Chapter 2 Matter as a Mirror: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance ...

Matter as a Mirror 85
by maintaining that the soul’s image is reflected in the physical world, though
in a deceptive way. “[This lower part of the soul] is pictured as being present
in bodies since it shines into them and makes living creatures, but not of itself
and body, but abiding itself and giving images of itself, like a face seen in
many mirrors.” 120 According to Plotinus, matter reflects soul in many different
images, but without ever entering into union with soul. Hence, in Plotinus,
the mirror is a metaphor signifying detachment, as opposed to communication
or sexual union. Ficino sometimes uses the mirror in an analogous way:
for instance, when he compares the way the mind perceives corporeal beings
to the reflection of the flame of a candle in the mirror where the fire is not hot.
In a way reminiscent of celestial fire (which lacks heat), this is an instant in
which the lower (the body of the candle’s coarse material flame) is subsumed
by a higher potency (mind) and purified and de-materialised in the process.
Yet, in accordance with the ascent towards the divine so characteristic
of Neoplatonic philosophies in general, the process may also work the
other way around: instead of conveying the idea or the image of deception
and deterioration, the mirror may focus divine influx. Quite unexpectedly,
Ficino sometimes even maintains that the rays of common light are “restored
and illuminated” in the mirror:
Indeed, so great is the “friendship” of light for the mirror that
lights and visual rays and radial images are not dissipated or
weakened in it, but immediately enhanced and strengthened.
Thus intensified, […] the light instantly illuminates a wall
opposite. 121
In several other instances Ficino maintains that the light that falls
onto a body is collected there and (presumably after a certain time) reinvigorates
again, especially in bodies that are congruous to it. Then the light starts
to redirect itself in the opposite direction, just as a mirror casts light “on the
opposite wall and creates splendour there.” Thus, the light first orders this
120 Enneads I, 8 15–17.
121 In Timaeum def. 30, OO 473: “Tanta profecto amicitia luminis est ad speculum,
ut in hoc ipso lumina radii visuales, radiales imagines non infrangantur quidem, sed ita
protinus invalescant, ut hinc statim multiplicatum lumen oppositum illuminet parietem,
[…].” See Allen (1989) 185.