From a rough translation of Giordano Bruno's memory text,
De Umbris Idearum. It's a big work in progress at this point. I'm sure someone with very good latin could make short work of it, but it's not easy to translate precisely. This is from the introductory dialog amongst Hermes Trismegistus, Philothimus (who represents Bruno), and Logifer (a pedant, representing Bruno's critics).
HERMES:
Continue freely; indeed, you know it is the same sun,
the same art, that will both receive praise and also blame. That sorrowful night
presents witches, toads, the basilisk, screech owls, and Plutonian rites, but [that
day] activates the rooster, phoenix, swans, geese, eagles, rams and lions. When
he’s in the East, creatures of darkness gather in their dens, while by his
light, man and the creatures of the day come out to do their work. He invites
them to this work, away from idleness. Heliotropes and lupines turn toward the
sun, while the night flowers and herbs turn away. Rarefied vapors rise to form
clouds, while more earthly vapors condense to form waters. Some shed a
perpetual, continual light, others shine irregularly. The intellect teaches
that they remain still, but the false sense tells us that they move. That which
rises in this part of the rotating earth, sets in the Antipodes. The same in the arctic: sometimes, things
appear to circle from left to right will at other times appear to move
vertically. In some hemicircles, they move quickly, while in the opposite, they
move much more slowly. The land which appears nearby appears to be larger,
while more distant lands (from our perspective) smaller than the others. The
most southerly of the North lands is the most northerly of the South. For those
who have the horizon at right angles, the left and the right will be of equal
size, but they will be unequal for those who look obliquely. The same
distributes the darkness and the light in equal measure in the region between
two parallels, but differently at different times. In this, the divine house of
Earth, we receive slanting sunbeams, instead of ones precisely vertical. The
planets (which some believe to be lesser gods under a second prince) likewise
receive varying light upon their bodies (which they call the light of
conception), turning different faces to him from the apogee to the aux, by
latitudes and intervals. (Even so the
Moon (which many among the philosophers think is a second Earth), turns a face
to that light, while turning the other face into shadow, where the Earth
interposes its sad shadow on a hemisphere of the Moon.
The sun,
therefore, while remaining the same forever, may also change its disposition,
sometimes one way or another, depending on where one sits. Likewise this solar
art, for ourselves, for other people, others yet to come, we believe that there
may be differences in how it is received.
