The Renaissance is often interpreted as a return to the values of the ancient era. However, the return to antiquity is not just the convenient acceptance of some past and forgotten knowledge. It is once again understood as the main source of humanistic thought.
The Renaissance man is a man of tradition, inheritor of human spiritual heritage. He brings together different lines of thought, which, like branches of a tree, come together and form the trunk of a single wisdom.
A man of tradition is one who cares for the preservation of forgotten knowledge and spirit, whose traces in human legacy awaken reminiscence in him and inspire him to an active search within himself.
Restoration of the Golden Age
Ancient thought was considered a treasure trove of values and a vision of the world that could enable the transformation of society and the construction of a future world. Antiquity was seen as a period of light, as noticed by Petrarch, and a source of a new golden age celebrated by Renaissance humanists.
Renaissance humanist. The Renaissance man is close to the modern human. He lives in a society that no longer offers him meaning and confines him to dogmatic thinking. He feels deceived by the world, which seems to have forgotten the meaning of human inner adventure. As a stranger in his own time, he longs for liberation. He dreams of a renewal of time, a golden age, a blossoming of thought, a rediscovery of deeper meaning in life, an enlightened peace. Gradually, this dream becomes a necessity for the arrival of a new era and a new philosophy of man and nature. This philosophy will flourish in the spring of the Renaissance.
Know thyself
The humanist believes that life is not just something external, a mere sequence of events or circumstances that are presented to him. For the Renaissance man, life has an inner dimension, imbued with magic and mystery. This dimension exists in the human being who, in his depth, possesses something hidden and divine, which can illuminate his own destiny, connect him with others, and with the source of creation. Nosce te ipsum, Know thyself, is the main motto of the humanists. The answers to fundamental questions are primarily within ourselves.
The art of connection
Similarly, another dimension of life hides within the heart of the universe, in the stars that bring life to the world with their brilliance, in the light that is the source of life on our planet. This is what ancient people called “gods,” and what humanists have rediscovered by reviving a rich symbolic world.
The encounter between the inner life of the universe and the inner life of man is the subject of hermetic science: it is the true art of relationships, the one that establishes connections between what is above and what is below. The perception of this inner dimension of life is the entire adventure of Renaissance humanism. To feel the divine and the spirit that exists in every particle of life, in every person, in every pore of nature, is the basic concern of humanists.
The human artist
Art is the first step in attempting to express these mysteries. Art is a reflection of Beauty, which humanists have said is the face that God. The soul speaks beautifully in a language that is not of this world: a language of harmony and purity that evokes a sense of fulfillment and ecstasy, and lifts the soul towards heavenly heights. Art stimulates the platonic sense of reminiscence, awakening in the soul a longing for its divine source.
Art is a reflection of the divine, and the artist is its messenger: they express the divine primarily because they can perceive it thanks to their receptivity. A true artist is primarily the one who succeeds in expressing it, not just a technician who masters forms.
The Inner Path
One of the finest artistic expressions of the Renaissance is poetry, which is truly the language of the soul.
Philosophers, aristocrats, courtiers, or artists engage in poetry as a means of educating the mind and heart in order to become sensitive to higher realities and gain internal insights that alone open the eyes of the soul to hidden realities.
The Renaissance man is insightful and is often symbolically depicted with eyes blindfolded, which signifies that his gaze is not physical or material, but rather an internal ability that allows the recognition of what is invisible and hidden to physical eyes.
The Speech of the Imaginary
The humanist, through imagination, connects with the mysteries of the universe. His mind is unable to explain the spiritual reality. Therefore, he needs to learn a different language that can make it accessible. This is the language of symbols that speaks to the imaginary. Symbols are the language of the soul: they are carriers of meaning. For symbols are the language in which the divine Word has shone in human souls, as the Chaldean prophecies, the collection of Zarathustra’s wisdom, say.
Symbols have the power to reveal to the humanist the secrets of the spirit and the divine. They enable epiphany, or the penetration of the sacred into profane life, transforming it in the process.
The Speech of the Soul
The speech of the soul is the speech of dreams, visions, but also the subject of philosophy. It finds its vocabulary in sacred languages and ancient mythology.
That is why the miraculous success of hieroglyphic writings is understandable. of Horus and Apollo, which are believed to convey the symbolic and sacred language of Egypt, the homeland of Hermes, and to reveal the true name of things, disclosing their secret essence (in accordance with the Bible, which speaks of the true name of things and living beings).
Let’s also mention Pico della Mirandola, who brought to Europe the complex and rich wisdom of Kabbalah, the sacred and symbolic language of Jewish tradition. The true name of things, their essence, can have a decisive influence on their nature and destiny.
The meaning of myth
The rediscovery of myths ignites the imagination of the Renaissance. Humanists uncover a deeper meaning of these imaginary stories, which simultaneously reveal the secrets of nature and reflect the mysteries of the human soul, life, and the universe.
The clearest expression of their philosophical power in art is undoubtedly visible in Botticelli, especially in his paintings Primavera and The Birth of Venus. On the other hand, Giordano Bruno marked the philosophical study of these forms of imagination.
The abilities of a magician
However, the abilities of a magician depend on their understanding of the laws of nature and the universe, as well as their mastery of rituals and symbols. In order to tap into the hidden forces and manipulate them, a magician must possess deep knowledge and focus.
A humanist does not want to be just someone who contemplates the mysteries of the universe. They want to unite with them, like a living link in a golden chain, which humanists have said connects heaven and earth.
As an active participant in this chain of relationships, the humanist is like a magician, someone who can reach the hidden structures of nature and life. They apply great skill in imitation, which of course is not blind copying of nature, but rather the ability to perceive nature, its hidden powers, and the forms that reveal its intelligence, the face of divine intelligence, the Word or Logos, in which Leonardo da Vinci was the greatest master.
Observing nature, the humanist is amazed by its beauty, and this leads them to imitate it in their works, which allows them to elevate themselves to a higher level.
Ethics and aesthetics
The path of the humanist consists, therefore, of three stages that lead to a gradual encounter with the hidden dimensions of existence. The first is imitation, the art of observing life, a phase of understanding and empathy with nature. The second stage is creation, where the humanist uses their knowledge and skills to express their own interpretation of the world. And finally, the third stage is integration, where the humanist merges their own being with nature and the universe, embracing the interconnectedness of all things.
enhancement and discovery of Beauty through harmonious forms of nature. This is followed by the purification of thoughts, feelings, and actions through philosophical life, such as in Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Academy in Careggi. These two aspects allow the philosopher to unite the aesthetic and the ethical. Only then can magic occur, the result of combining knowledge and power, a true ceremony of uniting humanity with the forces of life, in service not to oneself, but to the greater harmony of manifested existence. The image of the Three Graces, Beauty-Purity-Pleasure, highly valued in the Renaissance, reflects this triple path.
The search for harmony
Harmony is undoubtedly the guiding thought of the Renaissance. The pursuit of harmony is a demanding art of connecting opposites, such as heaven and earth, Hermes’ art in the truest sense, which gains great momentum during this period, encouraged by the rediscovery and expansion of the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of hermetic writings from the Hellenistic era.
First and foremost, harmony needs to be established within oneself, as Pico della Mirandola said about humans. The meeting place of the world, or the place where heaven and earth meet. Because of this, it possesses a dual nature that leads it to act either like an angel or like a beast.
Establishing harmony in the world and in one’s own environment, ruling peace over war, unity over discord, is also a great concern of the humanists of that era. Humanists are idealists who dream of a society of peace, and their dreams are often expressed through literary or architectural plans for utopian cities. Harmony is also a driving force in art, from painting and sculpture to architecture, the art of connecting parts into a harmonious whole.
Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola were heralds of religious harmony, pax theologica, and it is certainly worth mentioning the great Erasmus who fought against wars and conflicts of all kinds.
The search for harmony is a search for the divine, because harmony reveals the unity that arises from the balance of the parts of a whole. The search for Unity that is hidden in the multiplicity of the faces of life is a mysterious path. They move the humanists, from Petrarch to Pico della Mirandola, because Unity is a visible characteristic of divinity.
Divine is the one who can unite with oneself; divine is the one who can live in unity with the universe; divine is the one who can unite the past and the future, history and the present; divine is the one who can unite the forces of heaven and earth.