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HYPATIA, BEAUTY AND WISDOM ANGAINST FANATISM AND VIOLENCE (2)

After all, not long ago women were executed by fire when accused of witchcraft (this was one of the accusations of Cyril against Hypatia); and we can still read in the news about the young Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned to death by the religious and male judges in Iran. It would seem that puritants cannot forgive passion and gifted knowledge in women.

Alejandro Amenabar chose the word 'agora', which means plaza or gathering place, as the title of his movie; this underlines the social contents he means to convey to the public; it was in the agora in Athens where Socrates, another victim of intolerance and ignorance, used to teach and inquire about universal truth. The irony is that in the Alexandria of the IV and V centuries AD, the agora became a stage for dogmatism.

'Agora', the film, is a strong statement against fundamentalism. Although the events occured sixteen centuries ago, Amenabar is pointing out at the latest events of our times; Cyril, for example, is shown as a sort of Bin Landen, both is attitude and in physical appearance, and the mob that follows him and his preachers resemble a Taliban army. This Chilean Spanish director was born under the coup of Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, so he knows about repression and extremism. He is telling us that prejudice and fanatism have always existed, that people in power exploit this collective tendency for their own benefit.



What l do not agree with the film is the image of Hypatia as a free thinker; she was actually a great philosopher, a follower of Plotinus and Iamblicus (a philosopher we already introduced in a previous article about the Mysteries of Egypt); therefore, as a neoplatonic thinker, Hypatia had to possess a mystic vision of transcendance. She might have been a demiurge, someone who had angelical visions and talked to angels, that is why she was also accused of witchcraft. Certainly, she was an outstanding astronomer, but in Antiquity astronomy was always linked to astrology. However, Amenabar, a free thinker himself, chose to present her as pure scientist, in the modern sense, he wanted to emphasise the conflict between science and fanatism, or ignorance.

Nobody knows when Hypatia was born, only the date of her death. So, besides the fact that we need an extremely reliable and professional astrology program for the charts of ancient people, it is impossible to cast her natal chart. But l have this theory that the charts of the actors and directors of films (in art in general) provide information about the historial character they are dealing with. Rachel Weisz, Hypatia in the movie, is a Pisces (March/7/1970, in London) with several planets in this sign; Amenabar is an Aries (March/31/1972, in Santiago de Chile).

Could it be that Hypatia was a Pisces with moon in Aries? Her charisma and mystic tendency for hermetic knowledge might justify a Sun in Pisces, sign of Neptune and Jupiter; her courage, her independence of thought and her rebellion against authority, might stand for a moon in Aries. She remained a virgin all her life and had an amazone side in her; there is an anecdote, that when one of her disciples fell madly in love with her (Orestes in the movie), she suddenly showed him a cloth with her menstrual blood telling him: 'this is what you are in love with'.

One astrological aspect that both director and actress have in common is a conjunction of Mars with Saturn, in different signs (she in Taurus, he in Gemini), this shows a strong drive against repression, but also the risk of becoming a target of it. Amenabar must have felt in love with the image of Hypatia, he understood her at the bottom of his heart. He made a magnifiscent movie, badly appreciated by the mainstream. I strongly recommend to observe the esthetics and the art design of the film, the director was inspired in the portraits of Al Fayyum, a supreme art of portrait developed under the Roman Empire in Egypt that combine the Greek tradition with the Egyptian mystical vision of death. There was, not long ago, an expo of the Fayyum portrait in Tokyo. (The end)

HYPATIA, BEAUTY AND WISDOM ANGAINST FANATISM AND VIOLENCE (2)_e0182773_142068.gif
Rachel Weisz
March/7/1970, in London
HYPATIA, BEAUTY AND WISDOM ANGAINST FANATISM AND VIOLENCE (2)_e0182773_14203187.gif
Alejandro Amenabar
March/31/1972, in Santiago de Chile


In Japanese...

by xavier_astro | 2010-11-15 00:00 | 人物  

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