Bruno’s Magic of Desire

Renaissance binding magic for the information age

Here I will discuss the fascinating descriptions of magic by the Renaissance, philosopher, magician, heretic and scholar, Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600). Bruno’s contributions to magic through his extensive writings, are much overlooked, and his legacy has suffered much from his being used as a straw-man, both positively and negatively throughout history. In this article I will summarise his theory of magic, which despite being over 400 years old is very relevant to how we are using magic in the 21st century.

Eros (love) which holds the universe together

Bruno’s theories are based on the ancient Greek concept of Eros, described not only as love, but the very principle of order which binds all things in existence.

The Orphic mysteries were a group of initiatory secret societies in ancient Greece from at least as far back as the 6th century BCE. They taught a religion centring around the figure Orpheus, a mythical poet and musician. They also venerated a version of the god Dionysius who they considered second to Zeus in the pantheon. Dionysus was killed by the titans and reborn, and humankind was created from his ashes. This form of Dionysus was compared to the Egyptian Osiris, and was a far cry from the later drunken god of wine and intoxication. To the Orphics, Dionysus’ offered higher states of consciousness comparable to those found in yoga.

They believed humankind to have a dual nature, an imperfect body, prone to sin, inherited from the titans, and a pure soul capable of reaching divinity, inherited from Dionysus.

In the Orphic mysteries Eros was a primordial god who was either born of chaos, Nyx¹, a chaos-goddess, or from the cosmic egg. These mythemes all roughly align to the Hindu concept of Brahman. Eros became a concept that meant much more than erotic love. At its highest conception Eros was ‘that which binds the universe together’. In this sense molecules are atoms bound together by Eros, and all matter is a result of this binding.

This concept was also taught by Plato (approx. 428-347 BCE). It is similar to the concept of Logos (Heraclitus). Implicit in Eros are the qualities of desire: that matter desires to take form, and the quality of order. Being that which binds all things together, just as families and couples are bound by love. Some, especially the Orphics, have also associated Eros with life-energy, similar to prana or chi: that which animates living things.

According to Plato, erotic love was something to be transcended in order to understand this higher universal love, which allowed a practitioner to achieve union with the divine. This transformation of consciousness was achieved through mathematical, ethical and ascetic training. In Plato’s Symposium, Eros is described as a universal force that moves all things towards peace, perfection and divinity. Eros himself is described as a "daimon", namely an intermediary spirit between divinity and mortality.

Platonic love in its original conception, is the purification of Eros from sexual into ideal form. Implicit in Plato’s writings, where Eros is described as a magician (φαρμακεύς pharmakeus), with the power to enchant others is the use of Eros for magic. Especially the ability to control desire, to bind others, and to charm. A pharmakeus was someone who practiced magic, especially using potions, spells, or incantations. In this sense, the word refers to a sorcerer who could enchant, bewitch, or manipulate others through supernatural means. The term also had connotations of a poisoner, who can intoxicate others. Love was frequently described as a type of intoxication or poison in Greek Mythology, with the god Eros being an archer who made people fall in love with poisoned arrows. A further connotation of pharmakeus is that of a healer who uses medicines. It is likely that Plato had all of these ambiguities in mind when he described love through Eros.

As the universal order, Eros was the opposite of Chaos, where Chaos is both entropy and disordered potential.

God as love in Christianity

These concepts were adopted by the early christians Christianity where God is described as Love and the ordering principle of the universe.

In the First Epistle of John in the Bible, the key verses are:

1 John 4:8: "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."

1 John 4:16: "So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

Although the word for love in these passages is ‘Agapē’ (ἀγάπη) rather than Eros, both are understood as universal order.

In contrast, to Eros which is erotic or sexual in nature, Agapē in the New Testament is selfless, unconditional, and other-oriented.

In Christianity therefore, erotic love and erotic desire, as Eros, has been traded out for the love of a family, Agapē. Where the Orphics and Plato saw raw sexuality and desire in the universe as something to be purified into divine love through spiritual training, Christianity instead centres around the metaphor of a family, where God is a father, and nature and human beings are his progeny. In this way the desire, and themes of ‘intoxification’ are subverted somewhat. To the Greeks, Eros has the connotation of a desire to possess, where Agapē is unconditional, and sometimes sacrificial. Where Eros can be a love between equals, for instance young lovers, Agapē imposes a hierarchy with God at the top and his worshipers as children.

Regardless of these differences, both forms of love are that which orders and sustains the universe. Note that, like Brahman in Hinduism, God is this principle.

Christianity also borrowed the concept of Logos from Heraclitus (approx 500 BC), as that which differentiates and orders, and from Plato as the concept of reason. In English translations of the New Testament, Logos is usually translated as the ‘Word’. Jesus is said to be the Logos incarnate (John 1:1). This works well for a religion centred around a book.

As the Logos, Jesus is then the ultimate expression of God’s Agapē: Reason, order, duty, self sacrifice, family, kingship. It is with this background that Bruno lays out his theory of magic.

The ‘binding magic’ of Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, astrologer, cosmological theorist, and esotericist. Nowadays he is most often cited as a ‘proto-scientist’ who proposed an infinite universe, with no center, where stars were ‘other worlds’ with planets similar to Earth capable of life. In this he adopted the Copernican model² which proposed heliocentrism, becoming our modern conception of the solar system. For this reasons he is also unfortunately described in many places as a kind of ‘martyr for science’, as he was burned at the stake by the Catholic church for heresy.

This idea is somewhat incorrect. We still have the court reports, and while his cosmological ideas are included in his prosecution, the Church was much more concerned by his books on magic, and especially his preaching of ‘Arianism’, the idea that Jesus was not divine. He also denied the divinity of Mary and the ‘miracle’ of the transubstantiation, which he reasonably described as being symbolic rather than the literal body of Christ in the form of bread and wine.

It also didn’t help that Bruno, though brilliant, had a somewhat scathing personality and he was extremely critical of other thinkers of his time. Where other writers survived by keeping their mouths shut, and their writings on the down-low, Bruno was a squeaky wheel.

My following summary of Bruno’s position on magic is deeply indebted to this thesis by Michael Storch (McGill University, Montreal 2007).

Bruno’s writings were influenced by hermeticism, neoplatonism, stoicism, islamicate magical texts, kabbalah, alchemy, astrology, and the thinkers Iamblichus, Ficino and Agrippa.

In Bruno’s system, those that understand erotic desire, love, memory, and charm can manipulate reality and other people through the control of these factors and through the captivation of the imagination. In this way desire, based in love is a more powerful force than reason.

Similarly to Plato, Bruno called love “the great demon³, for his bond is indeed the entire substance”. As we can see Bruno is appealing to the same idea of Eros as the unifying ordering principle of the universe. Implied is the idea that while people can be manipulated through desire, so can nature.

Bruno wrote extensively on the type of magic I would term ‘charm’, and to which, I would include, art, music, film, theatre, courting, persuasion, advertising, and propaganda.

Bruno’s magic works through sounds and images that impress upon the imagination (phantasia), and ignite underlying desires. By imagination he didn’t necessarily mean ‘illusion’ or that which isn’t real, though these would be included. To Bruno the imagination is both our inner experience and the world we construct through our senses and perception.

Those who have the talents to control the imagination and mental states of others are then able to control their subjective reality. Bruno called this process ‘binding’, in the same sense that love binds us in relationships. As one can already glean, there is a big overlap between Bruno’s binding magic and our modern psychology, especially the concept of conditioning.

This magical binding process is an ongoing one, requiring upkeep and modulation from the magician as if he were conducting an orchestra. Indeed it is said by Bruno that it is much easier to bind a group of people than an individual (just as a conductor is never required for a solo performance).

The control of the imagination and memory that allows binding, uses an extended version of the ancient Greek idea of ‘memory palaces’. These are imagined spaces with elements that encode memories by association. A version of this process appears to exist in nearly every culture, as studied and demonstrated by the anthropologist Lynne Kelly.

Modern neuroscience and psychology also confirm that memorisation via association, and using the imagined senses (images, sounds, smells, feelings etc.) is the most efficient way to memorise large amounts of data.

These same types of techniques are used by competitors in memory competitions.

That we are less trained in these techniques than our ancestors is a symptom of the information age, first through mass literacy allowing things like shopping lists and libraries, and now with the digital revolution, the ease and speed at which we can find things to read: wikipedia, and recent AI Large Language Models⁴.

We also live in an age of advertising and persuasion, through social media. Writers and musicians such as myself, as well as other ‘content creators’ are constantly vying for the attention of those who want to learn, or be entertained. While hopefully most appeal to the curiosity, we are well aware of ‘click bait’ which appeals, like Bruno’s magic, to our base desires. In the political sphere the same could be said of the demagogues who seem to be ever present in the early 21st century. Apparent conflicts are constantly being manufactured in order to lure in voters. Identity politics appeal to the emotions causing one group to turn on another. At the extremes these factors allow, not only shifts in power, but also wars.

The universe building bonds of Eros are said by Bruno to structure matter, make seeds grow, and attract and influence all things.

He is critical of art, exclaiming that it binds the "the dimwitted" who see only the object, not the craft. I would frame art instead as drawing on qualities more fundamental than language: appealing to beauty and revulsion, form and chaos, which I understand to be relevant to even the simplest life forms. Perhaps Bruno missed this, or maybe he would simply disagree.

Bruno’s binding is a process rather than a single act. He explains that there is no single, absolute bond; and that many bonds work at once in a kind of ecosystem.

The most base and some of the most powerful desires to be bound can be found in the body. For example deodorant companies using TV ads will somtimes depict a man applying their deodorant, only to be chased sown the road by an absurd number of sexy women.

Advertisers and Bruno both understand that this association may be a complete lie, and yet it will still impress upon the audience by appealing to pre-rational desires. The product, now familiar will then stand out amongst others the next time a customer visits the supermarket.

Memory palaces

To construct a memory palace, for instance to stand in for a shopping list, one imagines a building, with one or more rooms. To encode ‘eggs’ one could imagine a chicken coup in the room where clucking hens are nesting.

To encode ‘beer’ one could imagine a miniature bar, and bartender in the chicken coup ready to serve drunken hens. To encode ‘bread’ one could imagine the chickens pecking at a sandwich.

Perhaps one needs to pop into the stationary shop after the supermarket. So outside of the chicken coup one might place a desk with a frazzled writer trying to write with an empty ball point pen directly onto the wooden desk. This could help one remember to buy biros and paper.

One can then rehearse this imagery noticing each of these elements in turn. Ridiculous, funny, sexy, or freaky elements help engage the memory, as do the uses of multiple sensory elements: image, smell, texture, emotion, colour, sound etc.

For Bruno, the memory palace, which he called the ‘atrium’ could be more than than just a memory jog. It could be a kind of ‘meaning engine’ (my own term) to produce new ideas via association and combination. These could then be used to develop new bonds to affect people or nature.

As one understands a concept, one can then break it into individual components which become places around the memory palace. Once this imagined environment has become encoded and complex, one can then rearrange its components in ways that are not possible in the physical world. A kind of ‘three dimensional brainstorm’.

Similar to the process I created in my article Meaning Engines contradictions, tensions and opposites create a ripe groups for generating meaning. For instance we may have the dichotomy man/woman. We could then use this to generate a plethora of characters that are inbetween these idealised forms. For instance a female body builder, a male ballet dancer in a tutu, a female warrior, a drag king, a hermaphrodite with a beard, makeup and large breasts… The tension between our associations can create perhaps endless forms. Perhaps this is the type of operation that Bruno would understand in his atria. Spaces that could contain many of these tensions spilling out idea after idea.

If one is careful to create these meaning engines from universal archetypes, then even though the ideas may have never been seen before, they ought to remain understandable to a general audience.

Tension not release

Just as my ‘meaning engines’ produce meaning endlessly as long as they are never truly resolved, so Bruno states that bonds only work on desires if the desires are never resolved. Thus people latch onto ‘sex symbol’ celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, precisely and powerfully because these longings will never be fulfilled. If the sex symbol dies young then they produce even better magic. You can’t go to bed with a picture of a dead icon.

In this way a lie can produce more magical effect than a fact. A multi-million dollar lottery that can (almost) never be won, will lure more people for longer than a more humble prize given to half of those who play. Bruno writes:

“The strongest bonds are forged toward things we desire, (Eros) and that desire is both intrinsic in the attractive aspects of the object, and also created by the one who desires. This desire does not always lead to action. For example, a hungry person desires her favourite dish; the goodness is inherent in the food itself, if it is of quality, but it is also contingent upon the condition of the person. If she is not hungry, she will not be bound by that food.”

In this way, the sorcerer must keep their target ‘hungry’. Even better, and well understood by advertisers and propagandists, is when the sorcerer understands how to create the desire in the first place. Pavlov’s dogs who were conditioned to expect food at the ring of his bell, were then made hungry by its ringing.

This concept is used in advertising and politics all the time. Promising one thing then delivering something different, that doesn’t fully resolve the first. This is also how conmen get away with their lies for so long. They sting their victims along with unfulfilled promises, based on core desires.

The difficulty for the sorcerer is the creation of a desire in others that doesn’t affect himself. In a sense every spell must necessarily also bind the magician at some level through their very intent, which is itself a desure. We see this play out all the time. Expert manipulators will become ensnared in their own trap as their own desires become beyond their own control.

That the fulfilment of the desire destroys the bond, also gives us a form of protection. If the afflicted can learn to resolve their own desires then they ought to be able to escape the sorcerer’s spell. Remember this anytime you feel manipulated. Which desire is being affected in you? and how would you offer your own fulfilment and to release you from this bond.

Bruno writes:

“The bonding agent does not unite a soul to himself unless he has captured it;

it is not captured unless it has been bound;

he does not bind it unless he joins himself to it;

he does not join it unless he has approached it;

he has not approached it unless he has moved;

he has not moved unless he is attracted;

he is not attracted until he has been inclined towards or turned away;

he is not inclined towards until he desires or wants;

he does not desire unless he knows;

he does not know unless the object contained in a species or an image is presented to the eyes or the ears or the gaze of the internal senses”

This segment is a wonderful tease. If one reverses the process it makes even more sense.

• An image is presented to the senses in the subject.

• The image creates desire.

• The inclination towards desire causes the subject to turn towards or away. This causes the subject to be moved and to approach.

• This causes the person to be bound, and then to be united to the soul of the sorcerer.

Likewise Bruno never resolved the tendency for the magician to become ensnared in his own trap. Perhaps he fully intended there to be a puzzle for the reader in this. In a way his writing is its own form of binding.

Bruno’s pantheism

Bruno understood the dichotomy of form and matter to be an illusion. In a sense his matter is enacted concept, or information condensed by the relationships between things.

He also understood consciousness to be fundamental. In this way the universe has a mind, as do pieces of matter, and all of these minds can be persuaded by you, and in turn are able to enact their persuasions upon you. Bruno says that matter can not be separated from act, and in this way he is, like Heraclitus before him a ‘process philosopher’. All matter is in motion and ‘solid objects’ are therefore just those things which flow more slowly than others.

Thus many of the things that can affect the psychology of humans, can be extended into the sphere of ‘natural magic’. The universe has a universal psychology of which ours is a minor reflection.

Bruno framed these persuasions between minds, human or otherwise, as seduction, the way a lover may seduce their intended, which brings us back to Eros, the binding agent of all things.

Finally Bruno’s magic and his cosmology firmly rejected the established hierarchy of being as presented by the Church and by other magicians. His centreless universe, filled with many earthlike worlds, seemingly granted access between all things. This was in opposition to the traditional ‘great chain of being’.

In this way he can, in some ways, be seen as a precursor to postmodern philosophy, especially Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, which uses the internet-like ‘rhisome’ as its central metaphor in opposition to the mythological ‘tree of life’ where all meaning relates to a central trunk. The internet and general decentralisation, and democratisation of knowledge and data have caused the rhizome idea to become a truth.

Likewise the ‘attention economy’ has created a media of charms and desires where everything is seemingly negotiable. Even the ‘lofty’ rockstars of last century can now be found live-streaming and answering real time comments and ‘super-chat’s with their fans. We live in an age of influence and perhaps, again, in an ‘age of Eros’.

Bruno’s magic gives us the theory we need to navigate this ecosystem of desire.

1. Etymologically linked to our word ‘night’, and carrying the same meaning.

2. Nicolaus Copernicus, published in 1543

3. The term Daemon was neutral in ancient Greece. Even by the Renaissance, and especially in magical writings, the term demon, retained this neutrality to a certain extent. Therefore pious Christian magicians wrote tomes on how to use and control demons. That demons are prone to evil is acknowledged, yet they can still, in this time period, be controlled by Christians for non-evil purposes.

4. I use the AI Large Language Model, Perplexity, as a fast search engine to find me links and sources, but all the writing I do is my own.