Friday, March 20, 2009

Evola becoming mainstream in Italy?

A recent article in La Repubblica wonders whether Evola is becoming mainstream (Alessandra Longo, "Per il trasloco An aggiorna la libreria accanto a Evola anche Whitman e Vasco," 19 March 2009).

The main reason for wondering this is the references to Evola in Ffwebmagazine, published by the Fondazione Farefuturo, which is run by Gianfranco Fini, president of Italy's Chamber of Deputies and a former minister of foreign affairs under Silvio Berlusconi, pictured here with his then American counterpart. Fini leads the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), a major political party generally described as "post-fascist" (it has its roots in the MSI of Giorgio Almirante).

Perhaps Evola is becoming mainstream. Or perhaps the mainstream is shifting? This is what happened in Russia.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Fez festivals

Faozi Skali, the Boutchichi Traditionalist Sufi who started the now well-established Fes Festival of World Sacred Music, no longer directs it--but has started a new annual festival, the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture.

The aims of the festival are "to allow Moroccan people to discover or re-discover how the Sufi brotherhoods have mainly succeeded in preserving a message of universal spirituality that irrigated the whole of the Muslim culture and nourished its artistic, literary, and even social and economic forms of expression" and "to allow people from other cultures to discover another face of Islam" and "show how Sufism, as a school of spiritual and civic education, can be a means of human development and a peace mediator."

The 2009 festival is the third, runs from April 18 to April 25, and mixes concerts with round-table discussions involving Sufis, academics, a French senator and the president of the Hermes foundation.

Strongly recommended.

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Job vacancy in Amsterdam

The Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam has a job vacancy for an Assistant Professor "History of Western Esotericism in the Early Modern Period." For all information: seehttp://www.amsterdamhermetica.nl/UD_Vacancy_2009.php?id=21.
The deadline for applications is Monday, 23 March 2009.