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Starting from the images of the myth of the city of Shamballa, this essay intends to examine its sources and above all the power of vision which, by combining different exegetical lines, ends up assuming complete existential indifference with respect to the traditions of extraction. From this change of perspective derives a different vision of reality, a “today” gifted by instantaneous knowledge and simultaneous communication have become realities that prove more advanced than our actual progress in terms of awareness. The city manifests itself in this light in its ontological component, as a breeding ground for souls. This function, so simple and intuitive, is however far from being realized, so much so that we have to declare that we need an intellectual awakening, a liberation from oppression, both of religions and capitalism, that the ecological symptoms make us understand more and more clearly as a condition that can no longer be postponed and for which a spiritual and non-violent struggle must be fought, the only one that can lead to an effective and lasting expansion of consciousness, such as to assume the density, strength and substance of an idea of cosmopolitan, universal citizenship.

This short essay will treat metric and free verse, with the awareness of the anachronistic quality of these topics. Notwithstanding, this is the purpose of this short essay which dares to start from the astral consideration of the meaning of poetry. Through this way, coming back to its inner metric and structure, poetry may compose the partiture of an urban renovation movement, creating conditions for a modern interpretation of urban spaces as common goods, where the ineffable power of the poetical word can introduce a new perception of life into the cities.

Through three capital questions, this short essay tries to offer a general panorama and a better understanding of the proteiform complex body or Masonry. Through by a multi-level hermeneutic, this study get the ambition to be comprehensible both to Readers who are not used to this kind of literature and to the ones advanced and skilled in symbolic thought. The main important conclusion owes the quality of the symbolic level, which is the property to refuse a single interpretation: notwithstanding, this does not prevent from a clear historical and political evaluation of the phenomena under analysis, according the methodologies of social sciences. This political evaluability drives to the main valuable output of the essay, which concerns the anthropological statement that the logical label of Masonry, with this name or many others, it exists since always. Under the category of initiatory institution, we may consider the step between individual and society, and a society inside a larger one. Evolving from the needs of the individuals to the ones of social groups, the matter joins to the land of political sciences. The sociological meaning can be posed under analytic view in reason of the functionalist meaning emerging from the alternative couples status-quo/emancipation and conservatism/progressivism. Through by this perspective, anyway the theme seems not to reveal much more, because this “proteiform complex body” manifest itself as something too much complex in its inner core to be considered in a way or in another. What remains is strictly symbolic, with some theological and eschatological points that refuse to be posed under restrain.

This short essay wants to look at beat literature as a medium that has re-introduced in popular feelings the possibility to change the world, transforming its social rules by using new technologies as instruments for emancipation. Stating this, the essay links the beat movement to hipster’s hopes of the beginning of the XX century, with the need to reflect on the meaning of two WW as barriers to people’s emancipation. From the non-academic side of the perspective, the essay indicates some special sources, trying to demonstrate how beat literature has shaped new meanings to words like “occult”, “magic”, linking them with other words like “awareness” and “emancipation”. Doing this, a tribute is given to the historical role played by the magazine “International Times” as living witness of the years when beat literature was germinating into the generational protest. The conclusions are oriented towards the meaning in the present for a beat attitude to (social) life, with the new awareness of the way indicated by Allen Ginzberg about the unuseful dimension of drugs as instruments to get the vision, and the need to substitute them with natural tools to be able to extract them from unconscious through yoga and meditation systems. This may help to create a new kind of people, involved in a cosmopolitan interpretation of life, able to interconnect by the new information and communication technologies, ready to create a new social intellect. Of course, we do not pretend to present this work of network as a strong link, rather, it seems to be a weak tie. Nevertheless, this weak tie in sociology is a concept used to indicate a relationship that is not as strong as quotidian family or professional relationships. The strength of weak ties theory affirms that weak ties provide access to new audiences where you could find opportunities or contrary opinions that would make ideas stronger, looking at how a person’s network can contribute to their success. Ideas are like germs and the