In the 1580's Bruno had developed an elaborate theory of memory training (published in, most famously, his Clavis Magna or Great Key).
It wouldn't surprise me to know that Bruno was, in fact, a Gnostic, or at least, well-versed in the Gnostic teachings. Gnosticism in all its manifestations was condemned as a (judaizant) heresy by mid-fourth century by Origenes and Irineus. There's a massive work by one Spanish scholar (Ignacio Gomez de Liaño, El círculo de la Sabiduría I. Ediciones Siruela) which details with painstaking accuracy the genesis and development of Gnosticism as an offshoot of Metrodorian Neopytagoric mnemotechnics, and its influence on the Esenes, the Kabbalah, and in early Apostolic Christianism.
In this respect, Bruno is an heir to more than two thousand years (I'm counting from Plato's time onward to Bruno's own) of tradition that encompassed numerical mysticism, menmotechnics, topico-geometric metaphysics, Platonism, Judaism and early Christianity.
Although at more than 750 pages, and denser than neutronic matter (and the fact that it is in Spanish), I cannot recommend this book enough.
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It wouldn't surprise me to know that Bruno was, in fact, a Gnostic, or at least, well-versed in the Gnostic teachings. Gnosticism in all its manifestations was condemned as a (judaizant) heresy by mid-fourth century by Origenes and Irineus. There's a massive work by one Spanish scholar (Ignacio Gomez de Liaño, El círculo de la Sabiduría I. Ediciones Siruela) which details with painstaking accuracy the genesis and development of Gnosticism as an offshoot of Metrodorian Neopytagoric mnemotechnics, and its influence on the Esenes, the Kabbalah, and in early Apostolic Christianism.
In this respect, Bruno is an heir to more than two thousand years (I'm counting from Plato's time onward to Bruno's own) of tradition that encompassed numerical mysticism, menmotechnics, topico-geometric metaphysics, Platonism, Judaism and early Christianity.
Although at more than 750 pages, and denser than neutronic matter (and the fact that it is in Spanish), I cannot recommend this book enough.