Sub Specie Interioritatis/en

📖 Fonte primaria: corpus Ur (1927-1928) — Krur (1929)
Questa pagina deriva direttamente dal corpus della rivista Ur (1927-1928) e Krur (1929) curata dal Gruppo di UR sotto la direzione di Julius Evola con la partecipazione di Arturo Reghini, Giulio Parise, Ercole Quadrelli, Guido De Giorgio, Luigi Valli, Ercole Quadrelli (Abraxa) e altri collaboratori. Le tre annate sono state riedite a cura di Evola con il titolo Introduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell'Io. Documenti Drive ISI-CNV: 📖 UR-KRUR — Corpus integrale OCR rivisto — le tre annate complete della rivista (Ur 1927, Ur 1928, Krur 1929) in formato Google Doc consultabile. 📁 Folder EVOLA UR KRUR — cartella Drive ISI-CNV con tutti i materiali UR-KRUR e l'opera evoliana correlata. Edizione di riferimento: Julius Evola (a cura di), Introduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell'Io, 3 voll., Edizioni Mediterranee, Roma, ed. critica 1971. Trad. fr.: Introduction à la magie, trad. Gérard Boulanger, Milano, Archè, 1984.

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«Sub Specie Interioritatis» is the first article of the journal UR in its first issue (January 1927), and therefore holds a programmatic position within the Group's corpus: it is the first-person testimony of Arturo Reghini (under the pseudonym «Pietro Negri») of his own direct experience of spiritual perception that occurred around 1913 in the hall of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. The article is both an autobiographical document and a phenomenological treatise on the condition of «seeing sub specie interioritatis» — of experiencing reality not as a body that contains consciousness, but as consciousness that contains the body.

The title is a formula coined by Reghini himself in conscious opposition to the «sub specie aeternitatis» of Spinoza (Ethica, V, 31): while Spinoza described the intellectual knowledge of the eternal from the standpoint of speculative reason, Reghini describes the operative perception of the interiority of being, lived in the body, as an inversion of the ordinary relationship between consciousness and body. It is, avowedly, an experience of an initiatic nature: elementary, fleeting, but real and direct, which initiates the one who lives it into a different quality of existence.

For the Paret-ISI-CNV School, the article is one of the texts of first transmission of what it concretely, phenomenologically means to recognize spiritual reality — not through theory but through perceived experience. It constitutes for every serious student a text to be meditated upon carefully, because Reghini describes with great precision a threshold of experience that, in analogous forms, can also be crossed by those who practice the School's discipline.

I. The experience of Palazzo Strozzi (circa 1913)

Reghini recounts that the experience happened to him while crossing the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (seat of the Institute of Higher Studies). In the preceding minutes there was nothing preparatory: no meditation, no religious emotion, no special practice, no philosophical speculation. Reghini insists on this: «the transition occurred independently of any scientific or philosophical speculation, of any cerebral activity». The experience presented itself «spontaneously, without transition, without warning, like a thief in the night».

For the duration of a few instants — sufficient for Reghini to live it fully and become aware of it — his perception of the relationship between his own body and reality inverted. He did not feel his body crossing the courtyard as an object among other objects; he felt his own body inside his own consciousness, and this consciousness was no longer «mental» or «interior» in the ordinary sense, but was an absolute dimension that contained the body, the courtyard, the building, the city — the entire material reality:

«I did not have the perception of the incorporeality of my own body, but I felt my own body within myself, I felt everything sub specie interioritatis. Of course, one must here try to assume the words within, interior, inner in an ageometric sense, simply as words suited, at best, to express the sense of the inversion of position or relationship between body and consciousness.»

The affective and perceptual qualities of this state are described with great technical precision:

«Powerful, overwhelming, dominating, positive, original impression»
«Hieratic solemnity, calm and silent power, Stellar hardness» (with the capital D indicating an ontological and not an emotional quality)
«A note of the eternal poem what I felt»
Sensation of eternity contained in the instant, of indisputable certainty of one's own being without limit
Simultaneous coexistence of two perceptions of reality — the ordinary corporeal one and the pure spiritual one — not contradictory in experience even if contradictory to rational analysis

Reghini emphasizes that what he experienced was not emotional mysticism, was not religious ecstasy, was not a vision: it was a structural perception of reality, as precise as a sensory perception but of a totally different nature.

II. The characteristics of «seeing sub specie interioritatis»

Reghini, after describing the event, analyzes its characteristics phenomenologically. Four distinctive traits of «seeing sub specie interioritatis» according to Pietro Negri:

It is not incorporeality but an inversion of the consciousness-body relationship. The body does not disappear and is not negated: it continues to exist and be felt. But it ceases to be what contains consciousness; it becomes what is contained in consciousness. It is a topological inversion of a completely new kind, ageometric (Reghini insists on the adjective because there is no physical «where» in which this interiority is situated)
Coexistence with ordinary perception, not substitution. The state does not cancel material reality, does not reduce its presence, does not make it illusory in the sense of solipsism or speculative idealism. Material reality continues to be there, exactly as before — but it has another status. Reghini deduces that one can have two perceptions of reality simultaneously, and that ordinary material reality is a function of corporeal life, not the only possible modality of feeling being
Independence from speculative preparation (and therefore the necessity of techniques different from philosophy to induce it). Reghini explicitly excludes that philosophical study alone can produce this experience: «it does not seem indeed that rational speculation can lead further than a simple conceptual abstraction, of a more or less negative character, and incapable of suggesting or provoking the direct lived experience, the perception of immateriality». The initiatic tradition has therefore developed non-discursive methods (corporeal techniques, ascesis of the will, rites, mantras, exercises of doubling) precisely because only through this path can the authentic experience be produced
Initiatic function. The experience, even fleeting, leaves a permanent mark on the individual who lives it: it is not forgotten, it is not reduced to a dream or illusion, it changes the quality of the one who has had it. Reghini calls it «a first effective direct perception of what the Kabbalists called the holy inner palace, and Filaletus the occult palace of the King, and also of what Saint Teresa called the inner castle. As elementary as it is, it is an experience that initiates a new, double life; the hermetic dragon grows wings and becomes amphibious, capable of living on earth and detaching itself from earth»

The recognition of converging traditions made by Reghini is decisive: the same experience — under different names — is described by the Kabbalah (hekhal qodesh), by the alchemical Filaletus (palatium occultum Regis), by Saint Teresa of Avila (castillo interior), by hermetic alchemy (the Winged Dragon of Lambsprinck). They are different formulations of the same science of the operative tradition, exactly as this wiki maintains for magnetism.

III. The inversion of the reality-matter relationship

Reghini develops in the second part of the article a broader analysis that makes «Sub Specie Interioritatis» a small phenomenological treatise on the very concept of material reality. The customary way of living identifies «reality» with «resistance» — what is real is what resists, the compact, the massive, the impenetrable. Things «are, so to speak, all the more real the more solid, impenetrable, unassailable they are». But:

This identification reality = solidity is a function of corporeal life — accustomed to resting on solid ground and manipulating solid objects. It is not a given in the structure of being, it is constructed by the particular condition of the human body on Earth
The typical characteristics of material reality gradually attenuate as one passes from solid matter to liquid, to fluid, to gaseous. Animal magnetism itself (cfr. Alchimia e Magnetismo) has already shown that human matter itself has fluidic levels and not only solid ones
Modern scientific analysis leads, through «the successive stages of molecular and atomic disintegration, to a conception of matter» radically different from common sense. Early twentieth-century physics — Reghini writes in 1927, after Bohr but before mature quantum mechanics — had already made it evident that matter is not a «solid thing» but a dynamic configuration of forces practically empty
Therefore: material reality «is not the only way of feeling reality». Other ways exist, and one of these is precisely the «seeing sub specie interioritatis» — a way that does not negate matter but repositions it as one of the modalities of the All

IV. Ordinary deafness and the problem of teaching

Reghini poses the question that every reader would have formulated: why do not all have this experience? And why is it not taught how to produce it?

On ordinary deafness Reghini advances an elegant hypothesis: «Usually the attention of consciousness is so fixed on the sense of material reality, that every other sensation goes unnoticed». Musical analogy: «The melodic theme played by the violins usually draws all the attention and the deep accompaniment of the cellos and double basses goes unnoticed». Spiritual reality is always present, but the «volume» of ordinary material perception covers its «low and deep tone». Only through a shift of attention — spontaneous, as happened to him, or cultivated by a practice — does it become audible. Further analogy: «When once, in the mountains, on a large flowery meadow, the dull and even buzzing produced by countless insects suddenly struck my ear, as if by chance, or rather, only suddenly and without apparent reason did I become conscious of that buzzing, certainly pre-existing my sudden perception».

On the problem of teaching Reghini is cautious, and it is the caution of one who knows that every easy answer would be false. «It is not easy to answer exhaustively these and other questions that can be asked about it». The experience that happened to him cannot be produced on command by any mechanical technique; it can be disposed by initiatic practice, it can be facilitated by the encounter with an authentic master, it can be recognized when it arrives — but not forced nor programmed. It remains in the final analysis an event of grace, according to the Christian formulation, or of sudden mukti in the Indian tradition, or of wu (悟, satori) in Chan-Zen.

Reghini's implicit advice to the reader of UR is therefore to not expect infallible techniques, but to work with patient discipline — according to the Dry Path of Abraxa — and to recognize when the experience occurs, without forcing it nor chasing it.

V. The historical and doctrinal significance of the article

«Sub Specie Interioritatis» has — in the history of twentieth-century Italian Hermeticism — the significance of a historical document of the first order. For several reasons:

It is the first public testimony of an authentic initiatic experience made by a twentieth-century Italian intellectual with full philosophical and Hermetic awareness of his own act. Neither Steiner (1861-1925) nor Crowley (1875-1947) nor Guénon (1886-1951) ever did the same in such a circumscribed and specific way
It establishes the plane of reality on which the entire UR-KRUR journal moves: not philosophical speculation, not parlor occultism, not séance spiritualism, but documentation of experiences that the Group recognizes as legitimate and that it proposes as a paradigm for others
Identifies the experience of the modern initiate with that of classical Christian mystics (Saint Teresa), Kabbalists, alchemists (Filaletus), and — implicitly — Indian yogis and Zen masters. The doctrinal point is explicit: it is the same experience under different names and cultures
It poses, with discretion, the question of the relationship between experience and initiatic legitimation. Reghini does not become a master by virtue of having had the experience; he recounts it as a testimony among others. Authentic initiatic transmission occurs through other channels — chain, order, living master — and personal experience, however real, is a confirmation of tradition and not a substitute for it

For the Paret-ISI-CNV School, Reghini is one of the essential points of reference — not to imitate the specific experience (which does not repeat on command), but to recognize the characteristic traits of an authentic event when it occurs in one's own path, and to not confuse it with intense affective experiences, emotional mysticism, or productions of the imagination that can mimic its traits without having its substance.

VI. Bibliography

Pietro Negri [Arturo Reghini], Sub Specie Interioritatis, in UR — Rivista di indirizzi per una Scienza dell'Io, year I (1927) no. 1, pp. 1-7 — main primary source
Arturo Reghini, Cagliostro. Documenti editi ed inediti, Atanòr, Rome 1924
Arturo Reghini, Le parole sacre e di passo dei primi tre gradi e il massimo mistero massonico, Atanòr, Rome 1922
Arturo Reghini, I numeri sacri nella tradizione pitagorica massonica, Rome 1947 (posthumous)
Baruch Spinoza, Ethica more geometrico demonstrata, V, prop. 31 — the formula «sub specie aeternitatis» to which Reghini opposes
Eugenio Filalete (Thomas Vaughan), Lumen de Lumine, London 1651 — on the «palatium occultum Regis»
Santa Teresa d'Avila, Las Moradas o Castillo interior, 1577

Sources

Primary sources of the UR-KRUR corpus

The primary source of reference for this page is the corpus of the journal Ur (1927-1928) and Krur (1929), edited by the Gruppo di UR directed by Julius Evola with the participation of Arturo Reghini, Giulio Parise, Ercole Quadrelli, Guido De Giorgio, Luigi Valli and other collaborators. The three years have been republished edited by Julius Evola under the title Introduzione alla Magia (3 vols., Milan, Bocca / Casa Editrice Atanòr / Edizioni Mediterranee, various editions from 1955; critical ed. Mediterranee, Rome, 1971).

Gruppo di UR, Rivista Ur, years 1927-1928 (12 issues each).
Gruppo di KRUR, Rivista Krur, year 1929 (12 issues).
Julius Evola (ed.), Introduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell'Io, 3 vols., Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome, critical ed. 1971 (and subsequent reprints).
French edition: Groupe d'Ur, Introduction à la magie, trans. Gérard Boulanger, Milan, Archè, 1984.

OCR Drive ISI-CNV Corpus — the entire corpus of the three years UR-KRUR is available in revised OCR: Drive Document with the complete three years (folder EVOLA UR KRUR).

Historical-traditional framework

Julius Evola, La Tradizione Ermetica, Bari, Laterza, 1931 (and reprints Mediterranee).
Julius Evola, Il Cammino del Cinabro, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1963 (intellectual autobiography with the first-hand account of the UR-KRUR experience).
Arturo Reghini, I Numeri Sacri nella Tradizione Pitagorica Massonica, Rome, Atanòr, 1947.
Arturo Reghini, Per la Restituzione della Geometria Pitagorica, Atanòr, 1935.
Renato Del Ponte, Evola e il magico Gruppo di UR, Borzano (RE), SeaR, 1994.
Gianfranco de Turris (ed.), Esoterismo e Fascismo, Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome, 2006.

Secondary reference bibliography

Hans Thomas Hakl, Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, Equinox, 2013 (chapters on the Italian traditionalist school).
Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment, SUNY Press, 1994 (for the context of the European esoteric revival).
Marco Paret, ISI-CNV materials on the Italian Hermetic tradition and on the link between UR-KRUR, operative alchemy and the magnetism of the School.