Month: May 2020

โ€œThe Knight, Death and the Devilโ€: Dรผrer's late Gothic symbolism

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Art, Christianity, Esotericism, Middle Ages, Characters, History

The famous engraving by Albrecht Dรผrer represents the epiphany of the man Heideggerianly thrown into the world, whose destiny is, humanistically, to be "faber fortunae suae", regardless of any obstacle, including the apparently impassable one of evil, that is, the devil, and of time, or of decay and death.

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โ€œThe physics of angelsโ€: dialogue between a visionary biologist and a rebellious theologian

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Christianity, Esotericism, Mito, Characters, Guests Book, Science, History of Religions

Can modern physics dialogue with the theological and mystical tradition to shed light on the ancient question of angels? This is the question on which "The physics of angels" is based, a text-dialogue between the rebel theologian Matthew Fox, and the biologist Rupert Sheldrake, known for the theory of morphic resonance, focused on the analysis of some of the most illuminating texts of three Christian mystics: Dionigi Aeropagita, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Hildegard of Bingen.

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The internal empire: hidden notes on David Lynch's cinema

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Cinema and TV, Esotericism, Characters

Torturer of the unconscious and of the dark ravines of the individual and of reality, David Lynch has been able to give life over the years to his very personal way of making cinema, full of secrets, hidden sides, very high and vast knowledge, from psychoanalysis to oriental doctrines.

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โ€œBeyond the Realโ€, or of the literary dignity of the Fantastic

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

Fantastic literature is still barely regarded by too many as paraliterature; "Beyond the Real", the new volume published by GOG edizioni helps us to affirm the opposite, analyzing the work of five of the most important authors of the genre from the end of the XNUMXth century to today: Lovecraft, Machen, Meyrink, Tolkien and Ashton Smith.ย 

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The legend of the sunken city of Ys, the Breton Atlantis

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

The mythical tale that describes how the lost city of Ys was swallowed up by the waves of the ocean most likely derives from historical events that really happened around the fifth century AD, but, as Massimo Centini argues, for example, the moralistic emphasis of an event natural of limited proportions could reveal the attempt by the Christian invaders to strike at the previous Druid religion and its priestly class, especially the female one.

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The Mythos and the Logos: Greek wisdom in the Platonic myths

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

Knowing oneself and the world of ideas through myth, or, in other words, reaching the Logos through Mythos: this is the main idea that supports Greek wisdom, as Plato has divinely illustrated in his works. The myth of the cave, the myth of Er, that of the charioteer and of Eros show us that in what we call "reality" nothing is certain, everything is in constant motion: the truth lies outside the fire, beyond out of the cave and of the mind itself, therefore in the world of ideas, which Plato calls "hyperuranium"; that is, "beyond the sky".

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Ophidic folklore: the "Rainbow Serpent", the Nagas and the fairy Melusina

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

Mythical ancestors, cultural heroes, feral entities of the subtle world and supernatural brides: the topos of the ophidic-anthropomorphic mythical entities is widespread throughout the world, and affects both the European tradition (regarding which we will focus above all on the medieval tradition of the Fairy Melusina ), as well as extra-European traditions such as the Indian one of the Nagas, "serpent people" residing in the world below ours, that of the Hopi and that of the Australian aborigines.

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Edgar Allan Poe, singer of the abyss

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

Unknown in life, Edgar Allan Poe saw his genius fully recognized only after his untimely death, as happened later also for HP Lovecraft, who followed in his footsteps: today, almost two centuries after his death, Poe is considered an author more unique than rare in narrating the unusual, in exploring the greatest and atavistic terrors of man, in recalling the lost beauties of ancestral times.

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From the Kelpie to the "Horned Serpent": lake monsters in Scottish and Amerindian folklore

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, folklore, Mito

In the contemporary world the so-called "lake monsters", of which Loch Ness in Scotland is certainly the most famous, are the subject of study of the pseudo-scientific discipline called cryptozoology; but in the past it was the sphere of myth and folklore that was interested in these creatures, both in ancient Europe where legends about kelpies and similar entities are widespread, and in native America, which Michel Meurger rightly defines "the 'Eldorado of the aquatic monsters ยป.

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Fools, shamans, goblins: liminality, otherness and ritual inversion

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, folklore, Middle Ages, Psychedelia, History of Religions

The peripheral location of the Folle / Buffone / Jester of the medieval era links him, as well as to the archaic Shaman, to other liminal characters of myth and folklore, such as the Wild Man, Harlequin, the Genius Cuckold and more generally to all that category of feral entities connected on the one hand to the demons of vegetation and on the other to the functional sphere of dreams and death. With regard to the rite, the Folle is to be seen connected to the so-called "ritual inversion" that was carried out during the Roman Saturnalia and during all those collective walking rituals of the Charivari type from which the "Feste dei Folli" were born in the Middle Ages. and the modern Carnival.

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