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The imaginal education
aims at regaining the lost connection with the cosmic life by the
recovery of the "true
imagination", a kind of
knowledge that can be find in the patient and obstinate works by some
great masters of art, and permit to tie in again the visible and the
invisible, to transmute material and spiritual into a new, lasting
conjunction. |
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In
small group settings, and according to the stages of the alchemic
process, the imaginal
education invites the
exploration of archetypal basins of the imaginative |
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experience such as the elements (the earth, the air, the water, the
fire), the symbols (the androgen, the cross, the mandala, the tree) or
many others figures of the imaginary world (Gods, mythic subjects,
forms shapes/appearances of nature or cultural forms of archetypal
significance) through images of particular symbolic relevance, selected
from art masterpieces.
To comprehend the works steeped in imaginal
power it is necessary to assume a favourable attitude and to place
oneself in a transitional, initiatory and clearly defined space. The imaginal
practice requires to give up any personal impressions and biographic
reminds, claims a devotional act of "loyalty
to the image"
with a displacement of the sight from the self towards the work, in an
effort of reduction of self in favour of the admired object and to
renounce to judging or evaluative intentions.
Moving from these conditions, the imaginal
path proceeds through particular steps (vision, meditation, circulation
and restitution) which follow the progress of the imaginative process
of the artist and are ruled by a dynamic balance between fluidification
and fixation (solve et coagula). |
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The intense,
protracted and repeated
contemplation of the object ( vision )
is a kind of "nigredo" that aims at dissolving the stereotypes and at
restoring an infant attitude.
The meditation
is an inner and slow exercise of
cooking, kneading and fixing of the
image.
The circulation
corresponds
the stage of "albedo", is the step of the condivision, where each
participant offers to the group his raw reflections, where analogies,
associations and metaphors flow without encumbrance in order to deepen
the comprehension of the object.
At the end of this figurative and interpretative stage, the step of the
restitution begins.
The restitution is a multiplicative action in which the inexhaustible
research of meanings can terminate with the symbolic interpretation of
the artistic object or go further, till a true trasmutation of the
vision and of the attitude toward the world, which appears re-viewed by
the hermetic perspective of the artistic work. |
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