Occult Imperium

Christian Giudice received his PhD from the University of Gothenburg. His work focuses on the Italian esoteric milieu of the early twentieth century. His other interests include fin de siècle occultism in France, England and Italy, Guénonian Traditionalism, the history of Thelema, and the relationship between occultism and cinema.

• Chapter 1: The Anti-Modern Side of ModernityChapter 2: Risorgimento Italy: Occultism, Politics, the Rise of the Nation State, and Roman TraditionalismChapter 3: The Early Years (1898-1910): Avantgarde, Theosophy, and Anti-ModernismChapter 4: The Schola Italica and the Rito Filosofico Italiano (1910-1914): Initiation and Invention of Tradition in Modern ItalyChapter 5: The Great War and 'Pagan Imperialism' (1915-1920): A Clash Between the Modern and the TraditionalChapter 6: Fascism and Traditionalism: Modernity and Anti-Modernity (1920-1925)Chapter 7: The UR Group and the End of a Dream (1923-1929) Chapter 8: Silentium Post Clamores (1930-1946) Chapter 9: Concluding RemarksAppendix: 'Imperialismo Pagano': English TranslationBibliographyIndex

With this outstanding volume, Christian Giudice is offering us the first academic monograph ever dedicated to Arturo Reghini and his milieu. Erudite, wide-ranging and yet eminently readable, the present study illuminates the cultural and political roots of fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century Occultism in Italy, up to and including the Fascist era. By retracing Reghini's intricate intellectual and Masonic journeys, Giudice gives us a penetrating analysis of the entanglements of occult spirituality, (neo)pagan Roman Traditionalism and an anti-modern political stance typical of the then cultural avant-garde, in an Italy grappling with the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of modernity, nationalism, and war.