Federico Campagna | Temple

Transcription 

Manuela Vasco Welcome to our podcast with Castello di Rivoli Philosopher-in-Residence Federico Campagna for the year 2022. Focusing on the rare books in the library of Francesco Federico Cerruti’s Collection and immersed in the Villa Cerruti with its extraordinary paintings and furnishings, Campagna is investigating—at the intersection between philosophy and visual art—the idea of ‘Creative Mediterranean imagination’ from the late antiquity to the beginnings of modernity. I’m your host Manuela Vasco from Castello di Rivoli – Cerruti Collection Communications Office. I welcome Federico Campagna, who today is going to expand on the notion of Temples.

Federico Campagna Hello. Buongiorno. Welcome to a new episode of the podcast series produced for the Castello di Rivoli from the Tower Room of the Villa of the Cerruti Collection in Rivoli. Today we will go for a mini tour around the collection. We won’t see everything. We only see a few items between books and paintings and more that are all connected by a similar theme, even though it might not be immediately apparent. The theme is that of the temple. I am here in the Cerruti Foundation working on my research on Mediterranean imagination, the imagination of the Mediterranean world, across centuries and across borders. And the temple is one of the first things that you encounter moving around the Mediterranean from the ziggurat of Mesopotamia to the pagan temples that you encounter everywhere in southern Italy, for example, but also the synagogues, the mosques, the churches, their old temples.

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about temples in colloquial language. We say, for example, there are certain restaurant is a temple for food or a place is a temple of fashion or a temple of the arts. People even say sometimes that their own body is their temple. But what does it mean for something to be a temple? Where does the word come from? To begin exploring the idea of the temple through the Cerruti Collection. We will go now to the basement of the villa. In the basement, there is a collection of modern and contemporary art. And we start with a work by Lucia Fontana is a 1965 work called Concetto Spaziale. Attese. It’s a red canvas with four vertical cuts. We begin from here to examine the temple. Why? Because the word temple comes from the Greek word, which means to cut out. The temple is that area which is cut out from the rest. It is the sacred space, cut out of the profane space. This is something that was well discussed, for example, by the historian of religions and philosopher Mircea Eliade in the 20th century. The temple is the first the limitation of space that cuts out of the world something like a window through which it is possible to look beyond the world. The temple, in fact, was also the name of the space that was drawn in the air by the Etruscan diviners of the ancient Roman times. The Etruscan people who lived around the area of Tuscany, more or less in Italy, were very renowned in ancient Rome, especially for their abilities as diviners that could read the signs and predict the future. They did it in many different ways by, for example, looking at the entrails of sacrificed animals, the liver in particular. But they also did it by looking at the flight of the birds. The diviner would have a wooden stuff, which is the same shape that still survives today in the Episcopal’s. The stuff that you see in the hands of bishops, the same exact shape. With this staff, they would trace in the air a certain space. They would cut it out the temple and through this they would observe the flight of the birds, literally. They would contemplate, look through the temple, at the flight of the birds. And through this, they would be able to predict the movements of fate and destiny.

To proceed with this contemplation, we could move up through the villa along the stairs that lead towards the tower. And then on the side we find the painting painted in the 1750s by Giambattista Pittoni. It’s called Astronomo con il compasso. The astronomer is the one that contemplates or to be more precise is the one that considerate – cum sidera, literally “with the stars”. To contemplate means to look at something through a particular angle, through the angle of the stars, which in themselves as constellations delimit certain templum in the sky and through the temple cut out, like in Fontana, the profane space to create the sacred space. But a temple is more than this. To achieve contemplation is not sufficient, or maybe not always sufficient to delineate a section of the sky with a staff. Often, we build physical forms of the temple. How do we build a temple? We use mathematics. That’s the first thing about a temple. It has a sacred geometry, a sacred mathematics. To guide us here, we can open one of the vitrines that contain the books of the Cerutti Foundation, and we can find in there a book published in 1509 by Luca Pacioli. He was one of the inventors of accountancy, was a Franciscan friar of the 15th century. He would combine mathematics in terms of its divine speculations, philosophical speculations and practical uses. In this book called Divine Proportione Opera could guide us to understand that when we create a temple, the proportions that we find in the building are very rarely random. Usually, they have to do with magical proportions, sacred geometrical proportions. It is said that one day the philosopher Pythagoras was walking through town, and he was passing in front of the area where there were the metal shops. People were beating on their iron bars. He noticed that every time they were hitting the metal, it made a particular sound. He realized that these sounds could create a certain harmony with each other. The pitch of the sound depends on the length of the pool or the dimensions of the piece of iron where it was, where the hammer was hitting. He realized there was a connection between music, geometry, and mathematics. For Pythagoras, of course, the music of the spheres is the voice of the universe. The key to understand the beauty of music is the same we can use to understand the structure of the universe. It is a sacred key, sacred geometry. We find, for example, also in mosques in the Sunni tradition, where figuration is almost entirely abolished, the geometrical proportions of the shapes drawn by the tiles or by the different architectural elements is always very precise and accurate. It has to do with geometrical and mathematical proportions that try to describe symbolically the secret proportions of the universe. A good example of this is the use of mandalas. To see mandalas in the collection and to have an idea about what mandalas also are, we have to look down on the floor.

There are lots of beautiful carpets coming from everywhere through across Central Asia and the Middle East. Carpets, of course, are not always necessarily mandalas, but they often are. They trace particular geometries that are not just decorative, but they try to convey a meaning, usually a meaning about the very shape of the universe. In the Hindu and in the Buddhist tradition, there is almost a perfect combination between the shape of the mandala and the shape of the temple. A mandala is a mind map that has a physical form, so it’s often squares that come out of all the squares and circles and so on and so forth. So geometrical shapes are arranged in a particular harmonic fractal order. They are used as items that the monks, for example, or the disciples used to memorize certain parts of the doctrine and then to guide their meditation on particular topics and especially across certain topics. Thanks to the mandala, the monk will be able to meditate from one state of mind all the way to another, and it would take a long time to pass through a mandala with the mind. Now, these mind maps are typically drawn, either drawn on silk or on wood or on walls, but also, let’s say, drawn with sand, with colored sands. They’re usually quite impermanent when they’re done with sand, of course, and that is obviously a point. But then they are usually blown out in the shape of the temple, a Buddhist stupa or a Hindu temple. Often, if not always, are physical mandalas in an architectural form. They are the architectural creation of that mind map. By navigating the space of the temple, you are moving through a sacred geometry. If you do it properly, you move not only with your body but also with your mind, with your spiritual awareness. It is a voyage of discovery and of development. It is a little bit like the path that a hero takes in a fable and moving across all the different stations, all the different parts of the geometry, you arrive to a higher level of consciousness. Mandalas, however, are usually observed flat. We usually see them painted or drawn, and they are flat. But the temple is not flat. The temple is a building, of course, and it has a certain shape very often. Let’s imagine the ziggurat, for example, or the complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. They have the shape of a mountain. The Mountain is the subject of a painting by Angelo Morelli part of a series on Magic Mountain, which we find inside the collection. It’s a beautiful painting and it conveys also that mystical quality of the mountain is White Mountain. It’s slightly reminiscent, if you wish, of the Himalayan peaks depicted by Nikola Rurik at the beginning of the 20th century, around the same time. It is also reminiscent of mystical mountains. I’m thinking, for example, about the book written by René Dhumal once again in the first half of the 20th century and finished called Mount Analogue. It’s this particular mountain that exists everywhere at that by going up this mountain. The adventurers would be able once again to progress in their spiritual development. The mountain is often the shape of the temple. The temple is that mountain upon which Noah’s Ark rested, but it’s also that mountain that connects heaven and earth. The mountain is also the tree of life. It is that thing which moves across different dimensions in the universe, different dimensions of reality, and connects them. Moving up the mountain, if we live underneath, is for us a way of moving upwards, so to say. Even though the idea of up and down is very relative all the way to the next dimension of reality, equally, the gods descend from the mountain to speak with us. The mountain is a technology of communication, if you wish, between the different dimensions of reality, like the Tree of Life, where the Siberian shaman, for example, would try to climb up, up, up the tree to reconnect with the gods. There is a technical term for this object, for this technology of communication, so to say, between different dimensions. The technical term is axis mundi. The beam of the world and the beam of the world is typically depicted with a particular shape, which is the shape of the cross.

There’s no shortage of crosses, especially in the Tower Room. Let us look at one in particular: Giuliano De Simone, 1385, Crucifixion. The Axis mundi that connects the world is the cross. And the cross is interesting because you see it has two directions, the vertical direction that goes up and the horizontal direction that cuts across it and in between them. The point of conjunction. The temple itself, if you wish, the spiritual dimension, the sacred is the vertical. And that vertical dimension is what penetrates our world is the sacred that penetrates the profane at every moment. The profane is the horizontal, the flow of history, the combination between these two, the point of contact is the hiatus is the opportune moment is the now. Time is the moment where somehow eternity seeps into time and time seeps into eternity. A good example are those cyclical festivals, for example, the birth of Jesus Christ. The Birth of Jesus Christ is an event that is not an event because the same event happens every year and it’s not a different event every year. It’s exactly precisely the same event, the same vertical line that cuts across the horizontal line at different points in the in the crucifixion that we see here, like in most crucifixions in the collection, if not all of them, the Christ is bleeding and is dying and the blood is pouring down and the blood also fertilises the earth. The sacrifice of Christ brings life to Earth. This is in the Christian theology, but it’s not the only way in which a crucifixion is depicted, for example, in the Greek and Russian Orthodox tradition, but also in some traditions in the West before the time of Giuliano de Simon. So before, let’s say, the later Middle Ages, the cross would carry a triumphal Christ, a Christ who is not dying, who’s not suffering, but who is alive, who never really died. Incidentally, the idea that Christ never died is called in theology due citizen. It’s a certain, let’s say, Christian heresies used to have this idea. Also, Islam has the same idea that Christ did not die because somebody else went on the cross in his stead. The Gnostics had a similar idea. But the point of the triumphal Christ that you see in other crucifixions where he’s not dying is not those. It is the idea that death itself is not really a reality for the Christ, because his divinity transcended the possibility of him ever truly fully dying, and yet Christ is a man. This means that the same applies to every living being, this idea of a life that is never defeated. You find also in theories about the end of the world, typical of certain traditions in the eastern part of Christianity is the idea of catastrophe. The idea that at the end of the world there is no final judgement with people going to hell, people going to heaven. But so there is no apocalypse, so to say even the apocalypse itself means revelation. So there is a revelation, but there is not the apocalypse in the sense that we usually understand. But there is an Apple catastrophe. Everything is reunited into the true essence and being of God. And thus death itself is not death at all. This is fundamentally the enlightenment that you get at the end of your movement through the temple. And when you pray inside the temple, typically what you ask is not to obtain favors from the gods, but you pray so that you are able to understand this, to have this vision. Prayer is once again a technology that is an enhancer of vision. It’s not an acquisitive technology, is a is an optical, if you wish, or mental technology. And this illumination, so to say, is what we find at the end of one of the books that are held in the collection, in the Cerruti Collection, there is an incredible 1499 edition of Francesco Corona’s book. At the end of this book, which is replete of symbols, adventures, allegories, dreams, inside dreams, the hero Polisario obtains the final enlightenment at the end in front of the temple, the founder of Venus. He can obtain it in a temple like space, because exactly the temple is the place where two dimensions meet in itself is a microscopic image of the universe. It is something somewhere which is inside of the world and outside of the world. That’s why often the temple also has an element of the cave. The villa itself in the Cerruti collection has an element of the cave. It feels sometimes to be inside this cave, replete with elements, objects whose meaning often has to be decoded with strong metaphysical, often spiritual meanings. The cave is also the place where the Prophet Muhammad would withdraw to receive the revelations of the Koran. The cave is also the belly of the monster of the of the sea monster where Jonas ended up in the Bible. But the cave also is the place where people sometimes live. It’s the place where people might fall asleep and sleep for centuries and then wake up again. It is the place of cult in prehistory. Probably not a place of dwelling as such, maybe only partly, but connected of course, to cult and also in part to dwelling. This is not off the topic of temples, because another way in which we understand temples is as homes.

The word for home in Greek is oikos. Eco- is also the word the term that you find at the beginning of economy or ecology. The economy is the laws of the of the house. Ecology is the discourse around the House, the Oikos, the Eco’s is also the name of certain temples, for example, the temple that was built at the foundation of the city of Siracusa, splendid cities of the Oriental coast of Sicily in the Greek Times was an oikos, was an eco-, was a house, the house of the gods, the church is the house of God. And every temple is a house of the gods. But hold on. The villa is the house of a man, and it’s the shape of a cave. Are temples also houses for people as well as for gods? Yes, they are in a certain way. Traditional homes are built in the with similar elements, geometrical and architectural elements of temples, because there is an equivalence between the house and the temple in the same way that there is an equivalent between the microscopic image of the universe depicted by the mandala, by the sacred geometry of the temple and the universe itself. But it’s more than this house as a temple and a temple as a house for the gods is for the humans, also a ship. And this is something that we find, for example, in churches when you enter a typical church. Imagine a typical Catholic church. The central part, especially if it’s a later church, is not an old basilica. But the central part is very clearly when you look up a ship, it’s called a nave, the long corridor. To say that you find in the middle and the two names and the sides nave comes from the Latin Navis, which means ship. If you look up at the ceiling, you see that very often the shape is that of an upside-down ship. It’s a ship that is sailing but through the sky. And the people inside the church are the crew and the travelers and the explorers of this ship. And in a way, inside the Cerruti Foundation, inside the villa, it is possible to go on a similar kind of voyage. Of course, one has to be able to interpret the symbols around themselves, interpret and misinterpret. There is a particular way of taking auspices divining signs around you to understand the future, which is that of mishearing was a typical way, especially for the poor and for the mystics in the Islamic world. In the Middle Ages you would go in the market, and you would hear people speaking and you would try to misunderstand some of the words and interpret them symbolically, sometimes also inside the villa. It’s possible to do this as we have tried to do, from Petroni to Luca Pacioli to Fontana, Morbidelli, and so on. Reading the elements around and creating this different narrative and thus constructing an upside-down ship to sail through the sky. And I hope that polyphemus enlightenment is also what you will achieve in the collection. And I hope you will also follow me next time. Still here for the next podcast for the Fondazione Cerruti in the Castello di Rivoli. Grazie. Arrivederci.

M.V. I thank you all for being with us. I’d also like to thank Regione Piemonte, Fondazione CRT, Città di Torino, Città di Rivoli and our partners Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Intesa Sanpaolo/Gallerie d’Italia, and Fondazione CRC.Our digital programs are also made possible thanks to Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo. We look forward to welcoming you again next month for this exciting series of podcasts with the philosopher Federico Campagna.