The Initiatory Ecstasy. From Giordano Bruno to Arturo Reghini E-Book

Nicola Bizzi

• Herausgeber: Edizioni Aurora Boreale
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

What exactly is ecstasy (from the Greek ἔκστασις, literally "being outside"), that psychic state of suspension and mystical elevation of the mind, which is perceived by those who experience it intensely as "estranged" from the body? What are its links with Philosophy (to be understood as Sacred Knowledge or as love for Divine Wisdom) and above all with mystical death and the initiatory experience of the ancient Mysteries? What is thought and how to control it to rise to higher levels of consciousness?
All the great initiatory schools of the past taught that one must die and be reborn in order to then ascend. But can this ascension be comparable to Philosophical Ecstasy?
Great philosophers of antiquity, from Plotinus to Porphyry, spoke to us about the experience of Philosophical Ecstasy as a reunion with the Absolute, with the Supreme End. And what if it also and above all involved a full connection with the Anima Mundi or with the Akashic Records? From Giordano Bruno to Tommaso Campanella, up to Arturo Reghini and Amedeo Rocco Armentano, some authentic Initiates have attempted to answer these questions.

Leseprobe

Τεληστήριον

NICOLA BIZZI

THE INITIATORY ECSTASY

FROM GIORDANO BRUNO TO ARTURO REGHINI

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Title: The Initiatory Ecstasy. From Giordano Bruno to Arturo Reghini

Author: Nicola Bizzi

Series: Telestérion

Editing, cover and illustrations by Nicola Bizzi

English translation by Umberto Visani

ISBN e-book version: 979-12-5504-558-8

Cover image: Leonardo Da Vinci, Salvator Mundi, circa 1515

(Private collection)

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

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THE INITIATORY ECSTASY

FROM GIORDANO BRUNO TO ARTURO REGHINI

The theme of the close relationship between philosophy and the mystical tradition, which I have developed at length in my essay Nei penetrali del Tempio1 and which was quite well understood in the first half of the 20th century by authoritative masters such as Arturo Reghini and Amedeo Rocco Armentano, as demonstrated by the works of great depth and relevance that they left us, was also famously addressed by Julius Evola in 1934 in his essay Revolt against the Modern World2.

Despite the undeniable differences in the positions and interpretative visions of Reghini, Armentano and Evola, the latter had rightly understood that Greek philosophy «almost always had its centre not so much in itself, but in elements of a metaphysical and mysterious character, which were echoes of traditional doctrines».3. And, surprisingly, Evola had also intuited, quite correctly, to be honest, the virtues inherent in the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers in relation to Platonism. Nevertheless, and without wishing to offend the Evolians, it must be stressed that the Baron, as an uncompromising advocate of idealistic subjectivism, underestimated the extent of the true and traditional importance of the metaphysical objectivism of the great Hellenic schools of wisdom, whether we are talking about the Platonic-transcendental school of the Academy or the Aristotelian-immanent school of the Lyceum. And, as the late Piero Fenili pointed out in one of his illuminating essays4 , Evola’s lack of understanding of the traditional meaning and value of metaphysical objectivism prevented him from recognising how much it represented the positive result – also due to Plato’s initiatory acquisitions of important mystery knowledge from Eleusinity and its Pythagorean derivation in particular – of the movement initiated by Socrates with his efforts in the search for valid definitions and concepts to be applied to any Sophistic arbitrariness. And so the Baron, who also acknowledged the full validity of the Socratic instance, but curiously glossed over the achievements of the Academy and the Lyceum, believed that the Socratic endeavour had only led to a fatal ‘deviation’, in that «thinking instead of trying to give the universal and the being in its proper form – that is, rationally and philosophically – and to transcend it with the concept, constitutes the most dangerous seduction and illusion, the organ of a humanism and, therefore, of a humanism, The most dangerous seduction and illusion, the organ of a humanism, and thus of a much deeper and more perverse unrealism, which was then to seduce the whole of the West».

This view of Evola, as Fenili rightly points out, is essentially incomplete and misleading, because it describes a failure where there was instead a success, because from Socrates’ definitions and concepts we moved on to the objective order of Platonic ideas and Aristotelian forms, by which the whole of reality is disciplined and reduced, as far as possible, from cháos to kosmos, according to the luminous Apollonian instance always present in the highest Greek speculation. On the other hand, in the classical world and in pre-Christian antiquity, man was closer to the gods and at the same time – in a real exchange and union – the gods were closer to man. And it was from the gods that man received precise teachings, rules and doctrines, as well as answers to the greatest questions that mankind has been asking since it emerged from the caves: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

By reflex, the most authentic philosophers – as well as the most authentic poets – «are simply interpreters of the gods»5.

The secrecy of the mysteries, like that of philosophy, science or medicine, as Victor Magnien observed, paraphrasing the great Emperor Julian and the philosopher Macrobius, was justified in the thought of the ancients by the fact that «nature itself loves to hide itself, and the truth cannot be seen without effort and effortlessness: those who have found this truth must not, therefore, reveal it too easily to others, nor expound it too clearly. Truth, which is divine by nature and gives great power to those who possess it, is too lofty for vulgar and base men; not only do they not deserve to possess it, but they might even despise it if they obtained it without effort: therefore it must be kept away from them. Truth surpasses even the faculties of ordinary men: only well-prepared and wise men should be made partakers of it».6.

In her article entitled Perché l’Accademia venne chiusa: Filosofia e Iniziazione, Daphne Varenya Eleusinia fully hits, in my opinion, the issue of the sacredness of Philo-Sophia as ‘sacred knowledge’. She points out, in fact, that students are usually taught that, out of the blue, the ancient Greeks would have passed from the mists of Myth (judged, depending on one’s position, either as a sort of ‘Golden Age’ or as the period of humanity’s infancy; both theses absurd and false) to the supposed ‘rational’ dimension of Philosophy. We have, therefore, on the one hand – as this researcher points out – the imaginative and naive Hellenes of the ‘mythological fairy tales’, and on the other the ‘rational miracle’ of Hellenic Philosophy, as if the two had no relation and were not inspired by the same Deities!7

Julius Evola

If we remain faithful, Eleusinia continues, to the teachings of the ancients, we must instead, in a certain sense, rewrite the history of philosophy, meaning, of course, only what can be considered as such, the authentic love of divine wisdom that makes invaders, «bearers of thyrsus, initiates and epopts, those who – as Proclus claimed – are part of the choir that sings the mysterious truth about the divine»8.

For this researcher, true Philosophy, the one that comes from the Gods (and thus not the one based on the mere opinions of mortals, i.e. three quarters of what one can read in a common modern Philosophy textbook) reveals and leads to Contemplation (Epopteia) of the same luminous Divine Forms that the blessed “Contemplants” (Epoptis) of the “white nights of light” encountered, to use the words of the Eleusinian Initiate Callimachus of Cyrene, in the “common sanctuary of all humanity”, in “Eleusis perfumed with incense”. And that is why, as she rightly points out, «not everything that contemporaries classify as ‘Philosophy’ can be considered worthy of this sacred name: true Philosophy is a mystery and symbolic formulation, just like the myths, about the Mysteries concerning the Gods, the essence of all things, the Forms and nature of all entities, and the truth that makes entities and souls coexist, until it reunites the Philosopher with the “maternal Source” and makes him return to his father’s Port, the Port of Eusebeia»9.

But Greek Philosophy, whether we understand it as Sacred Knowledge and love for Divine Wisdom, or as a school of life and a gymnasium of reflection, meditation, introspection and elevation, unlike now-extinct species such as Homo Erectus or HomoNeanderthalensis, is anything but a thing of the past. It is still alive and pulsating today, and despite the heavy and undeniable social conditioning of two thousand years of Christianity, which has altered part of its nature and its intrinsic message, it continues to form the very basis of our formamentis and cultural background.

Giorgio Giacometti, writer and lecturer in philosophy, in an interesting essay entitled Meditare Plotino10, states that «in this we are helped by the ancient texts themselves, which in order to aid concentration go from point of view to point of view (hence the appearance of contradiction and eclecticism in them)»11 and that «to this help we must add that of modern texts and masters that provide us with the key to reading and meditating on these writings»12. But, from my point of view, it is rather the opposite. No author, no philologist, and no self-styled modern ‘philosopher’ will ever be able to give us the right keys to read the ancient Philo-Sophia, and especially the Platonic and Neo-Platonic Philo-Sophia. Such keys to interpretation, if we are not satisfied with the more external aspects (the wrapping, we might say), can only be attained in two ways, through a Mystery initiation and the associated gradual process of elevation/learning under the careful guidance of a Mystagogue, or, in a profane (and therefore necessarily incomplete or partial) manner, through a prolonged and arduous careful reading of the texts of the Masters of the past, accompanied by a propaedeutic but indispensable cathartic stripping away of any preconceived prejudices dictated by the socio-cultural and religious conditioning of the contemporary world.

Giorgio Giacometti, again in Meditare Plotino, referring to the studies of the French philosopher and theologian Pierre Hadot – and in particular to the latter’s essay entitled Esercizi spirituali e Filosofia antica13 – strongly emphasises, as we have seen, the role of Philosophy as ασκησις, that is, as an exercise or meditation. In fact, he reminds us how Hadot, moving from the consideration of how ancient Philosophy interprets itself as an exercise, has come to understand how ancient Tradition continues to live in us, mostly unconsciously (as power or latency) and how it can speak to the discomfort of contemporary man certainly more and better than other Traditions, including Christian and Oriental ones.

From this point of view, based on Hadot’s studies, Philosophy presents itself first and foremost as the art of living, or as the art of life and death, or, if we want to be even more precise, as the art of knowing how to live and how to die. And it is certainly no coincidence that such a definition is par excellence the same as that of the Mystical Tradition, and of the Eleusinian one in particular, as we shall see in detail later on.

As early as 1928, the well-known Dutch theosophist and esotericist Johannes Jacobus Van der Leeuw, in his famous essay The Conquest of illusion14, reminded us that Philosophy should be understood above all as the pursuit of life and that it is more than the love of wisdom, unless we understand wisdom as something other than knowledge. According to Van der Leeuw, wisdom itself is knowledge and experience, and therefore it is life. As a consequence, the pursuit of wisdom must also be understood as the pursuit of life. But true Philosophy must not limit itself to being a mere intellectual solution to problems. In Plato’s words, Philosophy is born of wonder, and the true Philosopher is the one who continues to wonder at life, who never ceases to do so, not the one who is certain of having solved what lies beyond all solution. It is profoundly true, then, as Van der Leeuw teaches us, that until we are able to see the wonders of life around us, unless we see ourselves as enveloped in a mystery that defies our daring exploration, we are not yet on the authentic path of Philosophy.