Magia dellImmagine/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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«Magia dell'Immagine» is a technical-operative article published by Abraxa in the seventh-eighth issue of UR year I (1927), pp. 261-268, which expounds how the image — not discursive thought, not the word, not physical action — is the principal tool of magical operation in the awakened initiate. The article constitutes one of the most condensed and operationally valuable technical texts of the journal, because it provides the practical elements of mental magical work: the difference between thought and image, the solar-lunar structure of the imaginative act, the mercury-sulfur amalgam of the ignited image, the projection of the image onto the other.

Abraxa's central thesis: «In an awakened being the mind is no longer "thought"». Thought — the discursive sequence of concepts — is the form of mind of the ordinary man, slow, laborious, partial. The awakened initiate replaces thought with the activity that determines by instantaneous images — a mind that operates through plastic presences instead of conceptual sequences, and that projects these presences into the world to produce magical effects. With this form of mind, the initiate «creates, destroys and transforms in the matter of feelings and sensations in himself; with images he acts on his own organism; with images he works on others. He replaces the material act and the "will" of men with the force of the image».

For the Paret-ISI-CNV School, Abraxa's article is one of the cornerstone texts of operative practice: it describes with great clarity the difference between active imagination (operative, ignited, projective) and passive imagination (dreamy, wandering, fluctuating), and gives the technical elements for cultivating the former.

I. The passage from thought to image

Abraxa emphasizes that the change of mental function between the ordinary man and the initiate is not a change of content (thinking different things) but a change of mode (thinking in a different way):

The ordinary man operates through discursive thought: sequences of concepts linked by logical relationships, unfolding in time, requiring mental effort, producing mediated effects (they must be translated into words, commands, actions)
The awakened initiate operates through instantaneous image: plastic forms present all together in the mind, which do not need to unfold in time, producing direct effects (the image itself is the action)

The passage from one mode to the other is the object of the work: «awakening to timeless rapidity». The discursive mind is asleep relative to the imaginal mind; the initiate wakes up when his mind begins to operate in images.

II. The internal structure of the magical image

Abraxa expounds the internal structure of the magical image with great technical precision, applying the alchemical schema of principles: every authentic magical image is a compound of mercury (fluidic feeling, lunar pole ☽) and sulfur (mental act that fixes it, solar pole ☉):

«The center always reduces to the preparation of the caduceus: the emotional state acts as fluidic mercury which is fixed in the image, which is then ignited by the mental act: that is, everything lies in the amalgam, as rapid as it is complete, of feeling with the image, and in the activity to be maintained towards the latter, on which, like a bundle of solar rays gathered in the focus of a lens, the entire mind must be concentrated.»

Three necessary elements:

Fluidic feeling (mercury ☽): an intense but non-passionate emotional state — not craving emotion or craving-fear, but a pure affective quality that serves as the fluid matter to which the image fixes itself. Without feeling, the image remains «dry» — thought, not magical image
Mental act that ignites (sulfur ☉): concentrated attention that kindles and fixes the image like a solar lens concentrates the sun's rays in its focus. Without mental act, the image is dreamy — it fluctuates, it does not operate
Rapid and complete amalgam: the two elements must not remain separate nor succeed each other in time — they must fuse immediately. The trained initiate is the one who performs the amalgam instantaneously without making it a sequence

The result is the androgynous fiery mercury of the alchemical tradition — the mercury that is both active and passive, solar and lunar, possessing the fluidity of the feminine but the fixation of the masculine. This is the magical image in the proper sense.

III. Theurgic invocations

Abraxa immediately applies the schema to the specific case of theurgic invocations — the practices of evoking entities or divinities of the supersensible:

«In theurgic invocations, in the fluidic sense of one's entire being, the various images that express the attributes referred to the entity or divinity must be actualized. The mind will pass from one to the other, performing a series of transformations apt to produce the necessary exaltation so that sympathy and communication are created.»

The invoking magician does not «think» of Isis, Mithras, the Solar Archangel: he actualizes in his fluidic-mental being the images of their characteristic attributes (for Isis: the veiled woman, the wings of the swallow, the lotus, the sistrum; for Mithras: the young man in tunic with scarlet cloak, the crown of fire, the sacrificed bull; for the Solar Archangel: the lance of light, the eyes of fire, the white wings), passing from one to the other until generating a state of exaltation such as to open the relationship with the invoked power.

A particularly powerful example given by Abraxa:

«A general image of great power is that of a dark body that consumes itself and falls down giving way to a body made of radiant light and glorious force. This image in reality flashes in all moments of sudden, mortal danger, in an instant too rapid for common human consciousness to perceive it; and it rises again and restores and transfuses force into the organism as it abandons itself, and sinks into sleep.»

The image of the «dark body that falls and radiant light that rises» is — according to Abraxa — one of the primal images activatable by the initiate. It is the same image that, in instantaneous form, flashes spontaneously in human beings in situations of mortal danger (and which explains the frequent sensation of «resurrection» after escaping an accident) and in the passage from wakefulness to deep sleep. The initiate enacts it consciously as a magical gesture of regeneration.

IV. The projection of the image onto the other

The most technically advanced part of the article concerns the magical operation on the other through the projection of the image. Abraxa expounds it in two phases:

A. Reading the images of others

The initiate who has purified his sensibility — «renounced, exhausted, extinguished everything in feeling and willing that is desire, craving or aversion, sympathy or antipathy, mania for affirmation, attachment, egoism and instinctive reactivity» — sees the feelings of people not as inferential psychological states, but as actual images that he perceives with an inner eye:

«With a firm, calm, collected, impassive soul, the magician discerns with the sovereign eye in figures the feelings that might descend upon him as well as those of whoever, before him, is fixed by him.»

This is authentic clairvoyance — not vision of aura colors or fantastic astral symbols, but plastic perception of the thought-figures moving in the other. An angry woman has a precise figure in her heart; a frightened child another precise figure; a man about to lie yet another figure. The initiate sees them as the ordinary man sees colors and forms in the physical world.

B. Magical modification of the other

Once the figure in the other is seen, the initiate can act directly upon it:

«On these images, if he wishes, he can act directly: it suffices that his mind assumes them and projects them transformed, it suffices that his eye with a seeing-commanding changes them into others, so that in an occult and inescapable way a congruent alteration is produced in the soul of the other person.»

Precise technique: the initiate sees the figure present in the other, reproduces it in his own mind, transforms it into a different figure, reprojects the transformed figure onto the other. By the law of correspondence between image and state of mind (and by the microcosm-macrocosm identity of the Tabula Smaragdina), the transformation of the figure in the other produces the corresponding transformation of his state of mind.

C. Transfusion of a determined feeling

A third technique expounded by Abraxa: the initiate can evoke in himself the figure of a specific feeling he wishes to communicate to the other, charge it with his own fluid, then — fixing his mind on the other person — perform interiorly «the gesture of taking from one place and placing in another», seeing the figure install itself in the heart of the other person:

«If he wishes, he can evoke in himself the figure of a given feeling, ignite it and saturate it with his fluid; then, keeping his mind fixed on another person, enacting interiorly the gesture of taking from one place and placing in another, he sees the figure in that person, in the heart, and that same feeling or state will be transfused into them.»

All these operations — Abraxa notes — are possible even for those who have not yet "arrived" (i.e., for those who have not completed integral initiatic realization), provided they have sufficiently developed the solar-fixing quality of attention and the purification of their feelings from egotic passions. They are practicable at various degrees of maturity, and their efficacy grows with the quality attained by the operator.

V. The practice of image-ways

Abraxa also indicates specific images that function as ways of communication with determined cosmic forces, and that have the value of constant operative keys:

The slow ascent of the Moon on the horizon — image-way for communication with the cosmic forces of dissolution, passage, nocturnal morphogenesis, creative shadow
The Sun rising dispersing the fog of night — image-way for communication with the cosmic forces of creation, affirmation, awakening. It is the image connected to Apathanatismos (Mithras-Helios-Aion of the Magical Papyrus) and to the alchemical Albedo
The sense of Light evoked in concentration — favors the experience of the «light» aspect of the subtle body (the white rose of Morfologia Occulta)
The sense of Fire evoked in concentration — favors the experience of the «heat» aspect of the subtle body (the Saturnine-osseous dimension of Occult Morphology)

These image-ways constitute an essential operative alphabet, and every initiatic tradition has developed its own. The invocations of the Magical Papyrus of Paris use this alphabet, as do Byzantine sacred iconography, the visualizations of the Tibetan bardo, the visualizationist practices of vajrayāna, the techniques of energetic awakening of the modern School.

VI. The three concluding practical rules

Abraxa closes the article with three essential practical rules for those who practice the magic of the image:

Images are not floating "spiritual" things, but almost tangible objects. «If you proceed in these practices, you will see born ever more distinctly in you the knowledge, that thoughts and feelings are not incorporeal and "spiritual" things floating in the air, but almost tangible objects in motion, which can be handled, moved, projected, altered, placed, charged or discharged, and each of which has its own form». The classic modern distinction between «matter» and «thought» ceases: everything is substance, and the substance of thoughts is that of thought-figures
Images can be arbitrary, but they are more effective if they "allude" to the real forms of the states they fix. Conventional images (crosses, stars, seals, alphabetic symbols) work if connected to real states; «living» images (dawn, light, fire, fluid, ascent, descent) work better because they are already open ways in the collective and cosmic mind
The eye of the seer knows the most powerful symbols. «He who sees can therefore suggest images that give the most powerful lever for mental magic; and he also knows symbols which, when plastically enacted in the imagination, imprint and conform it so as to lead to a real, effective contact with the powers that correspond to them». It is the task of the seer master (or of the seer initiatic treatise like Aurea Catena Homeri) to transmit the right symbols to the disciple

For the Paret-ISI-CNV School, these three rules are the foundation of training in active imagination — a central practice of the school — and apply both to individual concentration exercises and to the work of magnetic lodge chain.

VII. Bibliography

Abraxa, Magia dell'Immagine, in UR — Rivista di indirizzi per una Scienza dell'Io, year I (1927), pp. 261-268 — main primary source
Eo (probable Pietro Negri/Reghini), article in UR n. 7-8, p. 198 — on the «signs» of entities that generate thoughts/feelings (reference given by Abraxa)
Rudolf Steiner, Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? (1904) — on the difference between ordinary thought and active imagination
Carl Gustav Jung, Über die Archetypen des kollektiven Unbewussten (1934) — on active imagination
Henry Corbin, L'imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d'Ibn Arabi (1958) — on the mundus imaginalis
Athanasius Kircher, Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646), Mundus Subterraneus (1665) — on the theory of sympatheia and the cosmic image (cfr. Athanasius Kircher SJ alchimista e magnetista)
Giuliano Kremmerz, Opera Omnia — on the magical use of the image in ritual

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 volumes have been re-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.

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

Historical-traditional framework

Julius Evola, La Tradizione Ermetica, Bari, Laterza, 1931 (and Mediterranean reprints).
Julius Evola, Il Cammino del Cinabro, Milan, Scheiwiller, 1963 (intellectual autobiography with 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 the link between UR-KRUR, operative alchemy and magnetism of the School.