Mircea Eliade: "Pauwels, Bergier and the Planet of wizards"

Dedicated to science and mystery, past and future, archeology and science fiction, "Planète" was a multifaceted magazine, published by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, former authors of the cult book of "fantastic realism" "The morning of the wizards", which attracted also the attention of Mircea Eliade, who spoke of it in his work "Occultism, witchcraft and cultural fashions", published in 1976.

β€œThe Traveler of Agartha”: the magical realism of Abel Posse

In the initiatory novel by the Argentine writer and diplomat, published thirty years ago and set during the last bars of the Second World War, the "magical realism" of Pauwels and Bergier, the esoteric doctrines of the Theosophical School of the late nineteenth century, are combined. β€” which then influenced the Central European secret societies Thule and Vril β€” and the eastern legend of the underground kingdom of the Immortals. In the background, a Europe by now on its last legs and a Tibet that within a few years would have experienced the indelible tragedy of the Chinese invasion.

From Stonehenge to Rapa Nui: Donald Wandrei and the return of the Titans

Taking both hands from the "Weird" literature of HP Lovecraft e Arthur Machen and combining the proceeds with the hypotheses of Charles Fort and the theosophical and "Atlantean" doctrines, Wandrei's 1932 novel was able to anticipate if not actually shape most of the cultural currents ascribable to the so-called "alternative reality" of the second part of the twentieth century: from the "magic realism" of Jacques Bergier to the "paleo-astronautics", from the encounter with extraterrestrial civilizations up to some dystopian predictions that today, almost a century later, do not seem science fiction at all.

The esoteric futurism of the Russian Cosmists

Cosmism is the miracle of a synthesis that the West knew for the last time in the Renaissance and that took root in the Soviet Russia of the "space race" in the last century: an attitude rather than a real current, a crossroads of experiences and researches ranging from esoteric futurism to transcendental pragmatism, from magical realism to idealistic materialism, from humanism to transhumanism.

Charles Fort and the restlessness of the extraordinary

Critic of science that he defined as "exclusionist", that is, inclined to accept only data that confirmed accepted theories and reject data that cast doubt on them, Charles Fort proceeded, in the manner of the ancient collators of "wonders", to collect and analyze all the so-called anomalies, those "damned facts" that had no place in scientific models, influencing to a certain extent the whole sphere of the "alternative reality" of the twentieth century, such as ufology, space archeology and cryptozoology.

Jacques Bergier and "Magic Realism": a new paradigm for the atomic age

Recently translated into Italian by the types of Il Palindromo, "In praise of the Fantastic" by the French writer and journalist Jacques Bergier, best known for having written with Louis Pauwels "The morning of the wizards", provides an analysis of the work of some "magic writers" at the time unknown to the French-speaking public (including Tolkien, Machen and Stanislav Lem), aimed at defining a new paradigm for the XNUMXst century that can combine science and science fiction with the ontological category of the "sacred".


Bada Valley: the β€œxenomorphic” megaliths in the jungle

We visited the island of Sulawesi, in the Indonesian archipelago, and ventured into the rainforest of Lore Lindu in search of the mysterious Patung, megalithic sculptures of only partly anthropomorphic aspect which constitute for archaeologists (but also for natives) a real enigma. Taking into account the various hypotheses regarding the cults of ancestors, those of fertility and supposed human sacrifices, we will try to connect them in aΒ framework as coherent as possible.

Colin Wilson & Jacques Bergier: that is, the conspiracy of history

Civilization as a conspiracy; history as a trap; an endemic psychic vampirism that has seized an entire civilization: these are the burning themes of two of the key texts of the Alternative Reality between the 60s and 70s: "The parasites of the mind" by Colin Wilson andΒ "The cursed books" byΒ Jacques Berger.