DEEP SCRATCH

Category: enochian

  • Frances Yates and the Mnemonic Works of Giordano Bruno

    Frances Yates and the Mnemonic Works of Giordano Bruno

    After Warburg’s death in October 1929 and the migration of the Institute to London in 1933, Brunian studies at the Warburg Institute took a very different direction thanks to the research of Frances Yates (1899-1981). While Warburg’s interest in Bruno and image-based thinking brought his philosophy towards the present, Frances Yates’ hypothesis of an Hermetic Bruno rooted his thought in a distant and partly mythical past at the antipodes of modern times. Nevertheless, while her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964) takes a different path from that traced by Warburg, her other Brunian study, The Art of Memory (1966), is perhaps her book closest to Warburg’s preoccupations. Indeed the history of mnemonics practices, by means of which mythological figures lived from the Antiquity onwards as animated bearers of learning in the intimacy of the human brain, had everything to interest Warburg. In fact the Art of Memory was written in close consultation with Gertud Bing as confirmed by this excerpt from the preface: 
    Now that the Memory Book is at last ended, the memory of the late Gertrud Bing seems more poignantly present than ever. In the early days, she read and discussed my drafts, watching constantly over my progress, or lack of progress, encouraging and discouraging by turns, ever stimulating with her intense interest and vigilant criticism. She felt that the problems of the mental image, of the activation of images, of the grasp of reality through images – problems ever present in the history of the Art of Memory – were close to those which preoccupied Aby Warburg, whom I only knew through her.
    Frances Yates expounded the first results of her research on Bruno’s art of memory in a seminar at the Warburg Institute in 1952. She showed her reconstruction of the wheel described in the De Umbris Idearum, Bruno’s first mnemonic work published in Paris in 1582. The two wheels illustrated below are part of the same work and serve as an introduction to using the larger wheel.

    In the first fixed ring the practitioner will assign a mythological or heroic figure to each letter. Bruno provides some examples : A Lycaon; B Deucalion; C Apollo; D Argos … (see De Umbris Idearum, pp. 107 ff). The letters of the second ring correspond to an action or a scene associated with each figure. The examples provided are: AA Lycaon at a banquet; BB Deucalion and pebbles; CC Apollo and Python; DD Argos and some cattle (ibid, p. 112). Thus rotating the first inner ring operates permutations between the figures and their action. Further permutation occurs when the third wheel is set in motion. It contains attributes or enseignes which can be easily passed from one figure to another. Bruno provides only four examples and leaves the rest to the imagination of his reader. These are : AAA, Lycaon at a banquet with a chain; BBB, Deucalion and pebbles with a headband; CCC, Apollo and Python with a baldric; DDD, Argos and some cattle with a hood. This way the systems makes it possible to create combinations of letters representing words, acronyms or syllables to be remembered by means of animated images mixing the attributes and accustomed actions of familiar mythological figures.

    BAA: B Deucalion A at a banquet A with a chain
    MAD: M Perseus A at a banquet D with a hood
    CAD: C Apollo A at a banquet D with a hood
    COD: C Apollo O and Proserpina D with a hood

    To approach the larger wheel Bruno advises his reader that `…it is necessary to dilute the printed page into an immense space’. The last section of De Umbris idearum describes the content of  the larger wheel over 40 pages. It consists of five concentric rings divided into 150 rays each subdivided in 5 cells. On the outer rings are numbers, letters, the name of inventors followed by four more wheels of words corresponding to the categories of agent, action, enseignes, attributes (adstans) and circumstance.

    Frances Yates reconstruction of Giordano Bruno memory wheel from `De Umbris Idearum’ – Click the image to access full version (PDF 1.5 mb)
    `How did the system work? By magic of course, by being based on the central power station of the … images of the stars, closer to reality than the images of things of the sublunar world, transmitter of the astral forces, the `shadows’ intermediary between the ideal world above the stars and the objects and events in the lower world.’ (The Art of Memory, p. 223)
    This interpretation, based on a misplacing of the images of the planets, was first revised by Rita Sturlese in her critical edition of the De Umbris  of 1991 (pp. LXVIII ff.) and later by Francesco Torchia (‘La chiave delle ombre’, Intersezioni, 1, 1997, pp. 131-151).

    Both scholars strip Bruno’s construction of its magical character. According to Sturlese the wheel is in fact an adult toy conceived to learn foreign words. Here each ray corresponds to a set of syllables combining one consonant with one vowel. Thus reconstructing a word with its phonetic constituents amounts to combining the various elements of each section. The addition of the images described in the last ring before the hub creates in the end a mnemonic background by means of which new words can be remembered. For instance to remember the word Numeratore you should pick the first syllable in the outer ring, NU, which corresponds to `Apis’; the second syllable in the second ring, ME: `in tapeta ’; the third syllable, RA, in the third ring: `deploratus’; the fourth syllable, TO, from the 4th ring: `compedes’; and finally RE in the 5th ring. This last ring  provides a background against which to set the image thus created:  `…mulier super hydram tres cervices e quarum singulis septem exiliunt capita habentem, vacuas antrorsum tendens manus’ (De Umbris, p. 151). 
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  • tale of the tribe and the sirius mystery

    The tale of the tribe contact high.

    Fuck off, and welcome to another installment of my blog–a tale of the tribe–that aims to offer a resource of specific information related to the great complex and generally hidden project (unfinished) tale of the tribe, by the late Robert Anton Wilson.

    Since a recent positive explosion of interest in Robert Anton Wilson across the United Kingdom due, in part to the brilliant book by John Higgs about the the KLF featuring much RAW wisdom and context for a UK audience. Plus, the Cosmic Trigger stage play looks to make agents sweat when it launches in Liverpool, November 23rd 2014. Revisiting Cosmic Trigger the book, the current author was bowled over again by gazillions of new connections, and a new deeper love for RAW and his life story, and a willingness to look at the tale of the tribe from a new angle, which sets the basis of the following piece of writing i gathered onto the paper page a few hours ago, here in Vondel Park, Amsterdam.

    Fire!
    x

    pg. 1

    TTOTT and the Sirius mystery

    what if
    RAWs great unfinished symphony
    the tale of the tribe
    were more than a guide to 13 of
    the greatest human minds
    who helped humanity find
    peace
    through communication

    what if
    TTOTT
    were also a guide to contacting
    higher intelligences
    from alternate dimensions
    or wherever
    what if the tale of the tribe
    were really a key
    to the sirius mystery
    and itself a cosmic trigger?

    pg. 2

    take Girodano Bruno
    his new languages
    for new communications with
    higher intelligence
    development of angelic languages
    so called

    foundations of
    enochian vision magick
    contemporary with John Dee and
    Edward Kelly

    maybe
    Bruno and his works hold keys
    to early contact with E.Ts
    angels entities as you wish
    and denizens of the sirius
    triple star system

    strange holy guardian angels
    but somehow
    communicating through timespace
    through the nervous system of
    Robert Anton Wilson
    into the tale of the tribe
    a modern critique
    of scripture
    holy binding contractual poetic
    does it work?

    pg. 3

    Yeats Joyce and Pound
    also made
    contact
    in some sense with higher
    intelligence
    some might say muse
    others artistic inspiration
    but what

    if Yeats…
    (a butterfly landed with all six mittens onto
    the page while writing this
    two antenna
    deep burnt orange and woody
    choco’ brown hairs with dashes of
    white)

    what if
    William Butler Yeats
    picked up on the magickal hermetic
    current and methods for contacting
    higher intelligence
    either from his own study of Bruno
    Dee Kelly Ficino
    or

    from Aleister Crowley
    the great beast
    who diligently practiced
    enochian magick

    pg. 4

    and so
    maybe Yeats passed on the
    invisible bug or knowledge
    a tiny magickal starseed
    to his associates
    James Joyce and
    Ezra Pound?

    the Chinese written character
    and ancient imagist sensibility
    in resonance with contacting
    higher intelligence
    how did that language strike up from the past?

    (contact between the widow of
    American scholar of Japanese arts and
    oriental culture: Ernest
    Fenollosa and Ezra Pound cc. 1912)

    the hermetic current
    tirelessly innovating culture
    art and science with
    humanitas

    pushing out beyond language
    into total communication
    magick keys to open invisible doorways
    geometry poetry mathematics
    and good will

    pg. 5

    and a will to power
    to the people
    special languages of poetry
    to awaken the reader
    to the ignorance in knowledge
    firm trust in the universe to provide
    flying on the wings of
    imagination

    what if
    contact with higher intelligence
    disguises itself as creative impulse
    and the spark of ingenuity?

    Joyce and Pound each
    made a revolution in
    communications scripture
    and systems

    a good guide to contacting your
    own deeper shadow self
    your private muse
    angel
    or sirian servant
    invoked for good intentions
    on behalf of all around the world
    humanity
    a doorway for friendly ET intervention
    ummm…

    pg. 6

    deeper still we have
    the Polish genius who contacted
    higher intelligence through the
    intensive work and innovation of
    language:
    general semantics

    a refinement of language structure
    toward a science of meaning
    contact with multiple entities
    a lesson for self centered
    naive realists
    in non-Aristotelian language systems
    of limited communications
    Alfred Korzybski

    key to magickal workings
    a 20th century extension of core
    hermetic wisdom
    scientifically presented as
    a system

    deployed by William S. Burroughs
    a possible way to interpret the nova mob
    practiced and mastered by
    Robert Anton Wilson himself
    the epic vortex
    of imagination and good
    willed humour

    pg. 7

    what if
    Buckminster Fuller were a
    primary key figure to
    understanding and making use of the
    hermetic wisdom in
    contacting higher intelligence

    innovation of geometry
    so as to benefit all humanity
    design science revolution
    in the hermetic tradition
    not for weapons of war
    but knowledge systems and new
    communications languages
    for peace

    toward universal abundance
    of technology in the
    minds of the people
    the natural abundance of
    carbon 60
    or bucky balls
    throughout the universe

    serious cosmic economics
    extraterrestrial technology
    and contact
    through the medium of geometry
    maybe some Giordano Bruno
    wisdom
    geodesics and dymaxion
    architecture for the people
    buckyballs and the mad
    carbon 60 mystery of the
    universe:
    ubiquity of c60 throughout it!

    pg. 8

    what if
    the father of information sciences
    and the mathematical theory of
    communication
    Claude Shannon
    were perceived as another
    unforeseen link to opening the
    invisible doorways through which
    higher intelligence
    crept

    to lead much of humanity in 2014
    into contact
    with everybody and everything
    imaginable:
    the global internet of things

    a basically hermetic ideaspace:
    shared knowledge and a
    scientific tool for discovery
    and information processing
    and
    feedback

    Shannon dangles keys
    to as yet undiscovered
    rooms without walls
    mind boggling complexity
    negentropy
    building a new cypher language
    to help deduce and evaluate
    information
    through innovating the equations
    binary electrical switching circuit
    contact

    pg. 9

    what if
    the tale of the tribe
    by Robert Anton Wilson
    defines another order of
    methods and systems
    required for any thinking individual
    who really wants to make contact
    with higher intelligence
    here it is
    cosmic trigger
    study it

    and with luck ideas and inspiration
    may emerge to lift up humanity
    and instigate newer and faster
    technological innovations
    of the living
    livingry

    once contact is established
    how the to ask
    a meaningful question
    how to interpret the information

    quantum mechanics
    and taoism
    both
    systems for deeper study
    on contemplating a holy
    guardian angel
    entity
    shadow self
    how to?

    pg. 10

    magickal workings in the
    enochian language seem
    to me to be more effective
    way to contact higher intelligence
    without tears
    with good reason healthy skepticism
    and a playful soul

    based upon evidence from
    RAWs books such as Cosmic Trigger vol. 1
    and from RAW himself in my interviews
    i now feel today that
    there exists a particular contact
    procedure
    based on RAWs experiments detailed in his
    book
    methodology that includes
    magickal occult ceremony
    and tantric rituals
    together with strange drugs

    Aha
    i hear the skeptic shout accusingly
    drugs!
    i knew it
    all this babble about contact and angels
    he’s high on acid

    well yes what you thought
    the psychedelic experience
    mimics the magickal experience
    and the experience of art too
    getting beyond language
    into epiphany and cosmic coincidence
    or better yet synchronicity

    pg. 11

    to innovate the priest craft
    while keeping two feet
    grounded on earth
    in the sewer
    maybe the message from the stars
    seeds is to evolve and mutate?
    get back to the primary source of
    a kind of
    decentralized (Bruno)
    perception

    unlimited and unbounded by belief
    beliefs unlimited
    freedom of thought
    as Crowley and Leary
    and Philip K. Dick demonstrated

    we are not alone but
    surrounded by a network of sentient
    beings
    a love macrocosm
    teaming with life and things to
    communicate and
    probably not in english

    simply tune in
    RAW tuned in while also turned on
    and quickly got dialled into
    sirius.raw broadcasting network 23

    since getting in touch
    RAW crafted ingenious magickal
    communication devices
    or books
    utilized to help
    other make contact
    and possibly take the plunge and
    attempt the tale of the tribe
    for themselves

    pg. 12

    TTOTT
    a modern verse epic
    an epic including history
    a global epic for the entire
    human race
    from the perception of
    an individual stuck in time
    space

    a spirited attempt to
    redeem oneself from the
    mostly violent
    wreckage of history
    the history of men
    empire warfare greed
    and nightmare bushit’ whirl

    a new book of the day
    contact for all who read
    to provoke freedom of thought
    and sympathy and forgiveness
    for all mankind

    the gods never left us’
    we must knuckle down and
    create this kind spirit of open
    communication for all entities
    both gods and insects
    we must become the
    magick
    we wish to see manifest
    in the word/world

    pg. 13

    two examples of
    the tale of the tribe
    the cantos of Ezra Pound
    &
    Finnegans Wake by James
    Joyce

    both epic and encyclopedic
    global
    tragic comic
    multi lingual
    crated a whole new style
    ideogrammic prose
    hologrammic prose

    both in the hermetic tradition
    heavy on math
    geometry and esoteric symbol
    systems innovated and
    unified in the minds of
    the people who read them

    keys to holding a kind sanity
    in the facebook of a
    pop culture apocalypse
    love and light of acknowledgement
    that nothing is what it first appears to be

    pg. 14

    and slowness is beauty
    good access to the data for all
    helps build a clearer picture
    global webnet search engines
    unleash much occulted information and
    wisdom hidden within the cantos
    and the wake
    even today

    and so the global
    hermetic revolution is underway
    and has been for thousands of years
    artists
    scientists
    hackers
    magicians

    untied against fundamentalist
    materialists
    religious and scientific dogma
    state sponsored bully boy tactics

    and against mean spirited
    greedy actions for the exclusive
    benefit of the few

    a planet spaceship earth
    with 7.6 Billion passengers
    using over 750 languages
    requires a certain sympathetic
    and tolerant individual
    who attempts unity in verse
    including history
    without loosing sight of
    the guiding principle of compassion
    and kindness for all sentient beings

    –Steve Fly Agaric 23
    Amsterdam. 6.50 P.M, 11th June, 2014.


    (on my way back from the park this afternoon i made a decision that when i got home i would google “Yeats and “butterflies” to see what might turn up. Of course, in 1934 Yeats wrote a drama titled ‘Wheels and Butterflies’ adding some spice to this mini-drama unfolding within a drama triggered by a butterfly landing on my open page as i wrote the word Yeats.)