Eros and Magic is much more than a study of Eros as applied by the Renaissance occult philosophies. It's a study of human interrelationships on both global and individual scales, coming only too close to the very contemporary form of magic -- a psycho-sociological science of societal indoctrination and manipulative social conditioning, magnificently employed by our highly cynical and enlightened era, which falsely and mistakenly, according to Culianu, identifies itself and its admired figure of Giordano Bruno as democratic. Our times owe a lot to Bruno, this Renaissance’s persecuted magician and philosopher--however, not exactly as we are brought up and conditioned to believe by history books. Culianu's study analyzes interconnections, parallels, and intertwined development of Magic Arts as drawing upon one’s imaginative subconscious, and, as such, explored by several Renaissance magic philosophers who courageously and creatively worked with the Imagination and considered it the most cherished divine gift that allows one to transcend earthly limitations and master the craft of magic.
The author's insightful input examines the Reformation’s vicious attack on creativity, fantasy and imagination as presenting danger to the religious and governmental power of the social institutions determined to exorcize human imagination and burn at the stake, together with Bruno, our ability to freely indulge in fantasies, from now on declared as demonic arts, heresy, and godforsaken witchcraft. Our modern times are no different--for as then, during the most bloodthirsty years of the triumphant Reformation (including its influence on Catholicism), our allegedly very democratic, open-minded, feminist, and technological times are unleashing another murderous attack on literature and humanities (imagination and fantasy residing in the subconscious), minimizing and closing literature/humanities departments in universities, as if determined to finally fulfill the Reformation's agenda--demonization and extermination of fantasy and imagination; in other words, depriving the future intelligentsia of human imagination, together with the magic legacy of Pico della Mirandola, Ficino and the best of Bruno. The resulting product is our social realism/scientific progress, with "its triumph of the [puritan, Nature-hating] reality principle over the pleasure principle [which adores feminine joys of Nature]" (221), for after the Renaissance's funeral, we are left only with "the strong contrast between the imagination (the pleasure principle) and free will (reality principle) and the idea that magic autism has no 'real' power" (221). By declaring the imagination's phantasms and phantasmagorical visions as unreal, utopian, and having no practical/profitable material value, descendants of the Reformation eagerly killed magic and locked up its devoted adherents in mental asylums, associating fantasies with psychiatric hallucinations. As the author concludes, "Modern Western civilization is altogether a product of the Reformation....On the theoretical level, the pervasive censorship of the imaginary results in the advent of modern exact science and technology" (222). The reader can only sadly sigh, hoping that maybe, just maybe, not everything is completely lost.
Regarding Culianu’s criticism of Bruno’a naiveté and lack of political caution, while remembering that it is much easier to see others’ mistakes than one’s own, one could only wish that Culianu too recognized dangers and did not provoke his enemies (some of whom masqueraded as friends), thus staying alive, instead of, like Bruno, paying with his life for his beliefs. But then don’t Bruno’s and Culianu’s fearless devotion to individual freedom and their readiness to sacrifice themselves in its name reflect their true greatness of spirit?
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