Magic and the Supernatural - Lancaster University

Juan Pablo Maggiotti
__________________________________________________________________
Each Venus has as her companion a love like herself. For the
former Venus is entranced by an innate love for understanding
the Beauty of god. The latter likewise is entranced by her love
for procreating that same beauty in bodies. The former Venus
first embraces the splendor of divinity in herself; then she
transfers it to the second Venus. The latter Venus transfers sparks
of that splendor into the Matter of the world. Because of the
presence of these sparks, all of the bodies of the world seem
beautiful according to the receptivity of their nature. 3
The Plotinian effort in demonstrating the bond between contemplation and
creation is continued by Ficino’s metaphysics and aesthetics, placing Beauty as
cause of every ontological tendency, here to contemplate it, there to create it.
On both sides [Venuses], therefore, there is a love; there is a
desire to contemplate beauty, here a desire to propagate it. Each
love is virtuous and praiseworthy, for each follows a divine
image. 4
Ficino uses the myth of Venus as nucleus for his commentary on the
Symposium, but incorporating centuries of neoplatonic tradition to his
hermeneutics, thanks to the doctrine of the ontological dynamism. This doctrine
plays a huge role in Ficino’s theory of art since it shows that contemplation and
creation are both equally necessary and simultaneous. Yet it also brings out a
serious problem: even when it’s true that every creation is originated in the full
perfection of the realities contemplated by the artist, it is also true that the act of
creation means the imposition of forms onto matter, i.e., the corruption of the
model’s original and ideal perfection. 5 The procession of being is hence
simultaneously acknowledged by Plotinus as an effect of Good and origin of evil.
The guide for Ficino at solving this contradiction is the so-called Pseudo
Dionysius the Areopagite, who explains the ontological dynamism from his notion
of divine extasis. It is from Dionysius that Ficino positions Love as core of the
ontological dynamism.
4. Love at the Heart of the Cosmos
In the Areopagite, the originally Platonic idea of love as engine and cohesion of
the universe is transformed in a radical way. The Plotinian necessary procession
changes into free-will creation and love becomes a reciprocal relationship between
God and his creatures. 6 Next to Dionysius, Ficino judges that love is the universal
link between creatures only because they’re previously affiliated to God by an act
of creation. And because of this, every descent over inferior realities may come out
11