The Cult of Tara

WORSHIP
affections and the link of links.' Bruno's language is excited and
obscure as he expounds this, to him, central mystery, the conditioning
of the imagination in such a way as to draw into the personality
spiritual and demonic forces which will unlock its inner
powers." 133
But this "imagination" of the magus works outwardly as well as
inwardly, and these "spiritual and demonic forces" are moved
beyond the magician's mind. Sendivogius, whose alchemical work
is included in the Musaeum hermeticum, writes:
To cause things hidden in the shadow to appear, and to take away
the shadow from them, this is permitted to the intelligent philosopher
by God through nature. . . . All these things happen, and
the eyes of common men do not see them, but the eyes of the mind
and of the imagination perceive them with true and truest vision.
"Matter," says C. G. Jung, "is thus formed by illusion, which is
necessarily that of the alchemist. This illusion might well be the
vera imaginalio possessed of 'informing' power." 134
Note that
matter is formed by illusion—a magical and creative power—rather
than by hallucination; reality, in the alchemical art, is controlled by
the true imagination. Martin Ruland, in his Lexicon alchemiae,
defines this imaginatio as "the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial
body," and Jung again comments: "This astounding definition
throws quite a special light on the fantasy processes associated
with the opus. We have to conceive of these processes not as
the immaterial phantoms we readily take fantasy-pictures to be,
but as something corporeal. . . . The imaginatio, or act of imagining,
is thus a physical activity that can be fitted into the cycle of material
changes, that brings these about." 135
Alkindi, author of the Theoria artis magicae, explains these material
effects by supposing that the imagination has "rays" similar to
those of the stars and operating in the same way upon reality, to
impress on an external object an image conceived in the imagination,
where such images have an "actual" existence. Pico della Mirandola,
in an indirect attack upon Ficino's "spiritual magic," denies
the existence of such rays; he says the only things that can be projected
outside a man are the "corporeal spirits," which the soul uses
as instruments. But he never questions their power over reality; if
some strong desire leads to these spirits being emitted, he says, they
may produce an external effect: ". . . . anger may result in fascination
[evil eye] and hence a disease. But these effects can be pro-
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