Tag: Iatromancers

Apollo the Destroyer: "coincidentia oppositorum" in hyperborean mysticism and eschatology

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

Although mostly considered in his "luminous" and "uranic" meaning, in the archaic tradition Apollo combines the most extreme dichotomies in his mystical and eschatology: the bow and the lyre, wisdom and "mania", depth and elevation, the catabasis and the journey in spirit to the White Island, the "Fall" of Being and the return of the Golden Age. Starting from ancient sources, we can find similar concepts not only to those of North Asian shamanism and Celtic spirituality, but even to the sacred vision of some modern poets โ€” like Blake, Shelley and Yeats - whose Apollonian chrism will appear clearer to us if we analyze their โ€œWeltanschauungโ€ in the light of the Platonic and Heraclitean doctrines.

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Parmenides, priest of Apollo: the "incubatio" and sacred healing

Published on: Last updated on: Written by: Categorized into: Characters, Shamanism, History, History of Religions
In an extract previously published on the site [cf. Ioan P. Culianu: the hyperborean shamanism of ancient Greece] we illustrated the retrospective of the Romanian religious historian Culianu on the existence of a Hyperborean shamanism in the ancient Mediterranean area: a "technique of ecstasy" attributable to the divine figure of Apollo Hyperborean of which the major interpreters, called "iatromanti", were the ancient scholars and philosophers. We focus here on one of these "enlightened": Parmenides of Elea (IV - V century BC), born in Elea / Velia (today Ascea, in the province of Salerno), where he founded the Eleatic School together with Zeno.

The archaeological findings of Velia allow us to reconstruct the "Apollonian Way" of Parmenides, pre-Socratic philosopher, Apollo's iatromancer and healer

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Ioan P. Culianu: the Hyperborean shamanism of ancient Greece

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

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.

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