Plenaries
Plenary
The Hills are Alive: Paracelsus and the Spirits of Nature
Leonard George, Ph.D.
At the age of 36, the Swiss alchemist and physician Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541) took on the name Paracelsus (“better than Celsus”) to proclaim his superiority over Celsus and other traditional medical authorities. He urged everyone to set aside the hidebound opinions of ancestors and look directly and deeply into the world. When he did so, he discovered a living cosmic system, more multidimensional and vaster than most of his peers or successors would fathom. Paracelsus championed a personal relationship with Nature, in two senses: a reliance on personal experience rather than abstract knowledge; and person-to-person contacts with spiritual entities in respectful and sometimes intimate ways. A grand spiritual ecology thus comes into view, with spirits of the elements (earthy Gnomes, watery Undines, airy Sylphs and fiery Salamanders) governing and protecting the balance of Nature and bridging physical and spiritual realms. Through directly perceiving the arcana of plants and minerals, and humbly learning from the spirits, the healing powers of the universe are revealed. The empirical approach of Paracelsus marks him as the first modern natural scientist; and his insights into elemental spirits had a profound impact on esoteric thinkers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Rudolf Steiner and C.G. Jung.
Plenary
The Twilight of Medieval Gnosis in the Italian/Swiss Alps
and the Inception of Modern Gnosis at Monte Verità and Eranos
Yuri Stoyanov, Ph.D.
The Cathar communities in the Italian-Swiss Alps were the last survivors of medieval Catharism, as the mountainous region was conducive to providing a natural protection for persecuted heretical groups. The Inquisition’s anti-Cathar campaigns in the area continued until the late 15th century, well after the suppression of Catharism in Languedoc and Italy, and the vestiges and legacy of their medieval Gnosis are still being traced and explored.
The revival of Gnosis as a modern phenomenon synthesizing intellectual, spiritual and scholarly pursuit took place at the forums, experimentations and projects at Monte Verità and Eranos on the northern shores of Lago Maggiore. The convergence at these forums of diverse traditional and innovative cultural and religious trends initiated a new search for a third way, a path between faith and reason. Modern Gnosis, understood as the “mythical expression of self-experience”, is considered by some – like Gilles Quispel, for example – likely to become the most significant form of spirituality of the 21st century.
Plenary
The Women of Monte Verità
Marjorie Roth, Ph.D., DMA
Women played a significant role in the founding and fame of Monte Verità. In this presentation we will meet some of the strong and non-conforming women who devoted their lives to the mountain’s promise of human transformation. Inspired by their time at Monte Verità, they helped spread its utopian message via their artistic and intellectual endeavors. These include dancer/choreographers Mary Wigman and Isadora Duncan; visual artists Emma Kunz and Hanna Hagborg; contemporary intellectuals Lou Andreas-Salomé, Gertrude von Le Fort and Marta Hegemann; and Ida Hofmann, who helped establish the original naturalist community.
We will explore their backgrounds, their relationships to the community at Monte Verità, the personal and social transcendence they hoped to find there and what, in fact, they did find. With respect to the community’s ideals involving gender and sexuality, we will contemplate the inevitable questions that arise as we look back upon their lived experience from the distance of 100 years.
Plenary
Hermann Hesse and the Inner Quest for the Soul
Ludwig Max Fischer, Ph.D.
As the most-read German author of the 1960s, Hesse opened the minds of a whole generation towards Oriental mysticism and medieval esoteric monasticism in his novels Siddhartha, The Journey to the East, The Glass Bead Game and Narcissus and Goldmund. His lifelong search for the inner center and protection of the individual human being and their soul is reflected in all of his prose and poetry, and serves many seekers today as guidance to find meaning in our alienating, modern, world. Hesse visited the visionary community at Monte Verità in 1907 and remained sympathetic to their ideals. During the second half of his life, Hesse resided only a few miles from Ascona in Montagnola, where he is also buried.
Plenary
Modernism and its Choices
Joscelyn Godwin, Ph.D.
Monte Verità, like many intentional communities, tried to unite two disparate trends. The first was to infuse daily life with higher meanings. The second was to escape the rules and restrictions of conventional society. As always, the arts were the mirror of human aspirations, and especially so in Switzerland where the Symbolist painters Böcklin, Hodler and Schwabe splendidly illustrated the first trend. The other trend found its expression first in abstraction, then in absurdity, when the Dadaist movement started at the Café Voltaire in Zürich. Both trends continue to this day.
Plenary
D.H. Lawrence, Monte Verità, and the Living Cosmos
Paul Bembridge, M.Phil.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) wrote novels firmly rooted in the soil of his birth in the little coal-mining town of Eastwood on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border. So, what had this son of an English miner to do with a community of avant-garde writers, artists and spiritual seekers in Switzerland? How was that even possible? This talk draws on new research to show the countercultural lines of influence at work in European culture, drawing Lawrence ever closer to a deeper understanding of existence. But Lawrence was never a mere follower. He welcomed esoteric culture only to the degree that it affirmed his own central, unsettling message: we need to wake up from the dream, the cautious simulacrum of reality we have created to keep us safe from direct, joyous exposure to the living cosmos.