglyphical characters, one of which Noah discovered after the flood in Armenia, and from this the signs of the planets derive. A universal science was then possible by their means, but the knowledge it embodied has since then not only diminished but has been divided up in such sort that its surviving fragments "make one an Astronomer, another a Magitian, a third a Cabalist, and a fourth an Alchemist"; but this lost unity of science Dee's work aims at reestablishing by means of the primitive planetary figures and the Cabalah, which last says Tymme "out of hidden and misticall sciences serveth to make away for men to come unto God."(93)
http://www.johndee.org/calder/html/Calder6.html

Calder on the influence of Proclus on John Dee

2013-01-06T00:39:00.002-08:00

Now, although many early neo-Platonists such as Plotinus (who praises for instance the way the Egyptian sages have expressed the true natures of each thing in the hieroglyphs standing for them (86)) or Iamblichus, dealt with the virtues of figures from this point of view, it is Proclus who offers some of the fullest, most explicit discussions, and the most obviously relevant to Dee's present work. He recurs frequently to the theme, seeming to regard the best method in all instruction to be that which he attributes to the Pythagoreans, which falls into three stages (perhaps corresponding to the familiar levels of Sensible Intuition, Abstract Reason, and Spritual Reality) the first and third of which employ this approach. For prior to scientific doctrine the Pythagoreans render manifest the proposed objects of enquiry by approximate similitudes and images, and finally once more have recourse to symbols of a different kind to reveal the arcane virtues of these objects (87). In the preface to his commentary on Euclid, a work in which Dee seems to have been thoroughly steeped, Proclus declares that in Numbers, Figures and Musical Accords are to be found the three ways in which the constitutive reasons of all intellectual, moral and theological truths are presented to the human mind, and later has a lengthy discussion on the virtues of figures reflecting directly on the position taken up in Dee's Monas
http://www.johndee.org/calder/html/Calder6.html

abstract from a paper on the Kabbalah of Rosenroth

2012-12-17T13:38:00.001-08:00

"Dans le cadre de l’étude de la circulation des modèles et des savoirs en Europe, nous proposons de nous attacher ici à la figure de l’adam kadmon, littéralement « homme primordial », telle qu’elle apparaît dans la Kabbala denudata de Knorr de Rosenroth, à ses caractéristiques et au rôle qu’elle joue au sein du système mis en place par l’auteur. Œuvre composée dans le dernier quart du 17e siècle par le mystique et hébraïste allemand Christian Knorr de Rosenroth, la Kabbala denudata constitue, selon nous, une véritable charnière au sein du mouvement de la kabbale chrétienne et, plus largement, dans l’histoire de la spiritualité européenne. Publiée en 1677, l’œuvre est postérieure à la kabbale chrétienne classique et ouvre la voie à la reformulation de ses principes par l’ésotérisme moderne naissant.

http://ulb.academia.edu/AnnaMariaVileno/Papers

Call For Papers - Celestial Magic

2012-12-15T15:50:00.001-08:00

University of Wales Trinity Saint David
The Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture,
School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology
http://www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk/en/sophia/

Eleventh Annual Sophia Centre Conference
Second Call for Papers

'CELESTIAL MAGIC'

22-23 June 2013
Venue: Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Bath, England

Keynote speakers

Prof. Peter Forshaw, Universitair Docent (Senior Lecturer/Assistant
Professor) for the History of Western Esotericism in the Early Modern Period
at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents,
University of Amsterdam.

Prof. Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic
Studies, New York University.

Conference Chairs
Dr Nicholas Campion, University of Wales Trinity Saint David,
n.campion@tsd.ac.uk
Dr Liz Greene, University of Wales Trinity Saint David and the University of
Bristol. l.greene@tsd.ac.uk

Conference Theme
Magic, loosely defined, is the attempt to engage with the world through the
imagination or psyche, in order to obtain some form of knowledge, benefit or
advantage. Celestial magic engages with the cosmos through stellar,
planetary or celestial symbolism, influences or intelligences. This academic
conference will explore the history, philosophy and practice of celestial
magic in past or present societies.
Topics may include:
Astronomy and magic in literature
Astral magic in the ancient world
Anthropological theory and astral magic
The use of astrology by magical societies
Astral divination and magic
Magical theory as a rational for astrology

The conference organisers invite proposals for papers of 30 minutes which
may deal with text, imagery, practice or theory. We welcome proposals on any
time period or culture. The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2012.

Please include an abstract of c. 150 words and a biography of c 100 words,
in the same document.

Alberti and Ficino

2012-12-01T21:06:00.002-08:00

Leon Battista Alberti and Marsilio Ficino, though separated by twenty-nine years in age, had a close relationship as mentor and pupil. Concepts which can be found in Alberti's De Pictura (1435) and De Re Aedificatoria (1450) are infused in Ficino's De Amore (1469). The concepts include Alberti's theories of armonia, lineamenti, concinnitas, ornamento, and the pyramid of light in the theory of vision. In both Alberti and Ficino, harmonies shared by the body and music are manifestations of the harmonies of the soul. Beauty in body and matter is determined by beauty in mind (mens), that part of mind directed toward intellectus divinus, and beauty is made manifest in mind by the lineamenti, the lines in the mind which are distinguished from matter. Beauty is the internal perfection of the intellectus divinus, which is the good, which is a perfect harmony called concinnitas. Ornament is not beauty, but rather a physical complement to beauty. http://www.academia.edu/2223434/Alberti_and_Ficino

Call For Papers: Grimoires at UT Austin

2012-12-01T20:19:00.002-08:00

"Text, Context, and Non-Text: Grimoires and Ritual Magic in culture, literature, and art."

Location:	Texas, United States
Call for Papers Date:	2013-01-15
Date Submitted:	2012-11-29
Announcement ID:	199149

Text, Context, and Non-Text: Grimoires in Central Europe
April 5th and 6th 2013
The University of Texas at Austin
Conference sponsored by
the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies,
the Texas Chair for Czech Studies,
and the Departments of History,
Germanic Studies, and Religious Studies
This conference is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of a large corpus of magic texts that figure prominently in the cultural and intellectual history of Europe. Its focus will be grimoires, real or imagined, whose legacy has reverberated throughout European culture in the form of folktales, literature (Faust, for example), and graphic art down to the present, at times being among the few treasured possessions brought to the New World.
Abstracts are requested that address any facet of this cultural legacy, in any country and in any era:
· TEXT refers to the content of the grimoire, its images and words, and issues arising from these directly--analysis of meaning, new manuscript finds, translations, etc.
· CONTEXT refers to the total situation in which the grimoire exists, with a view to politics, arts and letters, religion, folklore, etc.
· NON-TEXT refers to any situation in which the grimoire as object or as idea is more central than its content--the evocative indecipherability of existing grimoires, the grimoire as an emblem, key, or symbol, etc.
Abstracts for twenty-minute conference presentations from any discipline will be considered. Please send the abstract as part of an email to: textcontextnontext@gmail.com. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words long and accompanied by a brief (250 word) biography suitable for an introduction at the conference. The conference language is English. All abstracts should be submitted by December 15th (Jan 15th extended deadline.)
We look forward to welcoming a variety of exciting keynote speakers from Central Europe:
Prof. em. Leander Petzoldt of the University of Innsbruck, author of numerous books and collections of folklore, including Magie: Weltbild, Praktiken, Rituale (Magic: World View, Practices, Rituals)
Dr. Susanne Hose of the Sorbian Institute in Bautzen, Germany, author of numerous works on the motifs of magic and magicians (such as Krabat) in the folklore of Lusatia.

Jason Roberts
Email: textcontextnontext@gmail.com

Visionary Architecture

2012-11-23T23:34:00.003-08:00

Champoux’s dissertation, “Visionary Architecture: Monastic Magic and Cognition in John of Morigny’s ‘Liber florum,’” is concerned with the 14th-century Benedictine monk who participated in ritual magic and had visionary experiences. Besides being fascinating reading, John’s text, says Champoux, has altered the study and classification of medieval religions.

“Through a detailed examination of John’s visions and the historical context in which they were written, I argue that magic unsettled medieval theological boundaries and imbued John with a degree of creative license that forced theological interventions from his more orthodox peers,” says Champoux.

Patricia Miller, Champoux’s adviser, says this kind of research is rooted in the latter-day work of Hélène Cixous—specifically, her concept of “productive exile”—and of Michel Foucault, whose study of utopias and heterotopias has changed our understanding of space and time. Miller also points out that Champoux’s research rocks the fractious scholarly field of magic at its “conceptual and definitional core.”

“She is intellectually bold to enter into these discussions,” says Miller, who serves as the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion. “I think her approach—which emphasizes the idea of what magic does, intellectually, rather than what it is—will make a real contribution toward de-essentializing this topic and enabling its study as a legitimate expression of religion.”

http://www.syr.edu/news/articles/2011/dissertation-fellows-08-11.html

Giordano Bruno's Key of Transmutation

2012-11-13T20:46:00.001-08:00

Renaissance Scholars and Their Demons - Ficino lecture

2012-11-12T20:40:00.001-08:00

Society for Neo-Latin Studies: Annual Lecture
November 16th, 5 p.m., University College London
Dr Maude Vanhaelen (University of Warwick)
Renaissance scholars and their demons:
on Ficino and Iamblichus’ De Mysteriis

In 1486, Ficino suddenly interrupts his commentary on Plotinus’ Enneads and devotes three years to the translation of other Neoplatonic texts related to some of the most delicate doctrines of the time: pagan demonology, divination through dreams and theurgy. This paper examines the circumstances surrounding the production of these texts, and explores the ways in which they modify ancient and medieval doctrines of prophecy and divination. It also offers an overview of the immediate reception of Ficino’s translations: it shows that a network of humanists nourished a special interest in the doctrines revived by Ficino, prompting Savonarola to mount virulent attacks against his contemporaries’ revival of the pagan cult to malevolent ‘spirits’.

The lecture will take place in the Chadwick Building (G08), University College London, on Gower Street WC1E 6BT (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/find-us/

).

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Bruno's "Renaissance Dream of Knowledge" in England

2012-11-02T02:38:00.006-07:00

The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge

Giordano Bruno in England

By Hilary Gatti

Giordano Bruno’s visit to Elizabethan England in the 1580s left its imprint on many fields of contemporary culture, ranging from the newly-developing science, the philosophy of knowledge and language, to the extraordinary flowering of Elizabethan poetry and drama.
This book explores Bruno's influence on English figures as different as the ninth Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Harriot, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Originally published in 1989, it is of interest to students and teachers of history of ideas, cultural history, European drama and renaissance England.

Bruno's work had particular power and emphasis in the modern world due to his response to the cultural crisis which had developed - his impulse towards a new ‘faculty of knowing’ had a disruptive effect on existing orthodoxies – religious, scientific, philosophical, and political.

abstract from the publisher's website