For those interesting in seeing more,
this is the place of a strange revelation for some
and of fascination for others.
The room is filled with mystery.
The darkness is friendly, and, according to Caragiale,
"in each corner the matter speaks".
You feel like you're travelling back in time for more than 100 years,
when it was built.
Once inside, you leave the earthly world
and go to a very special place.
You feel the silence, the friendly mystery.
You explore a special place and that doesn't scare you.
Quite the opposite. You feel the time stood still
and a lucid craziness surrounds you.
You live the friendship between life and death
and you realize you explore an unfamiliar ground,
but that doesn't intrigue you.
You don't see anybody, but you're not alone.
There's something there.
After my daughter's death,
I should've shot myself or go insane.
But how could I've gone insane,
when I was reading her works night and day,
where an angel talked about faith and death?
Could I've gone insane, when her body lied in a grave,
but her spirit more alive than ever was lingering inside me?
One day, Iulia Hasdeu, the daughter, answers him,
as we can read in the prologue of "Sic Cogito",
the first Romanian book on spiritism
written by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu.
Six months had passed since my daughter died.
I was alone in the room, next to my desk.
In front of me, as always, I had a stack of papers and some pencils.
I don't know how, but my hand grabbed a pencil.
On my left temple I felt short hits,
like some telegraph machine was inside.
Suddenly, my hand started moving.
That lasted five seconds at the most.
When the arm rested and the fingers lost the pencil,
I felt as awaken from a sleep,
although I'm sure I didn't fall asleep.
I looked on the paper and read clearly:
"I'm happy, I love you. We'll see each other again."
"That should be enough for you."
It was written in my daughter's hand writing and signed by her.
Hasdeu didn't called the spirit. The spirit called Hasdeu.
In the archives, in Bucharest,
where Hasdeu was the manager for 20 years,
he received the first message from Iulia.
From that day on, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu followed a single road.
Practicing and converting to spiritism.
The pain is the element that convinced Hasdeu
to talk to the spirits.
And the hope...
The hope that he'll meet his daughter again after death.
Hasdeu didn't have a choice.
He didn't have a choice.
From now on, he'll only live to meet Iulia's spirit.
Born on November 14th, 1869,
the genius child read at two and a half years old.
At eight, in 1877, she spoke three languages,
French, German and English.
She takes all the exams and passes the first four years
at the National College St. Sava.
She also takes exams at the conservatory
for canto, solfeggio and musical theory.
Together with her mother,
the two Iulias go to Paris to continue her studies.
At 16, the exceptional child takes her degree in Letters
and enrolls at Sorbona, to study Letters and Philosophy.
At 20 years old she would've been their first woman doctor in Letters
if tuberculosis wouldn't have ended her life.
She dies on September 29th, 1888.
In her memory, Hasdeu builds the Campina castle.
Hasdeu considered he was guided by spirits.
And he claimed that when he built the two temples,
the family's mausoleum, in the Bellu cemetery,
and the Iulia Hasdeu castle in Campina.
He ensured the visitors
that the plans for the tomb and the castle
were inspired by Iulia's soul,
which whom he communicated.
"A poem grave", an article published in "Revista noua" by Ionescu John,
a great historian of the time and a former student of Hasdeu,
still is the best description of that architectural jewel,
as Hasdeu himself called it.
His study can be considered more than a description of the grave.
Before the entrance, dominating everything,
is a particularly shaped bookshelf, resting on two columns
adorned with ivy leaves, symbolizing the confusions of the world.
Everything is carved of a single stone,
three meters tall. It's a monolith from Albesti.
On the frontispiece is written in gold, "Stay a while".
Listen to him, come closer.
In the bookshelf, on the colored books
you can read the names of works that are the pride of Romanians,
proof that we have the godly spark in us.
Inside the throne, a bronze clock, stuck in granite,
stopped at 1:30, when Iulia's life ended.
Above it, two sphinxes made out of Campulung stone.
Resting of those symbols of the enigma, a globe.
Sit on the throne, tired of this life,
and lift your eyes.
Why do you lower them so hastily? I know.
There's a skull made of white marble in the upper part of the throne,
with his mouth wide open.
Lift your eyes towards the skull and read the brilliant inscription:
"Let the swallow build her nest."
Meditate, you visitor. Rest in the silence of the grave.
Relax, death is above your head.
Now come down in the tomb, my friend,
following the ten marble steps.
Will get down where the spirit rises on wings of faith.
You're not in the grave, you're in a temple
made solely out Carara marble.
It's one of those serene temples of wisdom,
as seen by the great spirits of the old times.
On the wall on the left, dug in marbled,
gilded under an eight corner star, on a blue background,
there's a spiritism creed.
The religious law. Believe in God, in the everlasting soul,
in the gift of talking to the dead.
The moral law. Love and help.
Love and help the nation, those that love and help you,
love and help without thinking of your own benefit.
On the right wall.
The social law. Don't dishonor.
Don't dishonor yourself, so that others would honor you.
Don't dishonor others, so that you would honor yourself.
Don't dishonor work, for work is life.
The philosophical law. When? Then.
When you know the facts, you write the truth.
When you don't want to believe, you don't want to see.
When you're looking for proof, you find denial.
The scary big genius, according to Mircea Eliade,
start building a castle in Campina, in 1893.
It's a copy of the druidic castles in Wales.
In a note kept in the archive in Campina,
the scientist wrote: "This castle was raised in 1894–1896,"
"with the plans of the spirit of Iulia Hasdeu,"
"through the medium Hasdeu,"
"with the help of the architect Toma Dobrescu"
"and it was build by Nicolae Angelescu."
Hasdeu wanted to make a church.
It's a museum, a temple and a church.
But mostly a church, a place for praying, for pain relief.
Iulia is the architect, the builder...
She's everything here.
Something strange happens.
It's the first time in the history of the spiritism in Europe
and all over the world when a spirit gives the orders
so that a dream from the nonmaterial world
comes to life in the material world.
The castle is made up of three towers.
The tower is the connection between earth and heaven.
It's build in three spaces. The underworld, the hell,
our earthly world, the purgatory,
and the sacred world, the paradise.
The central tower is the place that gathers
all the symbols of a dungeon.
The tallest tower in a temple or a church.
There's a symbolism of the center in the concentric circles
from where the great cross or the great cup starts.
Above it is the statue of Jesus Christ.
And the steps are the opening of the cup.
That's a symbol of uplifting, of raising.
The steps can only lead to the heavens.
Talking about uplifting, we're talking about heaven.
So above the stairs we need the heavenly symbol.
And back in Hasdeu's times there was a sky painted in the dome.
In the middle of the sky was the all seeing eye,
and the iris suggested the opening,
the place where the soul,
after travelling in other states, after the physical death
breaches the sky and gets out through that small opening,
to merge with the great absolute.
There are elements from every big religion.
But these elements gravitate towards the Christian core.
The Christian element is never lost.
Hasdeu wasn't a pagan, an atheist or a wizard.
He was a father and he loved his daughter dearly.
Of course, this is a Christian esoteric.
Let's define the esoteric.
It's related to the less obvious part of the dogma.
The dogma is the surface.
The first room in which the tourists enter is the welcoming parlor
of Mrs. Iulia Hasdeu.
The second room is the living room.
Here, the guests can see the faces of the family.
The grandfather, Mr. and Mrs. Hasdeu,
the scientist's parents, his brother, Nicolae.
And of course, the child genius, Iulia.
Also there is the clock.
It's a century and a half old and it belonged to the scientist's father,
Alexandru Hasdeu,
honorary member of the Romanian Academy,
founder of the Romanian Academy.
The most important part of this castle, of this temple,
of this church,
is the sacred mountain.
The actual temple,
with the depiction of Jesus Christ raising to heaven.
The fourth room is the study.
The hell.
A room painted red all over.
After his daughter's death, work became a torment for Hasdeu.
That's why he placed his office in hell.
There are two more rooms. Iulia's room,
also known as the green room,
because green symbolizes Earth.
It used to be a bedroom,
but it was turned into a room dedicated to Iulia.
Iulia never lived here, the castle was built after her death.
But there are things that belonged to her there.
The desk, the letter drawer, Iulia's doll,
with porcelain hands and head and glass eyes.
Her diary, her math notebook,
and her works.
Her books, her poems. "April bloom", "Cavalry",
"Theatre, legends and stories".
The last room, equally important,
is the spiritism room.
Here, Hasdeu used to comfort himself.
He talked here not only to the spirit of his daughter,
but also with the spirit of Nicolae, his brother,
and Alexandru, his father.
And even with his wife, Iulia, after she passed away.
The seances took place in the dark.
Usually there were 2 or 3 guests. The room is pretty small.
The spirit was invoked, took hold of a medium
and the medium wrote the message on a special manuscript.
A special page, with a message from the spirit.
The orifice in the room is not an accident.
The seances took place in the dark.
That's the only place that allowed the light to enter.
That's its purpose, to allow the light in.
Breaking up with the normality, Hasdeu lives his lucid madness
in his own universe, guided by Iulia.
The symbolism in the Campina castle reminds us of masonery.
There's a triangle with the all seeing eye.
There are chairs with the three points
used in the masonic writings.
But the masonry in the 19th century was a spiritual one
that preached a Christian esoteric.
It's possible that B.P. Hasdeu, like the great names of that age,
could've been a mason.
But the symbols in Campina and here, at the grave,
have nothing to do with the masonry, but with the illuminist vision
that connects the Egyptian tradition
with Judaism and Christianity.
It's the common denominator.
Hasdeu is a prisoner of a shadow turned into a cult.
This cult was accepted publicly with sympathy,
but also with skepticism and rightly so.
The spiritism movement starts with the left foot in Romania,
subject to the irony and jokes of certain intellectuals.
Was Hasdeu disputed because he practiced spiritism?
Without a doubt. There were some who didn't like that.
But the spiritism was something new,
a neoevangelistic current, according to Hasdeu and not only him.
Many scientist were interested in it
and studied it.
Hasdeu wanted to enlarge the knowledge,
that's why he tested it. He had spiritual experiences.
It's amazing that spiritual or ezoteric movements
are synchronic, they take place almost at the same time
all over the world.
That proves that we re–live the same story in each generation.
The same story can be said about Iulia.
In one seance, in 1892, he tells Hasdeu,
"My dear father, you did what you had to do."
"Don't let the ailments torment you."
"Everything is evanescent."
"Only me... I'm not evanescent. I've been too many times."
"Nine times."
Nine times a virgin in nine lives,
Iulia was Agnotica, Hipatia, Siria, Beatrice Portinari,
Juana Varanez, Elisabeta Tudor and Charlotte Corday.
The fact that she died young and virgin in her other lives
justifies that we can remember. If we look inside,
in our invisible area, we can discover the origin of the world.
And then we're not a small stake, we're a big one.
Fear but mostly the attraction between here and beyond
was always present.
But how can it be possible?
Indeed, this place has a special aura,
a special place.
There are many myths regarding the Jesus statue.
The Communists tried to take it down.
The legend says the soldier that tried to do that died instantly.
Somebody else put a hat on His head.
A few days later he fell in the acid tank,
at the Steaua Romana factory, in Campina.
The German soldiers had stables here, in World War I.
They put horses in the castle.
But they didn't dare touch the statue.
As long as Jesus is here, the castle won't fall.
Another legend says that at night you could hear Iulia's piano
and also cheers and applause.
In the morning, she was seen exiting the castle in a white dress.
The title of my book is "Sic Cogito". That's the way I think.
In the March 22nd seance, the medium Sperantia
wrote automatically, in a catalectic state,
a long communication in which my daughter talks
about my study of spiritism.
Their tone must be imposing and confident.
A sort of "sic cogito".
If you can believe it, so much the better for you.
If not, so much the worse.