Chi è Menerva

What it is and how it acts

The significance

Menerva or Menrva was a mysterious and powerful deity worshipped centuries before the advent of Rome among the Italic peoples.

Its origins are lost in the mists of time, but although exchanges with Magna Graecia caused it to assimilate many traits of Athena, Menerva retains indigenous characteristics.

Etymology links its name to an ancient Italic lunar deity, Meneswā. The moon is the star subject to the laws of becoming, the only one born, growing and disappearing, so much so that ancient thought symbolized the cyclic mutation of the cosmos.

Changes in the heavens found a correspondence on earth in the changing agricultural seasons, marked by the moons, the measure of time in the ancient world.

In fact, the very ancient lemma Meneswā is literally "she who measures," derived from the Sanskrit māmi. Its root Indo-European -men, connects Menerva to the mnestis Greek, memory, that is, the co-presence of past and present at the same time.

The measure of time, by extension, stretches into both sides of becoming, so much so that according to Latin source Menerva would derive from the ancient verb "promenervare," meaning "to remember the future," or to warn of it in advance.

The Etruscan Menerva was born from the head of Tinia, supreme god of the Heavens, that is, the divine intellect of pure reason, and Uni, female deity of fertility, mother of the seasons and therefore of time.

But what then is this union if not the thought of strategy? The Apollonian power of reasoning becomes an act only when it plunges into the Dionysian mutability of time, through the attempt the human effort to anticipate events.

Minerva, the Roman descendant of the Etruscan and earlier Indo-European goddess, naturally became a protector in the immanent world of humans, trade, weapons, medicine, activities in which a priori analysis and action are two faces of the same coin, consequent and intertwined.

Our time

If we think of Italy's history, Menerva's noctule seems to fly over its civilization in the phases of the full moon, from classical Rome to the freedoms of the medieval Communes, from the splendors of the Church to the exploits of the Maritime Republics, from the beauties of the Renaissance to the spirit of Reconstruction.

Italy at the dawn of the 21st century seems analogous to the "ragged, beaten and raced" Italy of Machiavelli's time than to its splendor imprisoned in its monumental memory.

An illune night seems to have fallen across Europe, waiting for the auroral spirit that knew how to draw vitality from its laceration and bore fruit in the classical world.

Then again, for the ancients, understanding the rhythm of history meant accepting that nights of full moon nights are followed by illunus nights and rain is alternated with drought.

The fruitful three decades of the postwar period were followed by decades of sterile and progressive deterioration of Italy's economic and social conditions. Industrial desertification, sclerosis of institutions and society have produced a country impoverished and cowering in itself, on the continent .

However, "the discourse on decline" is as inevitable as it is immobilizing, because it imprisons the energies, which alligate in what is most ancestrally Italian, i.e., theindustry, The ability to transform matter and create resources from nothing.

If historical conditions, would seem to sentence an ineluctable fate of marginality, the fluctuations of time teach that the court of history never passes final sentences. Each winter prepares for spring.

How we operate

Menerva was born from the need of those who animate it to find a space where theory and praxis are linked, where neither the urge to act for its own sake reigns nor debate remains confined to contemplative reflection intended for a circle of educated initiates.

The arts and crafts of which Menerva was patron translated thought into public and private action. The hope is that Menerva will be transformed into a platform for debate as well as a tool for a diverse audience to essay the intricate scenarios of the contemporary world.

Menerva would like to translate itself into a cornucopia of ideas, participating in the public square where strategic issues for Italy, Europe and the ecumene are discussed and defined, offering its voice, stimulating and hosting contributions with the ambition to affect the spirit of its time,

Menerva would like to disseminate knowledge of an intellectual armamentarium of techniques and tools for data collection, evaluation, and strategic analysis developed to assist decision-making processes in complex situations.

The tools will vary and touch unprecedented angles that will be condensed into intereactive and visual content in the spirit of "promenerving," anticipating the future and casting a glance into the fertile abyss of the past.