Hamlet and the Dying God

Hamlet and the Dying God "Now watch closely, everyone. I'm going to show you how to kill a god.”---Lady Eboshi, Mononoke Hime https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Princess_Mononoke In a previous paper, I explained that Hamlet is an autobiographical play and an allegory which explains how Shakespeare, a writer and a fighter, saw his struggle against fossil fuels. I wrote: Where can we fit Prince Hamlet himself into the allegory? Hamlet is interested in staging and writing plays that, as he puts it, show “the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”. (III.ii.23) Notably, Hamlet writes deviously and hides critical messages, such as the letter commanding the execution of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. (“folding the writ up in the form of the other…the changeling never known.” (V.ii.51-3)) Hamlet, a fighter and a writer, must be Shakespeare, the Hermetic playwright himself. If we follow Hilary Gatti’s analysis of what she calls “the Brunian core” (Gatti 1989: 139) (basically Act II scene ii) of Hamlet, we can even peer very specifically into the intellectual initiation of the playwright. First, it is important to understand which book Hamlet is in all likelihood reading: Polonius: …What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Polonius: I mean the matter that you read, my lord. Hamlet: Slanders, sir; for the satirical old rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes are purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams; all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down….(II.ii. 191-202) Gatti and many others have noted the strong echoes in the above with one passage from Dialogue I of Lo Spaccio: Look, my body is wrinkling and my brain getting damper: I’ve started to get arthritis and my teeth are going; my flesh gets darker and my hair is going grey; my eyelids are going slack and my sight gets fainter; my breath comes less easily and my cough gets stronger; my hams get weaker and I walk less securely. (Bruno, quoted in Gatti 1989: 142) https://www.academia.edu/6937932/_Stand_and_Unfold_Yourself_Prince_Hamlet_Unmasked Hilary Gatti is completely correct in her idea that Hamlet’s book is Lo spaccio della besta trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), but the question to be addressed in this paper is why did Shakespeare choose to paraphrase that passage from Lo spaccio and not another passage from Lo spaccio or another of Bruno’s books? We have to remember that the narrator in Bruno’s text is Jupiter (also called Jove), who is getting old and closer to death. (Actually, Jove does not die at the end of Lo Spaccio as the successful reform of the heavens seems to be beneficial for his health and he ends up hungrily calling for a fish dinner.) But why did Shakespeare choose a passage about a god who seems to be dying? Hilary Gatti provides a hint when she notes that Hamlet and Lo Spaccio also share a major fundamental dynamic and structural plot similarity: a strong but increasingly decrepit power center (Jove and Claudius) is vexed and challenged by a powerless but witty, brilliant and radical outsider (Momus and Hamlet): Lo Spaccio narrates the story of a macroscopic, universal reform undertaken trough the transformation of signs of the zodiac from bestial vices into reformed virtues, the entire operation being carried out by a Jove who considers himself an absolute prince, both in a political as well as a religious sense. Bruno, however, reminds his readers that even Jove, like all things that are part of the material world, remains subject to the laws of vicissitude, suggesting he is far from infallible, as he wishes to be considered. In order to underline this point, Bruno sees him as being accompanied throughout his long and meticulously organized reform by the suggestions of an ironic and satirical Momus, who gets dangerously close to appearing as the real hero of the story. (Gatti 2011: 149) Momus, the god of satire in the classical world, was expelled from Olympus by the gods for his caustic wit, and Bruno claims that Momus’ role in the celestial court of Jove in Lo Spaccio is similar to the Fool or court jester in an earthly court: “Momus still knows that once one of these buffoons [jesters] (each one of whom is wont to impart more truths to the ears of a prince about his affairs than all the rest of the court put together, and because of whom, most often, those who do not dare to talk, do speak in a kind of jest, and cause to be moved and do move proposals)…...” (Bruno, 101) Speaking as if “in a kind of jest”, including the Hermetic need and practice to use enigma, riddles, or allegory in order to hide a calculated message, can be seen as of course, Hamlet’s “antic disposition”, but also, more broadly, in my reading, as the whole play itself, which is an allegory, a mind tool. This phrase “cause to be moved and do move proposals” echoes Horatio’s plea to the ghost in Act I to give him some advice that could make a difference (i.e. cause to be moved): “If thou art privy to thy country’s fate,/which happily foreknowing may avoid/O speak!” (I.i.134-5) so this suggests that Hamlet was written with some sort of idea to convey a warning from beyond the grave (i.e. Shakespeare’s grave), with the ghost and his message being parallel to Shakespeare and his play. But what is the purpose of the dying god and what is meant by the dying god, after all, if this whole play is some sort of encrypted message from Shakespeare’s ghost beyond the grave? The fact that Claudius and Jupiter are equated means that Claudius is also to be recognized as getting progressively weaker. He does die at the end, ultimately proving his fallibility and mortality, but before that he becomes increasingly troubled by Prince Hamlet’s behavior, which seems, correctly as it turns out, to Claudius to threaten him personally: (“I like him not, nor stands it safe with us/To let his madness rage”(III.iii.1-2);” the present death of Hamlet. Do it, England,/For like the hectic in my blood he rages” (IV.iv.5-6) & etc.). Also, Rosencrantz alludes to the fall of Claudius (in the context of expressing a desire to save him): “The cess of majesty/Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw/What’s near with it. Or it is a massy wheel/Fix’d on the highest summit of the mount,/To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things/Are mortis’d and adjoin’d, which when it falls/Each small annexment, petty consequence,/attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone/Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.” (III.iii.15-23) Therefore, in some way, Claudius is to be read and understood as “a dying god” or failing system. In a similar philosophical vein, Gatti writes that: “(Hamlet) as a whole becomes a complex memory system, chronicling the times and thus eternalizing their acts, submitting them to the eye of absolute justice and eternal truth,” (Gatti 1989: 153) So, how can we now see Claudius, a dying god or failing system, from this perspective of “absolute justice and eternal truth”? Such a perspective means that we have reached the point when we have enough knowledge and experience on the planet to know precisely what we are looking at. Of course we know (and I said in my original paper) that Claudius represents fossil fuels and therefore his weakening represents in some way the end of fossil fuels. But more specifically and critically, he is not just “fossil fuels” but also all of the implied “ten thousand lesser things” that go with them: capitalism and the social constructs, rationales and ideologies that support and sustain capitalism and finance capitalism and which in turn sustain the further production of fossil fuels. He is a deeply networked structure of meaning and ideas; he is firmly linked to various national ideologies and also even reliant on some religious theologies and dogma too. In this comprehensive and systemic way, he is a god. Like a god, his being gives rise to and then sustains the activities (of all sorts) which then in turn sustain and nourish him and keep him going for subsequent generations. In my original paper, I interpreted the scene where Hamlet reads a book as an allegory of Shakespeare’s “initiation into Bruno’s ideas”, particularly the notion of “vicissitudes”. (“Bruno reminds his readers that even Jove, like all things that are part of the material world, remains subject to the laws of vicissitude” (Gatti; 2011, 149).) Because the play Hamlet is an allegory explaining Shakespeare’s life and passion as a fighter against fossil fuels, we can expect to see various autobiographical events such as writing a play, reading a book by Bruno, and so forth. But specifically speaking, this “initiation” idea, though it is partly right, doesn’t really account for exactly why Shakespeare chose a passage about a dying god. This “dying god” or “failing system” passage was chosen because Shakespeare must have anticipated that one day the whole ideological structure surrounding capitalism would become shaky. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to know this, since fossil fuels are linked intimately to capitalism and the latter can’t survive without the former and, moreover, Bruno’s thermodynamic heliocentric model of the solar system explained that it is thanks to the heat and the light of the sun that the bounty on earth is generated. In other words, deeply implied in Bruno’s model, was the idea that fossil fuels were temporary. Knowing that, Shakespeare could safely assume that successor cultures to the British model of early capitalism would develop a “god” or a “king”, that is to say a whole networked ideology which it would use to dominate the planet through colonialism, imperialism, exploitation of natural resources especially fossil fuels, tie-ups to monotheistic religions that negate and deny the Goddess and the Divine Feminine (that is, capitalistic ideology would purposely tie itself up politically to religions that conveniently ignored the idea that nature is sacred), etc. Moreover, this networked ideology would carry with it its own expiration date, based on when fossil fuels would go out of style based on their being no longer economic to produce. So at the one end of the birth of capitalism and ramped-up fossil fuel use, Shakespeare, through reading and correctly understanding Bruno, foresaw what was to come, as hinted at by Horatio’s lines that the ghost might have foreknowledge of his “country’s fate”. Meanwhile, at the other end of this time period, as I write now, an academic studying capitalism as an outgrowth of fossil fuels, Jason Moore, looks back over history and describes “the (current) unfolding crisis of neoliberal capitalism” as “a breakdown of the strategies and relations that sustained capital accumulation over the past five centuries”: The human prospect in the twenty-first century is not an altogether happy one. From the outset, our future can be specified at two levels of abstraction. The first is humanity-in-nature. Human engagement with the rest of nature has, over the past decade, reached the point “where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded” (Moore, quoting J. Rockström et al., “Planetary Boundaries,” Ecology and Society 14, no. 2 (2009)). The second is capitalism-in-nature. The unfolding crisis of neoliberal capitalism—now in between the signal crisis of 2008 and the unpredictable but inevitable onset of terminal crisis—suggests we may be seeing something very different from the familiar pattern. That pattern is one in which new technologies and new organizations of power and production emerged after great systemic crises, and resolved the older crises by putting nature to work in powerful new ways. The neoliberal revolution after the 1970s is only the most recent example. Today, however, it is increasingly difficult to get nature— including human nature—to yield its “free gifts” on the cheap. This indicates we may be experiencing not merely a transition from one phase of capitalism to another, but something more epochal: the breakdown of the strategies and relations that have sustained capital accumulation over the past five centuries. (Moore, 1) Moore’s phrase the “epochal breakdown of the strategies and relations” echoes Rosencrantz’s lines characterizing a king as “a massy wheel…to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things/Are mortis’d and adjoin’d, which when it falls/Each small annexment, petty consequence/Attends the boisterous ruin.” (III.iii.17-22) In other words, the “epochal breakdown” of capitalism can be seen, more poetically, also as a death of a sort of god or king. So two writers, though 500 years apart, one a playwright and one an academic, both agree that an epoch, the same epoch, will end. But what does this mean in non-metaphorical, non-allegorical terms? What does this mean in more practical or scientific terms? One clue on how to understand the death of this god is Moore’s use of a source entitled “Planetary Boundaries” in the quote above. The use of this term means that we are getting heavily into ecological territory, and before further discussion, we need to review what a planetary boundary is (from Wikipedia https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Planetary_Boundaries): Planetary boundaries is the central concept in an Earth system framework proposed by a group of Earth system and environmental scientists led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Will Steffen from the Australian National University. In 2009, the group proposed a framework of “planetary boundaries” designed to define a “safe operating space for humanity” for the international community, including governments at all levels, international organizations, civil society, the scientific community and the private sector, as a precondition for sustainable development. This framework is based on scientific research that indicates that since the Industrial Revolution, human actions have gradually become the main driver of global environmental change. The scientists assert that once human activity has passed certain thresholds or tipping points, defined as “planetary boundaries”, there is a risk of “irreversible and abrupt environmental change”.[3] The scientists identified nine Earth system processes which have boundaries that, to the extent that they are not crossed, mark the safe zone for the planet. However, because of human activities some of these dangerous boundaries have already been crossed, while others are in imminent danger of being crossed. Rockström and Steffen collaborated with 26 leading academics, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies climate scientist James Hansen and the German Chancellor's chief climate adviser Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. The group identified nine "planetary life support systems" essential for human survival, and attempted to quantify just how far seven of these systems have been pushed already. They then estimated how much further we can go before our own survival is threatened; beyond these boundaries there is a risk of "irreversible and abrupt environmental change" which could make Earth less habitable. Estimates indicate that three of these boundaries—climate change, biodiversity loss, and the biogeochemical flow boundary—appears to have been crossed. The boundaries are "rough, first estimates only, surrounded by large uncertainties and knowledge gaps" that interact in ways that are complex and not well understood. Boundaries can help identify where there is room and define a "safe space for human development", which is an improvement on approaches which aim at just minimizing human impacts on the planet. Crossing the planetary boundaries implies reaching basic limits. Further trying to increase population growth or economic growth will not be successful once basic limits have been reached. For example, selling more cars will increase ocean acidification and cause lower yields of marine products. Building another building puts more CO2 into the atmosphere and produces climate change and attendant problems such as droughts and lower grain yields and even famines, outweighing the profits from the building. Moreover, humans are in some ways not special: any species can reproduce and reach the limits of its ability to increase its territory and increase its population. This is simply an ecological phenomenon. The work of the ecologist C.S. Holling on the adaptive cycle, which is comprised of two phases, the front loop and back loop, may be useful here. According to Holling, in the adaptive cycle, the front loop “is characterized by the slow accumulation of capital and potential” and it “encompasses rapid growth” (Holling and Gunderson, 8). As growth slows as resources are used up, growth slows and then stops and the adaptive cycle enters into a new phase, the back loop. “The back loop is characterized by uncertainty, novelty, and experimentation” and it “encompasses release and reorganization” (Holling and Gunderson, 8). (Release here means release of materials, such as abandoned houses collapsing without maintenance, and with exposure to the weather, so that their materials such as metal, wood, etc., are released back into the soil and no longer deployed as material in houses.) This movement from the front loop (growth) to the back loop (reorganization) underlies what Jason Moore means when he writes that “we may be experiencing not merely a transition from one phase of capitalism to another, but something more epochal: the breakdown of the strategies and relations that have sustained capital accumulation over the past five centuries.” In other words, we have now already entered, or are entering, the back loop. In the front loop, material conditions of relative abundance gave rise to one sort of thinking and believing, one stance toward the world. In the back loop, the new material conditions, which are by definition much more straightened material conditions, produce another way of thinking and strategizing, another stance toward the world. Holling’s characterization of the back loop as one of “uncertainty, novelty, and experimentation” also implies this difference in thinking and strategizing. Moreover, Lo Spaccio della besta trionfante (which is a philosophical work presented as a series of dialogues) can be read as an allegory of the adaptive cycle, and I believe that is how Bruno intended it to be taken. (Though he obviously did not know scientific ecological terminology, which had yet to be invented, the concept is intuitive.) The adaptive cycle, which indirectly implies that humans’ deeply-held ‘truths’ or basic understandings (religious and otherwise) of the world are relative to their material conditions would have been a very disturbing and heretical notion to the Catholic church, with its opposing absolutist theology and can explain why Lo spaccio was singled out among all of Bruno’s works for special mention by the Roman Inquisition at the summation of his trial. The start of Lo spaccio shows a much-weakened Jove in dire straits and this condition shows, in allegory, the entrance of humanity into the back-loop phase of the adaptive cycle after people have been enjoying the front loop for a long time. Thus Sophia, one of the characters in the dialogue, says: No longer are there beasts into which he transforms himself; no Europas, who cause him to acquire the horns of a bull; no Danaes, who cause him to acquire the color of gold; no Ledas, who cause him to grow the features of a swan; no Asterian nymphs and Phrygian boys, who cause him to grow the beak of an eagle; no Proserpines, who cause him to become a serpent; no Mnemosynes, who degrade him into a shepherd; no Antiopes, who semi-bestialize him into a satyr; no Alcmenes, who transform him into Amphitryon. For that helm which turned and directed this ship of metamorphosis has become so weakened that it can barely resist the violence of the waves, and, perhaps now, is being driven toward shallow water. The sail is so torn and riddled with holes that the wind tries in vain to swell it. To the oars which, despite contrary winds and violent storms, used to propel the vessel, the boatswain will now hiss in vain, “Steer windward, starboard, in the ship’s wake, full speed ahead,” because the oarsmen have become like paralytics….(Bruno, Lo Spaccio della besta trionfante, 93) Note how mid-way through the passage the metaphor suddenly expands from Jove’s former sexual exploits to a more collective portrayal of weakness that includes other actors such as the boatswain and the oarsmen. This is a sign that this allegory includes civilization in general and not just one person. Also, as societies generally increase their populations through sexual reproduction, the focus is at first (i.e. in the front loop) on an unrestrained attitude towards sex. Summing up the problem, Sophia also uses language that echoes the front loop/back loop phenomenon: “Thundering Jove, after having enjoyed youth for so long a time, has led a reckless existence and has occupied much of his time in war and love. Now, as if subdued by time, he is beginning to break away from lasciviousness, vices, and those tastes which are inherent in virility and youth.” (Bruno, 91) We can see that Bruno is referring to civilizations and countries who gleefully and without restraint fill all the possible ecological niches they can fill in their habitat and then proceed to face their own ecological limits, despite not wishing to face them. Such civilizations and countries grow old as a result of entropy and inescapable dissipative and metabolic forces after a wild ride of “war and love” à la Jove. In such an inevitable circumstance, no longer does war or even reproduction make much sense. In fact, Jove in Lo Spaccio may be facing a complete civilizational, generational wipe-out, what ecologists today call a die-off: “the door will be shut to all other consequences, and in vain shall we await the birthday of the goddess of Cyprus, the depression of lame Saturn, the exaltation of Jove, the multiplication of sons and sons of sons, grandchildren and grandchildren of grandchildren, up to the very generation, the very one which is in our times…”(Bruno, 93-4) What happens after this in Lo spaccio? The back loop, although regrettably, has been ineluctably been entered and so, just as C.S. Holling’s ecological model predicts, “novelty” and “uncertainty” and “experimentation” are called forth. In Lo spaccio, this happens when Momus, the god of satire, who has long been exiled for arguing against the gods “as it seemed to them, too severely against their errors” (Bruno, 95), is summoned from his lonely spot of exile, “a star which is at the tip of Callisto’s tail” (Bruno, 95) to help Jove with reforming the heavens, that is, replacing all the bad and vicious constellations in the sky with virtuous ones. The reform occurs as Momus and Sophia (wisdom) explain to Jove that he must consider the material aspects of divinity, the material pathways understood through true appreciation of the workings of divine and scared Nature (this could also be termed the Goddess or Divine Feminine and it is a pantheistic vision of the world where all Nature is sacred, (also a notion totally heretical in Christianity and another reason the Roman Inquisition singled out Lo spaccio)): Diverse living things represent diverse divinities and diverse powers, which, beside the absolute being they possess, obtain the being communicated to all things according to their capacity and measure. When all of God is in all things…Therefore, Mars can more efficaciously be found in a natural vestige and mode of substance, not only in a viper and a scorpion but also in an onion and garlic. Think thus, of the Sun in the Crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion; you must think thus of each of the gods for each of the species under various genera of the entity. Because just as Divinity descends in a certain manner, to the extent that one communicates with Nature, so one ascends to Divinity through Nature, just as by means of a life resplendent in natural things one rises to the life that presides over them (Bruno, 235-6) That Bruno understood the basic processes by which the sun generates life on earth is clear from the first paragraph of Lo spaccio: He is blind who does not see the sun, foolish who does not recognize it, ungrateful who is not thankful unto it, since so great is the light, so great the good, so great the benefit, through which it glows, through which it excels, through which it serves, the teacher of the senses, the father of substances, the author of life (Bruno, 69) “The inference that we may draw from Lo Spaccio is that the more deeply man penetrates into the laws of nature, by virtue of his intellect, the closer he will come to an understanding of the unity that exists between him and the immanent principle.” (Imerti, 46) This immanence, which seems like a sacred immanence, Bruno expressed as “natura est deus in rebus” (“nature is god in things”) (Bruno, 235). The key point is for people to understand their own place within the whole (the unity that exists between them and the immanent principle, so it is a kind of spiritual concept). Bruno uses the term “contemplating Divinity” in the passage below, but it means more like “deeply understanding, respecting and feeling bonded to Divinity (and nature)”: Isis said to Momus that the stupid and senseless idolaters had no reason to laugh at the magic and divine cult of the Egyptians, who in all things and all effects, according to the respective principle of each, contemplated Divinity. And they knew how, by means of the species that are in the bosom of Nature, to receive those benefits that are desired from her. Just as she gives fish from the sea and from rivers, wild animals from deserts, minerals from mines, apples from trees, so from certain parts, from certain animals, from certain beasts, from certain plants, emerge certain destinies, virtues, fortunes, and impressions. Therefore Divinity in the sea was named Neptune, in the sun, Apollo, on the earth, Ceres, in deserted regions, Diana; and she was differently named in each of the other species, which as diverse ideas, were diverse divinities in Nature…… (Such a deep understanding of man and his place within nature is necessary or serious and fatal mistakes can be made by humans, such as dumping trillions of kilograms of plastic waste into the oceans and then ingesting the microplastics that bio-accumulate in their fish dinners later, etc..) The appeal of the Egyptian religion for Bruno was “its worship of the living effects of nature” (Imerti, 43). Imerti goes on to add that “The following quotation from Iamblichus (De mysteriis Aegyptiorum), which in the form of a prophecy laments the disappearance of the natural religion of the Egyptians and the dire effect this loss will have on humanity, prognosticates a return to the religion of nature; and Bruno’s employment of this passage in Lo spaccio is most significant” (Imerti, 43): “Do you not know, oh Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of heaven or better said, the colony of all things that are governed and practiced in heaven? To speak the truth, our land is the temple of the world. But woe is me! The time will come when Egypt will appear to have been in vain the religious cultivator of divinity, because divinity, remigrating to heaven, will leave Egypt deserted. And this seat of divinity will remain widowed of every religion, having been deprived of the presence of the gods……Oh, Egypt, oh Egypt! Of your religions there will remain only the fables, still incredible to future generations, to whom there will be nothing else that may narrate your pious deeds to save the letters sculptured on stones, which will narrate, not to gods and men (because the latter will be dead and deity will have transmigrated into heaven), but to Scythians and Indian, but to other people of a similarly savage nature. Shadows will be placed before light, death will be judged to be more useful than life, no one will raise his eyes toward heaven. The religious man will be considered insane, the impious man will be considered prudent, the furious man, strong, the most wicked man, good….Nothing holy will be found, nothing religious; nothing worthy or heaven or of celestials will be heard. Only pernicious angels will remain, who, mingling with men, will force upon the wretched ones every audacious evil as if it were justice, giving material for wars, rapines, frauds, and all other things contrary to the soul and to natural justice. And this will be the old age and the disorder and irreligion of the world. But do not doubt, Asclepius, for after these things have occurred, the lord and father God, governor of the world, the omnipotent provider, by a deluge of water or of fire, of diseases or of pestilences or of other ministers of his compassionate justice, will doubtlessly then put an end to such a blot, recalling the world to its ancient countenance.” (Bruno, 240). Why does Bruno use the phrase “the lord and father God”? It sounds rather Christian, but in this case, he is not referring to the western god, but he is using a Hermetic conception of god: Within Hermetic philosophy, this concept which is so often referred to simply as “God” is entirely different from how that word is used by the Abrahamic religions. Too often in this over-culture, “God” is used as a generic shorthand for their culturally specific deity, YVHV (Yahweh) and the mythologies attributed him. The discourse on “God” within Hermeticism began within a different culture, originating with an entirely different god (Tehuti, or Thoth). Despite the later inter-mingling of philosophies between Judaeo-Christian and Hermetic practitioners throughout the ages, there remains a stark contrast between the paradigm of Hermes Trismegistus and the paradigm of the Judaeo-Christian sacred texts. Mind you, Hermetics developed simultaneously to Judaism (founded 2000-1700 BCE) and Christianity (founded 30 CE), and predates Islam (founded 610 CE). It is thought that the figure and legend of Hermes Trismegistus emerged in Egypt during the time of Pharoah Amun, which is 2100’s BCE, prior to Moses. All these philosophies grew up in parallel in the same region of the ancient, classical world. Later, they developed clandestinely while nested within those cultures, so their influences do co-mingle, and even merge in some places. However, the Hermetic concept of “god” is a pagan one, recognizing a multi-layered divinity within nature, which is radically inclusive of all cultural god-forms and -isms. So when reading the Hermetic texts, westerners should throw out all the biases to the word “god” we may have grown up with, and meet these translations with fresh neo-pagan eyes. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/witchonfire/2020/01/foundations-of-modern-witchcraft-hermetic-philosophy/?fbclid=IwAR0NH45I9kdFJTd-bhQne6DkufvIdQZbYyXGOTJYS0jVwOeIeHbPjWCZV1g In effect, we can see that Bruno is a sort of Momus figure who has been locked away and exiled for a long time; and he has a name in Hamlet and a disguise. There is a dead jester in this play, the “King’s jester”(V.i.181), namely Yorick. And poor Yorick is undoubtedly another reference, a very poetic and a very poignant one (since Hamlet was written one year after Bruno’s death) both to Lo Spaccio and to Bruno’s concept of vicissitudes as well as to Bruno himself. Prince Hamlet tells Horatio that Yorick “hath bore me on his back a thousand times” (V.i.186), meaning that Shakespeare obliquely acknowledges Bruno as the source of many profound ideas he incorporated into his own plays and sonnets. Bruno’s identity has been suppressed and cloaked, his ideas veiled and disguised, but it is my hope to set Bruno free from his lonely star in Callisto’s tail. References Bruno, Giordano. 1584. The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast: translated and with an introduction by Arthur D. Imerti. Translated by Arthur D. Imerti. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1964. Reprint 2004. Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. 1974. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Gatti, Hilary. 2011. Essays on Giordano Bruno. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press Gatti, Hilary. 1989. The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Gunderson, Lance and C.S. Holling. 2002. Panarchy. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Moore, Jason. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. 2015. arianne Kimura 19