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'The animal dog for the constellation Dog': Umberto Eco on rhetoric and the Hermetic worldview.



I have drawn the following list of criteria for associating images or words not from a treatise on magic but from a sixteenth century mnemonics or ars memoriae. The quotation is interesting because - quite apart from any Hermetic presumption - the author has identified in the context of his own culture a number of associative automatisms commonly accepted as effective. 

1. By similitude, which is in turn subdivided into similitude of substance (man as a microcosmic image of the macrocosm), quality (the ten figures for the ren commandments), by metonymy and antonomasia (Atalas for astronomers or astronomy, the bear for an irascible man, the lion for pride, Cicero for rhetoric).

2. By homonymy: the animal dog for the constellation Dog.

3. By irony or contrast: the fool for the sage.

4. By sign: the spoor for the wolf, or the mirror in which Titus admired himself for Titus.

5. By a word of different pronunciation: sanum for sane.

6. By similarity of name: Arista for Aristotle.

7. By type and species: leopard for animal.

8. By pagan symbol: eagle for Jupiter.

9. By peoples: the Parthians for arrows. the Scythians for horses, the Phoenicians for the alphabet.

10. By signs of the Zodiac: the sign for the constellation.

11. By the relationship between organ and function.

12. By a common characteristic: the crow from Ethiopians.

13. By hieroglyphics: the ant for Providence.

14. And finally, pure idiolectal association, any mmonster for anything to be remembered.

(Cosma Rosselli, Thesaurus artifiosae memoriae (Venice, 1589). )

As can be seen, sometimes the two things are similar for their behaviour, sometimes for their shape, sometimes for the fact that in a certain context they appeared together. As long as some kind of relationship can be established, the criterion does not matter. Once the mechanism of analogy has been set in motion there is no guarantee that it will stop. The image, the concept, the truth that is discovered beneath the veil of similarity, will in its turn be seen as a sign of another analogical deferral. Every time one thinks to have discovered a similarity, it will point to another similarity, in an endless progress. In a universe dominated by the logic of similarity (and cosmic sympathy) the interpreter has the right and the duty to suspect that what one believed to be the meaning of a sign is in fact the sign for a further meaning.

'Overinterpreting Texts' in 'Interpretation and Overinterpretation' (CUP, 1992). 

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