The book is made up of two parts. The first is a city reading on different planes: its archetypes (the natural or organic, as seen in the medieval city, and the rational one, like the Roman city); its history, until the crisis of our time; its functions, similar to those of the human body; its soul. Facing a future that threatens a catastrophe makes problematic the very survival of the city, but the book imagines an ideal one and its foundation, outlining not its form but its soul more >
The second part, which begins with "There is a site in the middle of a plain ..." is somehow the incarnation of that soul in the body of a true city - Milan – with the living experience of its transformation. This is not just an urban plan, but the elaboration of a global vision of which it is a model. Not a utopia, as many believe, but the fruitful union of a reality and a spiritual principle, such as that which has happened in every moment of the city's life, except in the alienation of our time. As for the title, it announces what would be the constant theme of all Mazzucconi's work: in every field - city, architecture, painting, philosophy, religion - he seeks and develops the deep meaning of this being "in the image and likeness of 'man".

Summary

1. INTRODUCTION: To the reader / The city as a work of art

2. THE CITY IN THE TIME: Organicity and rationality / The city of the Middle Ages, the Cathedral, the road, the defense / The city of the Renaissance / The city of European maturity / The American city

3. THE CITY OUTSIDE OF TIME: The city in the contemporary world / Tradition and originality in the ancient city / The Italian city, the present state / The vital relationship with the past / The civilization of consumption

4. TOWARDS THE CITY OF A BETTER TIME: Contemporary metropolis / Man as a unit of measure, the family, the machine at the service of man, the house / An opening

5. THE CITY IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF MAN: City physiology, tissues formation, growth, nervous system, metropolis: a body of city limbs, university, the circulatory system, changing the concept of the road, towards birth.

6. BIRTH OF THE CITY: Breathing / Nutrition, work ethics, work Concept / Education, towards the experience of the city / There is a site in the middle of a plain, the origin of Lombardy cities, the character of Milan, two parallel cities: Milan and Paris, the time of Milan.

7. THE CITY'S EXPERIENCE: An urban plan in time / An urban plan in space / Principles of the new urban organism, meaning of the road, urban highways, greenery and urban character, urban layout of federated cities, building principles / The metropolitan road system, orthogonal path assumptions, the consequences of an orthogonal trace, radiocentric trajectory hypotheses, the reorganization of the railways, the consequences of a radio-centric system, the formation of a new center, the relationship between building density and congestion, conclusive considerations , the parallel evolution of reality.

8. THE FACE OF THE CITY: A new dimension, a new conscience, preliminary considerations for the new arrangement of the center / The Navigli's city, how to undertake the work, should the center of the nineteenth century be preserved? , the contemporary building heritage, the university town, the new plan of the Navigli's city, the tourist city, the services of the Navigli's city / The new ring center, a face, in defense of the idea of the center, some principles of realization

ST AMBROSE

From ancient Etruria to a new Renaissance is the path of a book that explores and lives a fundamental continuity. Not only does it reveal the deep root of Florentine civilization, reading in the Renaissance the true revival of Etruscan identity but pushes far beyond, postulating the possibility of a new civil birth today more >
The sensitivity to the "nascent moments" of the various plans in which they manifest themselves in cosmic life, in the history of a people and a city, to flourish in our very soul, makes this book a meditation in which urbanism comes out of a technical and historical context to become a psychological and inspired reading of the life of the city. The book tells also the history of the Florence's center, where the signs of the most significant events are collected: from the foundation of the Etruscan-Roman city to its degradation in the ghetto of the dark ages, to its replacement with a nineteenth-century center, to today's crisis. A crisis which is not limited to the center or a city but concerns the whole of the contemporary world. In this same place, the book proposes the experience of the "dawning city", as a new foundation that could seriously consecrate Florence to culture and art. The denunciation of the falsification of culture in a city subjected to the compressor roll of our time has the power of a disenchantment; while the proposal to allocate the new center and city to the function of university campus, takes all the sense of a new and authentic hope. The “youth city" would be a wonderful opening to the future in a world where destructive instances threaten to prevail.

Summary

1. THE BIRTH OF FLORENCE: Introduction: the Haruspex / The mirror / The birth of Florence.

2. THE CITY OF THE FATHERS: The “yolk” / Journey to the Father

3. THE YOUTH CITY: The school of identity / The school of ideology

4. TAGETE: Identity and universality / The Etruria's resurrection / The banquet of the gods

5. THE NASCENT CITY: The contemporary center / The dawning city

6. THE METROPOLIS

7. THE NEW HADES

Farewell

The book is the catalog of a traveling itinerant exhibition of the author who took place in Florence, Paris and Athens. It is presented in relation to the cities in which he worked, but are read with their ancient names, to highlight the interiority and timelessness that are characteristic of the poetics of Mazzucconi, in addition to the most secret place explored by his painting ... more >
... The first edition of Florence, at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, particularly emphasized the Vittorio Mazzucconi's project of the "Dawning City" for the new Florence's Center.

Vedi anche: Architecture catalog, Painting catalog

Summary

Critical texts

1 FIRST PROJECTS

2 MEDIOLANUM

3 LUTETIA

4 PAINTING

5 FLORENTIA

6 ATHENA

The book is a reprint of the catalog "The idea of the city", supplemented with a further 72 pages and 68 illustrations of the latest projects and paintings. In this form, it allows a more complete idea of Vittorio Mazzucconi's work. more >

Vedi anche: Architecture catalog, Painting catalog

Summary

Critical texts

1 FIRST PROJECTS

2 MEDIOLANUM

3 LUTETIA

4 PAINTING

5 FLORENTIA

6 ATHENA

7 THE NEW PAINTING

"Speaking to Benedict" is an inner dialogue that began during a short stay in a Benedictine convent. The path of meditation and seeking of God through it is, however, entirely outside of a confessional scope and is instead open to an intense relationship with the freest ideas, in contact with nature and above all with a Self in which our radiant inner sun is recognized more and more ... more >
A path that began with an independent and critical position towards common religious beliefs is thus at the center of truth and life, in which the Self is identified in Christ. The book begins the "Quaderni del Convivio" series, where Mazzucconi's seminars on the central theme of man, are collected. It has been the experience of a live, participated thought, that follows naturally the maturation lived in this book.

Summary

Introduction / The search for God / Man is a solar system / Clipboard / On the river / The Church / What is the meaning of our life? / Note / A greeting to Leonardo / The way of the cross / Buddhism and the moon / A planetary religion / God, father, mother, son / Male and female / Looking for the inner center / A prayer / If this is your will / We are the earth / The cross / The orientation / Humus / Who is he who is born again? / Brahman's breath / The essence / The seed / The signs / Body, soul, spirit / The city in the image and likeness of man / The plowed field / The golden bird / Trinity, duality, unity / Love / The woman, view from a man / The man, seen by a woman / The Couple / A sweet habit / Silence / The evil / The source / The poetry / Fishing / The flower / The sacrifice / Even the sacrifice / The Tree / An invisible intelligence / Thinking the universe / To light the fire / Being another person / Division and unity / The mask / Arjuna / What is the truth? / The true, the beautiful and the good / What you will do... / The white page / The dark side / The path of the soul / The mirror / Who that is / The person / The inner friend / The "why" is the empty / Where do I come from, where do I go? / The road / The animals / We swim in the whole / It is the spirit that ... / The birth of the child / The actor / The microbe / The empty stage / Solitude / The sacrifice of the work / The dismay / The Cathedral Ark / Sacrifice / Renunciation / A wish / The reversed pyramid / The Hourglass / Reincarnation / The overthrow / Geometry / The nascent city / God on holiday / Evolution / From the bottom to the high / Consciousness / A journey / The eternal and the ephemeral / The sleep / The loss of a loved one / The awakening / Awareness / Creation and fall / Still the discourse on the soul / The inner sun / The cave / The bunch of grapes / The conception / So be it / In front of TV / The weaver / The spider.

With "The Spiritual work" begins the "Convivio", a practice of philosophical dialogue that will develop from 2009 to 2013 with two seminars per year, in Spring and Autumn, with a dozen meetings each, conducted by Vittorio Mazzucconi, whose interventions, together with those of the participants, were recorded and then published, or in the process of being published ... more >
The book deals with various themes, between art and philosophy, bringing them all to the ideal expressed in the "Manifesto of Spiritual Work", which the book launches. Nothing confessional, as many have imagined: the new spirituality is in cultivating the ideal of man, which exhorts us to a new and fruitful understanding of ourselves, of nature, and of the divine. The inner renewal thus achieved is also expressed in the idea of a true "refoundation", which Mazzucconi proposes in many projects devoted to different cities. They present themselves in the various themes of the book almost as the characters of a theatrical play. Feature of Seminars was the spontaneity with which they were born and discussed themes, with a free and creative development of ideas, outside the usual philosophy patterns.

Vedi anche: Architecture catalog

Summary

I THE REFUNDATION OF THE CITY: 1 From the past to the future / 2 The contemporary metropolis / 3 The city in the image and likeness of man

II AN ARCHITECTURE FOR MAN: 4 From classic to today, the sense of architecture / 5 From rationalism to "technologism" / 6 A poetry for the city.

III ART AS INNER PATH: 7 The spiritual in art, from the art of the past to the modernity / 8 From futurism to contemporary art / 9 Art as an inner path

IV THE RENEWAL OF MAN: 10 The philosophy in history / 11 Reconnecting feeling and reason / 12 The spiritual work

""The story of the soul through my painting and beyond" is the subtitle of the book, which indicates the subject. A story that is read in the background of ancient myths - Orpheus and Eurydice, Persephone, Eros and Psyche, in which it is articulated, along with its spontaneous expression in painting ... more >
It is the journey of love and experiences that, through a thousand troubles, come to a catharsis, the one with which Psyche, marrying with Eros, is admitted among the gods: a metaphor for telling the sublime destiny of the human soul - Psyche - which recognizes its divine essence. When, then, by the union of soul and Love, a child is born, the author, disregarding Apuleus's fable, tells us that he is the Self, that is, the fulfillment of human nature. An end that Mazzucconi expresses more in the architecture and philosophy of the city than in painting, that is, on a more intellectual than passionate plan, to which the last part of the book is devoted. As to the psychological value of the whole process, which is close to the Jung's individualization path, Carla Stroppa highlights the spontaneous authenticity with which the author lives in his human and artistic experience.

Vedi anche: Architecture catalog, Painting catalog

Summary

1 THE DARK CAVERN

2 EURIDICE: The descent to the Hells

3 THE NIGHT OF THE SOUL

4 ART AND PSYCHOLOGY

6 PERSEPHONE: The body and the soul

6 CREATION

7 PSYCHE: The union

8 DIVISION

9 THE WITNESS

In the book are investigated the two poles of our being, including our lives. "Feeling" is associated with darkness, nature, unconsciousness, death, femininity, the Yin, while reason will be linked to light, civilization, consciousness, to masculine, to Yang. In a further mapping, similar patterns are read in history, art, and culture, all of which are all back to a fundamental cyclicity ... more >
In our time, we are unfortunately in the face of the dramatic rupture of balance between feeling and reason. What to do? The book is working on its recovery, in a new integration that also involves the union of feminine and masculine in us. As in the book "The Spiritual Work", Mazzucconi also transfers his intent to his ideas about the city, and here speaks of the significance of the temple.

Vedi anche: Architecture catalog

Summary

1 INTRODUCTION: The tree, the body and the soul / Spirit (What Is Love / Thoughts on God

2 INTEGRATION IN THE SAME CENTER: Soul and spirit / Intuition / Inspiration.

3 THE RHYTHMS OF NATURE, HISTORY, ART: The day, the seasons, life / Life, civilization and art / The art and the aoul / The Greek-Roman Art / The European art / The cycle and its overcoming

4 THE FEMALE AND THE MALE: The tree, the soul, and the female-male / Unions between female and male / An upper Level / God and the soul / Sun, earth, moon / A Biblical interpretation / Integration of feminine and masculine / The vision of a balance and the concrete relationship between people / Truth or consolation? / Division or merger of genres? Towards a conclusion.

5 THE BIRTH OF THE SON: The illumination / On the value of science / On the soul / What happens after death? / The seed / Education and the inner source.

6 FREEDOM AND LAW: How have laws been formed? / Laws and justice / A Law of nature / Illumination and utopia / Trends and negations / On beliefs.

7 THE POLIS: The city of reason and the city of "feeling" / "The city in the image and likeness of man "/ The nascent city / The city of thought / The vacuum, in the West and in the East / The City of the psyche.

8 THE TEMPLE: The Greek temple and the cathedral / The idea of the Ark / The size of the temple / Being agnostic? / Does it make sense to think of a new temple? / A city without a temple / Stonehenge / My Bows.

9 THE SUPREME ART: An universal conscience and art / Religion and spirituality / For a rebirth / Find the child in us / The reunion between ideal and real / The chrysalis / Conclusion

Since this precept has been written at the entrance to the Sanctuary of Delphi, the man has been questioning its meaning. It can be explored on different planes, from that of our personal characteristics, which everyone can try to investigate, to the highest one of what it means to be a man. It mean to ask: who is man? who am I? ... more >
The answer we can give can only open up further and deeper issues, for self-seeking is an infinite field. There is then a higher meaning than being a man, and it is to be ... Finding it is the true knowledge. The ancient precept did not just say "Know yourself" but "you will find in yourself the treasure of Gods."

Summary

1 INTRODUCTION: Know yourself / The two paintings / The inner master / The sacrifice / In the present moment

2 WHO IS THE MAN ?: An evolutionary line / God loves to hide / The silence / The concept and the intuition / Laity and spirituality / The tree and the tracks

3 WHO AM I ?: The person / The soul / The Self / Dialogue / Knowing the Self / The bodhisattva

4 THE INNER SOLAR SYSTEM: A new Copernican theory / The relationship / The union with the Self / The road to follow / The universal Self and the individual soul / The person / The well, the theater and the vase / The desire / Ignorance / Separation / Faith / Love / "The ferry" / The statue of miracles

5 WHO OR WHAT IS THE IO ?: "I am that" / The person and its destiny / Hic et nunc / The unconscious / The instrument / The mask / The architect / The vase

6 OTHER PERSONAL ASPECTS: Physical generation and spiritual generation / Experience / Morphology-psychology / The evolutionary way / The form

7 THE PERSONALITY: The bow and the arrow / Awakening / Lower and upper personality / The manifestation of God / The treasure of the Gods / The end of life or its cyclicity / The difference between men / Memory / Eros and logos / Faith and mystery

8 THE CREATIVITY: The prodigal son / The wake of light / The true creativity / Yin and Yang / An experience / Reviews / The Tao / Light and shadow in art / The best and the worst / Unite with the cosmic rhythm / Creativity like love / Transformation / Creation, destruction, conservation

9 THE CONSCIOUSNESS: A divine conscience and intelligence / The unconscious / Creation / Towards the divine person / Levels of consciousness / The mind and the reality / Diversity and change / Knowledge

10 THE JOY: The consolations of religions / The alternation of joy and pain / Joy and awareness / Joy and love / Tranquility / Happiness and bliss / Going towards the others / Being with the wave / Forgetting yourself / Evolution / A blank page .

The ordinary knowledge applied to the sciences and the whole of the culture of our times is the product of a reason that has not only become self-referential and no longer in dialogue with the soul but has been enslaved to matter. It produces the technology with which many useful things are made but often such as to threaten and finally deprive man of his humanity ... ... more >
It is a process that ignores the other knowledge, which was more developed in the past: religion, philosophy, art, and proximity to nature were its source, which has now become obscured. One can not think of going back to it, ignoring the extraordinary progress that has being pursued, but it is important to retrieve the lymph, for it to vivifies rational knowledge. To the likeness of union between body and soul, true knowledge must be a union between the reason that all explores and the feeling that hears and expresses the voice of the soul. And how is this union accomplished? With love, not in a generic sense, but as the true power that unites and, by means of this union, generates life; and does it at every level, up to the supreme level of returning to divine unity.

Summary

1 LOVE AS UNION

2 SCIENCE IS REAL KNOWLEDGE?

3 ART AS A WAY TO KNOWLEDGE

4 WHAT IS IMMAGINATION?

5 THE AGE OF HUMANITY

6 RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

7 THE CITY OF MAN

What is consciousness? A purely sensory fact or something that goes beyond, in the sphere of the soul? We know then that there are different levels of consciousness, from that of less developed animals or even of inanimated matter to that of human consciousness, but if we open a soul survey, is there a further stage we can guess? ... more >
In addition to being a mirror to our inner life, consciousness is formed in the relationship, with an ethical and civil evolution that extends to humanity a little at a time. Lastly, there is the opposite of consciousness or itsabsence: is the unconscious spoken of by psychoanalysis? Is all that in the world is not conscious or that we feel like that? Or is our habitual condition to be in a state of sleep, not awareness, from which we must awaken? On awakening, we will be conscious not only of our person and the world we live in, but of our true and spiritual Being. It is to this that leads the path to a true development of consciousness.

Summary

1 Questioning / 2 Asking again ... / 3 Consciousness and knowledge / 4 The unconscious / 5 The relationship / 6 Working the good / 7 Is there a consciousness after death? / 8 Educate consciousness

In a time like ours, where are so strong the contradictions and the explosive tendencies in which man is dissociated, and he is no longer believing to the great visions of philosophy, religion or art, is so difficult to talk about harmony ... more >
But it is also necessary to do so, with the intent of bringing these divergences and shortcomings back to an order, to a sense. It will certainly not be something static and immutable as it was believed in the past, but a push to rebalance the disorder that afflicts us on all planes, to heal the rupture above all in ourselves, to believe in beauty, in truth, in love. An utopia? No, we are talking about an inner orientation that not only can oppose what appears to be negative but it can absorb it and finalize it to the achievement of a new and dynamic harmony.

Summary

1 Introduction / 2 The beautiful and the true / 3 In the art / 4 In today's world / 5 The good / 6 The right / 7 In the city / 8 In the philosophy

In all the previous seminars, we have talked a lot about the soul, but does it make sense today, to talk about the soul? In the secular culture, or in the materialism of our time, the soul is denied as God is denied. Let's then talk about the body, of which we have never diminished the importance: just remember the seminary and the book ARTE E PSICHE to see that the way of the soul is accomplished through eros, that is bodily love, with all its strength ... more >
... Does anyway have a sense to distinguish between body and soul? Even believing in their duality, it is evident that it is composed in the reality of the person, in which body and soul are united, although their union ends and dissolves with death. How, then, do not wonder if, beyond this event, there is something at a higher and deeper level that manifests itself through it, and what is its purpose and essence?

Summary

1 Who are we? / 2 The Art / 3 The Mind and the Project / 4 The Mind and Vision / 5 The Mind and the Utopia / 6 The Soul and the Mind / 7 The Nature and the Body / 8 The Person / 9 The Self

Does it make sense to distinguish between essence and existence? A distinction that will appear unfounded to those who do not believe there is a being, just as he thinks there is no soul or God. This threefold denial shows us at least that being, soul, and God are the same, even though we live their equivalent only in the existence, in the body, and in matter ... more >
All these aspects are however united in life, as they will be divided into death, but not forever. Existence flows to being as well as being has flowed into life when we were born. Being and existence are then flowing into each other, like Yin and Yang. And as these are Tao manifestations, so, calling it in western terms the One, we will think it is above their cyclicity. Is it insuperable, alas, the distance between the One and our little mortal lives? No, the distance is canceled whenever the being and the existence merge: does it happen in extraordinary men, in extraordinary works? No, it happens in every flower and indeed everywhere, in every moment ....

Summary

1 INTRODUCTION / A newly found ignorance / I come from being and to being I return / The union between being and existing / Philosophy and the city / Being and existing: two terms to be clarified / The Supreme Being / The dispute / What need we ...? The fulfillment of the truth.

2 A DANCE, A BREATH: How to approach the spirit? / How to think about existence / Intuition, nature, Yin and Yang / Some reflection on creation / Theory and practice / The love of the true.

3 UNION AND SEPARATION: Existence is the realization of being / The different levels of being / Being as consciousness / Sunrise and sunset / The human condition / On a concrete ground / What is relative and what is not / The good and the evil

4 LIFE: Fecundation / What is life? / Affirmations and Negations.

5 WHO AM I ?: The person and the Self / On the way / The way, the truth, the life / The closed door / The mind and the soul.

6 AT WORK !: A roundabout on the Convivio / Duality and unity issues / Responsibility and love / The caterpillar and the butterfly.

7 THE ORIENTATION: The illusion / The will / The orientation / Premises and the seed / The flower / The nascent moment / The reality and the faith / The solar system / What should we ask for religion?

The Journey is an autobiography, but it goes beyond the story of a life, rich and interesting, to ask the questions that are in the heart of each of us as to the meaning of life: where we come from, where we go, and above all: " who we are? That's why there is an opening to a much wider theme than that of the author's personal life, and the title of the book is not my "journey," but the journey of anyone who tries to follow the golden precept "Know Thyself." ... more >
The idea that our true being is so much taller and more deep than the ego, of which stories are told, is present in ancient wisdom, much less in the various philosophical theories that have followed, but here it spontaneously forms as the mature consciousness in a truly lived life. Life and thought are the cornerstones of this journey - some will see them as practice and theory - but this is not so: we talk about a certain kind of thought, not abstractly conceptual, but what opens as the flower of a plant and knows how to sink his roots into the humor of life Vittorio Mazzucconi, who is an architect, painter and philosopher, makes us part not only of his life and his thoughts, but of works performed in the various fields of his activity, as many bodies in which the same soul is manifested. There is in all the fundamental orientation toward the Self, as to an inner sun, that Mazzucconi lives first and tries to communicate by pointing it out to all of us, at a time like ours, which seems to be lacking of it.

Summary

THE BEGINNINGS: A journey / My parents / The root / A soul / The child / The teenager / The young man / Tullia / Looking for a road / The graft / The first projects.

AROUND EUROPE: Switzerland / Sweden / Paris / London

III THE RETURN TO ITALY: The return / Via Machiavelli / The city in the image and likeness of man / America / Back to Milan.

IV THE FURNACE OF THE ANGELS: The building of the Avenue Matignon / The city of the Psyche / My home / My sisters / My painting / Eurydice / Villa Serena / Even that year ... / The descent to the Hells / Les Halles / The Lioran / The inscription to the Order / The Parisian Arches and the great contests / Difficulties / “The Dawning City” / 11/7 / Nancy / The Citadel / Athens / 12/7 / The end of my marriage / After the separation / The idea of the city / An unknown artist / Proserpina / I leave the “Fornace degli Angioli”

V THE PLACE OF THE WATERFALL ( “Il Luogo della Cascata”): A new life / Psyche / 14/7 / 16/7 / The gestation of the Self / After ... / The Foundation / The Citadel of Culture / After ... / The Palatine Pyramid / 19 / 7 / The death of May and our children / The Ark of the Duomo / 20/7 / The seminars / The Spiritual Work / The Convivio / Feeling and reason / Art and Psyche / 22/7 / The prayer / Exit / A distant morning / 24/7 / Circularity / I breathe ...

VI THE LEAVE : ... of my old family / will we meet again? / Who am I? / ...of my friends / ... of my women / .. of places and things ... / ... of my children / .. my projects / .. of painting ... ... of body and personality / The seed / The leave of myself / I am ... / The illusion / A balance.

VII ANOTHER DAY: Almost a diary / A birth / The dream / Imhotep / The Museum of Etruria / The hourglass / The overthrowing / Building / The inner temple / 13/8 / The return home.

THE WORKS: Architecture Works / Painting Works

After writing "THE JOURNEY", the idea of a "Return” was spontaneously born in the author, even though it was not clear at first what return would be: not sure on the memories of a life already mentioned in the first book. Perhaps those of a previous life, or the return on life in a later incarnation? Or, through these and other countless stages, the long path of return to the indestructible origin, destiny and sense of everything? ... more >
Our life is part of this journey. The book thus develops into a search for the meaning of life, about "who we are" really: a spiritual being, the Self, which our little ego does not know and seems to be lost in existence, especially at a time like ours, deprived of the consciousness of being, that is, of the soul and of God. The return that is being spoken and which is today dramatically urgent is therefore what brings us back to being, that is to ourselves, if we are to account of our true nature.

Summary

The return ticket / A prayer with the body / A musical Scale / The return / Sleep / From body to the soul and beyond / The “Sense” and its announcement / The Crucifix / The fall / The sin / The ignorance / Simplicity and complexity / The creation of the Sense / Resurrection / Healing / Wisdom / The wisdom of christianity / Christian myths / Our Lady / Faith / Innocence / The dawning City / The beautiful / Feeling and reason / Arts and religion / The great wheel of the world / The path of humanity and that of the individual soul / The empty flute / A new gnosis / Love / The word of God / The circularity of the whole / Grace / Orientation, grace and fall / Man's choices / Destiny of the soul and destiny of the world / Towards a universal religion? / The face of God / The abandonment of ourselves / The prodigal son / The return of the master / The son of God / Being and existing / The city in man's image and resemblance / The center / The birth / The return to the being.

To the mirror, or to the image that is reflected there, is usually associated an idea of ephemeral appearance, illusion, or vanity. In fact, it has a fundamental function in the evolution of man, as seen in the child when he recognizes his image in the mirror, while animals, except for a type of baboon, are unable to do so ... more >
The subject that is reflected and could previously see just one object, understands that this is himself. With the development of the mind, which is also a mirror, this game between subject and object becomes increasingly complex, developing what is called "reflection". The inner mirror of which the book talks but opens another perspective: it does not reflect as much the face or thoughts as the soul. But it is necessary to go beyond the appearance of the reflection, visual or mental, which only shows us a mask to find out who is behind it. The nothingness ... or not the spiritual being that we are in reality, even if we do not realize it? The precept "Know Yourself" encourages us to find out by interrogating ourselves, that is, seeing us in the inner mirror. It is an ancient and perennial message that we shall remember today, in which man must open himself to a fundamental jump of conscience if he does not want to succumb.

Summary

THE INTERIOR ROOM: The enchanted palace / The inner room / The apple / The freedom / A divine order / The feeling and reason / The source / The mirror / The inner teacher / The image of God / Subject and object / Hybris / Writing

THE ART: The artist / A staminal art / Creativity / Emptiness / The center / The birth of the city / The artist and the blackbird / The sense and the nonsense of art / The perennial in art / Today, in the light of the perennial / Feeling and reason / The art and nature / The beauty / The reason and nature / The thought / ... and art

III THE WAY: The road / Know Yourself / The Christ and the Buddha / The sacrifice / Conscience / The work on the city and ourselves / The diagram / The inner center / Who am I? / The comet / The horizontal and the vertical / Why suffering? / A dance / The orientation / The way back

IV MEETING WITH THE OTHER: Meeting someone /The hippogriff / The Self / Suffering and sacrifice / The box closed / The soul / The gem / Where are you from? / The soul and the woman / The prana / The mask / The two knights / The dragon / The "spiritual work" / An integrated image / The Ark / The other, the angel and myself / The pyramid / What do we see? / Love God, love your neighbor / Who is the neighbor? / The mirror and the world / The world turns ... / The mirror and the Spirit / Goodwill / Among the others

It is an inner conversation with which, beyond the little ego, one is addressing himself to the Self, the much higher spiritual being who is precisely the secret friend that manifests himself in our center. The perception of an orientation which thefore is born is precisely that towards this being and the vision that it opens up, with the knowledge and the new consciousness of how to act in the world ... more >
The book follows an investigation of the soul with which, in addition to searching for oneself, talks with other voices about the arguments of a theologian, Vito Mancuso, the mystical experiences of souls such as Meister Eckart and Teresa of Lisieux, the Nietzsche's will of power, and finally the same hybris, though in the form of totalizing erudition, which is manifested in the so-called cosmoteandria of a Pannikar. In the last part of the book, the author invites to set out, not looking only at the world where one must act by meeting other men, their ideas and ambitions, nor even at the kingdom of heaven to which the best souls have aspirated, but to a fruitful integration between existing and being: staying in the world but not being in the world, as Jesus had said. We need to look at our inner center, looking for truth in it, not in cultural or religious teaching; and engage in bringing it to the world, where today the false values that lead us to the catastrophe dominate.

Summary

I A INNER DIALOGUE: A habit / Talking with a friend / Silence and word / Water and reflection / Who is the secret friend? / Loneliness, love and sublimation / An eschatology of love / The inner dialogue / The true and the being / The men-children / Removal of death, eternity, cyclicity.

II The ORIENTATION: Orientation / The prayer / The will of God / The human condition / The orientation to the Self / Being and existing / The eternal game / The holiday and the life / The immensity of the universe / I am a solar system / Sicut in coelo et in terra / Effatà / The flower and the root / The invisible work / The Ark / The unconscious / The Lord / The genius loci / The spiritual east / The sphere and its center / The city in the image and likeness of man / The soul of the city / The essence / Harmony / Eros / Who is He and what is His face / A summer morning / The tree and the blackbird

III THE SOUL AND ITS DESTINY: A theology reading / Talking about the soul / Other Reading and Thoughts / Truth / Intuition / A Triad / The Holy Spirit / The Annunciation.

IV WALKING: The story of a soul / Being / The renunciation of the world / Sin and self-disclaimer / The person / Is there a kingdom of heaven? / The "beautiful sky" / The detachment from personality / Going beyond the world / The journey / Zarathustra / The will of power / The "cosmoteandry" / The son of God / Do I take leave? / A cover / Standing on a volcano / Light and shadow / The tale / The inner sun.

The source, the river that springs, the sea to which it comes, its evaporation in the sky, the rain that descends on the ground, feeding a new spring: this is the cycle of water and, in its image, that of everything else. In the book it is also read as the equally cyclical path of our life, from the birth with which it begins, to the river of the following existence, to the sea we come ... more >
... to with death, to the return of the soul to the womb of being, and the following new descent on earth with the birth of a new life. The parts in which the book is subdivided follow the same rhythm: the first is "The Source", a meditation on the soul; The second is "The River", which, concerning the existence, encompasses the multiple aspects of the world in which it takes place, even contingent and political; the third is "The Sea", where the river flows from our existence, with the possible scenarios awaiting humanity, including, if not unavoidable, the catastrophe that will accompany a radical change of civilization. The fourth is "Heaven and Earth," which reflects on the aspirations that prepare such a change, first of all, to a salvation symbolized by the Ark. Then there is a reflection on what is meant by "salvation": the physical one of humanity and the outer world we identify with, or the spiritual one with which man, going beyond it and its wreckage, achieves the true Sense of his life? The author urges us to look at the inner source, which is in each of us, and to see the star that illuminates and orientates us in it. It is the path of individual realization and commitment to a true salvation of humanity, for it finds the lost orientation.

Summary

I THE SOURCE: Incipit / The leaf / Meditation / The many springs / The present moment / Birth, source, dawn / Hic et nunc / Is there a soul? / A universal soul? / The ego and the Self / Consciousness / Finding / Who is it? / The Self / The cycle and the ego/ The Son of God / The same Self in different egos / Light anddDarkness / The inner solar system / The levels of being.

II THE RIVER: Essence and existence: the source and the river / Modernity / Once upon a time a king ... / Towards the catastrophe / The city in the image and likeness of man / A theory? / Collecting yourself / How to do it? / Reflections on power / God and Satan / Freedom and submission / The will of God / Nature and woman / Democracy / The essence and the laws / Good governance / Laity and religion / Feeling and reason / Freedom / Single thinking and the faces of freedom / The age of freedom / The ship goes ... / The rebalancing / The freedom in nature / How to guide us?

III THE SEA: Leaving the river / The mouth, scenery 1 / On the road, scenery 2 / The wreck and utopia, scenery 3 / My utopia / The center / A seed / The Ark, scenery 4 / The squaring of the circle / “The Dawning City” / Florentia / The pyramids / The soul of the city / Waking up / The city of God / The city of Man / The Cathedral Arc / The Ark of Man / To surrender

IV THE SKY AND THE LAND: In what salvation can we hope? / The inner sun / Resurrection / ... and after / The earth / The stories of art / At work! / The two kingdoms / Separation and integration / The seed / Exit

While the former book, the Secret Friend, was a dialogue with itself, though on a much higher level than that of the little ego - was a dialogue with the Self - this is a dialogue with death, born of an experience in which it appeared close. But what do you encounter in this situation? The Self itself, if our soul has gained its awareness and is able to recognize it, as the Tibetans ... more >
call upon to recognize the "clear light" at the point of death. The soul is in this case liberated from the cycle of births and deaths and can ascend to eternal life, as it would be to get out of the rotation of the earth to ascend to the sun; only that the soul sun will not be in heaven but in its center. The "know yourself" of the ancient precept, followed by the words "in yourself is concealed the treasure of the Gods" involves the discovery of this center. Next to this, the author looks at the world we live in and a modernity that is going to end up under our eyes; he is compared to its various aberrations, including the utopia of unlimited growth - as it would be a life that does not know death - supporting the need for a limit in every field, yet to be recognized with a true knowledge well beyond the rationalist and materialist who is destroying man and the world. Dialogue with death ultimately leads us to a reflection on the "golden head" seen in the cover image. It makes us think that when the soul breaks out of the body, it carries with it a precious identity that, beyond our lives, is immortal: good news for all of us. In the same way, the identity of our civilization will persist and emerge in new forms, beyond the mortal crisis we are experiencing.

Summary

I IN FRONT OF THE DOOR: Humanitas / The illusion of the world / Is there a continuity of consciousness? / The great tree / The leaves / The kingdom of heaven / The truth and the mind / Being in the world but not of the world / The bridge / An Autumn day / The Director / Nudity / Tension / The Self / The passage.

II DO KNOW YOURSELF: A look at the world and ourselves / The soul / The Father / The birth of the son / The death of the son / Resurrection / The sermon / The Self in the present / Arjuna / The source / Meet Yourself / Hic et nunc.

III AT WORK : The work of new man / “The City in Man's Image and Similarity” / Culture / The Limit need / Art / Science / Politics / Religion / Towards the end of modernity / A new modernity / The way of life / The first signs / Parallel to the fall of the Roman Empire / A new balance.

IV SOPHIA: At death / The neighbour / The spiritual work / Dante / The actor / The neighbour's love / Tagete / The Ark / Compassion / Sophia / A blank page / The Man's Ark / A new birth / The golden head.

The book begins with a small journey and the thoughts that come to mind in the author, while sitting on the train. They may touch on anything but the old traveler, who is not far from the end of life, is led to reflect on the meaning of this and his own identity: "Who am I?" He asks. The visit to Pompeii, to which he is directed, puts him in front of a death show - the end of the ancient city and, more generally, of every human enterprise ... more >
and make him think of the impulse that drives man to seek an overcoming, so as it can be accomplished in transformation, as occurs in nature and history, or intuition in a transcendent perspective. A critical moment of coexistence between the two dimensions took place at the end of the Roman empire, a time so similar to ours - when St. Augustine lived and wrote precisely the city of God while the earthly city, or Rome, was in fatal decadence. It also met its end and future transformation as well as Agostino's Mediolanum, and how it will happen to our city too. Mazzucconi speaks to us instead of a city of man: the "city in the image and likeness of man" - this was the title of his first book of 1967 - and the "dawning city" not only as transformation projects but as hope for a new birth of the city and civilization, after the catastrophe which the modern world is producing. This will also lead to the birth of a renewed man, as in an ideal baptism, that we are also ready to relive in a real action such as the construction of an Ark, a symbol of hope and salvation. The emotion in front of the frescoes of the Villa dei Misteri, evocators of a Dionysian rite, and the ruins of the ancient city, is accompanied by these thoughts of the day, on the possible tomorrow, meditating on life, death, love, Sense of our existence, until the author returns to the first question, and each of us can find the answer with him: "who am I?"

Summary

I THE MYSTERIES: Travel notes / In Pompeii / End or transformation? / Being and existing / The Villa of Mysteries / The drama / Two thousand years after / The awakening / The search for a way / The man in relation to the world / The sunset of a civilization / A principle of love / The “Domina” and her thoughts / Death and resurrection / The mirror / The Sacred Family / The Self / The lay spirit / The black hole / The beautiful and the true / The original pulse / The archetype / Love / The Sacrifice / The overcoming of death / Human and divine / Is there a kingdom of God? / If the universe has a Sense / Zeus and Ade / The inner sun / Eros and Psyche / The egg / The Witness.

II THE CITY OF MAN: Florentia / The city of youth / The man and the city / The city's soul / The emptiness in the city / Values for a new civilization / The city in man's image and similarity / Mediolanum / The city in time / Today, yesterday, tomorrow / The renewal of the man / Ambrose and Augustine / The city of God / Rome / Parallel between the end of the Roman Empire and today / The third Babylon / My "city / The city of alienation.

III THE ARK: The breath of God / The return to itself / At the thresholds of the apocalypse / Noah's Ark and Troy's Horse / In Front of the Arc / The Palatine Pyramid / Birth and overthrow / A new Baptistery / The baptism / The Kingdom of Being / Salvation / Spiritual birth / We beleive / The Ark of Man / The source / The cross and the spiral / Geometry / The double Pyramid / The sacrifice / Beliefs and truths / The different religions / Credo quia absurdum est / The walk / The golden statue / The rising sun / The person / Know yourself.

IV GEOMETRIES: The spaceship / The center of the earth / The symbolon / The space city / The interruption, the shell and the ark / Après le déluge / The archetype, the interruption of death and the rebirth / The archetype and the shapes / The truth / The chessboard / A spiritual principle / The fractals and the octagon / Transgression / The hourglass / The overthrow / The o One and the multiple / The Etruria's Museum / The true salvation / The Dharma / The son of the One / “I Am That”.

The Mazzucconi's books are a continuous meditation on man: he asks himself without respite "Who am I?" Many deep reflections are therefore born on the person, on the soul, on our true self and on the path to follow to discover it and not on the contrary to deny it with the exaltation of the false ego, to which our time is dedicated.
In an imaginary but lively dialogue with Spinoza, which the author confidently calls Benedict, and with Descartes, it emerges that the cause of this deviation and the tragedies that followed it is precisely the supremacy of the reason that they have inaugurated, to the detriment of the soul values. The "true good" that Spinoza pursued was purely an intellectual one, thus replacing the aspiration to the eternal that it implies with the rationalist mirage. ... more >
The idea that reality should instead be not only examined with reason but fertilized by a spiritual principle, similar to what happens in the fertilization of the egg, reveals itself as bearer of profound analogies and of an effective transformation.
Mazzucconi testifies to this with his towns and arks projects, whose geometry has nothing in common with the "geometric method" proposed by Spinoza to explain the world rationally but, on the contrary, shows that it can be transformed by a true creativity, similar to the fertilization of the egg. This is also the function of art, if we can renew it outside the delirious trends of contemporary art. As for the cover image that, like those of all the books in the series, is a painting by the author, we see in it that the soul also seems enclosed in an egg, ready to receive the principle of a spiritual fertilization, as in an authentic "annunciation".

Summary

I. WHO AM I?: Breath, air and thought / There is only the soul / The seed of God is not only in man / The thought of death / The conscience and its permanence / The soul is the ego? The person and its architect / The day and the night, the life and the death / Sun, earth, moon / The ego at different levels / The hypertrophy of reason / Towards the spiritual ego ... but also towards its opposite / The artificial ego, what comes out of us ... / The polarity of the two Ego / The initial question and the answer / Thinking of our loved ones / The flower, the soul and the breath / The soul, the person and the mask / The consciousness of being a child of God / The soul and the truth / Prosopon

II. BENEDETTO: A week with my children / Spinoza reading / A method / Benedict / I-conscience / The golden fleece / The fresco / The aspiration to eternal life / The breath / The thought / I exist, I am / The true / The prison / The return / The true good / In the sun / About the imagination / The love of God

III. THE EGG: Mid-August Reflections / Loneliness / The universal egg / The sphere, the mind, the egg / The nascent city / A university campus / The intellect, the egg, the Flower / The cross / Geometry, the fairy tale and the disaster / The inner city / The foundation of the city / The sphere and the ray / The pyramid / The overthrowing / A summary / Le Berceau / Les Halles / The flower and the Ark of Man

IV. ART:The ark / The little tin / The city in the image and likeness of man / The dove, the basket / Femininity and love / Art in today's world / A new function of art / The model / A personal work / Farewell / The Garden of Eden / Annunciation

First ideas for a Milan city-planning, which are developed and integrated in "The city in the image and likeness of man", 1967.

Summary

The space / Statistics and thought / Road meaning / Road network function / Change of road concept / Reshaping of built-up areas / Orthogonal lay-out hypothesis / Radial lay-out hypothesis / Change of center concept / Three referrals for our Administrators

Summary

The soul /The woman / Creation / Duality / Architecture

Summary

The site of the soul / A Testimony

The presence of the divine lives in these events of Love by Vittorio Mazzucconi. We know well that Eros is the son of the deity, but between the legends of Olympus and the songs of the Old Testament, in truth, I do not know well... The jew James Hilmann, of post-Jungian faith, writes precisely "If I were religious I would be polytheist". Syncretism makes our spirit light, but, as we know, it does not give it too many gifts of light.
Vittorio Mazzucconi is a child of his time, as for his poetic and pictorial writing. He is familiar with a chromaticity like that of Chagal, a pure, sinuous, harmonious and sensual line that makes us think of Matisse, and has the strength of Picasso's message. Instead, the spirit of Mazzucconi is different. I capture it as very ancient. It comes from far away. In every painting - only apparently has the breath of autobiography - he tends to raise the event, as a song suffered and inhaled rises towards the sky, to probe the unknowable. ... more >
He announces with his poetic scenographies that Love is above all essence and, consequently, sacred representation. In every work, like the Creation of Eve, acrylic with a strong compositional strength, or Pain in spring, where the sun seems to go out, Mazzucconi-alchemist actually stretches his hands to the Invisible and steals his luminous breath. The formal results, therefore, have the transfiguration of the sacred metaphysical, especially when a face, a body take apparent forms. In this case, the Dancer is exemplary, a great oil with a skilful balance of composition.
A pictorial cycle that, as a dominant motif, brings to light the representation of archetypes that arose from the unconscious, plumbed with melancholic serenity, in a sort of self-analysis. Without intentionality, as if by impulse, Adam and Eve emerge, on the surface, Life and Death, Sin and Conception, under the most different and fanciful formal masks.
Vittorio Mazzucconi makes us gifts of suspended figures, light, angels whose faces are in a counterpoint to white faces, with no trace of eyes or mouth. The representation, then, of the dawn, perhaps does not represent the rebirth of the Spirit? Is not the light green fringe symbolic of a peace, a message that guides the observer beyond the contingent?
Canticle of the Songs or, even better, Mysterium Conjunctionis, of Jungian memory, could be one of the titles of this tribute to the beloved Woman. They are oneiric transfigurations, that allude to complex situations, where in the embrace the arm becomes a phallus, and the hands of the lovers, united, form a symbolic circularity.
Mazzucconi pays homage to Love, to the suffering that Eros gives to man, so that he may grow and be reborn. This is the case of the Enigma, a four-part composition in which the symbolic elements of the water and the sky offer - also thanks to a diagonal reading - a tonal counterpoint of black, decodable with cosmic darkness. Instead, we have a reversal of the situation with the Dream, where the man and the woman, embraced in their sleep, offer a mysterious key, that of abandoning the soul to unknown shores. This is a cycle of love and sorrow, a symphony full of religiosity, where angels are the guardians of arcane messages. "If the spirit of God - Angelus Silesius sang - touches you with his essence, the child of eternity is born in you".

Synopsis

Two central elements of Mazzucconi's work, the "refounding" of the city, and the "reversal" of current values in the name of a vision that is, to the limit, mystic, find expression in the idea of creating a large pyramid overturned on the Palatine, which therefore touches only with its summit the illustrious archeological site. It is meant to celebrate both the ancient foundation and the empire that followed the foundation of a future open to a new civilization, following the same intentions of the projects for Milan and Florence

Summary

A new foundation / A virtual palace / A temple / A vision / A synthesis / The study booklet

Synopsis

Even in this work, the overturned pyramid, suggested in this case by the facade of the Milan Cathedral, is a symbol of spiritual opening. Located in the heart of the city, in front of the Duomo and the traces of the ancient baptistery where St. Augustine was baptized by St. Ambrose, it is offered as a new Baptistery for the rebirth of man and city after the dark period we are crossing.

Summary

From the past to the future / A project to renew the square / The Milan Cathedral Ark / The Arca and the Duomo / The church-square / Via dei Mercanti / Via Torino / From the high of the Duomo / At night / The underground

5 Subjects. To have information about the project click on the images.

The Dawning city: the Flower

22, Avenue Matignon, Paris (study for the facade)