In his eloquent introduction Noel Cobb offers four reasons why Moore's introduction to Ficino's imaginal world of the Florentine Renaissance is important:
First, it shows a way whereby the world may be ensouled, whereby soul is given body and is also nourished by the spirit.
Second, through Ficino a vision is given us of our cultural roots in ancient Greece, and origins in the archetypal world.
Third, it gives astrology at last the kind of home it deserves: a palace designed by Leonardo, decorated by Botticelli, furnished by Lorenzo and filled with the living music of Ficino's lyre.
Fourth, because it deflates the explanatory compulsions of psychological theory and directs our attention to our lived world, calling into play the aesthetic, that is, the sensing, imagining heart.
The perspective of the book is intended to be psychological. It appears to be addressed to people interested in psychology more than any other discipline and through Ficino it encourages different ways of approaching therapy - through the imagination. However, I found it on the astrology shelves and I rather suspect that it is intended as a sort of self help book too.
The book is divided unevenly into three parts: Part 1, Poetica Animae: A poetic of the soul introduces Ficino and his neoplatonic worldview in 116 pages. Part II Radii Planetarum: Planetary Radiance covers Ficino's astrology and each of the seven planets and their mythology in 73 pages. Part III Musical Humana: music of the Soul is one brief chapter. There are notes to the text and a bibliography.
In his introduction, Recovery of the soul, Moore contrasts the outer universe with the inner universe of the mind and suggests that modern psychology has lost something. He points out that "in psychology of the medieval and Renaissance man, the psyche was understood to be a microcosmic reflection of the universe.
He also explains that in his modern reading of Ficino he intends not to take everything Ficino says literally but "to translate his theories and suggestions for therapy into the language and practice with which we are familiar today." He maintains that to take literally would lead to "occult quackery" but to translate might equally lead to another "modern system".
Moore's approach is to focus on Ficino's ideas about imagining and imagery.
The second chapter, the Planets, introduces Ficino and the specific work that this book interprets.
Marcilio Ficino is not very well known but his work was influential and he is in fact enjoying a bit of a revival at the moment. Ficino had as his patron the famous Florentine Medici family, his 'soul father' was Cosimo de Medici. Medici was intensely interested in ancient wisdom of all sorts and had Ficino translate ancient texts including Plato and the Hermetica.
The group of artists and scholars became enthralled by this new found ancient wisdom and modelled their association on the Platonic Academy, adapting and interpreting the ideas and eventually becoming known as the Renaissance neoplatonists.
Apart from translating many ancient texts Ficino also wrote quite a bit himself and his most influential work is a three volume work Libra de Vita Tres, three books about life. (This has been translated into English only relatively recently as The Book of life.) The third volume of this work De Vita Coelitus Comparanda (How life should be arranged according to the heavens) is the primary source and stimulus for Moore's study. The title of this chapter, the Planets, is Moore's title for this book. The planets is a basically a treatise on natural magic, astrology and musical symbolism.
According to Moore Ficino believed that man has a double nature, mortal in body and immortal in essential man. The mortal nature is under the dominion of the planets but his immortal nature is not.
Moore does not say whether Ficino's ideas were a radical break with the prevailing ideas regarding astrology but this would seem quite likely. The traditional view of astrology, which is still very evident in the popular understanding today, is that astrology implies that man is fated by the planets.
Moore has interpreted Ficino as saying that the soul is the connector or mediator between mind and body. In explaining this he uses the analogy of getting a university degree. Very often, he says, modern people get a degree for the sole purpose of eventually obtaining creature comforts for the body so there is no soul at work. Even in the disciplines of the humanities and literature the dissecting scalpel of criticism lacks soul.
The soul expresses itself in images, dreams, shapes, and stories and emotion is a signal from the soul. If soul is the link between mind and body, spirit is the medium between soul and the world. Ficino, and his contemporaries believed that spirit was a subtle substance in the blood but on a cosmic level they also believed that spirit or rays emanated from the planets.
Moore suggests that the planets are a means for imaging the multiple facets of the psyche.
Memory also plays a role and it has two functions: to recall fundamental images, paintings, poems, ceremonies and basic structures and secondly to draw on collective ideas such as gods and goddesses.
These are the fundamental ideas which lead into the practical side of Ficino's psychological therapy. The most important part as far as Ficino is concerned is that well known dictum 'know thyself'. And self knowledge begins with discovery of one's own "star" and "daimon".
Ficino apparently gives information on how to discover one's 'daimon' but Moore does not give any details of this. Moore just points out that many great people including Plato's Socrates, Goethe, Yeats etc, believed that they had a 'daimon'. Moore links the 'daimon' with the inner voice, a sense of longing, fear or recurring dream. Moore suggests that in finding one's daimon one also discovers one's weakness, the vulnerable spot of the soul. The reason he gives is that it is "a generally recognised characteristic of a god or daimon is jealousy."
This is where astrology comes into play for the natal chart is where we discover that certain planets are more prominent than others.
According to Moore Ficino believed that illness comes in the form of monotheism, life dominated by one god, imagination fixed in a single kind of consciousness. The main problem for Ficino was the all pervading influence of the melancholy Saturn but for others it might be a preoccupation with relationships and sex showing Venus's influence. To remedy the situation Ficino suggests inviting the opposite kind of spirit while still accepting and experiencing the problem one.
The following chapter, Dissolve and Congeal, introduces psychological alchemy and even though I have a basic knowledge of alchemy I found this chapter rather confusing, boring and irrelevant. But, hey, Moore is a Jungian psychoanalyst and Jung was very much into alchemy.
The Elements of Psyche is a chapter on Ficino's interpretation of the elements. Ficino takes the four elements of nature classically identified as earth, air, fire, and water and he translates these into the world of psyche, substituting for each of the four an element more suited to the subtle nature of psyche. He uses the images of wine, aroma of wine, music and light.
In the chapter entitled Necessary Madness Moore opens with a Gnostic story of how the soul descends into the body and forgets its previous origins. But faint glimpses stir the memory with a feeling of longing.
This leads into Ficino's theories about Plato's 'four frenzies which Moore equates to archetypal figures of poet, priest, prophet and lover. These reflect strange states of mind otherwise known as altered states of consciousness in which we find the lost soul.
The second part of the book is called Planetary Radiance which is opened by chapter 6 Zodiacal reflections.
Moore has a very ambivalent attitude to astrology. He says:
"Although, as I said, my interest is in using Renaissance astrology as a source for deepening modern psychology, still I think that the ritual of astrology itself, though in no way necessary and not even important, might serve as a useful means for exploring one's fantasies and life patterns. Besides creating in the individual a sense of connection with a larger world, a world which might well be inside rather than outside, astrological imagery also importantly creates an imaginative awareness of one's own uniqueness," (120)
But he also says:
The serious psychological danger in astrology, a danger found in all religious and occult systems, is the temptation to lose soul in spiritual literalism. Instead of using astrology as an art of memory, people begin 'believing in' astrology and such belief takes this art of imagination out of the realm of metaphor.(121)
Moore also projects this ambivalence onto Ficino, but it is quite clear that Ficino was indeed a 'believer', not perhaps in traditional medieval astrological perspective but in his modified view.
The next seven chapters take the titles of the planets/gods of astrology: sol, Venus, Mercury, Luna, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.
Moore draws on Ficino's ideas and tells us the mythology associated with the planets, and the correspondences, both natural and man made, associated with the planets. In the Venus chapter, for example, he shows how Botticelli's famous painting s of Venus were used to illustrate Ficino's ideas and how they may have been originally intended as astromagical illustrations or talismans.
The renaissance is famous for its revival of interest in antiquity and classical mythology. The philosophy which accompanied the revival was neo-platonism which attempted a reconciliation between the world of antiquity and Christianity. Ficino revived and reinterpreted the esoteric dimension of Platonism and offered a practical synthesis of faith and reason within the bounds of renaissance Christianity.
Although Moore was evidently a Catholic monk for 12 years he has not drawn any attention to the fact that Ficino was attempting a synthesis or was working within the church. On the contrary he seems to applaud Ficino, and others, for encouraging a polytheistic view over against monotheism. Although it may be addressed to the world of psychology the emphasis of the book is very strongly on classical mythology and the terms 'monotheism and polytheism' cannot be read without religious connotations.
Moore has subtly but all pervasively emphasised the hermetic, Gnostic and magical ideas and practices without setting it in the overall context of renaissance. Perhaps this was intentional, maybe the audience he is addressing is rather ambivalent to orthodox religions.
Moore stated his purpose as wanting to extract Ficino's method of imagining and use it as a modern tool in psychology. He occasionally stresses the importance of treating the images as metaphors not metaphysical entities but I wonder how this is really possible. If Moore had simply wanted to extract Ficino's method he could have done so without introducing the philosophy and hermetic and gnostic beliefs.
All in all I have mixed feelings about this book. Although in theory I am not opposed to the ideas it contains I consider Moore's approach to be just a little subversive.
Ficino practised magic, he called it 'natural magic' to distinguish it from the more barbaric demon infested magic around at the time. Moore advocates the same or similar techniques but sanitizes them by calling it psychology of the soul and maintaining it should be understood as metaphorical. I can't see the problem with calling it poetic magic or something similar. In many respects the 'natural magic' of Ficino resembles Feng Shui, which is essentially a form of Eastern magic, which many modern people embrace at some level or another.
Ficino practised astrology but Moore does not advocate using astrology but just using the images. But quite honestly I cannot see how one can even begin to do this on a personal level without having a natal horoscope drawn which means using it.
It is quite clear that Moore is very concerned with the problem of literalism. He has a metaphorical imagination and recognises the dangers of literalism in the sciences, religion and astrology. But I think it is true to say that for anything to have effect one also must have a bit of belief, if only on a temporary basis. Whether or not Moore has belief in the hermetic or Gnostic ideas I have no idea but he certainly believes in Jung's archetypes and Joseph Campbell's remythologising.
I actually read this book because I was interested in Ficino and on a positive note I can say that this book has re-introduced an important but largely forgotten renaissance thinker and indeed the renaissance world to the general public.
Although I can't say that dedicated followers of astrology would appreciate Moore's approach to astrology at least he has offered a point of view which might be acceptable to modern people.
However, ever the cynic, my overriding impression is the horribly unfair suggestion that Thomas Moore is yet another 'new age' therapist who has appropriated an occult technique, sanitized it and founded an institution, the institute for the study of imagination, on the basis of it.
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