The Incantation of Circe

JORDANUS BRUNO

For those very beings—some of whom you see with horns, some with stings, others with such teeth, and others with lethal claws—they were each and every one of them terrible with horn, sting, tooth, and claw all at once. Now they have obtained diverse and specific weapons with which they can protect themselves and hurt others, whereas before they possessed them all.

MOERIS: By what reasoning will you persuade me of that?

CIRCE: Do you not know that he who is armed with a hand is more armed than all others? Do you not know that the hand lacks all specific weapons precisely so that it may be preeminent with all weapons? Bruno is drawing on a classical philosophical idea, famously articulated by Aristotle and Galen, that the hand is the "instrument of instruments." Because it is not fixed as a claw or a wing, it can grasp and create any tool, making the human more dangerous than any specialized beast. Are you ignorant that the hand, by adapting stings, poisons, horns, and teeth to itself, fears the attacks of no beast? Are you unaware that by this instrument alone, man has been accustomed to rule over all visible living creatures? It is, therefore, rash and imprudent of you to have become more afraid. Drive all dread from your mind, cast away all doubt, and proceed with me into an examination of them.

MOERIS: I cannot help but fear these horns, which are now present, fitted, and turned against us—we who are unarmed and weak—along with the other instruments of death that I see.

CIRCE: Hasten forward in safety; with a simple song original: "facili carmine." In this context, carmen refers to a magical incantation or spell. we shall overcome them all.

MOERIS: If you, a powerful goddess, promise that, I proceed without hesitation.

CIRCE: First, let us track these domestic animals. Look at those pigs nearest to us who have fled toward the houses; you would have most easily recognized them even when they were under a human husk. original: "humano cortice." Bruno often uses the metaphor of a "bark" or "husk" to describe the outer physical form that hides the inner true nature of a being.

MOERIS: Most easily indeed.