Customer Reviews

Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (Chicago Original Paperback)

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It is unfortunate that Professor Culianu was so violently removed from the world of academia. We are fortunate however, that some few books he was responsible for remain.

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!

This text has a twofold project. One, Couliano wishes to elucidate what he sees as the defining charachteristic of Renaissance Magic, that of "Eros," and also to account for the shift in thinking that reportedly heralded the "decline" of magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

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 late Iaon Couliano was an associate professor at the University of Groningen when he wrote this book, originally published in French and translated by Margaret Cook. It is an examination of how Neoplatonic ideas about cognition were applied to magical speculation during the Renaissance, and how these ideas were condemned during the Reformation.

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.

Great book. Some people think he was murdered for spilling the beans. He was fondly called the 'professor' by the librarians at the Vatican Library to give you an idea of his grasp of the subject matter...This book traces modern mass hypnosis (media) back to its roots and the 'bonding' of the masses elucidated by Bruno among others in the Renaissance. One of the unstated themes of the book is that modern man is really in worse shape than his Medieval ancestors who could see 'magic' for what it was. Today, the same magical bonds, manipulation and delivery system are disguised in psychology, pharmamcology, religion, medicine, scientific world-views and its state-sponsored perfection is masked behind static stage sets named things like public policy, public relations, communications studies, think tanks...they sell their 'bonds' with catch phrases like 'personal freedom', 'liberation', 'progress', 'free-markets'... Couliano had a personal history that allowed him to witness two different types of state sorcery : communist Romania and later the west and the United States. The book delivers a subtle warning to the West that they may be leaving the 'magical' manipulation the Western States have practiced since the Renaissance and moving toward a new form of state savagery perfected by the communist regimes in the 20th century...a situation made possible by man's inability to see the magic or having been completely put to sleep by it...a dangerous vulnerability and trust in the 'experts'-cum-magicians. The mass consciousness is becoming unconscious, swaying with every trend and nod and wink from the puppet masters...This book is heavy duty if you read between the lines...i think the powers-that-be feared his next one...God Bless His Soul. Pax Vobiscum.

This book argues that modern science is born after the Renaissance, and represents an entirely new manner of acquring and working with knowledge. As such, Couliano argues, modern science does not represent a linear extension or progression of Renaissance science, but rather a wholesale replacement, which essentially abandons avenues of exploration opened by the Greeks and later re-opened by Italian Neoplatonists, such as Giordano Bruno and Marsilio Ficino. Couliano goes so far as to suggest that our trust in quantitative science is so central to our contemporary worldview that the subjectivity of a Renaissance-era thinker would strike us as fundamentally unrecognizable.

This book works both as a fascinating elaboration of this alien Renaissance mindset and a critique of the modern scientific worldview, with Couliano firmly rejecting the notion that its rise represents a kind of "progress." In Couliano's view, the Renaissance sciences-including astrology, alchemy, the art of memory, and demon-magic-serve as strategies for working with the unconscious or imagination, and that their abandonment serves as a sort of psychological crippling. Actually, as Couliano explains in his final chapters, these methods are less "abandoned" and are more supressed by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, who jointly align these sciences with heresy and persecute the practicioners. (It is interesting to note that this alignment is still with us: see for instance the continued resonance of the Faust legend, which represents a man of knowledge as a servant of the devil, or any of the countless films or other cultural products which have depicted Satan as an erudite Italian.)

This book also makes a compelling case that these suppressed methods of knowledge-work continue to exist today in the form of various sciences and quasi-sciences: advertising, mass media, psychology, cryptography, and what Couliano calls "applied psychosociology." As these sciences are commonly used in the services of mass control, those of us who want to understand control logics would do well to attempt a more complete understanding of these techniques-which involves understanding their roots in the Renaissance. A difficult task, perhaps, but Couliano's book provides an excellent starting point.

According to Couliano, "the crowning wish of the historian of ideas is...to glimpse" a historical period's unique "hermeneutic filter." The 'hermeneutic filter' is the set of biases and prejudices with which a generation interprets and distorts the ideas it has inherited. Judged by this standard, the book is a huge success. The diligent reader will unearth many uncanny insights into the renaissance mind and its understanding of magic.

However, the writing is just TERRIBLE. This seems to be the author's fault and not the translator's. Expect to wrestle with vague pronouns, run-on sentences, undefined terms, and a general lack of both chronological order and topical focus. 'Eros' itself is never defined or explicitly distingished from 'Platonic love,' 'Socratic love,' 'courtly love,' or 'lust.' When Couliano mentions "the Philosopher of Stagira' the reader is expected to know he is refering to Aristotle. Similarly 'the Florentine Plato' is (presumably) Marsilio Ficino (but that's just my guess). Despite the brevity of this text, the level of academic detail is mindnumbing, and the reader must endure many sterile pages between each 'money shot.'

The problem seems to be Couliano's own 'hermeneutic filter.' Since he was writing for other historians of the Renaissance he presumes a high level of specialized knowledge. Since he was addressing the french academy of the early 1980's, the book is steeped in continental philosophy and written in obnoxiously florid prose. If you are not this sort of specialist, you will still find a lot of valuable stuff - just be be prepared to do some intellectual history of your own.

dumezil, jung, eliade, culianu. these are few of the 20th century's pundits of religion. culianu, a student and disciple of eliade, wrote a great book. besides the broad coverage inherited from his maestro, he comes with a great power of analysis, lucid reasoning and new theses. he operates surgically with both new and old concepts. i rated this book with 9 because it is quite difficult to have more than one 10-rated book.

I can hardly do justice to this brilliant history of the development of magic during the Renaissance. This is not superstitious hocus-pocus, but rather a serious theological and philosophical study of the rise of Hermetic thought which presages modern psychology and science of the brain. Professor Couliano was the world authority, and it is a bitter tragedy that he was lost to us so young.

This book should be of interest to those interested in the history of science, since early scientific thinking grew out of the philosophical study of magic.

If you'll ever read this book you'll agree that the history of the mankind is really about it: changing the subject of the history, turninig a medieval, supersticious, paranormally gifted man into an author of technology and science. It might not have happend, unless in the year of 1484 as Professor Culianu states the history would prefered otherwize. The question of "is this change for good or for bad?" could be hardly answered since the subject of modern history is us. And what we gain by reding this book is a nostalgy of what we were.