Oh that Bruno, always picking and choosing what he wants

 I fell intently upon this paragraph while reading Jennifer of the Falling Water’s most recent post:

‘I find it interesting that Bruno admired Thomas Aquinas, but not as a religious leader, as a Magus. Oh that Bruno, always picking and choosing what he wants, and bending it around for his purposes. Perhaps we all do that to some degree.’

It reminded me of this quote from Yates:

 “The Renaissance occult philosopher had a great gift for ignoring differences and seeing only resemblances” (165).

Yates is referring to the flexible way in which the Renaissance occultists constructed their systems of memory. To use Camillo as an example, his memory theatre synthesized the occultist hermetic and cabalistic influences with classic rhetorical and mnemonic practices. (The point of synthesis between these traditions is a major destination in this chapter). Present still, is the Dantesque imagery which acts as “vestiges of older usages and interpretations of artificial memory” (163). But rather than serving a scholarly, moralist purpose—which is inherently narrow and self-containing—Camillo extends those artificial conceptions to inhabit a space that reaches beyond good or bad, heaven or hell. Flowing from Ficino’s use of talismans in his magic, Yates believes Camillo imbues his images with talismanic virtue—meaning—the images of his theatre contain a power that is both cosmological and unifying. Rather than using images as mere signifiers or end points in his art of memory, Camillo utilizes them as a vehicle or conductor through which memory is unified with the higher world. 

"his Theatre is the first great landmark in the story of the transformation of the art of memory through the Hermetic and Cabalist influences implicit in Renaissance Neoplatonism" (162).

“When Viglius asked Camillo concerning the meaning of the work as they both stood in the Theatre, Camillo spoke of it as representing all that the mind can conceive and all that is hidden in the soul—all of which could be perceived at one glance by the inspection of images” (158).

I believe this puts into perspective all we should be doing for our Museyrooms; picking and choosing what we want to incorporate from Yates, and the class discussions, and other’s suggestions, and bending/weaving/layering/mixing (to take advantage of Seth’s cake analogy) it all to create something that represents us individually; is representative of our imaginations.

-------Be like Camillo and Bruno, put together things like Thomas Aquinas and heliocentrism that don’t initially appear to mesh. Don’t be afraid that you are misinterpreting, it’s not possible—any interpretation involves the use of imagination, which is exactly the cylinder you should to be firing on. Be fearlessly imaginative; create something awesome--------

And as always, do not forget that this is a final project, the culmination of all we have come to learn in this semester. So cull and compile! Through the process of creating your museyroom, you are already engaging the one crucial tool that this class revolves around: your imagination.