SAVol7Dec09WesternCo.. - Saptarishis Astrology

Far away, many centuries later, another extraordinary ruler, with the same nature asHadrian’s, “… who freed himself through a frenetic building activity; who sunk in a deepmelancholy to explode sometimes in a disproportionate rage, with an inexhaustible thirstfor knowledge and for understanding philosophy, but above all for satisfying the impulse totranscribe in stone his own visions and the most esoteric messages …” (8) (Petruccioli). Hebuilt a similar place to satisfy his cognitive, but also magic and ritual needs. This was Akbar,the Mughal emperor, who, in the 16 th century, in India, build in his palace in Fatehpur Sikrithe mysterious Anup Talao, “the incomparable pool” at the centre of which he would retireon a platform covered by a planetary canopy and he would meditate and also show himselfas a cosmocrator, the lord of the world, in a manner very akin – it can be surmised – to thatof Hadrian’s in his own very similar palace.Again in Rome, in the 17 th Century, another great man echoed similar concepts by creatingan architecture which was the concrete expression of a cosmic vision. This was FrancescoBorromini who had heard of the wonders of the East from his patrons at the PropagandaFide and who had certainly studied with fervent attention the ruins of Hadrian’s villa: in1644 he showed cardinal Pamphilij a project for a villa where “… from the windows of theside walls one could see many of the things in the sky which are taught by mathematicians190