This reminds one of the praise of the Egyptian language in Corpus Hermeticum XVI (the so-called "Definitions" treatise) in which Asclepius tells king Ammon that the treatise should be preserved in the original Egyptian, and should not be translated into Greek, for the Greek language is diffuse and empty, and the "efficacious virtue" of the original Egyptian would be lost in a Greek translation. If Bruno had read this passage, it would probably have been in Ludovico Lazzarelli's Latin translation in which the point that it is the magical power of the Egyptian language which would be lost in translation into a language lacking in this power comes out very clearly.'
…Bruno's practical magic therefore consists in drawing spirits or demons through "links". The linking-with-demons method was mentioned by Ficino at the beginning of the De vita coelitus comparanda, with quotations from Neoplatonist authors on it, though he protested that he was not using it. Agrippa has a chapter on the links, and this is Bruno's basis though he greatly elaborates it. One way of linking is "through words and song", that is incantations, now no longer regarded as purely natural magic as by Ficino, but invoking demons. Another way is by attracting demons with images, seals, characters, and so on. Another way is through the imagination, and this was Bruno's chief magical method, the conditioning of the imagination or the memory to receive the demonic influences through images or other magical signs stamped on memory. In the De magia, Bruno relates his magical psychology of the imagination to the terminology of normal faculty psychology which, however, he transforms by making the imagination, and more particularly the magically animated or excited imagination, when joined to the cogitative power, the source of psychic energy. This magically animated imagination is "the sole gate to all internal affections and the link of links"
…We have indeed come a long way from the Magia and Cabala system of the Christian Magus, with its safeguards in natural magic and its Hebrew-Christian angels as guarantees for religious magic. Nevertheless Giordano Bruno is the direct and logical result of the Renaissance glorification of Man as the great Miracle, man who is divine in his origin and can again become divine, with divine Powers residing in him. He is, in short, the result of the Renaissance Hermetism
…Agrippa had tried to preserve at least an appearance of Trinitarianism in his expositions of religious magic, stating, for example, that the three guides in religion are Love, Hope, Faith, the orthodox three theological virtues. Bruno, as he takes a wandering course through Book III of the De occulta philosophia, picking out some material, altering, rearranging to suit his purposes, always avoids the "threes", and his guides in religion become four, Love, Art, Mathesis, and Magic. It is in following these four that the religious Magus reaches the highest heights of perfection and power. All are connected with magic combined with Platonic furor. Love is the living virtue in all things, which the magician intercepts and which leads him from the lower things to the super celestial realm by divine furor. Art is the knowledge of how to become joined to the soul of the world. By mathesis we learn how to abstract from matter, motion, and time and to reach intellectual contemplation of the intelligible species. Magic is of two kinds, one bad, the other very good. The good kind, by regulated faith and other laudable kinds of "contractions", corrects the erring, strengthens the weak, and, through the greatest demon, which is love, joins the soul to the divine power.
…Bruno's practical magic therefore consists in drawing spirits or demons through "links". The linking-with-demons method was mentioned by Ficino at the beginning of the De vita coelitus comparanda, with quotations from Neoplatonist authors on it, though he protested that he was not using it. Agrippa has a chapter on the links, and this is Bruno's basis though he greatly elaborates it. One way of linking is "through words and song", that is incantations, now no longer regarded as purely natural magic as by Ficino, but invoking demons. Another way is by attracting demons with images, seals, characters, and so on. Another way is through the imagination, and this was Bruno's chief magical method, the conditioning of the imagination or the memory to receive the demonic influences through images or other magical signs stamped on memory. In the De magia, Bruno relates his magical psychology of the imagination to the terminology of normal faculty psychology which, however, he transforms by making the imagination, and more particularly the magically animated or excited imagination, when joined to the cogitative power, the source of psychic energy. This magically animated imagination is "the sole gate to all internal affections and the link of links"
…We have indeed come a long way from the Magia and Cabala system of the Christian Magus, with its safeguards in natural magic and its Hebrew-Christian angels as guarantees for religious magic. Nevertheless Giordano Bruno is the direct and logical result of the Renaissance glorification of Man as the great Miracle, man who is divine in his origin and can again become divine, with divine Powers residing in him. He is, in short, the result of the Renaissance Hermetism
…Agrippa had tried to preserve at least an appearance of Trinitarianism in his expositions of religious magic, stating, for example, that the three guides in religion are Love, Hope, Faith, the orthodox three theological virtues. Bruno, as he takes a wandering course through Book III of the De occulta philosophia, picking out some material, altering, rearranging to suit his purposes, always avoids the "threes", and his guides in religion become four, Love, Art, Mathesis, and Magic. It is in following these four that the religious Magus reaches the highest heights of perfection and power. All are connected with magic combined with Platonic furor. Love is the living virtue in all things, which the magician intercepts and which leads him from the lower things to the super celestial realm by divine furor. Art is the knowledge of how to become joined to the soul of the world. By mathesis we learn how to abstract from matter, motion, and time and to reach intellectual contemplation of the intelligible species. Magic is of two kinds, one bad, the other very good. The good kind, by regulated faith and other laudable kinds of "contractions", corrects the erring, strengthens the weak, and, through the greatest demon, which is love, joins the soul to the divine power.