Eros and Magic in the Renaissance

by Ioan Petru Culianu and Loan P. Culianu

Book Overview

It is a widespread prejudice of modern, scientific society that "magic" is merely a ludicrous amalgam of recipes and methods derived from primitive and erroneous notions about nature. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance challenges this view, providing an in-depth scholarly explanation of the workings of magic and showing that magic continues to exist in an altered form even today.

Renaissance magic, according to Ioan Couliano, was a scientifically...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226123162
• ISBN13: 9780226123165
• Release Date: November 1987
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

magic still among us

Great book. Some people think he was murdered for spilling the beans. He was fondly called the 'professor' by the librarians at the Vatican Library to give you an idea of his grasp of the subject matter...This book traces modern mass hypnosis (media) back to its roots and the 'bonding' of the masses elucidated by Bruno among others in the Renaissance. One of the unstated themes of the book is that modern man is really in worse shape than his Medieval ancestors who could see 'magic' for what it was. Today, the same magical bonds, manipulation and delivery system are disguised in psychology, pharmamcology, religion, medicine, scientific world-views and its state-sponsored perfection is masked behind static stage sets named things like public policy, public relations, communications studies, think tanks...they sell their 'bonds' with catch phrases like 'personal freedom', 'liberation', 'progress', 'free-markets'... Couliano had a personal history that allowed him to witness two different types of state sorcery : communist Romania and later the west and the United States. The book delivers a subtle warning to the West that they may be leaving the 'magical' manipulation the Western States have practiced since the Renaissance and moving toward a new form of state savagery perfected by the communist regimes in the 20th century...a situation made possible by man's inability to see the magic or having been completely put to sleep by it...a dangerous vulnerability and trust in the 'experts'-cum-magicians. The mass consciousness is becoming unconscious, swaying with every trend and nod and wink from the puppet masters...This book is heavy duty if you read between the lines...i think the powers-that-be feared his next one...God Bless His Soul. Pax Vobiscum.

philosophies of science and magic

This book argues that modern science is born after the Renaissance, and represents an entirely new manner of acquring and working with knowledge. As such, Couliano argues, modern science does not represent a linear extension or progression of Renaissance science, but rather a wholesale replacement, which essentially abandons avenues of exploration opened by the Greeks and later re-opened by Italian Neoplatonists, such as Giordano Bruno and Marsilio Ficino. Couliano goes so far as to suggest that our trust in quantitative science is so central to our contemporary worldview that the subjectivity of a Renaissance-era thinker would strike us as fundamentally unrecognizable. This book works both as a fascinating elaboration of this alien Renaissance mindset and a critique of the modern scientific worldview, with Couliano firmly rejecting the notion that its rise represents a kind of "progress." In Couliano's view, the Renaissance sciences-including astrology, alchemy, the art of memory, and demon-magic-serve as strategies for working with the unconscious or imagination, and that their abandonment serves as a sort of psychological crippling. Actually, as Couliano explains in his final chapters, these methods are less "abandoned" and are more supressed by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, who jointly align these sciences with heresy and persecute the practicioners. (It is interesting to note that this alignment is still with us: see for instance the continued resonance of the Faust legend, which represents a man of knowledge as a servant of the devil, or any of the countless films or other cultural products which have depicted Satan as an erudite Italian.) This book also makes a compelling case that these suppressed methods of knowledge-work continue to exist today in the form of various sciences and quasi-sciences: advertising, mass media, psychology, cryptography, and what Couliano calls "applied psychosociology." As these sciences are commonly used in the services of mass control, those of us who want to understand control logics would do well to attempt a more complete understanding of these techniques-which involves understanding their roots in the Renaissance. A difficult task, perhaps, but Couliano's book provides an excellent starting point.

Would that he were still alive...

It is unfortunate that Professor Culianu was so violently removed from the world of academia. We are fortunate however, that some few books he was responsible for remain. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance is an outstanding book. The work is essentially about phantasms (not to be confused with "fantasy") and how, in the past, these phantasms were believed to operate within the soul. Of course, if one accepts for the sake of discussion that phantasms exist and operate within the soul, then discussion of the mechanics of phantasmic operation (e.g. the art of memory, erotic magic, manipulation of desire) naturally follow. Culianu brilliantly reviews the history of thought regarding the movement of images within the soul and goes yet further to discuss the history of how men believed manipulation of individuals and "the masses" through this process might be effected. Naturally enough he touches on advertising, misinformation, spin and censorship. These very subjects got the conspiratorial Giordano Bruno (who occupies a significant position in the book) burned alive in 1600 by the Catholic Church (an organization understandably averse to anyone tinkering about in the very realm of imaginal manipulation they had such a stake in). It seems that these issues are still very sensitive to a number of groups with a vested interest in imaginal manipulation. There were a number of people in Rumania after the coup who began to worry about Culianu (a Rumanian expatriate) and his penetrating understanding of the rigid "Police State" with its enforcement of laws and the more flexible "Magician State" with it's enforcement of *desires* (all discussed in this book). That is most likely why Professor Culianu had his head blown off in The University of Chicago Divinity School.Anyone with an interest in how mankind has enslaved itself with the empty images of manufactured need and sterile consumerism will find Eros and Magic in the Renaissance to be the center of a web of ideas shedding light on this subject. Outstanding Book!

A Jump In The History Of Human Soul

If you'll ever read this book you'll agree that the history of the mankind is really about it: changing the subject of the history, turninig a medieval, supersticious, paranormally gifted man into an author of technology and science. It might not have happend, unless in the year of 1484 as Professor Culianu states the history would prefered otherwize. The question of "is this change for good or for bad?" could be hardly answered since the subject of modern history is us. And what we gain by reding this book is a nostalgy of what we were.

if you are here because you wanted to, this is a worthy book

dumezil, jung, eliade, culianu. these are few of the 20th century's pundits of religion. culianu, a student and disciple of eliade, wrote a great book. besides the broad coverage inherited from his maestro, he comes with a great power of analysis, lucid reasoning and new theses. he operates surgically with both new and old concepts. i rated this book with 9 because it is quite difficult to have more than one 10-rated book.