Ernesto De Martino – 𝐀𝐗𝐈𝐒 ֎ 𝐌𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐈

“At the wall of time”: the question of history and the crisis of the modern world

Published on: March 27 2020 Last updated on: 14 September 2020 Written by: Marco Maculotti Categorized into: Anthropology, Philosophy, Characters, History, History of Religions

Ernst Jünger's work on cyclical time, published 60 years ago, marks the apex of what was called the "culture of the crisis", a current of thought focused on becoming aware of the drama of History and Historicism and on the image of time as an impetuous flow that overwhelms everything: intuitions that, before Jünger, were brought to the surface by Oswald Spengler, René Guénon, Julius Evola and Mircea Eliade.

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Mircea Eliade: "Science, idealism and paranormal phenomena"

Published on: February 3 2020 Last updated on: February 3 2020 Written by: Marco Maculotti Categorized into: Anthropology, Esotericism, Extracts, folklore, Characters, Shamanism, Science, History of Religions

Paranormal powers are not encountered exclusively with primitives, but also with yogis, fakiri, saints of all kinds, belonging to all sorts of civilizations. The necessities of the historicist argument forced de Martino to limit his comparisons to the paranormal powers of primitives and those of modern mediums. But the authenticity of the yogis' powers, for example, raises another problem: that of the lucid and rational conquest of these paranormal powers. It is therefore not necessary to consider only a "historical magical world" (the primitives) and a spontaneous but historically inauthentic regression in this world (the mediums): it is necessary to consider another world accessible, in principle, to everyone and at any historical moment.

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South and Magic: the South between archaisms and historical precariousness

Published on: November 27, 2019 Last updated on: November 27, 2019 Written by: Federica Zigarelli Categorized into: Anthropology, folklore, Characters, Guests Book, History of Religions

Italy and in particular the South still experience a strong presence of archaic practices of a magical-religious matrix: this is the field of investigation in which the studies of Ernesto de Martino, a Neapolitan anthropologist known for having documented in the first person and for having interpreted the customs and beliefs (such as the evil eye and the fascination, the workmanship and the jetting) of which southern society is still pregnant today.

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Evans-Pritchard and the rationality of a "wild" people: the Azande

Published on: February 3 2019 Last updated on: July 6 2023 Written by: Maurilio Ginex Categorized into: Anthropology, Characters, History of Religions

As the British anthropologist, studying the Central African tribe of the Azande (or Zande) in the field, he intuited the “rational” aspect of their “magical-witchcraft” cult system.

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The magic of the Mainarde: on the trail of the Janare and the Deer Man

Published on: 5 September 2018 Last updated on: 12 September 2018 Written by: Maximilian Palmesano Categorized into: Anthropology, folklore, Shamanism, History of Religions

A visit to Castelnuovo al Volturno, in Molise, allows us to give a face to the characters of local folklore, the Janare and "Gl'Cierv", and to resume some central mythical-traditional aspects of Cosmic-agrarian cults of ancient Eurasia.

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