"Since the divine mind is universally present in the wold of nature (continues Bruno in the Seal of Seals) the process of coming to know the divine mind must be through the reflection of the images of the world of sense within the mens. Therefore the function of the imagination of ordering the images in memory is an absolutely vital one in the cognitive process. Vital and living images will reflect the vitality and life of the world--and he has in mind both magically vitalized astral images and the living striking images of the 'Ad Herennian' memory rule."
continuing on to pg. 259
"The art of memory has become in Giordano Bruno's occult transformation of it, a magico-religious technique, a way of becoming joined to the soul of the world as part of the Hermetic mystery cult. When the Thirty Seals of memory are broken, this is the 'secret' revealed in the Seal of Seals"
Ok so this is just a quick sampling of quotes about my favorite topic of this course, memory, imagination, and soul. The end of chapter 11 is littered with quotes in support of the trinity. More importantly, the process described by Yates finally connects Bruno back to the original thoughts of the Platonic and Aristotalian view of the art of memory. However, Bruno tends to be more in the camp of Plato. Like Plato, Bruno sees memory, imagination, and soul as the trinity that grants man limitless power of knowledge.
Bruno's memory system joins the human soul with the world. "As the world is satid to be the image of God, so Trismegistus does not fear to call man the image of the world... man is the 'great miracle' ... his mens is divine."
I don't even have to make any sort of argument, the text speaks for itself. Memory is the divine gift. God made man in his image. If God is all knowing one could assume that power was transfered upon man along with his image. Through memory man becomes God.
Further more, all knowledge is rooted in Memory, imagination, and soul. "The vision of the Poet, the Painter, and the Philosopher as all fundamentally the same, all painters of images in fantasy, like Zeuxis who paints the memory images, expressed by the one as poetry, by the other as painting, by the third as thought" (253). Thus we are all equally divine as the knowledge of the divine all comes from the same place. And its this knowledge that unites us all and unites us to the world in which we live. The world, in Bruno's tradition, is not some ownable/ conquerable hunk of rock but the root of knowledge and another being with which to share knowledge. The method man uses to hold this conversation with the world is MYTH!
--Enter Kane
I really wish I could more clearly align my thoughts on this topic and layout some linear and comprehensible narration of my thoughts rather than the clumps of jibberish. I will do some serious work on this for my paper. Maybe I can make a bit more sense of all of this
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