413th Anniversary of Giordano Bruno's Murder

     Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 in Nola, a small province of Naples.  He was christened under the name Filippo Bruno.  However, upon entering the Dominican Monastery in Naples at the age of sixteen, Bruno took the name Giordano after the Jordan River.
     In the Dominican Monastery, many esoteric books were deemed to have been written by "heretics" and subsequently banned.  It was considered a serious crime to read the material, even if one completely disagreed with its contents.  Bruno was very interested in this material and read books of this nature in secret while in the bathroom stall.  Eventually, Bruno was discovered and fled the monastery.  He traveled to many intellectual centers located in northern Italy, southern France, Padua, Milan, and Geneva.
     By 1581, Bruno was in Paris and had developed a firm belief in the philosophy of hermeticism.  While in Paris, he developed a camaraderie with the French king Henry III. Henry III was Catholic, but also had deep curiosity of esoteric teachings.  Two years later, Bruno moved to London with Henry III's new ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I's court.  Some speculate that Bruno was in contact with John Dee, consultant to Queen Elizabeth I who studied Hermetic philosophy.  
     Bruno was a master in the art of training the memory.  Instead of using the mind to simply record information, he used talismanic principles to induce information.  Bruno was even summoned to Rome to demonstrate his mastery to the Pope.  Bruno had many areas of study, including scientific developments.  He understood that human cells are perpetually replaced during life.  Some academic writers believe Bruno's theories regarding the structure of matter could be a foundation for atomic theory.
     Bruno believed that humans were not the center of the universe and that life existed outside of the earth.  His theories explaining the nature of existence led to his murder on Ash Wednesday in 1600.  On February 17 (today), Bruno was burnt at the stake for heresy.  The Catholic church used "Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante" or "Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast" as the primary support of Bruno's heresy.  This is a literary work by Bruno from 1584 that was viewed by the Catholic church as an attack, and included references to Egyptian religion, Hermeticism, astrology, magic, and classical Greek mythology.  In this text, Bruno reproduces ideas from an older Hermetic text called "Asclepius".  Here is a translated excerpt from Bruno's text in reference to the lament of Asclepius:
     
     “Do you know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of Heaven, or to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and work in Heaven are present in the Earth below? In fact it should be said that the whole Cosmos dwells in this our land as in a sanctuary.
     And yet, since it is fitting that wise men should have knowledge of all events before they come to pass, you must not be left in ignorance of what I will now tell you.

     There will come a time when it will have been in vain that Egyptians have honored the Godhead with heartfelt piety and service; and all our holy worship will be fruitless and ineffectual.

     The gods will return from earth to heaven; Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the home of religion will be left desolate, bereft of the presence of its deities.

     O Egypt, Egypt, of thy religion nothing will remain but an empty tale, which thine own children in time to come will not believe; nothing will be left but graven words, and only the stones will tell of thy piety.

     And in that day men will be weary of life, and they will cease to think the universe worthy of reverent wonder and worship.

     They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which he has built, this sum of good made up of many diverse forms, this instrument whereby the will of God operates in that which he has made, ungrudgingly favoring man’s welfare; this combination and accumulation of all the manifold things that call forth the veneration, praise, and love of the beholder.

     Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven; the pious will be deemed insane, the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good.

     As for the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you, – all this they will mock, and even persuade themselves that it is false.

     No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven, will be heard or believed.

     And so the gods will depart from mankind, – a grievous thing! – and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men, and drive the poor wretches into all manner of reckless crime, into wars, and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of the soul.

     Then will the earth tremble, and the sea bear no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their orbits, all voices of the gods will be forced into silence; the fruits of the Earth will rot; the soil will turn barren, and the very air will sicken with sullen stagnation; all things will be disordered and awry, all good will disappear.

    But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then God the Creator of all things will look on that which has come to pass, and will stop the disorder by the counterforce of his will, which is the good. He will call back to the right path those who have gone astray; he will cleanse the world of evil, washing it away with floods, burning it out with the fiercest fire, and expelling it with war and pestilence.

    And thus he will bring back his world to its former aspect, so that the Cosmos will once more be deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and maintainer of the Mighty Fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with continuous songs of praise and blessing.

    Such is the new birth of the Cosmos; it is a making again of all things good, a holy and awe-inspiring restoration of all nature; and it is wrought inside the process of Time by the eternal Will of the Creator.”

     Bruno believed the magical religion of ancient Egypt was corrupted by the the Christian religion.   He claimed that "triumphant beast" was a metaphor for human voices, but many individuals from the Inquisition saw this as a reference to the pope of the time.  Bruno traveled more to France and Germany to expose the dangers of the Catholic power.  However, he returned to Italy in 1591 upon invitation to visit Venice.  Ultimately, he was reported to the Inquisition and arrested in 1592.  Bruno was held in prison for eight years before he was burnt at the stake with his tongue tied.  He was viewed as the diabolically inspired magician who sought the destruction of God's own holy church.  Some believe that Bruno had made plans prior to his capture to continue his underground Hermetic movement in the form of a secret society.  

     In 1889, a statue of Giordano Bruno was erected in Rome at Campo de Fiori, the site where Bruno was burnt at the stake.  The statue was erected by Ettore Ferrari, the Grand Master of a Masonic jurisdiction in Italy known as Grande Oriente d'Italia.  Upon the unveiling of the statue, a radical politician named Giovanni Bovio gave a speech encircled by a multitude of Masonic flags.  Today, many atheists and freethinkers gather around this site on February 17th in commemoration of Giordano Bruno and celebrate the freedom of ideas.