Tag: lugh

Joan of Arc, the Fairies and "San Michele"

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

Who prayed Joan of Arc on May 30, 1431, when, in the flames of the stake, she was begging her god to welcome her into his kingdom? An emblematic story of pagan survivals, fairy trees and apparitions of angels of light. A fatal destiny, between predestinations to martyrdom, Apollonian ecstasies and heresies.ย 

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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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Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'

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

di Marco Maculotti


Mircea Eliade wrote that "the main difference between the man of archaic and traditional societies and the man of modern societies, strongly marked by Judeo-Christianity, consists in the fact that the former feels solidarity with the cosmos and cosmic rhythms, while the second is considered in solidarity only with history "[Eliade (1), p.5]. This "cosmic life" is connected to the microcosm by a "structural correspondence of planes arranged in hierarchical order" which "together constitute the universal harmonic law in which man is integrated" [Sanjakdar, p.155].

Archaic man especially took into consideration the solstices and equinoxes, as well as the dates between them: it was believed that in these particular days, which marked the passage from one phase of the cycle to the next of the "wheel of the year", the energy of the cosmos flowed more freely, and therefore they chose such dates to perform their own rituals. Here we are especially interested in certain dates between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, that is to say the calendar phase in which the Sun appears die: the so-called "solstice crisis" or "winter crisis".

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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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