ÉDITO

Summer Solstice 2005. Festival of Music.

Although the Solstice is an ordinary event in the sense that it comes twice a year since the beginning of time, it is also an extraordinary moment, entirely independent of mankind and its powers. In point of fact, we are now just about able to calculate its precise date and time, which in the case of the next one is 21 June at 8.46 a.m. Most civilisations have noted this magic moment, with the result that most festivals focus on the end of June and end of December. I should like to give full credit to Maurice Fleuret, who – in 1982 when he was Head of the Music

Department at the French Ministry of Culture – had the idea of proposing to his chief a “Festival of Music” to coincide with the Summer Solstice. This enterprise of his has now had international repercussions.

Alain Daniélou used to say that, for the Hindus, “language is the means through which human beings communicate with each other, and music the means through which they communicate with the Gods”

The house in Italy where Daniélou wrote many of his works is built on a hill known as “the Labyrinth”, inhabited since very ancient times as shown by the pieces of Etruscan pottery found there dating from the sixth century BCE. It appears that the house was aligned – perhaps on the foundations of some religious structure – according to the Summer Solstice, whence the name Daniélou gave it : “Solstices at the Labyrinth” (Les Solstices au Labyrinthe), as also the title of his memoirs “The Way to the Labyrinth”.

Some very good and encouraging news has been received from a press-cutting agency (l’Argus de la Presse), to the effect that an article in Monde 2, (from the newspaper Le Monde) on 19 March 2005, states that “one of ‘the most popular’ philosophical sites according to Netscape is the one dedicated to Alain Daniélou”. Such recognition is greatly appreciated by all our team and will stimulate further development and promotion of the site.