{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

It is a widespread prejudice of modern, scientific society that “magic” is merely a ludicrous amalgam of recipes and methods derived from primitive and erroneous notions about nature. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance challenges this view, providing an in-depth scholarly explanation of the workings of magic and showing that magic continues to exist in an altered form even today.

Renaissance magic, according to Ioan Couliano, was a scientifically plausible attempt to manipulate individuals and groups based on a knowledge of motivations, particularly erotic motivations. Its key principle was that everyone (and in a sense everything) could be influenced by appeal to sexual desire. In addition, the magician relied on a profound knowledge of the art of memory to manipulate the imaginations of his subjects. In these respects, Couliano suggests, magic is the precursor of the modern psychological and sociological sciences, and the magician is the distant ancestor of the psychoanalyst and the advertising and publicity agent.

In the course of his study, Couliano examines in detail the ideas of such writers as Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola and illuminates many aspects of Renaissance culture, including heresy, medicine, astrology, alchemy, courtly love, the influence of classical mythology, and even the role of fashion in clothing.

Just as science gives the present age its ruling myth, so magic gave a ruling myth to the Renaissance. Because magic relied upon the use of images, and images were repressed and banned in the Reformation and subsequent history, magic was replaced by exact science and modern technology and eventually forgotten. Couliano’s remarkable scholarship helps us to recover much of its original significance and will interest a wide audience in the humanities and social sciences.

In traditional Western magick, there are said to be four humours, or temperaments, which correspond to the four elements, and four of the planets: Sanguine of air and Jupiter; Choleric of fire and Mars; Phlegmatic of water and the Moon; and Melancholy of earth and Saturn. People endowed with the sanguine humour were active, successful, and outgoing; choleric people were irritable, and inclined towards fighting; phlegematic people were tranquil, and sometimes a little lethargic; while, conventionally, melancholic people were viewed unfavourably, and those born under the influence of the Saturnian sphere were considered to be sad, poor, and unsuccessful.

Despite this initial negative impression, the dark humour of melancholy came to be embraced by a small group of poets, artists, and occultists. Instead of being viewed as a trait of the poor and the unfortunate, melancholy was reappraised as a trait of all the great philosophers, prophets, artists, and heroes. This change in attitude was brought about by the Pseudo-Aristotelian text Problemata physica, whose theories were assimilated into the Neoplatonism of the Renaissance. Using a detailed, medical argument, the Problemata physica stated that when the heroic frenzy, madness, or furor, which Plato named the source of all inspiration, combines with the black bile of the melancholic temperament, it produces great people. These people, these melancholy heroes, have appeared throughout history and fiction: Plato, Heracles, Empedocles, Hamlet, while the image of the depressed poet is a veritable cliche. Even in modern mythology, the figure of Batman is an apt melancholic hero (discounting the more recent cinematic versions, in which he has been confused with the aberration that was camp tv series of the sixties), whose entire raison d’etre comes from the spirit of melancholy.

The virtue of melancholy was promoted in the Renaissance through the works of the growing group of Hermeticists. The planetary magickian Marsilio Ficino wrote of it in his book De triplici vita, in which he advised Saturnian, melancholic students that they should not resist the natural inclination to study, but rather, temper it by using Jovian and Venereal influences. More influential than Ficino's work, though, was De occulta philosophia of Henry Cornelius Agrippa. Agrippa stated that: "The humor melancholius, when it takes fire and glows, generates the frenzy (furor) which leads us to wisdom and revelation, especially when it is combined with a heavenly influence above all with that of Saturn ... Therefore Aristotle says in Problemata that through melancholy some men have become divine beings, foretelling the future like Sybils ... while others have become poets ... and he says further that all men no have been distinguished in any branch of knowledge have generally been melancholics.''

Agrippa then went on to classify three distinctive stages and forms of melancholy: imagination (imaginatio), rational (ratio), and mental (mens); mirroring Agrippa's own division of his book into three sections of elemental, celestial, and supercelestial. When the soul is set free by melancholy, it becomes concentrated in the imagination, and receives advice and instruction from, what Agrippa terms, lower demons. This means that at the imaginatio level, a previously unskilled person can suddenly become a great artist or artisan. At the second level, when the soul, set free by melancholy, becomes concentrated in the reason, it becomes the home of middle demons. Here, the soul receives knowledge of the natural and human worlds, and so the person can become a philosopher, or a physician. Finally, when the soul becomes concentrated in the intellect, the person becomes privy to the great secrets of mysticism and spirituality.