Browsing by Subject "imagination"

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Access status: Open Access ,
Magic as a science of imagination in the work of Ioan P. Culianu (1950–1991)
(Wydawnictwa AGH, 2017) Moretti, Roberta
The powerful spreading of new technologies and the mass media civilization have had a subtle, stealthy effect on the human imagination, a process that has its counterpart in external reality, in historical changes and in society. The role of imagination through historical changes was extensively explored by Ioan P. Culianu, a Romanian historian of religions and specialist in Late Antiquity and gnosticism, whose research was brutally interrupted by his assassination on May 21, 1991. He was shot to death around midday inside of a toilet at the Department of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago where he was teaching. He was only 41 years old. One of his main books is Eros and magic in the Renaissance (The University of Chicago Press, 1987), which has been translated into many languages and is probably one of the most complex and interesting 20$^{th}$-century studies on magic. He points out that the working of fantasy was fundamental to comprehend magical processes in the Renaissance, since magic was primarily directed to affect human imagination through the manipulation of phantams (»images« in Greek). He has been also a pioneer in the study of the historical vicissitudes that caused imagination to change from a civilization based on magic, as in the Renaissance, to a modern one based on science. To the scholar, the transition from a magic-based society to a modern one is explicable primarily by a change in the imaginary. One of the purposes of this paper is to shed light on the work of Ioan P. Culianu, especially on his research on magic, which he carried out throughout his life. Particularly interesting are the articles published in the last period of his life (1990–1991), when he was trying to develop a new paradigm of knowledge in the Humanities, concentrating on the study of the mind. He was shaping an original but uncompleted theory where the »cognitive revolution« was to be applied across and beyond the contexts of human science.
Access status: Open Access ,
Oczyszczając drzwi percepcji. Szkic o idei imaginacji w romantyzmie, kontrkulturze i New Age
(Wydawnictwa AGH, 2013) Kasperek, Andrzej
The main thesis presented in this study is the statement on the exceptional role of the idea of imagination in the development of romantic spirituality, which finds its continuation in the spirituality of counterculture and New Age (the existence of relations between Romanticism and New Age has been discussed by Hans Sebald, Paul Heelas or Wouter Hanegraaff). The significance of the idea of imagination for Romanticism was particularly focused on by René Wellek. Romanticism is treated by the author as a period in which deep re-interpretation of the Western esoteric tradition took place. This also applies to the idea of imagination, which Antoine Faivre treats as a central idea of the Western esoteric tradition. Referring mainly to William Blake's works, the author briefly characterizes the romantic understanding of imagination. Special attention is paid to the significance of Blake for counterculture and New Age. His works were invoked by the »prophets« of counterculture – Aldous Huxley or Theodore Roszak, and the name of such an important for counterculture music band as »The Doors« was borrowed from Huxley's work The Doors of Perception. Tracing the history of the idea of imagination in counterculture and New Age, due attention is drawn to the process of banalization to which this idea was subjected along with its introduction into pop culture.