Theses on Magic

The Theses de magia are a set of fifty-six numbered propositions on magic, each followed by a short reason or distinction, which survive in the same manuscript tradition as De magia and were first published by Tocco and his colleagues in 1891. They appear to be a condensed outline of the ideas developed at greater length in De magia, perhaps notes for teaching or for a projected work. The theses set out Bruno’s magical metaphysics in compact form: God as the source who acts through intermediaries; the hierarchy of intelligences, stars, spirits and bodies; the universal soul and spirit that link them; the power of sympathy and antipathy; and the ways in which voices, signs, characters, images and imagination can act upon spirits and through them upon things. Bruno also treats the role of faith and credulity in both operator and subject, maintaining that magical effects depend on a disposition of the soul, and he distinguishes between natural operations and those that involve demons. Because of their brevity, the theses are a convenient key to the vocabulary of Bruno’s magical writings and to their debts to Ficino, Agrippa and the Neoplatonic tradition. They are usually studied together with De magia, Magia mathematica and De vinculis in genere as a group of late works composed in Germany around 1588–1591.

What it contains

• Fifty-six numbered theses with reasons and distinctions
• God, intelligences and the hierarchy of causes
• The world-soul and universal spirit
• Sympathy, antipathy and the action of signs and images
• Faith and imagination in magical operation
• Distinctions between natural and demonic magic