Frances Yates Quotes

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Remember what Anatole France said about the dog masturbating on your leg--'Sure, it's honest, but who needs it?
Richard Yates
Giordano Bruno was to take the bolder course of maintaining that the magical Egyptian religion of the world was not only the most ancient but also the only true religion, which both Judaism and Christianity had obscured and corrupted.
Frances A. Yates (Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition)
Now nature herself teaches us what we should do. When we see in every day life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvellous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, unusual, great, unbelievable, or ridiculous, that we are likely to remember for a long time.
Frances A. Yates (The Art of Memory)
the soul never thinks without a mental picture’,13 ‘the thinking faculty thinks of its forms in mental pictures’,14 ‘no one could ever learn or understand anything, if he had not the faculty of perception; even when he thinks speculatively, he must have some mental picture with which to think.’15 For
Frances A. Yates (The Art of Memory)
The Sephiroth, as defined by G. Scholem, are ‘the ten names most common to God and in their entirety they form his one great Name’.
Frances A. Yates (The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics))
In every discipline artistic theory is little avail without unremitting exercise, but especially in mnemonics, theory is almost valueless unless made good by industry, devotion, toil, and care. You can make sure that you have as many places as possible and that these conform as much as possible to the rules; in placing the images you should exercise every day.’17
Frances A. Yates (The Art of Memory)
The secret of Giorgi’s universe was number, for it was built, so he believed, by its Architect as a perfectly proportioned Temple, in accordance with unalterable laws of cosmic geometry.
Frances A. Yates (The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics))
Camillo’s reputation was resurrected in the twentieth century thanks to the efforts of the historian Frances Yates, who helped reconstruct the theater’s blueprints in her book The Art of Memory, and the Italian literature professor Lina Bolzoni, who has helped explain how Camillo’s theater was more than just the work of a nut job, but actually the apotheosis of an entire era’s ideas about memory.
Joshua Foer (Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)
To return to the general analysis of the Rosicrucian outlook. Magic was a dominating factor, working as a mathematics-mechanics in the lower world, as celestial mathematics in the celestial world, and as angelic conjuration in the supercelestial world. One cannot leave out the angels in this world view, however much it may have been advancing towards the scientific revolution. The religious outlook is bound up with the idea that penetration has been made into higher angelic spheres in which all religions were seen as one; and it is the angels who are believed to illuminate man's intellectual activities. In the earlier Renaissance, the magi had been careful to use only the forms of magic operating in the elemental or celestial spheres, using talismans and various rituals to draw down favourable influences from the stars. The magic of a bold operator like Dee, aims beyond the stars, aims at doing the supercelestial mathematical magic, the angel-conjuring magic. Dee firmly believed that he had gained contact with good angels from whom he learned advancement in knowledge. This sense of close contact with angels or spiritual beings is the hallmark of the Rosicrucian. It is this which infuses his technology, however practical and successful and entirely rational in its new understanding of mathematical techniques, with an unearthly air, and makes him suspect as possibly in contact, not with angels, but with devils.
Frances A. Yates (The Rosicrucian Enlightenment)
He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty [of memory] must select places and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things themselves, and we shall employ the places and images respectively as a wax writing-tablet and the letters written on it.2
Frances A. Yates (The Art of Memory)
In the world of Ramon Lull, the brilliant civilisation of the Spanish Moslems, with its mysticism, philosophy, art, and science, was close at hand; the Spanish Jews had intensively developed their philosophy, their science and medicine, and their mysticism, or Cabala. To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis.
Frances A. Yates (The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics))
The main reason why serious historical studies of the Rosicrucian manifestos and their influence have hitherto been on the whole lacking is no doubt because the whole subject has been bedevilled by enthusiasts for secret societies. There is a vast literature on Rosicrucianism which assumes the existence of a secret society, founded by Christian Rosencreutz, and having a continuous existence up to modern times. In the vague and inaccurate world of so-called 'occultist' writing this assumption has produced a kind of literature which deservedly sinks below the notice of the serious historian. And when, as if often the case, the misty discussion of 'Rosicrucians' and their history becomes involved with the masonic myths, the enquirer feels that he is sinking helplessly into a bottomless bog.
Frances A. Yates (The Rosicrucian Enlightenment)
In Giorgi’s system, as with Pico, the system is not astrological in the sense of judicial astrology in which man is conditioned by his horoscope, some of the influences in which might be bad, for example a bad influence of Saturn. In this system, as with Lull and Pico, all the celestial influences are good, and it is only a bad reception of them which can make them bad or unfortunate. There is thus free-will in the system, free-will to make a good, not a bad, use of the stars. The planets are linked to the angelic hierarchies and the Sephiroth. Thus the planetary influences pour down on man purified by the Christian angels and the Cabalist Sephiroth. Though all are equally good they are placed in a descending order of importance matched to the order of the hierarchies.18 Thus there are no bad or unfortunate planets. On the contrary, Saturn, unfortunate and bad in normal astrological theory is placed highest in the list. Being the outermost or highest planet in the cosmic order, he is nearest to the divine source of being and therefore associated with the loftiest contemplations. ‘Saturnians’ are not those poor and unfortunate characters of traditional astrology but inspired students and contemplators of highest truths.
Frances A. Yates (The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics))
Nor must we forget that Augustine conferred on memory the supreme honour of being one of the three powers of the soul, Memory, Understanding, and Will, which are the image of the Trinity in man.
Frances A. Yates (The Art of Memory)
through the light which shines in natural things one mounts up to the life which presides over them.
Frances A. Yates (Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition)
Who is that man moving slowly in the lonely building, stopping at intervals with an intent face? He is a rhetoric student forming a set of memory loci.
Frances A. Yates
In the lifetime of the Catalan philosopher and mystic, Ramon Lull (1232–c. 1316), the Iberian peninsula was the home of three great religious and philosophical traditions. Dominant was Christianity and the Catholic Church, but a large part of the country was still under the rule of the Moslem Arabs; and it was in Spain that the Jews of the Middle Ages had their strongest centre. In the world of Ramon Lull, the brilliant civilisation of the Spanish Moslems, with its mysticism, philosophy, art, and science, was close at hand; the Spanish Jews had intensively developed their philosophy, their science and medicine, and their mysticism, or Cabala. To Lull, the Catholic Christian, occurred the generous idea that an Art, based on principles which all three religious traditions held in common, would serve to bind all three together on a common philosophical, scientific, and mystical basis.
Frances A. Yates (The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics))