Neapolitan Doctrine of Sympathies II

Unlike many of his documents, Giordano Bruno’s Essays on Magic (1588) are not in dialogue form; instead, they are written as straightforward essays, which means they are not written for the same audience. This different style of authorship suggests that his Essays on Magic are written for practitioners of natural magic, not to the general audience. Interestingly, he opens his essay with a similar list of magicians as Porta:"First, the term ‘magician means a Wiseman; for example, the Trismegistes among the Egyptians, the druids among the Gauls, the gymnosophists among the Indians, the cabalists among the Hebrews, the magi among Persians (who were the followers of Zoroaster), sophists among the Greeks, and wise men among the Latins” (Bruno, 105). We find Trismegistes, druids, gymnosophists, Zoroaster, but Bruno does not have Buddha from Babylon on the list. He, on the other hand, adds the Hebrew cabalists to the list of noteworthy magicians, as well as the Greek Sophists. Unlike Porta, Bruno accepts the Copernican hypothesis, conceives of an infinite universe, and reforms the philosophical doctrine of pantheism due to his radical manipulation of the Premodern doctrine of sympathies.

Bruno's preliminary remark concerning natural magic pertains to the doctrine of sympathies and antipathies: "Magic refers to what happens as a result of the powers of attraction and repulsion between things, for example, the pushes, motions, and attractions due to the magnets and such things, when all these actions are due not active and passive qualities but rather to spirit or soul existing in things (Bruno,105). Like Porta, Bruno mentions “attraction” and “repulsion” as alternates to “concord” and “discord” as the roots to sympathies and antipathies, and describes “attraction” (concord) more than repulsion (discord), because he provides the magnet as an example of attraction, but fails to provide an example for repulsion.Three operations of sympathies are “pushes, motion, and attraction.” Unlike Porta, Bruno draws attention to the fact that these “attractions,” “motions,” “pushes” between things are not material, but immaterial, because of his explicit reference to “spirit” and “soul.” Bruno’s tentative statement about the doctrine sympathies is grounded in Ficino's two Hermetic roots, because both refer to “cosmic influence” as an agent of motion and these correlations between celestial and terrestrial are not correlated on elemental or corporeal level, but on the spirit and soul of a thing.

Bruno reduces “attraction, motion, pushes” to bondage, because things can be bound to one another. Sympathies are the bonds between things, nothing more. His method involves how you bond things, so his doctrine of sympathies is essentially practical. His practical theory of sympathies plays upon a deceptive use Neo-Platonic terms: he speaks of “absolute beauty,” and uses the fourfold distinction between, mind, soul, nature, and matter. His usage of these Neo-Platonic terms surpasses Ficino, because of the former's metaphysical manipulation of these Neo-Platonic terms is the doctrine of sympathies possible: "There are four things [mind, soul, nature, and matter] which rotate around God, or universal Nature, or universal Good, or Absolute beauty…These four things, I say, move in a circle around their bonding agent in such a way that they maintain the same order forever” (Bruno, 156). First, mind, soul, nature, and matter, which are the four-parts of compound body (or ousia) regardless of celestial or terrestrial rotating around an absolute center, are again divisible by four terms: “God,” “universial nature,” universal Good,” and universal Beauty. So any of these four terms are interchangeable with one another, but such a reduction is not Neo-Platonic, because God is the One, which is distinct from the ideas of God (i.e., Good, Nature, or Beauty). Ergo, Bruno is using deceptively Neo-Platonic terms to accomplish a non Neo-Platonic end.

Secondly, Bruno does not speak of great chain of being in ascending or descending order, which links celestial and terrestrial entities, like Ficino and Porta; because he accepts the Copernican hypothesis. Instead, he speaks of mind, soul, nature, and matter “rotating around the central point." The image of compound bodies rotating around the universal point is structurally very different than the Neo-Platonic hierarchy of being.Thirdly, these compound bodies rotate around their corresponding “bonding agents” forever. The Copernican hypothesis has given Bruno a great deal more latitude for his doctrine sympathies than Ficino or Porta, because the compound bodies’ rotation around a universal datum determines their bondage to one another forever, which means he does not have to follow any prescribed rules about rank, order, and operation to link or bond one thing to another. 

Fourthly, he does not have to accept Plotinus’ fundamental rule that superior bodies influence inferior bodies, because all compound bodies rotate around the universal datum. Bruno is very clever to ground his doctrine of sympathies in an open system; while Neo-Platonists, such as Ficino, or Porta, require sympathies to be in a closed system with a prescribed hierarchy. Bruno's usage of Ne- Platonic terms enables him to have an open system of sympathies, which can be applied in far more extensive manner than Ficino’s or Porta’s doctrine. The openness and lack of hierarchy allowed by his manipulation of Neo-Platonic terms will provide the metaphysical foundation for his Machiavellian usage of sympathies.

On Bruno's view, the “the bonding agent” is not reducible to one link or resemblance, but is “composite, variable in nature and composed of contraries” (Bruno, 147). While Ficino or Porta are not very clear whether these links between superior and inferior bodies are complex, Bruno is explicit that sympathies between compound bodies are “composite,” “variable,” and “composed of contraries.” On Ficino and Porta’s views, the moon cannot govern water and fire, because those elements are contrary to another. Accordingly, fire needs another celestial body to have governance over it (i.e., the Sun). Bruno is throwing out this one dimensional aspect of doctrine of sympathies and arguing for multi-dimensional doctrine. As Bruno explains, "If every relationship were reduced to one, then perhaps one thing would be welcomed for all purposes and for all occasions. But up to now, this has not happened in nature, which has spread about many bonds of beauty, happiness, goodness, and various contraries of these dispositions, and which widely distributes them separately according to the numerous types of matter" (Bruno, 147). Bruno is doing a reductio ad absurdum argument against the one dimensional account sympathies. If this account were true, it would be able to explain nature; but it does not explain nature; therefore, one dimensional account of sympathies is absurd. If we expected only one power from one link, then there could not be a point cross referencing one link to other links. For example, sun has a link with gold, but also has link with plants, animals, human organ (the heart). These links are all simultaneous. Ficino and Porta, who maintain one dimensional doctrine, really cannot maintain such a doctrine, because they do not explain these multiple links.

Bruno's doctrine of sympathies involves that the bonding agents change over time: “But it would follow from this opinion that bonding powers are continually changed and altered as forms, circumstances, and natures are altered, for young man does not bind the same things which he bound as boy, and a woman does not bind the same thing which she bound as a girl” (Bruno, 147). Bonds or sympathies change and alter due to “form,” “circumstances,” and “natures.” Bruno’s doctrine sympathies are relative to changing “forms, circumstances, and natures of things which are bound together, which means that links between things are not as fixed and permanent. Instead, these bonds and links move in their rotation around the universal datum relative to changeable forms, circumstances, and natures: “that the same thing bonds contraries in the same way. Bonding agents which pertain to the same type of bonding seem confusing, and in a sense even contradictory, when one considers the contrasting efftecs and circumstances of the bonds” (Bruno, 148).

Just as physical attraction between man and woman can cause contraries, so the attractions between a celestial body and terrestrial body cause contraries. The sun, for examples empowers the putrefying basil to generate serpents. The sun’s bond between the herb basil has two contrary forces: putrefaction and generation. In fact, Porta’s examples of celestial bodies of the sun and the moon causing putrefaction and generation are examples of Bruno’s doctrine that sympathies between things can cause opposites, because putrefaction is an opposite process than generation. Porta’s examples also conform to Bruno’s threefold criteria of opposites: form, circumstance, and natures. The form, circumstance, and nature of the Herb Basil has changed enough by the Sun for the generation of snakes, which have different form, circumstance, and nature than the Basil.

The Neo-Platonist believe that “that which binds is a form of the thing, and crosses over from the thing to the mind, even though it does not leave the object” (Bruno, 150). At the outset of Essays on Magic, Bruno maintains such Neo-Platonic belief because of his acceptance of Ficino's second Hermetic root: that compound bodies are not bound by their material body, but by their soul or spirit distinct from their bodies. Accordingly, Bruno is either contradicting himself, or changing his view, or modifying his belief. On my view, Bruno is modifying his view, insofar as a sympathy or bond between two things is more than the form of a superior influencing an inferior, but “the complete nature of a bond is to be found not just in the object itself, but also in another equally important place, i.e.., in the one who is bound” (Bruno, 151).

If a sympathy has a two way influence between the object and the binder, then order, measure, and type would play essential role, because the sympathy would need more than form, because the governance of the binder would need an order, measure, and type, because the sympathy with the object would mean as much to the object as to the binder. If the Sun binds gold, plants, fire, etc, and if these objects also affect the Sun, then the Sun must not bind anything outside of its proper order, measure, and type. The Sun, for example, could not have an influence upon water, because water is the negation of the sun’s qualities: light and heat. The reciprocal dimension of a sympathy between the binder and that which is bound requires more than the Platonic concept of form, but requires type, measure, and order.

On the other hand, the object of attraction cannot simply be reduced to the body, because the form remains. “The bonds of love , which were intense before sexual intercourse, becomes relaxed when the seed is ejaculated and the fire becomes moderate, even though the beautiful object remains the same. Therefore, the whole nature of the bond cannot be found in the object” (Bruno, 151). This sexual metaphor meant to explain a characteristic of Bruno’s doctrine of sympathies can be applied to other examples. The sun, for example, is attracted to gold, empowers gold with its seed, and its intensity diminishes, but the sun still finds gold beautiful. The moon is attracted to silver, empowers silver with its seed, and its intensity diminishes, but the moon still finds silver beautiful. The moon attracts the movement of the waters (tides) with great intensity, empowers water with great motion and force, but such motion and force will diminish, but water is still under the Moon’s governance.

Sympathies function with momentary periods of great intensity and empowerment and periods of diminish intensity and empowerment, but this does not mean that sympathy is gone, because the form of beauty remains every constant, so reducing a sympathy between two things by its matter is impossible: because order is the time of a sympathy; measure is the power of empowerment; and type is the form of beauty, which causes the attraction. Moon, for example, affects the tides of the sea at a specific time of the month, its affect varies in its degree of power, and the moon finds the form of water beautiful.

Accordingly, Bruno is not bound to a closed universe, like Ficino or Porta, because the former, like Gilbert, accepts the Copernican hypothesis, which means he does not accept the hierarchical arrangement of the Ptolemaic astronomy. Consequently, we do not even have a clear Neo-Platonic god, because the Good, Beautiful are interchangeable with God. According to Ficino and the Neo-Platonists, God is the One, and Good, Beautiful, Real, are Ideas in God’s mind, but those ideas are metaphysical distinct from God. Bruno, on the other hand, has collapsed the One with the Ideas, whereby eliminating the metaphysical distinction between the One and the Ideas of God. Bruno does not care, because he is a pantheist, who believes God and universe are interchangeable. 

Secondly, Bruno has taken the multiple meanings of sympathies and allowed for the doctrine opposites and reciprocal function. Sympathies not only cause opposite effects on the effected body, but that the effect has reciprocal relationship with its cause. Sun, for example, causes putrefaction and generation at the same time with piece of basil, because Sun causes the basil to be transformed into a snake. Now, this transformation operation has effect on the Sun as well, so all sympathies are internally related to one another. Again, Bruno is trying to deconstruct metaphysical divisions between prescribed links in the cosmos which make the doctrine of sympathies possible.

Thirdly, Bruno also dances around the issue that an attraction is not a Form, but is not reducible to the Body either. This tap dancing has a point: a very Machiavellian point. The more open and unrestricted his doctrine of sympathies is, the more useful it will be to the magician’s application, because Bruno has undermined cleverly the fixed foundation of the doctrine of sympathies. He tells that the doctrine of sympathies is fixed, but everything associated with them is relative and changeable.

Applying his principle of relativity of sympathies, “no bonds are eternal” (Bruno, 159). Ficino and Porta believe that the links between superior and inferior bodies are eternal and necessary rules prescribed by God’s providence. Bruno’s logic is clear: if the classic sympathies’ order, type, and rank are useful to me, then I will use them. If these orders, types, ranks, however, are in the way of me turning another trick, then I will say the opposite on the grounds that I have introduced the doctrine of opposites to sympathies. They can appear to be eternal, but they are really not eternal. “Complete stability is opposed to nature things, just as we are sometimes more incline to condemn it, and yet at other times we rather desire it” (Bruno, 159).

We have two sets of opposition: first, fixed links is contrary to nature of things; and second, we sometimes want fixed links between things, and sometime we do not want fixed things. Accordingly, the degree of stability between a sympathy is relative to your perspective of the relation. If you want to see the sympathies as fixed (as does Ficino and Porta), then you will see them as fixed. But if you, on the other hand, do not want to see them as fixed, then you are freed from those sympathies. So when Bruno wants those bonds to be fixed, they will be fixed; on the other hand, if Bruno wants to free himself from those bonds, those bounds are no longer fixed. As Bruno confirms, “for it is quite natural to desire to break from the bonds, while just a little while ago we were open to being tied to them by our own voluntary and spontaneous inclinations” (Bruno, 159).

In this constant state of flux due the relativity of sympathies, Bruno finds something to which ground the doctrine of sympathies: self-love. While the links are in state of flux, “there is something in [entity] which strives to preserve itself as it presently is, and partly because it strives to be completely developed in itself according to its circumstances” (Bruno, 159). Just as you are motivated by self interest in your preservation and perfecting yourself as much as possible, so the rest of cosmos has the same interest. So the greatest method to bind something to yourself is by showing how its link with you is in its best interest. Bruno is brilliantly applying his reciprocal principle of sympathies to self-interest. Just as the sun will empower your heart, the sun wants your heart to empower it. Just as plants follow the sun for nourishment, so the sun receives nourishment from the plants under its governance. According to reciprocity of sympathies, any link between anything in the cosmos can established as long as it is in the best interest of both parties of the link. Water is influenced by the moon, because they find such arrangement in their best interest. But as self-interest changes, so do the links which bind parties change as well. Instead of fixed cosmos, we have free and open market of sympathies based upon mutual self-interest. Machiavelli would have been proud of such a shrewd magician as Bruno.