Module 3: The Imaginal Cosmos
Tutor: Angela Voss
We achieve many more results with just a glance than with a long and frequent reading of commentaries, for what we gain through our eyes is apprehended by our mind to a greater extent and more distinctly and retained by our memory more tenaciously that what we perceive only through the ears (Sisto da Siena)
Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body (Martin Ruland)
Module content
This module will be concerned with the imagination as an organ of perception and knowledge, for it is the imagination which is instrumental in the interpretation of all divinatory signs and symbols. We will take an imaginal journey through the cosmos, exploring texts, images and music whose archetypal qualities we can associate with the twelve planetary and stellar spheres, from earth to the fixed stars. The imagination is the language of the soul, in the sense of psyche as the mediator between divine and human worlds. We will begin therefore by considering appropriate methodologies for imaginal research which honour a soul-based approach to understanding, and then evoke various themes in mythology, art, music and literature for engagement and reflection. Each theme will give rise to the question of the transformation of consciousness through sensory - or supersensory - perception, and the power of metaphor and symbol to effect a deepening of perception. Students will engage both intellectually and imaginatively with the material, addressing the problem of 'emic' and 'etic' approaches to research; how does one study the 'experiential' moment of revelation through image, and bring such experience to bear on discourse 'about' it? Are poetry and art forms bone fide research methods? Is it possible to combine contemplative and critical modes in research? Students will be encouraged to use a variety of methodologies for their assignment, which may range from conventional essay to creative project.
Module aims
1. To encourage a participative mode of enquiry which engages the imagination in the understanding of symbolic themes.
2. To encourage a creative response to the material.
3. To address methods of study appropriate for imaginal discourse.
4. To come to a clearer understanding of the function of the imagination as an organ of perception and its role in the transmission of 'transpersonal' or spiritual dimensions of knowledge.
Students will be expected to submit a 5,000 word commentary or other approved project on a designated topic, and to complete weekly online assignments on the reading material. Key texts will be available online, and will be supplemented by powerpoint presentations, handouts, supplementary notes and short assignments.
Essential Texts
Patrick Harpur, The Philosophers' Secret Fire: a History of the Imagination (repr. Victoria, Aus: Blue Angel Gallery, 2007)
J. Godwin, The Harmony of the Spheres: A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music (Rochester Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1993)
A Blue Fire: The Essential James Hillman ed. T. Moore (NY: Harper/Collins, 1991)
Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul (Piatkus, 2004)
Peter Struck, Birth of the Symbol (Princeton UP, 2004)
Gary Tomlinson, Music in Renaissance Magic (Chicago University Press, 1993)
Essential listening
Secrets of the Heavens (The Marini Consort; Riverrun Records, 2000)
Images of Melancholy (The English Fantasy Consort of Viols, Riverrun Records, 2002)
John Dowland, Lute songs Flow my Tears, In Darkness Let me Dwell
John Dowland, Lachrimae or Seven Teares
Claudio Monteverdi, Madrigals Book VIII
Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo
'Gongs of our Solar System' (Don Conreaux: Mysterium Tremendum, 1994)
'Celestial Love Songs' (Jeffrey Thompson: Centre for Neuroacoustic Research, 1995)
Module units
1. Earth: Imaginal methodology
Online texts
Marie Angelo, 'Splendor solis: Inviting the Image to Teach' in Harvest vol.51, no.2, 2005
Arthur Versluis, 'What is Esoteric? Methods in the Study of Western Esotericism' , Esoterica online journal
Jeremy Naydler, 'A Question of Method' in Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2005), ch. 5
Angela Voss, 'A Methodology of the Imagination' in Eye of the Heart Journal no. 3, LaTrobe University (2009), 37-52
2. Moon: symbol as sacrament
Online texts
Abraxus, 'Knowledge of the Symbol' in Julius Evola (ed.), in Introduction to Magic (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2001), ch.3
J. Robert Barth, 'Symbol as Sacrament' in The Symbolic Imagination: Coleridge and the Romantic Tradition (Princeton UP, 1977) ch.1
Paul Tillich, 'Religious Symbols and our Knowledge of God' in The Christian Scholar vol. 30 no. 3 (1955), 189-197
S. Wasserstrom , 'On Symbols and Symbolising' in Religion after Religion (Princeton UP, 1999), ch.5
3. Mercury: Speaking Statues
Online texts
Asclepius trans. C. Salaman, (London: Duckworth, 2007) (excerpts)
D. Tarn Steiner, 'For Love of a Statue' in Statues in Mind (Princeton UP, 2001), 185-211
Algis Uzdavinys, 'Animation of Statues in Ancient Civilisations and Neoplatonism' in P. Vassilopoulou & S.R.L. Clark (eds.), Late Antique Epistemology: Other Ways to Truth (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 118-40
Angela Voss 'The Secret Life of Statues' (unpublished lecture)
4. Venus: Botticelli's Primavera and Erotic Madness
Online texts
Marsilio Ficino, letter, 'Good Fortune is in Fate' in ed. A. Voss, Marsilio Ficino (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2006), 103-105
Bruce Thornton, 'Eros the Pedagogue' in Eros, the myth of ancient Greek sexuality (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), 193-121
Plato, Diotima's speech in Symposium 201c-212b
Plato, myth of the charioteer in Phaedrus, 246a-257b
5. Sun: Ficino's De sole
Online texts
M. Ficino, The Book of the Sun trans. G. Cornelius, D. Costello, G. Tobyn, A. Voss & V. Wells in Sphinx vol.6 (1993), 124-48
M. Ficino, 'Orphica comparatio ad solem', Letters of Marsilio Ficino (Shepheard-Walwyn, 1994), vol.5, no.27
G. Cornelius, 'Astrology's Hidden Light: Reflections on Ficino's De sole', Sphinx vol.6 (1993), 114-122
6. Mars: The Images of Robert Fludd and the controversy with Johannes Kepler
Online texts
Robert Fludd, excerpts from 'The Macrocosm and the Microcosm' in Robert Fludd ed. R. Huffman (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2001), ch. 2
Johannes Kepler, 'Preface to the Reader' from Mysterium cosmographicum (NY: Abaris Books, 1981)
Wolfgang Pauli, 'The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler' in W. Huffman (ed.), Robert Fludd (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2001), ch.6
7. Jupiter: music and cosmos
Online texts
Marsilio Ficino, 'On Divine Frenzy' in The Letters of Marsilio Ficino vol. 1 (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975), 42-48
Ramos de Pareja, excerpts from Musica practica 1484
Gary Tomlinson, 'Modes and Planetary Song: the musical alliance of ethics and cosmology' in Music in Renaissance magic (Chicago UP, 1993) ch.3
Angela Voss 'The Music of the Spheres: Ficino and Renaissance Harmonia', Culture and Cosmos vol.2, no.2 (1998)
8. Saturn: Music and melancholy: John Dowland
Online texts
Anthony Rooley, 'New Light on Dowland's Songs of Darkness' , Early Music vol. 11 no 1 (Jan. 1983), 6-21
Angela Voss 'The Power of a Melancholy Humour: Divination and Divine Tears' in Seeing with Different Eyes eds. P. Curry and A. Voss (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), ch.7
9. Uranus: the new music of Claudio Monteverdi
Online texts
Daniel Chua, 'Vincenzo Galilei, Modernity and the Division of Nature' in Music Theory and Natural order from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century eds. Suzannah Clark & Alexander Rehding (Cambridge UP, 2001), ch.1
Claudio Monteverdi, 'Preface to the Eighth Book of Madrigals' in ed. Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History vol. 4 (New York & London: Norton, 1998) excerpt 29
10. Neptune: The music of the spheres: from Pythagoras to NASA
Online texts
Anthony Ashton, Harmonograph: A visual guide to the mathematics of music (Glastonbury: Wooden Books, 2005), 6-13
Iamblichus, 'Pythagoras' use of music' from Vita Pythagorici trans. T. Taylor, ed. Joscelyn Godwin in Music, Mysticism and Magic (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986), 26-29
Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Book 2, ed. W. H. Stahl (Columbia UP, 1952)
11. Pluto: Dionysian initiation: the frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompei
Online texts
Linda Fierz-David 'The Initiation Chamber' in Dreaming in Red (Putnam, Conn.: Spring, 2005), 20-39 Noel Robertson, 'Orphic Mysteries and Dionysiac Ritual' in Greek Mysteries ed. Michael Cosmopoulos (London: Routledge, 2003), chap. 9
12. Stars: Journeys to the other world
Online texts
Cicero 'The Vision of Scipio'
Plato, 'The Myth of Er' in Republic Book X
Plutarch, 'The Myth of Timarchus' in Moralia vol. VII (Harvard: Loeb Classical Library, 1959)
Further Reading
J. Robert Barth, The Symbolic Imagination: Coleridge and the Romantic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)
W. Braud & R. Anderson, Transpersonal Research methods for the social sicences (California: Sage Publications, 1998)
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes and the Orphic Gold Tablets (Cambridge: CUP, 2004)
Linda Fierz-David and Nor Hall, Dreaming in Red: the Womens' Dionysian Initiation Chamber in Pompeii (Putnam, CT: Spring, 2005)
David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)
J. Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth (London: Thames & Hudson, 1987)
J. Godwin, Robert Fludd: Surveyor of Two Worlds (London: Thames & Hudson, 1979)
J. Godwin, The Mystery of the Seven Vowels (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1991)
E. Gombrich, Symbolic Images; Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (1972, rep. London: Phaidon, 1994)
J.Hillman, 'A Cosmology for Soul' in Sphinx vol.2 (1989)
Jamie James, The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science and the Natural Order of the Universe (London: Little, Brown & Co. 1993)
C.G.Jung, Man and his Symbols (California: Picador, 1978)
Karl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Princeton UP, 1976)
Peter Kingsley, Reality ((Inverness, California: Golden Sufi Centre 2003)
Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio ed. W. Stahl (Columbia University Press, 1952, repr. 1990)
Erich Neumann, Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine, a Commentary on a Tale by Apuleius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)
Diana Poulton, John Dowland (London: Faber & Faber, 1972)
Kathleen Raine, Yeats the Initiate (Mountrath, Ireland:Dolmen Press, 1986)
Robert Romanyshyn, The Wounded Researcher (New Orleans: Spring: 2007)
J. Snow-Smith, The Primavera of Sandro Botticelli: a Neoplatonic Interpretation (New York: Peter Lang, 1993)
Deborah Tarn Steiner, Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)
Bruce S. Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997)
John Whenham, Claudio Monteverdi, Orfeo (Cambridge UP, 1986)
Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (Oxford UP, 1980)
F. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge Classics, 1983)
For an extensive bibliography for cosmology and divination click here
For a catalogue of papers available from AV click here