Gustavo Rol
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Gustavo Adolfo Rol (20 June 1903-22 September 1994) was an Italian thinker and teacher with a great interest in parapsychology and other extraordinary phenomena. His devotees consider him to have been a great spiritual master and have testified to various miraculous feats he supposedly accomplished.
Rol was born in Turin, Italy, and studied law at the University of Turin. He also studied in London and Paris and began a banking career that took him to other major European cities. While in Marseille during 1925-1926, he encountered a personage who showed him some card tricks, triggering an interest in magical and paranormal phenomena. He pursued deeper spiritual studies and had an experience in Paris of which he wrote in his diary: "I discovered a terrible law that links the color green, the musical fifth, and heat. I have lost my will to live. I am frightened by power. I shall write no more!" As a result of this crisis, he briefly retreated to a convent.
Upon returning to Italy, in the 1930s he became known in aristocratic and political circles. Rol engaged in various demonstrations of his supposed mystical powers, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and other psychic or magical feats. He also became a friend of film director Federico Fellini. Toward the later part of his life, and after his death, Rol was a focal point of debate in Italy between skeptics and advocates of parapsychology.
