Vlaicu Ionescu was a Renaissance personality of the modern era, a pioneer in all fields and directions in which he excelled and in all the meridians in which he lived, fulfilling his work in Romania, America, Europe, and Japan.
He was and is considered the most profound and knowledgeable interpreter of Nostradamus, by recognized specialists in the field, the interpreter who decrypted the fall of communism and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union in Nostradamian verses, revealing spectacular, incredible forecasts and predictions that have been confirmed by history.
He was a pioneer in the visual arts, a painter and illustrator whose works marked memorable exhibitions and won the interest of European and American collectors. He was a theorist, a professor of aesthetics, theory, and philosophy of the arts, whose courses and writings formed generations of creators and lovers of the arts. The Renaissance spirit, versatility, multilingualism, erudition, the twinning of the mastery of the liberal arts with the mysteries of mathematics, geometry, symbols and the Golden Ratio marked all directions of the work of Vlaicu Ionescu, a polymath of modern culture, an innovator and a wise man alike, a classic among the moderns and a modern among the classics, a contemporary of ours, guiding us towards the horizon of knowledge and perennial values.
Doina Uricariu, author of Vlaicu Ionescu - The Artist / Pictorul
Biography
Romanian-born (1922-2002) writer and painter Vlaicu Ionescu was one of the last true Renaissance men, having left an extraordinary and complex double legacy of Nostradamian exegesis and fine arts paintings, both rooted in the Traditional Thought[1] (Sophia Perennis) and Christian Orthodoxy.
Vlaicu Ionescu was born on April 1st, 1922, in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania to Fr. Dominic Ionescu and Maria Ion Zeller. Dominic Ionescu was a priest and professor at the Orthodox Seminary in Bucharest and known for his religious and nationalist idealism. Vlaicu Ionescu pursued university studies in philosophy, architecture, mathematics, musicology, and fine arts (painting). He obtained degrees in Philosophy (1945, University of Bucharest, Department of Philosophy and Letters), Musicology (1952, Bucharest Conservatory, Department of Composition and Musicology), and Arts (1962, School of Church Painting of the Romanian Patriarchate).
He first started exhibiting his paintings at the age of 19, when several of his paintings were included in a group exhibition of important Romanian artists, including luminaries such as Ion Țuculescu[2]. From an early age, Vlaicu Ionescu was interested in the esoteric traditions, occultism, and astrology, helped by a large collection of books inherited from his father and then further expanded.[3] He practiced the meditation exercises described by Rudolf Steiner[4], but he was most interested in learning about the prayer of the heart of the Eastern Orthodox Hesychast tradition[5].
In 1943, Vlaicu Ionescu met Lidia Pecuraru,[6] born on June 11, 1923, to Sava Mates and archeologist Dionisie Pecuraru. Vlaicu Ionescu evoked this meeting in his autobiography describing it as the “love at first sight” that changed all his life, providing focus and inspiration:
“...at the beginning of the year 1943, I met Lidia, who attended a common course at the Faculty of Philosophy. It was “love at first sight” which changed my life. She was the being sent by destiny to concentrate myself in a single love, to defend myself against the dangers of the communist terror, to criticize and advise me when my soul of Aries ignored the caution, to inspire me in my research and my creations.”[7]
During the 1945-68 period of militant communism in Romania, Vlaicu Ionescu was persecuted—much in line with many other intellectuals of his generation—and he was not allowed to work in his domain or exhibit his art. He dedicated over ten years in researching and writing the first manuscript of his book on Nostradamian prophecies. By 1958, he was arrested and sentenced to two years of prison for the crime of having an art collection and trying to make a living of restoring Old Masters’ [8] paintings. Fortunately, the initial search of his apartment did not reveal the manuscript (which included the prediction of the fall of Communism) and Vlaicu’s wife immediately destroyed it to prevent a much harsher sentence in the Romanian gulag.
During the 1968-69 slight internal political “détente,” Vlaicu Ionescu had the chance to exhibit his paintings at the prestigious Central University Library gallery in Bucharest, which generated immediate attention and success. “The kind of painting exhibited by Vlaicu Ionescu represented something that, with rare exceptions, could not been seen in Bucharest’s art galleries during those years… The young generation was enthusiastic in looking at the paintings that spoke of a new art by someone who was a [modern] European, a Westerner, and who did not paint with the hands but with the … inner eye, with the brain the memory of which embraced synchronically more than one civilization.”[9] As a result of his success, he was invited to open an exhibition at a Munich art gallery, and by a small miracle he obtained the visa and permission to leave the country. His exhibitions in the Federal Republic of Germany (October-November 1969) were very successful with most of his paintings sold. He was also invited to give conferences on the Philosophy of Art at the Volkshochschule in Munich and several interviews on Culture and Art for the Radio Free Europe. At the same time, Vlaicu Ionescu learned of a “renewed interest” by the Romanian security services in his affairs and impending arrest should he come back to Romania. So, he decided to remain in the West. In a further—even more dramatic—twist of lucky fate, his wife was able to travel to West Berlin with a work-related delegation, re-unite with Vlaicu, and then immigrate together to United States, settling in 1971 in New York.
Vlaicu Ionescu at a conference held by Atlantis Association, Paris, 1978.
After arriving in the United States, Vlaicu Ionescu dedicated himself to restoring his work on Nostradamian prophecies, which had been destroyed in 1958. The result was a monumental work on Nostradamian hermeneutics, published in 1976 under the title Le Message de Nostradamus sur l’Ère Prolétaire.[10] The book described his radically new method of decrypting the Nostradamian texts and included the prediction of the collapse of the Soviet Communist Empire in June 1991, a daring prediction when much of the West had accepted the existence of the Soviet empire as an unchangeable reality. Also included were numerous new deciphered predictions on political events, but also on subjects such as alchemy, atomic energy, planetary, space and other scientific discoveries. The fulfillment of the predictions made by deciphering the prophecies of Nostradamus, as well as the works published later, in France, Italy, Japan and Romania, established Vlaicu Ionescu as the most inspired interpreter of the prophet of Salon-de-Provence. As Raymond Abellio comments: “Vlaicu Ionescu is the privileged decryptor of the Sage of Salon and in a sense his spiritual son, his predestined heir, in his turn inspired.”[11]
Vlaicu Ionescu approaches Nostradamus and the task of deciphering his predictions in the context of Christian Orthodoxy and the Traditional Thought. In this view, the “essence of prophecy is not the prediction, but the gradual unveiling of God’s plan for the world … to recall the existence of a transcendent sense of history in the midst of historical events that are at first sight chaotic and meaningless.”[12] Such knowledge is revealed, it is accessible to those humans willing of spiritual ascension, but it is passed to the rest of humanity under the veils of the great myths and sacred texts, which are in general constructed on several levels of significance. The study of this ancient system of occultation is the essential foundation and pre-condition to approach the Nostradamian texts. Vlaicu Ionescu’s successful, new, and radical method is based on the study of the ancient systems of occultation and symbolism proper to the Traditional Thought. From this perspective he had attempted to elucidate the theoretical framework to understand the Nostradamian phenomenon and its meaning, especially for the period he called the “Proletarian Era.” And this is also how he came to the discovery of the Nostradamian alchemical texts hidden among the prophetic texts.
In parallel with the Nostradamian exegesis work and with the same traditional spirit, Vlaicu Ionescu continued his artistic evolution as a painter and teacher of the philosophy of Art. Doina Uricariu, in her book Vlaicu Ionescu - The Artist / Pictorul,[13] gives a magnificent account of Vlaicu Ionescu’s pictorial work which is both modern and complex, while remaining faithful to its traditional metaphysical foundations. The book presents (in a bilingual English-Romanian edition) the complete plastic oeuvre of Vlaicu Ionescu, hundreds of paintings and drawings, showing the splendor and precision of polichromy that overflows from his landscapes, portraits, still-lifes, and symbolic compositions, metaphysical and abstract. It chronicles the historic context that formed a dissident artist who refused to make ideological and political concessions or to abandon the esthetic imperatives that defined his oeuvre as a painter.
A multifaceted artist, a true “Renaissance man” who studied philosophy, religion, esoterism, Latin, Greek, mathematics, architecture, music, and the arts, Vlaicu Ionescu taught courses in Philosophy of Art, wrote books, conference papers, and articles on art. Over the course of his life, Vlaicu Ionescu exhibited extensively in the United States, Germany, Romania, Italy, and France. He also received several international awards, such as the Award of the “Leonardo da Vinci” Academy in Rome and the Award of the Académie Internationale de Lutèce, International Contest, Paris, France. His paintings have enriched numerous galleries, personal collections, and museums.
Affiliations: Vlaicu Ionescu was a member of the "New York Academy of Sciences", honorary member of the association and magazine "Atlantis" of traditional studies in Paris, and member of the Writers' Union of Romania.
Vlaicu and Lidia Ionescu with the Director of the Romanian Library at the Romanian Cultural Institute, during the cocktail after the opening of the retrospective exhibit, 1997, New York.
Promoter of Romanian art and culture: Vlaicu and Lidia Ionescu were strong promoters of the Romanian Art, Literature and Music. They sponsored many Romanian artists to visit, perform, or exhibit in New York, such as pan flutist Gheorghe Zamfir and icon painter Gheorghe Raducanu. They were major founders and benefactors of St. Mary's Romanian Orthodox Church in Queens.
Notes:
[1] Traditional Thought is understood in the sense defined by (but not restricted to) remarkable thinkers such as René Guénon, Julius Evola, Frithjof Schuon, René Alleau, Raymond Abellio, and Gilbert Durand. Their main task was to demonstrate the common metaphysical basis of all religions, the timeless wisdom that lies at the heart of diverse religions and behind their manifold forms, which is the same everywhere, regardless of the different shapes it takes in order to be fit for every race and every historical period. But they were also dedicated to the preservation and illumination of the divinely-appointed forms which give each religious heritage its raison d’être, providing its formal integrity and ensuring its spiritual efficacy.
[2] Ion Țuculescu, Romanian expressionist and abstract oil painter, was one of the important post-World War II European modern artists.
[3] Vlaicu Ionescu had a library of extraordinary wealth, partly inherited from his father and then having the chance to acquire the best works of Constantin Nicolau’s library of traditional sciences, of over 8000 books. In addition to important books in the fields of philosophy, religion, psychology, or mathematics, it included rare editions of alchemical, astrological and kabbalistic subjects, first editions of great French occultists, old prints of some works of Nostradamus, and famous interpreters of Nostradamus, of which the first place was that of Anatole Le Pelletier.
[4] Rudolf Joseph Steiner was a philosopher, educationist, and a social reformer from Austria. He was the founder of anthroposophy, a spiritual movement which claimed the existence of a spiritual world which can be reached through the highest level of knowledge. He was deeply influenced by the works of Goethe and worked greatly towards relating science with spiritualism.
[5] Hesychasm is a mystical tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church in which practitioners seek divine quietness (Greek hēsychia) through the contemplation of God in uninterrupted prayer. Its roots extend back to the beginning of Christianity and it was described in the writings of the fourth century Desert Fathers and later, in greater detail, in the Philokalia.
[6] Vlaicu married Lidia Pecuraru (11 June 1923-6 November 2008) in 1944. She studied and had degrees in Philosophy (1948, University of Bucharest, Department of Philosophy and Letters) and Theater Directing (1958, Institute of Theatrical and Cinematographic Art in Bucharest). She worked as artistic director at the Romanian Radio-Television and professor of acting and dramatic art at the Institute of Theatrical and Cinematographic Art in Bucharest.
[7] Vlaicu Ionescu, Notes autobiographiques, Oct. 20, 1994, New York.
[8] The term Old Master is used to identify an eminent European artist from the approximate period 1300 to 1800 and includes artists from the Early Renaissance through to the Romantic movement.
[9] Doina Uricariu, Vlaicu Ionescu - The Artist / Pictorul, 2012, Universalia Publishers, pg. 117.
[10] Vlaicu Ionescu, Le Message de Nostradamus sur l'Ère Prolétaire (The Message of Nostradamus on the Proletarian Era), 1976, Dervy-Livres, Paris, France
[11] Raymond Abellio in Préface to Vlaicu Ionescu’s Nostradamus, L’histoire Secrète du Monde, (Nostradamus - The Secret History of the World),1986, Éditions du Félin, Paris, France, p. 15.
[12] Jean Phaure, Cycle de l’Humanite Adamique, 1973, Devry-Livres, Paris, France
[13] Doina Uricariu, Vlaicu Ionescu - The Artist / Pictorul, 2012, Universalia Publishers. World-renowned writer, Doina Uricariu is an important figure in contemporary Romanian literature: a poet, critic, writer, historian of art and literature, and winner of several national and international literature and poetry awards. Her volumes have been translated into numerous foreign languages. Dr. Uricariu received many international awards for editorial activity. She is a Knight of the Romanian Crown, and a Knight of the Romanian Order “Faithful Service” for creative activity and culture. She lives in New York.
Did Nostradamus know the Transaturnian Planets?
Vlaicu Ionescu said: YES. “In an essential paper ("Nostradamus et les planètes trans-saturniennes", in Atlantis 325, 1983, p.205-241), Ionescu puts forward the idea that Nostradamus refers to the discovery of 3 transaturnian planets in the quatrains VIII 69, IV 33 and I 84 of Centuries.”
Charles Ridoux remembers Vlaicu Ionescu in Journal of Traditional Cyclology:
VLAICU IONESCU - May 22, 2016.
After an introductory issue of traditional cyclology, the Journal of Traditional Cyclology (JTC) undertakes the publication of three issues forming a set of three Tradition witnesses in the form of three thematic issues in the following order: Vlaicu Ionescu, Raoul Auclair, Jean Phaure. Afterward, I plan to publish non-thematic issues, composed by the presentation of texts by these three authors, accompanied with my comments.
In the number 325 of the issue of review Atlantis, published in 1983, an article by Vlaicu Ionescu on the trans-Saturnian planets, with the interpretation of three quatrains of the Centuries linked to the discovery chart of each of the three planets: Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and Pluto in 1930. It was at the beginning of the spring of 1988 when I think of having read this article, which made me a great impression, changing completely the unfamiliar idea that I was then of the "Mage of Salon." I went to find the director of the magazine Atlantis, Jacques d'Ares, and from this meeting there followed a more personal approach which resulted in a lasting attachment to orthodoxy. The reading which I made afterward of Raoul Auclair's work dedicated to Nostradamus confirmed me in the admiration and great reverence I felt for the prophetic work of Nostradamus, in spite of certain Guenonian reservations on the chart of the Great Monarch. During the 1990s, I had the pleasure of meeting Vlaicu Ionescu and his wife Lidia during one of their passages in Paris, together with some friends of the Pilgrim of Paris.
THREE WITNESSES OF THE TRADITION : JEAN PHAURE, RAOUL AUCLAIR, VLAICU IONESCU - 2003.
A year ago, on October 13, 2002, Jean Phaure left us to be born in heaven. October 13 is the anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, which hold a prominent place in the eschatological conceptions developed in the work of Raoul Auclair. And Henri Bodard, in a brief note on Jean Phaure published in the magazine Atlantis, brings this departure closer to that of Vlaicu Ionescu, to which Jean Phaure had just paid a last homage published in this same issue of Atlantis. For me, since my meeting with Jean Phaure in November 1986 at the colloquium organized by Louis Pauwels in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of René Guénon, these three authors - Jean Phaure, Raoul Auclair and Vlaicu Ionescu - have always been intimately associated in my readings as three witnesses of Tradition particularly attached during the second half of the twentieth century to highlight the eschatological dimension of our time. Thus my homage to Jean Phaure will take the form of a triple evocation of the crossed destinies of these three inspired exegetes who have each, in their own way, attracted the attention of their readers - decades before the event - on the importance of the year 1989 and the fall of communism in Russia : Jean Phaure by examining the planetary cycles and the great planetary concentrations to which the astrologers give the name of "doriphories", Vlaicu Ionescu being the interpreter of Nostradamus's extraordinary prophetic vision of the "Proletarian Era", which encompasses the entire period between the beginning of the French Revolution and the end of communism in Russia, Raoul Auclair examining in the light of the Sacred Numbers the developments of the prophecy of Daniel throughout a cycle of 2520 years that ended in 1917 as well as the 72 years that go from 1917 to 1989.