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Gustavo Adolfo Rol (1903-1994)
He was the stuff of legends.
"He is in Turin but people take pictures
of him in New York"
(newspaper headline, '70s).
He was able to pass through closed doors
and walls.
He could read any book in any library without taking it phisically
off
the shelf.
He was able to "create watercolour pictures out of thin
air".
He knew things about Napoleon that only Bonaparte himself could
know.
He could read minds.
He always discouraged any interest in the
occult and the supernatural.
He always laughed at the opinion his believers
held about him ("They
think I'm a wizard!!")
He always assumed a rather uncompromising Christian
stance on matters
of faith.
Was Gustavo Adolfo Rol a man posessed of dangerous and ill-received supernatural powers (as the hardcore believers think)?
A great thinker mistakenly considered a "phenomenon" (the image he most probably tried to promote)?
Or a clever exploiter of popular credulity, working stage magics and speaking in riddles just for kicks (as the skeptics see it)?
Opinions on the subject are varied and cover the whole spectrum.
In general, the compiler of data faces a character that can be all and its countrary, depending on the opinions of various commentators. The only viable course is to put together the clearest and straightest set of data available.
Born and raised in Turin, G.A. Rol was certainly a man of wide
an varied
culture.
His often outspoken philosophical world-view was mainly derived
(as he admitted freely) from thinkers such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Kierkgaard
and Croce, with religious elements variably distributed in the whole.
And
many of Rol's "revelations" are to the cinic either idle observations, firmly
grounded in common sense, or phrases of difficult interpretations, that can
be seen as "higher truths" as long as you are running on faith. He was also
used to recycle other people's catchphrases, such as "God does not play
dice".
Coming from a well to do family - his father was a banker, he lived in
a luxury flat whose furniture alone was worth a fortune, and he collected
Napoleonic memorabilia - Rol never asked his followers for money, a fact
this that at least places him a little bit higher than Cagliostro, the famous
adventurer to which he was often compared.
According to many, he was
probably much more interested in building some kind of cult of his personality
than to increase his material riches.
Courted by jet-setters - from which he normally took his distance - he was consulted on delicate matters by such diverse characters as Benito Mussolini (that saw him privately during his various Turin visits) and movie director Federico Fellini.
He was particularly harsh with journalists, that he called "lie-mongers, rare expression of a class living on a presumption of knowledge, without moving a muscle to increase their meager learning".
He was otherwise extremely nice to the cathegory.
On their part, his critics normally accused him of taking advantage of "a presumption of knowledge".
The fact that never, in his whole, uncanny carreer, Rol's supposed powers were precisely described (with possibly one exception, in 1978, by skeptic journalist and writer, Piero Angela) or classified does not help an objective study; terms like "incorporeità" (disembodied state) o "trasmutazione della materia" (transmutation of matter) are often used by believers.
Even if he was referred to, in print, as "the most famous psichic in the world", Tutrin-based Gustavo Adolfo Rol was not particularly famous outside of Italy, and was described by his critics "a contemporary Cagliostro", that somehow "was able to convince a lot of people of the fact that he had supernatural powers by simply executing some easy parlour games".
It's a fact that never a stage magician was admitted in his presence or to observe his powers in action, but from descriptions, many experts (including well known debunker Randi, and Italian star magician Silvan, that often tried to meet him face to face) recognized many of the supposedly mistical events as classical sleight of hand numbers; Rol seemed to be really fond of a card trick known as "Out of the World", invented by manipulator Paul Curry.
In the game, a member of the audience is invited to arbitrarily divide a shuffled deck in two, working with cards covered (face down); once turned face up, the two packs are made entirely of red cards one and black cards the other. But Rol himself, on the other hand, always admitted that his were only tricks, as that was what the people wanted from him.
Other often-quoted tricks include a "flash reading" of closed books chosen by another person and the materialization of pictures on subjects "taken from a bystander's mind", both tricks being rather impressive but also easily explained by sleight of hand.
Rol's attitude towards skeptics, his strict refusal to accept a serious study of his actions (a refusal that extended to the recording of his experiments on film), are used by both factions to fuel their arguments; the skeptic see in this the clearest proof of the fact that it was all a scam, while believers are wont to interpret this as a form of superiority towards everyday frames of mind.
Also, his constant dicouraging of any interest in the supernatural was taken by skeptica as a subtle form of self promotion; certainly, many still see this attitude as the sure proof that he knew "something" and that something was neither pleasant nor safe.
