TARAntism
Kiss of the Spider Woman
TARAntism
Great Mother as Spider Woman
Pre-Christian Archetype of Femininity
Origins
Healing Dance Ritual
http://www.dipscr.uniroma1.it/sites/default/files/13_Pizza_Tarantism_2004.pdf
http://amaraterra.blogspot.com/2011/03/le-origini-e-la-fine-del-tarantismo.html
Aracne, the Great Mother and the Archetype in Tarantism"
By Francis April / February 15, 2011 / Wise / Leave a comment
Aracne, the Great Mother and the Archetype in Tarantism
Tuesday 21 December 2010
In the research carried out by Maurizio Nocera in "The bite of the spider. To the origins of Tarantism "(Capone Editore), a whole series of tarantels have been developed in South Italy and also in Tuscany. Research focuses on and analyzes the phenomenon that we are very concerned about, namely, Tarantism Salentino, the phenomenon of Pizzica. On page 6 of the book "The Bite of the Spider" is Nocera himself writing "The phenomenon, understood as a therapeutic rhythm, was one of the many natural ways of liberation from the negative energies of the body."
At the basis of the Pizzica, it is possible to identify contradictory elements which, at the same time, can be complementary. And it is precisely their existence at the same time, contradictory, in man to create the phenomenon of Tarantism.
At the basis of the phenomenon, genetics (like genesis and more to develop, but not here) of the transe. A state of psychological dissociation that Jung derives from the possible imbalance that in one subject comes into being between elements of individual history and elements belonging to that unconscious history of humanity codified as archetypes, ideal models. The model that is identified as an archetype is in this case the myth of the spider, which in recent times assumes a double connotation, often related to the religious aspect expressed through the figure of Saint Paul. Contrasting aspects at the base of the crisis that is being liberated in the trance of the tarantas as a cathartic event. Just as it happens in the passage of the Salento tradition "Santu Paulu" that concludes with "There is tarant lax dance / there is cacciala malincunia fore" to "hunt" out the evil of living through the act of dance. But the obsessive repetition of dance is the same instrument for the catharsis and the attainment of the trance as it was in China, eighteen centuries before Christ, through dances and repetitive songs that led to the transept, and yet the Baal prophets who leaped for hours around or the insistent repeated repetition of the nuns by the Druids to the modern hypnosis techniques that by the fixed repetition of some words or gestures lead to the hypnotic trance causing a crisis in the hypnotized subject.
The animal that distinguishes this is the spider and Nocera's analysis moves to the extreme, at the origin, creating a point of union between the Greek Oistros and the spider's sting that is made out, instigating , possession and rhythm of music takes on a cathartic, liberating role. From here, the therapeutic value of Tarantism is born. The Spider / Oystros with his bite comes to possess the body, Nocera writes, "the possession of a body by the spider, is to represent the difficulties of life."
Interesting is the quote that Nocera made of "De Sensu Rerum et Magia" by Tommaso Campanella, Frankfurt 1620, in which Campanella wrote: "The Tarantulates expel the spider's poison through the sweat caused by the dance, generated in turn by the rhythm of music "to indicate how the therapeutic / liberating power of the tarantula dance was hired.
Even Maurizio Nocera from "The Bite of the Spider" makes us note that "It is embezzled - offending it (bite and re-bite) with its oistros of an individual's body, inevitably opposing a deity such as Athena of the Greek world and Minerva in antiquity. [...] Salento people in general have a particular veneration for the Virgin (Aracne is a young virgin) and at the same time for the Great Mother (Atena-Minerva is at the same time the virgin par excellence, but also a Great Androgynous mother). Probably this archetypal belief lies in its roots in the most remote ages, up to the Neolithic and perhaps even the Paleolithic Salento. The Venus of Parabita (Paleolithic) and the pictogram of the Great Tridactic Mother in the Porto Badisco Deer Grotto, are perhaps indicative of some origin of this belief structure among the locals. "
An example of this series of contrasting elements is the iconography of the fresco of Saint Paul at Patu, Hundred Stones, where the Saint is depicted with the sword around which two snakes are wrapped and a caduceo (to the left of the painting) first symbol of Mercury, then brought back to the figure of Ermete Trismegisto); The toad, the scorpion and the spider are also represented. The spider who, as it is said, Nocera dates back to the myth of Aracne narrated in Metamorphoses of Ovid, but dating back to the Greek era, in which the young virgin Aracne, very skilled in the tile, dared defy the goddess Athena so much that the latter offended by the behavior of the young man turned her into a spider, forcing her to spin from her mouth for the rest of her life. If we add to this the hypothesis launched by Nocera that it is possible to suppose that the cult of the Virgin, even here in Salento, dating to the neolithic or even the Palaeolithic as a cult of the Great Mother, of the Earth, of Fertility, in virtue of ancient pre-historic civilizations of matriarchal structure, fits in that - in my hypothesis - in that concept of archetypes as elements of unconscious history - according to Jung's definition - that contribute to the contrast, to the imbalance, to a given period and to a series of people, in that Christian context for which a subversion of the paradigm is realized by transmuting pre-historic matriarchal civilization into a society Christian patriarchal; by virtue of this it is possible to think of contrasting elements that break the psychic balance in man, as the exhausting crossing between the old paradigm - assimilated as archetype - and a new paradigm seeking and trying to impose - and comes and is imposed - on those unconscious criteria that govern the "genetic" development of man. The contrast that occurs in the displacement of the archetype substitution contributes or generates the element of disruption, imbalance, conception, tarantism, which binds to it, generating the breaking element of the new patriarchal paradigm that overlaps to the matriarchal one generates imbalance, unconscious break in the generations and society to come. -- Francesco Aprile https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=https://faprile.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/aracne-la-grande-madre-e-larchetipo-nel-tarantismo/&prev=search
The Tarantula, image and cult of mother goddess... a wonderful reflection between Jung and salento
By Gabriella Petrelli
To think about the "phenomenon" of tarantism, it means for me to go on the complex plot of lonely research and / or reappropriation not easy and not peace links with origin, with the image image of the cultural humus, the constitutive of the profound existence of the soul that brings me back Not only in family figures, (the maternal grandfather "played" for the tarantolate) but above all to the heritage of images Connessecon my roots, with the pathos of the earth land.
The interpretative instruments of deep psychology and in particular of the hilmaniana vision of the psyche that places the centrality of the soul with the richness of its symbols and its diverse emotional values, allow me to search, beyond the interesting historical and social considerations, The Phenomenology of the image of the spider manifested, ago, in the ritual of tarantism. My cognitive approach, therefore, differs from a strictly symptomatic consideration of the phenomenon of hysterical disease, due to the removal of erotic impulses, which would have a privileged subject for women, which has always been subject to the of the super - individual And cultural. But the symptom, including the hysterical one, is only the surface, the isolated of a tangled and intricate tangle that links to complex relationships between individual and collective psyche, between lived and. The Tarantula, in that sense, weaves its thick canvas more like a image than the paradigm of a single symptom. In this context also the meaning of pathology does not indicate More Classifications Classifications of psychic phenomena but expresses a particular dimension of the soul that reveals the depth of its nocturnal appearance, the. To put it in the words of the same hilmann: " the archetype is an affliction; it makes us suffer. The Pathology of the psyche is an integral part of psychology because the suffering of the archetype through our complexes is an integral and necessary part of psychic life Hilmann, the myth of analysis, Ed. Adelphi, Milan 1991 p. 199.) of the archetype, acting unfolding not only in its symbolic polysemy, but also in affective ambivalence, without our analytical and selective consciousness indicating priority priorities, separation between opposing and irreconcilable poles, or still evolutionary processes towards an alleged superiority of Spirit against the unspeakable abyss of matter. The reality of the soul is the world world, it is the symbolic space where it forms the whole of the mediation of energies and opposing psychic forces, but not for this escludentesi between them. "it is the malakut, the world of the soul, the world of sensitivity sensibility, the world in which the spirits is and is the bodies" 2. (D.,,,,,,,,,,, Lecce, October 1983, p. 6.)
My intention of analysis will follow the following policy and methodological lines, showing how the mythical heritage acts and interacts with our individual lives, turning into rituals and collective cults in certain historical situations. In particular, the symbolic image of the spider is attributable to female, understood as unconscious, deep, present in the psyche of all individuals and not identifiable with a particular gender. As is highlighted by the relevant documentation on the crisis and its subsequent resolution in the rite, the archetype acts in all its aspects, while retaining its own psychic opposites which can constantly trasmutarsi each other.
I would like to imagine, at the beginning of my story, that they are the same goddesses, those who weave the fate of each and who are familiar with the mother - spider, to hold the line of my words, connecting and entangled the fabric of emotions, Communicated and lived in the empty spaces of the speech. Those who guide me in this path - journey, lead me to a charming image of the goddess - mother - spider who with the venom of her bite induces the victim to a state of emotional paralysis where even the body appears to be compelled, through the language Symbolic of the symptoms from a strange substance that invades and pervades the consciousness that is so captured by extraneous but seductive content. It is the all-consuming,------------ Neumann attributes this aspect aspect of the archetype to the. " the spider is a symbol of the terrible mother. Similarly, the network and tourniquet are weapons typical of the terrible power of women, of its ability to shackle and bind; and the knot is the terrible instrument of the enchantress " 3. (e. Neumann, the great mother, Ed. Astrolabe, Rome 1981, p. 234.)
It is the terrifica medusa that in the dark world of hades petrifies who dares to cross his gaze. It is the image of petrification and psychic death, that is what stops the life flow, is the mother as a womb of death. Medusa represents the whole chaotic and undifferentiated of unconscious content, which attracts the I to the psychic dissolution. The image of the spider can be considered, according to the interpretation, an "spilled mandala" 4, which from the centre center (the self) captures the most disparate psychic elements.
This centre attracts and rejects until it becomes more visible during the detection. It is the moment when the psychic elements are and, joining by joining, thus creating a formless emotional world that exercises on the self, entrenched in its useless defences, an enormous power power. In this sense, the tarantula that, inoculation in its victim a powerful poison, which, once it has been placed in circulation, produces devastating effects in the psyche which then reflected in the theatre theatre. The Mandala refers to the all of origin, to the primordial elementum that in alchemy is identified by the name of "first matter". it is complex to define in a few words the richness of symbolic send of alchemy. (C.G.Jung, psychology and alchemy, Ed. Optically, Torino 1994, p. 80.)
Jung, however, speaks in terms of self-knowledge in the process. The 'first matter' is as the foundation, the principle from which, within the elements of nature, the deep-rooted research. Among the various meanings of " first matter " I would like to highlight the image of the duplex as he represents, both the aspect-chthonius aspect of Saturn and the live silver ", " the aqua permanens " of alchemists capable of cleanse The psyche from the shadows of Hades. For This Dual Nature, he is like the beginning and end of Opus Alchemic (laws of detection) as the perfect identity of opposites, heaven - earth, water - fire, male - female. Mercury is nothing more than an aspect of the whole psyche where the low coincides with the superno.
" this dark mercury is meant as an initial state, so the low of the beginning must be conceived as a symbol of the supreme, and the supreme in turn as a symbol of the lower The Spirit of mercury for its and ambiguous nature may represent the intricate chaos of the unconscious that reveals its aspect and saturnino appearance in the first phase of opus aichemica, namely the nigredo. In it the lumen naturae, divine fire and / or Aqua Permanens (both attributed to the spirit of mercury) are buried in the darkness of the matter where they release the destructive power. It is the leaden aspect of mercury that poisons not only the report of me with the unconscious complexes but also the communication with the outside world. It's the pain of deep emotional life that drags me into a slow dissolution in the psychic abyss. The Venom inoculated from the tarantula is due to the pharmakon which produces both harmful and healthy effects. It is linked to the sulphur, the darkness and the evil of the whole of the first matter, the all-consuming aspect of mercury - Saturn, but also constitutes a powerful antidote against this poison. The substance, in fact, once extracted from the darkness of matter, possesses the ability to make the bodies perfect, them by the lethargic state of Hades to a new form of existence. If we translate the symbolic language of alchemy into psychological terms, we may say that the deep component of unconscious psyche requires a laborious transformation that leads from the intricate tangle of emotional complexes to the Kosmos of self-knowledge, implemented in the detection process. All this indicates a different attitude of consciousness to the whole unconscious: at the moment when it relates to it, districandone the content, or at least riconoscendoli in their primary existence the dangerous solution, the venom of the spider mother turns into A new form of awareness from which a new vision of existence will emerge.
This type of psychological transformation with regard to the phenomenon of tarantism occurs in the ritual of dance where each entity identifies itself with its inner tarantula, until the crisis resolution.
Before I dwell on the ritual, I would like to draw attention to the image of the spider as a sort of scales intelligence, provided with a deliberate intention of the deep psyche prior to external factors. In order to understand the logos of the soul, it is necessary, as affet but
Same himself, abandon the of conscious life and consider the aspect aspect, the kingdom of Hades, where the creativity and wealth of the unconscious, together with its torments. In such an inverted perspective, it is not possible to treat the heroic I that selects, analyses, catalogues by rational means, but we have to come down (in symbolic sense) in the depths where in the pain and apparent chaos of symptoms and pathology, perhaps we could see an invisible order that It tends to transform and renew the personality of the individual. The Alchemists sought in the depth and darkness of the first matter the lumen naturae, the divine spark capable of regenerating the spirit and body of those who were devoted to the "Laborum" of opus.
" however, they were more or less aware of the fact that their intuition and their truth came from a divine source, not by Revelation, but by individual inspiration or by Lumen Naturae, i.e. by the sapientia Gods, hidden in the matter
In the invisible world of the soul, the mother spider orders and weaves a different emotional warp that the individual consciousness but also the same collective consciousness denies and removes. The removal is not only the sexual drive but a mode of existence and understanding of the world that do not fall within the principle principle of salento culture which is logocentrica and patriarchal. The tarantula that each year returns to indicate a suffering of the erotic dimension of the female, which may have its epiphany at the time of the awakening of nature, thus maintaining the link with a very precise and determined cosmic ritual. It is worth the hypothesis of some studious about the connection of tarantism with the rituals of cosmic rebirth or initiation of maidens to adult life. But here I would like to point out, following the methodological lines, how the rite of dance can lead to the resolution, albeit temporarily, of the crisis through the identification with the image of the spider, in a kind of debut, which carries the body, with a Gesture, to express the abyss of mystery. The Rhythm of music, the same movements of the body, reveal a state of intoxication, excitement, possession that can be attributed to the rite ritual.
" Dionysus means the abyss of the demented, passionate dissolution of every human peculiarity in what has divine and animal
A fragment of heraclitus reported to the bacchanalia states: "and hades that they celebrate, raging"
The unbridled rhythm of dance, up to psychophysical and psychophysical, leads to the God inside. In this way, the mother of spider comes to possess the consciousness that is in Hades, identify with the abyss.
" Fantasy is the primal force of the soul that tends to restore everything in its primary condition, ritualizzando everything that happens, turning events into mitemi, fixing the trifles of every clinical case, in the precise details, apparently so irrelevant, of a Legend, constantly affabulando our lives in structures that we can neither understand with our mind nor govern with our will but we must love a love fates
In the was, the poison acts as an intoxicating substance by taking cathartic value. It is comparable to " Aqua Permanens " of alchemists, " to live silver " to which the spiritual power, Creator and dispenser of new life is attributed. (C.G.Jung, psychology and alchemy, cit., p. 90.; 8 G. Packages,,, Milan 1996.; 9 J. Hilmann, // Myth, cit., PP. 198-199.)
"live silver" comes in relation to the moon, as this announced the rise of light. The Sacred Fire, the sulphur that belongs to mercury, ignites the substances, releasing the sal, or milk milk, dew that purifies from the darkness of the darkness of Hades, and gives the bodies and souls new life. It is linked to the sapientia of women, to its spiritual nourishment, to its ability to regenerate its existence, transforming it from the depths.
" the great goddess of the night as lady of the unconscious is not only the lady of poisons and intoxicating substances, but also of amazement and sleep. Its priestess is the primordial elargitrice of incubation (the sleep of healing, transformation and awakening). His speech is necessary everywhere the relationship with the powers is only possible to a soul released from the body in the dream and ecstasy " '°.
The creative aspect of women is also manifested in the weaving, braiding, activities that give shape to the life and fate of each being. These activities belong to the mother goddesses which in different cultures are celebrated as those through spinning, decree the birth and death of beings and the entire universe. They are the secret plot of being, the cosmic order that sews the events of each of them in the alternation of existence, ensuring their own function, guaranteeing the universal sense of justice.
The intelligence of the spider mother rules our life in harmony with that cosmic; and I would like to end her sharing, imagine her as she who holds the line of our love relationships without emotional cobwebs, real traps for us and others ..
1 E. Neumann, the great mother, cit., p. 298.
By Gabriella Petrelli
To think about the "phenomenon" of tarantism, it means for me to go on the complex plot of lonely research and / or reappropriation not easy and not peace links with origin, with the image image of the cultural humus, the constitutive of the profound existence of the soul that brings me back Not only in family figures, (the maternal grandfather "played" for the tarantolate) but above all to the heritage of images Connessecon my roots, with the pathos of the earth land.
The interpretative instruments of deep psychology and in particular of the hilmaniana vision of the psyche that places the centrality of the soul with the richness of its symbols and its diverse emotional values, allow me to search, beyond the interesting historical and social considerations, The Phenomenology of the image of the spider manifested, ago, in the ritual of tarantism. My cognitive approach, therefore, differs from a strictly symptomatic consideration of the phenomenon of hysterical disease, due to the removal of erotic impulses, which would have a privileged subject for women, which has always been subject to the of the super - individual And cultural. But the symptom, including the hysterical one, is only the surface, the isolated of a tangled and intricate tangle that links to complex relationships between individual and collective psyche, between lived and. The Tarantula, in that sense, weaves its thick canvas more like a image than the paradigm of a single symptom. In this context also the meaning of pathology does not indicate More Classifications Classifications of psychic phenomena but expresses a particular dimension of the soul that reveals the depth of its nocturnal appearance, the. To put it in the words of the same hilmann: " the archetype is an affliction; it makes us suffer. The Pathology of the psyche is an integral part of psychology because the suffering of the archetype through our complexes is an integral and necessary part of psychic life Hilmann, the myth of analysis, Ed. Adelphi, Milan 1991 p. 199.) of the archetype, acting unfolding not only in its symbolic polysemy, but also in affective ambivalence, without our analytical and selective consciousness indicating priority priorities, separation between opposing and irreconcilable poles, or still evolutionary processes towards an alleged superiority of Spirit against the unspeakable abyss of matter. The reality of the soul is the world world, it is the symbolic space where it forms the whole of the mediation of energies and opposing psychic forces, but not for this escludentesi between them. "it is the malakut, the world of the soul, the world of sensitivity sensibility, the world in which the spirits is and is the bodies" 2. (D.,,,,,,,,,,, Lecce, October 1983, p. 6.)
My intention of analysis will follow the following policy and methodological lines, showing how the mythical heritage acts and interacts with our individual lives, turning into rituals and collective cults in certain historical situations. In particular, the symbolic image of the spider is attributable to female, understood as unconscious, deep, present in the psyche of all individuals and not identifiable with a particular gender. As is highlighted by the relevant documentation on the crisis and its subsequent resolution in the rite, the archetype acts in all its aspects, while retaining its own psychic opposites which can constantly trasmutarsi each other.
I would like to imagine, at the beginning of my story, that they are the same goddesses, those who weave the fate of each and who are familiar with the mother - spider, to hold the line of my words, connecting and entangled the fabric of emotions, Communicated and lived in the empty spaces of the speech. Those who guide me in this path - journey, lead me to a charming image of the goddess - mother - spider who with the venom of her bite induces the victim to a state of emotional paralysis where even the body appears to be compelled, through the language Symbolic of the symptoms from a strange substance that invades and pervades the consciousness that is so captured by extraneous but seductive content. It is the all-consuming,------------ Neumann attributes this aspect aspect of the archetype to the. " the spider is a symbol of the terrible mother. Similarly, the network and tourniquet are weapons typical of the terrible power of women, of its ability to shackle and bind; and the knot is the terrible instrument of the enchantress " 3. (e. Neumann, the great mother, Ed. Astrolabe, Rome 1981, p. 234.)
It is the terrifica medusa that in the dark world of hades petrifies who dares to cross his gaze. It is the image of petrification and psychic death, that is what stops the life flow, is the mother as a womb of death. Medusa represents the whole chaotic and undifferentiated of unconscious content, which attracts the I to the psychic dissolution. The image of the spider can be considered, according to the interpretation, an "spilled mandala" 4, which from the centre center (the self) captures the most disparate psychic elements.
This centre attracts and rejects until it becomes more visible during the detection. It is the moment when the psychic elements are and, joining by joining, thus creating a formless emotional world that exercises on the self, entrenched in its useless defences, an enormous power power. In this sense, the tarantula that, inoculation in its victim a powerful poison, which, once it has been placed in circulation, produces devastating effects in the psyche which then reflected in the theatre theatre. The Mandala refers to the all of origin, to the primordial elementum that in alchemy is identified by the name of "first matter". it is complex to define in a few words the richness of symbolic send of alchemy. (C.G.Jung, psychology and alchemy, Ed. Optically, Torino 1994, p. 80.)
Jung, however, speaks in terms of self-knowledge in the process. The 'first matter' is as the foundation, the principle from which, within the elements of nature, the deep-rooted research. Among the various meanings of " first matter " I would like to highlight the image of the duplex as he represents, both the aspect-chthonius aspect of Saturn and the live silver ", " the aqua permanens " of alchemists capable of cleanse The psyche from the shadows of Hades. For This Dual Nature, he is like the beginning and end of Opus Alchemic (laws of detection) as the perfect identity of opposites, heaven - earth, water - fire, male - female. Mercury is nothing more than an aspect of the whole psyche where the low coincides with the superno.
" this dark mercury is meant as an initial state, so the low of the beginning must be conceived as a symbol of the supreme, and the supreme in turn as a symbol of the lower The Spirit of mercury for its and ambiguous nature may represent the intricate chaos of the unconscious that reveals its aspect and saturnino appearance in the first phase of opus aichemica, namely the nigredo. In it the lumen naturae, divine fire and / or Aqua Permanens (both attributed to the spirit of mercury) are buried in the darkness of the matter where they release the destructive power. It is the leaden aspect of mercury that poisons not only the report of me with the unconscious complexes but also the communication with the outside world. It's the pain of deep emotional life that drags me into a slow dissolution in the psychic abyss. The Venom inoculated from the tarantula is due to the pharmakon which produces both harmful and healthy effects. It is linked to the sulphur, the darkness and the evil of the whole of the first matter, the all-consuming aspect of mercury - Saturn, but also constitutes a powerful antidote against this poison. The substance, in fact, once extracted from the darkness of matter, possesses the ability to make the bodies perfect, them by the lethargic state of Hades to a new form of existence. If we translate the symbolic language of alchemy into psychological terms, we may say that the deep component of unconscious psyche requires a laborious transformation that leads from the intricate tangle of emotional complexes to the Kosmos of self-knowledge, implemented in the detection process. All this indicates a different attitude of consciousness to the whole unconscious: at the moment when it relates to it, districandone the content, or at least riconoscendoli in their primary existence the dangerous solution, the venom of the spider mother turns into A new form of awareness from which a new vision of existence will emerge.
This type of psychological transformation with regard to the phenomenon of tarantism occurs in the ritual of dance where each entity identifies itself with its inner tarantula, until the crisis resolution.
Before I dwell on the ritual, I would like to draw attention to the image of the spider as a sort of scales intelligence, provided with a deliberate intention of the deep psyche prior to external factors. In order to understand the logos of the soul, it is necessary, as affet but
Same himself, abandon the of conscious life and consider the aspect aspect, the kingdom of Hades, where the creativity and wealth of the unconscious, together with its torments. In such an inverted perspective, it is not possible to treat the heroic I that selects, analyses, catalogues by rational means, but we have to come down (in symbolic sense) in the depths where in the pain and apparent chaos of symptoms and pathology, perhaps we could see an invisible order that It tends to transform and renew the personality of the individual. The Alchemists sought in the depth and darkness of the first matter the lumen naturae, the divine spark capable of regenerating the spirit and body of those who were devoted to the "Laborum" of opus.
" however, they were more or less aware of the fact that their intuition and their truth came from a divine source, not by Revelation, but by individual inspiration or by Lumen Naturae, i.e. by the sapientia Gods, hidden in the matter
In the invisible world of the soul, the mother spider orders and weaves a different emotional warp that the individual consciousness but also the same collective consciousness denies and removes. The removal is not only the sexual drive but a mode of existence and understanding of the world that do not fall within the principle principle of salento culture which is logocentrica and patriarchal. The tarantula that each year returns to indicate a suffering of the erotic dimension of the female, which may have its epiphany at the time of the awakening of nature, thus maintaining the link with a very precise and determined cosmic ritual. It is worth the hypothesis of some studious about the connection of tarantism with the rituals of cosmic rebirth or initiation of maidens to adult life. But here I would like to point out, following the methodological lines, how the rite of dance can lead to the resolution, albeit temporarily, of the crisis through the identification with the image of the spider, in a kind of debut, which carries the body, with a Gesture, to express the abyss of mystery. The Rhythm of music, the same movements of the body, reveal a state of intoxication, excitement, possession that can be attributed to the rite ritual.
" Dionysus means the abyss of the demented, passionate dissolution of every human peculiarity in what has divine and animal
A fragment of heraclitus reported to the bacchanalia states: "and hades that they celebrate, raging"
The unbridled rhythm of dance, up to psychophysical and psychophysical, leads to the God inside. In this way, the mother of spider comes to possess the consciousness that is in Hades, identify with the abyss.
" Fantasy is the primal force of the soul that tends to restore everything in its primary condition, ritualizzando everything that happens, turning events into mitemi, fixing the trifles of every clinical case, in the precise details, apparently so irrelevant, of a Legend, constantly affabulando our lives in structures that we can neither understand with our mind nor govern with our will but we must love a love fates
In the was, the poison acts as an intoxicating substance by taking cathartic value. It is comparable to " Aqua Permanens " of alchemists, " to live silver " to which the spiritual power, Creator and dispenser of new life is attributed. (C.G.Jung, psychology and alchemy, cit., p. 90.; 8 G. Packages,,, Milan 1996.; 9 J. Hilmann, // Myth, cit., PP. 198-199.)
"live silver" comes in relation to the moon, as this announced the rise of light. The Sacred Fire, the sulphur that belongs to mercury, ignites the substances, releasing the sal, or milk milk, dew that purifies from the darkness of the darkness of Hades, and gives the bodies and souls new life. It is linked to the sapientia of women, to its spiritual nourishment, to its ability to regenerate its existence, transforming it from the depths.
" the great goddess of the night as lady of the unconscious is not only the lady of poisons and intoxicating substances, but also of amazement and sleep. Its priestess is the primordial elargitrice of incubation (the sleep of healing, transformation and awakening). His speech is necessary everywhere the relationship with the powers is only possible to a soul released from the body in the dream and ecstasy " '°.
The creative aspect of women is also manifested in the weaving, braiding, activities that give shape to the life and fate of each being. These activities belong to the mother goddesses which in different cultures are celebrated as those through spinning, decree the birth and death of beings and the entire universe. They are the secret plot of being, the cosmic order that sews the events of each of them in the alternation of existence, ensuring their own function, guaranteeing the universal sense of justice.
The intelligence of the spider mother rules our life in harmony with that cosmic; and I would like to end her sharing, imagine her as she who holds the line of our love relationships without emotional cobwebs, real traps for us and others ..
1 E. Neumann, the great mother, cit., p. 298.
Alison
https://archive.org/stream/tarantismomodern03quee/tarantismomodern03quee_djvu.txt
In the next few weeks, I threw myself into the tarantula literature. One fascinating account fol- lowed another. There were the studies of choreomanias like St. John's Dance, St. Vitus' Dance, St. Guy's Dance — all with overlapping symptoms, the precise clinical entity or pathology un- known — more often the disease was put down (by modern authorities) to "sympathetic con- tagion" or mass hysteria. Sometimes it was viewed as a festival of license, the "chorea lascivia" as Paracelsus called it. Some thought it a recrudescence of bacchantic rites that had gone under- ground for centuries. Checking first in that treasury of occult lore and learning, Lynn Thorndike's History of Ma^ic and Experimental Science, 1 found at least a dozen references in volume 8 — it was all the rage in the seventeenth century. As a subject for learned discourse, I mean. Everyone who was anyone pronounced on it — Cardano. Borrichius, C'ampanella, Baglivi, Athanasius Kircher — why Kircher even wrote three entirely different accounts of it. in Phonur- gia Nova. Musurgia Universalis, and Magnes, sive Ars Magnetka. He, like the others, was fas- cinated by its bizarre symptomatology and its implications for the understanding of magnetism, music and healing — the preoccupations of both the Pythagorean and Orphic schools. Augustus Hare described tarantism as he found it in the boot of Italy, early in this century: "... An epidemic of melancholy madness, which pervaded the women of Apulia, ending in frenzies like those of hydrophobia and frequently in death, was believed to proceed from the bite of the tarantula, chiefly because the disease appeared at the season when this spider woke up to its summer life. It was believed that music was the best means of giving relief to the tarantulati, in- citing them to dance and causing them to throw off the poison of the tarantola in perspiration. The patient, dressed in white and crowned with flowers, used to be led out into the garden by her friend, and the musicians in attendance would play the air of the tarantella, which the "taran- tolata" would follow, only leaving one partner after another until she finally fell down exhausted, when a pail of cold water was thrown on her, and she was put to bed. The epidemic of Apulia, and the belief in the tarantula bite, spread over the whole of Italy, till regular fetes were ap- pointed for the cure, which received the name of 'camaveletti delle donne'." * That redoubtable Englishwoman, Janet Ross, late Victorian aristocratic eccentric who travel- led throughout Sicily and Otranto querying after local folklore, left us a marvelously vivid ac- count of the phenomenon as she found it in the 1880's. Tarantism had long since become in- stitutionalized and was seen as a peculiarly female syndrome, probably because it was women who tended to get bitten while picking grapes or harvesting grain. Men, too, however are recor- ded as having been accidently poisoned while greedily eating grapes (tarantulas hide in bunches of grapes to build up their internal heat which strengthens the poison) or bitten in the earlobe while sleeping on the ground. Janet Ross's account, like so many, emphasizes the particular susceptibility of women: "I as- ked Don Eugenio also about the famous tarantola... (He) told me he had witnessed hundreds of cases. 'There are various species of the insect' (he said) 'of different colors and two different kinds of "tarantismo", the wet and the dry; the women in the fields are the most liable to be bit- ten, because they wear so little clothing on account of the intense heat. A violent fever is the beginning of the disease. The person bitten sways backwards and forwards, moaning violently. Musicians are called, and if the tune does not strike the fancy of the "tarantata" (the person who has been bitten), she moans louder, crying "No! No! Basta! Not that air." The fiddler instantly changes, and the tambourine beats fast and furious to indicate the tempo. At last the "tarantata" approves of the tempo, and springing up, begins to dance frantically. Her friends try to find out the colour of the "tarantola" that has bitten her. and adorn her dress and her wrists with ribbons of the same tint as the insect: blue, green or red. If no one can indi- cate the proper color, she is decked with streamers of every hue which flutter wildly about her as she dances and tosses her arms in the air. They generally begin the ceremony indoors, but it often ends in the street, on account of the heat and the concourse of people. When the "tarantata" is quite worn out she is put into a warm bed and sleeps, sometimes for eighteen hours at a stretch. If it is a case of wet tarantismo, the musicians sit near a well, to which the "tarantata" is irresis- tably attracted. While she is dancing, relays of friends deluge her with water.' Don Eugenio went on to describe an autocratic master-mason who vehemently rejected the reality of tarantismo and put it down to female malingering or hysteria. As luck or San Cataldo would have it, he himself was bitten and in his frenzy tore down his doors and was soon seen jumping about in the streets crying "Hanno ragion' la femmine! Hanno ragion' la femmine!" (The women are right! The women are right! ) (The Land of Manfred. London, 1 889) Extract from the book Tarantismo to be published by High Frontiers, Summer 1 987 continued on page .W Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from R. U. Sirius Archives / Mondo 2000 History Project http://archive.org/details/tarantismomodern03quee continued from page 33 High Frontiers interviewed Alison Kennedy (alias Alison Wonder- loud or Queen Mu) in her aerie in the Berkeley lulls. The room was full of divine clutter: stai ks oj waxes, pylons of books bristling with multicolored markers. She seemed somewhat less manic than when we'd last seen her. She had sedated herself she confided, for the or- deal. Brandy'.' we wondered. Tryptophane 9 Valerian root with tincture of glow worm'' High Frontiers: Great opening! I expected something turgid and dry from those stacks of xeroxes you've amassed. But didn't you doctor it a bit - use a little literary licence' Alison: Not at all! That's precisely how the whole thing unfolded. In fact, I had no idea what I was dealing with when I first stumbled on this Orphic gold mine — the vastness of it, it's extraordinary ramili- cations. I just thought: "What a great little bagatelle this would make for High Frontiers. I'll knock it off in a week and go back to my Great Work — which was sting-rays. H.F.: And that was a year ago'.' AK: Just over — September 31, 1985, and I've been hot on the trail ever since. At first the aspect that fascinated me was its link with an- cient female ecstatic rites — rites that have survived into this century and have in fact been fully and richly documented by ethnomusi- cologists — though not in the English language. Ernesto de Martino in La Terra del Rimorso did a magnificent job collecting all the history and folklore which he integrated with documentary coverage of its present-day survivals in Apulia — the heel of the boot of Italy. The ex- orcistic ritual associated with the bite is performed annually on the feast day of St. Paul under Church auspices and is attended by hundreds of men and women, especially adolescent boys and girls. I. M Lewis has described this "macabre cultural construct" where the libertine spider is identified with the ascetic apostle in Ecstatic Religion. They summon the saint with the invocation "My Saint Paul of the Tarantists who pricks the girls in their vaginas, my Saint Paul of the Serpents who pricks the boys in their testicles." H.F.: Weird stuff! And you say this goes back to Dionysus? AK: Actually, J. F. Gmelin, back in 1795 appears to have been the first to suggest that this rite was a survival of ancient Bacchantic orgies. The women saved their pocket money all year and made white gowns that were perfect replicas of ancient Greek off-the-shoulder maenad gowns, wore coloured streamers tied to their upper arms which flut- tered wildly as they danced, their hair streaming loose and their heads thrown back in ecstasy — exactly as maenads are depicted on Greek vases. Incidentally Patti Smith, one tarantula venom initiate, is depic- ted wearing just such a gown in the pages of Babel. They hired itinerant musicians to play with the money they'd saved for festivals known as "carnaveletti delle donne." H.F.: So this was a peculiarly female institution? AK: Well, that's what I thought at first. But now I believe that there are three separate strands of tradition — the female ecstatic rites, the gay Orphic poetic tradition, connected with both seership and the sal- timbanques, and the Gypsy love magic and "cante jondo" tradition — popularly known as "Deep Song" or flamenco. H.F.: It sounds like this spider is found all over the place. AK: Well, there are many sub-species of Lycosa tarentula — narbonen- sis, radiata, hispanica, infemalis, etc. and these are found all through the circum-Mediterannean area and near East. There are also other spiders — the mygale for example, or the spiderlike arachnid known as Galeodes, the Arza in Sardinia, and even an ant, Mutilla calva. These all produce similar syndromes — profound prostration followed by an exaltation of the nervous system, lascivious dancing, emotional dithyrambs, possession states. All spider poisons profoundly affect the nervous system — possibly because of the ATP in spider venom.. The Galeodes found in North Africa seems to be the gadfly or gadbee of antiquity — the oestros which caused the "rutting madness" in women — though others have identified it as a kind of Tabanus or horsefly. It's all very confusing — the ancients didn't think in the same strict taxonomic categories as we and the word "tarantula" was applied to any number of critters. The phenomenon itself has been in- stitutionalized differently in each culture — different names, different cures, different functionalist explanations. In Ethiopia or Abyssinia for example, it is know as "Tigretier" or "Tigretismo" and the venom is smoked on hemp in secret cultic rites — by women, the Zars, certain orgiastic Sufi orders. In Andalusia, in Southern Spain, it was used clandestinely by gypsies in love philtres; in the hoda gitana or Gypsy wedding fiesta, as an ingredient along with menstrual blood in the wedding cake to be consumed by bride and groom; and the blood of the tarantula consumed by Flamenco dancers and musicians to invoke the "duende" or powerful tellurian energy that wells up through the soles of the feet inspiring the most impassioned displays of technical virtuosity and "soul". H.F.: Before we go any further, maybe you could recapitulate the ef- fects of tarantula venom for our readers. I know you go into much greater detail in the book, but what does T.V. produce besides intense sexual excitation'.' AK: Oh. that's just the beginning. You might say that it releases the Kundalini fire. It's a powerful spinal nervous system stimulant — like strychnine, aconite or panther gall bladder. It produces a manic-depres- sive syndrome to the nth degree and an extraordinary excitation of the special senses — sound, music, color, odor — as well as synesthesia. It moves up successively through the chakras, producing a really amaz- ing heightening of the emotions reminiscent of "Adam" or the phenethylamine tribe — only with tarantula venom you've got both the agony and the ecstasy — anguish and rapture, a little hell to harrow before you enter into the gates of horn. H.F.: What are the gales of horn'.' AK: The gates of horn gave one access to viridical dreams, prophetic knowledge. But, as Rimbaud said in one of his Voyant letters, "Les souffrances sont enormes" — The sufferings are immense — "All forms of love, of suffering, of madness... he exhausts within himself all the poisons. Unspeakable torments, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed, and the Supreme Scientist!... So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, un- nameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first has fallen!" H.F.: It doesn't sound particularly recreational! AK: Well, tarantula venom is incredibly toxic stuff. Lautreamont kil- led himself on it and Rimbaud effectively burnt out his poetic daemon. But then again, all the phenethylamines should be used with the greatest circumspection as well. They drain your marrow — what the Greeks call muelos, the life stuff, the vital flame. Rimbaud was cons- cious of how toxic it was — "I'm crapping myself up as much as pos- sible," he wrote. "I say that one must be a seer, one must make oneself a seer, through a long, immense, and calculated disordering of all the senses. H.F.: Sounds rugged! AK: It is — but that was central to the Orphic notion of the poet's mis- sion — and personal calvary. It was thought that the soul had to be tem- pered or perfected through extreme states of suffering. A commonly occuring emblem for the alchemical stage known as the "nigredo" was the crowned heart transpierced by swords. Eliphas Levi places great stress on the idea also. There's a great quote in his History of Magic, "Learn how to suffer and learn how to die — such are the gymnastics of eternity and such is the immortal novitiate." "The gymnastics of eternity" is a telling phrase in view of the cult of the saltimbanque in the work of many Orphic poets — Rimbaud, Rilke, Lorca. The poet was seen, in the French Romantic tradition, as taking great risks — as being a high-wire artist, as narrowly escaping the jaws of death. Poets consorted with jugglers and acrobats in the old Corn- media dell' Arte days of Theophile Gautier. The surrealists, Picasso, Apollinaire and Rilke, hung out with the trapeze artists of the Cirque Medrano on the outskirts of Paris and immortalized them in their work. "Let's be like them!" cried Rilke. "Let's never fall without dying!" This whole notion of the poet as daredevil artist is alien to us in the English-speaking world bred on the pablum of the poet as effete, limp wristed and phthisical. H.F.: Well, do you think acrobats also used tarantula venom'' AK: It's occured to me. I wonder just how far its secret use has spread. Certainly from the descriptions of its effects on the nervous system — the superhuman grace, timing and flexibility that are associated with it — would commend it to the performer. Edward Topsell, for example, in his classic "History of the Four Footed Beasts..." says that those bitten by the tarantula "dance so well, with such good grace and measure, and sing so sweetly as though they had spent all their lives in some dancing and singing school!" And, of course, the homeopathic reports always mention "contortionistic body movements" as a prime symptom along with "great fantastic dancing." H.F.: Well. I can see how it would make for some dazzling stage magic. AK: It's hard to know how many rock performers have been into the stuff. Harold thought Jimi Hendrix might have used it. Any rock musicians who hung out in Marrakech might conceivably have run into it. Patti Smith definitely was into it at one point. On Radio Ethiopia she writes "the drug that surrounds the heart, the pipe that lies on its side still bums" and sings: "Oh, I see your stare/ it's spiral- ing up there/ up through the center of my brain/ baby come/ baby go/ and free the hurricane oh i go to the center of the airplane/ baby got a beat in the center of the ring/ and my heart is pumping/ and my fists are pumping" — almost a clinical description of tarantula venom in- toxication, with its emphasis on the heart symptoms. "Release (Ethiopium) is the drug... an animal howl says it all," she writes on the back of the album, and takes as the leitmotif for the whole album Breton's "Beauty will be convulsive or not at all." H.F.: Did her venom use start with Ethiopia? AK: Oh, no. There are many allusions in her book Babel — at least b '73 she was using it. "The Stream" and "Saba the Bird" are aboi venom initiation. In "Neo Boy" she writes: "The long animal cry woman is blessed, the perfect merging of beauty and beasl, the greei gas moving in like excitement... a woman alone in a tube of sound resound is resounding, a long low whine moving through the spine." H.F.: What can you tell us about the artist as outcast, as pariah'' AK: Of course, that's a favorite theme of Patti Smith's taken fron Rimbaud. Rimbaud referred to tarantula venom as "merde" (eatinj merde was the code word for T.V. in letters to Verlaine.) He was cons cious of its' being polluting as well as sacred, as being totally beyom the pale, beyond the understanding of petit bourgeois society. He cal led himself "the hyena" (the hyena eats shit as well as carrion and, fo good measure, was said to be hermaphroditic); in other words, th most glorious taboo breaker of them all. His friends were called th "oestros" and "the toad's friend." Patti Smith called the artist a n (anagram of art) or after Rimbaud — a nigger — "the great accursed And Lautreamont had a whole host of epithets for himself drawn froi the natural history realm. H.F.: Didn't you say Garcia Lorca was into the stuff'.' AK: Well, there is a great deal of internal evidence in his poetry th; he was. He began studying flamenco guitar with two old gypsy mastei in the Sacro Monte outside Granada at the age of 17. His extraordinar personal charm and seductiveness may have led one of them to "tur him on" to tarantula venom — even though, normally, no payo woul have been let in on it. He helped de Falla organize the first Festival c Cante Jondo only a few years later — the woodcut emblazoned on th program cover features, among other emblems of cante jondo, a tarar tula in the lower left hand comer. The central icon is the hea transfixed by swords with an eye in the center crying tears of blood- markedly similar to the eye in the heart in certain of Athanasius Kii cher's cosmograms or in Sufi emblems. It seems to symbolize lovin compassion or the wisdom of the heart bom of soul suffering. H.F.: Do you have any actual evidence that the gypsies turned him on AK: No, quite frankly it's all wild surmise. It might have been Manui Torres, with his "black torso of the Pharaoh." Or another possibilit which fits in with the tradition of older gay Orphic poets turning o promising younger poets, is the Count of Miraflores de los Angelc whom he met at the Gongora Festival in Seville. He seems to have ha all prerequisites for a T.V. habitue: he was a magician, theosophis hypnotist, poet, and Allumbrado. But really tracing the chain c transmission is a fairly futile (if entertaining) exercize. H.F.: Sometimes these things aren t passed on in a linear way at all. . AK: Precisely! Did Dali get it from Lorca or did he get it from the A lumbrados and Lorca through the gypsies? All we know is, in Spain ; least, it's use was closely related to the cante jondo tradition — "Dee Song" — the soleares and siguiriyas and the cult of the duende. Lore; in his famous lecture on "The Theory and Function of the Duende lists a few of the poets who had a "duende" — that is a daemon or earth goblin that courses through them producing what's called the furc poeticus. Listen to this quote: "To help us seek the duende there i neither map nor discipline. All one knows is that it bums the blood lik powdered glass, that it exhausts, that it rejects all the sweet gcometr one has learned, that it compels Goya to paint with his knees and wit his fists horrible bitumen blacks. Or that it leaves Mossen Cinto Vei daguer naked in the cold air of the Pyrenees... that it dresses the deli cate body of Rimbaud in an acrobat's green suit; or that it puts the eye of a dead fish on Count Lautreamont in the early morning Boulevard.' H.F.: Didn't you say that Lautreamont was another initiate' AK: Well, it was actually this very quote from Lorca that alerted me t the possibility. I already had plenty of evidence for Rimbaud's use b the time I stumbled on this reference, and I had always wondered wh Lautreamont had been taken up and practically divinized by the sui realists. So I began going through his major work fairl meticulously — Les Chants de Maldoror, and there in the fifth chant, hit paydirt. H.F.: Perhaps we should mention that Maldoror is considered the mas terpiece of fin-de-siecle morbidity. AK: And mortality! H.F.: And dark humor.. . AK: And revolt! It's gratuitously grotesque — like grand guignol, he' trying to "gross out" the reader. H.F.: But funny as hell! It was embraced by the Surrealists an> Lautreamont seen as some kind of martyr. AK: Actually, a swan. Lorca was also called a swan. H.F.: A swan'.' AK: Swan, cisne, was one of the epithets for Orpheus. Orpheus, yoi know, was reincarnated as a swan — after his severed head sailed ti Lesbos prophesying all the way — a favorite decadent art theme. Bretoi called Lautreamont "the swan of Montevideo" and boasted, "I havi access to him as a convulsionary." H.F.: So I suppose Breton is another T.V. initiate. AK: I was getting to that! — Poisson Soluble is, of course, a play oi "Poison soluble" and it's packed with venom references. H.F.: But back to Lautreamont! AK: You know he composed all these poems late at night declaiminj loudly to the accompaniment of a piano, quite Pierrot Lunaire. He ma; have been constitutionally melancholic, but his work more than an; other exemplifies the "depraved fancy" sometimes associated wit! tarantula venom. Baglivi says "many have sought the sepulchre an< lonely places, and even extended themselves upon the bier. Desperats they court dissolution... The restraints of modesty being loosed, the; sigh deeply, howl, make indecent gestures, expose their sexual or © ontinued on page 4. continued from page 59 gans... others like to strike whips on the buttocks, heels, feet, back, etc.. Also strange fancies in regard to colours are observed..." — Anyway, in the fifth "chant," about the slaying of the eidolon or double, he refers explicitly to the spider's magnetic spell over his cerebro-spinal nervous system going on nearly two lustra (or ten years) and twice he refers to this spider specifically as a tarantula. H.F.: But how can all these Ph.D. lit. oil. types have missed this? AK: Ah. but they lack angelic guidance! Once you have the key... you know Rimbaud was always boasting about having the key. "Only 1 have the key to this savage parade!" he cried. And: "I am an inven- tor., a musician, even, who has found something that may be the key to love." But it is in Une Saison en Enfer that he gives the most sus- tained blow-by-blow description of tarantula venom intoxication, "To drink strong drink, as strong as molten ore," he cries. "My heart has been stabbed by grace. Ah! I hadn't thought this would happen... I may die of earthly love, die of devotion... Ah! my lungs burn, my temples roar! My heart... my arms and legs... Fire! Fire at me! Here! I'll give myself up! I'll kill myself! I'll throw myself beneath the horses' hooves! Ah!... I'll get used to it." This last suggests that he had consciously undertaken this ordeal, that this was the first of a series of Orphic "investigations" (his word) that summer at Roche in the old granary where his mother and sister Vitalie pressed their ears against the doors to hear the passionate cries within — a poetomachia of one! H.F.: Is that recorded somewhere'! AK: Yes— it's in Vitalie's journal. He shut himself up in the granary for weeks, writing A Season in Hell and all they heard of him were "moans, sobs, cries of rage, oaths, blasphemies and jeers." In "A Night in Hell" he actually opens by saying "J'ai ovale une fameuse gorgee de poison" — "I've just swallowed a terrific mouthful of poison" — and goes on to record meticulously the physical and psychological effects of the venom. "My entrails are on fire. The violence of the venom twists my arms and legs, deforms me, drives me to the ground. I die of thirst, I suffocate, I cannot cry. This is Hell, eternal torment! See how the fire rises! I bum as I must... A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn't he?" And he goes on ranting and expostulat- ing. Then: "My hallucinations are endless... I shall say no more about this; poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am the richest one of all, a thousand limes, and I will hoard it like the sea. Oh God — the clock of life stopped but a moment ago. I am no longer within the world. Theology is certainly accurate; hell is certainly down below — and heaven is up on high. Ecstasy, nightmare, sleep, is a nest of flames. . . 1 will tear the veils from every mystery — mysteries of religion or of na- ture, death, birth, the future, the past, cosmogony and nothingness. I am a master of phantasmagoria. Listen! Every talent is mine!... Shall I give you Afric chants, belly dancers? Shall I vanish. Shall I dive after the ring'!... Shall I? I will make gold, and medicines... Put your faith in me. then; faith comforts, it guides and it heals. Come unto me all of you — even the little children — let me console you, let me pour out my heart for you — my miraculous heart'." This fearful gamut of emotions is typical of tarantula venom intoxication — the messianizing, the gran- diosity, the sweeping cosmic dioramas. Having experienced something of this myself, on a combination of adam, 2CB, and acid, I immediate- ly recognized the utter authenticity of it. Rimbaud goes on in his Delires II: Alchimie du Verhe to describe quite methodically, how he went about forging a new poetic language of all the senses. "I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still." In the section "Faim," he speaks of the "bindweed's (morning glory's) gay venom." Significantly, in the recently published hrouillon or rough draft, I found that it was a spider, in fact "the Romantic spider" (laraignee romantique) — that he had originally written but that he substituted "morning glory" in the published form. "Heureuse la taupe, sommeil de tome la virginite!" he cries. "Happy the mole, slumber of (ritual) virginity!" L'Herhe a la taupe is Datura and mole's hearts eaten were said in Pliny to confer the gift of prophecy. He goes on to describe the damage to his nervous system: "It affected my health. Terror loomed ahead. I would fall again and again into a heavy sleep, which lasted several days at a time, and get- ting up I continued with the same sad dreams: I was ripe for death and my weakness led me down dangerous roads to the edge of the world, and of Cimmeria, home of whirlwinds and darkness." And worst of all, he mourns the loss of that animating force in human existence: Desire. H.F .: Ah. Desire. / imagine this brings us back to Dylan. AK: Precisely! It is, in fact, the album on which Dylan most clearly spells out his use of tarantula venom. The album cover features Dylan dressed in the manner of a young Rom — the gypsy look he favored during The Rolling Thunder Tour. In the liner notes he himself wrote he says "Where do I begin... on the heels of Rimbaud moving like a dancing bullet through the hot New Jersey night filled with venom and wonder." H.F.: But surely that's figurative? AK: That's what Dylan's counting on us assuming. Dylan's got a lot of hubris, but he doesn't really want to give it away. H.F.: But still, I haven't heard anything really unambiguous. AK: Oh, you want something unambiguous? Well, then there's Rim- baud's Poison Perdu ("Forgotten Poison") published and authenticated by Verlaine in La Cravache in 1 888 but, strangely, left out of almost every edition of his work since. The opening stanzas describe a typical Pierrot Lunaire scene of taking tea on the balcony under the moonlight. Stanza three says: "Pricked into the edge of the blue curtain shines a pin with a head of gold, like a large insect that sleeps. The point of the pin is tempered or quenched ("trempee") in a sharp poison. I take you — be prepared for me at the hours of the desires of death." H.F. What does the pin symbolize'' AK: I don't think it's symbolic at all. I think it was used to draw blood from the tarantula. Lorca uses it similarly only it's an old rusty pin in- stead of a gold-headed pin. In "Double Poem of Lake Eden" he cries: "Horned dwarf, let me pass through to the wood of yawnings and stretchings and exhilarated jumps. For I know the most secret use of an old rusty pin and I know the horror of wide open eyes in the tangible surface of the dish." H.F. Who's the horned dwarf' AK: The duende of course, and it's a rusty pin because rust had occult meaning to the gypsies, and the dish probably referred to lecanomancy — divination through gazing at a basin of water. H.F .: Most ingenious. But is it true? AK: Well, probably only Philip Cummings could say for sure. He's the young American poet Lorca had met at the Residencia in Madrid and was visiting at Lake Eden — his family cabin. He's now just over eighty and still going strong And though I talked to him yesterday on the telephone, I hesitated somehow to broach the subject of spider venom! H.F. What makes you think he would know? AK: The poems written at that period were clearly written under the influence of tarantula venom. Look at Cielo Vivo or Danza de la Muerte. Also, Lorca wrote Angel del Rio from Eden Mills: "Hidden among the ferns I found a distaff covered with spiders... Cognac is ur- gent for my poor heart." He must have taken a supply back to New York City for he writes, "The mask! Lo, the mask! Spitting wilderness venom over New York's imperfect despair!" Many people have com- pared Lorca's Poet in New York with Rimbaud's Saison en Enfer. John Crow describes his mode of working in those months — and it's strik- ingly reminiscent of Lautreamont: "When he settled down to write poetry in the early morning hours of New York after midnight it was with the strained voice, the high key, the midnight fervours of nostal- gia burning deep in the darkness. And the picture was no salutory sight." "With an A and an E and an / knifing into my throat" cried Lor- ca. "I am a wounded pulse probing what lies on the other side." And after the paroxysms of the night, whether spent in love-making or poetic composition, the prostration of the dawn — "the desires of death" — see "He died at Dawn" or Rimbaud's Matinee d'lvresse ("This poison will stay in our veins even when, as the fanfares depart, we return to our former disharmony") and the physical exhaustion and neuro-endrocine depletion where he's left as immobile as a statue (see "Longing of a Statue"). H.F '.: But you said he began taking tarantula venom years before — AK: Yes, but it reached a crescendo in the savage surrealism of "A Poet in New York". He must have tried it at least by 1920 for he writes then of "spider of silence, spider of oblivion" and was early fascinated by the insect world — something he had in common with Rimbaud and Lautreamont who were weaned on Dr. Chenu's "Encyclopedic Naturelle." Lorca's first play The Butterfly's Evil Spell was all about cockroaches! And the cicada was a favorite metaphor for those artists who exploded in heavenly sound and light. "Let my heart be a cicada," he cries "Let it die, singing slowly, wounded by the blue heaven." In his lecture on "Cante Jondo" he writes of the great cantaores burning themselves out: "They were immense interpreters of the popular heart, who destroyed their own hearts, among the storms of feeling. Almost all of them died a death of the heart, that is they exploded like enor- mous cicadas." So the fascination was there with the whole phenomenology of the soul, states of poetic rapture, extreme states of passion and madness all associated with insects. Plato in Phaedrus speaks of the four forms of divine madness: poetic madness, Bacchic- madness, prophetic madness and the madness of love and it is the whole panoply that we get with tarantula venom. H.F.: In the book, you say that Lorca made a surrealistic film about his tarantula venom trips. AK: Yes, he wrote the silent film scenario called "Trip to the Moon". He teamed up with a young Mexican film maker, Emilio Amero, whom he met in New York. Lorca had been devastated by Bunuel supplanting him in Dali's affections (that was the crise de coeur in 1928 that prompted his trip to New York.) He had seen "Un chien An- dalou" which Bunuel and Dali collaborated on and must have decided to go them one better. All the favorite Lorca themes are here: the boy in the saltimbanque suit, the Gypsy spook Roelejunda crying tears of blood, the moon emerging from a skull, fish palpitating in agony, frogs, close ups of male and female sexual parts. The protagonist, the thunderstruck man with veins painted on his body, must have been Lorca himself on tarantula venom — his "trip to the moon" (he repor- tedly made six "trips to the moon" in this period). And the name "Elena, Helena" that flashes on the screen and fades into screams must surely refer to Helena Diakonoff, or "Gala" who had, by that time, definitively supplanted him as Dali's great love. Frustrated love is the dominant theme. H.F.: Fascinating! I'd never heard of this film. AK: Few people have. The Spanish original is still Amero's posses- sion. He would probably know — wherever he is — about Lorca's taran- tula venom habit. Cummings must have known but we can bet he wouldn't tell us — not the man who destroyed the packet of manuscripts Lorca entrusted him with the admonition to keep them safe. We'll never know what they contained because he destroyed them as soon as he heard of the poet's death — after first reading them. "They were dreadful," he said laconically. "I burned them." H.F.: What a crime. But surely there's some other link. AK: Well, of course Dali knows all. If only Vanity Fair had asked about tarantula venom instead of the Rape of Europa. Lorca was madly in love with Dali from their student days at the Residencia. As Dali said in a recent interview: "Lorca was in love with me — you know this? He had this tremendous love of only men and Dali is very young, and beautiful, and he's crazy about me! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!" H.F.: How Daliesque! Where' d you get that? AK: In Explosion of the Swan, an interview published by Black Spar- row Press. And here's a picture of them at the beach. They spent several summers together at Cadaques but in 1928 Bunuel usurped him in Dali's affections and he plunged into a deep depression — he was particularly stung by Dali's calling his work retrogressive. This depression reached a climax in the spring of 1929 when he joined a religious brotherhood, the Confradia de Santa Maria de la Alhambra. In Holy Week he actually headed the procession of penitents in Granada, wearing a hooded penitential robe and carrying the cross! H.F.: Holy Toledo! AK: (laughs) No, but close. Of course, he was innately extravagant and manic-depressive. Most people remember him as a charmer, gentle, sympatico, always "on", but Dali describes another side of Lor- ca: "The poetic phenomenon in its entirety and 'in the raw' presented itself before me in flesh and bone, confused, blood-red, viscous and sublime, quivering with a thousand fires of darkness and subterranean biology." H.F.: So you think they were exploring this world of subterranean biology together? AK: I think that's inevitable — though of course Dali would never ad- mit to an exogenous source of inspiration. "I don't take hal- lucinogens!" he cried. "I am a hallucinogen!" But his surreal universe; his paintings for Les Chants de Maldoror, the "blood is sweeter than honey" first Communion incident from The Secret Life; the painting "Spider in the Afternoon"; an article that appeared in 1941 in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "Spiders — that's what fascinates Dali most about Virginia," all argue to the contrary. H.F.: How did they take it? AK: Lorca refers repeatedly to a pin: "the most secret use of an old rusty pin" or "On a pin's point my love is spinning!" I think they were puncturing the dorsum of the spiders' abdomen lightly with a pin — and the blood or hemolymph would spurt out without permanently injuring the spider. The hemolymph of spiders is green — blueish green when fresh oxidizing to brownish green — because the hemocyanin molecule is based on copper instead of iron as in mammals. The meaning of the line most often identified with Lorca — and yet puzzlingly cryptic — "Verde que te quiero verde" — "Green how I want you green" — in the Somnambular Ballad is now patently obvious. H.F.: And you've got the patent on hemolymph extraction? AK: Oh, I'd never do it! — It's simply too toxic to the heart. It's probably what did Jim Morrison in. H.F.: Really 1 AK: No, that's just a wild rumor! My wild rumor. But he's fairly Or- phic and a great admirer of Rimbaud's. H.F.: You keep using the word Orphic and though it's pretty late in the game, could you explain what you mean by it'? AK: Ah, orphism. This could be never-ending. John Warden says that given the will and ingenuity, anything can be shown to be Orphic. As a myth, it contains dozens of sub-motifs: the magician-poet who can tame the forces of nature, the descent into Hades, the loss of the beloved, the last minute breaking of a taboo, the dismemberment by incensed rampaging females (like Pentheus), the decapitated oracular head, the power to charm beasts and cure the bites and stings of venomous animals: the stellio, the adder and the tarantula. One inter- esting aspect that has not been sufficiently emphasized is the mysogynist character of Orpheus (post-Eurydice), the fact that he ad- dressed himself solely to men (like Robert Bly). Women were forbid- den to participate in Orphic rites or even enter into the sacred precinct around his shrine. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Orpheus advocates pederastic love. But still the most important aspect of the Orpheus story is his ability to cure through the power of music and sound. 'He could halt the five archetypal tortures (Tantalus, Ixion, Tityos, Danaides, Sisyphus) and counteract the madness caused by the siren's ® song with his more potent music. II F So Orpheus represents the musician as Healer? AK: Yes, but not merely a medium or channel; he's a rigorously trained thaumaturge who uses his mastery of musical tones, modes, vowel sounds and colours to draw down the different planetary in- fluences. And as a seer or prophet he was master of the art of divina- tion through mirrors or basins of water — the encounter with the double — a higher-octave Narcissus. The psychosomatic effects of the eight different modes— Phrygian, Lydian, Dorian, etc. is a wist sub- ject — too vast to go into here. The vibrational affinities between the vowels, colours, tones and planets goes back to Gnostic incantations and is described in Empedocles' Purifications and Plato's Charmides, The seven Greek vowels were magical symbols of the music of the spheres and were uttered by the initiate to intensify the incantation or used as amulets. Rimbaud, in his enigmatic Voyelles, combined the vowels with colours, alchemical symbolism and tarantula imagery to create a real tour-de-force. "A. black belt, hairy with bursting flies"— the black belt referring to the characteristic marking on the ventral side of the tarantula: E, white — sand, the tarantula's habitat; I, crimson — blood, rage; U. green — divine peace; 0, violet — the angelic or transcendent. (The last three referring to the qualitatively different kinds of tarantula venom trips). Rimbaud was preternaturally cons- cious of his orphic calling from the age of fourteen — and conscious of the grueling discipline involved. "Careful, mind." he writes in The Im- possible. "Don't rush madly after salvation. Train yourself!" "La science que j' entreprends est une science distincte de la poesie," said Lautreamont in his Poesies. The soul of Orpheus was thought to successively incarnate in Homer, Pythagoras. Ennius, then (after a lapse of 1600 years) in Mar- silio Ficino. Ficino, who wrote The Book of Life, a manual of self-cul- tivation, and was patronized by Lorenzo de' Medici, played an Orphic lyre emblazoned with a picture of Orpheus and sang the ancient Or- phic hymns with incredible sweetness. Cosimo de' Medici invited him to come down to the villa for the weekend and added "And don't for- get to bring your lyre when you come." Lorca must certainly have in- carnated the soul of Orpheus in this century. He wrote: "In a century of zeppelins and stupid deaths I sob at my piano dreaming of the Han- delian mist and I create verses very much my own, singing the same to Christ as to Buddha, to Mohammed, and to Pan. For a lyre I have my piano and, instead of ink, the sweat of yearning, yellow pollen of my inner lily and my great love." In the Renaissance, humanitas is defined as the capacity for love, and the effect of Orpheus' song was to lead man to love. Love is the power that produces harmony in all things — Love is "inventive, double-natured, holding the keys to everything." Double natured, like sacred and profane Venus, like the two musics of Urania and Polyhymnia. And Orpheus, having suffered to such an ex- treme, is endowed with the furor gjnatorius which can lead man to a state of joy. H.F.: Where is our Orpheus today'' AK: I suspect that he'll come out of the ranks of Rock music. We are so close to an understanding of music and affective states, music as healer and purifier. With the incredible sophistication of acoustic tech- nology, the resources of the Rock Industry, and the surprising intel- ligence of some of the people within it, it is just a matter of time before Orpheus' soul incarnates again. H.F.: There was no mention at all of Orpheus at that "Ritual and Rap- ture" Conference last month. I "Ritual and Rapture: From Dionysus to the Grateful Dead" sponsored hy U.C. Berkeley featured mycologist Joseph Campbell and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.) AK: I know — I thought that was remarkable! Mickey Hart's writing a book: On the Edge of Magic, but he's still on the edge. Both he and Jerry Garcia professed themselves to be essentially mediums. Orphism is the next stage beyond Dionysiac possession, beyond catharsis. It re- quires soul-suffering and transcendence, then deep study and ritual practice. H.F.: Are you suggesting that rock musicians start hitting the books ' AK: Not necessarily, but there is a fantastic treasury of ancient manuscripts, housed at the University of Texas at Austin. J*° n L««- was just telling me about it. He delved into it a bit a few years ago when he was writing a score for a him on Kepler's "Music of the Spheres" H.F '.: What does it contain' Incantations on old mumnn wrappings. that sort of thing? AK: Lots of Renaissance musical treatises — survivals and sys- tematizations of Pythagorean lore. He said there were really bizarre fantastic things there — charts, anatomical drawings showing different modes or musical tones streaming through nerve fibers and plexi or resonating in ventricles: five floors of the stuff; they plundered Europe after the war, brought it in by the railroad carload. Somebody should really begin looking seriously at the musical material. H.F.. -Or frivolously! AK: Frivolously, even. Also, there's a semi-reformed cranial surgeon up in Santa Rosa, Joel Alter, who now has a holistic health clinic where he's working with sonic resonances in healing. He claims that musical vibrations and vowel sounds produce standing waves in the cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles that actually mediate the produc- tion of neuro- hormones. H.F :. Are there any rock artists who are implementing these dis- coveries in their music'.' AK: You tell me. You know the rock scene far better than I. Is anyone consciously using musical energies in an Orphic way? H.F.: It's hard to say. You were probably right earlier when you said that the primary impulse of most rock has been more Dionysian They're into catharsis, they're into release — release from stress, sexual frustration, social tensions, whatever. And they're into bac- i hanalian celebration... .logger, Patti Smith. Jim Morrison all mode diced references to Dionysianism at one time or another. I'd say most of the powerful performers these daw arc post modern ironists — like David Byrne. Bowie, Laurie Anderson— not particularly Orphic. But I can think oj several people whose works I would check, if I were you, for Orphic elements... Peter Gabriel. Van Morrison. Todd Rundgren, Kate Bush... AK: Oh I loved Kate Bush's Hounds of Love. It's really quite ecstatic. H.F.: I heard that she incorporated a lot of Gurdjieffs musical theories in that album They might be hosed on Orphic notions. AK: One record that impressed me recently — in more ways than one — was the new double album by This Mortal Coil. It's got some dis- tinctly Orphic elements to it. H.F Oh. is that the one you were telling me about with Tarantula on it'' AK: Yes, someone gave me a copy. He'd heard the refrain "Taran- tula... Tarantula" coming over the airwaves in the dead of night and leapt out of bed to write down the title. It's called Filigree and Shadow — doubtless a reference to Moorish architecture. The lyrics cover all the basic leitmotifs of tarantismo — the shining staring eyes, (in fact, they're on the cover), the initial numbness or prostration, the mask, the double, the thunder (Rimbaud's tempete. Lautreamont \ tourbillon, Patti Smith's hurricane), the sense that one's another per- son — "another person living in a parallel reality" is the way Harold of the Flying Tarantulas put it, "Je est un autre" were Rimbaud's words. The first verse runs: "I'm living but I'm feeling numb. you can see it in my stare I wear a mask so closely now and I don't know who I am This poison wells inside of me eroding me away I've noticed in other eyes things closing in... But when the thunder breaks it breaks for you and me Tarantula, tarantula" The last verse ends rather abruptly: "My world's under a sentence of death I was born under (grass) clouds But when the pressure gets too much for me I bite! I-I-I-I-I-E-I-E-I-E-l-E-O-O-O-O-O" This kind of sudden, quirky, animal-like violence is often described in clinical reports of tarantismo, or of possession states. The "squared mouth" of the Greek mask of tragedy, the "bouche carree" of Lautreamont; the characteristic animal howls, and eeriest of all. a peculiar "yelp" — ... "the stylized cry of the tarantulees, the crisis cry', an ahiii uttered with various modulations, that sounds more like the yelping of a dog than a human cry." (Gilbert Rouget, DeMartino). Darwin has an illuminating discussion of the paroxysms of rage, grief. terror and joy and how they produce strange involuntary sounds depending on the different muscle groups powerfully contracted. H.F.: This is fascinating, and clearly relevant, but is such music or- phic'.' AK: Well, it's probably pre-Orphic. Not having looked at those in- cunabula at Austin, I don't really know what Orphic means. The music Rimbaud composed on his death bed and played on a hand organ was probably Orphic. H.F.: Oh? What's this'.' I've never heard of Rimbaud composing music. AK: Well, none of it survives unfortunately — we'll never know what it was like — except that it was described as "supernal fugues of essences and quintessences." He probably played it to heal himself in those weeks in Marseilles after they amputated his leg. Anyone who has even contemplated taking tarantula venom should read his sister Isabelle's description of those last days — the hellish sufferings, "the incessant wails and indescribable despair." The most terrible, exquisite pathos I have ever read — his damnation foreshadowed years earlier: "Hadn't I once a youth that was lovely, heroic, fabulous — something to write down on pages of gold?... I was the creator of every feast, ever) triumph, every drama. 1 tried to invent new flowers, new planets, new flesh, new languages. I thought that I had acquired supernatural powers. Ha! I have to bury my imagination and rm memorii ' What an end to a splendid career as an artist and storyteller' I! I called mysell a magician, an angel, free from all moral constraint!... 1 am sent back to the soil to seek some obligation, to wrap gnarled realit) in my arn // /• So, have we said it suffii it ml) loud and . tear vet? For all sou kids out there in Radioland— Don't, I repeat, do not try tarantula venom' AK: It permanently imprints the nervous system with a manic-depres sive syndrome — and it's probably carcinogenic. H.F.: There are much belter things out then ' AK: Or on the drafting boards — or the computer simulation modelling screens Anyway, psycho-nutrition is where it's at! And be sure to tone up your thymus glands! H.F. So back to Orpheus — any candidates for Orpheus out there? AK: Well, being a child ol the sixties. I kind of thought it might be Dylan. His life follows the typical Orphic pattern — the descent into Hade., the loss of his wife Sarah, the retirement into the wilds of Thrace (read upper New York State), and finally this year his resurfac- ing after the long Rip van Winkle-like hibernation. I thought he might be about to reveal his "gnawing secret"— the "hydre intime" of taran- tula venom use — when I heard his 19X6 summer concert tour was cal- led "True Confessions." H.F .: Gnawing secret'.' AK: Well, those were actually Henry Miller's words describing Rim- baud: "The hydre intime eats away until even the core of one's being becomes sawdust and the whole body is like unto a temple ol desolation." Desolation, damnation of the soul- some of the meanings that have been attached to the "Ten of Swords." H.F.: That's the name of the new bootleg Dylan album. I wondered where that came from. AK: Significantly, out on Tarantula Records. Dylan seems to have a very loyal and protective entourage, but clearly somebody out there knows. Patti Smith in Babel writes "Have you seen dylans dog.' it got wings, it can fly, if you speak of it to him, it's the only time dylan can't look you in the eye." H.F.: But damnation of the soul'.' Isn't that a bit strong'.' AK: Well, he said in Tarantula that he'd made a Faustian pact with the devil to get away from Middle America. The gypsies atttach a par- ticularly malign significance to the ten of swords. In Crowley's Book of Tholh, it is ruled by the sun in Gemini: (Dylan's sign) and represents "the culmination of unmitigated energy... the ruin of the In- tellect and even of all mental and moral qualities." H.F . I don't see any evidence of ruined intellect. AK: Look, I'm just quoting. The card itself is reminiscent of the pierced heart in alchemical and cante jondo symbolism — anguish, dis- solution. Rachel Pollack has the best discussion of it. "You are physi- cally ruined by the intensity," she writes in The 7H Degrees oj \\ isdom "Your mind has been stretched to its outer limit... The 10 swords in a man's body including one in his ear suggest hysteria and the idea 'no one has ever suffered as much as me'." "Non est dolor sicut dolor meus": Dylan has written this in many ways especially in his born- again lyrics. H.F.: Oh. have you found evidence in his lyrics?... AK: Look. I'm into grand synthesis — not minute textual exegesis! But there are a few things — "I know all about poison. I know all about fiery darts" he says in "What Can I Do For You?" In "Where Are You Tonight (Journey Through Dark Heat)" he says: "The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, to live n you had to explode" and "I fought with my twin, that enemy within, 'til both of us fell by the way. Horseplay and disease is killing me by degrees while the I looks the other way." H.F.: Horseplay must be about heroin — but disease? AK: Well, in the same period he wrote "Legionnaire's Disease" which clearly describes tarantismo — the title slyly referring to North Africa via the French Foreign Legion. "Some say it was radiation, some say there was acid on the microphone, some say a combination turned their hearts to stone. But whatever it was. it drove them to their knees. Oh, I egionnaire's disease./ 1 wish I had a dollar for everyone that died that year" (Edie Sedgewick? Jim Morrison.' Jimi Hendrix?) "Got 'em hot In the collar, plenty an old maid's shed a tear: Now within my heart, it sure put on a squeeze. Oh that Legionnaire's disease." H.F.: Lean slammed Dylan for his "sniveling and snarling" in NeuroPolitics — said that he almost single-handedly undermined the A- quartan idealism oj the Psychedelic Movement. AK: Yes. He called him "that Old Testament Masochism Bob." but he also said he was mutating rapidly. But Allen Ginsberg said it best of all in the liner notes for Desire (which by the way. was subtitled Songs of Redemption): "loved like a thin terrified guru by every seeker in America who heard that long-vowelled voice in heroic ecstatic trium- phant how does it feel'... And behind it all the vast lone space... of mindful conscious compassion. Enough Person revealed to make Whitman's whole nation weep." ®
the syntactic ritual of tarantheism, which have been obscured and finally deciphered in light of recent discoveries. Starting from the great lesson of Ernesto De Martino, the mysterious universe of the mythical "tarantula" is unveiled in all its many meanings through the events of Magnificent and even earlier Paleo-Mediterranean mythology, medieval debate on poisons, natural magic and of witchcraft, of iatromechanical medicine at the threshold of enlightenment, and finally of its new configurations in the age of postmodernity. An astonishing, wide and profound cultural breath emerges, inspired by archaic legacy and new contemporary mysticism, between esotericism and instances of rationality. Paolo Apolito, anthropologist at the University of Salerno, questions the current meaning of the tarantula rite - more memory and a sign of local identity - in a Mezzogiorno in full transformation and contradiction. Following a tireless excavation, passionate as the writing that expresses it, the author comes to understand the reasons why a phenomenon that remained latent for almost thirty years suddenly comes back to speak of itself. Gino Leonardo Di Mitri, historian and researcher of the "Diego Carpitella" Institute, reconsidering the ignored chapter of the sunset of Byzantine civilization in the Land of Otranto, comes to a definition of tarantism more complex and less anguish than what would be it was conceivable, in a counterpoint between ancient Mediterranean dances and clues of sincretic religiousness enclosed in an authentic sacramental drama. Bernardino Fantini, a medical historian and director of the prestigious "Louis Jeantet" Institute of the University of Geneva, traces the story of tarantism on the traces of Giorgio Baglivi, the protagonist of the first 'epistemological breakdown' in syndrome investigations. Theories and methods about the effectiveness of music against the spider bite, the chemical and mechanical interpretations of the disease, and the physical and fibrillary backgrounds of a complex and innovative clinical practice have finally been put to the screen. Vittorio Lanternari, dean of the La Sapienza University of Rome and founding father of contemporary ethnopsychiatry studies, establishes a stimulating comparison between the atavistic expectations of salvation and healing whose theater was tarantism and the new forms of Marian devotion of which is a paradigm illuminating the phenomenon of Lourdes. The 'metastoral' event of suffering and the consequent use of the 'pilgrimage' resource are examined in an impeccable lesson of social and cultural anthropology of wise comparative cuts. Gabriele Mina, a researcher at the University of Genoa, tries to read some of the aspects of the works by Epifanio Ferdinando, Athanasius Kircher and Giorgio Baglivi to reveal the rhetoric of an era such as the '600. A reflection that, although confined to the themes of the history of scientific thinking, can draw a fascinating picture of the dominant mentality in the 'golden age' of tarantula. Gianfranco Salvatore, musicologist and anthropologist of the University of Lecce, and director of the Diego Carpitella Institute, reviewing the copious literature produced on the subject of tarantism following the famous Earth of Remorse, compares the indisputable portraits of the Demartinian experience and the overwhelming instances of overcoming traditional research. This is a real document of the new season of studies on the phenomenon that was inaugurated in the '90s. Maria Rosaria Tamblé, an official of the State Archives of Lecce and a member of the Patria History Society for Puglia, brings to light two important process events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries against the tarantats and practicing the magic arts drawn from that rich mine that are the documentary funds of the Salento bishops. The 'night stories' by Catherine 'Grecian' and by Francesco da Casalnuovo, reflect the theme of tarantism within a context which has so far been regarded as strange to possessions and sorcery.
Domènech Y Amaya (Don) Pedro Francisco
Survey on a man bitten by tarantula
An eighteenth-century pamphlet dedicated to the vicissitudes of evil caused by the tarantula bite.
Translation of Livia Apa
Loretta Fractal Introduction
In 16∞; pages 120
Palermo, Sellerio, 1998
Euro 7,00
Limited availability, volume out of stock
Domènech, a Catalan doctor, was an eyewitness and improvised therapist of a case of tarantolism in Estremadura in the summer of 1790, solved, according to tradition, with tarantella and guaracha. The meticulous description, veiled with dull irony, is a small gem of eighteenth-century prose.
Pedro Francisco Domènech y Amaya, Catalan doctor, was born in 1755 and died in 1833.
Giuliano Valter
Dogs, poets, pupa and tarante
Meet with Witnesses of Popular Culture
With musical CD
Volume in 16 ° format (19 x 14 cm); 188 pages; 37 photos in b / w
Rome, Imbalances, 2007
Euro 18,00
Availability: On sale
Hecker FK Justus
Danzimania
Edited by Giovanni di LeccePages 104
Nardò (LE), Besa, 2001
Euro 15,00
Limited availability, volume out of stock
A brief but important essay by the illustrious German doctor of the nineteenth century, Justus FK Hecker, guides us through the reinterpretation of Tarantesimo of South Italy and of the other "Danzimanie" (San Vito Ball, San Giovanni Ball, African Tigretier) highlighting the rituals and healing of the European populations in their historical, environmental and social context, and inviting the reader to discover differences and analogies between the past and present, the North and the South of Europe, the dancing behaviors of yesterday and today's generations. Along with the book, a musical CD, edited by Giorgio Di Lecce, collects some of the arias (harmonic clauses) used since ancient times in treating the tarantas care that needed the right air - tarant-ella - for get the healing, along with the dance, the appropriate objects and colors. In addition to the arias transcribed in the musical scores recorded by Hecker in the appendix to his book (reported by Kircher in 1641), the tarantella of Foriano Pico was proposed by the end of 1500 (one of the first to have this name) and the last pinch- taranta of an old woman of Scorrano, collected in Galatina in the '90s.
Katner Wilhelm
The Enigma of Tarantism
Nardò (LE), Besa, 2002
Euro 15,00
Availability: On the market
Wilhelm Katner's 1956 essay, published here for the first time in Italian translation, is one of the classics of the twentieth-century study of tarantism. In particular, by focusing on the zoological classification of the poisoned bite of the animal and on the many symptomatic readings, his medical analysis highlights a precise dialectic with the historical sources. It follows an aptic interpretation proposition that - a few years later - Ernesto De Martino would be confronted, thanks also to the direct knowledge of the two scholars.
Inchingolo Ruggiero
Luigi Stifani and the taranted pinch
Studies on musical instruments, 'numerical' music and on music performed by Luigi Stifani's group.
Description: Volume in 8 ° format (23 x 15 cm); 188 pages.
Place, Publisher, date: Nardò, Besa
Necklace: Entropie 48
ISBN: 9788849709308 978-88-497-0930-8
Price: Euro 16,00
Availability: On the market
Materials 1 - Ernesto de Martino monograph.
Semiannual periodical.
With the works of: Cantillo; Di Gianni; Esposito; Faeta; Iaccio; Lombardi Satriani; Merico; Mingozzi; Musi; Vuoso.
Publication by CEIC (Centro Entografico Campano).
Pages 160
Calimera (LE), Kurumuny, 2007
Euro 12,00
Availability: On the market
The reinassance of a magazine is in itself an extraordinary event, but it is even more so in the case of a publication that as "Materials", is generated in the field of demoentnoanthropological scientific-cultural periodicals, notably a field characterized by a small number of headsets.
Today, as we are today, we consecrate the monographic part of the magazine to Ernesto de Martino (of which the centenary of the birth falls in 2008), in the belief that the great scholar is still exemplary and critically present, vivid in his relation to the deep dynamics of the crisis of contemporary- .
"Romanticists," wrote Martino, "returned to ancient national memories, customs, traditions, costumes and popular songs, but they did not return for simple curiosity, and we, today, why should we return?" One of Martino's answers was: To participate "not from stateless but from Italians to the general humanist movement", deepening the cultural tradition to renew it, dividing "well-founded in our things and moving them to the world." The staging of folklore, which fills the gaps left by the progressive folklore, has in the meantime loaded the demo-anthropological research of further theoretical and methodological problems, new programs and fields of inquiry by promoting the multiplicity of glances to which the present world, he has several different stairs, he can not and must not escape.
In the awareness that much remains to be done, the new editorial series of "Materials" starts up in the world.
Since the introduction of Ugo Vuoso.
Mighali Giuseppe
Zimba - voices, sounds rhythms of Aradeo.
by L. Chiriatti; M.Nocera; S.Torsello.
Enclosed audio CD containing 23 tracks.
Page 80
Calimera (LE), Kurumuny 2004
Euro 12,00
Availability: In the market
The book with attached CD containing 23 songs recorded between 1976 and 1978, collects the history of Zimba family, extraordinary players of tambourine Aradeo. Through this instrument the Zimba exorcise life and its evils. They are at the same time tarantati and tarantati players. The Zimba represent a social and political voice "against". In their songs it tells the story of tobacco workers of Aradeo and political events that sees them engaged in the front line. The CD contains 23 pieces, some already 'published or known, others completely new and ends with the singing of San Lazzaro made at Easter 2004 by Pino Zimba and his sisters, at the event "Songs of Passion." Pino Zimba; (Giuseppe Mighali), is the natural heir of this tradition.
Mina Gabriele (eds)
The bite of the difference.
Anthology of the debate on tarantismo between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Pages 153
Nardo (LE), Besa.
EUR 13.00
Availability: In trade
the historical image of the Mediterranean tarantismo, thanks to contemporary literature, is handed down from important witnesses seventeenth century; However, in the previous three centuries it develops a debate on diverse than ever, so far virtually ignored. The cultural look that over that period describe and assess the phenomenon is mediated by a plurality 'of categories: among them stands out the one of "melancholy", capable of guiding interpretive keys (the fixing and alteration fantastic, the variety' of symptoms , physiology poisoning) but that at the same time brings out the relationships this complex interplay between the authors, the matter of their representation and the reader. A particular horizon of words and bodies that here we wanted to re-cross between clues and fiction writing, in an introductory essay on "construction melancholy" of tarantism and in a choice of documents (proposed in the original Latin and in translation): rare books, treatises de venenis, medical dissertations on the spider bite, notes of famous authors such as Marsilio Ficino and Tommaso Campanella.
Mina Gabriele Torsello Sergio
Infinite canvas
Bibliography of studies on the Mediterranean tarantismo.
Pages 196.
Nardo (Le); Besa, 2000
Euro 15,00
Availability: In trade
From 1945 to May 2004, some 800 items of literature on the Mediterranean ritual of tarantism organized into an annotated bibliography and literature in a diachronic, with appendices on the video documentation, sound materials, resources on the Web. Since the season demartiniana to ethnomusicology studies, anthropology and psychiatry, the myth, the debate on identity 'premises, from Salento to Sardinia to the Spanish rituals, journals, dissertations ... an essential critical tool for searching, collecting, the discussion.
Mingozzi Gianfranco
La Taranta. Book + DVD
The first film document on tarantism.
Original Music recorded by Diego Carpitella; Photography by Ugo Piccone; Consulting Ernesto de Martino; Comment by Salvatore Quasimodo.
8th edition format (21 x 14.5 cm); 112 pages; many illustrations in b / n in the text.
Dvd: The Taranta, 1962, b / n; 35 mm; duration: 20 '
Galatina (LE), Kurumuny,
Necklace: Frames. No. 05
ISBN: 8895161372 978
Euro 15.00
Availability: In trade
The book recounts the experiences of a passionate filmmaker anthropology, Gianfranco Mingozzi, around tarantismo. For over twenty years Mingozzi has traveled the lands of Salento documenting the first - in 1961 - with the short film The tarantula and an episode of the film The Italian and love (White Widow), this phenomenon then known only by scholars. Then returned in 1977 on this topic with the dramatic TV report South and magic, in memory of Ernesto de Martino (ethnologist who had studied and analyzed tarantismo in several books), still has testified in 1982 with a recent documentary, The land of remorse, the end of this ancient medieval heritage.
The book is divided into three parts, corresponding to the different experiences of Mingozzi field: The tarantula and The White Window displays with dozens of photos taken from the frames of the respective film, accompanied by commentary by Salvatore Quasimodo and by the music of Ernesto de Martino , by the criticism and all the documents about the shoot, as well as a diary kept by the director at the time. On land of remorse contains - along with the text of the documentary - the articles that accompanied the release of the South and Magic program on TV with the red-hot controversy of big names (Sanguineti, Siciliano, Rossi, Scabia etc.) On "The reality ' its representation. " And this to give a vision, the most 'complete, the phenomenon of "tarantism" more and more' at the center of the mass media, musicians, scholars.
Montinaro Brizio
Dancing with spider
with accompanying CD
Pages 140
Lecce, Argo, 2008
Euro 18,00
Availability: In trade
From the stage show Dancing with the Spider, starring Brizio Montinaro with Ensemble Terra d'Otranto, the book offers a fascinating journey through literature and music from the fifteenth century to the present they have marked the important stages of one of the traditions most mysterious of the Mediterranean.
The looks on tarantism of clergymen, doctors, philosophers, travelers, storytellers, anthropologists. From time to time poisonous, wise, amazed, ironic, aware.
The ancient music all certified by witnesses as truly perform music for the dance of tarantate: languid, melancholy or variously punctuated those of the past, triggered until the tragic climax those of today. Líiconografia the tarantula of past centuries and recent photos 'stolen' in Galatina from Brizio Montinaro during the rite of tarantism now in full decay and decline.
Sources with the original notes scores, rare and unheard of Italian and Spanish music used in the exorcism of the tarantula.
The CD with a complete recording of the show Dancing with the spider.
Mora George
Apulian bad
Subtitle: Ethno-psychiatry historical tarantismo
By Gino L. Di Mitri
Description: Volume size 8 °; 100 pages.
Place, Publisher, date: Lecce, Besa, February 2017
Series: Reflections 58
ISBN: 9788862802031 978-88-6280-203-1
Price: Euro 13,00
Availability: In trade
Nacci Anna (ed)
Tarantismo and Neotarantismo.
Music, dance, trance.
Proceedings of the Conference. Rome February 13, 2001
Nardo (LE), Besa.
€ 12.00
Availability: In trade
Neotarantismo, a neologism coined by observing a phenomenon that involves large groups of people spread throughout the Italian territory (and not only). A movement that expresses the need music "other", for new communication and interpersonal relationships, a question cathartic dance usable beyond its historical connotations linked to suffering and shame. The need, detectable in every age, of liberation from daily worries and oppression of various kinds still expressed through and through music and dance.
Against globalization, the cultural leveling and the attempt to erase the diversity 'implemented by the media reaches a strong response from below. And here is thick masses of young and old, who flock squares, community centers, pubs, theaters and any other structure that proposes popular music concerts, including tweaks that triggers uncontrollable collective dance moments.
Pacoda Pierfrancesco
Tarantapatia
Subtitle: The long nights of the tarantula
Illustrations by Lucio Montinaro
Description: Volume size 8 ° (19 cm x 13); 136 pages.
Place, Publisher, date: Galatina (LE), Kurumuny, 2012
Necklace: necklace Out
ISBN: 9788895161907
Price: € 12.00
Availability: In trade
Panico Fernando
white dress.
Ethno-anthropological research on Apulian tarantism.
8th edition format (21 x 15 cm); 95 pages.
Calimera (LE), Kurumuny, 2009
ISBN: 8895161174 978
Euro 10.00
Availability: In trade
Pizzicata.
Edoardo Winspeare.
DVD
A Edoardo Winspeare with Cosimo Cinieri, Fabio Frascaro, Chiara Torelli.
Italy, 1996.
duration: 91 '.
Availability: No
From "Il Morandini 2008 - movies Dictionary":
In 1943, on the eve of the Allied landings in southern Italy, the pilot of a US scout Tony Marciano (F. Frascaro), shot down by German flak over the Salento, find shelter in the farmer's family Carmine Pantaleo (C. Cinieri), he rediscovers his roots, falls in love with Cosima (C. Torelli), one of three daughters of Carmine, sparking jealousy of her future husband, the wealthy Pasquale ( P. Massafra). 1st feature film cosmopolitan Winspeare E. (1965), born and raised in Depressed (Lecce). Except C. Cinieri, all non-professional interpreters, selected in Salento; all components of technical cast from the film schools of Monaco, Rome, Paris. Remarkable for the ability 'to build a history of feelings based upon a ethnic and anthropological research. Pizzicata - or pinch tarantata - is a peasant dance that mimics the love between man and woman, the duel with the dagger, the frantic pace that trance music brings women bitten by the tarantula. Jérôme Harley Music.
Distributed by the Academy without success. 1st prize Citadel Fuji-1997 to the Arezzo Festival of Italian independent cinema.
Romanazzi Andrea
The return of the dancing god
cults and rites of tarantolismo in Italy
Discovering folk music and traditions behind the "Night of the Taranta" with foreword by Teresa De Sio
format 13 x 20 cm; pages 180
Roma, Venexia Editrice, 2006
Euro 16,00
Availability: In trade
Folk traditions related to tarantolismo generated cults and rites that have created some of the most 'vital music and folk dances: tammurriate, tarantella and pizziche, whose renewed interest among young people is attracting strong international appeal. The author analyzes the evolution of such traditions, including the venues and festivals, fairs and events related to the cult of Taranta. The preface is an interview with Teresa De Sio, great protagonist and scholar of popular music.
Tarantism rooted in the atavistic fears of man Ancient God who sees the vegetation, which had become immanent in the plant, to perish by his own hand and therefore is afraid that the same deity ', offended and misused, take vengeance with all its power.
It is the time when you generate the mystical human crisis, it is the farmer himself actually 'cause of death mowed God and therefore of his own despair ending the plant life and so' bowing to God's punishment.
The only solution is to search for a scapegoat, the sacred animal who, like novello agnello, can wash from ancestral sins and hide the crime disguising and transforming the man murdered in murderess.
Sara 'so' that over the pages of the book we will encounter between ancient gods' and many totemic animals, the wolf, the bull, goat, rabbit, expressions themselves immanence of the divine and equally guilty of death executors god.
Sara 'during this excursion that will arrive in the presence dell'aracnide, the mystique Taranta from dual aspect: expression of god that must be killed but also temibil scapegoat on which to pour the ancestral faults.
This is the essence of the spider and its lewd and luscious bite. It returns to the moment of human crisis, the only real original sin of Eve's offspring, the collection of the forbidden fruit, the "messengers of God" that is so 'killed to give the knowledge to himself and to his descendants. It is the crisis that generates the expulsion from Eden, the departure from the woods that made for man, is the appearance of the primordial shame, uman terror that lurks between the coils of the serpent tempter, the tarantula hidden in the branches Primigenia not for groped and condemn, but to seduce and show off her sensual bite, symbol of transience 'human, the illusory domination by man over nature which is Divinity'.
At the obsessive and repetitive rhythm of the tarantella pizziche here is that music and dance are become through the numinous world, the changing way that leads man to ecstasy mystical dancing around the Tree of the primordial Sabbath. It is here that one of the eternal serpent coils, the Old God from the skipped step continues to offer the fruit to her children that the fearful grasp. Every year, from here to eternity ', all'ondeggiare of ears of corn in the wind, the man will see' the return of the "god dancing" and he will dance 'til you will disappear when the pale light of the moon will have' finally completed the grueling night of Taranta.
Rossi Annabella
And the world became yellow.
Tarantism in Campania.
With essays by Patrizia Ciambelli, Aurora Milillo and Elizabeth Di Marino.
Introduction by Luigi M. Lombardi Satriani.
In 8 ° format; pp. 239.
Vibo Valentia (VV), Qualecultura, 1992
Availability: No
Rossi Annabella
Letters from a tarantata
New edition by Paolo Apolito
With a language known by Tullio De Mauro
Description: Volume size 8 ° (21 x 15 cm); 185 pages.
Place, Publisher, date: Rome, Imbalances, 2015
Series: Studies and Tools. No. 2
ISBN: 9788886211208
Price: 18,00 EUR
Availability: In trade
Rota Daniela
Jesuits and Tarantulas
Volume in size 8 ° (24 cm x 17); 136 pages
Place, Publisher, date: Lucca, LIM, 2012
Series: Music Library Lim - Essays
ISBN: 978 870 966 800
Price: Euro 30,00
Availability: In trade
Santoro Vincenzo Torsello Sergio (ed)
The Rhythm Meridian
pinches and identity 'dance of Salento
Interventions Franco Cassano, Maurizio Merico, Giovanni Pizza, Alessandro Portelli, Luigi Piccioni, Roberto Raheli, Joseph M. Gala, Clara Gallini, Edoardo Winspeare, Sergio Blasi
Pages 206.
Euro 14,50
Availability: In trade
" the meridian "rhythm is an attempt at social and anthropological interpretation of" Salento movement of rediscovery of traditional music and pinches through the contributions of intellectuals, artists and cultural workers.
the approach given to the book by the two curators, Vincenzo Santoro Sergio Torsello, try to ask, more 'than to resolve fundamental questions of analysis and interpretation, with opinions often not aligned, then determine a ricost interruption rich but heterogeneous.
Franco Cassano, saw there an attempt to reconfigure the relationship between modernity 'and tradition; the anthropological gaze of Gianni Pizza, intervention in the refined form of letters, pointing instead to organize the phenomenon in a global context, focusing on the mechanisms and ideologies of cultural production. Maurizio Merico, meanwhile, tries to read the femonemo using interpretive categories of Franco Cassano (the identity 'meridian) and Ernesto de Martino (the concept of "cultural home"), while Gigi Piccioni instead raises the question about the risk that the rediscovery of identity 'local brings summed nell'lternativa between identity' to live or identity 'to sell.
Alessandro Portelli photographer with extraordinary vividness, contradictions and paradoxes inherent to the "Pizzica" movement; Roberto also Raheli, the revived musician and publisher and Pino Gala, etnocoreologo, wonder about the distance between tradition and new interpretations and / or processing, respectively, of music and traditional dance than what successive generations. The masterful interview Clara Gallini finally analyzes the mechanisms of construction of the idea of "ethnicity '". The volume ends with the testimony of Edoardo Winspeare, director of "Pizzicata" and "Sangue Vivo", and Sergio Blasi, mayor of Melpignano and organizer of the "Notte della Taranta", the most 'popular Salentine events.
The book is enriched by the photos of Puce and Claudio Raffaele Longo.
Santoro Vincenzo
The return of the tarantula
History of the rebirth of Salento folk music
with music CDs
Volume in 16th format (19 x 14 cm); 272 pages; 50 illustrations in b / n
Rome, Imbalances, 2009
Euro 27,00
Availability ': In business
Sanz Pilar Leon
Spanish tarantula.
Empiricism and tradition in the eighteenth century.
Pages 228.
Nardo (Le), Besa, 2008
Euro 15,00
Availability: In trade
more one delves into the history of tarantism, the more clear the need to overcome the domicile endemic, South Italy and Salento in particular, to land on Mediterranean routes. On this track was born the desire and conviction to conduct research in a very little known territory, led by doctors who, in the land of Spain in the eighteenth century, s'interrogavano on sound therapy and dance in front of men bitten by the spider. This volume presents a considerable body of unpublished historical sources or little known to the Italian public. In the hope that the path of the tarantula can continue in the Mediterranean network, then return the endemic "land of remorse", the more enriched and informed.
Schneider Marius
The sword dance and the tarantella
Wise musicology, etnogrtafico and archaeological on medicine rites
By Pierpaolo De Giorgi
Pages 242
Availability: No
Created almost as an appendix of another famous work by Marius Schneider (The symbolic animals and their musical origins in mythology and in ancient sculpture), the sword dance and the tarantella is actually 'the first comprehensive project that has dared to enroll in a large and complex categorical scheme, all the elements involved in tarantismo. Piu 'known in Italy thanks to a brisk stroncatura demartiniana ( "a personal mythmaking and unfounded") than through a direct approach, the Alsatian scholar research is definitely a milestone in the difficult path followed by the men of science for groped to understand a mysterious and elusive phenomenon. The generous attempt schneideriano winds through a articolatissimo confrontation between ethnic music, folk and primitive music systems and theories, plastic and visual arts, religious texts and various documents: the outcome is the fresco of a symbolic thought that springs from civilization ' megalithic and which assigns to music an essential ontological meaning, a real archetypal principle of all reality '. Even for those who the author deems final landing de Land of remorse, read or reread today the sword dance and to approach this fascinating world view in which man feels in close relationship with an animal, a plant, a constellation, a musical instrument, a mythological construction, it is still an extraordinary cultural adventure.
Serao Francesco
Della Tarantola or both falangio di Puglia.
By Gino L. Di Mitri
Pages 256
Nardo (LE), Besa, 2006
Euro 16,00
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FRANCESCO SERAO (1702-1783) was a physician and professor of great reputation in the Kingdom of Naples. Trained at the thought of Descartes and the tradition of the Academy Investiganti, resent 'teaching of Niccolò Cirillo, the influence of the doctrines of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Lorenzo Bellini treated.
He wrote several works: volcanology, zoology and translated - and introduced - in the scientific world Italian medical works of John Pringle. But he remained famous for his academic lectures "Of tarantula or both falangio di Puglia" that in 1742, in a climate of growing and widespread skepticism about the real responsibility 'of spiders in causing the syndrome of tarantism and complying with the observations of Tommaso Cornelio, they gave the final blow to magnetistiche iatromeccaniche and theories that had raged until then. In a learned and passionate critical review of the scientific literature to him earlier, Serao dismounted piece by piece the building tarantismo built on fragile foundations gullibility 'and founded the first convincing theory of a disease does not generated by actual poisons but rather' from melancholy up to become a real "school of the nation".
The work of Serao constitutes a gash opened on society 'whole of southern Italy on the eve of the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799: a surprisingly modern fresco from which transpire, in vivid colors, stabbing, the features of a world poised between the more' refined modernity 'intellectual and more' frightening backwardness of mentality ', including unprecedented environmental violence and deeper humanity' collective, between European impulse to the progress and constraints tough to feudalism '.
Sigerist Henry Ernest
Short History of tarantism.
Pages 80
Nardo (Le), Besa, 2010
Euro 12,00
Availability: In the market
remained unpublished Inexplicably in its Italian translation for little more than half a century, A Brief History of tarantism is a small but important text for those who want to learn more on 'enigma of tarantula. The paper has the advantage of being very strict in dealing with the seventeenth and eighteenth-century literature without losing the lively and popular character typical of Anglo-Saxon writers. Unfairly died of Ernesto De Martino in the famous Land of Remorse, the study of Sigerist is of paramount importance as it demonstrates conclusively that tarantism is not an extravagant manifestation of folklore, but a wise form of musical culture and dance which, under the guise of an original therapeutic procedure, practiced for centuries the southern populations to conceal the ancient pagan mysteries and not be persecuted by the Church.
Staiti Domenico, Boccadoro Brenno, Rouget Gilbert, L. Di Mitri
Tarantismo, Trance, Possession, Music.
Pages 128
Nardo (LE), Besa, 2001
Euro 14,00
Availability: In trade
Four major scholars in ethnomusicology and musicology explore the mysterious universe of the tarantula in an authentic counterpoint between antiquity 'Greek, classical tradition Renaissance-Baroque, cathartic-religious syncretism . What emerges is an amazing picture, in which music therapy endeavored for centuries as a remedy for the famous spider bite reveals a legacy of great dignity 'cultural, artistic and spiritual. Domenico Staiti, Professor of History of Musical Instruments at Dams University 'Bologna, through the reading of the Apulian vase painting of age' classic, investigates the possible antecedents of tarantism in mystery rituals of Dionysus, with all their worn with symbolism, evocations and ideas that relate to the drum and sull'aulòs such vehicles teléstica mania. Brenno Boccadoro, professor of musicology at the University 'of Geneva, retraces the path of civilization' European literary antiquity 'classical age' of the Enlightenment in search of the most 'fascinating themes that unite tarantismo other ways used by humans to apply the psychological power of music to the recomposition of the passions and to recapture lost dell'harmonia. Gilbert Rouget, already 'director of the music section of the prestigious Musée de l'Homme in Paris and author of a fundamental monograph La musique et trance, review, not without critical insights, the theory of' 'exorcism choral-music "made in his time by Diego Carpitella reaching the hypothesis of a real "possession of the theater" with its liturgical canon. Luisa So, Professor of History of Music at the Conservatory "Tito Schipa" of Lecce, identifies numerous points of rhythmic-melodic-harmonic connection existing between the tarantella seventeenth century and some forms of popularizing tradition of the late Renaissance and Baroque (foil, Moorish, salad ...), then projecting the analysis within the musical experience learned throughout the seventeenth century with remarkable proposal to little known or unpublished own musical scores identified in major libraries in Europe.
