Laissez-moi voir, je veux le tuer de mes propres mains
Preface to the First Edition
Anyone who writes the history of twentieth-century Italian
Astrology at the end of the second millennium, will not fail to
remember that, having been dependent on foreign authors in
the Sixties and until the early Seventies, it soon freed itself
from them and emerged as an adult national astrological
movement of great originality.
I have observed it while going as an invited guest to several
Conferences in Italy, where I collected valuable friendships
and where these facts happened almost in front of my eyes.
However, the merit of this well-achieved growth shoult be
first of all given to a core group of enthusiasts, gathered by
or around the
C.I.D.A. [André Barbault is mentioning the
first C.I.D.A. of Federico Capone and later of Serena Foglia,
editor’s note], an Italian astrological association which is much
more representative than other analogous European
associations, and the publication of “Linguaggio astrale” is
its happiest evidence.
It is precisely in such a background that I met Ciro [the
then vice-president of C.I.D.A., editor’s note], whom I
immediately saw as a fervent bearer of the future.
I started by appreciating his prudence. He certainly was
not one of the many agitators who want to revolutionize
everything, absolutely ignorant of where they are acting -
heirless miscarriages of venture. If you want to shake the
fruit tree, first of all you need to learn to do so because you
can’t go into the Palace of Urania in your slippers. Nor did I
miss to understand his vocation, his demand, his search for
“something else”, since he was no slave to tradition. So, I
understood that for him too, things were not that easy.
On one hand, the spirit of kinship “ especially when
you are a Cancer “ is an advisor. Of course, tradition,
supported by a “we”, gives the impression that we passively
follow a vast and blurred droning of a great family of noble
lineage whose knowledge is stammering. However, it is
not less necessary to be inspired by this vehicle of
collective memory, because a word from the past is not
overcome if it remains alive and if the trunk of our tree still
remains strong. On the other hand, those who do not go
through this path, eat a sour fruit which sets their teeth on
edge, and the solitary man who wants to go along this
warpath again in one life, then rediscovering all by himself,
condemns himself to fabricating his own myth. It is so
much wiser, then, to listen to the ancients!
But on the other hand, and so much so with great Uranian
values, shouldn’t we liberate Astrology from a superego of a
fossilizing tradition? Should we eternally run in circles, to do
again in the twentieth century what Ptolemy had done in the
second, Giuntino in the Renaissance and Morin in the
seventeenth century.
Let’s beware from bending to the mentality of the past,
from lining ourselves on the ancient, from being towed by
the already done.
If Astrology possesses a part of truth that is based on a
reality, it is immortal. But it is not alive in the sense that it
follows mechanically the beats of time, if it is able to reinvent
itself, reincarnating itself in the spirit of the men of every
epoch and remaining fecundated by such renewal.
Paradoxically, I got to say to myself, reading the
Tetrabiblos: what does it matter what Ptolemy thought about
what I find, since what I find helps me to understand and
improves my knowledge.
Ciro is exactly the kind of free spirit who looks for a new
way in modern thought. Searching for the strength of the
right track, he very soon became sensitive to the charm that,
at that time, “Symbolic Astrology” was beginning to hold.
Astrology that, giving itself back to its psychic field, finding
again its psychological function-virtue, re-gained its
justification to also become an avant-guarde knowledge.
In his astrological track, he then rooted himself to the values
of modern psychology. A strong position that, for example,
today frees him from the sirens’ song of a Reincarnationist
Astrology which goes along a crazy path diving into something
that we cannot know. However, his mental opening is equally
great: this I criticize of Statistics, the practice out of the need
for scientific nature, knowing well that you need to do it but
without making too many illusions. It is never in vain that we
clash against the core of one’s intellectual needs.
Everyone knows that Ciro “he first in Italy” launched
himself in the venture of information technology and his
important electronic tools, with the first researches, helped
by a small team of collaborators, locates him today at the
vanguard on the international Astrological scene.
Such a rare generosity for the cause lets us hope that he
will reach his aimed target: giving an order to an Astrology
which is not yet judged for what it is, but for what it is believed
to be, or for what we would want it to be.
This enthusiast, already made strong by a huge work, leads
us contemporarily in a particular adventure: that of the expert
who dives, with his sleeves rolled up, in the practice familiar
to his cabinet of consultation. The expert is completely at
ease and does not hesitate risking even before the field of
“elections”, so dear to Morin, a field in which conscience
clashes on the border of where you can go without going too
far…
But, in the right distance between “pianissimo” and
“fortissimo”, who will complain for his excellent company?
ANDRÉ BARBAULT
24/07/2012
