Article Archives - Visions & Prophecies

IMAGINATION & FANTASY by Claudia Caleffi

1 November 20232 November 2023visionieprofezie

The need and the quest for knowledge and, at the same time, its communication are intrinsic in the nature of the individual. The ability to narrate, whether through myth, fables, song, or poetry, is the fundamental and inalienable dimension of human thought through the use of words, images, and memories.

Scientifically, the parts of the brain that appear to have characterized the evolution of human beings seem to be the frontal lobe and the cortical areas, the areas specifically dedicated to language, imagination, and visualization.

In his writings, Tommaso Palamidessi emphasizes the importance of intellectual faculties such as willpower, attention, imagination, visualization, and memory.

These faculties enable us to empty the mind and focus on a specific goal, until reaching states of mind such meditation and and even beyond contemplation.

This is the art of knowing ourselves in our innermost being, as well as understanding Nature and the Cosmos and its dimensions. These faculties exist in both men and women in a latent state but can be activated and enhanced through appropriate, consistent, and targeted exercises.

The human soul, the most sublime part of the individual, has, among other faculties, the contemplative faculty and imagination, whether spontaneous or induced, which is both evocative and invoking. It is defined by these two qualities: creative imagination. Imagination and visualization are based on the universal laws of suggestion, which have the power to keep alive and awake the goal and purpose we have set.

Palamidessi writes:

“Creative imagination, when directed by the fire of a will animated by a precise intention, is as powerful as an oxyacetylene flame and can dissociate, unify, and transmute.”

It can happen to confuse the term imagination with fantasy, and use them interchangeably. But from their etymology differences can be noticed.

The word fantasy has its roots in Latin phantasia and Greek φαντασία (phantasia), which translates as appearance or manifestation. Fantasy tends to have a more ephemeral and abstract connotation, with an association to the term phantom.

On the other hand, imagination comes from the Latin word imago, meaning image.

Imagination represents the sensory perception of reality, capturing the sense of the phrase: in me mago agere – to work deeply within me. Imagination is the combination of two Latin words, imus (meaning bottom or depth) and agere (meaning to act), suggesting a deep inner process that moves the individual.

So, we could consider imagination the means to make visible what fantasy, invention, and creativity conceive. Fantasy might be the source of ideas, while imagination is the process through which these ideas are made visible or realized in some way.

Bibliography:

DICTIONARY OF THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE – Treccani
ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE – Zanichelli

From the Series of the Archaeosophical School:
AWAKENING AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CENTERS OF STRENGTH – Booklet 15, Tommaso Palamidessi, Archeosofica
ARTISTIC ASCETICISM, COLORS AND PAINTING – Booklet 27, Tommaso Palamidessi, Archeosofica
THE DAILY SPIRITUAL EXERCISES OF THE ARCHAEOSOPHIST- Booklet 41, page 3, Tommaso Palamidessi, Archeosofica

WHO IS MORGAN ROBERTSON? LIGHTS AND SHADOWS…

26 May 202327 May 2023visionieprofezie

“It’s a cold, moonless spring night when the keel of a large passenger ship sails across the Atlantic.

It sails so fast, in defiance of all caution, it’s about to break any crossing record.

It is technologically at the forefront, such that the builders consider it unsinkable.

Suddenly, the shape of a big iceberg appears in the darkness.

Too late to correct the course; the impact is inevitable.”

This is not a newspaper article about what happened to the famous transatlantic Titanic but some extracts from the dramatic story reported in the book “Futility or The Wreck of the Titan” (“Futility” in the first edition of 1898), written by Morgan Robertson and translated in the Italian edition with the title “Il Naufragio del Titan”. The correspondence and analogies in this novel, written 14 years before the Titanic tragedy, are numerous.

The coincidences between reality and imagination are so incredible that it is normal to wonder if this novel is really a prophecy or the accurate and meticulous analysis of an event that, given those characteristics, could have happened statistically.

Even today this novel continues to stir curiosity and questions, fuelling an aura of mystery. Who is Morgan Robertson?

He is an american writer and “inventor”. Inventor because he claimed to have designed the prototype of the periscope used on boats, however he did not obtain the patent granted to other inventors.

He was born in 1861, son of a navy captain. He was embarked for about 10 years on merchant ships and for these reasons he knew the sea, its dangers and pitfalls…

Moreover, at that time, maritime transport was almost as important and fundamental as the air transport of our day.

As for the hypothesis that a ship could be wrecked because of the collision with ice blocks, it was not a literary fantasy but a reality and indeed the most feared event on the North Atlantic route.

Not to mention that about 6 years prior to the publication of the book, there were rumors about the construction of a boat able to beat every record in speed and size but was, above all, defined unsinkable thanks to its hull divided into 16 watertight compartments, therefore designed to stay afloat even if some compartments were to have loaded water.

In the light of these considerations, can we still call Morgan Robertson a seer? Or was it simply his intention to warn us not to underestimate an impending danger?

Even the first title of the work seems very eloquent to me: “Futility”!

It is difficult to say and we will never know, even though he calls himself a psychic, one who drew his inspirations and ideas from “his companion in astral writing”.

To support this peculiarity, another one of his books comes to our rescue, written in 1914, a year before his death, entitled “Beyond the Spectrum”.

In this work, the writer tells us about a war between the United States and Japan as a consequence of a surprise attack by the Japanese, with blinding weapons, on a naval expedition.

Once more, 27 years in advance, Robertson predicts what will happen in Pearl Harbor (actually a military base), and which will determine the entry of the United States of America in World War II.

MAGIC AND DIVINATION by Elisabetta Meacci

12 May 2023visionieprofezie

The Magician, which can be associated with the Hermit tarot card

Talking about magic nowadays might seem inappropriate. As soon as we hear this word we think of the illusionist, the magician who performs tricks and with special effects. Or we think about those fantasy film characters who are very eccentric and bizarre. In short, magic with fairy tales’ magic wand.

Not magic in the ancient sense of the term, no, it doesn’t immediately come to mind, in fact it seems something very distant from modern society, from this civilization of machines and technology, where everything is practical, immediate, visible, tangible.

A society where many call themselves “atheists” and are skeptical of everything which lies beyond their noses.

Magic as ancient wisdom, as development of faculties that every human being possesses more or less latently, doesn’t come to mind.

In reality, magic is a current topic and is alive in every time and every place. One may say that it is innate in us. From the most insignificant sign of superstition to the rituals of the great religions, magic survives and becomes part of the life of each of us. As if with a gesture or a strange power we could change the course of events. But is it really possible?

We live in a world made of exchanges, of relationships, of harmonies. Energetic exchanges, vital, with the environment around us, with nature, and with the people who make up our circle of human relationships.

We are bound with our physical body to the earth, to its radiations and its atmosphere, so it is necessary to learn to free ourselves from conditionings and to harmonize with the environment; our etheric body is related to the etheric body of the earth and the Cosmos, and we are influenced by it, so we must also harmonize with it, possibly using it; the same applies to the astral and the mental energy bodies, which have relations and links with those of the earth and the Cosmos.

One of the purposes of sacred magic is to bring all these forces into balance in order to open a path to the Celestial Spheres.

The magical art knows the wise use of colors, of perfumes, of musical notes, of symbols, and of magnetic or vital currents of our body, for the purpose of transforming the human soul into an immortal angelic being.

So divination gains an important role. In Chinese philosophy contained in I KING, the Book of Changes, one of the most important texts about divination, everything that happens in the visible world is the extrication of an image, an idea present in the invisible world. The seeds of everything are in the higher, invisible and spiritual worlds. Here on earth these seeds materialize, as it were, in time. If I can predict in advance, I can somehow act to have a better destiny. The ability to intuitively know, and discover these spiritual seeds is the prerogative of wise or holy people who are used to being in contact with these higher dimensions. It is through them that a sort of circuit is created between heaven or the supersensible world of ideas, earth or the corporeal world of visibility, and man.

AN UNSEEN SIDE OF JULES VERNE by Claudia Caleffi

12 May 202312 May 2023visionieprofezie

I don’t know about you, dear friends, but despite having read many novels of this author, I had missed one of his works that once again demonstrates the extraordinary nature of this character.

The title is “Paris in the 20th Century”, written in 1863 but discarded by the publisher, left forgotten in a drawer and published posthumously in 1994.

Once again, from this work, it emerges how Verne anticipates the times with a new literary genre. Verne has been called the father of modern science fiction and one of the authors who has most influenced the literature of the “fantastic”.

In his earlier novels we can find that atmosphere of collective optimism, of positive—and perhaps utopian—attitude towards a better life thanks to technological discoveries and industrial development. Slowly, with advancing age and perhaps because of painful family events, this perspective begins to fade.

In this story, the mistrust towards progress, machines and a future in which the individual risks losing oneself really transpires. That’s Verne’s intuition, that’s the first dystopian novel!

The paradox of the story lies in the fact that once again the futuristic imagination, the extraordinary foresight describe, in the mid-nineteenth century, the city (and the lifestyle, I might add) in which the work is published a century later.

With acute irony, “Paris in the 20th Century” is a metropolis organized: by machines that move by means of compressed air, on elevated tracks: one for the outward journey and the other for the return journey; by communication systems that recall network immateriality; by carriages held together by electromagnetic force.

No need for maintenance, no smoke, no steam, cars move thanks to an invisible force: an air engine dilated by gas combustion. At night Paris is bright as day with a “glow comparable to that of the sun”.

Here is a brief passage:

“The men of 1960 were not surprised by these wonders, they took advantage of them daily without any contentment, with their fast pace, with their hasty pace and their American impetus. It was clear that the demon of prosperity pushed them forward without rest and delay”.

“Paris”, but this noun could also be replaced with “The World”, pursues a spasmodic search for profit and exploitation and in the triumph of the cynical logic of the economy.

In this society, there is no longer a place for Art, for writers, for professors, for poets and musicians; libraries no longer exist. The radiant progress of science is contrasted by the dark death of Art.

Authors like Balzac and Dumas were unknown to make way for new poetic verses such as “Electric Harmonies” or “Meditations on Oxygen”, not to mention the “Poetic Parallelogram” or the “Decarbonated Odes”. Once again, Verne is able to cast his gaze far into the future.

A Walk Through Paris Early 20th Century – World Capital of Art