Gastone Ventura

(Aldebaran)

Sovereign Grand General Hierophant. 1966-1981

The Count Gastone Ventura was born in 1906 and died on 28th July 1981. He was descended from an aristocratic family of Parma, which later -during the Napoleonic times- took up residence in Venice. Gastone Ventura stayed there for most of his life. He reached the rank of Admiral (class of 1906) in the Italian Navy, he was also a journalist, a critic, an author, and perhaps most importantly, a very honest researcher of the occult. Up until his first trips to Egypt, Yemen, India and East Africa, he focused his studies on the historical and traditionalist research. He was active in Martinism (initiatic name Aldebaran) as well as in the Ancient and Primitive Oriental Rite of Misraim & Memphis.

He was occupied with the spreading of knowledge (Gnosis) not as a collection of encyclopaedic information but as Traditional Gnosis in its absolute spiritual sense. According to G.Ventura, Traditional Gnosis is based on the universal principles of metaphysics.

“There exists”, he wrote, “a problem of reintegration of civilisation in its general position as expression and spiritual interpretation of the basic events of life and of the internal turmoil which pushes humanity to come into contact with superior and inferior worlds".

He moreover argued that the messages of Tradition are passed through “the path of blood”, inheritance, invitations from the utmost past, a special state of consciousness, memory and thought. Obscure messages, revealing and incomprehensible to most people, messages that pass through the Rite and Symbol.

He authored the following books:

The Masonic Rites of Misraim and Memphis
The “Tetraktys” of Pythagoras
Gnostic Cosmogonies
Cagliostro: A Man of his Times
All the Men of Martinism
Knights and Knighthood
Traditionalist Mindset and Hermetic Tradition
Secret Societies of the Renaissance
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
The Western Initiatory System
The Mystery of the Sacrificial Rite (It was in this book that the Ruby Tablet (author unknown) was first published)
The Secret Spirit of Knighthood
Historical and Traditional Assessments of the Myth of the Queen of Sheba.
The land of the four justices