English
In the first part of the entry on Barcelona hermetic, we referred to a chapter of the book by the Samoan writer Albert Hanover, Modelo de Espaldas (Behind the Model).
As a game, with the number of God´s names according to the Kabbalah, there are about 73 seductive and sinking pages, which make up a strong maze of mirrors which is reflected, in an endless dance of masks among apocryphal and other realities well documented; the thousand and one faces of the Secret History of the Kabbalistic Barcelona (including its close relationship with Isaac the “blind” and the critical circle of Girona), alchemy, mysterious and magical, from the prehistoric dolmens and monoliths to the modern manifestation of Montesa Templar order, in motorcycle brand bearing the same name, through the Masonic Gnostic resonances octagons of the Eixample and the modernist architecture among other remarkable things.
The same way, as throughout the chapter is particularly hard to distinguish on the other feature that is common to almost all the work written by Hanover, in which it is quite difficult to discover what information and characters are real and which are the result of the fable created by the author -noting the arbitrariness of any construction of meaning and the way we create and transfer what we call culture, if what we are reading is nothing more than a joke of gigantic and fantastic proportions, perhaps it did not constitute proof of its authenticity, because the texts are abundant in the East and West since ancient times considered the laughter, and its momentary collapse of the prevailing reality principle, as one of the most effective access to essential and hidden sides of things.
Anyway, Hanover has just concluded that the true magic of the city is connected through the amazing power of some places in which, by a sort of random overlapping of elements, one gets the feeling of experiencing a dislocation of space and time, as a result of the mixture of realities that the mind associated with moments and situations, some completely fictitious, so not too dissimilar to as happens in dreams.
One of these places, according to him the the cloister of the Gothic cathedral; the sound and light of its interior, filled with palm trees and unpredictable web-footed birds always placed him at once, who knows why, going with the troops of Alexander, in some fascinating abandoned city in India, perhaps similar like an episode of the Jungle Book by Kipling. And another, not far from there, the lower courtyard inside a Renaissance palace located in the corner formed by the number ten Carrer del Paradis (how to believe that the name is casual), seat of the Rambler Center of Catalonia (how not to fable with the nature of these trips), where the impressive columns of the Temple of Augustus, haunted by the ghostly remains of Roman Barcelona.
Paul Oilzum
Coming down the steps leading up to the contemplation of these hidden columns of about 2000 years we experience a sense of coexistence of parallel times with trepidation and reverence that we feel like participating in an initiation ceremony. If you rent apartments in Barcelona you will find few dizziness like this.
