Tag: Robert Graves

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Prometheus in the Wind

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

8/7/1822 - 8/7/2020: almost two centuries from the drowning of Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose figure immediately became admired and venerated by the most restless spirits. The Prometheus who steals fire to give it to men, found in the English poet a version at the extremes of high ideality, in the name of a radical social and spiritual renewal. An unrepeatable season, here told through little-known sides of ours and through the profound influence on personalities very distant from each other, such as d'Annunzio, Crowley and Carducci.

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β€œThe Wicker Man”: from folklore to folk-horror

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Cinema and TV, Esotericism, folklore, History of Religions

For the making of "The Wicker Man", Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer delved into British folklore and modeled the Beltane ceremony and its preparations on the ancient propitiatory rites of Calendimaggio and the late winter procession, centered on the ritual sacrifice of the "Fool "," King of Disorder ".

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Towards β€œTimeWave Zero”: Psychedelia and Eschatology in Terence McKenna

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Esotericism, Characters, Psychedelia, Shamanism, History of Religions

In addition to being one of the "prophets" of the psychedelic Counterculture of the second half of the last century, Terence McKenna was able to build, in the course of thirty years of studies and experiments, a real eschatological system for the Third Millennium, in view of final explosion, based on the recovery of shamanic practices, on a new interpretation of the Sacred as "Mysterium Tremendum" and on the vision, beyond the ordinary dichotomy between life and death, of what he called an "Ecology of Souls".

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From Pan to the Devil: the 'demonization' and the removal of ancient European cults

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

di Marco Maculotti
cover: Arnold BΓΆcklin, β€œPan, the Syrinx-Blowing”, 1827

We have previously had the opportunity to see that, in the first centuries of our era and even during the medieval era, the cd. "Rural paganism" it kept its diffusion unchanged, especially in the areas further away from the large inhabited centers. St. Maximus noted that "in the fourth century (...) the first missionaries passed from city to city and rapidly spread the Gospel over a very large area, but they did not even touch the surrounding countryside", Then adding that" even in the fifth and sixth centuries, when most of them had long since been converted, in Gaul and Spain the Church, as shown by the repeated canons of the councils of the time, encountered great difficulty in suppressing the ancient rites with which peasants from time immemorial averted plagues e they increased the fertility of the flocks and fields"[AA Barb, cit. in Centini, p.101].

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The festival of Lughnasadh / Lammas and the Celtic god Lugh

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

In ancient times, among the Celtic populations, at the beginning of August Lughnasadh / Lammas was celebrated, the festival of the first harvest, established according to the myth by the god Lugh himself. An analysis of the functions of the latter will allow us to highlight its remarkable versatility and correspondences with other divinities of the Indo-European traditions (such as Apollo, Belenus and Odin) and even with two divine powers of the Judeo-Christian tradition apparently opposed to each other. : Lucifer and the archangel Michael.

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