Here are the cultural events and book presentations that will be broadcast this month, one evening a week, sul our YouTube channel. Live streaming starting at 21:00.
Wednesday June 9
Β«THE GOD OF CROSSINGS: in the footsteps of Genius LociΒ»
with STEFANO CASCAVILLA
"No place is without genius" wrote a fourth-century rhetorician, a witness that every corner of space has its own invisible quality. The god of the place was a certainty, like the rising of the sun. The god of crossings presides over the meadows of San Bartolomeo in the Terminillo massif as well as the Karakorum Highway or the routes of North America. The The genius of the place it reveals itself in the high-altitude villages of the Homboro valley in Pakistan as well as in Prague or Berlin. The author comes across the genius of the Siberian woods and the divinities of the Peruvian Andes; but also buildings, walls, towers and factories behave like natural environments. The travel story is accompanied by a journey through the thought and works of the ancient and contemporary world: from Plotinus to Jung, from Plato and Bachelard, from Leopardi to Hillmann, from Greek myths to Chinese wisdom culture. Orphans of ancient myths, we have not had enough time to consolidate new ones and our disillusioned and predatory attitude relegates us to a desacralized space, in a painful relationship with the Earth, with a Cosmos that no longer animates. Going back to where we no longer see anything is possible.
Wednesday June 16
"GNOSIS & APOCALYPSES: dialogue on apocryphal gospels, Gnosticism and Hollywood", with PAOLO RIBERI
There is a relationship between the ancient apocryphal gospels, Matrix, Westworld e Twin Peaks? According to Paolo Riberi to fully understand the meaning of many TV series and some of the most popular films of our day, such as Fight Club, T, Donnie Darko e Ghost in the Shell, we must go back almost two millennia, when gnosis was formed as an unorthodox and esoteric way to knowledge and truth, as an alternative to the religious doctrine of the Church and to the philosophical thought of Greco-Roman classicism. Reasoning around the salient features of all esoteric knowledge - first of all the conception of the world in which we live as an illusion, a virtual prison guarding which is the figure of a Demiurge - the author frames gnosis, alchemy and Qabbalah in the broader story of pop culture that characterizes postmodernity, within which cinema and, increasingly, television series have a highly innovative role. Analyzing scripts, characters and settings of cult works, Riberi outlines a cultural and spiritual fresco full of suggestions and influences, including conspiracy theorems, science fiction, videogames, fantasy literature, heavy metal and variously assorted puzzles.
Thursday June 24th
"HISTORY OF MAGIC: rites, beliefs, legends through the centuries", with DANIELE PALMIERI
An invisible world hides behind the veil of matter; an intangible yet concrete reality as much as the objects that surround us, in which hidden forces and occult entities are hidden, which have always accompanied man. "Magic" is the term by which knowledge of this hidden realm is defined. But magic is not a purely theoretical wisdom. Magic is an art: a working knowledge aimed at understanding the invisible world to obtain effects on the visible world (and vice versa). In this form of knowing, it is not possible to separate knowledge, experience and practice. History and Practice of the Magical Arts is a history of magic that seeks to merge these three aspects of occult science, narrating the evolution of the magical arts and the description of the multiple practices that, since the most remote past, have allowed man to enter in contact with the hidden side of things and understand their laws. A journey that starts from shamanic roots and mystery rites, passing through Greek Theurgy, witchcraft and medieval Goetia, Judaic Solomonic magic, high Renaissance ceremonial magic, up to modern initiatory magic.
Wednesday June 30
Β«LOST TALES: the Italian Pulp Magazine ",
with VITTORIO CIRINO and DORIAN BONES (LSDZ)
Published by Letterelettriche and inspired by the American magazines of the first decades of the last century,Β Lost Tales is a more unique than rare pulp magazine on the Italian scene. Stories and essays byΒ sword & sorcery, science fiction and horror, with unpublished works by contemporary Italian authors, stories of great authors of the past not yet translated into Italian and others already translated, retranslated and proposed in a new version, essays accompanied by literary, cultural and cinematographic references and magnificent illustrations.
