The Wind, the Spirit, the Ghost

The volume is the result of the second International Seminar organized in 2011 by the "Julien Ries" Archive for Symbolic Anthropology. At the origin of the volume there is Ries' statement according to which "Man tries to explain his experience and maintain a relationship with the numinous by creating a whole series of symbols that call into question the different cosmic elements such as light, wind, water, lightning, the stars, the sun, the moon [...]. All manifestations of the sacred presuppose the existence of a symbolic way, since the sacred never manifests itself in its pure state." To confirm this conception, the volume develops a broad and articulated reflection on the symbol of the air/spirit as a fundamental hierophany of the religious experience addressed both in its traditional manifestations (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Indian world, archaic China, the African world, the culture of the North American Great Plains), and in some contemporary degenerations.

An essential tool for understanding the same contemporary metropolitan sensibility strongly attracted by the discreet charm of the "spiritual", within which, however, the spirit has often been transformed into a wind carrying ghosts and dangerous fetishes.

Contributions by: Patrizio Alborghetti, Ivan Bargna, Enrico Comba, Yves Coppens, Adine Gavazzi, Paul Gilbert, Paolo Gomarasca, Mauro Magatti, Paolo Nicelli, Silvano Petrosino, Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée, Patrizio Rota Scalabrini, Paolo Trianni.