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On magic<br />
Finally, it must be consciously accepted and firmly asserted that all<br />
things are full of spirits, souls, divine power, and God or divinity, and that<br />
the whole of intelligence and the whole soul is everywhere, although they<br />
do not do everything everywhere. The poet has taken this idea from the<br />
teachings of Pythagoras.<br />
To begin: the heavens, the earth, the water wastes,<br />
the lucent globe of the moon, the sun, the stars,<br />
exist through inward spirit. Their total mass<br />
by mind is permeated: hence their motion.<br />
From mind and spirit comes life – of man, of beast,<br />
of bird, of monsters under the foam-flecked seas. 21<br />
The same message is contained in the sacred mysteries received by all<br />
people. Thus, in the Psalms and in the Book of Wisdom, it is said, ‘The<br />
spirit of God has filled the whole earth and everything which it contains’,<br />
and elsewhere, ‘I fill the heavens and the earth’. 22<br />
A material substance differs from the substance of the mind and soul and<br />
sublime spirit as follows. The universal body is contained as a whole in the<br />
whole universe, but the spiritual substance is contained as a whole in each<br />
part. Thus, it exists everywhere as a whole and conveys everywhere an image<br />
of the whole, sometimes more clearly and sometimes more obscurely,<br />
sometimes in one way and sometimes in many ways. Thus, the entire<br />
nature of its form and light is reflected as a whole by all particles of matter,<br />
just as the universal body is reflected by all of matter.<br />
This can clearly be seen in the case of a large mirror which reflects one<br />
image of one thing, but if it has been broken into a thousand pieces, each<br />
one of the pieces still reflects the whole image. Again, when different parts<br />
or bodies of water are separated from the whole or from the universal ocean<br />
by Amphitrite, 23 they have different names and properties; when they later<br />
flow together into one ocean, they have the same name and properties.<br />
Thus, if all the spirits and parts of air were to flow into one ocean, they<br />
would produce one soul, which elsewhere is innumerably multiplied. As a<br />
result, the philosophers say that in the original state of things there was one<br />
matter, one spirit, one light, one soul and one intellect.<br />
21 Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 724–9. Translation is by Frank O. Copley in Virgil, The Aeneid (Indianapolis:<br />
Bobbs-Merrill, 1965) 137.<br />
22 Wisdom, 1:7; Jeremiah, 23:24. Bruno’s reference to the Psalms is apparently an error.<br />
23 Amphitrite was the goddess of the ocean and the wife of Poseidon. For Bruno, she represented the<br />
maternal origins of all things.<br />
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