Piervittorio Formichetti is the author of a long introductory essay (80 pp.) to the new edition of Caucasian Yoga Manuscript by Count Colonna Walewski, just published by Venexia editrice. In this long article (divided into two parts) he proposes a shortened version exclusively for Axis Mundi readers.
di Pier Vittorio Formichetti
In the West, the term yoga it mostly evokes practices, teachings and landscapes of central-eastern Asia, Tibet and India, associated in a more or less pertinent way with Buddhism. A definition like this cannot fail to be surprising “Caucasian Yoga”, which abruptly shifts the reader's thoughts a few hundred kilometers to the west: to the Caucasus, in fact, an ancient geographical, but also ethnic, historical and mythological crossroads between Eurasia and the Middle East. So what is it about?
In the early fifties of the last century, it appeared in the United States a strange book entitled A system of Caucasian Yoga (A Caucasian Yoga system), written by Count Stefan Colonna Walewski, former Polish diplomat who emigrated to New York. Count Walewski claimed to have frequented, during one of his international trips, a mysterious neo-Zoroastrian brotherhood located in the Caucasus, which would have made him aware of the doctrine and methods for practicing certain respiratory and psycho-physical techniques that would have favored the development of extraordinary states of consciousness and theurgic faculties; from the secret teachings that this sect would have transmitted to him in Russian and Persian, and which he wrote by hand in English, the so-called was born Caucasian Yoga Manuscript. The volume was printed and published in 1955 (shortly before the author's death) by the Falcon's Wing Press publishing house of Indian Hills (Colorado), which printed a thousand copies; of these, however, most were eliminated after the exponents of an esoteric association present in the USA - those who met them remembered their name as “Masdasnin” – considering the disclosure of secret practices dangerous, they obtained the withdrawal of the book from the market by appealing to the court. From Manuscript three hundred copies survived, and were only republished thirty years later, in 1987, by the Borderlands Sciences Research Foundation, specialized in the study of phenomena, precisely, "at the borders" of official sciences. Finally, around 2000, a surviving edition of the Manuscript it was translated for the first time into Italian and published in Rome with the original text (curiously all in capital letters) reproduced on the facing pages. In recent weeks, after twenty years, Venexia Editrice (Rome) presents this book again with a dissertation by the well-known writer and expert in esoteric and fantastic literature Sebastiano Fusco, and an introductory essay by the writer (condensed and updated, as far as possible, below).
So what was secret in the teachings transcribed by the Polish nobleman? And who were the mysterious followers who obtained his withdrawal from publishing? To shed light on these circumstances it is necessary to know the author better.
Stefan Colonna Walewski, born in Vilnius (current capital of Lithuania) on 9 June 1897, and died in New York on 19 May 1955, declared himself a direct descendant of the count Alexandre Florian Joseph Colonna Walewski (1810-1868), illegitimate son of Napoleon Bonaparte I and his Polish mistress Maria Laczynska (1786-1817), wife of Count Anastasy Colonna Walewski, chamberlain of the King of Poland and fifty years her senior. There are portraits and photographs of Count Alexandre Florian which show the marked resemblance between his face and that of Napoleon; vice versa, There are only two rare photographs of Count Stefan: one published in the US magazine “American Magazine” in October 1948, who dedicated an article entitled to him Devilish Business (Evil business), the other – a close-up of his face with a cold expression – reproduced on the back cover of the first edition of A system of Caucasian Yoga; this photograph, moreover, is accompanied by a short and interesting biographical profile of him:
Count Stefan Colonna Walewski, who looks and sometimes acts like a mix between Jim Farley and Sidney Greenstreet, has held since the 20s the unique distinction of being the creative owner of the strangest trade in the United States: mystical, magical and 'art. At the sip of a Homburg, which he appreciates, he will launch into a jovial, witty and erudite explanation of an Egyptian scarab or a dagger phurba Tibetan. Count Walewski entertained patrons at New York's fabulous Post 21 area, which he affectionately called the "21 Club," as well as the modest lama head of the newly founded Buddhist Church of New Jersey, a small, colorful building near Freehold complete with mantra Tibetans, Central Asian ceremonial images and Mongolian prayer flags. The Count made rich donations to the collection of altarpieces and other sacred objects of this small Church. As he explained after making a particularly large contribution, "The souls of 200 Kalmyks, and 400 more to come, are praying for me now, my friend." The Count's mother had blood ties to both the Lithuanian and Italian nobility, and her son was born in Lithuania. With his father (of Polish blood and of other rank in the Tsar's diplomatic services), the young Walewski traveled, participating in various wide-ranging missions, including a long stay in the Caucasus region, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War .
[1]
Naturalized American in 1927, Walewski had come to the USA in 1916 as a diplomatic agent of the Polish government or of the now unstable Austro-Hungarian Empire; in this role, he had visited several countries in Europe and Asia Minor; unfortunately there is no further information on who he was his father, a diplomat in the service of the Russian Empire. In New York the count became known for his philanthropy, as evidenced by his donations to the Buddhist community; however, his personality also had a dark side. Esoteric, the vast bazaar of magical objects, oriental art artefacts and archaeological curiosities that he opened, included both artefacts that came into his hands in a mysterious way, and fakes, often made by himself. Perhaps the only other book translated into Italian that talks about Count Stefan Colonna Walewski is In the Seventies by journalist Barry Miles, published in the USA in 2011 and dedicated to "alternative" American cultures from the post-World War II period to the 70s. In this volume – published in Italian with the title The Seventies. From William Burroughs to the Clash, from Allen Ginsberg to Patti Smith. Adventures in counterculture – it is said that Harry Smith, an exponent of the US "counterculture" of the early 50s, had Count Walewski as his "occult teacher", described as a disturbing character to say the least:
“former Austrian ambassador to the United States who suddenly found himself out of a job when Austria became pro-communist.” He got busy and opened in New York Esoteric, a shop that sold fake Tibetan artifacts and unusual oriental objects in quantity. “Back when Tibet was still in her place,” as Harry put it. It seems that Harry had lived with Walewski, perhaps in a household homosexual. He said that the count only gave him a little money every now and then, and that he survived on those tips. The apartment was near the shop and the count kept his most precious objects there. There were sixty or seventy thangka Tibetans, Harry said that after some convincing the count had given him the best ones. There was a library of rare and precious books like few others in the world, including Crowley titles released in print runs of fifty copies. Among the gifts Harry received was the original typescript of the 5=6 ceremony. […]
To protect himself from poisons, Walewski had suggested that Harry make three cuts on the inside of his thighs by rubbing certain poisonous substances into them, but he was too fearful, did not obey and never obtained the protection. Walewski's rooms housed a cluttered library and mountains of ethnic artifacts. The floor was literally covered with tens of thousands of ushabti, small Egyptian funerary statuettes, there were so many that you couldn't walk without stepping on them and maybe crumbling some of them. Dominating the environment is an oversized statue of Lon Nol [another name for Trungpa, a guru Tibetan known by the well-known poet beat Allen Ginsberg, ed.] who rides a beast and uses his whipped son as a saddle. It was said that when he practiced his rituals, Walewski somehow managed to squeeze himself into the bronze statue, which was unlikely given his obesity which made him struggle to move around the shop. The count ate potatoes and parsley which he vigorously sliced on a medieval table in the living room, and ate with his hands. One day Harry had gone looking for a fork for himself. He had noticed that something was boiling on the stove that had nothing to do with their meal. He had opened all the drawers in search of cutlery. “They were full of human femurs. Understood? He spent a lot of time making Tibetan artifacts, and there was quite a demand for bone flutes. He agreed with the gravedigger of I don't know which hospital, and there was a bone on the stove. Boiled to separate the meat! This was before the 'occult explosion', eh. At the time, Tibetan items were very expensive. And Tibetans, of course, have always been good traders. They built millions of those instruments, more than were needed in Tibet. Everyone wanted one!”.
[2]
At the time of the first Italian edition of Manuscript, some scholars would have argued that the psychophysical operations that Count Walewski claimed to have learned from the obscure Caucasian sect already mentioned could be the same ones imported into Europe by the well-known esotericist Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1866?-1949), who, mentioning the mysterious “Sarmoung brotherhood”, could have alluded to the same association known by Colonna Walewski, attributing to it one of its characteristic alienating and suggestive names. It has also been speculated that the no less mysterious “Masdasnin” they wanted to block the publication because the teachings collected in it could have been stolen by themselves from one or more previous esoteric-initiatory associations; some have therefore wondered whether the members of the "Sarmoung brotherhood" could have been the "legitimate" predecessors of the "Masdasnin". But did these two esoteric-initiatory associations really exist?
The only neo-Zoroastrian association that has a name similar to “Masdasnin” is the Mazdaznan Brotherhood, which, despite having very few followers and no longer having an institutional organization, still exists in the USA and Europe. Mazdaznan was founded by a German citizen, Otto Hanisch, whose date and place of birth are uncertain: according to his follower David Ammann (who published many of Hanisch's writings, sometimes also writing the prefaces), Hanisch was born in Tehran, in 1844, the son of a Russian diplomat, and the same Ammann says he had been initiated into the inside of as a child a Zoroastrian secret society in the Iranian mountains, where he practiced breathing techniques that had beneficial effects on his health (it seems he had heart problems). Others believe he was born in Poznan, Poland, in 1854-55 - a city which, however, could have been that of his parents, who immigrated to the United States - or even in Mendota, in the rural area of Illinois. Hanisch took on the oriental name Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish, and curiously – just like Count Colonna Walewski a few decades later – he claimed to have learned the Mazdaznan doctrine during a stay in west-central Asia; which may make us doubt the sincerity of the count regarding these circumstances. In Italian, in addition to few lines present inEncyclopedia Treccani on line, on Hanisch and the Mazdaznan we have reliable information almost exclusively from sheet dedicated to them by CESNUR (Centre for Studies on New Religions):
Otto Hanisch (1844-1936) was born in 1844 in Tehran to a Russian father and a German mother. However, there is no shortage of controversy regarding the place of birth itself, and in any case, very little is known about his life for the next fifty-six years. In 1900 he is in Chicago, where he claims to have been initiated in Persia (or Tibet) into a mysterious Zoroastrian Order. He began to gather disciples under the name of Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish, and in 1917 he founded the Mazdaznan association in California. Among the main disciples were Maud Meacham (1879-1959) and David Ammann (1855-1923), who would play an important role in the first years of the diffusion of Mazdaznan in Europe. After Ha'nish's death, "voters" succeeded him until the Mexican Alfonso R. Calderón decided in 2001 to put an end to the organized presence in the United States, now reduced to a minimum. The national branches are now semi-autonomous but a coordination role is played by the German one, the largest. A number of public activities also continue in the Hungarian branch.
While in the United States Mazdaznan has led a rather quiet existence, in Europe there has been no shortage of controversy. It has been questioned, in particular, whether it is an authentic Zoroastrian teaching, emphasizing rather the peculiar ideas of the founder. Although fundamentally monotheistic, Mazdaznan teaches that “man is in God and God is in man.” Each race has a particular religious vision: the highest - and in some ways final - is that of the Aryan race, which is expressed in the Zoroastrian teachings, which in turn coincide with those of genuine Christianity, not to be confused with the institutionalized version - always according to Mazdaznan – corrupted by Saint Paul. There was frequent accusation of racism, although in 1935 Mazdaznan was banned in the Third Reich for his pacifism. Today the founder's writings on the religious destiny of the race are republished with a note denying any intention of racial discrimination.
The purpose of human life on Earth is to transform the world into a garden where God (Mazda) can once again interact with men. The technique for redeeming the world of matter and making it perfect like the spirit is articulated in breathing exercises (of central importance and vast influence in the environment of the new German religiosity before the Second World War), rhythmic prayers and songs. Dietetics also assumes importance, which has attracted the attention of many doctors and has spread Mazdaznan in health circles also in Italy, where, if the organized presence has disappeared (there is, in fact, only one institutional referent), there remain, however, readers of Otto Hanisch and members in direct contact with foreign branches of the movement.
From this CESNUR sheet a veiled preview of the marked syncretism that abundantly characterizes the Caucasian Yoga Manuscript. Reading it, one discovers that it assembles, not always in a coherent way, heterogeneous doctrinal and practical elements, coming from various Eurasian philosophies and religions; references to philosophical-initiatory systems of Eastern Asia or the Mediterranean and European area: concepts and techniques of Indo-Buddhist yoga are intertwined with terms of Zoroastrian and Christian origin, to mantra expressed in a syllabic language (perhaps partly imaginary or in imitation of the Persian language), and sometimes in real magical formulas. The text refers, for example, to the Christianity – the introduction written by the count opens with a slightly modified quote from Jesus' phrase “There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed” (Matthew, 10:26; Luke, 12:2) – as for the 'alchemy understood as process ascetic-spiritual (there is at least one reference to the two energy currents ida e ping it connected to breathing [3]); there are references to a “Egyptian” and “Chaldean” system almost certainly not originating in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, but rather developed later, probably by Neoplatonic and Neo-Pythagorean esoteric Egyptian schools; ancient notions and practices are casually placed alongside modern concepts and recent (for the time) technical-scientific acquisitions: there is no shortage of repeated references to applied electricity and radio waves, assimilated to the "aura" of the Earth, called by its Persian name Armaites, divine personification of our planet as a being endowed with conscience, obedient to the law of God or Ahura-Mazda; there is a digression on cell biology that takes up five pages. All this, and more, framed by a form of Gnosticism according to which the world and the human being have fallen from an original condition of psychophysical purity.
A personal contribution of Count Walewski, certainly not taken from the yoga, Zoroastrian or Mazdaznan doctrines, consists of the sporadic but explicit mentions of the complex of theurgic practices Magick, a term coined by the controversial English occultist and magician Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), of which - as we have seen - Count Walewski owned numerous texts. In the General compendium – section of Manuscript placed among them “Arcane masters” and “Minor Arcana” – the first reference to the appears Magick. Crowley published the book of the same name in 1929 - which tells us that the Manuscript by Walewski was certainly written after 1930 – and defined the Magick “the art and science of causing changes in accordance with the Will”, while the Manuscript presents it as “the practical application of super-sensitive observation and its interpretation. Its purpose is to making things appear and disappear and changing one object into another – creation, destruction and transmutation”.
How much of this set of doctrinal and practical esoteric-religious references can therefore really coincide with what Gurdjieff claimed to have learned during his travels to the East?
In 1885, Gurdjieff had begun a long journey between Europe and Asia together with a group of friends called “Truth Seekers”, which included scholars from different branches of knowledge; from Constantinople he moved east, coming across the archaeological ruins of an ancient city in eastern Anatolia. Here in 1886 he would have found the remains of the writings on parchment of an ancient esoteric association, the Brotherhood of Sarmoung, which perhaps flourished in Babylon as early as 2500 BC; subsequently, he would meet an obscure former Christian missionary, Father Ioannas, who many years before had met some of the Sarmoung, had been admitted among them and only then - he said - had he finally found the definitive truth about the destiny of the human being [4]. Gurdjieff apparently learned about the matrix of the mystical dances – carried out by an alleged order of “priestesses” – which he himself would then rework by inserting some elements taken from other religious schools, especially the Muslim Sufis and Whirling Dervishes, which he already knew quite well. However,
the only clue as to what is practiced in the temple comes to us when he describes the ritual dances that the priestesses perform following instructions engraved on large gold pillars that resemble a forest, dances that are probably at the basis of the famous movements that Gurdjieff will later include in the his job'.
[5]
Despite the uncertainty and ambiguity of these testimonies,
over the years numerous people, taking the existence of the Brotherhood for granted, have attempted to identify its location. Uspenskij links it to Zoroastrianism, considering Sarmoung the Armenian pronunciation of Persian sar-man, “he who preserves the doctrine” […], while Desmond Martin places it in the Hindu Kush mountains in northern Afghanistan. Idries Shah, a famous Sufi thinker of the 20th century, reports several stories and prayers sarmouni, while Omar Michael Burke, probably his pseudonym, writes of several encounters with them, describing them as a network of scattered villages and houses rather than a single monastery. Finally, the Canadian activist and diplomat James George considers it an incorrect transposition of Surmang, a group of Buddhist monasteries in the mountain range of the same name in Tibet.
The indeterminacy of the very existence of the Sarmoung brotherhood has therefore led to the statement that:
The problem of the sources on which Gurdjieff drew [...] remains unsolved: the Brotherhood of Sarmoung, "founded in Babylon in 2500 BC" according to his words, is nothing but a myth, and the testimonies are dubious ad usum delphini produced by the neo-Sufi (or perhaps better, pseudo-Sufi) Idries Shah to identify it with alleged Afghan Sufi orders linked to the Naqshbandi and Qalandari brotherhoods of Central Asia.
In this regard, other scholars of mysteries and esotericism have also concluded that in reality there is no link between Islamic Sufism and the Sarmoung brotherhood, doubting whether the latter really existed:
Although few would say it so bluntly, it seems clear to me that the Sarmoung are entirely imaginary. None are known tariqa [brotherhood] Sufi of such a name, and in fact “Sarmoung” is a fantastic, typically Gurdjieffian name. It is immediately obvious to anyone who knows anything about regular Sufism that there is nothing remotely Sufi about the Sarmoung Order described by Gurdjieff (European neo-Sufi movements in the interwar period).
[6]
Therefore it would be an esoteric association with little or no affinity with Sufism, of uncertain geographical location and dubious existence, to which Gurdjieff would have given one of his typical alienating names. Yet, in Italy there are those who claim to have found some clues among the documents kept by a family well known in the political context of the second half of the twentieth century, that of Mariano Rumor (1915-1990), president of the Council of Ministers several times from 1968 to 1974. Let's report from the blog www.riflessioni.it/ the main passages on this incredible version of secret history, having its roots in a past that is even millennia old:
No one ever had any idea what the Sarmoung Brotherhood could be, at least before the book was published The other Europe, by Paolo Rumor with the collaboration of Giorgio Galli and Loris Bagnara. Loris Bagnara (architect, author and researcher in the historical-archaeological and esoteric field) is working, in collaboration with Paolo Rumor (son of Giacomo, in turn cousin of the better-known Mariano, who was Prime Minister five times) on the copies of ancient documents owned by the Rumor family: they outline the existence of a secret structure, of which Gurdjieff would also have been part - present, since the most remote antiquity, in Africa and Egypt - which, in very distant times, would have expanded towards the north-west to work on his European Union project. The structure, at least in the terms in which Rumor represents it, would seem to constitute one of the most ancient and venerable subcenters of the esoteric organization that dominates the world; and, on the ideological level, a third way halfway between traditional esotericism and the modernist esotericism of the British school (initiation and counter-initiation according to Guénon), covering an intellectual territory with few - if not zero - ways of access from the exoteric world.
[7]
Then follow the words of the researcher Loris Bagnara, from which it emerges a bold hypothesis on human protohistory which is linked to rather well-known issues in the field of“alternative archaeology”, such as the existence of copies of ancient geographical maps of the earth's surface before the "Flood", the rise in ocean levels at the end of the fourth and last ice age (about 12.000 years ago) which almost totally erased every trace of the alleged previous civilizations [8]. Subsequently, Count Colonna Walewski, the year of his birth (1897) and the Caucasian Yoga Manuscript as a possible trace of the expansion towards the north-west of the presumed occult Structure: in this reconstruction, its importance cannot be excluded
which may have covered, as a hub of transmission towards the west, the Caucasus - land of Mazdeists and Zoroastrians, as well as an ancient center of diffusion of that particular and unknown version of Hermeticism which goes by the name of Caucasian Yoga; and it won't hurt if we stop briefly to illustrate it [...]. A book entitled The Caucasian Yoga Manuscript – published by a small Roman publishing house less than twenty years ago – fell into our hands in 2018. According to a note from the editor, its story would be adventurous: it was written by a former Polish diplomat, Count Stefan Colonna Wale[w]ski (1897-1955), who emigrated to New York, where he worked as an antiques dealer. Printed in the 1950s, the sale was blocked by a mysterious group of esotericists who claimed intellectual property; only three hundred copies remained around, one of which was found by one of our compatriots in New Zealand. In that note it is also stated that Caucasian yoga would have been part of Gurdjieff's youth training - something we doubted, because, in his works, the great Georgian esotericist declares himself against exercises based on breathing.
[9]
At this point, we cannot be certain that the system illustrated by Count Colonna Walewski is the remnant of an ancient tradition, although spurious and reworked (or even misunderstood or 'diverted') for the use of twentieth-century Westerners, but native to the Caucasus and transmitted to it by concession of a secret Zoroastrian (or neo-Mazdaic) brotherhood; nor, vice versa, that it is a modern composition (i.e. from the first half of the 900th century), born in esoteric Middle Eastern environments in contact with the Central European society of the same era, and then interpolated with personal elaborations by Count Walewski. It is very likely that in Manuscript both these components are present, and in any case there is still much to investigate on the contacts between Count Walewski, the Mazdaznan sect and the esoteric-occultistic circles of the first half of the twentieth century.
Only during the writing of these lines, for example, did the writer learn of the existence of a correspondence in French and German between Walewski and "some high-ranking representatives of Mazdaznan", as well as the manuscript by a Persian subject living in London around 1938 (his name was perhaps Arash Sami o Araf Sami), compiled in the language farsi (Persian) with the translation opposite, containing schemes of yogic-Sufi exercises and "almost identical" psychophysical practices to those present both on the Caucasian Yoga Manuscript drawn by Walewski himself, and in the correspondence. However, in the latter, consisting of about fifteen letters, the Mazdaznan never define the aforementioned exercises as "Caucasian", but rather "Egyptian", it's the same Otoman Ha'nish claimed to have learned and taught a set of postures, stretches and stretches of the body even derived from practices carried out by the Egyptian Pharaohs, which were also said to give the practitioner a "self-enlightenment" that was not only metaphorical and psychological-spiritual, but also physical: his body would generate an internal luminosity, visible to any spectator. Of all this material, no copies are known to date, with the exception of those - lost due to a flood - belonging to the scholar and lover of initiatory-esoteric traditions Gaetano Lo Monaco. From him we also learn about the performance of similar psychomotor and respiratory exercises at the esoteric "structure". Mysteria Aeternis by Rudolf Steiner, where – according to Daniel Egmond – they were combined with the pronunciation of “vowels-vibration” and with “Masonic signs” to “harmonize the subtle energies” of the human body; Egmond also notes that these exercises (or variations thereof) “played an important role” also inOrdo Templi Orientis (OTO), esoteric-occultistic circle founded by Theodore Reuss and others between 1895 and 1907, the year from which Aleister Crowley was its guide; which is why, according to Egmond, "it is also possible that Steiner received them from Reuss" [10].
After reading the Manuscript, at least two fixed points can however be established:
1) the heterogeneous set of doctrines and practices that the Manuscript contains is not necessarily attributable to an ultra-esoteric organization born as early as the 3rd millennium BC: almost everything it contains can be traced back to various religions, esoteric philosophies and relatively knowable, chronologically located complexes of yoga, tantric and magical practices between the spread of Buddhism (5th century BC) and the elaborations of Aleister Crowley (first half of the 20th century);
2) the alleged Brotherhood of the Sarmoung appears too different from that of the Mazdaznan to be able to coincide with it. As we have seen, the rites of the Sarmoung would have included mystical dances performed by "priestesses", while among the Mazdaznan, at least according to the Manuscript Walewski, there is no teaching in which one or more types of dance are fundamental: on the contrary, it is based on yoga breathing and concentration techniques (or variants of these), i.e. on a set of practices that Gurdjieff, apparently , he did not consider basic but accessory; his disciple Piotr D. Uspensky, in the famous book Fragments of an unknown teaching, recalled that controlled breathing was not the main method studied and taught by Gurdjieff to his students at the "Centre for the Harmonious Development of Man" [11]: in the Gurdjieffian psychophysical and spiritual path it was undoubtedly the dances, movements and music that had a performative function [12].
The Caucasian Yoga system
and the “Arcana masters”
Il Manuscript, which bears the title of Key to Mastery (Key to Mastery), illustrates a progression of respiratory, psycho-physical and also magical-ritual exercises, aiming at the acquisition and mastery of some thaumaturgical and theurgic faculties. The practices that would allow the rediscovery of these faculties are inserted into a conception ofhuman organism as a living mirror of the cosmic organism, which according to experts belongs more to tantric yoga than to original yoga. Each individual is naturally endowed with potential faculties of interaction with the various forms of the divine Spirit present throughout the cosmos, but has undergone mostly unfavorable conditioning during conception, the period of intrauterine life and childbirth. These conceptions of pregnancy as a determining condition, and of the mother as a subject unconsciously responsible for the future condition of her child, recur more than once in Manuscript. From this fallen condition of the human being arises the need to recover the “state of mastery”, that is, the set of energetic-spiritual potentials of the individual and the mastery of them, through the practices of Caucasian Yoga. According to this system, the cosmos is pervaded by the divine energy called Gaya-Lhama, a supposed Persian term analogous to Ga-Llama of the Tibetans, prana of the Hindus, al Ki of the Japanese et al About (o Qi) of the Chinese. In the'Introduction, Manuscript he explains:
The titanic power of Gaya-Lhama is everywhere, and always seeks to penetrate the human being in order to express itself through him. Becoming receptive to the harmonious flow of this energy means establishing the master rhythm in the individual […]. Gaya-Lhama is the energy contained in space and has four vibratory states corresponding to four colors. These assimilate from the air and vivify the reflex centers in the human body. These vibrations correspond to the four functions of being and contribute to developing them.
Stefan Colonna Walewski, The Caucasian Yoga Manuscript (from now on: MdYc), Rome, Venexia editrice, new edition 2023, pp. 157-158
Such colors are the three “primary” colors: red, yellow and blue, plus white, respectively associated with an existential dimension of the human individual: physicist; mental; spiritual; psychic. The person, inhaling and exhaling at regular intervals of precise duration for a certain number of times (depending on the prescribed exercise), and visualizing the four colours, projects each of the relevant chromatic-energetic "vibrations" into a part of his body: the red-physical to the lower stomach, the sex, the occiput (base and posterior area of the skull); the yellow-intellect on the upper chest and forehead; spiritual-blue (vital energy) at the abdomen and cranial crown; the psychic-white on the arms, hands, legs, feet and face. In this way, the colorless divine energy, absorbed by the individual through breathing, breaks down into the four colors displayed mentally by the individual himself, projected in specific directions by his will: the person must visualize them as if they were in front of him while keeping his gaze fixed on a point at eye level, which can be the Sun or the Moon on the horizon (therefore not at random times of the day) or a solid circle, as wide as a coin, preferably black on a white background. Breathing is distinguished astrologically: “The solar one (right nostril) heats and is electric, the lunar one (left nostril) cools and is magnetic”.
The celestial bodies in Caucasian Yoga have the role of dispensers of "particular energies", of which the Masters (i.e. practitioners who reach the state of Mastery) they are both transmitters and receivers: there is therefore also an astrological component, but on this aspect the Manuscript does not go into detail; the most important star is in any case the Sun: “When a Master concentrates, meditates, receives or sends energy, he always places himself in the direction of the Sun: east in the morning, south at noon, west at sunset and north at midnight; except in cases where lunar energy is necessary for astral work or the particular energies of the different planets and stars according to their specific magical properties" [MdYc, p. 162].
On these basic relationships between the human being in his totality and his imaginative faculty, between the human body and the celestial bodies, they subsequently develop the “Arcana” of Caucasian Yoga, i.e. the respiratory and psychophysical exercises which also include magical-ritual and even para-surgical practices that are difficult or not at all attributable to yoga. The first pages of the original text of Manuscript present the reader with a Index – structured in paragraphs that exactly imitate the indices of the Mazdaznan texts written by Otto Hanisch and published by David Ammann – and one Introduction, after which the Arcana are illustrated one by one, divided into seven “Master Arcana”, sixteen “Minor Arcana” and four of twelve “Major Arcana”: of the latter, in fact, only the second, third, eighth and twelfth are reported. The use of the term “Arcane” equivalent to esoteric teaching, and the division into main and secondary arcana, are found – as is known – in the Tarot cards, and in both cases the number of secondary arcana is just over double that of the main arcana: 16 to 7 in Caucasian Yoga (however four of the secondary arcana are called "major"), 56 to 22 in Tarot.
On this aspect, Sebastiano Fusco suggests that Count Walewski used the typical name of the Tarot as "the most conspicuous" of the "clues that guide in the search for interpretative sources" of the various esoteric currents present in the Manuscript, whose "scattered" elements should draw attention to the fact that each of them represents a path punctuated by symbolic images of the spiritual transformation of the practitioner; Interestingly, Fusco also highlights the role of practicing as the twenty-third element interacting with the 22 Arcana of the Tarot, a concept similar - adds the writer - to that ofi ching (o Yi Jing), the Book of Changes Chinese, conceived about three thousand years ago in Taoistic environments and then commented on by Confucius and his school: the consultant is almost always involved in the situation described in the "oracle" requested by him [13]. Be that as it may, this hypothesis can confirm that “Caucasian Yoga” is not at all a corpus ancient or modern Zoroastrian, but rather a hybrid system among the breathing and visualizing practices of Indo-Buddhist asceticism, the elaborations of the Mazdaznan, those of some "schools" of esotericism of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century and, in part, the personal ruminations of the author-editor of the Manuscript.
For example, the fourth master Arcana, which “has the aim of developing the will of command (and electricity) by storing it in the ganglia of the body, ready to be used”, is based on alleged “Egyptian ritual” from which the Mazdaznans - or perhaps Count Colonna Walewski - would have taken the position to be assumed depicted in the drawing in which the person is represented in profile, while he brings his hand up and not far from his forehead, as if to protect his eyes from the sunlight or an external agent. In the "Caucasian" exercise, this gesture evolves into a series of seven rhythmic rotations of the arms store the electricity released into the environment: it is one of the many examples ofmixed approach of esotericism and parascientific conceptions of Caucasian Yoga: it could be said that the arm, by rotating, accumulates the electrostatic charge on itself thanks to the friction with the surrounding air; but the question naturally arises whether a non-metallic organ (the human arm) can really accumulate electricity in this way.
Il fifth master Arcana is one of the most important due to the extra-ordinary possibilities it would give the practitioner: "control over the force of Earth's gravity (weight), allowing the practitioner to levitate in the air, fly and walk on water”. Here too, following the correct rhythmic breathing, movements with the arms are fundamental, and not surprisingly similar to those of floating and flying. Obviously the surprising effects of this exercise are levitation and the possibility of walking on water: we do not know if they are truly achievable through the practices summarized in Caucasian Yoga Manuscript, but both phenomena, according to the history of religions and paranormal phenomena, are not impossible: they are supernatural faculties known for centuries in yoga with the Sanskrit name siddhi, “perfections” or “accomplishments”. The famous Romanian historian of religions Mircea eliade (1907-1986), who lived in India during the XNUMXs and met some here guru, probably seeing some cases of levitation in person, he wrote considerations on this subject which, despite himself, gave rise to discussions and controversies among his contemporary and future colleagues [14]; around 1937, for example, Eliade had stated:
... it is noted that, in some cases, the law of gravity no longer applies, and that the body can remain suspended in the air (examples of levitation are today confirmed by science); Likewise, it is noted in other cases that the law of the fallibility of the human body is suppressed, and certain people can stand on hot coals without suffering the slightest harm (well-studied and unanimously accepted cases). We can therefore come to the conclusion that the physical and biological laws that condition human life can sometimes be suspended.
[15]
Levitation is therefore not a phenomenon attributable only to a dark past with legendary contours, or purely in the context of illusionism; it has rightly been observed that “magicians and illusionists use ingenious tricks to simulate the realization of phenomena such as levitation; which doesn't mean that these phenomena can't really happen" [16]; furthermore, it is not a prerogative of Asian cultures, being episodically attested also in European Christianity [17].
As for the possibility of walking on water, the episode from the Gospels (Matthew, chapter 14; Mark, chapter 6; John, chapter 6) which passes on as Jesus he walked on the water of Lake Genesareth at night, astonishing the apostles who remained on the boat. In the Hindu context, more recently, we find an Indian master named Tapoban, who lived within the XVIII-XIX centuries, endowed with the same faculty: the Italian-French disciple of Mahatma Gandhi reported it, Giuseppe Giovanni Lanza del Vasto (1901-1981), reporting an anecdote told by Shri Rama Krishna, a Brahmin, mystic and philanthropist who lived in the 19th century, nicknamed Paramhansa, that is, Great Swan - a volatile symbol of wisdom and holiness in Hinduism - who, despite being a Hindu, apparently had visions mysticisms of Christ and the Virgin Mary [18]. Even closer to us in time and space, the famous painter, antiquarian and benefactor Gustavo Adolfo Rol (1903-1994), whose numerous extra-ordinary abilities are known, who, according to recent testimony, was even seen walking on the water of a small lake in the Valentino park in Turin [19].
In sixth master Arcanum we have another example of the sometimes messy esoteric eclecticism that characterizes “Caucasian Yoga”. In the presentation of this exercise there is again a reference to alchemy – transmutation, the Philosopher's Stone – linked to the mysterious European esoteric organization of the Rosicrucians, and understood, apparently, as a procedure that combines the protochemical effects of the hermetic art - the transmutation of base metals into gold - with the immaterial effects of the same "Great Work" understood in an ascetic-spiritual sense: perception and experience of the unity between the human intellect and that of the Divinity. This condition would make one capable of transmute the Earth into the “Gatra-Sa-Mara”, the “Garden of purity” mentioned in the CESNUR sheet dedicated to the Mazdaznan. However, a mystical-parascientific element is added: the “fusion” between the “auric spheres” or “eggs” of man and the Earth. This particular effect can perhaps be interpreted as the interpenetration between the human aura and the aura of the Earth (to which the Manuscript had already alluded to) implying that our planet also emanates an aura around itself, a reality different from the set of auras of all human beings living on it. This unification between the aura of the individual and the aura of the Earth is conceived as a form of the union – or as a means of achieving it – between the soul of the individual and the divine creator principle called by the Egyptian name of Atum, the primordial creator god who, according to the theogony of the cult of Heliopolis, gave life to the first nine gods of Egyptian polytheism, emanating from itself in the form of sputum or sperm, but also of light or primordial fire [20]. Such a mystical state would also be attainable with the aid of “music, sound and contact magnetic and electric fields”: from this point of view, the conception of mystical union in Caucasian Yoga it mixes scientific (electromagnetic fields) and parascientific aspects with traditional aspects such as the knowledge of the effects - a transitory state of mystical ecstasy and overcoming the usual perceptive limits - induced by certain musical sounds and rhythms: this last aspect is perhaps present in the majority of forms of shamanism, and in subsequent practices similar and probably derived from it, present in different civilizations geographically distant from each other, for example among the Inuit or Eskimos and the ancient Jews in the first centuries of the monarchy of Israel, where however it is combined with ritual dances and ecstatic [21], which are absent in Caucasian Yoga.
The VI Arcanum includes the three basic breaths of Caucasian Yoga – inhalation or inhalation, breath retention, exhalation or exhalation, each lasting seven seconds – mentioned with the Sanskrit names given by the Hindus: respectively Puraka, kumbhaka e rechaka. The repetition of this breathing rhythm together with the other components of the exercise, such as the kneeling position holding two vertical sticks, would cause a semi-ecstatic or para-ecstatic state characterized by psycho-sensory symptoms known from the history of experiences of contact with the dimension of the Sacred:
You will feel waves of heat and small electrical shocks at the base of the skull, and in the cerebellum and inside the brain, as well as an electrical current flowing up the spine at the top […]. You will also hear a pulsating sound such as a bell or a chime, and you will experience pulsating sensations of expanding aura, as well as sometimes the sensation of wings beating, opening or moving as if a bird were attached to the base of the skull or the head. This is the ka or bird ba of Egyptian mythology. This is fine, but when you feel faint, stop or, if you choose to continue, remember that you are about to fall asleep or go to sleep. trance, and that you must absolutely not be disturbed until your guardian angel or Heavenly Father awakens you. If your knees start to lift off the floor or your body starts to soar, stop immediately. Levitation is undesirable while the trance state is positive and provides the power to lay on hands and heal.
MdYc, new edition cit., pp. 173-174
A note to this passage warns, rightly, that in reality il ka and ba in the Egyptian conception of the human soul there are two distinct elements, only the second of which is depicted as a bird with a human head, while the first is represented as a pair of arms raised with the palms of the hands facing forward [22]; one can therefore ask whether this case of confusion between Egyptian elements dates back to the syncretic doctrinal complex of the Mazdaznan, to an esoteric Egyptian or pseudo-Egyptian source, or to one of the possible interpolations of Count Colonna Walewski. The same can be said of the mention of the Heavenly Father and the guardian angel, Judeo-Christian and then Islamic elements, combined with practices and concepts very far from the three great monotheisms.
Conversely, the psycho-sensory phenomena described are attested in the context of ecstatic and yoga experiences in contexts that are even distant from each other historically and geographically. The element of levitation returns, which here, however, appears as an involuntary effect and - without specifying in what way - contrasted with the thaumaturgical power through the contact of the hands, the presumed effect of the same exercise. The electric current flowing from the base to the top of the spinal column may well designate energy or power (shakti) also known in the West by its Hindu name kundalini, represented in the form of a crouching snake which, stimulated by correct breathing practices, extends vertically [23].
The heat wave at the base of the skull was an experience probably experienced by Gustavo Adolfo Rol, significantly as he focused his gaze on the green color of the rainbow; around the mid-20s, observing after a storm "an enormous rainbow [that] seemed to embrace the whole of Marseille" [24], Rol noticed that only green, the central color of the rainbow, remained imprinted in his mind after having looked away: "in that moment, he felt pervaded by a warm sensation that was radiating to the base of his skull and, at the same time, he seemed to feel transfigured, as if his ego had given way to a more complete ego, capable of vibrating on the creative wave of the cosmos" [25]. It is also possible that this phenomenon occurred not at that same instant, but during Rol's subsequent attempts to perceive and understand it. [26]; However, we note a relationship - partly similar, partly different from that present in Caucasian Yoga - between color visualization, perception of vibrations in the form of heat and an enhanced state of consciousness.
Le sound perceptions of bells, chimes and bird's flapping wings that the practitioner would feel occurring within himself, then, are almost identical to those which, according to Islamic tradition, accompanied the first experiences of contact with the Divine in Muhammad (Muhammad) and his first prophetic inspirations [27]. According to ancient Indo-Tibetan sources on yoga, some of these acoustic phenomena are actually perceptible when the practitioner reaches a certain psychophysical state during concentration: this would therefore happen regardless of the individual's religion of reference. It is tempting to hypothesize that Muhammad, during his nocturnal meditations, performed some kind of yoga-like breathing exercises; but, according to Islamic tradition, such phenomena were perceived by him suddenly and independently of his will.
Il seventh and last master Arcana, according to Manuscript, and instead "a purely magical work to control time”, i.e. operate a magical-theurgic influence on meteorological phenomena; in fact we are faced with an operation that has nothing of Yoga, except rhythmic breathing, voluntarily panting to "clean the lungs". In the curious prescribed position - standing, with the tips of the fingers together and immersed in a basin of water - the operator must perform three rhythmic breaths four times, each ending with a specifically modulated exhalation of increasing intensity, each of which must be accompanied by the pronunciation in the background of a word halfway between the mantra and the magic formula, which:
it must act as a background to provide the vibrations necessary to awaken the elemental spirits of the wind, storm, hurricane, etc. This word is “I-Hau-Haa” and must be intertwined with the exhalation of air in the sigh, wail and roar. Attracting the powers of wind and storm, this arcanum modifies the surrounding climatic conditions, with the help of the great spirit El Borach (spirit of lightning) and Waat (spirit of wind).
MdYc, new edition cit., pp. 175-176
This passage is one of the most disconcerting of Manuscript. In theory, El Borach and Waat should be “elemental spirits” of the respective forces of nature (lightning and wind) of the Zoroastrian or Mazdean religion: but in it, obviously, they do not exist with this occultist denomination, and the name Waat in mythologies and religions does not seem to correspond to anything; the only names that are analogous and partially similar in pronunciation are the Persian Vata and the Hindu (but also Indo-Iranian) Vayu, deity of the wind (vāta in Sanskrit) [28]. The word borak o borach with the meaning of lightning it can be linked to the Canaanite or Phoenician-Punic language spoken for example by the Carthaginians: the surname Barca or Barka, belonging to the historic enemy of Rome, Hannibal, had precisely this meaning. “Lightning” translates similarly into Arabic, and indeed el-Borak is merely an alternative transcription of al-Buraq, name of the supernatural mare on whose back – according to Islamic tradition – the prophet Muhammad (Muhammad) flew to Paradise in the mystical vision during the Night of Destiny (Laylat ul-Qader) [29].
Curiously, El Borak is also the nickname of the gunslinger with lightning speed who is the protagonist of some stories by the well-known American writer Robert E. Howard (1906-1936), starting from The daughter of Erlik Khan (Erlik Khan's daughter) of 1934. This title shows that the creator of Conan the Barbarian he undoubtedly knew something of the ancient Eurasian traditions: could he have drawn the name El Borak precisely from the possible reading of a text printed by the Mazdaznan in the United States?
NOTES
1 – Author's translation. Jim Farley (USA, 08/01/1882 – 12/10/1947) and Sydney H. Greenstreet (Sandwich, UK, 27/12/1879 – Hollywood, USA, 18/01/1954) were film and theater actors; Greenstreet was “corpulent, mellifluous and sweetly ambiguous”, a description that could confirm both Count Walewski's overweight and homosexuality (which will be mentioned later).
2 – Barry Miles, The Seventies. From William Burroughs to the Clash, from Allen Ginsberg to Patti Smith. Adventures in counterculture, Milan, Il Saggiatore, 2014, pp. 175-176. THE thangka Tibetans are Buddhist banners, painted or embroidered mostly with mythological-religious subjects; The ushabti they are the Egyptian statuettes of agricultural servants-workers, placed in the sarcophagus or buried together with the mummy with the hope that they would then cultivate the vast "Hotep Fields", or "Iaru Fields" in the afterlife.. Bone flutes made from human femurs were indeed characteristic objects of Tibetan liturgy, along with other artifacts of the same peculiar origin: for example, the British diplomatic agent John Claude White, the first European to visit the inaccessible Himalayan regions of Sikkim between the 80s and 90s of the XNUMXth century, in his account Sikkim and Bhutan (London, 1909) remembered having seen objects carved from human bones at the Buddhist monastery of To-lung (“Stony Valley”); these instruments – summarizes a tourist guide – accompany the recitation of the gods during daily rituals mantra producing significant vibrations inside the temple, especially to ward off certain powerful evil spirits, but also in certain tantric ceremonies the khang lin: kangling, that is, a human femur pierced and used as a trumpet; see e.g. Maria Guendalina Raineri, Enrico Crespi, Sikkim and Darjeeling. In the lands above the clouds, Bologna, Calderini, 1992, pp. 89-90 and 77. A tiaras composed of human skulls and bones, typical of Tantric Buddhism Vajrayana, which involves overcoming the taboo of death, Maurizio Assalto also mentions, For those who sound the roar of the Buddha, “La Stampa”, 19 June 2004.
3 – See e.g. Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy. Meaning and vision of the world, Parma, Guanda Editore, 1974 / 1986, pp. 115-117; Omraam Mikhael Aïvanhov, The secrets of the book of Nature, Moiano (PG), Prosveta Edizioni, 1996, p. 178.
4 – Gianfranco Bertagni, Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff, https://www.gianfrancobertagni.it/materiali/gurdjieff/pagsugurd2.htm.
5 – Walter Catalano, Enneagram: the receipt of a symbol, http://www.gianfrancobertagni.it/materiali/gurdjieff/enneagramma.htm (also for the next two quotes). One may wonder whether the mysterious priestesses-dancers that Gurdjieff said he saw could have been imagined by him on the model of deva-dāsi (“the servants of the god”), known in the West by the Greek name of hierodule or the Portuguese one of bajaders, performers of liturgical (but also profane) dances in Hindu temples: cf. e.g. Pio Filippani-Ronconi, Hinduism, Rome, Newton & Compton, 1994, p. 91.
6 – Mike Plato, In search of the secret people, https://mikeplato.myblog.it/2018/04/17/alla-ricerca-del-popolo-del-segreto/ .
7 – DM (Daniele Mansuino) and LDC, Neomazdeism, https://www.riflessioni.it/esoterismo/neomazdeismo-1-htm. We thank the editors of the site for the authorization to reproduce extracts from the text. The studio we are referring to is Loris Bagnara, Paolo Rumor, with the collaboration of Giorgio Galli, The other Europe. Myths, conspiracies and enigmas in the shadow of European unification, Castelfranco Veneto (TV), Panda Edizioni, 2017.
8 – Cited in Neomazdeism, cit.. Gurdjieff also mentions the alleged map of Egypt before the Flood that he found in his Real life, trans. it. Milan, Basaia, 1987, p. 33.
9 - Neomazdeism, cit., https://www.riflessioni.it/esoterismo/neomazdeismo-1-htm.
10 - Private communications to the author, November 27-December 9, 2023; see Daniel Egmond, Western Esoteric Schoolsin Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, edited by R. van den Broek and WJ Hanegraaff, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. 336 and 345, cited in Don Karr, The Study of Christian Kabbalah in English: Addenda, P. 24. In turn, the book A system of Caucasian Yoga was widely exploited, without ever mentioning the author and title, by Austrian-American Freemason Albert Leon Schutz for his text on “Perfect Yoga”, which mentions Count Walewski only once among the various spiritual researchers of initiatory traditions of the Caucasus (see AL Schutz, Kosher Yoga, Santa Barbara, California, USA, 1987, p. 15).
11 – See the passage cited in Wikipedia, entry Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff , note no. 11 (cons. 13 March 2023).
12 – See e.g. Mel Gordon, Encounter with an extraordinary theater. Gurdjieff's demonstration movements, in “Sipario – Monographic theater quarterly”, year XXXV n. 406 / III quarter 1980, Curtain of the East for the West, pp. 45-50.
13 – See Sebastiano Fusco, Arcana Arcanorum. A glimpse into the Absolute, preface to MdYc, new edition cit., pp. 12-13; for the Chinese oracle: I Ching. The Book of Changes, edited by Richard Wilhelm, with preface by Carl Gustav Jung, trans. it. Milan, Adelphi, 1991.
14 – Mircea Eliade, Portuguese diary, trans. Milan, Jaca Book, 2009, p. 198 (our italics), quoted in Davide Ermacora, Mircea Eliade and the reality of paranormal powers, in “Studies and Materials of the History of Religions”, 81 (2), Brescia, Morcelliana, 2015, p. 701.
15 – Mircea Eliade, Gordian knowledge, 1937 (?), in Id., Fragmentary, trans. it. Milan, Jaca Book, 2008 (or. ed. 1994), cited in Ermacora, op. cit., p. 723.
16 - Occultism, mystery and magic, “Grandi Temi” series, Novara, De Agostini, 1976 (or. ed. Barcelona, Salvat Editores, 1973), p. 97.
17 – See e.g. Judith Dembech, Rol, the great Forerunner, Turin, L'Ariete, third edition 2013, pp. 135-136; Leo Talamonti, Forbidden universe. A rigorous investigation into the occult dimension of life, Milan, Mondadori, 1966, pp 180-187.
18 – See Giuseppe Giovanni Lanza del Vasto, Pilgrimage to the Sources. My meeting with Gandhi and India, Milan, Jaca Book, 1978, p. 195.
19 – Testimony by Lorenzo Pellegrino recorded on Franco Rol's Youtube channel, also cited in Piervittorio Formichetti, Parallels between the Hindu doctrine of Tripurārahasya and some faculties of Gustavo A. Rol, on the blog Philosophical Pages, February 13, 2022.
20 – See MdYc, new edition cit., p. 175 note n. 190; Emanuele Prezioso, The Pyramid complexes. Architectural and cultural developments from the Ancient to the Middle Kingdom, degree thesis in Sciences of Antiquity-Literature, History and Archaeology, supervisor prof. Emanuele M. Ciampini, University of Venice “Ca' Foscari”, AA 2011-2012, pp. 14-15; Graham Hancock, Footprints of the Gods, trans. it. Milan, Corbaccio, 1996, p. 455. Boris de Rachewiltz, in his Dictionary in the appendix to Book of the Dead of the ancient Egyptians – The Turin papyrus (Rome, Edizioni Mediterranee, 1986 / 2001, p. 162) recalls the anthropomorphic representation and the relationship with the Sun at dawn and sunset.
21 – For shamanism among the Eskimos see. e.g. Silvio Zavatti, The ice people. Life and culture of the last Eskimos, Milan, Longanesi & C., 1977, pp. 144-145; Barry Lopez, Arctic: the last paradise, Milan, Mondadori – Club degli Editori, 1986, pp. 241 and 243; for the ecstatic prophets (nebiim) Jewish, cf. The book of Samuel, 19, 18-24 (reigns of Saul and David, about the year 1000 BC); The book of Kings, 22, 10-23 (pro-Phoenician reign of King Ahab and his wife Yezabel, circa 860 BC).
22 – See e.g. on Axis Mundi Piervittorio Formichetti, The humanism of the ancient Egyptians and its relevance (1a part), review of Primavera Fisogni, In the sign of thought: as the ancient Egyptians thought, Cosenza, Santelli Editore, 2019.
23 – See e.g. Titus Burckhardt, Alchemy. Meaning and vision of the world, cit., pp. 115-117.
24 – Franco Rol, Gustavo Rol: a Western Buddha of the 20th century, in “Mistero Magazine”, August 2021, p. 40.
25 – Maurizio Ternavasio, Gustavo Rol. Life, man, mystery, Turin, Lindau-The Age of Aquarius, 2008, p. 40; also cited in Piervittorio Formichetti, Gustavo Adolfo Rol – 3a part: green and five, on the blog Philosophical Pages (also in “Luce e Ombra”, parapsychological research journal of the “Bozzano – De Boni” Foundation-Library of Bologna, year CXXII n. 1 / January-March 2022, p. 67 et seq.).
26 – F. Rol, Gustavo Rol: a Western Buddha of the 20th century, cit., pp. 42-43.
27 – See e.g. Mike Dash, Beyond the borders, Milan, Corbaccio, 1999 (or. ed. Borderlands, Cambridge UK, 1998), pp. 58-59; Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed, Milan, RCS Quotidiani, 2005, p. 201 (Series Protagonists of History, “Corriere della Sera”, vol. 9; and. or. Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1967, tr. it. Turin, Einaudi, 1973/1995), p. 65.
28 – See Albert Olmstead, The Persian Empire, trans. it. Rome, Newton & Compton, 1997, p. 22; Filippani-Ronconi, Hinduism, cit., pp. 22 and 82-83.
29 – See e.g. Anthony S. Mercatante, Universal Dictionary of Myths and Legends, trans. it. Rome, Newton & Compton, 1988, p. 140.
