Sunday afternoon at the Libreria Esoterica in Milan starting from 15 pm meeting with Tiziana Granata (Fires in the Mist) and Marco Maculotti (Axis of the world).
15:30
TIZIANA GRANATA:
ALMANAC OF FOLK REMEDIES
As we approach the Winter Solstice we immerse ourselves more and more in the darkness of the night of the year preceding the rebirth, and to help us on this path are some figures with a double aspect, negative and scary but also positive as they bring health and fertility. Lucia who burns the eyes but brings gifts and healing, Barbara of the fire, the krampus with coal, whip and cowbells and so on until the death of the sun and her regeneration, symbolism Christianized in the birth of the Child. All these steps bring with them rituals and formulas handed down through generations and which we too can carry out today: we will talk about them in the meeting on Sunday 3 December at 15.30 pm at the Esoteric Bookshop in Milan.
Tiziana Granata was born in Milan in 1971. Always passionate about history and popular traditions, in 2017 she opened the blog Fuochi nella nebbia on Facebook, focused on pagan survivals in the Christian context. In 2019 you take care of the textual part of the calendar published by Mugello Comics and illustrated by great Italian designers. Since 2019 she has taught popular traditions at the University of the Third Age in Milan and holds conferences on Italian folklore issues with particular attention to the Northern regions. Since 2020 she has started several collaborations with online sites and radio programs.
17:30
MARCO MACULOTTI:
THE ARCHAIC SUBSTRATE OF THE YEAR-END HOLIDAYS
Behind the veil of the protracted Christianization of the last millennium, the end-of-year calendar festivals, like all the others, reveal to a careful and aware eye an undeniably pre-Christian substratum that has its roots in the mists of time. From Christmas to the Epiphany, including the fateful twelve days that separate them, from the feast of Saint Nicholas to that of Saint Lucia, up to the apparently more profane one of the New Year, all these holidays present themselves as a concealment and a historical reorganization of celebrations much more archaic, above all the Roman ones of Sol Invictus and Saturnalia, without forgetting in a more general perspective the so-called "cult complex of the visitor" which in all ancient European societies (and not only) was strictly interconnected with the end of the cycle annual and the beginning of the following one, as well as, from a cosmic-symbolic perspective, with the traditional theme of the "consummation of the cosmic cycle" and the advent of a renewed golden age. These are themes that we focused on in the second annual issue of the Axis Mundi magazine โEschaton: end-of-year celebrations and end of the cosmic cycleโ, as well as in various articles published over the years on the Axis Mundi website, of which we will try to provide an all-encompassing perspective here.
Marco Maculotti is the founder and editorial director of Axis Mundi, a magazine on the history of religions, anthropology of the sacred, traditional studies, folklore, esotericism and fantasy literature and of the publishing house of the same name Axis Mundi Edizioni. In 2021 Mimesis published its first long essay โCarcosa unveiled. Notes for an esoteric reading of True Detective ". In 2022 he published the first edition of โThe Angel of the Abyss. Apollo, Avalon, the Polar Myth and the Apocalypse ", winner of the 2023 Grancelli Prize in Verona as best original non-fiction work in the field of religious studies. In 2023 he edited and edited together with other authors โNordic myths. Gods and traditions of Northern Europeโ, released by Diarkos Editrice.
