Apathanatismos/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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The Apathanatismos (Ancient Greek ἀπαθανατισμός, "immortalization procedure", from ἀ-/ἀπό- privative + θάνατος "death") is a Greco-Egyptian ritual text from the 4th-5th century AD preserved in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris (PGM IV.475-829, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France), which describes an initiatic operation of regeneration and ascent of the initiate through the seven planetary heavens up to the vision and union with the "Supreme God". First published in 1903 by the German classical philologist Albrecht Dieterich under the title Eine Mithrasliturgie ("A Mithras Liturgy"), it was taken up, translated into Italian and commented on by the Gruppo di UR in issues 3-5 of year I (1927) of the journal as a cornerstone text of the operative procedures of the late antique initiatic tradition.

In the thought of the Paret-ISI-CNV School, the Apathanatismos represents — together with the Corpus Hermeticum, the Papyrus Bruce Coptic-Gnostic and the Tabula Smaragdina of Ermete Trismegisto — one of the proof-texts of the existence in late antiquity of an operative practice that integrates divine invocation, breath control, visualization and cosmological ascent with outcomes consistent with those described by the internal alchemies of the East (cf. Alchimia e Magnetismo sect. XVI on Taoist neidan). Its presence in the papyrus shows that the doctrine and practice of initiatic regeneration were operative within the Greco-Egyptian culture of Alexandria, independently of the hypothesis of a primary Indo-Shivaite origin (cf. Daniélou-Gordon White comparison in Alchimia e Magnetismo sect. XV.6).

I. The Magical Papyrus of Paris and Dieterich's edition

The Great Magical Papyrus of Paris (Suppl. gr. 574 of the BnF) is one of the most important manuscripts of Greco-Egyptian magical literature to have survived from antiquity. Dated to the 4th-5th century AD, it contains a collection of rituals, invocations, formulas and operative procedures of various origins, predominantly Greco-Egyptian but with Jewish, Gnostic and Persian elements. The section PGM IV.475-829 — operative heart of the papyrus — describes a ritual of immortalization structured in seven invocatory Logoi that correspond to the ascent through the seven cosmic levels up to the vision of the "Supreme God".

In 1903 the classical philologist Albrecht Dieterich (1866-1908), professor at Heidelberg, published its critical edition with German translation and extensive historical-religious commentary under the title Eine Mithrasliturgie. The attribution to the official Mithraic cult, supported by Dieterich, is today considered by the majority of scholars to be an over-interpretation: the text is more likely a syncretistic magical-theurgical composition from the Alexandrian area, in which elements of Mithraism merge with Neoplatonic theurgy, Hermetic cosmology and Jewish mysticism. It remains certain, however, that the ritual belongs to an actual operative tradition of late antiquity, not to mere literary speculation, and that the states of consciousness and phenomena described — luminous glow, mutation of the air, vision of the celestial gates, ascent through the spheres — are recognizable in analogous accounts of the later initiatic tradition (Gnostic, Hermetic, Sufi, Rosicrucian).

II. The ritual structure: seven Logoi and ascent through the heavens

The ritual of the Apathanatismos is structured as a succession of seven invocatory Logoi (λόγοι, power-words, ritual formulas), each followed by precise bodily gestures and breathing techniques, resulting in a cosmological ascent through seven levels of the cosmos:

First Logos (Initial Invocation): the celebrant invokes the elementary cosmic powers ("Begetter, First Genesis", etc.) and declares himself a son of the cosmic Mother
Second Logos (Opening): the gates of heaven open; a breath falls upon the initiate; the celebrant must resist and direct his gaze upward
Third Logos (Vision of the seven Gods of the cosmos): the celebrant sees seven young Gods with black hair, in white tunics, and seven Goddesses with serpentine faces — these are the Pòloi (Poles) and the Týchai (Fates) governing the four cosmic pillars
Fourth Logos (Convergence of the solar rays): the invocation makes the Sun's rays converge on the initiate, who becomes their "center"; the young God with flame-like hair appears in a white tunic and scarlet cloak, with a fiery crown — Mithras-Helios-Aiôn
Fifth Logos (Salutation to the Solar God): the celebrant greets the supreme God as "mighty King of great influence, highest among the Gods", and asks to be announced to the "transcendent good God" who generated him; he pronounces his own name and that of his mother, affirming that he has been "regenerated in this instant"
Sixth Logos (The Seven Virgin Fates): the seven celestial Goddesses of Destinies appear, august virgins with serpentine faces, each of whom the celebrant greets with her ritual name
Seventh Logos (Union and final vision): vision of the supreme God in the midst of light, with whom the initiate unites in the state of immortality

The bodily techniques described in the text are of great operative precision and attest to a refined technical knowledge:

Breath control: deep inhalation "from the divine", prolonged exhalation "emitting a bellow like the sound of a horn", compression of the ribs in the final phase of the Fifth Logos
Posture and gaze: the initiate stands still, with his gaze "fixed in the spirit", and must sustain the convergence of the rays without averting his eyes
Amulets: kisses to the consecrated amulets are prescribed before certain invocations
Voice: the Logoi are pronounced with "fire and spirit from beginning to end"; the sequences of vowels (intelligible as magical-musical incantations, cf. Sefer Yetzirah) are repeated "until you have completed the seven immortal Gods of the cosmos"

III. The reading of the Gruppo di UR (1927)

In 1927 the Gruppo di UR — under the impetus of Julius Evola ("Leo", director of the journal) and Arturo Reghini ("Pietro Negri", Pythagorean, classical philologist, the expert in Ancient Greek in the group) — publishes in issues 3-5 of year I the first annotated Italian translation of the text, with philological introduction and operative notes. For the Group, the Apathanatismos is not an erudite object of religious history: it is an operative text that documents the same science that the Group is practicing and teaching, expressed in the cultural terms of late antique Alexandria.

The four doctrinal points that the Gruppo di UR extracts from the ritual and makes elements of its own operative encyclopedia are:

Regeneration is real, not metaphorical: the text explicitly declares that the celebrant, at the end of the Fifth Logos, is "made immortal among myriads of beings in this instant" — an operative statement, not a liturgical one; cf. La Doctrine du Corps Immortel by Giudicelli (1988) for the same twentieth-century formulation
The ascent through the seven heavens corresponds — in structure — to the succession of the seven planets-metals of the alchemical tradition (Saturn-Lead, Jupiter-Tin, Mars-Iron, Sun-Gold, Venus-Copper, Mercury-Mercury, Moon-Silver; cf. Alchimia e Magnetismo sect. IV); the celebrant who crosses the cosmic gates of the magical papyrus performs the same work as the alchemist who "makes the metals rise to their planets"
The inner Sun: the "young God with flame-like hair" of the Fourth Logos is the inner Sun of the initiate, identical to the Indian Rasa, the Taoist Ling-tai, the alchemical Philosopher's Gold; its vision and interiorization are the central point of the ritual
The substantial identity between microcosm and macrocosm: the ritual demonstrates operatively that the initiate who correctly invokes the cosmic powers finds them within himself — not as a poetic metaphor but as an experimental reality. It is the same microcosm-macrocosm identity of Hermes' Tabula Smaragdina (cf. Alchimia e Magnetismo sect. II)

IV. Continuity with the practice of the School

For the Paret School, the Apathanatismos constitutes one of the proof-texts of the historical continuity of the initiatic tradition that the School preserves and transmits. Its specific techniques — vocal invocation with the use of vowel sequences, precise breath control, progressive visualization of cosmic figures, structured ascent through successive levels, final state of immortalization — are the same techniques that recur, under other names and other cultural languages, in all the operative traditions documented by the wiki cluster:

The magnetic chain of the lodge of Kremmerz locally activates the analogous cosmic structure
The tripartite breath of the Chinese tradition applies the same science of breath
The ascent of the Caduceus of the yogis retraces the same ascent through the levels
The Way of Magic (Abraxa, UR 1927) describes the identical process in the language of the School
The conquest of the immortal body by Giudicelli (1988) gives its twentieth-century formulation

The presence of the text in the papyrus of the 4th-5th century AD demonstrates that this is not modern syncretism but an operative tradition documented at least from late antique Alexandria, which the Gruppo di UR recognized and revived, and which the Paret School continues to transmit alive.

V. Essential bibliography

Albrecht Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, Teubner, Leipzig 1903 (1st ed.), 1910 (2nd ed.), 1923 (3rd ed. with commentary by Otto Weinreich) — [fundamental critical edition of the Greek text]
Gruppo di UR (ed.), UR — Rivista di indirizzi per una Scienza dell'Io, year I, issues 3-5 (1927), Rome — [first annotated Italian translation]
Hans Dieter Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Including the Demotic Spells, University of Chicago Press, 1986 (2nd ed. 1992) — [modern critical edition of all PGM, including PGM IV.475-829]
Hans Dieter Betz, The "Mithras Liturgy": Text, Translation, and Commentary, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2003 — [the most complete academic commentary on the ritual]
Marvin Meyer, The Mithras Liturgy, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta 1976 — [accessible English translation with introduction]

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 annual volumes were 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.

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