Emilia De Simoni, “Dall’axis mundi all’anima mundi”, in “Il volo dello Sciamano. Simboli e arte delle culture siberiane”, a cura di S. Massari e G. Mazzoleni, Roma, De Luca, 2002, pp. 169-175 (original) (raw)
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Circulations animales en Méditerranée, 2024
The study of animal transfers plays a crucial role in the perspective of investigating the ecology of the ancient Mediterranean as an interconnected space of circulation of humans, animals, plants and artifacts. This article focuses on a specific case study, that of the monkey, an animal that iconographic evidence and archaeozoology record as a marginal and somewhat exotic animal of the Mediterranean eco-fauna for the Ist millennium BC. Nevertheless, the presence of non-human primates is well attested in the Latin literary production, from the comedy of the archaic age to the satire of the imperial age. Objective of this research is to define the extent to which the monkey’s status as a “transferred”, traded, if not deported, animal plays a role in the cultural representation that ancient texts elaborate on this animal in Roman society.
Antrocom Journal of Anthropology, 2017
This article was supposed to be a simple review of the book by Baldini La strada dai molti canti. Filosofia e sciamanesimo greco (The road of many chants. Philosophy and Greek shamanism), but after reading it, it developed into something different and more extensive, I would say an ‘extended’ review. When I bought it, I thought I would read a book that combined philosophy and anthropology, but after a few pages it was clear to me that it did not speak about neither of them, and that I was confronted with a book of a religious nature, impregnated with profound mysticism. Baldini inscribes his research into that religious movement known as Neo-Paganism, which also includes Neo-Shamanism, the Movement of the Goddess, Wicca, etc., but which has its roots in the European mystical, esoteric and traditionalist intellectual currents, American trascendentalism, joined by forms of oriental mysticism, Hindu universalism, as well as Native American and Central Asian/Siberian neo-shamanism. In the 1960s-1970s these currents formed the New Age, that is what Bloom calls Californian orphism, a minority but important current of the post-Christian West, which has influenced both part of the feminist movement and a number of counter-cultural intellectuals and grass roots as well. Keywords: matriarcato, femminismo, Grande Dea, Grande Madre, Movimento della Dea, sciamanesimo siberiano, nativi americani, neo-sciamanesimo, New Age, Eliade, sciamanesimo greco, Parmenide, Filosofia Perenne.
2019
Il saggio studia la funzione del corpo nella tetralogia di Thomas Mann «Joseph und seine Brüder», nelle cui frequenti rappresentazioni scimmiesche si esprime la riflessione morale e artistica dell’autore. Il collegamento tra la scimmia e l’artista ha una tradizione di lunga durata nel pensiero occidentale e origina dall’elemento dell’imitazione: all’interno delle «Wahlverwandtschaften», nell’incrocio fra la ritrattistica dedicata alla scimmie e la mortificazione dell’aristocrazia tedesca, Goethe aveva raffigurato la decadenza dell’arte e della società europea, con la quale l’Egitto del «Joseph-Roman» condivide più di una somiglianza. Anche per Thomas Mann è possibile individuare una parentela fra l’opera d’arte, l’origine “scimmiesca” del talento artistico, e il “nudismo letterario” che contraddistingue la società moderna.