Giordano Bruno

De Umbris Idearum

& Ars Memoriae

On the Shadows of Ideas & The Art of Memory

Translation and Introduction by:

Scott Gosnell

De Umbris Idearum

by Giordano Bruno

Orginal publication

Aegidius Gorbinus, Paris, 1582

Translation and Introduction © 2013

Scott Gosnell

United States of America

First English Edition

Huginn, Munnin & Co., Publishers

www.deumbrisidearum.com

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Introduction

The memory system Giordano Bruno describes in De Umbris Idearum (On the Shadows of Ideas) is called the Method of Loci or Memory Palace system. It asks the user to create a series of images representing ideas, events, facts or words, and to mentally place these images around a building or other structure that the user knows well. To retrieve the ideas or words, the user retraces their steps through the imagined building to each image in turn, which reminds the user of that specific idea. An experienced user is capable of precisely memorizing lists with thousands of items, entire books, lengthy speeches or conversations.

The technique had supposedly been developed by Simonides of Ceos, a poet who performed a victory Ode at a feast given by a Thessalian nobleman. The nobleman was displeased with Simonides’ frequent praise of the divine twins, Castor and Pollux, and told him to seek the second half of the payment from them. Simonides then received a message that two young men were outside of the banquet hall and wished to speak with him. Immediately after Simonides left the building, the roof of the banquet hall collapsed, killing his host and many of the guests, rendering their bodies unidentifiable. Simonides, however, retained a perfect memory of where the guests were sitting moments ago, enabling them to be buried by their families.

From these semi-legendary beginnings, Bruno’s system descends through the classical memory systems described by classical orators, including Cicero and Quintilian, by way of the Dominican art of memory described by Thomas Acquinas, and combined with a wheel system developed by Portuguese mystic Ramon Llull. During the classical era, Greek and Roman orators used the system to memorize and recite public speeches and to prepare for court cases. During the Medieval period, the use of structured visualization for meditation on virtues and vices and for the memorization of sermons was developed by Church scholars.

The system developed rules for the places, which Bruno calls subjects and rules for the images, or adjects. The places should be well-known, well-lighted, neither too far apart nor crammed together, and easily distinguished from one another. The images should be emotionally striking, either heroic, horrifying or comic, and could consist of well-known people, objects or dynamic actions in various combinations. The more vibrant the image, the better. In  De Umbris, Bruno provides several lists of possible figures to use, drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Polydore Virgil’s lists of inventors of the various arts, the figures of the zodiac, planetary images and Bruno’s own particular philosophical, literary and religious interests.

Much of the content of the second half of the book describes the use of these images to encode letters or syllables, with multiple images used to memorize words. It is apparent that in addition to their primary function of syntactic encoding, the images or letters may be used as allegorical figures to encode concepts. The lists as a whole also represent memory palaces of their own: in addition to using a physical building as a framework for memorization, it is also possible to use an imaginary building, a well known book (such as the Metamorphoses), or celestial objects including the planetary images, signs of the zodiac, or decans as “places” on which to superimpose images.

The book is structured in two major parts, with an introductory dialogue, allegorical poems and a dedication to King Henry III of France attached to the front of the first section.

The first half of the book begins with the dedication and three poems, followed by an introductory dialogue which takes place among Philotheus (a stand-in for Bruno), Logifer (a pedant, representing Bruno’s critics) and Hermes (Hermes Trismegistus, a deified philosopher). The three argue over whether Hermes’ book of memory techniques should be revealed to the world. Logifer presents the competing memory techniques of a series of scholars with humorous or grotesque names (e.g,  Dr. Bobo, Dr. Syringe), which Philotheus dismisses as useless. Hermes thereafter agrees to read from his book, which is the same as Bruno’s book, and which purports to offer a method which is “simpler and easier to use” than any of the other methods described. (Bruno’s method is actually more elaborate than almost any alternative, but is certainly effective if practiced correctly.)

The remainder of the first half is an essay in list form that is actually on the shadows of ideas, as the title of the whole volume suggests, which consists of a list of “Thirty Intentions” and “Thirty Concepts”, labeled with the letters of the Latin alphabet, plus the letters from Greek and Hebrew which do not have exact parallels in Latin. These lettered intentions and concepts can be placed on Llullian wheels like the images in the second half of the book; this allows for the lists to be recombined, generating new questions and answers after the fashion of the Llullian Art. The intentions and concepts, however combined, include Biblical references, Neoplatonic and Hermetic material, and a considerable number of references to Copernican astronomy. Earthly objects and memories are described as “shadows” of eternal, supernal and archetypal Ideal objects. Memories fade because they are based on imperfect things, while strong images are lasting because they are closer to the Ideal Forms. These Forms are expressed in the constellations, in figures of legend, and in mathematics. We recognize these traces, or vestigia, as signs that God is operating in the world. The Art of Memory is therefore a way to connect our thoughts with the highest and best things in the Universe.

The second half of the book, identified as Ars Memoria (The Art of Memory) describes the Method of Loci or Memory Palace method, as set out above. In the course of the second half, following sections on subjects (places), adjects (images)  and the organum (system) this method is set out in greater and greater complexity. He lays out twelve “ways of clothing subjects: Species, Forms, Simulacra, Images, Specters, Models, Vestiges, Indications, Signs, Notes, Characters and Seals”, and proposes sets of Agents, Actions and Objects which can be combined to represent sequences of letters or syllables in a single adject, ultimately laying out a system to cover up to five rings of moving wheels or five syllables in a single word/adject. He discusses such linguistic questions as what to do about the U (or Roman V) following a letter Q, as in the word QVINTUS (fifth), and how to deal with languages that have a large number of adjacent consonants without vowels (German, Russian, English). At the end of the section, he adds lists of mythological figures, largely taken from Ovid, lists of “inventors” of things, partially taken from Polydore Virgil and partially selected based on Bruno’s interests in mathematics, philosophy and magic, with companion lists of actions, objects, qualities and accessories for each, a separate set of lists containing astronomical/astrological content, describing the images of each of the decans (Babylonian/Egyptian stellar deities) described by Teucer according to Cornelius Agrippa and/or Albumasar, seven images for each of the classical planets, the twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon, and the Twelve Natal Houses of the Zodiac. Each of these images is assigned a pair of letters, as the mythological image lists were. The lists continue a pattern of groups of thirty, a number that fascinated Bruno. These are followed by a brief summary and recapitulation of the main themes of the book, and closed by a set of poems entitled “Enigmas and Paradigms” together with an explanation of each poem.

At several points in the Ars Memoria half of the book, Bruno makes reference to another book, the Clavis Magna or Great Key. It is indeterminate whether this title refers to De Umbris as a whole, the Ars Memoria section itself, another unpublished book, material that went into Bruno‘s later books on the Art of Memory, the quasi-fictional book Hermes reads from in the introductory dialogue, or a similarly “internally written” book that will exist in the mind of the practitioner once they’ve finished learning De Umbris.

As mentioned above, the primary function of the Art of Memory Bruno described here is to provide additional support for the memorization of words or ideas. He also mentions that the practice of the Art should be helpful not only for memory but for the “other powers and faculties”, by which he means imagination and willpower, the other abilities traditionally grouped together in Renaissance faculty theory of cognition. Frances Yates, author of the groundbreaking Art of Memory, believed that this also referred to the development of a “magical memory”, and that Bruno’s techniques in De Umbris and elsewhere represented a system of magical practice. While this theory may have been the case in practice, it is difficult to draw a primarily magical purpose from the text itself. With a few notable exceptions#, the magical images in the book appears to have been added partially to provide the kind of emotionally striking visual descriptions that stick in the memory, partially in support of Bruno’s Neoplatonic religious/philosophical system, and partially as a piece of theatrical marketing to make the rather dull set of orator’s techniques appear mysterious, compelling and worth learning.

Bruno published this book in 1582, when he was living in France. At the time, Henry III asked him whether the Art of Memory was in fact magical, and Bruno says that he told the king that it was merely an application of art. We know that this is something of a cagey answer; Bruno would later write on magic as well as memory and cosmology. That answer earned him a “readership” from the king, and subsequently a place in the household of the French Ambassador to England. De Umbris therefore comes at a critical turning point in Bruno’s life. He had fled monastic life in Rome with the Inquisition on his heels. He had been reported by others in the Dominican order for his reading habits (Erasmus and other authors on the Index of Forbidden Books) and his removal of saints’ images from his quarters, a suspiciously Protestant activity. Excommunicated, he fled to Geneva in advance of the Inquisition. A highly abrasive man when challenged, he managed to also receive excommunication from the Calvinists of that city without ever having first joined them.

By 1584, he would have extended his take on the Copernican heliocentric solar system to reflect his interest in infinites and multiplicities, describing an infinite universe, containing infinite worlds revolving around infinite suns. He would continue to write on the Art of Memory, mathematics, cosmology, magic and his philosophy while traveling in England and Germany over the coming years before receiving an invitation to teach the Art of Memory in Venice, where he was turned over to the Inquisition, sent to Rome, tried and burned at the stake in 1600 for heresy, blasphemy and disobedience. He would publish several other books primarily directed at the Art of Memory: Song of Circe, The Book of Thirty Statues, The Book of Thirty Seals, and On the Composition of Images. On the Shadows of Ideas contains the seeds of all of the ideas that he would express more fully in later life.

From the references in his texts, it is apparent that he was extremely erudite,  with a knowledge of Christian and Classical thinkers, including the Platonic and Neo-Platonic writers that so interested him. He was also widely read in the scientific literature of the day, and would later defend the Copernican heliocentric universe, before expanding it to a centerless, infinite cosmology. Here, both Copernicus and Nicholas da Cusa are in evidence. He fled monastic discipline after being caught reading Erasmus, a forbidden humanist author, during lavatory breaks at the monastery. It is easy to imagine Bruno as a compulsive reader who would consume whatever was available. If he had written today, this text might be filled with references to quantum mechanics, the latest findings in neuroscience, and pop culture  in the place of constellations and Greek mythology for memory images.

Bruno influenced philosophers, writers and scientists including Galileo, Hegel, Pater, and Coleridge. He is commemorated for his role as a freethinker and proto-scientist. Many of those who are reading On the Shadows of Ideas in English were introduced to his work through the writings of Frances Yates, particularly The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. He has appeared as a character in popular fiction by John Crowley and SJ Harris, among others. His memory techniques, discarded in favor of filing systems and computers, have found new life and are in use in the World Memory Championships.

Bruno’s Latin varies from the effervescent and intricate to the brutally simple and back within a short passage. He wrote with many voices, and cast many shadows. For those who are convinced that Bruno was a spy during his career in England, you will find that the memory system in this book could be used to encode messages in emblems or images, and that the Lullian wheels bear a marked similarity to cyphering machines developed over the past several centuries. We don’t have any definitive evidence from this text that he used the system for such a purpose. We do know that he was a teacher of astronomy and mathematics, and would have been familiar with the paper computers, called volvelles, that were used as a teaching tool in his era. For those who are convinced that Bruno practiced magic, the possibility of using the visualization techniques to support various magical practices, such as those described by Ficino and Agrippa, certainly exists, but other than a mention of using the techniques “against nature, if necessary”, and the inclusion of astrological images for use in memorization, one would have to look elsewhere for support for this theory. One could, in short, use these techniques in a large number of ways not explicitly described in this book, and that Bruno understood and encouraged the reader to make the fullest use of the techniques, without spelling out all of the implications explicitly.

Bruno refers to the contents of his book as “art” rather than “magic” for several very good reasons. First,  under the edicts of the Council of Trent from twenty years before the publication of his book, any admission that the book contained sorcery or divination would have placed it quickly on the Index of Forbidden Books, and would have made it unreadable on pain of excommunication. This would have interfered with his desire to obtain a scholarly post from King Henri, and severely limited his potential readership.

Second, this choice of words falls under a long tradition of treating natural philosophy and natural magic as interchangeable concepts, while opposing superstition, illicit magic and sorcery. Bruno echoes a line of philosophers who claimed a superior understanding of the hidden relationships of the world through study and observation.  This understanding was emphatically not due to this influence of pagan spirits or demons, said the philosophers, and was therefore philosophy rather than magic under the definitions of the church and the law.

Bruno’s idea of the best magic was based on the study of the hidden bonds or connections among all things in the universe. So, love attracted humans, but also made the planets attracted to their stars. Numbers are connected to each other through mathematics. One memory is connected to many others through chains of association. Everything begins with the One, and multiplies into infinity. The Art of Memory is a way of reproducing a living universe in all of its diversity inside the artists mind, and is thereore the most useful of all the arts.

-SG

2013

De Umbris Idearum

On the Shadows of Ideas

Giordano

Bruno

Nolano

De Umbris Idearum
On the Shadow of Ideas

Entwining art, which will be sought, found, judged, arranged and applied:

For the internal writing, and not for the public, for explanation of the operation of memory

CONFESSION

It’s of the utmost importance that Shadows not trouble you with silliness or complications, unless you are searching for really difficult work.

To Henry III,

Most Serene Ruler of the French, the Poles, & etc. & etc.

Who does not know (most sacred Majesty) what gives the principal sources of the principal; greater importance: due to the foremost and important? Therefore no man can doubt why this work, as well as the nobility of the subject which it addresses; a singular creation, which supports the weight of demonstration, which is communicated, be reckoned one of the greater: the whole of the people view in you, by virtue of the mind we see: outstanding, high exaltation of talent a most famous, and therefore illustrious and magnanimous man, whom doctors all regard most honorably. Please accept this with [my] greatest gratitude [for your] protective favor, judicious and mature examination, and eminently generous, powerful, and intelligent vision.

Greetings

Philotheus Giordano Bruno Nolano

Friendly and studious lecturer

There is in a high place

In Chios a face of Diana

Whoever enters the temple in sorrow,

On seeing it, departs in joy

And in the letters of Pythagoras,

By the two-horned act of discrimination,

Whoever discerns rough paths clearly shall travel them

dexterously,

In the end shall reach the goal.

The Shadows, which emerged

From the depths of darkness

Shall make easy welcome where now it seems unfriendly

And faces, and letters too.

Merlin Artificer

There is painted a cock,

Who, since he was not completely without sense,

Could not apprehend the profoundly

Silly publications of incompetent artists

He appointed servants and friends

To send them away into the wilderness

Who does not ignore, rather respects

The true cock’s accurate portrayal

Gives ear and admiration to those who do, too:

The noisy ones who were driven away didn’t, sadly.

Merlin the Temperate Judge

There is a river in Phrygia called Gallus

Whosoever drinks a little of it

Cures the evils of the body

If you drink completely, to fullness

Until you are completely stirred to life,

You shall never need to drink it again.

According to part of the wise letter above,

Confer civilly with life,

And rejoice greatly

If you drink too much, it will trouble you,

Toss you madly,

Hurl you gloriously.

Having made it thus far,

If you want to avoid damnable pains

Choose mastery

Only to placate wisdom,

Just touch the lips,

Just smell with the nostrils.

Therefore it does not do well

For the judge to make haste,

Twitch the ears of Midas.

Merlin the Suitable Judge

There are those who’d use a dog for plowing;

That would mount to the stars on camelback,

There’s a frog that would ride a shrew across a river,

Those that would slowly journey to the hunting of an ass,

Those who would hunt cuckoos employing wolves,

Those who’d like to have pigs fly,

And other implements which badly fit their purpose.

This is not so different from the Organete[1] vice,

Or preparing to dig,

Or going fishing,

Or learning to swim or fly with suitable wings,

Or learn to hunt by appropriate means

If you don’t utilize the appropriate efforts,

Not suitable for flying,

Fishing, hunting, employing,

It won’t be me who’s crying,

Rather it will be you navigates

The impassible Labyrinth without a thread.

Philotheus Giordano Bruno Nolano

Preliminary Dialogue to explain Shadows of Ideas and his memory techniques

Interloquitors

Hermes. Philothemus. Logifer.[2]

HERMES

Hermes: Continue reading freely. Indeed you know it is the same sun[3], the same art, will both receive praise and also blame. Similarly, you know that night presents witches, toads, the basilisk, solitary owls, and Plutonian rites, but [that day] activates the rooster, phoenix, swans, geese, eagles, rams and lions. When he’s in the East, creatures of darkness gather in their dens, while by his light, man and the creatures of the day come out to do their work. He invites them to this work, away from idleness. Heliotropes and lupines turn toward the sun, while the night flowers and herbs turn away. Rarefied vapors rise to form clouds, while more earthly vapors condense to form waters. Some shed a perpetual, continual light, others shine irregularly. The intellect teaches that they remain still, but the false sense tells us that they move. That which rises in this part of the rotating earth, sets in the Antipodes.  The same in the arctic: sometimes, things appear to circle from left to right will at other times appear to move vertically. In some hemicircles, they move quickly, while in the opposite, they move much more slowly. The land which appears nearby appears to be larger, while more distant lands (from our perspective) smaller than the others. The most southerly of the North lands is the most northerly of the South. For those who have the horizon at right angles, the left and the right will be of equal size, but they will be unequal for those who look obliquely. The same distributes the darkness and the light in equal measure in the region between two parallels, but differently at different times. In this, the divine house of Earth, we receive slanting sunbeams, instead of ones precisely vertical. The planets (which some believe to be lesser gods under a second prince) likewise receive varying light upon their bodies (which they call the light of conception), turning different faces to him from the apogee to the aux, by latitudes and intervals.  (Even so the Moon (which many among the philosophers think is a second Earth), turns a face to that light, while turning the other face into shadow, where the Earth interposes its sad shadow on a hemisphere of the Moon.

The sun, therefore, while remaining the same forever, may also change its disposition, sometimes one way or another, depending on where one sits. Likewise this solar art, for ourselves, for other people, others yet to come, we believe that there may be differences in how it is received.

Philothimus: Who is Hermes with whom you speak? Whose is the little book you have in your hand?

Hermes: De Umbris Idearum, a book of internal writing; I am unsure whether it should be revealed, or whether it should continue to be hidden in darkness.

Philothimus: How so?

Hermes: Since there are signs (as they say) that the author may be exalting himself, and that would not be accurate, as archers aim to be.

Philothimus: Certainly, if all there was was fear and caution, no one would ever attempt works, for nothing good and wonderful has ever appeared in our sight. The providence of God does not cease (said the Egyptian priests) whether we send men to the statues of Mercury at the correct times, or whether we have misinterpreted the predictions. Nor does our understanding cause the sensible Sun to shine, else we should always have to keep our attention on it.

Logifer: I would agree with those people who say that this sort of thing should never be revealed: Philothimus may have heard doubts, but if he had heard the things we have, he’d throw the book in the fire to burn it to ashes. Those who have read it so far at a teacher’s request have not been pleased. Now I don’t know what to hope for, for very few can understand, by themselves, how to make the correct judgement on this.

Philothimus: Do you hear what he’s saying?

Hermes:I am listening, but I would hear more, and will decide between you.

Philothimus: I would say that first, Logifer, I disagree with you. Your argument does not offer the persuasion of reason but rather strengthens the value of the opposite opinion. Those few who have read of this invention so far (between myself and Hermes) have no small praises for it, but those who do not understand it clearly will neither be able to praise, nor find fault with it.

Logifer: You say that it must be; not that it will be, is, and was. Many, when they do not understand, because they do not understand, and also the wicked of mind, will make grave insults against the creator of this art. You may or may not have heard with your own ears that Doctor Bobum[4] has said that there is no art of memory, except as it is procured through frequent repetition and habit of lessons, viewing many times the things seen with the eyes, and hearing many times those things heard by the ears. Do you get it?

Philothimus: If it had a tail, it would be a vervet monkey.

Logifer: How do you respond to master Anthoc, who considers extraordinary powers of memory to be the province of  wizards and other exceptional men? Look at those letters, you grayhair!

Philothimus: This from the son of an ass, who has no doubts that Noah preserved the animals in his Ark.

Logifer: And master of arts and archmaster of medicine Rocco, who would rather use the Empyrean memory method, and who supposes these are trifles, rather than artful precepts?

Philothimus: No more than from the chamber pot!

Logifer: A doctor of ancient times said that the art cannot be accessible to all, but only to those well-endowed with natural memory.

Philothimus: Ridiculous notion!

Logifer: Pharfacon, doctor of laws and philosopher of grammar, feels that this art is more a hindrance than a help, for where one could easily call to mind worthy things without art, these things are now bound to call to mind things, places and images in great abundance, which no doubt results in confusion of the natural memory.

Philothimus: Crysippus should comb that thought with a gigantic iron comb.

Logifer: Dr. Berling, that most learned of men, has said that we can add nothing, lest we take something else away.

Philothimus: Like one of those sea urchins [spiny seed pods] underneath a chestnut tree?

Logifer: Master Maines[5] might say, if it please all, I may never be pleased.

Philothimus: Not that he will ever taste this wine.

Logifer: And how do you think your friends will respond to this?

Philothimus: Often, if you add enough ink to your lamps, Ethiopians look like anybody else; also, if you’re jealous then even ugly things will look beautiful.

Logifer: It is said that even the exalted Master Scoppet[6], prince of physicians, who in his argument with our author: show me your art of memory, and if you can’t I’m not sure whether it’s disdain or inability that prevents you from performing.

Philothimus: If he’d said, “show me your urine before I look at the solid excrement,” perhaps our author would have treated him in a manner more urbane, hospitable and appropriate to his art?

Logifer: What shall we say of Dr. Clyster[7], a teaching physician, who says it is impossible to grasp the speech closely, but who recommends transplanting the hoopoe’s tongue, which as Aknaldo and Tiberide say, will restore strong memory to the forgetful?

Philothimus: Aristotle said, “by playing the harp you become a lyre.” If this makes anyone unhappy, then perhaps he should transplant some doctor’s brain and become a doctor.

Logifer: Also said Dr. Carpophorus, after Proclus and Sabinus, that the mind and memory are in three parts, just as the ship has a bow, a stern and a midships. That which is repeatedly laid in the middle will be accessible from the prow to the stern of the animal spirit. Moreover, this cannot happen unless the animal spirit can lucidly, serenely, and clearly pass through. Hence, excessive cold in combination makes one obtuse, languid and dullness of memory. Likewise, dryness, in combination with frigidity, generates insomnia; humidity with excessive coldness brings lethargy.

To ward off these things, the art recommends these devices: to perform such exercises as will excite, recall and stimulate the senses, call back the spirit from shameful folly and lassitude; moderate coupling, which reduces melancholy and increases joy in pleasure; a complete purge of the fleshly body; use of an ivory comb and rubbing of rough cloth upon the head; drinking light or watered wine, so that the veins, being opened by the wine, should not burn the blood with the wine’s intensity; consuming agents producing constipation, either naturally or artificially, so that the smoke evaporating from the boiling of food in the belly does not cause sleep, the dulling of wit and mind; abstention from food which is cold and wet in nature, all fish generally, brains and marrow, radishes, steamed or raw leeks, onions that have not been consumed by fire; use of aromatic substances; washing the head and feet in decoctions of lemon balm, laurel leaves, fennel, chamomile, and such like; Pythagorean exercise, taking place at twilight, since this confers the most potent effect on ingenuity and memory. These are the things that improve memory, as well as those things handed down by paragons of literature: Democritus, Archigenus, Alexander and Andronicus the Peripatetic; not nugatory arts which rely on imagining solid figures to kindle the memory.

Philothimus: He followed up the lectures of others with a rude noise; the venerable doctor acted the part of a parrot and an ass.

Logifer: Master of the laws, Arnophagus[8], highly praised, said that not many have this skill, but many would if such a skill existed.

Philothimus: This reasoning is like that of a little girl still growing her teeth. Neither does this argument have much of a bite.

Logifer: The most excellent Doctor Psicoteus claims that despite knowing the arts of Tullius[9], Thomas[10], Albertus[11] and Alulidis[12], he’s unable to get anything out of them.

Philothimus: This is a judgment of the first tonsure.

Logifer: And to put it all together in one word, various people say various things, different people feel differently, for every head there’s another opinion.

Philothimus: And so many words…So crows caw, cuckoos cuckoo, wolves howl, pigs grunt, sheep bleat, oxen low, horses whinny, asses bray. Aristotle said it is a shame to ask them and to expect an intelligent answer. Among themselves, oxen low to oxen, horses whinny to one another, asses bray to asses, but our conversation pertains to man’s inventions.

Logifer: Rightly said. Therefore, let Hermes present his book, and let us consider the author’s own opinions.

Hermes: Most gladly will I do so. I’ll read the beginning of the work:

(He says) “It escapes no one that there exist many published works regarding the art of memory, all of which offer the same canon of lessons, and which present us with the same difficulties: for this reason, we propose to provide advice, showing the fruits of this invention in a more serious, clear and free illustration, so that what many desire strongly will be achieved.

“Ancient institutions prescribed daily exercises that required inappropriate effort that might be more fruitfully diverted: in fact, geniuses are less constant, and would rather touch upon everything than to fully grasp a single thing.”

Philothimus: This author is not one of those who gathers many opinions to himself from a crowd of other authors, who achieve immortality from the labor of others, you put in the authors who have worked for posterity, avoiding those who have neither intelligence nor understanding (wrapping their own inventions in the skin of a lion, and finding they had grown into it) to return to your own skin and your own voice. How many have enervated Mars (because it is easy to add some invention)[13], out of a lack of stupid sense. Those are the rams of infantility, torments of errors, cannon of foolishness, coruscations, thunders and lightnings of nonsense.

Logifer: You’re not thinking of our publishers of poetry, our versifiers, who quote the inventions, half lines and lines of others, want to sell us poetry?

Philothimus: Let go of the poets. We know that they have long hands, loud voices, for when they’re reciting at various places and times.

Logifer: I was talking about verisifiers, not poets.

Philothimus: Good. Let them think we’re referring to them if that’s what they want. Is that what we want? Enough of an intention in the mind of the author to get the proposition.

Logifer: Do not poets…

Philothimus:Let’s move on. Read…

Hermes: “Hence (he says) applying my mind to pay my respects to some of my friends,  after [considering] several different memory arts, which I sent privately in various directions, and by various methods communicated their dignity and intelligent capacity, having the principles of this virtue, which contains in it things preferred above all others, with none of the drawbacks in its outcomes. Using this artifice, a practice of  knowledge easy and not by any means laborious, and which freely produces knowledge; this however, which is contrary to the usual custom of those arts, where the books are easy and brief, but the practice is long and difficult, so that where few scholars would compare those with this, let all whether skilled or learned find it easy to know, and also to exercise, even without having a teacher who has made sense of the metaphysical doctrines of the Platonists, one can understand this art: for even though it requires strong faculties of imagination and supposition in comparison to others, it can be used by whomever (provided that they are not completely dull-witted), for it contains terms most proper and adapted to showing significant things.

“This art does not simply confer an art of memory, but also opens many faculties of invention. For this reason, remember to perceive this inwardly[14], for the royal does not depend on the choice of the common: every one of those things can be explained in its canons, provided according to the mental capacities and faculties of the listener, as long as an intense and elegant explanation isn’t missing.

“Moreover, know this, into whose hands this art falls: our idea is not bound to any other’s philosophy, nor is this absent philosophizing thought as a way to disregard things. Rather, there is no one we regard highly who has not been able to construct a method of value with this. Do not abjure the Pythagoreans, nor desert the faith of the Platonists, nor despise the Peripatetics—insofar as the foundations of real reasoning are attained. We say this to assuage him who would measure his genius alongside another’s’. These unfortunates, who have long pondered the best philosophers, not properly advancing their own mind, but rather ending with no wit of their own—they are pitiable, but are better than those who, not knowing their own poverty, do not dare to dare—rather, be compassionate and praise it (unless it continues through carelessness). Like those filled with the spirit of Aristotle (since it is now lawful and progressive to see his books), hear when they read De Umbris Idearum will stick to your words, and say ‘these Ideas  are dreams or monsters.’ We concede, but ask whether this conforms to the true nature of things, such that ideas run under a shadow. Again, come to the place where run the reasons of the soul: ‘Giordano! (will) you next say that it takes threads to weave the soul?’ Puffing our cheeks up or the like manner, we can argue with an internal opponent who would deter us from gaining the fruits of this discipline. We too were once less learned, and of the same mind, but we kept faith in the science of it. Now, by the kindness of the gods, these skills have been acquired, and we find that the proper actions on this side of the argument are—whatsoever brings greater benefit, invention and higher properties wins the argument—if this means that the Platonists win the argument, we commend it. If the Peripatetics provide a greater expression to the things in this art, we faithfully admit this. The rest is judged in like manner. For it is not necessary to give full credit to one artist for creating every work. Nor I say, the same work—for a helmet, shield, sword, shafts, standards, drums, trumpets and all other armaments need not be melted and forged all together. Thus, moreover, not only the works of Aristotle and Plato will suffice. Sometimes, even, (somewhat rarely), it is not through such usual terms at all that I will customarily explain my intentions. With all the philosophers, however, we use whatever works will best present these and other arts easily (so long as the mind is strong).

“There are two ways of treating the art: one of which is higher than the operations of the mind and gives a general order, and second is the head of many methods by which the diverse artificial organs can be found and the memory explored. These consist in the first case of thirty Intentions, in the second of thirty Concepts, thirdly in the many combinations which can be made from the combination of the first and second elements. The other, which follows, is a sample of a fixed memory device composed by category.”

ON THE SHADOWS of IDEAS

Thirty Intentions of Shadows

FIRST INTENTION A.

First, we make the sign of the one God, and with the blessing of the Most High, we begin.

The finest and most perfect of men for whom it is possible to dwell on earth, wisest sage of the Hebrews, spoke to his companion, saying, “I sit down in his shadow with great delight[15]”.

It is not truly our nature to be able to live in plain truth, for is it not said, “Vanity, vanity, all life is but vanity![16]” And what is true and good is the only thing. Otherwise, how can one whose essence is not actually true have any efficacy or truly act? Therefore it is more than sufficient, that I should sit beneath the shadow of the truth. Not only under the shadow of the natural or rational truth (which might be described as false or evil) but also that of the Metaphysical, Ideal and Supersubstantial, which makes one a participant in truth according to the faculties of his own mind, even if it does not begin with that image, takes up that image, within the transparency of the soul, bounded by the opacity of the body, the human mind experiences that image, by way of internal senses and rationality, by which we live our animal lives: that very shadow.

SECOND INTENTION B.

Consider such a thing—this, too—imagine this to be what I desire: to separate this concept of shadow from that of darkness. Shadow is not darkness, but rather shadow is the tracing of trails in light, or the sign of light in darkness, or the participation of light and darkness, or is composed of light and darkness, or is a mixture of light and darkness, or is neither from light nor darkness, but is a thing apart from the others. Therefore, this is not a full light, or this is a false light, or one neither true nor false, or perhaps it’s both true and false, a trail, etc. However, keep in mind, that shadow is as a trail of footprints[17], although it is a participant in light, the light is not full.

THIRD INTENTION C.

Furthermore, since we understand this light in two ways, in the vicinity of Substance, and in the things happening in relation to their own Substance, or consist in the Substance (accordingly, the two in opposition make up the shadow) you must remember: the light which is around the substance makes a last track, part of the light that makes a first act. At the same time, the shadow is said to emanate from the Substance itself. This is the primary subject for which the physicists say: that all that does not receive the fullness of light are said to be in shadow.

FOURTH INTENTION D.

Consequently, it won’t escape you that since shadow both takes part from the light and part from the darkness, two things fall under the category of shadow: shadow from darkness, and (as they tell it) from death. Either descending from the higher powers or arising from the inferior, as happens when one is completely exhausted and the senses depart the body. In the first case, the shadow is thrown into darkness, in the second into light. At the horizon between light and darkness, we discern nothing but shadow. This is the horizon of good and evil, the true and the false. It can be made either true or false, good or bad, becoming the shadow of one or another.

FIFTH INTENTION E.

Shadows in the largest sense, considered as appetites or cognitive objects, descend from the One in supersubstantial creation, in ever increasing infinite numbers (after the manner of the Pythagoreans) of progressions: as they depart from the One, the further they move from truth. From the superessences to the essences, from them to their footsteps and from there to their statues, images and shadow excursions, both toward the matter and toward the sense and to the faculty of reason through which they are understood.

SIXTH INTENTION F.

A shadow in nature, whether in the internal or external sense, consists of movement and alteration. In the true intellect, as a consequence of memory, it consists of stillness. Therefore a wise man seeks this book’s virginal, supersensual, supernatural consequential knowledge, sitting beneath its shadow. This state lasts longer than in the natural life (where the senses swiftly jump and topple, seduced by surrounding phantoms), whether in the absolute past, not yet begun, or in the designated present. Thus, he says: I sat down under a shadow, or I was sitting.

SEVENTH INTENTION G.

But when order is in all things, and they connect together, as the lower to the middle to the upper, the composite unto the simple, the simple unto the unitary, material to spiritual, spiritual proceeds to the immaterial, the one universal Being’s body, one order, one governance, one principle, one beginning, one middle, one end. And when (as the Platonists knew) continuous migration[18] occurs (when some minds convert to matter, and some turn away from the act, under nature and fate), nothing prevents it [the soul] from acting as does the lyre of Apollo to rise to the heights step by step, from the depths, to the middle areas, and into the heights. It’s evident to our senses that earth turns into water, water to air, air to fire, and again by condensation fire becomes air, air water, water earth. Thus we see that stillness changes into motion, motion always ends in stillness. That is true even in eternal heaven. The Peripatetics sometimes considered that in heaven itself, the act is mixed with the power to act (though they combine this with other reasons), they understand that the end of action is in the past, and the origin in the future. Then, whatever descends from some other species, such as theologians divined from their wisdom, we must endeavor to strive—having before our eyes, by the sublime operations of the soul, the whole scale of nature—always seeing by motion the multitude, and by stillness unity. When we use our faculty to this purpose, we perform the work of the divine, admired by all. We connect the causes and consequences of things, and this exhorts and encourages us. Indeed, from antiquity, man learned how the general related to the specific, species by species to genus above. In addition, we understand how the lowest forms of intelligence pass through all the distinct species, through the more numerous and of many forms, while the higher pass through fewer numbers and types of forms, and in the supreme case, One. Moreover, he who knows how to grow the Artificial Memory of many kinds, to one from  many kinds, is surely beyond teaching.

EIGHTH INTENTION H.

Toward the highest, by some similar movement, the lowest ascends by degree. Once it has passed through all of the degrees, it is no longer similar, but must be said to be identical. Clearly, we are taught to do this by the example of fire, that through means of heat produces similar rarification in water. Following the trail of similarity, we are able to access in common from the shadows to the footsteps, tracing the footsteps to our imaginary pictures, from the latter to other things.

NINTH INTENTION I.

However, since same is the same as alike, it doesn’t matter whether one gets there by going uphill, downhill, or from side to side; so it happens that (within Her own boundaries) Nature is able to do everything everywhere, so too can the intellect and reason make the shape of  any and all forms.  As, I say, nature takes each and every form, so too the passive intellect (as they call it) is able to take each and every form, and memory memorizes each and every thing—by analogy, everything is similarly thought of, everything included in a similar way.  Furthermore, every remote thing is brought near by the same means.

Hence, material plundered from plants [when eaten by animals], is not immediately converted into animal matter, rather through the medium of hyle, blood and semen. Hence, any who knows extreme means correctly used shall be able to elicit them [correct forms] from everything.

TENTH INTENTION K.

Otherwise, that which is similar, rather than that which has equality and uniformity (which they also call equivalent), is pleasing, rather than the other case, whether it’s the internal sense or the external sense we’re referring to, when it’s bad and unprofitable to have this condition. For, just like the sensation of heat, which does not feel the same to everyone, but depends mostly on the degree of one’s sensitivity to it. Hence, you should seek your images from practice and foresight, not from the insights of adepts which you will be unable to share.

ELEVENTH INTENTION L.

Consider that the world is composed of parts with unequal beauty. In this variety therefore, beauty is made manifest, and the whole of its beauty consists of variety. It follows that shadow images and imperfect images: because actual images have variety, but shadows, which are bounded by the extrinsic figures, have no variation of their own. I would say that the shadow, as a shadow, is only what it is, except what it receives in a particular case.

TWELFTH INTENTION M.

True Chaos in Anaxagoras is variety without order. So, with regard to the marvelous variety of things connected through order, that which is highest to the lowest and from lowest to the highest interfacing to form a single, great and most beautiful living creature (such is the world), when all of the parts agree. Such great order goes with great diversity and such diversity requires great order. No order exists where no diversity is found. Therefore the first principle of no order, no ordered is properly understood.

THIRTEENTH INTENTION N.

Certainly, as indissoluble harmony connects first principles to second ones, as the heel of one rests upon the head of the another who precedes it, as they form links in that golden chain that runs stretching from heaven to earth, truly extended, as were you when you were able to make your descent, easily descending as by order you will be able to reascend. Through this great connection we are able to recover our artificial memory, should any weakness in recall of an item in a group in ordinary memory present itself. This is manifest in the following verse, where Aries advances on Taurus, and Taurus moves through diverse actions upon Gemini, and then by another set of actions, Cancer, and so in succession each of the others: this way we gain an intuition how one result follows another.

[Aries] Leader of the flock, beside himself with wrath

Turns in vengeance on the king of the herd,

Empty headed Taurus sprints to strike,

Charges the brothers Gemini,

Those youths wave at nearby relatives

To object. Cancer walks through dewy meadows,

Suddenly, obliquely, Cancer, startled by the waves,

Comes face to face, perhaps, with Leo,

Who raising hackles and his tail, threatens,

The swiftly wandering Virgo wild,

Who fled hence, they say, so fast,

She knocked askew a fisherman with scales of Libra,

Whose peaches spill while she embraces him,

Libra’s hooks impale Draco, worm,

Who, fearing death, point out,

Nearby Sagittarius, her future husband,

Shoots his arrows, thinking her despoiled,

They go astray, wounding Capricorn,

Escapes he, though Aquarius’ waters,

Plunging, running through the gurgling stream,

The goat baits Pisces fish.

FOURTEENTH INTENTION O.

An ascent therefore, in the case of the shadows of the Ideals, by way of connection and concatenation, is not constant throughout the chain, as in our previous and subsequent statements. Neither ought the bed of this shadow be one under which Leviathan sleeps: Not, I repeat, taking light away from the shadow, but conducting the light; for it is not the truth, but rather it comes from the truth and returns to it. Therefore, you do not have to believe there is any error in it; rather the truth is hidden there.

FIFTEENTH INTENTION P.

These shadows are not homonyms for the shadows which confuse everything, this is a completely foolish statement, lacking thought, intelligence and discernment, rather without this shadow to protect against other shadows (for it is said, “protect us in your shadow”) we could not be lifted into the height of discernment above our own bodies. For it is said, “His shadow covers mountains”. From it are derived and emanate those things that we produce in intelligence and memory, and which at length end in the light. This, or a similar figure to this, as the Cabalists say, happened when a veil of this type covered the face of Moses, when he received the Law, not in order to deceive, but to provide for the good health of his eyes, against that damage which happens when one proceeds too rapidly from darkness into light.

For nature does not allow direct progress from one extreme to another: rather shadow mediates, shadow tempers the eyes to light. Some have lost their vision in trying to too suddenly turn from darkness into light without using any shadow to mediate it. Shadow prepares vision for light, shadow tempers light. Shadow, through the divinity, prepares tempers and serves the thirsty soul. Therefore, recognize those shadows which do not perish, but bind and keep us in the light, which advanced, lead and were recognized by us.

SIXTEENTH INTENTION Q.

In his own way the Theologian said, unless you believe, you shall not understand. And in their own ways, the philosophers confirm with their own faith, as they say (for among the Pythagoreans, faith is that which is not demonstrated, among Peripatetics that which is non-demonstrable, and among the Platonists, both of these are held true): what comes from virtue and root cause and contain a certain implication, must be explained by a certain procedure, whether they are natural or rational. Nature gives us the forms wrapped up before revealing them. Similarly, God pursues a similar way of divine order and dignity with regard to the arts. Therefore, even if it seems arduous to use shadows in this manner, of if anyone suspects that this is but vain foolishness to access light from shadow, they should know that the flaw is not with the shadow. They should understand that it is easier to grasp something wrapped up that one could not capture naked.

SEVENTEENTH INTENTION R.

Of physical shadows, from trees and herbs that chase away serpents and which promote a more peaceful life: they are another case. Ideal shadows, (if they really are ideal) with all references to the intellect and the purified internal senses, do not rise and fall subside the same way.

EIGHTEENTH INTENTION S.

Do not sleep, but proceed considerately if you are comparing the proportions of a physical shadow with its ideal shadow. For our eyes elongate the bodies which are distantly lit, and the shadow is diminished, but on the other hand the light is brought close to the body, the shadow increases, and appears to be a greater obstacle.

NINETEENTH INTENTION T.

The greater the light and the density of the body, the sharper and clearer the shadow becomes. I say this formation imitates the body, whether in density and rarity, or in continuity and discontinuity. Truly, such imitation is derived from the body.

TWENTIETH INTENTION V.

Shadow of light follows movement of the body. Body moves? Shadow moves. Light moves? Shadow moves. Both move? Shadow moves. Against physical observation of the same subject (where I and the subject move), there are simultaneous, various and sometimes contrary movements. Why not? It’s not necessary that the movement of the body and the light follow the shadow. Maybe this can be solved by their concurrent motion and opposite conditions. As you listen to this, as the motion of the light makes the shadow’s movement fly, as the body moves like the following: so that it does not seem to be incompatible, but rather flies in unity, or in opposition, or contrariwise. For the rest, consider how it is in these things, and also in the rest in proportion: for it is more than enough that our work be revealed to those who turn their attention to this.

TWENTY FIRST INTENTION X.

The similitude between shadows and ideas does not end there, as these do not stand contrary to one another. Through a single species, we know beauty and shame, appropriate and inappropriate, perfect and imperfect, good and evil. Evil, imperfection and shame are not properly thought of as ideas: they are known not through their own, but from thinking of them as the absence of another species. For this is their property: that they are not what is, but (to speak more clearly) a defect in an effect.

TWENTY SECOND INTENTION Y.

Shadows may be named as accidents of the body: if it proceeds from the body and returns always to it, if it is always of the same shape and number, this is so. If you want to call this an accident, now consider it an accident separable from its subject: consider a shadow in light from a horse that falls now on stone, now on wood. This is opposed to the physical rationale for accidents, unless you want to throw yourself into the arms of Scylla  for the sake of this argument[19]. So, why would we say this for shadows of ideas: Are they the substances themselves, or rather just accidents? They’re somewhat like substances, and somewhat like accidental notions. If it pleases one to say, these are but accidents of reason, through inexperience, because they are neither habits, nor dispositions, nor innate faculties, but only accidents, rather they [shadows of ideas] are produced by dispositions, habits and faculties, of which they consist. In fact, the universe is not simply divided into substance and accident, as is sometimes supposed. This consideration applies to more than just shadows.

TWENTY THIRD INTENTION Z.

For shadows, there is no time save this time, no space save this space, no motion save this motion. It is abstracted from all truth, yet is not without it. But, it’s also not impossible to think (if this is an ideal shadow) that the opposite or something else is also true, since it is all one. With shadows, there is no opposite, neither darkness nor light. So man took refuge in the Tree of Knowledge, and knew shadow and light, truth and falsehood, good and evil, when God called out to him: “Adam, where are you?”[20]

TWENTY FOURTH INTENTION Ψ

Do not overlook this, nor fail to consider adequately: when one body is lit by two or more opposing sources it produces two or more shadows. Understand how and by what means these follow the body, by what means they result from the lights, and consider moreover how shadows are produced from a single body in multiplicity by multiple lights: innumerable lights, innumerable shadows may not at first appear discernable. We must, therefore, find other means of producing shadows with light, even though it may appear to defy reason.

TWENTY FIFTH INTENTION Φ

Nor should you be fooled by how shadow flees from light: not unless there is a truly singular distance, location, and disposition: along the length and width of the body, a shadow is produced opposite the light, but sometimes no more than a fleeting appearance of a shadow is hinted at. Indeed, at some places, the Sun does not produce a shadow at all, or only on truly rare occasions and for a brief time.

TWENTY SIXTH INTENTION Ω

If the size of the opaque body exceeds that of the shining body, then the base of the shadow produced will have infinite size of indeterminate distance. If, instead, it is true that the size of the shining body exceeds that of the opaque body, then it produces a shadow with its base at the opaque body, with a cone extending from the body, in proportions determined by the ratio of the sizes of the two bodies and the distance between the two. In the case of the moon’s shadow, that is produced on the Earth on the side opposite to the light (assuming that the sun is on the opposite hemisphere) for a fixed cone of the earth’s margin, while its base outside the Earth is not increasing as far as we can determine. This is how the moon produces the shadow of the sun from the earth: it has a certain amount of the earth between its base and end: it does not reach all the way to the sphere of Mercury[21]. Now similar make a similar judgment with regard to ideas’ shadows.

TWENTY SEVENTH INTENTION Θ

So note how the light and dark (darkness as the dense body is called), give birth to shadow, how light is its father, darkness its mother. We have only this, as it appears, if we follow it with light, it flees, as if it presented only the appearance of its mother, not its father: as the ruling families leap to protest. Just as the habit of noble families to protest though not many of their habits demonstrate honesty. So, as the light increases, it thins; and when there’s a dilation of the light source, its circumference contracts.

TWENTY EIGHTH INTENTION ע

So, point a gnomon aimed at the Bear and draw an imaginary meridian line between it and your eye, passing South unerringly, and as time passes, many different stars will circulate around different circles centered on the pole. You’ll be able to calculate this, no less with ideal shadows than with physical bodies, and you’ll be able to detect the innumerable significances, properties and differences among ideas.

TWENTY NINTH INTENTION צ

There extend from the sun six different principal shadows. One from the east [on rising]: which casts shadows to the west. One from the west [on setting]: which extends to the east. One [at noon] from the south, or in Southern latitudes from the north. One in the breadth from North to South. Another that admits of no latitude. From the belt (as they say) of the heavens, by perpendicular rays toward its nadir, the Earth produces a shadow. From opposite parts of its hemisphere, other rays proceed, reducing the shadow as it extends. Thus there is in nature a horizon, and in the same line from the perspective of the equinoxes, there is a circular line on the sphere, and equally in the mind, there are six eternals which form different shadows, from which we can receive every kind of conversion to light.

THIRTIETH INTENTIONש

But in order to make sense of all the different shadows directed by the six principals together: you should know that all together are not less creative than were they one, for they all trace back to the same source. In our case (I say) one can be all shadows of ideas. Addition, subtraction, and alteration generally speak for all other refining, clarifying and presenting [ideas]. As in the material arts the subject gives substance, which is modified by adjectives, which receive in themselves alterations, transpositions, and universal diversifications. Analogy itself admits of metaphysics, logic, physics: or as before, the preternatural, natural and rational. As with true images and shadows. For the rest, an act in the divine mind happens at the same time and place as the thought. In the intelligences, acts and thoughts are discrete. In heaven, in the multiple active powers, successive. In nature, by means of footsteps, almost as if by impression. In intentions and rationality, by the means of shadows.

There is one paradigm, by which ideas have actually infinite differences, and one shadow in faculty has finite differences. Line AB intersects line CD perpendicularly, and produces two right angles. Now, if we incline the line toward B, we produce an acute angle and another which is more obtuse. More and more as we incline toward F, G, H, I, K and so forth, the obtuse angle grows and the acute angle decreases.

It is clear how, using these two straight lines, there are an infinite number of different acute and obtuse angles. In this first case, faculty does not differ from act, because whatever it is able to be, it is, since once it is, it has its identity. Thus, in point D, there are at the same time infinitely different angles and only one. In the celestial movements, an active power, such as the movement to points E, F, G and innumerable others, yet these do not move. In the heavens, it’s a mixture of active and passive power, as when line CD is able to move to form angles this way and that.: secondly, for many reasons the Peripatetics believed that the heavens contained a ingredient of active power.  In the matter of the moveable and in the consequences, it is a passive power, signified by point D, that produces the innumerable differences of acute and obtuse angles, the means of being in material, and the efficient, and the means of participating in action, and on power, as shown. As I have said of the different angles: you refer to the different species, as you would refer to numbers. And therefore also, it is possible to manifest everything through a figure.

TYPE of the SHADOWS

The Thirty Concepts of Ideas

Therefore let us progress to thirty concepts, which we will deal with first simply, then with greater complexity in conjunction with the thirty intentions.

FIRST CONCEPT A.

Lucifer (says Plotinus) in whose face God fashioned eyes and various other instruments of the senses, to preserve something of the natural, and to interact with something similar to light. These words manifest a principle pertinent to the intelligible world.

SECOND CONCEPT B.

It is not right, I think, to have many princes[22] in the world, and in consequence to have any orders rather than one. And, consequently, if one is so ordered, all the members of it are connected and subject to it. So as the higher members truly exist in the extended mass and multiplying numbers of the expanded material. Hence, from that which has the most in and of itself, to that which has minimal existence, to that which barely has existence at all, let there be access. Which, in his order, by his degrees, he who has conceived in his mind an image of the world, let him take from this that which he has in his nature also. Thus, almost naturally, he will easily accomplish all things.

THIRD CONCEPT C.

What always happens is not subject to consultation and argument. If it can be demonstrated that something always does something, then argument and consultation go away. The work is perfected if only the natural experiment produces a natural and effective explanation. Thus bringing about a closer resemblance between the operator and his most frequent operations. Made thusly, with a minimum of thought and discernment, in perfection, generates the most exquisite actions. Those who, though they consist at a particular time and place, release the time and place from the thinking of their ideas: they conform their operations to the divine entities, whether they belong to the intellect or the will. Was it not he who said, “Though you are made of flesh, do not live according to flesh.”[23]

FOURTH CONCEPT D.

If this is possible and true, we may learn that the intellectual soul is not really inherent, fixed and persistent in the body, but in truth is an assistant and housekeeper of the body, so that it can boast a perfect species, apart from the body. Which opinion (without controversy) adheres maximally to the Theologian that gave a name to something more precise, called “man inside”. What if you could apply the same theory to soul without a body, in that it combines the ideas, not determined by place certain and time, whenever a man free in mind or soul leaves matter and time.

FIFTH CONCEPT E.

The soul has the same relationship to the higher intellect as a transparent body has to light (as the princes of the Platonists understood) for that which is diaphanous and transparent always admits some inner light, which is always being emitted from the body, as if it dwelt in a luminous region. But when it continues to dwell in the body, like a crystal, its luminosity is bounded by the opaque body: so too the sensible species of the planets, which change and rotate in their own times, and change in location, and rise and fall.

SIXTH CONCEPT F.

Things with forms are in Ideas, are in a certain way in themselves, are in heaven, are in the circle of the sky, are in the ultimate and efficient causes, are in the effect, are in an extrinsic sense, are in an intrinsic one: each in its own way.

SEVENTH CONCEPT G.

Material, receiving the ideal form does is not filled (as if we protested a new eternal affection), for it neither truly accepts, nor receives that which it appears to receive. For those which are true, those are the objects of the senses, and also indivisible: these are called firstly and automatically principals and great substances. What is true remains eternal: but that which is subject to generation is also subject to corruption, and is said not to be true. This is not only pleasing to the philosophers, but also the Theologians, who call the outer man and external conditions “vanity”. And others suggest that all things under the sun are nothing but vanity, that is, it is the state of all natural things where we live. From ideas, then, from ideas begin the formation of the soul, if you understand.

EIGHTH CONCEPT H.

Plotinus said, explaining the multitude of ideas through reasoning, man is the first idea, soul the second, and the third is scarcely human. The second depends on the first, the third on the second, while through ordering, contraction, and composition, they become directed toward physical subsistence. By the metaphysical concept therefore, what is third becomes second, and what is second becomes first.

NINTH CONCEPT I.

The identical, permanent and eternal coincide. That which is identical remains identical, perpetual and eternal. That which is eternal remains identical and perpetual. That which is perpetual remains eternal and identical. Take therefore this principle, that whatever has identity has also permanency and perpetuity. If you can grasp that, you will have something that will be fixed in your soul.

TENTH CONCEPT K.

Give dignity to the thought that sticks in the mind. The first intelligence, the light, Amphitrite, pours forth its light from inside to outside to such an extent that anyone can draw anything and everything from it, according to their own ability, which may be in the path of the light. Perhaps this is why some have thought (as they say): “She reaches from end to end,” and also say, “No man is cut off from the light.” Here I mean light that makes intelligible intelligent things, both things that tend to intelligence and also that which communicates intelligence. These things, which flow forth, one to another, various and sundry, in innumerable plenty, so many that it is like trying to count the stars and failing; so this also flows back, flows together and back into one, until the unitary source is again reached.

ELEVENTH CONCEPT L.

The first intelligence creates, not through the generation of new ideas in new ways. Nature creates in great numbers but only by the same methods it always operates. Rationality creates infinite forms in the same way: composing, dividing, adding, subtracting, ordering and randomizing.

TWELFTH CONCEPT M.

Deformed animals take beautiful forms in the heavens. Metals which lack luster shine when in their own planets. For neither man, nor animals, nor metals exist here as they there exist. For whatever happens here occurs there with greater vigor. The virtues, which separate and multiply in matter, there combine and unify. Clearly, as the Platonists say: ideas are not the only part of living life and developing reason; illumination, lifebringing and unification, conforming to superior agencies; these are the reasons by which one develops intelligence and memory of the forms.

THIRTEENTH CONCEPT N.

It contains the light, the intelligent life, the first unity: all species, perfect truths, numbers, and things of degrees. While in nature are differences, contradictions and diversity: in it are wholeness, harmony and oneness. Try it, and you will be able to strongly identify, harmonize, and unify your received species, without fatiguing your genius, disturbing your mind nor confounding your memory.

FOURTEENTH CONCEPT O.

When you arrive by reason at how the heavenly bodies conform, you will not make the misstep of thinking that the vile forms and thoughts of lower animals remain vile in heaven, but conform to the heavenly intelligences: so all the forms of the world will present to us when in heaven.

FIFTEENTH CONCEPT P.

For such a concept, you will find that you’ve moved from much confusion to distinct agreement: it will not confound the universal logic, wherein the low, middle and high parts are mixed together or in different versions; but rather, as each and every part informs one another, with complete form and unified function. In the way arms connect with hands, the foot to the leg, and the eyes to the face, so this is more understandable when seen altogether. So that, with regards to the parts and all the species, nothing was made without him nor exempt from his order (the most simple, most perfect, without number in the first mind) that connects each and every thing to one another, and by his uniting reason we conceive: What is it not possible to remember that can be thought of or processed?

SIXTEENTH CONCEPT Q.

One is that which defines all. One is the beauty and splendor of all. From One emanates the lightning brilliance of the many species. But if you consider that, then there is no means by which anything in the world can escape your eye.

SEVENTEENTH CONCEPT R.

We err, and forgetfulness happens, because we compose the form but weakly. Formation, of course, in the material world, is a lower form, is composed of its own vestigial signs, and is malformed. Go up, therefore, where the pure species are, formless nothing, and where each Form is itself formed.

EIGHTEENTH CONCEPT S.

Plotinus, prince among Platonists, noted: “As long as the figure is only shown to the eyes, this is not love. Rather, it is when the figure is held in the mind completely that love arises immediately.” Similar judgments apply to the objects of the intelligence, and also to those of the appetites. Investigate this, and see how quickly, vividly, and tenaciously you will grasp the species.

NINETEENTH CONCEPT T.

Plotinus saw Salem[24] ascend seven steps (to which we add two) to ascend to the Source. These are: First, clearing the mind. Second, attention. Third, intention. Fourth, contemplation of order. Fifth, proportional comparison of order. Sixth, negation or separation. Seventh, desire[25]. Eighth, the transformation of the self in the thing. Ninth, the transformation in itself. Thus you open the approach from shadows to ideas.

TWENTIETH CONCEPT V.

Everything which is, after the One, is of necessity multiplex and numerous. Beyond one, therefore, all but the first are numerous. So, under the lowest of the steps of Salem are naturally infinite numbers of materials: in the highest truth infinity unites in the purest act. Descent, dispersion and distraction go toward matter. Ascent, aggregation and determination go toward action.

TWENTY FIRST CONCEPT X.

Numeric entities (some say), relate to the actual truth, or true existence, as material through inchoate forms have to [Ideal] Forms.

TWENTY SECOND CONCEPT Y.

Consider forms threefold. The first of these is the potential to be formed, on which you can perform the act: this is not properly idea, nor the thing produced, which is called the form. The second of these is that which is formed as a part of the thing itself, and  which does not belong to this but is called the likeness of that of which it is a part. The third which is bounded by anything, by the quality of an inherent figure, as it were; this kind of thing cannot receive rational ideas, for it is not separate from its own form. Fourth, that by which anything is formed, and which imitates anything; in common speech, this has retained the name “Idea”. And this is called in four ways: in artificial things themselves, before the realization of the things fabricated; intended first, before the second, in the principles of nature, before natural things ; in the divine mind, before the nature of all things. In the first case the idea is said to be technique, in the second logic, in the third physics, and metaphysics fourth.

TWENTY THIRD CONCEPT Z.

Some forms imitate nature, as in a mirror image of its form. Some the institution, as in a figure impressed by a seal. Some, both by imitation and purpose, as it presents a picture of the artist’s intention. Some things through the interaction of purpose and chance: by way of the differences between themselves: if this is done it can present a picture. Other things that happened completely by chance, wherein the image depicted does not purposefully imitate anything. Some things happen neither on purpose nor by chance, nor through imitation, if indeed such things exist. There is the greatest proportion of the Ideal in the first case, less in the second, minimal in the third, and in the fourth case, none.

TWENTY FOURTH CONCEPT Ψ

Agents from nature or from chance, not from the provisions of the will, not supposing ideas. Such would be the first efficient cause if there were no ideas, and no free-willed agents. Otherwise, this validates Democritus, Empedocles, and Epicurus. If you find it impossible to separate the agent from some system, be very insistent, and all your probing will prove most helpful.

TWENTY FIFTH CONCEPT Φ

Said one of our countrymen: Exemplars of forms have the nature of finality, and from these takes the nature of the agent which acts upon it, though it is outside of it. But it is not appropriate to think that God acts for any purpose outside of Himself, and receives from somewhere else the sufficient cause to act. For this reason, ideas are not from outside of it. We, however, should look outside of ourselves and ask that which is above ourselves: which of these ideas alone should we take into ourselves?

TWENTY SIXTH CONCEPT Ω

Through a species that is in the intellect, we can gain a better apprehension than from a species that is in the physical world, because it is in-material. In like manner, it is easier to know something from the divine mind, rather than something we can deduce from its own essence. Two things are required to know a species: a representation in thought, which enables us to properly think of it; and its essence and material, insofar as we can know it.

TWENTY SEVENTH CONCEPT Θ

As Ideas are the first form of things, according to which all forms are made and perish: and not only with respect to that which is generated and decays, but also all that which can be created and destroyed. So it is true that we form in ourselves the shadows of ideas, when such an opportunity presents itself through adaptability and malleability to all such forms. We form them of such similitudes, through the rotation of the wheels. If you can try this any other way, then try.

TWENTY EIGHTH CONCEPTצ

Plato did not establish the ideas of accidents because he realized that they are the proximate causes of things, whence, if anything, except the idea, was the proximate cause of the thing, he did not want to consider it an idea, and therefore argued that there is no idea common in those things which are said to be what is before and after, but that the former was idea of what follows. Hence the philosopher Clement stated that the higher things in organizations are ideas of things below

Theologians believe that God is the immediate cause of the accident and will be the Idea of everything, though they do not mean to exclude the gods. And we, in the present case, we wish to be all of the ideas, because all concepts ascend together to the same place. Of all things are formed the shadows of ideas.  Do not, therefore, destroy the Platonic doctrine of clear understanding.

TWENTY NINTH CONCEPT ע

Plato posited no singular Ideas, but only of species. Both because ideas deal only with the production of form, not matter; and also, because forms are principally concerned with nature, not groups and individuals.

The Theologians put forward the concept of singular ideas, for they assert that God is the total cause of how and how much, in what material and what number the forms take. We too propose singular ideas, realized through the universal images, and apprehended through similitudes, whether this is before the thing, in the thing or after the thing; also whether it is in the senses, in the intellect, whether practical or in speculation.

THIRTIETH CONCEPTש

Less common ideas are those generated one from the other, and finally from all ideas to that idea which is called the highest intelligence, the One. Your shadows of ideas are less common, and their extrinsic subjects are less common, than those generated one from the other in memory.

TYPE of the IDEAL INTENTIONS

OF COMPLEXION, IN WHICH WE ROTATE THE FIRST WHEEL WITH THE SECOND[26].

Requirements for those who want this art to become a habit of the mind and will, and to capture memories (though currently limited to presenting and perceiving memories): First, have experience of the prime elements and their significance. Second, follow accordingly. Third, accordingly deduce from the first. For the first time, we have two workers, who are well versed in the doctrines of the Peripatetics and Platonists. Lastly, commit yourself industriously to it. Now, we undertake the application and universal contraction [or explanation] of the art of memory.

The Art of Memory

Jordano Bruno

First Part

I.

Then our plan is to pass on the art of the shadows of ideas, to lead you out from your sleeping nature; from error, misdirection, and being led astray; from deficiencies of energy; to support and strengthen you, correct errors, achieve perfect results, and make you the emulation of industriousness.

II.

There is, indeed, an art to these things which follows something like an architectural discussion, and also of the habits of everyone who has a rational soul, from that which is the vital principle of life, from each and every one according to the principle of extension in life. No power relies on any special faculty, but only as it is inhabited by the essence of the whole, as a branch relies on the strength of the whole tree. What should we suppose, in fact, the power of memory consists of: does it issue from the intellect? If in the intellect, then how do memories, sense impressions and desires travel? Furthermore, we wish to know how we regulate and direct through it our understanding, reasoning, memory, imagination, desires, and similar thoughts.

III.

Truly with regard to the general, singular and collective functions with which the soul is born: what are they, how do they operate, is it not sufficient to reveal that what the soul seeks is art that clothes the soul? That the soul clothes the art? Would it not be appropriate to try to restore the skill using the means by which she, who we call Mother Nature, frequently acts?

IV.

None may speak as though there are many arts of the organ[27], which though they use the pipe organ, play the pipe organ, yet may claim that their art has nothing of the pipe organ in it. What are they to say, other than that their art is made from that very instrument, is crafted and fashioned from it? What is it, if not that? Moreover, if there is no existing organ, how can another be fabricated? Explain to me how the art can proceed? In what way do the preexisting techniques of the organ exist? It was formed in the first place through the reception of outside determination[28]. But if vulgar philosophers have a difficult time believing that an external object should be produced from primary essence, how much more so in the case of something produced from internal material. Yet this is our intention, don’t you realize?

V.

If this is so, it appears to be the better philosophical practice: of that created first of an art, nothing else can be said, but which nature left a gap, it is filled by reason, which from the seeds of the first principles, therefore has the power to illuminate as if from the outside all its features and attractions; illuminated, as it were, by the sun, and illustrated through the agency of the intellect, using eternal Ideas to combat the influence of the stars, directing and obtaining the resources necessary for the act, generated by the Greatest Good. From such manifestations, without risk of contradiction we declare that this is the natural fount of all the arts and substances.

VI.

Consider, therefore, what intentions it is possible to express, in such excellent nature, an art which one has not yet mastered. It can be of the nature of something more remote, rather than that which is seen close to hand. That same can be perpetuated in substantial form, but not on the other hand perpetuated if one’s art does not extend that far. Actual external forms, as in the figure of intentions from the Clavis Magna[29], are as difficult to make as a stone such as a diamond. Such conditions, acts, names in memory, and durable  objects as would be permanently committed to memory; these are not possible to retain naturally, any more than the fluctuations of material in the stomach which digests everything [could be indefinitely retained]

VII.

But where do I say the faculty for this art lies? Where talent thrives. Which genius lies closest? Humanity’s. Upon what are the true man’s faculties first expressed? Nature’s true labor. Therefore, if you would find the true root of this, and extract or transplant it completely, then worship nature, and give respect where respect is due. This can be accomplished with much shouting and crying at the beginning, when you initially apply yourself to it. Nature invented the body for the soul, and supplies instruments fit for the soul. (Through which, argue the Pythagoreans and the clever Magi, the body and soul discover life). Your very nature (unless you turn away from it) shall be present in all things. For the universal nature of our duty is not limited: Jupiter rains down over all that sprouts, and over all plants shines kind Apollo. But not all things are imbued with equal life, nor are all things perfectly interchangeable, as in our case, not all things can be communicated the same way.

VIII.

Since, therefore, every possible nature would stand before us, whether before nature, or in nature, or from nature: we begin every action from an understanding of nature, and nature cannot therefore be ignored. Howsoever distinguished, through the action of whatever common philosophy, this cannot be denied. I would have this attributed to me, as an organ to its operator, as a branch is extended.

IX.

Because we understand the least tied to the common philosophy is that which nature calls materials, connected to forms: but also through the recognition of the intrinsic and efficient principles, whether all together, or as we may otherwise suppose, through the ways they are connected. The foolish speak the loudest: Whereupon, the nature of this man is compared to that one: there is no universal logic to this, for we do not perceive this as a logical whole, nor do we grasp nature through appearance only: rather, in physical existence, we make the connection that as it is in all, so it is in each.

X.

This is the mediator between sensible things which are past or absent, and those things which are present and conspicuous. On the one hand, there are those things which have the visual weight of sculptures or images; on the other hand, words that flow forth as if produced from nothing. These become stable and fixed as if written down. If so, then concepts and silent intentions become intimately communicable, accessible at all places and times.

XI.

That book of fate, without necessity, without good, without a Demiurge, without the world spirit, without such appeals to nature as we are accustomed to, from error to perfection, communicated even to the lowly: motion and time proceed according to their principles whether singly or all together. Hence this series progresses, it is said, by this art as if led by the hand. For that reason (as it pertains to our purpose and intention), in earlier times, we wrote on the bark of trees with knives. Then, there followed the age of inscribing words on stones, and then using juice on papyrus. Next, sheets of parchment and pens dipped in artificial ink. Accordingly, the paper and pen speak to the use of the most appropriate writing. Thus, writing has progressed from styli to sponges, sponges to reeds, reeds to quill pens, and now to the cast letters [of the printing press]. In just the same way, internal writing [memory] has advanced: whether in ancient times, the great poet Simonides[30] or some other source handed down the following: how to use locations and imaginary figures, charts and writing, with imagination and cognition in place of writing and the pen, inscribe things we would remember from our studies in our internal book of memory. Let them judge our efforts against those previously accomplished. Now we start the practice.

XII.

You have, in the Clavis Magna twelve ways of clothing your subjects: Species, Forms, Simulacra, Images, Specters, Models, Vestigia, Indications, Signs, Figures, Characters and Seals. Some work upon the eye (so it is said: art cannot depict what nature cannot), while some operate through external forms (Images). Models are like pictures and also like the figures drawn by magicians. Some of them operate via the internal senses, which magnify, extend and multiply them in measure, duration and number; as do the things produced by the imaginative faculty. Some of them are things that share a point of resemblance: forms of the same type, or have the substance of a copy of some particular example. And some borrow from the subjects own substance, as a sophist borrows from reality, or art borrows from nature. Some will be appropriate to any art, providing support for all: these are the Signs, Figures, Characters, and Seals. Using these, one can act in nature, above nature, and if the situation requires it, contrary to nature.

XIII.

Those cases occur where figures and images do not yield to the imagination, or for types of figures that do not move. For these lack the characteristics which attack the senses, in other words, lack of difference and disposition without which the antecedents and efficient acts cannot succeed[31]. There is a certain way of grasping such ideas: find a part which relates to the image, or a part of an image which related to the idea—this is the method of the Indications. Indications work through things’ efficient causes, imagined connects, and examples of things—this is how Models, Images and Effigies work, but one can also correctly use Seals, Notes and Characters, tried singly or in combination. So, we haven’t just put this randomly in the middle of our list…

XIV.

Mercury next presented the species of Simulacra, Forms, Images, Models, and Specters; moreover, the substance, essence, goodness, justice, and wisdom, presented by the Notes, Characters, and the Seals. How many things has Mercury made, and all things that Mercury said or rendered: these are the true Models; likewise, the Images, Signs and so forth. We make this clear demonstration with the aid of Mercury, and we say that this image of virtue—this is a Sign, this Note, this Image.

XV.

To these considerations: remember that this art is a means rather than an end of its own: to collect sensations, forms, figures, times and places. This method was already expressed in both its spirit and its technical details in our first book, Clavis Magna. Yet this cannot be used for all images—for as many as we can find a memory, there are some that have no imaginable image or suggestion. For these, terms, uses, hypostases, thoughts and other signs of that type can be used to signify the concept with imaginable images. And with this in mind, we do not have to omit anything from the possible set of attached images.

XVI.

If the attachment is poor, then the art will produce a poor effect, as our predecessors so perceptively noticed. It is important to have a clear view with excellent light, for dense darkness, great crowds, scenes that fade into the distance, and such things prevent clear preservation of the scene. It’s like a dog chewing on a stone instead of a branch, but this is not dangerous, as others have charged this author. But we have found that if we have been given, or developed material places (which are verified by the outer senses), greater care is not needed, as the places in memory hang together naturally; this works as well for purely imaginary architecture, provided it is internally consistent. The prohibition against this, developed in some antique time, is not a proper part of our art, as we have discussed in our book Clavis Magna. Consider this concept rather carefully.

XVII.

Fame is a natural consideration which like most considerations of proportion does not deal with private things, or with regard to hidden material (which takes the name of nature); rather with the outer form, its appearance and subject matter, and its efficient uses. There is a connection between the work of the thief, who profits by others’ labor, and the power of representation. The art is worth less than the thing it copies; we suppose nothing less than that within dreams all things should be permitted, as the first subject of the nature of art is that it is not only for itself: but also reflects that which is around it. So for your consideration of the matter requires that, as befits their practice,  all the elements of art beget forms more elegant (with the general goal of all in a subject, a new form of art) and so the same is true with respect to faculty in general graphics, and excellent sense of proportion, when two things are of the same size. So, a painting by an internal system produces images of things memorized. There is also the internal writing, using reasons and orders of the words, and gives Signs, Notes and Characters: all of these dwell in the subjective imagination. Nor shall I deny that they speak to one another like a community, and also to remembered things, or also to the verbal retention of ordered Forms, called Images.

XVIII.

Take a picture (a suitable term to use with this art), whose primary subject is that of a wall, next to which is a stone and so forth. It therefore contains a second subject that has the same color as its background. Writing has as its first subject the paper on which it is written: the second subject is the forms of the letters written on the page. Thus, there are two kinds of objects which the term subject admits, viz., the location and the object itself (or the adject). Potentially, there can be two subjects in the same place, namely, in memory and imagination generally rather than in a specific case, and the substitution of one image for another in memory or imagination, which allows for a kind of attention, and to compare the features present in one subject with those of another. Similarly, in painting or writing or whatever material used, it adapts organically, in such a way, for there is no shortage of figurative instruments.

SECOND PART

There are three considerations to make if one would excel in the practice of this art. Firstly, what things are observed, and what qualities do these subjects have. Second, what this teaches us about the nature of how forms are prepared. Third, how to adapt our teaching methods and the medium thereof, so that it is most perfectly matched to the soul: as in the Clavis Magna where that great task was accomplished. Lest you think that this book is worthless compared to that one, imperfect as it is (for it is not always an advantage to contract an art to its various principles, or to subordinate the whole science to one part of it). So we will divide the cannon of our art in three parts: First, regarding material or the subject[32]. Second, regarding form or the adject[33]. Third, regarding instrumental and efficient powers: namely, causes, both of the efficient and instrumental varieties.

OF THE SUBJECT

I.

The first subject is an extension of the technology or to order the folds of the imaginative faculty. From species planted in the receptacles which receive the influx from the windows to the soul. Both what is seen and what is heard may be retained and organized at will in all its various distinct parts. What defines the common subject, the common forms, from the common art, which we have deduced from the example of antiquity. The first principles of the Clavis Magna is: imaginary chaos is tractable, so that the cognitive power is able to convert  that which is seen and heard into a reproducible image, from its first to last components, excellently presenting whatever image: a new tree, or an animal, or the population of the world. However, if the chaos is clouded by external winds, there will be a difference between the inner and outer images. A healthy image derives from a happy and  noble subject, as you will be able to judge, using your own good experience. Whosoever uses the methods in the Clavis Magna will be able to elicit a good result, and will overall reach Corinth[34]. Therefore, let us proceed to define the first subject.

II.

Clearly, the first part of the material is the subject, thus regarding the material: if we would produce visualization which is not fleeting, then this depends on the ability of the imagination to compose images which vividly describe the parts of the principle in monstrous, novel, innumerable transformations of the image, to make lengthy lists of these, and to digest them into an internal model of the world. Therefore, in this honorable company, we do not admit material subjects, as in the true art of arts & faculty of faculties.

III.

To preserve the foundation of these ratios consider carefully the relationships between the tiny size of a man and the largeness of his views, between intentions and forgiveness, between the limits of the senses, the past and the future, presentation and actions, the extended parts and the integrated whole, distance and proximity, movement and the capability to act, the beginning and the end, that which is moved and that which moves it.

IIII.

The most common issue is that one can only extend so far as it is possible to comprehend in the folds of the imaginative faculty, regardless of whether it is possible to add something, no matter if something is subtracted. Another common issue is that one sees only the cosmic perspective of the accumulated mass. Another, less common, is a political issue, if you like. Another might be called an economic issue. Another is more properly the four atomic substances, or if it seems more proper, five atomic substances. Another is that which is the property of the gathered atoms, or if not simply atoms, then  types of them. All together, these considerations are excluded from the present art. For God knows the infinite ways to reduce and multiply these together.

V.

These also come in two ways, using the animate and the inanimate. Animation renders the substance of the subjects and adjects brightly and distinctively. This approach requires care in the formation of movement made by the images: with animation it is possible to say things empty and inane. So be careful not to use this method rashly for “Emptiness breeds emptiness” and trust in this art will be in vain, the walls will shout, and the stones give voice.

VI.

Hold in common that which is common to all, less common that which is less in common, hold proper that which is most properly proper, or the most proper. Here you must arrive at a place which is exempt from all forgetting, in which you can perfectly describe and inscribe your images, organize them according to your own best methods and inventions; becoming therefore quick, efficient and confident in your practice. So you have learned at the feet of the Clavis Magna.

VII.

Let all natural, physical or technical forms be used. Let all images, proportions and quantities of forms be used, such that natural memory prescribes both maximum and minimum terms to be used, such that the subject should have a noticeable and unusual form. The standards of the ancients prescribed this as the best of forms: that which are either the most frequented or else the least common.  If you place an object against a background where it cannot be clearly seen, you may not remember it well. Be careful in intrinsic writing as you would be in extrinsic writing: if it is not possible to clearly see the outlines of the subject, or the internal details, or if the contrast is poor, it will be hard to distinguish one from the other when the time comes to read them. In the same way, a confusing symbol will obscure its meaning, a letter placed atop a letter or a seal atop a seal will destroy or at least confound each other. Therefore, consider both what is adjacent to and connected to any form, continuous to it, interposed to it, so that it has its own distinct location, and in this way avoid creating confusion.

VIII.

So, too are the subjects to be taken with definite means, lengths, heights, latitudes and differences of the extremities, so that they have a similar relationship to one another. For every virtue of nature is present firstly external to the eye, and only afterwards internally, not only in how the source of light and the various colors are concerned, and in the contrasts and differences, according to the principles of optics and catoptrics[35] but also the other wonderful visual processes that must be accomplished. If for some reason, the subject does not allow itself to be made in the correct proportions, then attempt to rescue it, either by adding external details or by adding or subtracting those already in the figure; both of these are opportunities. Subtraction: to sculpt a figure of Mercury from stone. Addition: to build a ship from wood. Inscribing, erasing and diverting lines results in a drawn likeness. Tracing lines results in a figure. Alteration turns wine into vinegar. Commingling is one thing to try, separation another. Also, connections. Also, consequences, solutions, results, and the changes of forms which are common to all things subject to change.

IX.

This, too, should not be passed over: the proportionality of the subject as the eyes of the intuition gaze at the thought they regard. For just as in the case of the external senses, which experience a diminished perception when the eyes are sensitive or the too close to their subject (as when a book is held too close or far from the eyes), so in our case, the gaze of internal thoughts regulates the image’s distance from the power of the attentive faculty [the attention] as it shapes and imagines its object. This, too: no less care should be taken by all, lest in believing themselves too much unmindful of the subject, as it were, remembering naturally, they may bring forth a figure which looks as if they had constructed it to be a subject, when in fact it does not exist. It is one thing to be subjective, so to speak, and quite another to write in the dark, or beneath a cloth.

X.

Regarding the arrangement of the subjects: the continuity of their distribution and appropriate separation: my advice is to consider the best interval to place the subjects so they do not become confused. Conversely, they should be placed in a continuous and uniform fashion, without an excessive amount of space, so that, while separated, you will be able to encounter one subject after another, and arrange adjects to mark the subjects. What, after all, prevents us from using our fingers to make new use of this ancient fantasy? Further, do not merely hold the light, rather make from light: so far, I think, you should experiment with these methods, in such a way that they will become accustomed to you, so that they are no different from the most reliable ones. A little care will indeed guarantee this, should you wish.

XI.

The subject of repeated excursions [into the memory palace] only brings benefits, and may be worth as much as the current system. Do you know of someone who, having been accustomed to read, reads longer and faster by considering the individual letters, rather than the words to which they refer? You certainly are accustomed to do things perfectly without thinking about whatever you are used to doing, without focusing on the individual parts and elements to control the design. The expert musician can string and play the harp perfectly without thinking of the harp he plays, but will play unevenly if he spends too much effort thinking about playing. It’s sufficiently clear that even shallow water can cut a channel through marble and steel. But, what more can we say about the manifest? We don’t pass over these words because we don’t understand them, but because of great difficulties in putting them into operation. The rules of antiquity instruct us to place the subjects a reasonable distance from one another, so that even if they are numerous, we can read them handily and legibly as if they were characters inscribed on paper. If you approach this work girded about with ignorance, you will find it quite difficult to get accurate appearances, but with practice, the opposite is true. If you practice this according to the terms of the ancient art daily and regularly, you will see rapid improvement. Within the space of three or perhaps four revolutions of the moon, you’ll get results; within six you should have mastery. Thus have we found a method of committing any subject to memory in a way that will keep it fresh in mind, and make manifest the Clavis Magna. Let others stand this method against the others, and they’ll be able to judge the difference.

XII.

You see just how eminent nature prefers variety. The various parts of the world. The various parts of the species. Variety in the specifics of the individual figures; for not one olive is like another nor is any one person exactly like another. So everything is differentiated by different capabilities, each singular, each separated from all others by the appropriate differences. Try therefore to conform to nature, in all its diversity, in the methods of survival, in magnitude, in form, in figure and in habit, in conditions, in ends, in place and in regard to all possible differences; thereby through action, patience, elaboration, adaptation, subtraction, addition, and all the other methods and descriptions effect change. Changes are said to be both being and unity: indeed, when any one is not, it is not a being; however, we feel the natural differences of each thing that is. That which is uniform and undifferentiated generates revulsion, that which is merely continuous produces no delight, but changing things do so in exactly this way. For no matter how quickly one sticks one’s foot in the stream, it’s impossible to put it in the same river twice.

XIII.

Subjects depend on emotional affect, as emotions impact the active faculty, with some attracting and some repelling, some via their intrinsic nature and some via their context. After some consultation, we can think of how to place a principal subject near additional subjects to produce an emotional impact that does not result from any single one, in which they supplement or enhance one another. For what reason? The more intense is the reaction, the more effectively it can stir the imagination and memory when they are repeated. Hence as spices, salts, hot peppers, and other condiments season the broth, so these with the memory, as we repeat, recapitulate and resume thinking about them: highly diverse images, changes, or perhaps it would be better to say, as appropriate to the times. That works well with those who are most easily disturbed, if they are trying to do something simple; otherwise there is so much confusion, and much trouble as the task becomes more and more involved. How the strength of the emotions in general is developed, and how they are provoked, preserved, and varied was not too openly implied in the book of the Clavis Magna.

ON THE ADJECT

I.

Adjects are defined as a class of subjects sometimes physically, sometimes artistically affixed in the imagination [to a subject], and to signify or express by some clever conceptual apparatus, presentation, effigy, notation, or by pointing to a Scriptural allusion. What is the rule respecting common forms, handed down from antiquity to our own times? True forms, and those derived from the roots of the Clavis Magna, are taken from and explained in terms of cognitive species, or statues, or microcosms, or placed in other architectures, using a legible interior notation, or figures of the ductile chaos of our imagination, which permits all metamorphoses. If this type is not clear, but only apply your judgment [and it will be].

II.

There is chaos in the primordial elements of nature and in the order of numbers, but this series does not exclude the need to understand even the formless forms, it is likewise necessary to understand the truth of number and how the forms are formed. There are, as you can see, many diverse intervals, each with its own share of the common forms, which when created, designate [for example] element A, which shapes, numbers, and elements form a circle and radii. Another is imprinted with the form of Aries the Ram, another Taurus the Bull, and so on with the rest. Another with Aries, when Saturn is returning; another for when Mars is in retrograde; another for all and sundry. And so also in the infinite possibilities of forms and changes, likewise with numbers, likewise elements, likewise also with diverse methods, changing movements and efficient causes. This is how chaos’s form is unformed, so too how all the other forms are formed; so too how the various groups and configurations of forms are formed—but I am getting bored with this proposition. However, that which abides immobile, the subject: the sense in which this is formed and is the subject, should be considered as the male is to the female and therefore as the unformed forms the formed. It would generally be considered more perfect chaos if it consisted of unordered etherogenesis, but this is of no use. It is indeed necessary that the system of memory be ordered by number and elements, by moving through a location, and by all the other methods we can use to support our memories. However there are (you see), an orderly distribution, but not only in radii, not only in circles, but every way that occurs, whether in elements or numbers. The most excellent way to deal with these other things would be through this figure, but they are very small here. These should still be added to after appropriate discussion; not decisively, but rather affirmatively. This only will I say, that if you consider this carefully, and are able to attain the art of such figures, it will provide help to not just your memory, but also confer wonderful powers upon your soul.

III.

First therefore, regarding the notation of the adject, there should be a balance between excess and diminution, intention and remission, past and future, distance and proximity, relative to the size of man, on average, as it depends on intuition and time of presence in one’s memory.

IV.

Of these other things, some are living beings, and can be run together as if they were organs, efficients, adjuncts or works; others are inanimate, and as this kind run together like organs which are instruments, adjuncts, and works only. However, some are animate participles of reason, and this applies to all actions and passions, and  not beliefs only. One reason is that they lack (as it is quite clear) words which are wholly and sufficiently convenient for them.

V.

Of these, some are natural, some artificial, some come from the outer senses into the internal. Some are generated by the senses themselves, but all come from the species of Forms, Simulacra, Images, Figures, Examples, Characters and Signs; this follows the distinctions among forms indicated and considered in the Clavis Magna.

VI.

As to size, it follows that: adjects should be in proportion to their subjects, as it is in fact in the real world. Otherwise, our imagination would lose its sight, and these would become difficult to see or disagreeable. Locating a small piece of writing in a large page requires additional patience. Mass alone does not give a tree its distinctive shape. Some may prefer the work of certain accomplished artists, where some small, detailed objects are present, but always in connection with others of similar scale. So, add arrows to Sagittarius, a pen to a scribe, a needle to a tailor. Such are the connections, relations, antecedents and consequences of these that they make the invisible visible and intelligible to all, and even difficult things easy to think.

VII.

As to quality, it follows that: [the images] are illustrious; they are the things of imagination and thought; they are those things to make the heart pound, having the power of something wondrous, frightening, pleasant, sad; a friend, an enemy, horrible, abominable, admirable, prodigious; things hoped for or which we are suspicious of, and all things that encroach powerfully on the inner emotions—bring these to bear. Therefore, beware straying from the path we have taught, for adjects of the species of Signs, Insignia, Characters, and Seals, which we have enumerated, depend on implanting these images, however modified in figure and quantity, in the inner senses. As we have considered in the Clavis Magna, it is the power of the senses and imagination, and not only the cognitive faculty, that are able to make the imprint on memory.

VIII.

As to the relationship between the adject and subject, one should not be applied so to the other, as it were, by chance; rather comprehensibly and integrated, wearing the appropriate clothing, dedicated to providing protection, and so properly connected, that nothing would prevent them from holding together in a hurricane. Let all the parties be related according to one another, to one another, whether through purpose or belonging, through disorder or order, resistance or consistency or universality, let all be designed so that each concept links to another concept. Why add an adject cut off from any conception of its subject? Likewise, use meaningful backgrounds, as carved stone elements cannot be fashioned by the winds, nor be confused by images formed of shifting sands.

IX.

How the adject conducts itself, with the subject and in relation to the subject, and how it is acted upon by the subject, or on the subject. Some say action or passion are so vivified that any movement may stun the internal vision, or excite arousal. Travel, change, exposure, mixing, discharging, collecting, ascending, descending, obviation, decline, refusal, abandonment. Things approached, driven toward, driven away, excluded, turned away, circumnavigated, curbed, vexed, rejected, bent, depreciated, demolished, destroyed, uplifted, elevated, extirpated, distended, scraped, washed, removed, evacuated, derived. For all of these things, it is not enough to have a fixed connected image, rather, for these, let them be fixed in motion, and their ability to persevere be situated. Therefore lest we give up hope to establish them, because their continuous motions lack for stability [let us set up moving images in still locations], as the fortunate poet calls inconstancy constancy. But observe carefully the variety, number, speed and slowness or their lack: these are conditions relating to the quality of exaggeration.

X.

Howsoever the subject changes, the adject changes in uniformity with it. As to value, it is in harmony with the nature of the variation mentioned above, as one selects. Hence, it is said:

In nature, variation is beauty.[36]

Therefore, it is possible to add the same adject to different subjects, if they are separated, and reused after the insertion of a number of distinct, different actions, implications, and in different relationships.

XI.

It should be that an adject kept with a common subject (because it fits with, or connects to the subject, or has the distinction of belonging to the subject) do not include those things that belong to others, but only to all in the continuity, connection, constipation and which avoid mixing. Likewise for various backgrounds, willingly exchanged actions committed, movements such as the hands engage in, and other pieces of business which help your recall.

ON THE ORGAN[37]

I.

For the rest of the organ, in the present case we determine that the soul is clothed in not-nothing. It is not sufficient to the agent, that we have induced forms, and provided rules for the creation of subjects, but we must also find opportunities to go where the business takes us. So that the subject serves as a vehicle for the agent, the herald of the essence, and the method of its contraction.

II.

New combinations make for remembrance and memory. Intention precedes all the external senses, as well as the internal situation, from the fact that the act comes from the object. This arouses the imagination, directly or indirectly, and influences the senses. Investigate the passive movement of the imagination. Investigate the active movement of the imagination. Search the imagination for the correct image. Image, as the power of the specific thing. The intention of the image is that which drives memorization to the exclusion of all other things. The presentation of the image is that which presides. The decision which is made is the intention of the image.

III.

Meanwhile, all that attention, or discernment (achievement which investigates and discerns the thought), that natural instrument, which can be given its common name, seeing as it has until now been considered to have no name until we gave it one. The reason for this name, which finds consideration in the hidden, since formation of reminiscence and memory comes from the roots, hidden deep in blind darkness. Therefore, this instrument is the faculty of thought. We take our measuring staff in hand (by which we are able to begin training our faculties) stand bold, and disperse, destroy and scatter lies. We are as a chestnut, which communicates with all the other chestnuts.

IV.

And this instrument is known from its action. For since it is known to have two abilities, visualization and remembrance: and while some would (as they say) call them one thing, we distinguish between the two, though both come from the imagination, most likely, in my opinion. For its power lies in the confines of the preservation of memory and imagination, and is coterminous with them. Though this is distinct from the recollection of the imagination, since sometimes one has imagination without form, including any imaginable form, or even sometimes divested of the idea of form. Hence it comes about that we are unable to hold many things at the same time; we cannot imagine many things simultaneously. In those cases, therefore, this is what drives the instrument, to use Discretion, Determination, Ordination, or (if we choose to speak more judiciously) is that by which it becomes Discretion, Determination, Ordination. So, from the perspective of our present thought, we have selected one from the many; I imagined one image of many holding forth a proposition: the imagination should be thought of as a painter depicting something on a wall; the picture retains the memory of his intention, so that the organ bears his application, or rather the result of his information, through the application of this and that; and if connected to one another, as with the links of a chain, and so forth. Therefore, as a guide to our own nature, unless the chain comes together naturally, organizes nearby objects using emblematic techniques; so that if the accounts do not properly connect, where it was just one thing after another, or if there is no internal organization or organization by reason, by merely an accident of position, it is useful to pursue organization through emblems. Behold, through attention, unity functions (so much have I said it that one of my editors removed it) to organize and capture everything in order. Even if you had one hundred sheep, and various characteristics of the numbers, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and so on: very soon, they become crowded, confused, or meet some other obstacle; instead, the shepherd’s staff turns the sheep, attracts them, brings order to each of those that were driven off. So, using determination, he chooses one after another through attention. Here is a place for considering the analogy, as far as the memory of the common order of the numbers, applied to the sheep, even if we haven’t yet been able to; so we can easily find the kind of art, heard or seen, using the number of orders, the mental order, and then knowing the number becomes easy once we have remembered even a single time. The forms of the numbers are within all of us, with a little stretching. And this theory, in the Clavis Magna, regarding the semimathematical numbers. I believe that we have demonstrated enough for the talented among you to figure out the rest, and perhaps more than enough for those with particularly clear glasses. For it is enough for us to be consulted (and my thanks to them) by those who are grateful, but not to all.

V.

Therefore there is an examinable number, which affects only the thought specifically preserved, through its faculty removing borders, disaggregating, gathering, applying, changing , forming, ordering, selecting and referring to Unity. It is said indeed, that nothing can be conveniently said of such a number. Moreover, for such a number, let there be nothing there other than memorization which can have it, nor can it be defined sight unseen, in accordance with the principle that things should not run together (places, for instance, avoid this effect, as places hide the numbers they contain), on account of the differences between the two, (one of which contracts to its neighbor, the other contracts the best way possible). Is it not said by a number of people that the difference in the numbers say it all—how many sheep look for the answer?  How many sheep are there? How many sheep are here? And therefore it is said, in different ways depending on who says it. By whom, at the same time for example, we take the second and the third after the first, both by way of the first, or through the occurrence of the second and the third, or the difference of the second and the third, but not for the first. For there is a way of speaking practically, not philosophically, which speaks rather to the nature of things as they are used. This happens in two useful ways: in the first place determined by habits, as in the case of those who remember by virtue of their intelligence, reason, and ingenuity; for they know that when one occurs, it is always followed by this and that, and so on as reason allows, so that they soon become famous for their skillful memory. The second way is this: to use a more complete (if not absolute) system of memory, such as we have here, where even the least understood terms can be recalled, just as Charontis said of Merlin,

There are many ruined fragments in this field

And so, even if we are unable to make distinction among the many parts, through normal cogitation or exercise of mental virtue, we can remember even that which cannot be distinguished one from another. Since, then, this memory is not related to the application of reception and retention (as we have said and proved in our demonstration of the Clavis Magna, using the imagination in a general way, nor, as we have said, does this result from utilizing what is called common sense), nor of those things which are according to common knowledge, but according to the particularities of the senses and its own predicates. There can be no doubt that [this art] is cogitative, since it arises out of the thought processes of the cognitive faculties, which cannot themselves be grasped cognitively. What then is that interior power which conveys from the ear to the voice, as the voices we only hear when they intrude on our memory? In any case, if it is thought (since we do not always choose to remember one thought, when another of equal power intrudes on it), thought is not naked, but armed with examination, which enables it to not only feel the hand of that which touches it, as it were, but also to stretch out its hand, and touch those things it would within the store of memory. It is evident that this instrument necessarily opens the path to finding the secret of many things otherwise closed.

VI.

We examine a group of five separate specifics: Applications, Formations, Transformations, Meetings and Orderings, which are, of course, only a few of the things that can be done with Numbers. For, just as all who see and hear are not always able to tell you how they see and hear, or what they’re seeing or hearing, nor how the various things add up to a full design or unified pattern. They still know what things look or sound like. Numbers operate through universal reasoning and combination, as produced by the soul, but not merely in an additive way through the power of proximity, the faculties & organs, neither merely through that which is in front of us, as we might desire. Those more familiar with the methods of the Arabs or versed in the disciplines of the Peripatetics, such as we touched on before, will have more success. If we do all these things, turning our notice to each strategy, even if difficult to communicate, being cautious of novel techniques which have few precursors in the sayings of the philosophers, beloved of those who believe in novelty and new inventions, we will avoid the mistake of those who damage the forest goods. Pay attention also to the business of the practice, not simply at a glance, and you’ll observe most likely that what you’re looking at makes sense.

VII.

It should be noted that this application is analogous to the correspondence between external bodies and images of those bodies constructed by the imagination. Imagination around particular images: this understanding of the purpose of images disadvantages the incorporeal[38]. From this analogy, it follows (as shown elsewhere), art attracts the external sense, it attracts and binds it, allures it, and irrevocably wins. Why else is Zeus depicted surrounded by birds? Why is Venus sculpted by Praxiteles with scant modesty for her lovers?  For artists, a figure is made based on its subject matter so that it is intensely and exquisitely depicted, invested with its chief characteristics rather than just an appearance. However, (as mentioned above) although this is a universal principle common to all, it is not uniformly distributed. It is sufficiently plain that this is in all things which fittingly and instantly resound within the soul (as the body does).

VIII.

The Divine Soul receives Ideas more clearly, more intensely exposed, from the objects and Forms it sees with its keener sight, and can more easily discern a pattern within the bodies of the Forms, regarded as nothing more than the Ideas of the Divine, as they reach into the internal senses of men. How better should they be called, if not the religious ideas of the shadow, such is their distance from the reality of nature, e.g., as natural metaphysics is distinct from the truth? Of those species which are directly accessible to the intellect, rather than believing in the light which drives us into the meaning, which provides the meaning of physical forms from their external appearance. From one part of the experience, however, this extends one way, from the other, the other. Therefore, it is better to think each way without opposition to embrace what we have showed you how to do elsewhere. You will therefore be able to do this on your own if you’ve absorbed the general philosophy of these things. What exception can there be in your eyes, which can be accomplished given the powers provided by this knowledge? What appeals less to the eyes than to shut them? What else than closing one’s eyes in the shadow of death (as they say) which surrounds us? Might there not be a universal truth available to anyone in the crowd, unless we shut our eyes like the dead?

IX.

For true formation in this method that follows, one should first note how the full force is distributed in a particular situation. Potential apprehends that with which it has common material, and nothing stands by itself without wellspring or outflow. No element by itself has odor or flavor or heat, rather it is when the different elements are brought together in varying levels that odors, flavors and heat are brought forth. Likewise, as fire lights other bodies which reflect it to greater or lesser degree in a variety of different ways. This is despite the fact that the object does not have the fire in itself, nor does the fire have the other object in itself, rather both together have this power through this method. Now, you have by similitude and a formation of your intellect, a method to improve your memory in ways better than any previous method. And the efficacy of this advice is based on attention.

X.

There are those that want forms to be simply reduced to the powers of imagination and common sense, with much corporality and of (as is said) limited spirituality. But true form is difficult to reduce, being of much spirituality and limited corporality. It is advisable to delay much corporality while common sense distinguishes the spiritual; from whence the fixed form comes, and how it came to have a particular shell. Fixed objects inflict a reciprocally slowed motion on a man whose soul fixes past objects; better to have remembrance, which has a deftness of explanation, a dreamlike grasp of the ideas and words. There are designs for various forms of memory—some fast, some slow, some tempestuous, some calm—sometimes shaped like Martini’s horse[39], sometimes like a Georgic horse[40], as they say, as feels appropriate to their own gravity. For whatever they may feel, corporality is not just corporality, as is properly said, nor the body just the body, nay, it is universally asserted that a body does not act upon itself, nor the lesser upon the greater, the least on the greatest, for all action derives from the quality, from the most spiritual, from the incorporeal and the greatest. This would mean that even the words of noble men cannot always avoid being inappropriate, and if you would like them to apologize for not doing more to explain the physical body, it’s as if you wanted to avoid vehicular accidents by ordering everyone to remain still. Such excuses cannot arrest or detain them, you can’t prevent the words being spoken despite the feeling in your stomach. I leave aside those that are more primitive and more morose, more pitiful and rather crude. It doesn’t matter that we experience in the study of a living thing much more than we remember. Consider, some things that glide smoothly through our consideration are more easily and fully retained, but others that we have considered eagerly and long are barely retained. Not in delay, therefore, rests the power of corporality, to the contrary in all things pertaining to the body. Rather, it is not delay which fixes things [in memory] but beautiful activity, though it seems that the form may not be suitable for a child, or to act quickly, or may not come immediately, so that the action is performed by lingering. But when it is in its most spiritual form, it is active. Hence, fire is the most active of elements, because it is the most spiritual of them, with the most potential, most convertible, which alone was given the ability to grow to infinity. Even if one accomplishes much, it is not because he is more and greater in body, but because of the qualities contained in that large frame. Such qualities (as some Platonists noted), were he reduced to half his size, would be twice as powerful as before, despite the constraint. So, if in even smaller quantity, then more powerful than in the larger; if in the indivisible, infinitely more  powerful. From this can be understood, therefore, how the philosophers have spoken without understanding.

XI.

Hence, it is also evident how the ignorance (which in fact, is not without advantage to those matters we are discussing at present) of the horse acts to bring forth some of the physician’s saying: “Not Quality, but Quantity.” This is introduced with the intention to introduce the opposite argument. For it may be that the quality of so great a power is not so great that it is not less than the quantity and quality of the many things which exist still in larger quantity. The activity we refer to, however, ought never to be a large amount; the whole of it should pertain to the subject matter, its nature, its extension should be well ordered (as is information), contained, of quality, and beautiful. One would be of iron certainty, as it were, to abandon their apothecary because they receive a price according to the quantity, which is in the weights, numbers and measures, no matter what the quality of the simple, confection or drug was, as was certainly the well known case in our country. Quality, not Quantity. Depicting a pig is not like reporting on a horse, as it is not required to talk of well made eyes, small ears, the cast of the neck, the width of the breast, the menacing brow, the aligned mouth, the limberness of the legs, and other things of that kind, but only if it is relatively long and fat. By no less a correlation, however, can we refer to a pig as we referred to that which was in the apothecary’s shop. Quality, not Quantity: being a loving mother, he endowed her with daughters and a son.

XII.

Modification and Unification happen simultaneously, although they are two separate acts. Modification is made for Unification, Unification makes Modification. By their reason, we begin: Heraclitus said, if all beings were made of smoke, we could distinguish them by the smell. Let’s say that again in grosser form: If chickens could outrun all but hungry foxes, then all foxes would be hungry. Out of all the things one has power to change in one’s own way, one is man’s imagination: as all the powerful eat what they will, so too is human thought a matter of taste. This kind of conversation can reach (but not act without thinking) on imagination, for everything cannot be rendered without actually using imaginative acts of thought. But you will say that we need to convert all or a specific part of that which we imagine, or more, and if you convert a single part, it won’t be remembered by many, but on the other hand, unless everything turned into a sheep, except for the wolf, the wolf won’t eat just anything edible. If change and reformation into several species: either finite or an infinitude of finite things; determinate and known, determinate [yet not known], indeterminate. But it is foolish to try for infinity. Know therefore, it should be made so that the change is not substantially different, nothing is destroyed, and everything is changed so that singly or as one, they advance reasonably in the memory, so that the wolf devours them as one, rather than if all the items have their own accident.

As to that vowel in the center if it is innumerable, and it is possible that the imaginary elements [around the circle] are related (not removed, so that each retains its individual diversity), then it is possible that they can approach a unified sound, or even act like the application of vocal harmonies, with each essentially different from the others, and thereby able to penetrate more fully. So one spirit set forth the several different instruments which produce different voices, each on their own account. Why then, do not be disposed to despair, but rather as it were gird to yourself some of the countless possible imaginative and cogitative powers available in the current situation, visualize the universe as it is in this book, and so memorize this in your soul. This is what we leave to your skill, O you clever ones. Let’s look at the method of discovery the god Pan Arcadia used to tie wild reeds together: this is what is done with these various characters, it’s not as easily done to get agreement among them as it was to get the one mass of matched hemlock stalks to achieve union, but it’s convenient to have one.

XIII.

With regard to organization, the common (although the matter is a little less, and related) propositions depend on how you consider those things we have better used through elaboration elsewhere. Principally, it is remembrance; this motion and the motion that succeeds or accompanies this motion, whether it be local spatially or temporally; or rational, whether natural or artificial, or howsoever otherwise positively associated, one after another in succession. And in this way, we proceed from the memory of snow to the memory of winter, hence that which has cold weather. From here to reaction: to what causes the feeling of heat in the belly, and then to the power of digestion. From this to the appetite, and to long life through nourishment, strength and exercise, and so on. In all cases, similarly. If on the other hand, anything is lacking, refer back to the order, so that one thing depends on another, or based on it: indeed, this should always make sense. Were not the philosophers said to have taken all action from their sensible reasoning of the proper nature of things? Those things that are outside the margins of nature are not known. In the same way, if you ask, what is order? He’ll say, something which is in the way of nature. What is the lack of order? That which departs from the way of nature. These are the things of the organ, as we wish it to be spoken of, pertaining to the organ of attention, which, if one contemplates more attentively there is nothing which hinders one from proceeding further. For any obstacle removed from the path follows as a consequence of the journey. Certainly, we might be unable to do this if theory had not been sufficiently placed before them and titled thusly, so that they would be able to accomplish these things through practice.

THIRD PART

I.

We come now to the part where we convey the operation of the method. As a preface, we will begin with the simple elements of notation and continue to the entire complex, giving each mature consideration.

First therefore, in the same way that inscribing characters in books teaches reverence to the eyes, imagining the design of the subjects leads the memory in a powerful and efficacious way which our discussions have covered. Let us take a common subject and the parts of it distributed into the first location selected by the operator, which ought to succeed one another according to the rules laid out above. From here we proceed to the subdivisions of these parts, how they are related to one another, and how they are seen to follow one another in place of true contiguity, how they may be positively described, which particulars are most proper to particular subjects, which should be multiplied according to the breadth of the subjects as appropriate, and the advantages of meeting places.

II.

Once the memory is present and ready to arrange, catalog the different things of sense, first twenty five, then fifty, then a hundred, so that you will get the desired result through gradually increased exercise and training, with the very best results being seen when the order is suggested by natural memory. Good subjects when distributed and applied, will occur to you as clearly as if written on a page, so that you can go from last to first with the same facility as from first to last. Likewise, you should choose how to place it and how to invert it to compare your particular sensitivity.

III.

Accordingly, the subjects seemed to be effective with regard to the adjects if in theory they do not depend on a brittle foundation of natural memory. For there are two kinds of memory [natural and artificial], and these terms are simply an admission of necessity, but in one sort it is in fact believed that particular functions favor particular uses, while some others cause more serious difficulty if you are not accustomed to them. Or, again, because there is no convenient image on hand that fits the current circumstances, as for example with one’s own name, or if we lack a ready concept for the garden, trees, minerals, seeds, and other things of that kind. Finally, the opportunity often presents itself for the enlargement of words [through images], which we have the least notion of.

IV.

Elsewhere, we will explain the kinds of things that themselves bear addition. For through talent, you have an open path from what we’ve said before, and these are also the best leader and teacher of the intrinsic and extrinsic nature that has innate character of reason and ever-illuminated objects.

V.

Many terms have been added along the way, and you will be able to meet so many through the activity which provided you with skills in the Clavis Magna (for that is the source of all these inventions), a commodious number of which have been explained as seen in various places. This is the only way since ancient times to ours to be sure, but because it requires a very difficult exercise not everyone is sure to secure every question.

VI.

Glance therefore, reading with extended breadth and compressed length: for the eye and imagination become scattered and distracted, causing greater trouble than one would expect, given the practice and duration of the art. For what? An individual subject and a single adject (as in most cases) could record an element, since there are countless different combinations and compositions. On which subject, we should translate from the Greeks to the Latins who first made this art apparent: she who laughs at those images the Greeks were willing to write down, and thus prepare themselves, that she had better have an opportune amount of time to study, because she saw that words of an infinite multitude exist, and therefore that it is ridiculous to want to pursue after them. And yet, it has been discovered that we can not only able, but easily able to manufacture images, within borders of any kind whatsoever, in each and all places, in several ways, as described in a number of treatises and in the diverse manifest intentions set in order. In the present, however, the method which follows is proposed.

The First Practice Expressed:

Of the Fixed Wheel

I.

To prepare for a regular exercise, the first element is an easy concept: I mean those elements for which an adject is readily explainable, which are best suited to receive (or not) all productive activities or properties.

II.

As you know, the thirty elements [on our wheel] which we have chosen correspond to the thirty letters which comprise three different languages, with some differences in pronunciation, for which it is necessary to establish three elements: for A is very much equivalent to alpha and aleph, and B to beta and beth. Similarly, there are many others. But where there are additional elements from Greek (omega, theta, psi) and also Hebrew letters, they are properly written in addition. And so a simple set of elements serves three languages, as well as those which descend from them.

III.

Thirty letters, then, provide readiness beyond any reasonable extension generated by your imagination, so that you or anyone else will respond to your goal for individual elements to order, regress, progress and scramble, or any similar purpose.

IV.

How much effort must be spent to develop each of the activities appropriate to each proceeding, all sensible to the eye and not requiring a movement of the body to continue [I will leave up to you]. You may find it more convenient as you get settled to allow us to propose actions for each type of agent[41]:

AA

Lycaon at a feast

BB

Deucalion throwing stones

CC

Apollo in divining

DD

Argus with a cow

EE

Arcas with Callisto [as a bear]

FF

Cadmus, sowing [dragon’s] teeth

GG

Semele in childbirth

HH

Echo with Narcissus

II

Tyrrhenean sailor with young Bacchus

KK

Pyramus and Ensethe

LL

Mineis at weaving

MM

Perseus with Medusa’s head

NN

Atlas in heaven

OO

Pluto with Proserpine

PP

Cyane in the pool

QQ

Arachne in her web

RR

Neptune on a horse

SS

Pallas among the olive trees

TT

Jason on a bull

VV

Medea with Jason’s cauldron

XX

Theseus and Sciron

YY

Nis’s children in their father’s hair

ZZ

Daedalus in his constructed wings

ΨΨ

Hercules and Antaeus

ΦΦ

Orpheus and his lyre

ΩΩ

Ciconians in the Orpheum

ΘΘ

Issac on the precipice

צצ

Memnon in the tomb

עע

Arion on dolphins

שש

Glaucus among herbs

It is not necessarily required that the first letter of the name of the agent or action correspond to the expression one is trying to signify: it is sufficient for there to be a predetermined significance ascribed to both of them.

Rotate the second wheel within the first, immobile wheel; the external representing people, the interior denoting appropriate actions.

V.

These are easily extended to further developed activity. If it please you, to a person and their actions, add an attribute or instrument which can be part of the action or at least compatible with the emblem as a whole. For the reason that the Ideas are permanently fixed to these wheels although additions to the Ideas can be applied to them. (This appears further in the book.) Therefore, Lycaeon’s chains, Deucalion’s headband, Apollo’s belt, Argus’s head, Arcas’s bag, Cadmus’s plow, Semele’s throne, and such things as may be peculiar to each, which may be important to include with each. Combined with the journey system of the last practice, this initial practice is preferred.

Rotate the third wheel between two immobile ones so that the humans, places, attributes, are constant wherever they are placed, and can be arranged howsoever you wish. Wheels fixed in the sight of the eye of the mind are of this kind.

On the external wheel are people, with appropriate actions on the middle one. The interior has insignia or attributes as follows:

A Lycaon

A Feasting

A in his chains

B Deucalion

B ploughing stones

B wearing his headband

C Apollo

C with the Pythoness

C wearing his belt

D Argus

D herding the cows

D beheaded

E Arcas

E with Callisto

E and his bag

And so on, as you would create and order them according to your judgment. But should it happen that the third component, the instrument you’ve added (which can be less advantageous than if you’d used something that can be appropriated for the action or at least not suffering from attachment) for the benefit of exaggeration, or for someone’s imagination, or to connect emblems, whether the operation on the emblems creates, helps, rejects, everts, exempts, extracts, evacuates, collapses, falls upon, or otherwise operates appropriately on the work. Sometimes, even incompatible symbols can be appropriate, if they can be related and applied without any difficulty.

VI.

I purposely decided to entrust to your skill to find appropriate activities and instruments, or decorations, such that for each specific determinative, famous people and famous emblems are used, and (everyone draw pleasure) when the people, works and instruments stir up the emotions. In the above examples, they open the doors of memory, they are powerful, open emblems, but no two are the same, nor do they emanate from the same source at all.

I.

On the motion of the wheels

Consistent, therefore with respect to most prefigured wheels, like the practice where one holds these in the hand, the main structure consists of two elements which you select. At first, we have a figure consisting of two fixed wheels. Then, the outer wheel remains fixed, and the inner rotates. This old habit, of looking to the fixed wheel with a fixed gaze has an actual practical reason, resulting in an increase as we return back over here.

II.

On the motion of the inner wheel of the first figure for each combination of the two elements of the presentation

I will seek a proper operation, rendered in the course of a longer communication. And therefore whatever requirements need to be adapted to establish the composition. Lycaon paired with a feast gave you AA, where the inner wheel matches the outer wheels; likewise Deucalion with stones BB. Turning a wheel so they are no longer twinned still gives you a pair of elements: turning the inner wheel to position B against the higher wheel, you will no longer pair the feast with Lycaon, but now Lycaon turning to stone. Deucalion breathing in Python’s fumes, Apollo tending a cow, and so on, each with its immediate action, succeeded by other elements. What does the combination of PA refer to? Setting the wheel inward to P gives you Plato at a feast. Setting a combination of RE? Setting E inward against R presents you with Neptune running Calyston through. Similarly, the combination of SI produces Pearls and Pallas. VO Medea seizing Proserpine. Therefore you have a way to present to your senses a combination of the two elements.

III.

The internal motion of the wheels of the second figure and composition of each of the three elements of the presentation

Also in the second figure, the two rotating internal wheels are able to present and combination of any of the three elements without encumbrance or effort, so that where the three fixed wheels present: Lycaon at the feast in chains AAA. Now Lycaon with Medusa striking with the instrument of Pluto gives us AMO. Arcos with the action of Semele and instrument of Pluto presents EGO. Medea with the act of the Tyrhennians and the implement of Perseus gives us VIM. And so on in the many ways of varying elements within the medium, so that the elements of each of the outer wheels can produce all imaginable combinations at will.

IV.

The method of composition of four elements of the presentation

But if it so happens that another needs to be added for a combination of four elements, it is unnecessary to put in a fourth wheel, in all but a few instances, to combine another element in the last place, as for example, S in the fourth place in MENS, and T in the combination DANT. To indicate the presence of this element for the fourth cycle, it is sufficient for some particular accident or assistant with some relation to the pictured subject or adject or as another indication.

V.

Of another coordinated manner of composing and presenting the three other elements

There is also another way to add the third element, namely, as L, R and N mediate between the existing elements of the composite TRVNCUS. In the second compound INCRASSATVS. In the third part of the composite PERMAGNAVS. And they denote the other elements through their place and presence, being regarded sometimes by sensible things or accidents in a subject, or with the subject or to the subject it addresses. To me, that suggests it would be reasonable to use an additional figure, sitting in the third case, lying down in the second or standing in the first. But if the other elements present themselves [with three or more consonants in series], as hardly ever happens [in the language of] the Latins, Greeks, Hebrews, Chaldeans, Persians, Italians, Arabs and Spaniards, yet it can happen that you see the light of day in which there is a case of triple designations and other arrangements.

As regards to the French (or the Germans, Scythians, Goths and others of that kind), nor of rustic language, I do not know the usage of their customs, which would allow certain elements. It is not a trial to do so: just add them to complete the writing as needed. Hence there is no lack of ability for those who would seriously attempt them, as opposed to those who claim it’s an apparent injury.

VI.

The composition of each of the five elements of the presentation

For the composition of five elements, there is no new method, but that which is already offered for us to employ or associate (as I will speak plainly): there are two ways this can occur, which occur at the same time, being the additional leading S and T in the fourth element and the intermediate L, R and N, in the combination PLEBS in the first combination TRANSACTVM and the last combination in STVPRANS.

VII.

The composition of the many elements

If instead of one or two particulars, what need is there for us to get excited if they are made up of many elements? Thus, over the minimum condition, a party of four or five representing the composition can be conveniently introduced. Such, however, works whether they are known to many, or if this one is SCROBS, or that one word he can make a composite of is SCROPS, properly voiced.

VIII.

Of the V after the Q

I do not want to pass over in silence the observation that in the interior of the written word (although not necessarily for this purpose, but only to fit some useful things), that V should be put in after Q in the case of numbers; it never used to be used otherwise. So only in one case would QV be an element. In such cases, write, QVINTE, QVINTE, QVADRVM, V QVATIS? But in cases where it was necessary, would one not be required to write QARE QINTE QATIS QADRUM QINTUM? And so therefore those with a looser sense of integrity, but who are more accustomed to writing in their own language without prejudice in their own country performed a better job.

IX.

To amplify the internal subjects and easily increase the number of adjects that can be reproduced

After adding a few adjects readily, and with a bit more effort expanded the number of subjects, there is nothing to restrict the general increase of the subjects through multiplication. Considering this, I say firmly, add things slowly to keep all of them connected and probing for any defects that result in the course of training as we have indicated: compare them to the other images.

From the multiplication of adjects from three times two to the considerable faculty for realizing the principle whereby you can turn it to larger affairs: by converting it into a ratio proportional to other information.

You have already the thirty extremely vivid adjects which can already serve you in your writing. Now, (if need be) it may help immensely to expand the number of links, multiplying into countless expressions, even if it’s a bit inconvenient, which have the same form and the same number of adjects to your store, so that the smallest detail of the external document can be added to the internal. It is quite obvious how to practice this exercise. How so? As you now have a single Lycaon, Deucalion, and so on, now create two of each for yourself, so that where Lycaon, Deucalion and so on were thirty, you now have sixty. If in triplicate, ninety, if fourfold, a hundred and twenty. All of which are the best images, pulsing with the imagined root names you’ve gathered. For that which has its proper name cannot otherwise be stopped. Maintain the constant name for the symbol Deucalion, Philotheus as you throw stones, so that each one is credited once. How famous is this best invention, that by its use and application, we are able to see beneath the surface.

The Second Practice, which is in the simplest terms, how to make a combination of any number of combinations of elements in a presentation.

I.

Exercise will quickly develop the first practice to the point where you can assign that initial combination of elements for a complete explanation of terms, given the combination of combinations, so that whatever the number of subjects, you attach the perfect adject (as terms or simple incomplexities are called) to the number taken.

II.

Certainly, this makes sense: As to the number of thirty elements, you set up thirty actions, insignia, circumstances and attributes. So now in order to dispose of a hundred and fifty, we would set up elements with five components, through deduction. Therefore, as we have taught with the elements, so teach with regard to the combinations.

III.

By what we have said with regard to the enlargement of the graphics, produce the most famous names to the extent that is needed in the art; a variety of the most useful and celebrated names will be added in their centuries, under the shadow of the wing of the thirty of the previous standard. Now for a large operation, each of the proposed standards with five elements and five subcomponents should be accompanied by another five subsidiary names under each banner.

IV.

You should know that it is better if those under each standard are related, so that each of them will find a suitable seat, mustered among those of similar quality. The banners of the military do this, so they can muster more than one or two satisfactory soldiers from one area. For equality is not simply in equal numbers, but also in action.

V.

You will arrange for yourself a hundred and fifty names, whether by proper name, or by type of action, or personal feelings, according to an order in which each is ordered and organized in fives. As a result, the regulation of these or other (if you require more) subsisting parties and arts (to adhere the different arts and activities), whether the names of acquaintances or any other way that follows the order of the sequence, or in any way that may be more convenient for you [for example]: from those most attached to you to those distant in succession, thus reducing uncertainty in the series; in relation to the same or other circumstances, the same or other insignia, and by the assistance each receives.

VI.

Therefore, this image, like the image of three wheels, is made up of five fixed wheels, each of which consists of combinations of two elements of the hundred and fifty[42]. The exterior and the means of solving problems, giving the names. Second, the actions. Third, the insignia. Fourth, the assistants[43]. Fifth, the circumstances. They should be used this way, after the universal character, unless this fails somehow to serve.

Since it is difficult to make the likeness of five wheels within a small area, each of which has the likeness of the others, we have therefore not enlarged this, but limited it. As a result, we have drawn this with the thirty principal standards on the circumference, with their subordinated individuals in series toward the middle.[44]

AA

Rhegima

Discovered the chestnut tree

1

AE

Osiris

Invented agriculture

2

AI

Ceres

Yoked oxen

3

AO

Triptolemus

Planted

4

AU

Pitumnus

Fertilized

5

BA

Erichtonius

In his chariot

6

BE

Glaucus

Forged iron

7

BI

Thraces

Created the sickle

8

BO

Misa

Used salt to season

9

BU

Pyrodes

Struck fire from flint

10

CA

Hasamon

Transplanted

11

CE

Phega

Grafted plants

12

CI

Belhaiot

Used donkeys to carry

13

CO

Pilumnus

Ground corn

14

CU

Oresteus

Oversaw vines

15

DA

Noah

Organized the vineyard

16

DE

Liber

Made wine from barley

17

DI

Stphylus

Diluted wine

18

DO

Isis

Gardened in rows

19

DU

Minerva

And the olive tree

20

EA

Aristeus

The industry of honey

21

EE

Nembrot

First hunted

22

EI

Phalla

Wove the net

23

EO

Gebur

Set the snares

24

EU

Ramessus

Baited the hook

25

FA

Regomer

Built the ladder

26

FE

Sargum

Caught sea-fish in a basket

27

FI

Danaus

Dug the well

28

FO

Doxius

Built with mud

29

FU

Jobal

Built with wood

30

GA

Husbal

Built the lime kiln

31

GE

Ciclops

Built the tower [or chimney]

32

GI

Theodorus

Built the bed [or anvil, foundation, ring]

33

GO

Perdix

Made the compass

34

GU

Talus

Made the saw

35

HA

Theodotus

Made the gimlet (awl)

36

HE

Parug

Made the hammer

37

HI

Semeol

Made weapons for battle

38

HO

S[p]eussipus

Created jars

39

HU

Luscinius

Hewed wood

40

GA

Choraebus

Threw pottery

41

GE

Barcham

Spun wool

42

GI

Closter

Made threads

43

GO

Arachgne

Wove

44

GU

Boethius

Sewed clothes

45

HA

Phrygio

Carded

46

HE

Caathar

Cobbled shoes

47

HI

Procon

Made glass from plants

48

HO

Lycarnassus

Made tongs

49

HU

Chares

Made the gauntlet/gloves

50

IA

Abas

Barbered the head

51

IE

Stram

Used the razor

52

II

Crates

Wore gold cloth

53

IO

Arphalus

Wrought in gold

54

IU

Dubitrides

Fashioned flagons

55

KA

Hermahel

Made drapery

56

KE

Ramesses

Created carpets

57

KI

Minos

The first sailor

58

KO

Daedalus

Designed the mast

59

KU

Glycera

Fashioned the crown

60

LA

Emor

danced

61

LE

Anacharsis

Put together the bellows

62

LI

Delos

Melted ore

63

LO

Lydus

Stamped coins

64

LU

Apis

The first doctor

65

MA

Chiron

The first surgeon

66

ME

Circe

Fascinator/ Beguiler

67

MI

Pharphacon

Necromancer

68

MO

Aignam

Drew magic circles

69

MU

Hostanes

Provoked the demons

70

NA

Zoroaster

First magician

71

NE

Sush

Reader of palms

72

NI

Chaldaeus

Diviner in fire

73

NO

Attalus

Scryer in water

74

NU

Prometheus

Sacrificed oxen

75

OA

Abel

Slaughtered cattle

76

OE

Enos

Erected an altar

77

OI

Zedechor

Put a pier in water

78

OO

Cureta

Sacrificed children

79

OU

Abraam

Circumcised

80

PA

Joannes

Baptized

81

PE

Emael

Uncoverd his head before the altar

82

PI

Imus

Covered women’s heads before gods

83

PO

Amphiaraus

Augur (haruspicer)

84

PU

Orpheus

Founded the Mysteries

85

QA

Alphares

Founded the spring festivals of Mars

86

QE

Criton

Founded the harvest festivals of Ceres

87

QI

Belus

Created idols

88

QO

Diagorus

Overturned altars

89

QU

Chemis

Made pyramid tombs

90

RA

Mirchanes

Made candles

91

RE

Gyges

Painted images

92

RI

Marsyas

First piper

93

RO

Tubal

First musician

94

RU

Amphion

Set the musical notes

95

SA

Amurius

Nerves in faith

96

SE

Baros

Faith in the air

97

SI

Venus

Instituted prostitution

98

SO

Tubal Cain

First in battle

99

SU

Pyssaeus

First trumpeter

100

TA

Birrias

Played the timbrel

101

TE

Bellerophon

Rider

102

TI

Neptune

Tamed the horse

103

TO

Aetolus

Threw the spear

104

TU

Perseus

Shot the arrow

105

VA

Artemon

Formed the tortoise [of shields]

106

VE

Phoenix

Shot the ballista [siege engine]

107

VI

Maletes

Raised the standard

108

VO

Gaegar

Created the shield

109

VU

Ermus

Founded Nola

110

XA

Marmitus

Forged the breastplate and helmet

111

XE

Theut

Wrote the letters

112

XI

Canradus

Described battle in writing

113

XO

Thales

Wrote of the eclipse

114

XU

Pythagoras

Wrote of the morning and evening star

115

YA

Nauphides

Wrote of the course of the sun

116

YE

Endymion

Wrote an account of the moon

117

YI

Hipparchus

Described the leftward motion of the sky

118

YO

Atlas

Bore the sphere of the heavens

119

YU

Archimedes

Entered the airy heavens

120

ZA

Cleostratus

Described the twelve signs of the Zodiac

121

ZE

Archytas

Wrote about the geometric cube

122

ZI

Xenophanes

Imagined the countless worlds

123

ZO

Plato

Discussed ideas and Ideal Forms

124

ZV

Raymundus [Lull]

On the new elements

125

ΨA

Jordanus [Bruno]

On The Key and The Shadows

126

ΨE

Protagoras

On the two opposing arguments

127

ΨI

Alcmaeon

On natural reason

128

ΨO

Euclides

On the nullity of evil

129

ΨU

{blank in manuscript}

130

AA

Epicurus

On mental freedom

131

AE

Timon

On misathrophy

132

AI

Crates

On the universal sources

133

AO

Cleanthes

On the development of philosophy

134

AU

Menedemus

On the propagation of superstitions

135

BA

Polymnestus

On Pythagorus’s cultivation of beans

136

BE

Philolaus

On harmonizing widespread things

137

BI

Speusippus

On the sweet philosophy

138

BO

Anaxagoras

On chaos

139

BU

Archelaus

Without natural balance

140

CA

Pyrrho

Speaking without understanding

141

CE

Diodorus

Discussing complicated and thorny issues

142

CI

Simon

All affirming gestures

143

CO

Aeschylus

On persons

144

CU

Diogenes

On the ignorance of all scholars

145

DA

Homer

The Epic of Sophocles

146

DE

Sophocles

The Tragedy of Homer

147

DI

Farmacon

On optics

148

DO

Tapes

On perspective

149

DU

Melicus

On memory

150

AA

Knotted

1

AE

Lying [as in a falsehood]

2

AI

Wrapped

3

AO

Unformed

4

AU

Famous

5

BA

Idle

6

BE

Scandalous

7

BI

Wearing

8

BO

Inept

9

BU

Lying down

10

CA

Treads

11

CE

Unheard of

12

CI

Unstable

13

CO

Rude

14

CU

Enchanted

15

DA

Reached

16

DE

Enmeshed

17

DI

Throwing

18

DO

Horrible

19

DU

Incapable of, beside

20

EA

Stroke

21

EE

Honored

22

EI

Festive

23

EO

Bringing

24

EU

Expected

25

FA

Scornful

26

FE

Rooted

27

FI

Fateful

28

FO

Released

29

FU

Killed

30

GA

Brutal

31

GE

Indisposed

32

GI

Suspended

33

GO

Disordered

34

GU

Indiscrete

35

HA

Traveling

36

HE

Needy

37

HI

Repulsed

38

HO

Scrupulous

39

HU

Shameful

40

IA

Superstitious

41

IE

Buried

42

II

Excused

43

IO

Vague

44

IU

Fluid

45

KA

Inclined

46

KE

Harmful

47

KI

Swallowed

48

KO

Revised

49

KU

Detested

50

LA

Found

51

LE

Obliged

52

LI

Intercalated

53

LO

Orphaned

54

LU

Cut off

55

MA

Broken

56

ME

Written

57

MI

Unusual

58

MO

Impressed

59

MU

Deceived

60

NA

Standing

61

NE

Unknown

62

NI

Challenged

63

NO

Injured

64

NU

Left

65

OA

Ranging

66

OE

Complaining

67

OI

Repeated

68

OO

Deciding

69

OU

Innumerable

70

PA

Unclean

71

PE

Gelded

72

PI

Begging

73

PO

Multiform

74

PU

Notwithstanding

75

QA

Clenched

76

QE

Mysterious

77

QI

Monstrous

78

QO

Ignored

79

QU

Idle

80

RA

Prognosis

81

RE

Implacable

82

RI

Orphaned

83

RO

Neglected

84

RU

Oppressed

85

SA

In business

86

SE

Disastrous

87

SI

New

88

SO

Unclear

89

SU

Obscene

90

TA

Impenetrable

91

TE

Dried

92

TI

Hard

93

TO

Disloyal

94

TU

Precipitous

95

VA

Venal

96

VE

Goaded

97

VI

Fainthearted

98

VO

Wild

99

VU

Broken [as a  horse]

100

XA

Burning

101

XE

Disconnected

102

XI

Engraved

103

XO

Twined

104

XU

Smoking

105

YA

Shipwrecked

106

YE

Corrupt

107

YI

Thrown

108

YO

Emaciated

109

YU

Errant

110

ZA

Frozen

111

ZE

Riddled

112

ZI

Funereal

113

ZO

Bloody

114

ZV

Livid

115

AA

Rotting

116

AE

Pestiferous

117

AI

Tart

118

AO

Drunk

119

AU

Anxious

120

AA

Oblique

121

AE

Tartarean

122

AI

Vibatory

123

AO

Attacked

124

AU

Bitter, Sour

125

AA

Formless

126

AE

Dissonant

127

AI

Desert

128

AO

Woodland

129

AU

Indolent

130

AA

Stygian

131

AE

Hollow

132

AI

Sleepy

133

AO

Shallow

134

AU

Immature

135

AA

Swollen

136

AE

Armed

137

AI

Tasteless

138

AO

Stony

139

AU

Bedded, Ringed

140

AA

Ambiguous

141

AE

Willful

142

AI

Boisterous

143

AO

Snorting

144

AU

Rapacious

145

AA

Infantile

146

AE

Dissenting

147

AI

Biting

148

AO

Recalcitrant

149

AU

Stupefied

150

aa

Olive

1

ae

Laurel

2

ai

Myrtle

3

ao

Rosemary

4

av

Cypress

5

aa

Palm

6

ae

Ivy

7

ai

Poppy

8

ao

Oak

9

av

Nettles

10

aa

Flowers

11

ae

Spines

12

ai

Triple crown

13

ao

Hornwood

14

av

Dogwood

15

aa

King’s crown

16

ao

Orchid

17

ai

Reed

18

ao

Willow

19

av

Deer’s horn

20

aa

Lightbeam

21

ae

Comet

22

ai

Rainbow

23

ao

Tower of Juno

24

av

Threatening clouds

25

aa

Climbing Vines

26

ae

Lamps

27

ai

Tisiphone’s Mane

28

ao

Jewels

29

av

Lilies

30

aa

Dichotomus moon

31

ae

Lightning bolt

32

ai

Sword

33

ao

Axe

34

av

Arrow

35

aa

Saw

36

ae

Rain shower

37

ai

Hook

38

ao

Bit

39

av

Vibrating tongue

40

aa

Cone

41

ae

Holding hands

42

ai

Eagle’s beak

43

ao

Boar’s head

44

av

Lion’s head

45

aa

Undulating rain

46

ae

Funeral oration

47

ai

Screech owl

48

ao

Rooster

49

av

Dove

50

Apple basket

51

aa

Hydra

52

ae

Flame

53

ai

Wine

54

ao

Bird’s nest

55

av

Haruspex’s entrails

ADDITIONS to the NECK or HEAD

aa

Chain

56

ae

Serpent

57

ai

Lambswool

58

ao

Fox fur

59

av

Throat

60

aa

Chain

61

ae

Ring

62

ai

Lemur

63

ao

Wing

64

av

Bundle

65

aa

Halter

66

ae

Quiver

67

ai

Belt

68

ao

Sieve

69

av

Mill

70

aa

Yoke

71

ae

Purse

72

ai

Fan

73

ao

Scepter

74

av

Whip

75

aa

Goblet

76

ae

Trumpet

77

ai

Sword

78

ao

Trophy

79

av

Scales

80

aa

Cowl

81

ae

Linen

82

ai

Golden area

83

ao

Herbs

84

av

Clock

85

ADDED TO THE FEET

aa

Scorpion

86

ae

Dog

87

ai

Cave

88

ao

Goose

89

av

Altar

90

aa

Tree

91

ae

Gold chain

92

ai

Serpent

93

ao

Irons

94

av

Pearl

95

aa

Column

96

ae

Dolphin

97

ai

Dragon

98

ao

Horse

99

av

Wheel of Fortune

100

aa

Grass

101

ae

Ditch

102

ai

Oven

103

ao

Barn

104

av

Cradle

105

aa

Hell

106

ae

Lake

107

ai

Lion

108

ao

Rabbit

109

av

Boundary

110

aa

Grove

111

ae

River

112

ai

Marble milestone

113

ao

Suckling Sow

114

av

Boulder

115

aa

Bench

116

ae

Chairs

117

ai

Grave

118

ao

Reflecting mirror

119

av

Haruspex’s entrails

120

aa

Slow bull

121

ae

Honeycomb

122

ai

Formal garden

123

ao

Mousetraps

124

av

Joined bundle

125

aa

Death’s horse

126

ae

Seven-branched candelabra

127

ai

Burning incense

128

ao

Sparking sulfur

129

av

Obstructing barrier

130

aa

Slow donkey

131

ae

Drinking bowl

132

ai

Pandora’s box

133

ao

Cornucopia

134

av

Charging Bull

135

aa

Man’s torso

136

ae

Suspended woman

137

ai

Wolf eating a corpse

138

ao

Chicken incubating eggs

139

av

Tomb

140

aa

Oven

141

ae

Burning straw

142

ai

Basket of fish

143

ao

Dog suckling whelps

144

av

Tunnel

145

aa

Crowing cock

146

ae

Charging ram

147

ai

Dead pig

148

ao

Child playing

149

av

Drum

150

Images of the Faces

Of the signs of Teucer the Babylonian

Which can be easily apprehended and used

with this Art.[45]

Aries

AA

Ascending the first face of the Ram: a black man, of excessive size, with burning eyes, a serene face, standing in a girded white robe.

AE

In the second, a beautiful woman dressed in a tunic dyed in true Tyrian purple, her hair loose and crowned with laurel.

AI

In the third, a man with pale hair dressed in red clothing. There, on his left, is a gold bracelet, and a strong staff is held in his right hand. He is restless and angry as if frustrated, but handsome and bold in his features.

Taurus

AO

In the first face of Taurus: a naked plowman, wearing a cap of woven straw, of brown color, who follows a woman casting seeds.

AU

In the second, a naked man in his prime, crowned in gold and with a golden chain around his shoulders. He carries a scepter in his left hand.

BA

The third, a man who bears a snake in his left hand and on the right a spear or arrow, and before him are a burning lamp and a flagon of water.

Gemini

BE

In the first face of the Twins, a servant, having a rod in his right hand, of cheerful and happy countenance.

BI

In the second, a man of labor and the land attends to a dancing piper with bare head and feet.

BO

In the third, a fool pipes, and to his left, an angry man bears a sparrow atop his staff.

Cancer

BU

In the first face of Cancer, a well-dressed and crowned man, with an olive branch in his left hand and a vial in the right.

CA

In the second, a man and woman are sitting at a table, playing a game, dressed in ordinary clothes, with wine. In front of the woman are gold and silver vessels.

CE

In the third, a hunter preceded and followed by hounds, wearing horn and crossbow, swiftly marching along.

Leo

CI

In the first face of Leo, a red faced man, clothed in saffron robes, crowned in gold, carrying a rooster in one hand and riding on the back of a lion.

CO

In the second, a woman walking with her arms lifted up to heaven, and next to her, a man of strict countenance bearing a sword upright as if prepared to pass sentence, carrying a shield.

CU

In the third, one carrying a bag or whip, who looks sad or depressed, following a young man dressed in white

Virgo

DA

In the first face of Virgo, a maiden carrying a bouquet of flowers, and a man with flowers and leaves scattered around him, clothed in a green garment unbound.

DE

In the second, a man dressed in black leather, carrying a purse in his hand, a veil hanging from his head.

DI

In the third, an old man leaning on two sticks, with disheveled forelocks and scattered beard, dressed in a dark color

Libra

DO

In the first face of Libra, a man with a fierce expression regards the scales, bearing a weapon or a pen in his right hand.

DU

In the second, two men wrangling and scuffling before a tribunal, who bears a long staff in his right hand, and has his left upraised.

EA

In the third, a fierce archer, who follows a man carrying bread and a cup of wine, who goes naked before.

Scorpio

EE

In the first face of Scorpio, a beautiful woman dressed in finery, before whom two youths exchange training blows.

EI

In the second, a woman, completely naked, and two men, one of whom stands to the side of  the woman, the other lies on the ground next to a dog.

EO

In the third, a man strikes a woman’s back; she is bound hand and foot.

Sagittarius

EU

In the first face of Sagittarius, a fully armed man, bearing a shield on his left and a sword on the right, whose advance causes the land to seem to shiver.

FA

In the second, a sad woman in mourning clothes, bearing in her arms a boy, or alternately, teaching.

FE

In the third, a man lies on the ground, absently stirring with a stick. His face is pale, and next to him stands a pig, digging in the hard earth.

Capricorn

FI

In the first face of Capricorn, a man in the dress of a merchant with an ugly and sad countenance follows a young man who is dancing and flapping his hands.

FO

Second, a man throws darts at a flying dove, while two women watch.

FU

Third, a virgin clad in white, trampling a fox underfoot and reading a book.

Aquarius

GA

The first face of Aquarius, the head of a household and his wife, who have the expression of people deep in thought; he has pawns in his hands, she has doves.

GE

In the second, a man in the habit of a councilor in session, with a memorial speech in his hand, and a long beard on his chin, and a strict expression on his face.

GI

In the third, a young man of angry and inflamed appearance, hands raised as if to attack, fingers twisted.

Pisces

GO

In the first face of Pisces, the shape of a man transporting goods in search of a new home, following a woman carrying a tripod and crossbar.

GU

In the second, a man wearing tight workman’s clothes, with bare arms and a bold, agile body, and of cheerful countenance.

HA

In the third, a firm young man embracing a young woman, and beside them a brace of two fowls.

The attitude and actions of the figures aforesaid may not contribute directly to the Art of Memory; however, it can be enhanced by these types of images.

I.

The first image of Aries is of a bold, shameless and strong imagination.

The second, of an arrogant, ambitious and noble mind.

The third, like a desperately inquisitive, sharp mind seeking joy.

II.

The first image of Taurus is of the principles, operations and actions of the Geometrical Protectress.

The second, of that which is noble and powerful among the multitude of nations.

The third, that which is miserable and servile.

III.

The first of Gemini, that faculty in Mathematics which none shall exceed.

Second, a shameless deceiver of laborious energy, who puts back no stores.

Third, delirium, forgetting, great hoarseness.

IV.

The first of Cancer, subtle contemplation, watchful intelligence and the will to love.

The second, moderate intelligence and good fortune.

The third, much traffic and little effort, because of the difficult middle.

V.

The first of Leo, forceful, abounding, merciless and implacable.

The second, quick shedding of blood, betrayal and suspicion.

The third, that of a companion or friend who will lose a court case or assessment.

VI.

The first of Virgo, loaded with riches, but not through any illicit business.

The second, the avarice and profit of the greedy.

The third weakens, sickens, invalidates and consumes.

VII.

The first of Libra, delivering the poor from the hand of the oppressors and the powerful.

The second, impatience with injustice, and pacification of tumults.

The third, a courtesan, adulterous, voracious.

VIII.

The first of Scorpio, a beautiful and seductive, but unholy betrayer.

The second, equally treacherous and dishonest.

The third full of wrath, anger and violence.

IX.

The first of Sagittarius, bold, maddening and unrestrained by any yoke or law.

The second, the concept of fear and sadness of service and labor.

Third, a narrow, brawling and hostile peace.

X.

The first of Capricorn, luxury goods lost.

The second seeks impossibilities.

The third, by enlarging the intention of becoming wise is foolish.

XI.

First Aquarius thinks and works for gain, against poverty and vileness.

Second, great intelligence and sobriety.

Third, the shamefulness of a lack of moderation, and presumptuousness.

XII.

The first of Pisces, of things that need care.

The second, the great and many intents of business.

Third, paralyzed by too much leisure and luxury.

Although it is not required to make use of these images, it is necessary to provide some kind of sensible images for forms and qualities.

What follows are seven images of Saturn

from the Egyptian and Persian philosophers

which are usable both for places and subjects

HE

The first image of Saturn: a horned man riding on a dragon with a little owl in his hand, swallowing a snake.

HI

The second is a man bearing a sickle in his right hand and having a fish in his left, and riding upon a camel.

HO

The third is a man, sad and sighing, holding his hands up to heaven, dressed in dark clothes.

HU

Fourth: A black man with camel’s feet sitting on a winged dragon, bearing in his right hand a branch of the cyprus.

IA

Fifth: A man of dark countenance, wearing black clothes, with his right arm entwined with a basilisk’s tail.

IE

Sixth: An elderly, lame man leaning heavily on his staff, seated in a high throne in a chariot which is pulled by a mule and a donkey.

II

Seventh: A charioteer in his chariot, pulled by two stags. In one hand, a fish. In the other, a curved sickle.

Seven Images of Jupiter

IO

The first image of Jupiter is a man in a decorated chariot drawn by dragons. One hand rests on a dragon’s head, the other casts arrows.

IU

The second image of Jupiter is of a man sitting on a throne, fanned with beech branches by four winged youths.

KA

The third image is a man having the head of a ram, sitting upon a wheel, and carrying in his hand a vessel of balm or balsam.

KE

The fourth image is of a lion with the head and feet of an eagle, bearing an oak branch in one claw, between two beautiful young men in flowing white robes.

KI

Fifth: A man sitting on an eagle, dressed in emerald clothing, the head bearing a crown of hyacinth and a scepter in the hand.

KO

Sixth: A crowned man, dressed in yellow clothes, an olive tree on his right, riding on a dragon.

KU

Seventh: A man crowned and raising his hands together, as if praying, and whose garment is cerulean sprinkled with golden stars.

Seven Images of Mars

LA

The first image of Mars is a man of fierce countenance, fully armed, riding upon a lion, and wearing a helmet with a vulture’s beak.

LE

Second: a man armed with a broad sword and spear, and something on his helmet like a chimera whose mouth emits scintillating fire.

LI

Third: A man casting sulfurous fires with his right hand. With his left hand, he grasps the neck of the panther he rides, though it does not cooperate well.

LO

Fourth: A man bearing a narrow sword in his right hand and a human head dripping blood in his left. His countenance is as if sunburned.

LU

Fifth: A man of tawny color, wearing red clothing, carrying a heavy iron scepter, riding on a wolf.

MA

Sixth: A man who ravishes and perverts the most beautiful virgins through his strength, borne in an ivory chariot drawn by two dog-headed baboons.

ME

Seventh: A leopard and a tiger, fighting. On either side, two helmeted men with drawn swords, threatening each other.

Seven images of the Sun

MI

The first of the sun: A beautiful & elegant woman, crowned, on a golden chariot, drawn by a quadriga of horses, ascending.

MO

Second: A beautiful young man, naked and crowned, bearing a garland of interwoven flowers, embraced by peacocks.

MU

Third: A youth crowned with a diadem of flashing lightning, carrying a quiver and bow.

NA

Fourth: A woman embracing and kissing a boy, wearing a long green robe. Her hair is most beautiful, she is of a beautiful countenance, and she holds a mirror in her right hand.

NE

Fifth: A maiden wearing a shield on her left and bearing a bundle of arrows on the right, perched on a crocodile.

NI

Sixth: A man riding a running lion, dark clouds of breath emerging from its nose. In his right hand he bears a rooster.

NO

Seventh: A man dressed as a pontifex, preceded by two bare-headed men. His gown is of shining gold, bears a crow in his lap, and has a golden dog at his feet.

Seven images of Venus

NU

The first image is of a maiden crowned in myrtle, naked, having long hair unto her ankles, bearing a white dog.

OA

Second: A lovely boy carrying a basket brimming with various flowers in both hands, followed by a man who looks like a gardener.

OE

Third: A woman with naked breast, with the head of a dove, and having hooked feet, following a fleeing young man.

OI

Fourth: A woman riding a bull, bearing a comb in her right hand and a looking glass in her right, while a young man with a bird in his hand watches from the green.

OO

Fifth: A boy holding a silver chain, and a naked girl next to him, crowned with laurel, while Bacchantes dance.

OU

Sixth: A child, winged, with dazzling gold hair which throws forth fiery darts of a thousand colors.

PA

Seventh: A youth and maiden struggling, obscured by a cloud, contending that the other must concede who owns the linen garment they are struggling over. In his hand, a golden chain.

Seven images of Mercury

PE

The first image of Mercury is of a youth of most beautiful countenance and disposition, bearing and gazing at a scepter enwreathed by two snakes gazing at one another.

PI

Second: A bearded and charming young man, crowned with olive branches, having a scepter in his hand, and a fire kindled before him.

PO

Third: A man wearing a winged helmet, with wings on his ankles also, bearing a rod in his left hand and a javelin in his right.

PU

The fourth image: A man with combed-forward hair and a long beard, wearing breastplate and toga, following a girl of charming appearance. His whole body is attractive, but he has the tail of a snake.

QA

Fifth: Argus digging, a spear in his right hand, a pipe in his left, and by him a heifer feeding on green grass.

QE

Sixth: A man dressed as a merchant and traveler, eyes turned toward the sun, hands extended.

QI

Seventh: A boy riding a ram, carrying a gray African parrot in his left hand.

Seven images of the Moon

QO

The first image of the moon is a radiant woman riding on dolphins, having in her right a chameleon and lilies in her left.

QU

Second: A hooded farmer, bearing a scythe in his right hand and a polling arm his left.

RA

Third: A woman decorated with many pearls, in white robes, with a crystal vase in her right hand, a cat in her left.

RE

Fourth: A woman riding on the necks of a hydra with three of its seven heads flying off. Her empty hands stretch forward.

RI

Fifth: A silver child with crown and scepter, mounted on a cart pulled by two goats.

RO

Sixth: A woman with a single horn, her arms and legs entwined by serpents, riding on a panther.

RU

Seventh: A hunter whose dog worries some wild pigs as he continues to put on a robe.

An image of the Dragon of the Moon

SA

A kingly person, having in his right hand the head of a dragon. Above the kings head are flames. The dragon’s head is like that of a hawk.

Images of the twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon

for the extension of the Art

SE

First: An Ethiopian in an iron chair, casting a javelin, girded with cables.

SI

Second: A king on a throne, and a man prostrate on the ground, lifting a scepter.

SO

Third: A woman dressed in finery, sitting in a chair, her right hand raised over her head, her right hand entwined in her flowing hair.

SU

Fourth: A knight riding a horse, holding a snake in his right hand, pulling a black dog along with his left.

TA

Fifth: A silver prince on his throne, having a rod in his right hand and embracing a girl with his left.

TE

Sixth: Two men in armor, bareheaded, casting down their swords and embracing each other.

TI

Seventh: A man kneeling with both hands raised to heaven attends a person dressed in finery on a silver throne.

TO

Eighth: A man riding an eagle, carrying reins which bind another two eagles before.

TU

Ninth: A eunuch with his hands blocking his eyes, standing before a filthy bed.

VA

Tenth: A woman giving birth in front of a golden lion and a recovering invalid.

VE

Eleventh: A man riding a lion, his left hand in its mane, holding a spear in his right.

VI

Twelfth: In a leaden and blackened seat, a dragon fights with a man.

VO

Thirteenth: A stallion mounts a frenzied mare, while a shepherd stands with a fixed expression and both hands on his staff.

VU

Fourteenth: A man holds a dog suspended by its tail, and the dog bites its own foot.

XA

Fifteenth: A man sits, reading a letter, smiling to flatter the courier.

XE

Sixteenth: A silversmith, having a balance in one hand, an abacus on the table.

XI

Seventeenth: Man carrying an ark, followed by a monkey.

XO

Eighteenth: A brass man, bearing a snake in his hand which chases away many serpents.

XU

Nineteenth: A woman with her hands over her face & extended.

YA

Twentieth: A centaur with hunter’s bow and quiver on the left, a dead fox on the right.

YE

Twenty-First: Two men together, one watching while the other shaves off his gathered hair.

YI

Twenty-Second: A man with winged helmet and feet, fleeing to safe refuge.

YO

Twenty-Third: A cat grabbing a dog by the head, the dog having the cat by the back, the ground shakes and a man falls to the ground.

YU

Twenty-Fourth: A woman suckling a child that holds a ram’s horn in its hand, followed by a multitude.

ZA

Twenty-Fifth: A man planting a tree, another sowing grain.

ZE

Twenty-Sixth: A woman washing and combing her hair in front of a winged boy.

ZI

Twenty-Seventh: A man casting a bottle into the hole of a well.

ZO

Twenty-Eighth: A fish leaps through the air above water in which swim many more.

Images of the Twelve Natal Houses of the Zodiac

ZU

The first image of the First House: A man jumps over a wall, while another with a staff herds sheep across a spring.

AA

The second image: A man sitting at a table while his wife is in labor, attended by two midwives.

AE

The third image: A naked woman spins a wheel while blindfolded, standing on a ball over turbulent waters.

AI

The first image of the Second House: a servant with two vessels of silver, filled with precious stones and gold.

AO

Second: A treasure hunter flees a naked old woman of meager means.

AU

Third: A statue of Vulcan of black material. His hair is curled, and he leans into his work. Standing nearby is a small black child, well dressed, with a crown on his head.

AA

The first image of the Third House: images or likenesses of Castor & Pollux standing upon an altar in the midst of burning fire.

AE

Second: Like the departure of a family from a good place: sad faces, going silently.

AI

Third: A hermit carrying bound books, following a likeness of Mars.

AO

The first of the Fourth: An old man with his wife, an old woman, looking at a set of cadaver’s bones resting on a golden bed.

AU

Second: A beautiful woman having in her left hand a globe of the Earth, a crown in the form of a tower on her head, and a scepter in her hand which seems to want to dig into the earth.

AA

Third: A man standing next to buried iron gratings, and an ox eating grass.

AE

The first of the Fifth: A horned man with a long, gray beard, accompanied by his two sons, his friends bearing gifts, and two leopards.

AI

Second: A man with his eyes fixed on a book, and an arriving courier dressed in white with a green cap.

AO

Third: A husband, sitting at a table with his wife or another woman, kissing and caressing her.

AU

First of the Sixth: A sickly man lying on the ground. A thin, dark dog stands nearby, barking at him.

AA

Second: A girl dressed in the raiment of a queen, her train supported by a Moorish child, and followed by her two maids, who dance with garlands in their hands.

AE

Third: A man having a globe of the world in his left hand, and in his right, a drawn sword, preceded by another man.

AI

The first of the Seventh: Two men wrangling with their hands on the hilt of a drawn sword. Nearby, two youths reading letters.

AO

Second: A young, handsome man and a maiden crowned with a garland of flowers, together with an older man holding a drawn sword.

AU

Third: An armed man following a thief who is transporting merchandise.

AA

The first of the Eighth: A naked woman in the desert, before whom rabbits flee, in an atmosphere filled with storms and lightning.

AE

Second: Sisyphus tries to heave a huge stone up a mountain, following a female figure with covered face and head who wears dusky robes.

AI

Third: A farmer carrying apples, and a fox struggling in a snare.

AO

First image of the Ninth House: A beautiful woman wearing a green robe, crowned with gold, having one hand raised to heaven, which sends down a bolt of lightning.

AU

Second: A broad-shouldered man praying, raising and clasping his hands above his head in front of an altar where a sacrifice is consumed by fire.

AA

Third: A maiden, having a celestial sphere in her left hand and a looking glass in her right, dressed in a gown of heavenly color, with crown and shoes of shining gold.

AE

First image of the Tenth House: A king sits on a throne, and around him several counselors on curved benches.

AI

Second: A pious man sitting in a chair which bears the image of a sounding trumpet.

AO

Third: A bronze column on which stands a naked golden statue of the king, before which a priest tends to sundered hands.

AU

The first image of the Eleventh House: A beautiful nude woman, adorned with jewels and golden ornaments on her head, a chain of shining jewels and carbuncles around her neck and carrying a golden bow and quiver.

AA

Second: Treasure arrayed in packed rows.

AE

Third: A king in the regional dress of his nation advances, followed by a boy in a garment of diverse colors on tawny, bare headed, bearing the king’s crown.

AI

First image of the Twelfth House: A man beckoning to a friend with one hand, while having hidden a razor in the other, while an old woman warms her hands at the fire.

AO

Second: A cow grazing, and next to it others in yoke and pannier.

AU

Third: A man, naked to the waist, beating against a rock. Next to him an angry man breaking pottery vessels and pouring oil on the ground.

Uses of the aforesaid groups of images to remember things

You can compare the tremendous, incomparable profit and benefit from the aforesaid images.

I.                    They are forms continually, perpetually inherent to their subjects.

II.                 The subjects may be ordered as you would give them or in the order in which you received them; which in fact works in regard to the memory of the content of the forms themselves.

III.             If you want to convert them to use them as adjects instead of subjects, who am I to stop you?

IV.               It’s worth remembering then, that to remember the parts of a thing, join vivid images, distinguished personages, actions and circumstances in order; so that each of them connects through a congruent action of the passions, changes, context and other methods which you have, that work, with whom, and about the things your training activities provide, enabling you to divide up the subject matter into its members that the memory seals describe. If you would have them not escape you through abstraction, as it were, but rather fix them in the eyes of your faculty, then you ought to choose specifics. For, as we have shown elsewhere, the more successfully the outer senses are stirred, the more it can nestle in the inner senses.

For combinations in which the subsisting element precedes the assisting element

It being arranged that infinite elements can be arranged in infinitely many combinations, it is nothing to add to the ranks of the primary combination. From this example you have a hundred and fifty simple combinations, in which the element of standing or lying precedes the main element or another hundred and fifty in which the element of standing or lying follows the main element. And then to the differences of straight or curved, clothed or stripped, turned hither and thither, or to make him sit that was standing, holding themselves or others in two ways, a thousand ways; all this, you’ll be able to do. Chorebus sitting and potting denotes A.M., standing indicates M.A.

For elements which melt into and terminate between and after simple combinations

For mediating and superimposed, or falling and rising elements pertaining to each of the five combinations, you, my friend, will be able to enthusiastically provide an honorable way to lay down combinations of the five elements, increasing their number after the form shown. Give therefore to the agent the final eleven differently signified elements: C. G. L. M. N. P. N. S. N. T. R. S. T., and three differences for the melting central elements L. N. R. The first, you shall place on the head, the second on the back, or the contrary. Give, then, operations as well for the differences and to symbolize the final eleven. Place three in the middle, the first of which (if you please) will be the action of the subject, the second in the arms or hands of the one acting. Similarly, distinguish between twelve and three. At present, these differences are as they are in the womb, so to speak, just as a very intimate communion with your industry relaxes you.

Of the two excellent discoveries in this Art,

and its encomium

There are two things we have discovered and accomplished in this Art, both of which seemed to be impossible to do in ancient times. As to the first, in the first practice, to draw any combination using only attributes of the subject. Second, in the second practice (which is something like divine intervention and is a most pregnant discovery, since no one knows how to apply it to anyone else), how a unique subject & adject can be conveniently added to the list. Therefore the discovery of our inward writing far more quickly and easily bears fruit, speeded through exercise. Where before we would have bleated letters in syllables rather than collecting more complete actions all at once in oration, through the discipline of this Art, I now have a catalog; through the first or second practice, I’m able to read or hear all of the subjects in order of their adjects. Used as prompts I can quickly give all of the activities. Thus, this destroys all the other methods that came before in this type of Art, and fears nothing that may come to try to destroy it. The point is just that which leads us to believe that as we apprehend or acquire more of it, we’ll be better able to talk stylishly and complement discursively.

The practice whereby simple things may be signified

Next to how the memory of an experience may feel after we approach it. Of those memories, there are some that are signified simply, and some with partial complexity. In complex things, some are of substance, and some only by accident. Of those things which are of substance, some are sensible and some intelligible. Of those which are sensible, some are sensible per se, but some by accident. Of those accidental, some are present in substance, as in the quality and quantity of intrinsic qualities of that which has inherent substance, such as the surrounding figures and colors.

Some, however, are present in a certain way, and in a way they are truly here, through the relationships with that from which they are taken on the one hand, and on the other hand, from what is said about them. Some of them will consist of substance, as the agent does with patience, and as patience does with the agents. Some consist of the circumstances of substance, some with how the substance interacts with its surroundings, such as a site, but other circumstances that apply to substances, such as those which apply between subjects and adjects, which some have called encircling, enveloping, wearing or wedding: some are circumstances, such as a farm, a house, a woman. Some are present in a certain sense and circumstantial in another sense; that very thing when at the same time there is one thing specifically and also a general: for example any thing of itself, but also everything of its kind. It is also true with regard to time and place: for the time is seen from the perspective of heaven, but also there are subjective views of time of many kinds. Place, even if it’s just the outside of a container is circumstance to that which it surrounds.

If the body of the container, as is commonly said, is circumstance, because it’s a surrounding, yet still it is also a real piece of matter in its own right, depending on who’s considering it, and whether space is a more physical and material dimension within a secure receptacle.

With regard to all these things I’ve mentioned, advanced configuration is necessary. So: simple intelligible substances, figured or configured sensible substances, and even that which results in Ezekiel’s fiery and spinning wheels. Non-sensible substances are represented by their accidents, as is done through the correct positioning of one’s limbs, and through the disposition of all the animals on the Earth.

Accidental sensibles per se, are the things that are the object of the senses. Those things that are present in accidents through the things which are embodied, such as the fact that so much quantity is continuous or discrete, depending on the quantity.

Such a quality is that which is properly present. In this way, the substance of those things becomes the subject of those things by which they are represented. These adhere to the accidents, to themselves by means of inherence, and by the means used to adhere the two. Accidents of the things that are really here, or on the other hand are really present. Accidents that stay with them, or which are interchangeable. Accidents which are circumstances which cannot be symbolized directly, can be symbolized by their own circumstances or some figurable circumstance. It also helps whenever they have been shaped by the senses, which represents another potential point of attachments. So then, when they represent the universe through the help of subjects and adjects, memories are rendered in the substance of the darkness of the internal senses.

The practice for signifying complex things

As a combination of the mind and voice then becomes a union of substance, and is compounded from simple things, or altered from the simple things that make up its components. So too, in its characteristics, it follows that inward writing results from a combination of simple substances, and connects back to those substances, its action to their actions, its existence with their existences, implement to implement, and circumstance to circumstance. This combination coincides with the first definition of forming images, figures and signs, or universal statements (refer to the Intentions for the other definitions of simple things, or for specific inward writing not so conceived, since without simpler terms simplicity cannot be expressed). Second, the development of statements or complete thoughts, which is the border between the many and the one, or from the one, and which divides it from the many. Third, in discourse with an ordinand’s own members, the combination of effects, results in the complex when they are connected together in further composition. As soon as a physical form of matter takes physical form, the body is then mixed in a simple and imperfect preparation. Everything is simple simultaneously, hence the imperfect nerves, hence the mature bone, hence the production of the perfect body parts, as they are homogenously called. All these are parts of it, and in establishing the members of this child of heaven, as the arms and head agree. All members are finally gathered in one body’s animated embrace. Not in any other way than this does it come to pass that the simple forms are assembled, but that after the first is added, go from this to the second, from this to the third, from the one side to the other and so on the characteristics of the subjects are going to be made. But if one does not take the whole complexion of the subject in one go, it can be made through a complexion of the subject or of the first subject in connection with other subjects, as in the application of adjects which are added to achieve some application. Therefore, do this in the manner that continuous ships form a bridge, and thus cross the Hellespont with dry feet.

This Brief and Easy Art

Dedicated To

The Most Christian King of France

Jordan Bruno Nolan

Enigma and Paradigm

Urania’s seer climbed to her temple,

Where the clouds are driven from his mind,

Pregnant with the new order of the world,

Indicated by an extended hand.

King Leucadius sits here in his sad old age.

He preferred sitting here to being his kingdom’s father.

On Mars’ spear would this have been carried off,

But gold on this Titan makes it endure,

Gentle Venus renders grateful love,

Here is decided peace and war, here the gods decide.

Here Lucina sheds unstable light,

As she settles in her garden, increasing,

The order is conceived after the palaces of heaven,

Twice six houses they’ve traveled through,

The old man will travel to various places,

Winding roads, various sinuous notes,

Here enters the Mother of the divine. Go forward,

Smithaeum deity, Cnidia born of sea,

Enter Atlantis, Cyllenian youth,

Delia cannot hold back powers of heaven and hell.

Enigma somewhat explained

Hence (most serene king) History is easily negotiated, and you will find that those memories you hold (as are the volumes of books, volumes and chapters) placed correctly, as when furnishings from a house are brought into the courtyard, in which the various dealings, the gestures and successes of great lives, arrive in set order, infallibly, quickly, before the eye of imagination.

Instead of the familiar story of the most famous, of Adam, Abel, Chaim, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and the rest of their house, one must establish one’s own sources. It is the same, then, for all successive lists, carried out in different ways: whether entering through a single or a common entryway, or by deducing more singular properties to enter, they retain the connective nature of their accidents according to the order of the subjects in history.

You will be likewise able to locate speeches and statements as members under their spokesmen. Under their titles, the books you have read, under the headings, the passages, under the passages the lines and their intentions. Under Medical texts, their books, sections, chapters, parts of chapters, with intentions and aphorisms all set in order to deliver value no less than those men who wrote the books.

Like all others (more than those who are ignorant of the present application would find credible) one may adapt the materials to their profession.

For the art of the Creative Type, you have the following figure, which can be turned to a host of uses. In this scale, seven rays of constant characters are described. Thus, the center of a sphere is a solid, or the center of a circle rotated about a plane, given various things through different orbits, and of their portions of the circumference.

CREATIVE FIGURE

Jordani Bruni

Nolani

ANOTHER BRIEF ART

Various orders of affairs or relating to order, and of the power of retention

which cannot be easily performed with other arts.

Enigma and Paradigm

Jordan Bruno Nolan

Light of a clear mind does not wander abroad,

No sense in running a risk,

And how deeply deceived was the man you sent to Tartarus,

Blazing, fleeing waves, claiming thirst:

Circe’s power forced your humors through seven chambers,

Each driven alone and in groups, driven

To transfer his wicked parent to this ancient field,

As when Jupiter bore Ganymede,

Mars provides blazing eyes defiant,

To see this garden, in which Mulciber fierce

Maintains a world famous lamp,

Offspring are manifold,

Sweet Venus, breathing upon all living things,

A hidden goddess in every place,

Leaving messages that you believe the divine.

Trust the female, feminine, masque of the sea,

The walls fall away, though not your gifts.

Delia, renew your work’s strength.

This art reveals itself as a song too, especially to those who have gained knowledge of the turning wheels. When the leader of an army faces his army, with hundreds of acquaintances (his own or vicarious acquaintances), it’s appropriate to know which ones to refer to. He should place under each one the appropriate actions, or passions, or circumstances, in the order of their position, and accordingly perform multiplication of the number of internal fantasies before his inner eye. Using Circe’s medicine, one will be able to, in a short time and with minimal study, affix inscriptions of this in one’s memory with the simple types and grades of qualities. The child will be able to retain all the grammatical names (understanding the meanings properly signified by a word) given each day. And understand the correct meaning according to its proper significance, even if there is the same meaning under many different names, and in the same idiom, however that meaning is articulated. Those who are familiar with what we’ve already written will certainly know that this is no understatement: for although there might be a difference in the emphasis (so to speak) of the words in front of him, as in: it’s not exactly to say that tunic, garments, apparel are entirely the same, but we understand them to be synonyms, excluding exclusions, antonyms and similar business. Hence, a philosopher with his forty eight parts of the air in four quarters, with stars in situational positions and ultimate positions (which is stars is considered to be magnitude), may be entered in the same order, looking at them as four quarters. Hence at last, with all knowledge, skills and exercises, ordering schemes and rules, you will be able to arrive at the particular decades, and centuries, and myriads, which you want to relate.

In the following diagram of the

Twelve Houses, you have

the Figurative Material of the Art

JORDANO BRUNO NOLANO

Another Brief Art

This riddle involves most artistic forms, artistic backgrounds serving.
In motion, driven by the same movement,
Gives an eternal immobility,

As a recognized center round
Round about, which he would never have left its worth:
And how its wheel, remaining mobile around an immobile axle,
Nor does it move right way:
It works naturally, smartly changing face;
The beginning of it is if they did not always both, being yet present.
Carpathian Neptune, Proteus in a huge whirlpool,
Base act by the biped after cattle and horses
The same is observed when all the forms, contracts,
Power that is within a constant height drives.
Just what is the nature of all the guide
Therefore guarantee continued existence of the monad.
You see how there is no action to deny
How come all the more polite.
Turn the Chaos of Anaxagoras, which has potential
Democritus his atoms: Plato with his woods.
The seeds which receives, keeps, kept warm, directs and constrains.
A decision was not his mother without a father
This description of your reaching out into a series n v m z o c o r c i m   n v t
Those whom he was shut up inside the whole world.

The Art Explained

Let that which is in the subject be the subject, as that which is animate is animated: constant from place to place, and not traveling

Inanimate subjects have five local differences, as mute animals exhibit five sounds.

Each unique subject is animated by the system of the twenty four or thirty species, modulated by the five local differences and the requirements of expression.

Let it be sufficient to you that each one emits a sound. Indeed, in our experience, it is better to act with appropriate firmness, and to boldly make many subjects, than it is to make a few hesitantly and fearfully.

Systems come in four classes. First, there are those conveniently divided into left and right.

The second is above. The third is below. Fourth, that which must be carried out from the perspective of a rational animal.

So I believe that it would be an advantage and a greater display of skill if each of the said five differences have their own system, for the visitation of new species.

The letters in the middle of the designated organ should shine forth in the same way that the form L. R. and N. signifies.

Instead of following the designations as we did before and which you are doing for endings present in Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and French languages.

B. P. M. L. R. S. N. C. T. G. D. F. A. E. I. Y. O. V.

Organize another art, as if to herd stray animals in a corral; the system remains the same.

And if you know of a better way to use symbols of animate or inanimate subjects, if it’s  truly necessary, why should I prevent that (as long as you keep them in a separate place), to animate the soul’s attributes, or to put them in the same order they give them in another country?

So you have many penetrating climates, however many can conveniently make use of adjects of Memory for more than their voices.

OTHER METHODS OF ART

If one cares to animate subjects in a perpetual crowd with many attributes and places, and that gives you the opportunity to explain a hundred instruments, or their consequences, or their associations, or causes of movement, or tribulations, or perversions, or any additional approach of the imagination, you will most likely be happily successful.

Enigma and Paradigm

Teaching insensible elements required to develop sensible species and number

This opens the way to a broad variety of countless other applications,

And will reward the one who fully grasps it.

It reddens with another red if one looks east, when

First comes rising the team of horses of the sun,

Passing their own way until at evening,

Phoebe hides the quadrupeds at last,

Nola stands by day and night alone,

Alone while earth turns its dense body,

The last resisting light covers the Bear,

Different words he thunders for a fifth time,

Not forgetting his wild side,

But if his voice reaches your rocky cave,

With an air restoring sound,

Either sound an echo, or if they protest such use, then

Write the elements upside down.

END

Notes on the Text

[1]              Misspelled “Onanite”?

[2]              Hermes: Hermes Trismegistus, deified philosopher who was believed to have been a high priest in Egypt, and who will describe the Art of Memory. Philotheus: a student, representing Bruno himself. Logifer: a pedant, who takes the viewpoint of Bruno’s critics.

[3]              Pun in latin of sole “sun” and sole “alone”

[4]              “Dr. Bobo” First in a series of satirical or grotesque philosophers of opposing (and therefore inferior) opinion to Hermes/Bruno.

[5]              “Mr. Drainpipe” or “Mr. Lavatory”

[6]              “Dr. Ladle” or “Dr. Stirring Spoon”

[7]              “Dr. Enema” or “Dr. Syringe”

[8]              “Mouth Lover” or “Glutton”

[9]              Tullius Cicero

[10]              Thomas Aquinas

[11]              Albertus Magnus

[12]              Probably a typo for “Lullis”, Ramon Llull, mystic and originator of the combinatoric wheels described in the later sections of this book.

[13]              That is: how many men have made themselves less virile by using quack remedies in an attempt to make themselves more so.

[14]              Or: take it to heart

[15]              Song of Songs 2:3

[16]              Ecclesiastes 1:2

[17]              Vestigia: lit. footprints, spoor, trails, tracks, residue. In this context, they represent the traces of God’s act of creation, visible, for example, in awe-inspiring natural phenomena. See Ingrid Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic for a full discussion of the impact of this concept on Bruno.

[18]              Implying both metempsychosis (migration of the soul into new bodies) and perpetual and omnipresent change in all things nature.

[19]              In other words, if you want to push this argument beyond the bounds of sense. See also Scylla and Charybdis, a set of dangerous rocks and a whirlpool, represented in sailors’ stories as a pair of monstrous women, with a narrow, safe channel that ran between. A caution against going to extremes.

[20]              Genesis 3:9

[21]              Consider implications for cosmology. Not clear whether Bruno thinks Mercury and the Moon both revolve around the Earth at this point.

[22]              This can be taken either as an endorsement of Henry III as a universal prince, for the Pope and the Catholic faith as the one true church, as a statement of Unitarianism, or a comment on angelic magic.

[23]              Romans 8:12

[24]              Jacob.

[25]              Or: a vow, volition

[26]              Using the thirty intentions together with the thirty concepts listed in the sections above. Also, more generally, using two wheels at the same time, which are rotated against each other to produce compound ideas, images &etc.

[27]              A pun on the word “organum”, meaning both a pipe organ and a system or method, as in the one described in this book.

[28]              i.e. Someone had to invent the organ for organs to exist.

[29]              The Clavis Magna, or Great Key, which is referred to repeatedly within De Umbris, is either a book that Bruno intended to write in addition to De Umbris; or that he wrote but never published, or that was otherwise lost; or may be an alternate title for either De Umbris as a whole, or the second half of the book (titled Giordano Bruno Nolano’s Art of Memory), or might even be the book that results from entering De Umbris into one’s memory using the techniques of the physical book.

According to Frances Yates, De Umbris is purported to be the simplified version of the system in Clavis, if one can believe that this is a simplified version of anything.

[30]              Simonides of Chios, credited with having originated the art of memory after recreating the seating chart of a banquet which he had survived after the roof fell in, killing the rest of the guests.

[31]              In other words, the art of memory requires striking images which stir the emotions, and which must have some way to connect them with the ideas that we’re trying to memorize. Abstract ideas that don’t have a strong visual connection are difficult to memorize with this method—which is why Bruno will connect images to syllables elsewhere in the text as an alternative for words that don’t have strong associative properties.

[32]              In classical memory technique, Bruno’s subject is referred to as the location or locus, the locations within an imaginary building, or Memory Palace, where the individual images are placed.

[33]              In classical memory technique, Bruno’s adject is the memorable image placed within a single locus or  subject.

[34]              i.e. Like Oedipus, you will correctly answer the Sphinx’s riddle, answering even the most difficult questions you may be asked.

[35]              The physics of lenses and curved mirrors

[36]              Paraphrasing Cervantes?

[37]              "Organ" Or “system”

[38]              i.e., It is best to have concrete images, as abstractions are often hard to convey as images.

[39]              As painted by Simone Martini (1280-1344) Equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano

[40]              Possibly referring to horses reared for the Olympics in Book III of Vergil’s Georgic Odes. Alternatively, could refer to paintings of St. George and the Dragon, as painted by Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), Raphael (1483-1520), and as sculpted by Donatello (1386-1466) among others of the period.

[41]              Figures from Greek and Roman myth populate this wheel of images and actions.

[42]              That is: there are five concentric wheels, pinned (fixed) at the center. Rotating the wheels allows for each of the one hundred and fifty components (five sets of thirty) to be combined.

[43]              adstantia

[44]              The list of inventors and other exemplars of human arts and technologies is, per Frances Yates in The Art of Memory p.222, derived from Polydore Vergil’s 1499 De Inventoribus Rerum, with some additions and alterations from Bruno, including Bruno’s inclusion of himself as the inventor (or author) of Shadows and the Key. Michele Ciliberto, Marco Matteoli, Rita Sturlese and Nicoletta Tirinnanzi identify the images as sourced from Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers, Polydore Vergil De Inventoribus Rerum, Ovid Metamorphosis, Pliny Natural History, Marsilio Ficino Platonic Theology, and others.

[45]              The astrological images here and in the following sections are, per Frances Yates, derived from lists in Cornelius Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, Book II, with some alterations or inventions by Bruno. Per Sturlese et al, a number of the images are sourced either from Agrippa, from Albumasar’s Flores Astrologie and/or from other sources.