Month: October 2019

From Montague Rhodes James to Ari Aster's โ€œHereditaryโ€

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Cinema and TV, Esotericism, Italian Literature, Characters, Guests Book

In some of the most terrifying stories of Montague Rhodes James emerges the Hoffmannian-Ligottian theme of man as a puppet or marionette, at the mercy of demonic entities that hide behind the scenes of reality: particularly successful is "The Haunted Doll's House", which has partially inspired by Ari Aster's film โ€œHereditaryโ€.

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The supernatural horror of Montague Rhodes James

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, folklore, Italian Literature, Characters, Guests Book

Far from being classified simply in the context of "hauntology", the stories of Montague Rhodes James, far more than just "ghost stories", anticipated the "cosmic-horror" mythopoeia of HP Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti, presenting the Horror in โ€œtotally otherโ€ terms, completely unrelated to anthropomorphism and the typically human physical-corporeal dimension.

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The humanism of the ancient Egyptians and its relevance (II)

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, Mito, History of Religions

In the two dimensions of Being for the ancient Egyptians, wnn (absolute existence) and แธซpr (the relative existence of individual beings), the spirit, the vital breath, ankh, acts, whose hieroglyph is the famous crux ansata; the other fundamental Egyptian cosmic principle was Maat, translatable as "Justice-Truth", "Order" or cosmic "Balance", as opposed to isft, chaos, disorder, degeneration.

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Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, adventurer of the unconscious

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Italian Literature, Characters

Villiers's universe is frozen and delusional, even more so than Sade's: it's a world haunted by gothic but modernized ghosts, crossed by lightning whims of style. Defined by Verlaine "un poรจte absolu", revered by Mallarmรฉ and placed by Baudelaire on the same level as Poe, Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was one of the most iconic characters of French decadence and of the whole of the nineteenth century.

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The humanism of the ancient Egyptians and its relevance (I)

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Anthropology, Guests Book, History of Religions

The examination of the hieroglyphs reveals to the reader interesting implications, sometimes assonances and possible linguistic roots common between different and distant civilizations, as well as the spiritual, psychological, socio-cultural coordinates on which the average man of ancient Egypt oriented his decisions, the his relationship with himself, with nature, with others and with the pharaoh, the way of understanding religion and death.ย 

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โ€œMidsommarโ€: the coronation of Beauty and the expulsion of the Beast

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Cinema and TV, Esotericism, folklore, History of Religions

Ari Aster's "folk-horror" film stages a Midsummer ceremony inspired by the ancient European rites of late winter and Calendimaggio: beyond the inaccuracies and poetic licenses, the fulcrum of the narrative must be recognized in the "descent into hell" and in the subsequent rebirth of the protagonist Dani, an initiation that obviously requires a sacrifice.

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WB Yeats, William Blake and the sacred power of the imagination

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, Italian Literature, Characters, Poetry, Guests Book, History of Religions

Although they lived one century after the other, in the biographies of Blake and Yeats it is possible to glimpse two parallel lives, based on some specular guiding ideas that guided their artistic and literary activity: the ideal of " religion of art โ€, the saving mission of the artist, the emphasis placed on the imaginative faculty for the purposes of the process of self-realization and the announcement of the advent of a new era to come.

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"The House on the Abyss" by William Hope Hodgson

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, Italian Literature, Guests Book

A descent into hell turns into a space-time wandering. On the threshold of the twentieth century, the traditional katabasis is now tinged with the gloomy hues of already Einsteinian cosmicism. In a universe that has lost its center for centuries, WH Hodgson tries for the last time to get an overview of the Whole. The vision that he gives us is that of a universe without holds, in perennial decay, dominated by unknown forces that embody chaos and death, anticipating what will be the typical nightmares of HP Lovecraft's sepulchral nihilism.

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