Conversations with Mircea Eliade

114 years ago, on March 13, 1907, Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest. For the occasion, let's spend a few words on booklet recently published by Edizioni Bietti for the β€œMinima Letteraria” series, in which you can read four interviews with the most important historian of 70th century religions released respectively to Jean Varenne, Alain de Benoist, Fausto Gianfranceschi and Alfredo Cattabiani, in the 80s and XNUMXs.

di Marco Maculotti

Cover: Mircea Eliade (right) with Carl Gustav Jung in Eranos

Auras and inner lights

Since the perception of a light characterizes the apparition of the divine, the luminous has always been associated with the numinous. The great dilemma that Walter Benjamin proposes is whether the visual impression is determined exclusively by the biology of the human eye or is also characterized by cultural and historical specificities. This contribution seeks to reconstruct how the experience of light in the West has changed over the centuries in intensity and suddenness and how its modes of manifestation have changed.


The festival of Lughnasadh / Lammas and the Celtic god Lugh

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.

The "myths of emergence" in the traditions of Native Americans

di Marco Maculotti

According to many mythical traditions, in the beginning the first members of the human race were generated in the bowels of the Earth, within underground worlds similar to cavernous wombs. The myths of emergence, particularly prevalent among Native American populations, provide us with the best examples of such subterranean realms. The mythical tales tell of how the first humans were brought to the surface to live in the sunlight only after they remained for a long time under the earth's surface, in the - so to speak - "larval" state, and after developing a rudimentary physical form. and a human conscience. According to native peoples, this emergence from the underworld marks the birth of man in the present era - or, to use a typical American term, the "Fifth Sun" - and also represents the transition from childhood and dependence on womb of Mother Earth to maturity and independence.

The phenomenon of sleep paralysis: folkloric interpretations and recent hypotheses

The myths and the chronicles of folklore have transmitted to us with extreme clarity the way in which the ancients framed this phenomenon: surprisingly, all the chronicles and legends of antiquity agree in affirming that responsible for these disturbing experiences is a certain type of astral entities - sometimes labeled by modern minds as 'spirits', other times as 'demons', often also as 'fairies' and the like - who conduct their attacks only during the night, often pressing on the sleeping victim's body and sometimes entertaining with the subject has a sexual relationship. These entities, in various cultures, have been called in numerous ways, the best known of which to us Westerners are those of Latin derivation: 'succubi', 'nightmares' and 'larvae'.

di Marco Maculotti
cover: Johann Heinrich FΓΌssli, Nightmare

Sleep paralysis, also called hypnagogic hallucination, is a sleep disorder in which, between sleep and wakefulness (therefore in the moment before falling asleep or in the instant before waking up) one suddenly finds himself unable to move. Most of the time, according to what those who suffer from this disorder say, the paralysis begins with a tingling sensation that goes through the body, reaching the head, inside which the subject feels a kind of hum "like a swarm of bees ”or a sound similar to that of a washing machine or aβ€œ thumping and screeching of metal objects ”. Often the victim of this experience tries to scream for help, managing at best to whisper faintly, also experiencing the unpleasant sensation of hearing his own voice suffocated by something abnormal.

Often, if the victim is in bed with someone, the latter cannot notice anything, to the point that often even the most disturbing phenomena (terrifying sounds and noises, incomprehensible voices, sometimes even strange unnatural lights coming from outside) succeed to arouse the attention of those who do not undergo the episode in first person. It can also happen that the succubus (which, if once the name for the mysterious entity causing the phenomenon, is now the term by which medical science refers to the 'victim') hears familiar voices - or, sometimes, even 'demonic' - calling him, or arguing with each other behind the subject's back or, worse still, whispering close to his neck, often from behind, in a disturbing voice.

Science believes that this abnormal state is due to the persistence of the state of atony that the muscles present during sleep and is caused by a discrepancy between the mind and the body: with the consequence that, although the brain is active and conscious and the subject can often see and perceive clearly what surrounds him, despite this the body remains in a state of absolute rest, to the point that any movement is precluded for the duration of the experience. Of course, science denies the reality of the experiences experienced during this mysterious experience, reducing them to mere hallucinations caused by equally mysterious alterations in the subjects' brain balance, which would occur at the exact moment of the transition between wakefulness and sleep β€” and vice versa.

Enigmas of the Mediterranean: the Guanches, the 'Peoples of the Sea' and Atlantis

An attempt at classification (cultural, anthropological and genetic)Β of the mysterious population of the Guanches, ancient inhabitants of the Canaries, and a look at the Hellenic myths concerning the "Fortunate Islands" and the 'mythical' war against Atlantis

The primordial and triple god: esoteric and iconographic correspondences in ancient traditions

di Marco Maculotti

In ancient traditions around the world we find reference to a god of origins, who came into existence before all else, creator of all that is manifest and equally of all that is unmanifest. The most disparate mythical traditions depict the primordial god as containing all the potentials and polarities of the universe, light and darkness, spirit and matter, and so on. For this reason, he is often represented with two faces (two-faced Janus) or even with three (Trimurti Hindu). However, more often than not he is considered invisible, hidden, difficult to represent except in an allegorical, esoteric form, which often refers to the union of the luminous and fiery principle, 'masculine', with the dark and aqueous, 'feminine' . In the traditions of the whole world, this primordial god is not honored with a cult of his own, since it is believed that he now lives too far from man and human affairs do not concern him: for this reason, this maximum deity is often spoken of as of a deus otiosus.

The mysterious Natchez Indians, Children of the Sun

Among the myriad of populations that once inhabited the vast prairies of North America, the Natchez of the Southern Mississippi Valley. In fact, although belonging to the confederation of Cree tribes of the Muskogee language, they spoke a peculiar dialect and very distinct from that of the other populations of the South-East, called Natchesan. From the few sources that history has handed down to us it seems that their culture, of a sedentary type, was born around 700 AD and that it was strongly influenced by the great Mesoamerican civilizations, especially as regards the cult of the Sun β€” and of the deified ruler as his sonβ€”And the voluntary practice of immolation as a practice worthy of the highest honor.

Guido von List and the magical-religious tradition of the Ariogermans

Wotan's wisdom is knowledge, magic and poetry at the same time. He not only knows the mysteries of the Nine Worlds and the order of their lineages, but also the destiny of men and the fate of the universe itself. Perhaps this is why He, unique among the Ases, was able to give a spiritual conscience to the human being: because, by accessing the supreme communion with the Great Mystery, and learning the secrets of the alphabet of the cosmos, He was able to synthesize all and seven spirits of the Aesis in a single spiritual entity, what the ancient Greeks called pneuma. With this magical act Wotan, according to Logos, originated from himself the third Logos, the one who has the power to give spiritual Life to the human being, just as the second Logos self-generated from the First.

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using an approach halfway between the anthropological and the occult, the Viennese scholar Guido von List attempted a reconstruction of the Germanic Urgrund, analyzing the more esoteric aspects of the cosmogony and pre-Christian religion of the ancient Central European peoples .

di Marco Maculotti

A cosmogonic reading of the pantheon of the Mexica tradition, in a perspective of religious syncretism

According to mexica mythology, each star embodies a certain character: the deities have so to speak "sacrificed" themselves in illo tempore to reincarnate in the stars. Thus, for example, Quetzalcoatl transformed himself into the planet Venus, the morning star, which therefore can be worshiped in the triple symbolic form of dynamic energy, of star and personified, as a cultural hero. In turn, the Sun, the main source of the tona or vital heat, arises from the immolation of Nanahuatzin.

The Aztec religion is a Mesoamerican religion that combines elements of polytheism, shamanism and animism, as well as aspects related to astronomy and the calendar. Aztec cosmology divided the world into three levels: an upper one, seat of the celestial gods, a lower one, seat of the underworld powers, and a middle one, in which the human consortium lives, equidistant from the gods and demons of nature and the subsoil. The concept of TheotlΒ it is fundamental in the Aztec religion. In language Nahuatl it is often considered synonymous with "God", even if, to be more precise, it refers to a more general concept, which refers to the immaterial dynamic energy of divinity (tona), similar to the Polynesian concept of mana. As the Tapas of the Indo-Aryans, this tona it is not always beneficial, since an overabundance of it brings death and destruction [Torres 2004, p.14].

The Sacred Circle of the Cosmos in the holistic-biocentric vision of Native Americans

β€œThe circle was sacred to the Amerindians because it indicated a Way of Understanding. It provided a means of understanding the Cosmos, the mysteries of life and death, the mind and the individuality of the ego. With the circle, the Amerindian shaman could show how the Cosmos worked, how the laws of Nature and the Cosmos governed all living beings, how to discover the relationship between man and other life forms on the Planet and how to get in harmony with the Nature, with the Great Spirit and with one's own Spirit. "

[Extract from the graduation thesis Recognition of the rights of the Native Peoples of Canada2015]

For millennia, American Indians have regarded the earth as a church, the bullion tables as altars, all of creation as pervaded by sacred vital forces, in a universal circle of equals, one related to the other in a vital balance.Β 200 The habitat represents the stage on which the realm of spirits and the physical world perform. Plants, forces of nature, celestial stars, human beings, herbs that heal and allow visions, are all part of a "family-run system",Β 201 in which all are relatives, "all equally children of the Great Mother Earth". The circle of the native universe contains in an inseparable whole the entire existing world, physical and spiritual. Thanks to what we said previously on the importance of the cd reciprocity law in native traditional philosophy, it is not difficult to understand that it is precisely this principle that forms the basis of this particular holistic vision of the cosmos as a single organism composed of a multitude of interconnected and interdependent parts.