Mysterious energies, magical symbols on palaces, monuments and on the Mole Antonelliana, the alchemical caves under Piazza Castello. With Cagliostro who had stayed there twice. This is why over the centuries Turin – one of the three vertices of the white magic triangle with Prague and Lyon – has earned a reputation as a magical city. But even the black one had its following: the Mausoleum of Bela Rosin had been closed because satanic rites were held there, and in the center is the Palazzo Trucchi di Levaldigi, with its famous “devil’s door”. Turin also means Shroud and Freemasonry, and legend has it that the Holy Grail is buried under the church of the Gran Madre.
“I am the gutter”
In this city in 1903 the psychic Gustavo Rol was born, who interpreted the syncretism between religion and mystery in his own way. A fervent Catholic, he said of himself: «I am the gutter. It is not this that should be analyzed, but the water and the reasons why the rain occurs ». Behind this concept was God. Experiments with cards. Remote writing, reading and painting. Appearance of objects and dematerializations. Clairvoyance, medical diagnoses and healings. But you also travel into the past into the future. The repertoire of what Rol called “my possibilities” astounded the guests of his house in via Silvio Pellico, in San Salvario. Many queued to be welcomed in the hall full of Napoleonic relics (of which he was one of the greatest collectors in the world) overlooking the Valentino park.
When Mussolini asked
Among the illustrious visitors, Fellini (who never failed to ask for advice before shooting a film), Zeffirelli, Agnelli, Valentina Cortese, Gassman and Valletta. And it is said that even Mussolini one day asked him: “Do you, who foresee the future, think we will win the war?” The fame of a character with extraordinary powers had spread to San Secondo di Pinerolo, when he had managed to save some partisans hostage from the Nazis, astonishing an SS commander: “If you guess what I keep in the right drawer of my desk in Germany, I leave you free ». But woe to anyone who called him a medium, a spiritualist or, worse, a magician.
Antiques dealer and painter
Youth had been marked by stays abroad, interspersed with the achievement of three degrees. Once back in Turin, he was married to a Norwegian noblewoman who had not given him children. But the fascination that Rol gave off with those blue magnetic eyes and imposing physique was difficult to resist, and he did not hold back. He first worked as an antique dealer and then as a painter, with the figures on the canvases changing position even when he was not at work, as the writer Nico Orengo had said. Rol liked to see the surprise on his guests’ faces. He unwillingly “performed” outside the home, but no one had ever reported suspicious movements when he read in closed books or objects appeared in his hands who had come from who knows where.
The question of faith
Mystery, but also a solid relationship with God. Rol attended the Consolata church also because he was born on June 20, the day consecrated to the Madonna of the same name, to whom he will remain devoted throughout his life. For him it was indispensable to have absolute faith and hope in God «who, being everywhere – he said – is also present in those who do not believe in him. But even if we admit that God does not exist, no one would be able to escape the laws that govern the universe and reject the gifts that come from it ”. Rol trusted in the dialogue between confessions, even though he was aware of the impossibility of a unitary creed that included Christianity, Islam and Judaism. And he consistently practiced his “apostolate”, helping in a concrete way those who needed it.
“His” Turin
The assumption around which his “possibilities” revolved was the theory of the “intelligent spirit”: for him even inanimate objects had their own “spirit” which represented the reason for being of the things themselves. This entity was sublime in the case of individuals, because it possessed a charge of intelligence that went beyond instinct. A vision that blocked the way to spiritism, which he never resorted to. His Turin was enclosed in a handkerchief, the one around the market in Piazza Madama where he went shopping. A couple of restaurants, the pastry shop for the coffee, the restorer, the paint shop. And that usual counter where he enjoyed making nuts or cherries appear in the pockets of incredulous customers. He once complained to the proprietor that the peaches he bought the day before weren’t too good. “But doctor, how is it possible that you who foresee everything are not able to choose the best fruit?”.
The illustrious critics
Rol has always been opposed by Piero Angela and by Cicap, the committee for the control of claims on the paranormal, which wanted him to undergo scientific tests. They called him a magician, a barker. Yet almost 30 years after his death in September 1994, the city and those who knew him are still wondering about the powers of this man. Who threw roses against the walls of a room, to make them appear in the adjacent one, and who “read” the halo of people, to understand if they had any disease. A mystery that no one will ever be able to reveal.
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