Although the Greek philosopher Aristarchus Samius (310 BC), among several others hypothesised a heliocentric model for the known universe, the majority of Greek philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle still held to the false presumption of a geocentric model for several reasons. Astrological prediction necessitated an Earth-centred model because the Earth was the place where events occurred and where human beings lived. It need not imply that they believed in the cosmological theory that the Earth was actually at the centre of the entire cosmos. The earth-centred (geocentric) astrological chart was a fundamental device employed by seers and sages in horary astrology since Babylonian, Egyptian and Chaldean times. The Biblical story of creation (Genesis) was arranged sequentially and in accord with a geocentric universe and as the Bible was considered by Catholics to be the “word of God”; to accept any other theory or hypothesis was to deny God’s fundamental truth-the Seven Days of Creation. Thomas Aquinas, having read Plato was largely responsible for the Church’s maintaining a Ptolemaic viewpoint which ostensibly reinforced the “truth” of the scriptures. The Catholic Church had already “absorbed” the philosophical truths formulated by the proto-scientists of ancient Greece (Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato & Aristotle) into the Church’s teachings and were disinclined to alter or reverse their fundamental doctrinal truths. Astronomers and astrologers in the time of the Elizabethan era therefore held on to or believed in the same mathematical model formulated by Claudius Ptolemy around 140 AD, even though it was largely inaccurate and it was impossible to accurately predict the length of the orbital cycles of the seven known luminaries. These facts about cosmologies were interwoven with the science of number and calendrical time calculation often drawn from Jewish theology and magic. They also reinforced a model of the moral dimension with Heaven above, and Hell below in the bowels of the Earth. In the majority of geocentric models formulated by Agrippa and Trithemius it was presumed that nothing existed beyond the Empyrean dimension or sphere of the fixed stars (See Celestial Spheres).
More recently, after the publication of Dan Brown’s Book “The Da Vinci Code” it has been suggested that an organised group of people, whom Brown calls the “Illuminatti” were actively opposed to the Vatican Church’s view in matters of natural history and cosmology. If such a secret society existed then among its main adherents would have been Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Giordano Bruno, all of whom endorsed the heliocentric model as true even though they lacked the proof. Galileo did belong to a scientific group known as The Academy of the Lynx (the lynx having exceptionally good eyesight) and being modelled on the Society of Jesus, a Jesuit school rather than one supporting atheist or agnostic beliefs. The closest form of such a free-thinking group in England in fact was the School of Night, whose leaders or supporters were probably Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry Percy (The Wizard Earl).
This denial of a heliocentric model of the universe by the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation, and for some time after set up a series of political tensions that reverberated throughout Christendom and beyond for several centuries. In 1543 the Catholic Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) published his hypothetical book De Revolutionibus suggesting a heliocentric model. Although he had begun his researches as early as 1510 into heliocentric models, he was warned by the Pope to maintain this idea as merely a mathematical theory and not propose it as an actual reality because of the controversy it might cause.
Meanwhile, in England some extremely forward thinkers seized on the Pope’s obstinate stance against a heliocentric universe as an opportunity to undermine Catholic religious and political influence among the British Protestants and some Catholics and to confirm the teachings of the Gospels as spurious and ultimately fallacious when challenged by the “new science”. This in turn gave rise to the secret Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross or The Rosicrucians (1570-1625). The new enlightenment fostered by the Protestant Church in England would also prove itself to be superior to that in Rome, thereby justifying its original split or divergence from the time of Henry VIIIth. It is quite likely that Giordano Bruno, an exile or scientific immigrant from Rome, with his lectures was instrumental in fostering this new enlightenment viewpoint. Robert Recorde (1510-58) published the Castle of Knowledge (1586) reaffirming the Copernican theory. A year later the scientist and mathematician John Field (1525-1587), who was the father of the Elizabethan actor Nathan Field, was urged by Dr. John Dee to publish his own Almanac: Ephemeris Anni with the newly calculated cycles of the planets in accord with a Heliocentric Universe. Field was also a fervent Puritan who despised “Popish Perversions” and quite likely contributed to the Martin Marprelate controversy. Another student of the illustrious Dr. John Dee, Thomas Digges (1546-1595), who was the father of the poet Leonard Digges (1521 – c. 1574), edited a successful almanac entitled; “A Prognostication Everlasting” and also invented the theodolite. Leonard Digges contributed to the dedications in Shakespeare’s First Folio published in 1623.
It is quite likely that like Copernicus and Galileo, Thomas Digges had constructed a type of proto-telescope which enabled him to view the craters on the Moon, the “eye” of Jupiter, as well as its moons and even to observe the Milky Way for what it was; namely a huge cluster of stars. His instructions and results with mirrored lenses were published in a work entitled Pantometria in 1571 two years before he died. Although these optic inventions or plano-lens devices were also mentioned by Leonardo da Vinci and possibly by Ptolemy himself, the British considered them extremely useful in naval warfare and for navigation of the seas so there were other reasons to keep their findings discreetly tucked away in the appendix of an obscure yearly almanac. Furthermore, ostensibly persona non grata during Mary’s reign, their predecessor and staunch Protestant, Leonard’s Digges’ had his property and estates seized because of his support for the Sir Thomas Wyatt rebellion (1553-4) which opposed her marriage to Phillip II of Spain.
In 1572 Thomas Digges tried to measure the distance to a supernova using the parallax method and achieved a result which confirmed that the supernova had to be way beyond the orbit of our Moon, thereby affirming the Copernican model to be superior to that of Ptolemy’s. He published his findings in a work entitled “New Star of 1572”, Alae seu Scalae Mathematicae, which reinforced the Copernican Model, even though it was still considered hypothetical by the majority of scientists in Europe. Digges even dedicated the work to Lord Burghley, the Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth Ist and the following year published his “Perfit Description”, a table of the calculations as an appendix to a new edition of the Almanac begun by his father “A Prognostication Everlasting”. In this way he succeeded in not drawing too much attention to his findings or invoking the wrath of Rome. Neither Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) or for that matter Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had the same prudent approach. Many Renaissance philosophers began to think of an infinite universe, unbounded like the mind of God and these new discoveries necessitated a new doctrine, a new order and it appears a new Biblical text. By unravelling the laws of nature, philosophical science sought to confirm the “hand and mind of God” in creation as well as the “word of God” in the Gospels. For many rational people of the time the literal, allegorical and metaphysical meaning of Biblical texts became seriously confused and this led to further denials of Rome’s supremacy, at least in doctrinal matters if not in cosmologies. For others, these free-thinking scientists were for the most part heretics if not lunatics when it came to questions of faith and religion and it would be better to eradicate or ignore them. The emergence of the play Hamlet in 1600 (the same year as Bruno’s execution), whose “uncle” is named Claudius after Ptolemy may suggest some parallels with the New Enlightenment especially when we examine the lines:
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Indeed, when we dig a little deeper, there is a great deal within Shakespeare’s most autobiographical play which is set at Elsinore, Denmark to connect the philosophical theologian and scientist, Giordano Bruno, a nobleman the 17th Earl of Oxford and the eccentric astronomer Tycho Brae. When Bruno left Paris in 1583 after receiving his degree at Toulouse as Doctor of Theology, he had finished writing his first serious work “Shadows of Ideas” which was gratefully dedicated to Henri III, and based upon Plato’s Republic, it was his first attempt to portray the essential unity of the Universe and a rejection of Aristotle’s theories on matter. He was then given a letter of introduction from King Henri III, brother of Francois, Duke of Anjou, to the French ambassador to England’s court, Michel de Castelnau, Seigneur de Mauvissiere. Castelnau then invited Bruno to be his guest at Salisbury Court, near Southwalk where he was introduced to none other than the Queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, equivalent to the head of MI5 and homeland security. It was apparently there that Bruno’s alternative role as a spy (under the pseudonym of Henri Fagot) held some importance in the discovery of enciphered messages sent to Mary Queen of Scots, with the covert assistance of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton and his agent Francis Throckmorton who was the ring-leader of the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth 1st. Bruno was himself privately presented at Elizabeth’s court where he received a modicum of respect for his poetical verses as well as his scientific theories:
While Copernicus had ascertained that the Sun was a star that was situated at the centre of our solar system, and not the Earth itself as Ptolemy had previously theorised, Bruno’s was ultimately theocentric. God, he said, “is the inner principle of all movement, the one Identity which fills the all and enlightens the universe.” He added that everything is contained in this One Principle, “for the Infinite has nothing which is external to Itself.”
After outlining this, what would have been a revolutionary and controversial concept of God, Bruno then proceeded to define the phenomenon of Nature itself as “a living unity of living units, in each of which the power of the whole is present.” Nature, he affirmed confidently may appear to us in numberless forms, but it must always be considered united in its fundamental principle. Therefore, it must never be conceived as a creation, but merely as a development of the First Principle. Where then should we look for God? Bruno answered:
“In the unchangeable laws of nature, in the light of the sun, in the beauty of all that springs from the bosom of mother earth, in the sight of unnumbered stars which shine in the skirts of space, and which live and feel and think and magnify the powers of this Universal Principle. theocentric. God, he said, “is the inner principle of all movement, the one Identity which fills the all and enlightens the universe.”
He added that everything is contained in this One Principle, “for the Infinite has nothing which is external to Itself.” He even went on to espouse poetically on his theories:
The universe is infinite
with matter as we know it extending throughout;
the universe has no borders nor limits;
the sun is just another star;
the stars are other suns,
infinite in number and in extent
with an infinity of worlds (like our own) circling them.
In the universe
there is neither up, nor down, nor right, nor left
but all is relative to where we are
there is no centre;
all is turning and in motion,
for vicissitude and motion is the principle of life;
earth turns around its own axis even as it turns around the sun
the sun turns too around its own axis.
In his seminal work “Of the Infinite Universe and Worlds”, can be found written
in Italian, published in London, 1584:
Nothing stands still,
but all things swirl and whirl
as far as heaven and beneath is seen.
All things move, now up, now down,
whether on a long or short course,
whether heavy or light;
perhaps you too go along the same path
and to a like goal.
For all things move till overtaken,
as the wave swirls through the water,
so that the same part
moves now from above downward,
now from below upward,
and the same hurly-burly
imparts to all the same successive fate.
He was encouraged to present his ideas such as the immortality of the human soul at Oxford University in a lecture that received a mixed reception, some arguing his heretical views were absurd or even dangerous. However, while living in London Bruno wrote his “Cena de le Ceneri” (“The Ash Wednesday Supper”) and “De l`Infinito, Universo e Mondi” (“On the Infinite Universe and Worlds”), both published in 1584. He also wrote “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast”; “Cause, Principle & Unity” and “On The Infinite Universe and Worlds”. In his final work he argued that the individual stars observed at night are very much like our own Sun, and that the universe is an infinite space that contained a “plurality of worlds” (ie: Galaxies). It was written in Italian and published by an Englishman J. Charlewood, these unorthodox and controversial treatises are now known as Bruno’s “London Dialogues”. He dedicated two of them to his friend and “kindred sprit” Sir Philip Sidney (a member of the Pembroke Circle), in his view the leading light of the English renaissance. Sidney wrote:
“Though dustie wits dare scorne Astrologie,
And fooles can thinke those Lamps of purest Light
Whose numbers, wayes, greatnesse, eternitie,
Promising wonders, wonders do invite,
To have for no cause birthright in the skie,
But for to spangle the black weeds of night;
Or for some brawle which in that chamber hie,
They should still daunce to please a gazer’s sight.
For me I do Nature unidle know,
And know great causes great effects procure,
And know those Bodies high raine on the low.
And if these rule did faile, proof makes me sure,
Who oft fore-judge my after-following race
By only those two starres in Stella’s face.”
On the evening of Ash Wednesday, 1584 the Warwickshire poet and aristocrat Fulke Grevile invited Bruno to give a lecture to a group of “friends” at his London residence. The substance of his talk came very close to the tenets of Theosophy, wherein GOD was perceived as the centre of everything that was in itself self-effulgent and at the same time omnipresent. In other words that everything in the manifest universe is in the process of becoming, “and this process proceeds under the fundamental Law of the Universe—the Law of Cause and Effect.” The Law of Periodicity also expresses itself within the Law of Reincarnation, so that “we ourselves, and the things we call our own, come and vanish and return again.” Bruno posited the identity of all souls with a Universal Over-soul, although he was willing to concede that there must be an endless number of individuals and an endless number of rebirths. Finally we are all in our nature One, and the knowledge of this unity is the goal of philosophy. The soul of man, he affirmed, is the only God there is. “This principle in man moves and governs the body, is superior to the body, and cannot be constrained by it.” It is Spirit, the Real Self, in which, from which and through which, are formed the different bodies, which have to pass through different existences, names and destinies. Moreover, he found favour among the Northumberland Circle, which included John Florio, Thomas Herriot, Nicholas Hill, Walter Warner, Sir Fulke Greville, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Watson, Dr. John Dee (the alchemist, astrologer, magician, and intelligencer), and probably Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, i.e., Shakespeare, all of whom were members. Seven of Bruno’s works, including “Gli Heroici Furori” neatly annotated by the 9th Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy were recently found in his library. It might be of relevance that the Northumberland Manuscript that featured a play presumably in part written by “Shakespeare” was found in his London residence Northumberland House, where Sir Francis Bacon was temporarily in residence. In his “De Magia” (Frankfurt, 1591) Bruno wrote:
“The order and power of light and darkness are not equal. For light is diffused and
penetrates to deepest darkness, but darkness does not reach to the purest regions of
light. Thus light comprehends darkness, overcomes and conquers it, throughout infinity…”
Out of the confusions and anomalies caused by geo-centrism and the multi-layered and complex hypothesis known as “The Music of the Spheres” Bruno pronounced what in comparison was a very simple idea, that neither the Earth or for that matter the Sun was not actually located at the centre of an imaginary Universe. The idea that our solar system was not fixed at the centre of our surrounding Universe was not officially rejected as false until as late as 1924 when it was shown that we were located on the outer fringes of a huge galaxy which was not alone but contained many worlds beyond into infinite space. The idea of black holes, event horizons and dark matter was unknown to the 16th century astronomers. Aside from Bruno’s theory of an extended cosmos lay his radical theories about matter itself. These were far more threatening to the Church authorities than his cosmological vision. As far as Bruno was concerned, Matter was Divine since it was the Divine Unity underlying at the heart of all reality. We get a glimpse of these ideas from a reading of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet Prince of Denmark” where he literally quotes Bruno:
“Doubt thou that the stars are fire
Doubt that the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love”—(Hamlet, II.ii.116-119)
Bruno’s frequent response to these questions was: “…there is no centre, there are no spheres, and…there is no Heaven, only space, endless infinite space, eternity…” Ramon Mendoza, in his book “Acentric Labyrinth”, set forth the ultimate consequences of this cosmological and prophetic vision:
“The All is no longer necessarily a sea of billions of galaxies and clusters of galaxies; the All may be an infinite ocean of infinite universes! In this ocean, our insignificant tiny universe is only an island in the infinite archipelago of universes. Humanity has thereby been stripped for good and all its cherished centres. Riding on its speck of dust, humankind drifts aimlessly along the endless pathways of the labyrinth of universes—a labyrinth with no centre and no edges, no beginning in time, and no end.”
And Mendoza went on to say:
“However, there is really no need for despair; by discovering our appalling spatiotemporal insignificance, we have come to realize the only title to greatness we still possess, and which has become, precisely in the process of this millenary quest for centres, all the more manifest and inspiring: the boundlessness and almost unlimited power of the human mind.”
The greatest of astronomers from the time was Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). He lived in his subterranean observatory on the island of Uraniborg, off the coast of Denmark, near to the royal castle, Helsignor (Elsinore). A fine portrait of Brahe depicts the famed astronomer framed by a stone portal. Heraldic shields, on either side, bear the names of his ancestors: Erik Rosenkrantz and Sophie Gyldenstierne. In De La Causa, principio et uno (London, 1584), Bruno employed satire to expose the prevailing conventions of the day when his Pedant “Poliinnio” holds forth on women and the notion of “Matter”:
“Without a doubt, form does not sin and error is engendered by no form unless it is conjoined to matter. That is why form, signified by the male, when placed in a position of intimacy with matter, or composition with it, replies (quoting Adam) “the woman he gave me”—that is matter—“she, she deceived me”—that is the cause of all my sin (breaking off he says) “O, I see that colossus of Indolence, Gervase, coming to sap the thread of my elaborate speech. I fear he has overheard me, but what does it matter?” Like Polonius the loquacious Polinnio is playing with the semantics of a mundane phrase “matter”:
“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 rogue says here that old men have gray beards,
that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum,
and that they have a plentiful of wit, together with most weak hams.” —(Hamlet II.ii.196)
It would appear that the names Polonius and Polinnio may have derived from the same source, a play written by Bruno entitled: “Il Candelaio” which was published in 1582. In that drama when Bruno’s follower Gervase arrives on the scene, he asks: “What’s up?” and Poliinnio replies:
“I came upon a passage of Aristotle in the first book of Physics where he sets out to elucidate what primary matter is, and takes as a mirror the female sex; the sex, I mean, capricious, frail, inconstant, soft, petty, infamous, ignoble, base, abject, negligent, unworthy…”
While citing Bruno’s theories he is at the same time lampooning satirically his arch nemesis William Cecil, his own father-in-law who was well known as the epitome of pedantry. Tycho Brae’s ancestors Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, were characters associated with the Secret Order of the Rose-Croix and when hearing of Hamlet‘s ‘bad dreams’ warn him against perverse ambition as does Bruno in his “De Umbris Idearum” (The Shadow of Ideas, 1582):
Guildenstern: Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of the
ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream..
Rosencrantz:
Why then, your ambition makes it one; ’tis too
narrow for your mind.
Hamlet:
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.
Guildenstern:
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Hamlet:
A dream itself is but a shadow.
Rosencrantz:
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Hamlet:
Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
outstretched heroes the beggars’ shadows. Shall we
to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.
In his own dedication to “Il Candelaio Bruno also remarked:
“Everything which is, either here or there, either near or far, either now or to come, is either early or late.” Which is not too far removed from Hamlet‘s comments:
“If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not
now, yet it will come.” —(V.ii.220-3)
Which suggests that the drama Hamlet was probably written or revised soon after Bruno’s trial and brutal execution in February, 1600 although it is traditionally dated 1601.
While in the 20th century Hubble had established that the fuzzy spiral “nebulae” observed through powerful modern telescopes were not clouds of nebulous gas but were really distant galaxies composed of billions of stars—“not unlike island universes,” and very much like our own Milky Way. In 1608 the astronomer Johannes Kepler also observed a supernova which disproved the idea that the heavens, indeed the planets and moons as well as the Earth itself were eternally “fixed” by God. The Biblical references that the Vatican was so sensitive about were Psalm 93:1, 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 which include text stating that “the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved.” In the same manner, Psalm 104:5 says, “the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.” Furthermore, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that “And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place” which according to Galileo it did not! The first telescope to be commercially made in Europe was by Hans Lippershey of the Netherlands in 1608, a year before “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” were published. In my view there are many astrological references in both the Sonnets and plays attributed to William Shakespeare, so much so that they deserve greater attention from academic scholars. The problem is how many academic literary scholars have rigorously studied traditional astrology as practiced and understood in the Elizabethan period? However, although many people fail to see the importance of astrology today, in the Elizabethan era the science played a far more important and significant role in personal and state politics. The references usually took the form of allusions or symbolic perspectives influenced from the understanding of religion, creation, the practice of astrology and the known astronomical truths and hold little significance for the study of tropical astrology as it is understood by the masses today. Indeed, astrology as a science was so important to the Church and State that it seemed expedient to have one man, namely Dr. John Dee, to advise the Queen on determining her forthcoming coronation date (See “The Queen’s Sorcerer”. One should bear in mind that the Elizabethan Age was also known as The Golden Age so far as the British Isles were concerned and that Shakespeare’s influential and metaphysical circle was just one of many others. Can you imagine for example if today the reigning monarch had decided to write a treatise on Witchcraft, just as James Ist had done?
If the Church, the State and the Monarchy had total belief in the effect that even the date on which an important ceremonial moment was being held would determine their beneficent or malefic outcome, so why should not William Shakespeare have some belief or certainty in the science and art of astrological prognosis?
The alchemical and magical brotherhoods of Shakespeare’s time were a product of the Reformation and the new Enlightenment which produced a watershed in the lives of many European citizens, politicians, rulers and priests. Among other intellectual reformers and great thinkers of that time were Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Thomas Harriot. However, there were indeed many more free thinkers of this period, for example those filtering through the Italian Renaissance, in Spain, in Demark and the Netherlands, in Austria and Bohemia. The importance of Neo-Platonic symbolism, the secret work of Rosicrucians, Freemasons and literary cabals, and Shakespeare’s acceptance and creative expression of these ideas has been sadly neglected in many conventional academic circles. When we know that the theatres in which the theatrical dramas were performed were aligned and designed in accord with astro-geomantic principles, in which the iconic “Monad” devised by Dr. John Dee was architecturally expressed within that “wooden-O” does it not seem plausible that the plays themselves, the words contained in them, the metaphors, the number of acts and scenes follow a particular numerical structure, and that they mirror the models of the cosmos defined by Alchemical Symbolism? If an eminent scientist such as Isaac Newton had embraced such philosophical and astrological doctrines then it is not such a quantum leap into the ridiculous to assume that Shakespeare had been tutored or influenced by them also. For at that time there was no real art without some element of science and no real science without a deeper understanding of the occult arts. Fortunately, today a great deal more interest and genuine research has gone into the astrological and astronomical references in Shakespeare’s work-some professing he was a Freemason, some that he was an Alchemist and others to say that he was a literary Magus.
| The links to my publications “Shakespeare’s Qaballah”, a Companion to Shakespeare Studies and my anthology of poetry, “Parthenogenesis” are as follows: |
https://www.amazon.com/dp/8182537193
https://www.cyberwit.net/publications/1721
Website: www.qudosacademy.org
