Disciple of Bernardino Telesio, Antonio Persio, in his treatise published in Venice by Manutius’s sons in 1576, develops the concept of genius as Spiritus/Mercurius.
Trattato intorno all’Ingegno dell’Huomo, or treaty on the human genius, is a pretty ignored sixteenth-century pamphlet written in Italian by Antonio Persio (1543 – 1612), although so courtly and convoluted to make reading difficult even for an Italian native speaker, like me. So it does not surprise the book has not known a more comprehensive eco, and frankly, I doubt it will ever find a complete translation into a more global language. As typical for the sixteenth century, they disguise the form of the work in a mix of purely philosophical dissertations, common sense ethics, and health standards recommendations, as the duty of every earnest parson, as the priest Persio was. On the other hand, a book written in vulgar language and not in Latin was addressed to the vulgar indeed, or at least not to a scholarly audience. If the books in Latin were subjected to Sant’Uffizio, books in vulgar were much less but had to be very cautious. After Telesio’s death, Persio had already ordered his teacher’s ideas in Varii de rebus naturalibus libelli, or pamphlet on various natural things, in which it can be found some parts as Quod animal, De somno, and De Natura, which would have been posthumously banned by Sant’Uffizio and inserted in the Index of prohibited books published by Clement VIII in 1596.
Trattato intorno all’Ingegno dell’Huomo is entirely Persio’s work. The article presents only a selection of the most interesting parts, initially hidden, dissolved, and scattered throughout the 129 pages. I have fully transcribed and translated them, conserving the original wording. I have left out the parts the author uses to dilute his thought, masquerading it as a pamphlet on moral philosophy.
It has been mistakenly thought that Trattato intorno all’Ingegno dell’Huomo only regains the sense of Bernardino Telesio on astronomical sun or sunlight. Still, it takes up and amplifies the entire particular issue of the inner central sun of all beings. And we’ll see how the concept of ‘genius‘ symbolically and clearly, brings instead to Mercurius and how many issues in the book can be recognized as typically alchemical, in an unexpected sense that can embrace both the so-called inner and lab Alchemy. With a minimum hint of Alchemy, the reader can immediately understand ‘genius‘ as perfectly standing for Spiritus, spirit/Mercurius. And for Mercurius, I mean the mercurial substance, i.e., the ineffable matter of alchemists. The features Persio gives to genius are recognizably peculiar characteristics of the alchemical Mercurius. If the reader dared to mentally replace the term genius/Sun/God with Mercurius, a fresh vision might appear before their eyes.
In this way, we will acknowledge the alchemical symbolism as we accustom alchemists to recognize, and many obscure symbols can find a way out and a meaning. We will find classic alchemical symbols like the inner central Sun, fishing nets, rivers, and oceans. And intriguing as well, as a pretty unexpected explication for motion and sound as Spirit/genius accelerators. And memory with its doubling and keeping the property. As well as an express explication of potable gold, with its effects and uses. To end up with the sleep of great initiates and the making of gods.
The Italian word Persio specifically utilizes for genius is ingegno, which could be more appropriately translated in English as ingenuity. Still, as most English-speaking academic scholars in the Italian renaissance preferred to translate it as genius, I also kept this English academic expression to create a continuity with their work. Even if they often seem to reel in the symbolic sea of Renaissance Italian literature without grasping the alchemical significance that can not be ignored; instead, the authors of the time well knew however much. A typical example of this incomplete interpretation is the book by Noel L. Brann, The Debate Over The Origin Of The Genius during The Italian Renaissance, the theories of supernatural frenzy and natural melancholy in accord and conflict on the threshold of the scientific revolution, 2002, in which the author can grasp the importance of the Platonic and Aristotelian theories in the Italian Renaissance, as well interpreting the meaning of genius as spirit, but misses the hidden sense of spirit as alchemical mercury (which is instead a fundamental Plato’s feature). In Brann’s analysis, the spirit does not go beyond the definition of mere intellectual faculties.
Some notes on Bernardino Telesio (1509 – 1588): Italian philosopher and naturalist was the initiator of the new philosophy of Nature during the Renaissance. Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Campanella drew many concepts from his teaching, to cite some that were said to border on Alchemy. At the University of Padua, Telesio began by participating in the contrasts between Averroist and Alexandrian in interpreting Aristotle. During these disputes, he elaborated his critique of Aristotelian physics, developing an interest in the study of nature to which he devoted all his future works.
Telesio first put forward the idea that knowledge of nature must be based on the study of natural principles (iuxta propria principia) abandoning any metaphysical consideration but taking the pantheistic and vitalistic conception of the pre-Socratic and Plato, which survived in the Neoplatonist Renaissance circles and magical beliefs of the time. Contrary to Aristotle, who argued that “quidquid movetur ab alio movetur“, another body in motion moves everything in motion, Telesio believes that the movement is a principle inherent in the heat. So he developed as the first acting force the warm, expanding; as the second force, the cold, condensing; and a body substrate, the material. As the erudite reader may discern, these are but the alchemical forces that allow the Solve et Coagula, or the world machine.
Persio sets the introductory part of Trattato intorno all’Ingegno dell’Huomo in Venice and starts it with a eulogy and dedication to nobleman Pietro Contarini, who allegedly associated whose family name with Alchemy. The author thanks Contarini for allowing him into the Venice State Institute of Printing and Minting. Persio describes gold assay, how to do it by dissolving the metal into strong water, then moves to silver cupel delineation, talking of all that as man’s brainchild, which he defines genius. But what is this man’s genius? With these considerations, which could have been found as incipit in a lab Alchemy treatise, he analyzes the origin of human genius. Nostrum opus exasceatum sit, or our opus, has been drawn up:
Genius as Spiritus/Mercurius.
Accordingly, Genius is a synonym for spiritus, which not only invents things but refines those already invented. And the spiritus creates and refines the already created, as Mercurius, a synonym. Persio makes examples of inanimate objects, such as statues or paintings, revealing they gain life through genius. Semina flammae abstrusa in venis silicis, seeds of flame hidden in rock veins – Virgil, Eclogues.
Genius as Memory/Mnemosyne.
We can define genius as a ray of divine wisdom, but what Persio intends is surprising. The author here cites Plato when saying that our soul had abode in heaven before entering the body and, once down in the body, it will be provided with genius/Mercurius, which for Plato other was then the faculty of remembering, so a memory exercise [Mind, memory, not the mental exercise that can be defined so marginal in modern psychology, but the aptitude so necessary in Alchemy and ancient mythology instead, Mnemosyne. Something that will require a doubling].
Etymology of the Latin term ‘ inginio’ or to seed.
Seek the etymology of the word genius; that’s all latin. Inginio, from ingenero or do as a seed and generate planting inside a thing [ Totally alchemical concept of the seed of metals, the seed of all things, Mercurius]. The genius does not dwell only in animate things but also in what is thought to be soulless [like the places known as ingenium loci, today known as ‘genius loci’, instead].
Genius as the source of water.
Lucretius defines it as a source of water, waves, and sea. Unde mare ingenui fontes externaque longe flumina suppeditant?, or where the native and external sources rivers supply from afar the sea? – Lucretius – They are called geniuses, as they run to the sea because of their natural habit and are not confined or imprisoned because of any artifice of man’s will, for instance, tanks or other closed places. So for Lucretius, genius is a natural and inherent power engendered by us. An idea close to the concept of Mercurius, often represented by the serpent precisely because of its darting. Indeed, it is not said the gods are those that flow.
Genius as a fishing net.
A very consonant definition is the ancient Greek word ‘sagena‘ σαγήνη (sagḗnē, “dragnet”) or fishing net, marine netting. Another symbolic representation of the spirit or alchemical Mercurius is the fishing net.
Genius as the nature of air.
The spirit of animals, as well as ours, are within the entire body. Still, as far as Persio knows, it leans to “ ventricelli del cielebro“ [ the Latin form for cerebrum is indeed the same cerebrum and not cielebrum, which may instead appear as a mix of cielum [sky] and celeber-celebra [ celebrate], but fourteenth-century poets as Cecco d’Ascoli and Boccaccio cite celebrum instead of cerebrum, and concerning ventricelli there can hardy find an established meaning, but ventricelli is used in some central Italian dialects as rolls and rolled shapes at large, so one can argue that ” ventricelli del cielebro” may stand for convolutions of the brain], but further on Persio says its nature is warm and soft, and resembling air.
Genius, motion, and sound.
And in addition, it can emit sound and motion, as claimed by Platonian. The spirit moves and takes pleasure from motion, a great pleasure, therefore loves musical and regulated sounds since it gets motion from them. Each part of our body receives movement and the sense of hearing from the spirit.
The mutual relation of Geniuses.
And we indeed feel to make the spirit feel; we move to make it move and let it move all parts of our body wherever it likes. To where if the substance of the spirit was not in our body, we could not move—nor stand. If any particle of the spirit, localized in any part of the body, gets injured, the universality of the spirit immediately rescues it.
Genius as a mirror.
Galenus says that from the spirit it will be made two spirits, animal and vital, and then three with the addition of natural. But Persio adds that the spirit Galenus, clothes with the nature of air and then the nature of fire, is the father, source, and root of our genius. In our body, different forms of genius are being born, like a mirror: the cleaner and clearer, is the mirror, the more quickly it receives imprint and likeness of image.
Comparison with gold.
You could make a comparison with the gold assay. In short, you purchase gold of wisdom and can expect to be purified in the fire of spirit, a hot and animated substance. Pindar says that gold has the virtues of fire. Many wise found that gold, as the spirits, has the Sun’s and Jupiter’s virtues.
Potable gold.
And if you want to make it very thin and well purified so that one can drink it, and because of that, it has been called potable gold to recreate the power hidden in our hearts. With gold, one can buy another precious.
Mind not to let your pores too open.
But pay attention to your skin pores are not too open, because in this case, the very thin spirit will fly towards the Sun, his father, as it has been seen in some who were left deprived of everything, if not dead, they are little different from the dead.
The sleep of the initiated.
It is said of Epimenides Cretan, who for 50 years was believed to be in sleep, so Pythagoras for ten years and Zoroaster for 20. Even without moving, Socrates was seen in several places. If Archimedes had spent his genius to take refuge in a protected place, his life would not end so soon.
Genius as a microcosm.
Many say this system is not very different from having a soul sown and scattered by the sun throughout the universe. And where this universal spirit expands, it interweaves with all the parts of the universe and in all parts of the body, where more were less, and for this, it is called a little world or microcosm.
How Genius can gain solar virtue and why he should.
And if you find the person who will discern the whole parts of spirit so to make it an elected wine, white sugar, balsam, gold, precious stones, and other things that shine and smell, and especially the warm, moist substance, and it will be like when to feed the brain or liver sufficiently, they eat the same parts of a noble animal, the same way you do for the heavenly spirit. For example, if we wanted to make the spirit solar, or participate in the solar virtue, we would use solar things proceeding from the less perfect to the more perfect, till us, which would be the most perfect.
Spirit-Sun multiplies himself.
So is it true that the world is living in every place, clear from motion and generation, so it is proved that the hot Sun can pull the vapors from the earth and make them very subtle, but also forms the same animal souls? So the spirit is widespread all over the universe while, at the same time, being in every little part of the universe; his action generates different forms and makes up different spirits. Plotinus pointed out the difference between great and little spirits, universal and particular. But there isn’t the same difference because the spirit and warmth of the sun and sky do not feed the essence of things below, but for himself, because it is fitted out with the ability to multiply himself.
Apollonius of Thiana and the seven rings.
Apollonius of Thiana said that one should not marvel at Apollo’s ability to deify the spirit inside him caused this Apollonius comprehended the language of birds. An Apollonius ancestor had seven rings called by the name of certain constellations; every day, he wore one on his finger according to the name of the day.