The Platonic Cave, its Orphic and Pythagorean influences & the Mฤyฤ of the Upaniแนฃads

In this exhibition we will try to compare the main characteristics of the image of the Platonic Cave contained in the VII book of the Republic with those of the Mฤyฤ of the Upaniแนฃads. The common beliefs are evident and involve, above all, the bonds that determine the state of man's imprisonment and the possibility of redemption through the purification of changing forms.

Abraxas, or on escaping from the cosmic prison

In their new book, "Abraxas: the magic of the drum. The forgotten cult of the cosmic god from shamanism to gnosis", released in March for Mimesis, Paolo Riberi and Igor Caputo investigate the figure of the god / demon Abraxas, halfway between that of the Demiurge of the Gnostic and Platonic cosmogony and that of the aeonic god who connects the various levels of the cosmic manifestation.

The Logos and the knowledge of God in Clement of Alexandria's Neoplatonism

In the "Stromateis", written in the third century, Clement of Alexandria establishes a deeper analogy between the truth-Logos, coeternal and coextensive with God, and the cosmic aeon, aiศn, which gathers in itself present, future and past: to the temporal scan , a typical expression of creation, the articulation of the parts of the cosmos is connected; thus "he who reassembles the different parts and reunites them will safely contemplate [...] the Logos in his perfection, that is, the truth".

Of Solstices and Apocalypses: of Saturn and the Golden Age

Solstitial and "apocalyptic" annotations on the celebration of Christmas and the end of the Year, on the archaic doctrine of the "gates" of the Cosmos and of the Year and on the eschatology of the ancient Sidereal Religion, passing from the Greco-Roman tradition to the Hindu one the Christian one.

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

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".


From Cybele to Demeter, the different faces of Mother Earth, or rather of the ecliptic

From the Phrygian tradition concerning Cybele, "goddess of the mountain and wild beasts", to the Indian tradition of Aditi, "inexhaustible source of abundance", up to the different Hellenic divinities such as Rhea, Demeter, Themes, Meti (without forgetting the various collective deities, always feminine, of destiny), an astrotheological reading emerges that can shed light on the aforementioned "Mother Goddesses of the Earth", provided that the latter is understood, following the studies of Santillana, Dechend and Richer (as well as the Platonic clues), in the meaning of ecliptic.

Mircea Eliade: "Cosmic cycles and history"

"Even within the framework of the three great Iranian, Jewish and Christian religions, which have limited the duration of the cosmos to a certain number of millennia, and affirm that history will definitively cease in illo tempore, there are traces of the ancient doctrine of the periodic regeneration of history ยป: Very ancient doctrine that Eliade, in his essayโ€œ The myth of the eternal return โ€, finds in the Babylonian, Hindu, Buddhist, Germanic and Hellenic tradition.

We do not live in time, but in "chronospheres"

The chronospheres are psychic experiences and dynamic spacetime events, like concentric circles in the water, they are different frequencies of the passing of time that involve us; if spacetime is like the ocean, the circles in the water are the traces and the different times that unfold and dilate, mixing and overlapping continuously

Uttara Kuru, the Boreal Paradise in Indian cosmography and art

Giuseppe Acerbi examines the theme of the Boreal Paradise in the Hindu tradition, framing it in the doctrine of cosmic cycles and highlighting its correspondences with the Hesiodic and Platonic tradition, finally analyzing the symbolisms that are found in the artistic representations of this locus amoenus.ย 

The Pole, the incorporation, the Androgyne

The mythical traditions from all over the world speak of an auroral golden age in which Man lived "in the company of the gods": this can perhaps be related to creation "in the image and likeness of God" and to tradition of the Platonic primordial Androgynous, homologue of the kabbalistic Adam Kadmon?

Who is hiding behind the mask? Visits from Elsewhere and the paraphysical hypothesis

The examination of the theories of John Keel and Jacques Vallรฉe based on the "paraphysical hypothesis", the "superspectrum" and the "thermostrate effect" allows us a reflection on the Other World and a parallelism with the cosmographic model and the "antichtลn ยปBy Filolaoย 

Ioan P. Culianu: the Hyperborean shamanism of ancient Greece

cover: Ilyas Phaizulline, "Orpheus at the Empire of the Dead"


Introduction

curated by Marco Maculotti

When it comes to "shamanism" [I], we usually tend to think of the Siberian one [II], from which the term itself derives, or to the Himalayan one, which often synchronizes with the Buddhist and / or Hindu tradition, or to that of the native populations of North America, Mexico and the Andes, as well as that of the Australian aborigines. More rarely, the importance of shamanic practices for the Indo-European peoples is emphasized, although the classical sources are not poor in this regard.

G. de Santillana: โ€œHistory to be rewrittenโ€. Reflections on "Ancient Fate" and "Modern Affliction"

(image: Gilbert Bayes, ananke, sculpture)

Extract from the essay by Giorgio de Santillana ยซHistory to rewrite", Written in 1968 and published the following year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later (1985) translated and published in Italy by Adelphi in the collection of writings entitled"Ancient fate and modern fateยป.

Preface and notes by Marco Maculotti. Our italics.

The symbolism of the Spiral: the Milky Way, the shell, the "rebirth"

di Marco Maculotti

Having analyzed in recent months [cf. Cosmic-agrarian cults of ancient Eurasia] a series of rites, myths and deities connected to the theme of cosmic rebirth, we want in this appointment and in the next ones to focus our attention on some symbols, which we have already mentioned, which archaic man recognized as images capable of eschatologically raising him towards the understanding of this mystery.

The "Heavenly Fire": Kronos, Phaeton, Prometheus

di Andrew Casella
cover: Jean Delville, Prometheus, 1907)

[Continued fromย The astronomical significance of the Golden Age: Astrea and the "fall" of Phaeton]

In a Mongolian wedding prayer it is stated that: "Fire was born when Heaven and Earth separated": Therefore, before the celestial equator (Father Heaven) and the ecliptic (mother Earth) moved away (ie the inclination angle of about 23 ยฐ of the ecliptic with respect to the equator was recorded), the" Fire " did not exist. At the beginning, the Milky Way united heaven, earth and the world of the dead: the southern part of the Galaxy, in correspondence with Scorpio and Sagittarius, is, for many traditions, the place dedicated to the collection of souls waiting to reincarnate.