excerpt on Giordano Bruno and semantic fields

Wolfgang Wildgen in Meaning and Cognition: A Multidisciplinary approach

203 the 'Art of Memory' elaborated by Giordano Bruno is already a highly developed semantic theory

204 since memory organizes 'pictures, ideas and signs' ... his artificial memory is a very early theory of semantic fields and sets out basic processes of semantic composition

it is multimedial, since it is not restricted to linguistic items but refers by means of imagines to external and internal pictures, and by means of ideae to abstract theoretical principles.

Contrary to the structuralist models of semantic fields, it possesses dynamics (by metaphors, metonymies and semantic metamorphosis) and links the basic concepts, the ideae, to a cosmological construction.

Thus the theoretical range of Bruno's 'theory of semantic fields' is much broader than that of the classical paradigm established in the 1920's by mainly German and French scholars.

Dynamic semantics...refers to very fundamental topological and dynamic principles... brings the theory of semantic fields back into the neighbourhood of Bruno's proposals. In his and Cusanus' terms, the extremes are in contact with one another

Science and the Occult -- Call for Papers

Science and the Occult - from Antiquity to Early Modern Period
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

APRIL 20-21, 2012 (Friday-Saturday)

Hosted by the Department of History and supported by the Bilsland-Puskas Initiative endowment at Purdue University

Keynote speakers:
Edward Bever Ph.D., Chair of History & Philosophy Department, SUNY-Old Westbury (State University of New York)
Nancy L. Turner Ph.D., Chair of Social Sciences and History Department, University of Wisconsin-Platteville; Chair of Societas Alchimica

Abstract submission: 500 words
Contact: Angela Catalina Ghionea at email: ghionea@purdue.edu

Deadlines:
To chair a Session: September 15, 2011 (Propose a title with short description for a session you would like to chair, and one page Resume)
Paper Proposals: October 1, 2011 (500 words Abstracts to be submitted as word attachment, plus full CV)
General Sessions: January 15, 2012 (Offers to preside for possible General Sessions, plus one page Resume)


Topics considered (but not limited to):

History of Magic, Alchemy, Witchcraft, Medicine, Herbalism, Kabala, Numerology, Sacred Geometry, Esoterism, Hermetism and Hermeticism, Divination, Tarot, Astrology, Tradition and Lore, Ciphers and Alphabets, Semiotics and Symbology.

The fascinating recurrence of alchemical symbols in European, American, and Islamic thought, as well as specific non-rational methods employed by many scientists to promote rational discoveries from Ancient times through the Early Modern Period, will be the focus of this conference. We anticipate the publication of an edited Volume II, after the event.

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/history/scienceandtheoccult/

Speculum Theologiae

In Beineke MS 416

Speculum Virginum, "mystic form of paradise" / cloistered religious life

Godwin on Alchemy for non-initiates

To look at these symbols as pictures is to understand something that commentators rarely point out. They will tell us what the various creatures or figures symbolize, but if that were sufficient, there would be no need for an illustration: it could all be put into words, like philosophy. Why draw so many images if all they mean is that there is a relationship between “soul” and “spirit”? The reason is that these symbolic landscapes and their inhabitants are to be brought alive through the imagination.
...
For those of us who cannot or would rather not “rise in the planes,” the symbolic world of Hermetic philosophy still affords a unique combination of visual pleasure and spiritual meaning.

— Joscelyn Godwin, The Silent Language: Symbols of the Hermetic Philosophy

Jung on Alchemy

My results, based on fifteen years of effort, seemed inconclusive, because no possibility of comparison offered itself. I knew of no realm of human experience with which I might have backed up my findings with some degree of assurance. The only analogies-and these, I must say, were far removed in time-I found scattered among the reports of the heresiologists. This connection did not in any way ease my task; on the contrary, it made it more difficult, because the Gnostic systems consist only in small part of immediate psychic experiences, the greater part being speculative and systematizing recensions.

Carl Jung, Alchemical Studies

Quotes from Hopkins on the Alchemical Color sequence (thanks to Phil Norfleet for these)

"One would suppose that the alchemist, having prepared gold, would be satisfied, but a fourth step is indicated: Melanosis, leukosis, xanthosis, iosis. In this last step iosis we have to take refuge in all our ideas of aichemistic theory and step lightly in the maze of vague and unintelligible words. Generally whenever this stage is reached, the alchemist author announces that he will conceal nothing and then breaks forth into an ecstasy of exclamatory sentences: “Oh, natures superior to all Nature!” etc., etc. After the black, white, yellow comes “iosis” which means production of violet or purple.’ It has not been clear why the production of violet or purple should havc been considered the last and highest and best step in the transmutation process. Was this final stage so honorable because metal coloring and dyeing began in the same shop, so that the royal purple and the ios of gold made purple the highest attainment of each in brilliancy of color? The analogy is attractive but does not seem sufficient.

"Another question arises: Can it be done? Also, was the production of this highest color, higher even than the yellow of gold, only the result of a lively alchemistic imagination, or is there experimental basis for this color? Again, if this violet is possible, is gold a prerequisite for the production of the violet color, just as the alchemist believed that silver must precede gold?

"Alchemistic literature certainly gives an affirmative answer to this last question.

It is the tincture forming in the interior [of the gold] which is the true tincture in violet, which has also been called the Ios of gold. … By operating on gold you will have the Coral of gold. … You will find a powerful body having the odor of cinnabar, of coral or minium. This great marvel, this indescribable marvel, has been named Coral of gold. … Treat by projection gold with Coral of gold, silver with gold, lead or tin with molybdocalc. Behold how he has made us rise by degrees.

"Mary the Jewess in a famous passage says:

If the two do not become one, i. e., if the volatile does not combine with the fixed, nothing will take place which is expected. If one does not whiten and the two become three, with white sulphur which whitens [nothing expected will take place]. But when one yellows, three become four, for one yellows with yellow sulphur. At the end [the climax] when one tints into violet, all things combine into Violet[!]

"This passage indicates the superstitious reverence accorded to this highest color; and the preceeding quotations show that the color, as yellow was below white. The sequence is the same in both steps."