by Ron Singer.
“How the hell did you get in here?” The Dictator groped for the buzzer beneath his desk, almost pressing the red nuclear button, instead.
“”Don’t bother,’ said the intruder, a tall man dressed in the gray hooded robe of a Dominican friar. ”It isn’t working. Besides, I’m not here to harm you. My purpose is to try to lift the cloud of unknowing in which you grope out your days.”
“ ’Cloud of…’ what? Who the hell are you?” demanded the Dictator, rubbing his bald head. “And who sent you?”
“I am sure you have never heard of me,” he said. “My name is Giordano Bruno da Nola. In life, I was a Magus.”
The visitor seemed aware of the perhaps counterintuitive fact that listening was a skill many dictators seem to possess in abundance. After all, over the six long years leading up to February 17th, 1600, he had endured hundreds of interminable colloquies with his Inquisitors, at which point they had burned him at the stake – without even the usual courtesy of prior strangulation.
“As for your other question,” he continued, “the answer is complex. I suppose you could say History sent me, or the Universe. Not Hell, though, I don’t believe in Hell.” With that, he drew back his cowl, revealing a stern, weathered face with a grizzled mustache and mad, glittering eyes.
Swinging his black boots onto his polished desk, and slouching down on his ergonomic throne, the unfazed Dictator fingered the gold buttons of his black military tunic. “Yeah, right, you’re a messenger from History and the Universe. Can I see your credentials? And I’m the Pope.” He thought for a nanosecond. “Hmm,” he muttered. “Not a bad idea. I’ll have to look into that.”
Bruno frowned at this unconsciously insensitive reference to his chief tormentor. Without inviting him to sit in the smaller chair on the far side of the desk, the Dictator glanced at his gold wristwatch. “You’ve got thirty seconds, pal, before I throw you out…” He remembered the dead buzzer. “…even if I have to do it personally.”
Bruno responded to this threat by passing a hand through the top of the desk, a silent demonstration of his incorporeality. The Dictator’s mouth fell open, and the air seemed to go out of his bulky frame. The Magus snapped his fingers, causing the Dictator’s red sash to snap painfully against his chest, like a big rubber band.
“Stop blustering, and listen to what I have to say!”
A deep furrow appeared in the Dictator’s brow. Had he really threatened to throw this intimidating intruder out? “Okay, shoot,” he said, forming an imaginary pistol with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “But make it quick, I’m a busy man.”
“As for me, I have all the time in the world –and beyond this world.” Drawing himself up to his full height, and aiming a forefinger at the Dictator, the Magus chanted, ”In the name of Sol, the one true god, and his attending spirits, including Isis, divine Sophia, the celestial spheres and terrestrial animals, and the decons and constellations of the sub-Jovian world, I, Giordano Bruno da Nola, do hereby declare that, unless you immediately cease and desist from stoking hatred among your fellows, in the interests of battening your larcenous ego, you will be consigned forever to historical oblivion.”
The Dictator pretended to be frightened. “Ooh,” he mocked, “ ‘historical oblivion.’ As long as they don’t forget me!”
Bruno shrugged, and silently pointed to the Dictator’s smart phone, which sat on a corner of the desk, looking like a turquoise postage stamp on an enormous brown envelope. Lunging for the device, and clicking it awake, instead of the usual welter of adulation, the Dictator saw that, except for four words, the screen was empty:
YOU HAVE BEEN DELETED
“Hey, let’s make a deal,” he squeaked. “Wow! I bet I could delete all my enemies! Could you teach me how to do that? I mean, I’m pretty… what’s that word… charismatical, myself.”
“What you just witnessed was nothing like your so-called charisma. Yours is an evil magic; mine, a benevolent.”
“Yeah, right. That’s what they all say.”
At that moment, the door sprang open, and the Advisor, a heavy-set, arrogant-looking man with curly brownish-gray hair, strode into the room. He wore thick glasses and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.
“Don’t you knock, anymore?” scolded the Dictator.
The Advisor ignored both the complaint and the visitor. “Sign this!” he commanded. “It might undo some of the damage your recent outbursts have done to our alliances.” He sailed a single sheet of paper across the desk.
“Aren’t you even going to ask who my visitor is? He’s a holy man who does magic tricks. Calls himself ‘Senor Bruno.’ ”
“Signior Bruno,” the Magus corrected.
Other than a cursory nod, the Advisor ignored the oddly dressed visitor, who did not look anything like a member of the evangelical contingents he often encountered in this office. “Just sign,” he repeated.
The Dictator drew his fountain pen from its gilt holder and flourished it, in preparation for signing the document. As the Advisor waited, he peered owlishly at Bruno. “A magician, eh? Maybe, you could use a spell to undo some of the damage this moron causes every day.” The Dictator opened his mouth to protest, but a stern glance from the Advisor made him shut it. “Maybe, you could even restore his wits –not that he ever had any.”
“Hey!” protested the Dictator.
“ ‘Therein, the patient must minister to himself,’ ” quoted the Magus.
“Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 3, lines 48 to 49,” said the Advisor.
“Ah! I see you are an educated man.”
“He knows everything,” boasted the Dictator, whose pen was still circling the document like a plane waiting to land at a busy airport.
Addressing the Advisor, the Magus said, “Presumably, then, Sir, you have read my thirty-second book. Written in Switzerland, and published in Frankfort, the title, as you will recall, is De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione.”
Vain about his knowledge, the Advisor replied, “Why, yes, I believe I have read that one. The date was around 1590, wasn’t it?” Cognizant of the general outlines of Bruno’s biography, he was guessing.
“1591. But, since you have, indeed, read the book, I find it astonishing that you can continue to serve such a master.”
“Eh.”
“As you will recall, in one illustration, Jupiter, the First Principle of the Universe, is standing in a chariot. Arrayed on his left hand are figures representing Pride, Display, Ambition, Dementia, Vanity, Contempt For Others, and Usurpation; and, on his right, Life, Incorrupt Innocence, Erect Integrity, Clemency, Hilarity, Moderation, and Toleration. Well, then, Sir?”
“Eh,” repeated the Advisor.
“It seems to me that the figures on the left precisely describe your master; those on the right, everything he spurns. Ergo?”
For a moment, the Advisor seemed stunned by the Magus’ argument. But, never at a loss, he sprang to the counterattack.
Continuation of the Dialogue between the Advisor and the Magus
Advisor: What can I say? We’re not in the sixteenth-century, anymore, Toto.
Magus: “Toto,” you call me? “All”? Well, yes, I suppose I am.
A: Never mind, that was a joke –after your time. What I mean is, ours is a complicated world, full of frightening conflicts.
M: Was my world so different, torn as it was by doctrinal strife stoked by self-interest and demagoguery? But my magic offered a solution. If things had only gone …differently, all those terrible religious and dynastic wars could have been curtailed.
A: “If!” A compadre of yours, Tommaso Campanella, did catch the ear of Cardinal Richelieu, and your sun worship had its day in –at– court. The results were the absolutism of Louis XIV, and the French revolution.
M: I regret those unfortunate developments.
A: Anyway, wasn’t that one-world cosmology business originally cooked up by your predecessor, Marcilio Ficino, to cure rampant depression, then called “melancholia,” among his students? Your “magic” was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo designed for the couch. More like cosmetology than cosmology.
M: Not only is depression ubiquitous among the youth of today, but your allusion to Ficino is a foolish quibble! You surely know enough about the history of technology to be aware that numerous inventions designed for specific purposes –in many instances, for war– have been adapted to wider, more benevolent uses. Is this not the case, for example, with those thinking machines everyone today seems to worship?
A: Computers?
M: Besides, what do you offer in place of my one-world “cosmetology”?
A: Well, to put it in terms that will be familiar, my boss and I are like the lion and the fox. He threatens; I negotiate. It’s about leverage. Or, as Ludwig von Rochau put it, three or four hundred years after Machiavelli, we practice realpolitik.
Besides, in recent times, we’ve tried that one-world stuff again. Since you seem to be so well informed, I’m sure you’ve heard of the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations. The League failed dismally to prevent World War Two, and, ever since, the U.N. has been impotent in the face of global carnage.
M: There has always been carnage, and we have always had lions and foxes. But, nowadays, humanity faces a new and uniquely serious threat. Five centuries after my death, the alchemy of money and ignorance has come to dominate human affairs more completely than ever before, and this toxic mix is fast destroying Nature, which I value above all else. Your master, who should be a bulwark against this calamity, is, instead, its aggressive agent.
Before the Advisor could reply, the Dictator, who had been watching the exchange as if it were a tennis match, finally piped up. “Yadda, yadda!” he sneered. “No wonder the Inquisition burnt your crazy ass!”
Instead of replying, the Magus drew back the sleeves of his robe, made a circular motion with his arms, and intoned an ancient Egyptian spell. Suddenly, the room was filled with dazzling golden light, in which danced a swarm of gorgeous visions, including planetary bodies, the atmospheric forces of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, representatives of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and emblems of gods and goddesses from both the Egyptian and Greek pantheons.
Even the Advisor seemed impressed, and the expression on the open-mouthed Dictator’s face was that of a child opening hitherto unimagined Christmas presents. Within a few moments, however, the magical figures had faded and disappeared, as had the Magus.
“Where’s he go? Spontaneous combustion,” quipped the Dictator.
“There’s no such thing. Sign the paper.”
As the Dictator once again flourished his pen, he was heard to murmur, “But I like elephants!”
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giordano-Bruno
“da Nola,” refers to Bruno’s origins in the small town of that name, in the shadows of Mount Vesuvius.
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/giordano-bruno-executed
The magical invocations, the vision of Jupiter in his chariot, and the “The Cloud of Unknowing,” vs. the Hermes Trismegistus-Cabala-based one-world connection…
–all from Yates, Frances, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1964; Midway reprint, 1979).