After last year’s great success, the Spirit Culture Festival returns to Rome, again in the prestigious location of the Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia.
After the first fourteen editions in which the headquarters had always been in Cabella Ligure (in Val Borbera, in the province of Alessandria), the festival has become itinerant, finding a further destination in the capital to replicate the traditionally summer initiative. The occasion was provided, in 2023, by the centenary of the birth of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, founding spiritual guide of Sahaja Yoga, recognized as guru and avatar by millions of devotees around the world.
Presented by Sahaja Yoga Italia and Theater of Eternal Values, with the patronage of Municipality II of Rome Capitalin the intentions of the organizers “the festival wants to celebrate culture, art, music and dance (…) A group of international artists and speakers united by a profound spiritual search”.
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After all, since 1961 Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi he had expressed his high aesthetic and ethical vision of art: “Artists must raise society’s gaze to their levels of taste, and not bow to the poor demands of the public, giving up their freedom. This can only be done if enlightened artists they work closely with educational and social institutions. Through magazine and newspaper articles, these artists’ ideas can spread. Through plays, films and radio conferences, the public can be educated to understand true art, which can thus maintain its dignity.”
Among the artists invited to the Spirit Culture Festival: Leo VertunItalian sitarist of English origin; Manish Madankar, exceptional tablist, student and heir of some of the greatest Indian musical excellences: Carlo Gizzicomposer ranging across classical, ethnic, jazz, modern and improvisational music, musical director of the Theater of Eternal Values international, and director of the Divine Symphony Orchestra; Victor Vertunnisinger-songwriter known for the splendid translation into music of William Blake’s poetic texts; Hi Giovannangeli, artistic director of the Theater of Eternal Values international, which staged shows inspired by the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Divine Comedy. Alongside them, many different artists from all over the world, among which many young talents stand out (among others we mention Laura Ditta, Emma Turley, Tommaso Gizzi, Akhila Pandit).
As in the previous edition, I will have the pleasure of speaking as speaker, alongside esteemed colleagues (Duilio Cartocci, Mauro Cipullo, Lorenzo Ghirardi and Noemi Serracini), to whom I am united by a long and fraternal spiritual search.
This year the theme of the festival is the etymology of “desire”, or the longing towards the stars (from the Latin lust, composed of the particle de and sidus, sideris). I will have the honor and burden of facing, together with the director of the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Giulia Luana Toniolo, the spiritual meaning of this yearning as a common element between Etruscan and oriental culture, particularly Indian. A combination that is only apparently strange, but which can suggest stimulating comparisons and enlightening juxtapositions, despite being aware of the evident differences. For example, in a very interesting recent essay by Marco Maculotti, The Angel of the Abyss. Apollo, the Polar Myth and the Apocalypse (Axis Mundi), speaks of “the tradition of the Etruscans, an ethnos which, similarly to the Minoan one, has recently been traced back to the all-encompassing Indo-European channel thanks to specialist research”.
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Without making rough mixes New Ageit is dizzying to compare some ritual aspects of Etruscan discipline, for example, to the structure of the subtle body in yogic tradition.
But beyond the conferences and the great artistic variety, the center of the event will be the experience of meditation. As I wrote in the book Introduction to meditation (made with Francesco D’Isa for Edizioni Tlon): “In my experience, meditation is a state of inner stillness, of thoughtless awareness, in which the mind is immersed in a silence full of grace, a silence which in reality is a symphony of subtle internal resonances”.
The Festival will take place Sunday 20 October, from 10am to 9pm (the event itself is free, you will only pay 4 euros for access to the museum gardens).
