Cantus Circaeus: Incantations of Circe, together with The Judiciary being the Art of Memory.
Seattle, WA: Ouroboros Press, 2009. First English language. Hardcover. Small octavo. 138pp. Original black cloth with title to spine and gilt Ouroboros design on upper board. Originally printed in Paris 1582, this is the first English language edition of Giordano Bruno’s Cantus Circaeus, translated from the original Latin by Darius Klein. In the beginning of Cantus Circaeus, Bruno portrays the doctrine of correspondence as used with the seven planetary invocations, which are themselves tokens of praxis in the Hermetic tradition. The incantatory litanies include the names, attributes, plants, stones, animals and other qualities associated with the astral bodies, and are thus memory palaces of planetary arcana. Through dialogue, Circe and her assistant Moeris, explicate the use of images in the imagination in order to facilitate use of the Art of Memory which constitutes the latter half of the text. Francis A. Yates, author of Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition comments: “Bruno’s magic memory system thus represents the memory of the Magus, one who both knows the reality beyond the multiplicity of appearances through having conformed his imagination to the archetypal images, and also has powers through this insight. It is the direct descendant of Ficino’s Neoplatonic interpretation of the celestial images, but carried to a much more daring extreme.” "As new" condition - thus a tight clean Fine copy in Fine dust jacket. (Dust jacket protected by removable mylar sleeve). Item #70799
ISBN: 0966295048
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