Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Yates - Dec 1990

Chicago University Press, Dec 1990. New edition. Paperback. This is Yates's masterpiece, a brilliant and lucid survey of a wide range of magical traditions in the Renaissance. Yates argues that magic lay at the heart of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, and places the extraordinary misfit Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) at the center of that development. In later works, Yates often let her insight run wild, but this book rightly revolutionized thinking about magic and occultism in the Renaissance. It will be a difficult read for those not used to academic writing, but it is extremely clear, and well worth the effort.