Nectar in Renaissance Esotericism: Ficino, Pico, Agrippa, and Bruno Dan Merkur In Greek mythology, nectar was the

drink of the Olympian gods. The beverage was anciently described as psychoactive. In the Symposium, Plato likened nectar to fermented honey when he used the expression honey-drunk on nectar;1 Euripides reversed the analogy in calling mead the nectar of bees.2 In classical Greece, bees, honey, and mead had religious associations, particularly with the goddess Artemis.3 In Phaedrus, Plato asserted that nectar was available for the human souls consumption, and he described mystical experience--the souls apprehension of being--as the occasion when nectar would be consumed.
Of that place beyond the heavens none of our earthly poets has sung....It is there that true being dwells, without color or shape, that cannot be touched; reason alone, the souls pilot, can behold it, and all true knowledge is knowledge thereof. Now even as the mind of a god is nourished by reason and knowledge, so also is it with every soul that has a care to receive her proper food; wherefore when at last she has beheld being she is well content, and contemplating truth is nourished and prospers, until the heavens revolution brings her back full circle.....and when she has contemplated likewise and feasted upon all else that has true being, she descends again within the heavens and comes back home. And having so come, her charioteer sets his steeds at their manger, and puts ambrosia before them and draught of nectar to drink withal.4

Beginning with Plotinus, the third century founder of Neoplatonism, mystical experience was not celebrated with nectar, but was instead described as a consequence of intoxication on nectar. In the course of a passage that discussed mystical experience,5 the psychoactivity of nectar was associated not with alcohol but with the intellects loving union with the Intellectual-Principle.
Intellectual-Principle, thus, has two powers, first that of grasping intellectively its own content, the second that of an advancing and receiving whereby to know its transcendent; at first it sees, later by that seeing it takes possession of IntellectualPrinciple, becoming one only thing with that: the first seeing is that of Intellect knowing, the second that of Intellect loving; stripped of its wisdom in the intoxication of the nectar, it comes to love; by this excess it is made simplex and happy; and to be drunken is better for it than to be too staid for these revels.6

Plotinus here described mystical union, becoming one only thing with IntellectualPrinciple, as a drunken...simplex and happy state of Intellect loving; stripped of its wisdom in the intoxication of the nectar. At the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, Plotinus statement that the intoxication produced by nectar consists of mystical union was made available to a Western European audience through Marsilio Ficinos translation of The Enneads into Latin.7 In his own writings, Ficino referred repeatedly to ambrosia and nectar. His phrasing in his Commentary on the Phaedrus was carefully ambiguous regarding its psychoactivity.
In the Phaedrus Plato calls the contemplation ambrosia and the joy nectar when he writes, Having seen the things that truly are [=the Ideas] and been nourished by them,the soul descends [through] the interior of heaven again and returns home. On his arrival, the charioteer stops the horses at the stable and offers them ambrosia and nectar also to drink.8

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At the stable, that is, at divine beauty, he stops the horses, that is, assembles and prepares all the parts of the soul subjected to himself. He offers them ambrosia, and also nectar to drink, namely, the vision of beauty and the gladness proceeding from it. Such are the results of the four divine madnesses.9 Plato adds that the souls are nourished there with the same foods as the gods, that is, with ambrosia and nectar. He supposes that ambrosia is the sweet, clear gazing at the truth, but nectar the excellent and effortless providing [for inferiors].10

In these passages, Ficino commented on Platos use of ambrosia and nectar. Ficino can be read to mean that the food and drink of the gods were metaphors for the truth and joy, respectively, of mystical experience. His phrasing would then belong to the general tradition of Renaissance humanism, which routinely allegorized classical mythology in order to read Christian values into the ancient pagan tales.11 It is also possible to arrive at a very different reading of Ficino, by treating some of his discussions of nectar at face value.
The perfect food of man is...God, with whose nectar and ambrosia human hunger and thirst are continuously aroused and increased till, at length, they are wonderfully and abundantly satisfied. Thus in Him alone does the highest pleasure coexist forever with the highest satisfaction.12

This passage was given in Ficinos own name rather than in commentary on Plato. In it, Ficino may have been following Plotinus in suggesting that consumption of nectar and ambrosia induces experiences of God because the drink and food are themselves divine. In his Commentary on the Symposium of Plato, Ficino resorted to misdirection. The narrative consists of a dialogue that was ostensibly spoken on the occasion of a symposium hosted by Lorenzo deMedici, wishing to renew the Platonic banquet.13 In the commentary, Ficino located ambrosia and nectar in heaven.
By his beneficence he [the god] first leads souls to the heavenly table, laden with ambrosia and nectar; then he assigns every soul to a seat; finally he keeps them there sweetly for eternity. For no one returns to heaven except those who have pleased the King of the Heavens.14

The conception was consistent with a remark in a letter, Here among spirits innumerable, who feed upon ambrosia and nectar, we are granted a couch at the feasts of the gods.15 We are given the impression that the soul first ascends to heaven, either in a vision or post mortem, and there participates in the divine banquet. Elsewhere in the Symposium commentary, however, Ficino explained that symposiums were heavenly feasts where one might come and listen carefully to the divine mysteries.16 Because ascension to heaven was a metaphor that signified attendance at a symposium, we may conclude that the divine food and drink of the Olympian gods, that consisted of mystical experiences, were consumed by Ficino and other Florentines at their Platonic banquets. Ficinos disciple, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, wrote less guardedly about the properties and significance of nectar. Like Plotinus, he associated nectar with the Active Intellect, the fountain fullness of holy and inexpressible intelligence, whence the angels are drunken on their own nectar.17 He made clear, however, that he referred to the practices of the pagan mysteries of antiquity.
For what else is meant by the degrees of initiation that are customary in the secret rites of the Greeks?...Then lastly...came...a vision of divine things by means of the light of theology. Who does not seek to be initiated into such rites? Who does not set all human things at a lower value and, contemning the goods of fortune and

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neglecting the body, does not desire, while still continuing on earth, to become the drinking-companion of the gods; and, drunken with the nectar of eternity, to bestow the gift of immortality upon the mortal animal? Who does not wish to have breathed into him the Socratic frenzies sung by Plato in the Phaedrus, that by the oarlike movement of wings and feet he may quickly escape from here, that is, from this world where he is laid down as in an evil place, and be carried in speediest flight to the heavenly Jerusalem.18

Here nectar was drunk by a person, while still continuing on earth. Its intoxication had the power to bestow the gift of immortality. It produced the Socratic frenzies sung by Plato in the Phaedrus, visions of the ascension to heaven. In the next generation, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) referred only briefly and equivocally to nectar, but he managed to assert that it was available for human consumption.
Now man is returned to God by prayers, by which coming he (saith Plato in Phaedrus) stops horses, and enters into the chambers of repose, where he feeds upon ambrosia, and drinks nectar.19

Later in the sixteenth century, the psychoactivity of nectar continued to be remarked by occult writers. Giordano Brunos Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast had the god Momus discuss nectar in a speech directed to Jove:
This council meeting, oh father, must be postponed for another day, and for another occasion, since it seems that your being disposed to having a conclave now, immediately after dinner, was prompted by the generous hand of your affectionate cupbearer. For nectar which cannot be thoroughly digested by the stomach neither satisfies nor refreshes it, but distorts and saddens our nature, and perturbs our imagination, making some gay and without purpose, others unrestrainedly happy, some superstitiously devout, others vainly heroic, others choleric, others builders of great castles in the air, until the time when, with the vanishing of the same pipe dreams, passing through brains of different complexion, everything falls to the ground and vanishes into smoke.20

In his reply to Momus, Jove responded, among other topics, to the question of his inebriation.
Do not believe, however, that I have been so violently assailed by some strange humor while dining, that, after dinner, it still holds me bound and chained, because of which I proceed to action, guided not by reason but rather by the power of nectarean fumes. On the other hand, from this very day last year I began to deliberate within my own mind what I was to carry out on this very day at this very hour after dinner. Because it is not customary to bring sad news on an empty stomach, and I well know that you would come more willingly to a celebration than to a council meeting, which is studiously avoided by many of you.... Now I remind you, oh brothers, sisters, and children, that those whom Fate has permitted to taste ambrosia, to drink nectar, and to enjoy the dignity of majesty are also enjoined to bear the heavy responsibilities that accompany privilege.21

In Joves last sentence, Bruno listed ambrosia, nectar, and majesty as distinguishing features of the classical gods. The association of the three items implied that the consumption of ambrosia and nectar was what made the Olympian gods divine.

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In The Heroic Frenzies, Bruno explained that when the soul encounters divinity in mystical experience, it becomes aware of its own divine nature: In that divine and universal chase he comes to apprehend that it is himself who necessarily remains captured, absorbed, and united.22 He described the attainment of infinity, that is, mystical union with the Infinite, as an engagement in activity rather than rest. This rejection of contemplative passivity in favor of magical activity, Bruno associated with the gods consuming nectar and ambrosia.
The weeping eyes symbolize the difficult separation of the thing desired from him who desires it, which, because it does not satiate or weary him, offers itself as an infinite effort, and therefore is always with him and is something for which he never stops searching. Similarly, the felicity of the gods is described by their drinking of nectar and not by their having drunk it, by their tasting and not by their having tasted ambrosia, by their ceaselessly desiring food and drink and not by their having been gorged so that they have no desire for them. Therefore the gods hold satiety to be a state of movement and apprehension and not a state of repose and comprehnsion; their satiety is never without appetite, nor do they experience appetite without being in some way satiated.23

Bruno was also explicit that nectar was consumed by practitioners of his philosophy. This frenzied one...is inebriated with drinking the divine nectar.24
From the vulgar and common man he was, he becomes rare and heroic, rare in all he does, rare in his concepts, and he leads the extraordinary life....he stops living according to the world of folly, of sensuality, of blindness and of illusion, and begins to live by the intellect; he lives the life of the gods, he feeds upon ambrosia and is drunk with nectar.25 The intellect conceives the light, the good and the beautiful as far as the horizon of its capacity is extended, and the soul drinks divine nectar and from the fount of eternal life as much as its own vessel permits; it is evident that the light is beyond the circumference of the soul's horizon, but the soul will always be able to penetrate iot more and more; similarly, nectar is infinite and the source of living water is inexhaustible, so that the soul can become ever more and more intoxicated.26

For Bruno, nectar was clearly a fluid that had highly variable impact on mood, induced mystical unions, and supported beliefs in being divine and possessing magical powers. Whatever its botanical identification, the pagan context of nectar in Plotinus, Ficino, Pico, and Bruno suggests that the psychoactive substance that Bruno intended was connected in his mind with classical paganism and not with Christianity. The hallucinogenic salves used by European witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries27 provide examples of psychoactive drugs that were historically employed in Western culture without ever having been Christian sacraments. Nectar may have entered Renaissance esotericism from Italian folk custom rather than from Christianity. The discussions of nectar by Ficino, Pico, Agrippa, and Bruno go far toward explaining how superbly educated Renaissance philosophers can have sincerely believed that they possessed magical powers. Unlike uneducated European witches who conceptualized the effects of their salves within traditional, folkloristic mythologies, the Renaissance Magi had the benefit of academic training in logic and integrated their use of drugs within expert practices of philosophy. The psychoactive properties of the drugs that they consumed nevertheless persuaded them that magic works. They were presumably employing one or more sorts of deliriant.

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Notes 1. Plato, Symposium, 203b: honey-drunk on nectar--because wine did not yet exist. As cited in: Carl A. P. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples, & Clark Heinrich, The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2001), p. 71. 2. Euripides, Bacchae, 142; in Euripides V: Electra, The Phoenician Women, The Bacchae, ed. David Grene & Richmond Lattimore (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 160. 3. Hilda M. Ransome, The Sacred Bee: In Ancient Times and Folklore (1936; reprinted Burrowbridge, UK: Bee Books New & Old, 1986), pp. 75-82, 91-111, 119-139. 4. Plato, Phaedrus, 247 c-e; trans. R. Hackforth, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton & Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 494. 5. Plotinus, The Enneads VI vii, 34-36; trans. Stephen MacKenna, 4th ed. (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1969), pp. 588-60. 6. Plotinus, The Enneads VI vii, 35; p. 589. 7. Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1968), p. 60. 8. Michael J. B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer: Introduction, Texts, Translations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 220. 9. Ibid., p. 224. 10. Ibid., p. 236. 11. Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970). 12. Marsilio Ficino, The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. members of the Latin Department of the School of Economic Science, London (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1978), II, pp. 54-55. 13. Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Platos Symposium on Love, trans. Sears Jayne (Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1985), p. 36. 14. Ibid., p. 79. 15. The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1994), V, p. 26. 16. Ibid., pp. 107-8. 17. Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man. On Being and the One. Heptaplus, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, Paul J. W. Miller, & Douglas Carmichael (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill Educational Publishing, 1965), p. 12. 18. Ibid., p. 13. 19. Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. James Freake, ed. Donald Tyson (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1993), p. 652. 20. Giordano Bruno, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, trans. Arthur D. Imerti (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), pp. 143-4. 21. Ibid., pp. 105-6. 22. Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Frenzies: A Translation with Introduction and Notes, trans. Paul Eugene Memmo, Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 225. 23. Ibid., pp. 239-40. 24. Ibid., p. 169. 25. Ibid., p. 126. 26. Ibid., p. 237. 27. Michael J. Harner, "The Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft," in idem, ed., Hallucinogens and Shamanism (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 12550.

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