Shadow plays. Projections. Unstable, intangible forms. Faded colors on opaque surfaces. Light – the sun, the flame of a candle, the stars – filtered through holes or thin pieces of paper. This is the lantern of fear, a device with ancestral origin that however not remain static. Such apparatus evolved, gained a more appropriate name (magic lantern, an apparatus for delightful and wonder) acquired new features and possibilities with lenses and mirrors that allow even fusion of multiple extremely sharp images. The brazier and electric power became the light sources, while the very spectacle of magic lantern projections acquired over time a transcendental, metaphysical meaning. Emmanuel Swedenborg, after the vision he had in a London restaurant, has developed a new theology in which the universe would be a show of projections, the repertoire of images corresponding to the soul of every living being as the light would be the divine influx. The shadow and the light coming from the same source, their conflict only an aspect of the reality. Thus we have Lanterns of the Old Night, an entertainment for the blackest and ancestral nights, suitable for ladies, gentlemen and children, presented ghostly fragments possible and invented memories. The protagonists of this evening performance are presented one at a time: a revolutionary astronomer, a suicidal writer, a missionary photographer, an author ravaged by dementia, a demiurge of cinema. As in dreams, these protagonists are before multiform antagonists and endless, impossible possibilities, so changeable as unpredictable. The existence of each of these imaginary and real and potential persons projected in pale images that have their own power while alive and animated by unsteady blowing of a light source. Table of Contents: Divine Buildings Lunar Empire Some Dead Rats The Age of Ice and Gold and Mud The Devil, Almost The Extinction Hymnbook More information at: exoccidente@gmail.com