Works of Art.... Songye "Kifwebe" Mask

 African masks will not make you invisible. 

They neither hide, nor diguise, nor mask. 

The gods that founded our earthly life in Africa send masks 

to transmit energy to their children...

from Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano

The Songye tribe is located in the southeastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The most well known and highly sought after mask of the Songye tribe is known as the "Kifwebe" mask. These masks are typically associated with abstract shapes as well as beautiful textured lines and linear scarification. The lines are usually painted with alternating black and white stripes, which give an almost hallucinating effect. Kifwebe masks can be male or female, with crested comb structures identifying male masks, the higher the crest, the more powerful the mask as well as the greater the spiritual power of the dancer. 

more here >

Rosaleen Norton... poem excerpt

Light's Black Majesty : Midnight Sun: Lord of the wild and

living stars:

Soul of Magic and master of Death;

Panther of Night... enfold me.

Take me, dark Shining One; mingle my being with you,

Prowl in my spirit with deep purrring joy

Live in me, giver of terror and ecstasy

Touch me with tongues of black fire.

Fed with the fire at the Black Opal's centre,

I drink living silver in moon-quickened streets,

And star-voices ringing:

All Strangeness is with me

Towering, invisible, changing the Earth

Hatred and heavens are blending within me: They beat in the

pulse of the stars,

For a god in my heart cries with primitive splendour

....

And I hear, through the seething of luminous silence-

Secretive, vibrant, the sound of the Solitude-

Calling of others like me.

Quietly they come, flitting softly a secrets; light-footed,

velvety, swift...

With eyes gleaming green, lambent flame of the Opal.

Kindred... we signal our quick recognition.

I am I ... but I know we are we

Panther of silence; god of Night; Lord of the wild inhuman

stars:

You are my own; teeming soul of solitude.

Here is no lonelines, secret Master-

You, Dark Spirit are with me.

RN

accompanying piece for "Black Magick" below

previous Rosaleen Norton post

Auguste Brouet... erotica

Ex libris...Josef Uhl 1918

click image to enlarge

Ex libris... Horst‎ Schulze

click to enlarge

Edward Estlin Cummings...poem & drawings...

i like my body when it is with your

 

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

previous posts EE CUMMINGS

Eilish McCarrick... paintings

Conjoined 7 (2008)

Conjoined 1 (2007)

from her series Conjoined, you can see more at her page E McCarrick

My works... monogram

Lucas van Leyden... Ornamental engraving ...1528

Hans Erni... Satyr...1958

For Benjamin PERET...

Max Ernst - illustration for La Breis Galante 1949 by Benjamin Peret

 TOM TOM 1 for Benjamin Peret

even the river of earth blood

even the blood of the ruptured sun

even the blood of a hundred nails of sun

even the blood of the suicide fire beasts

even the blood of ashes blood of salt blood

of bloods of love

even the flaming blood of the fire bird

herons and falcons

rise and burn

AIME CESAIRE

Edmond Jabès ... poem...

From "Groundless,"

by Edmond Jabès (b. Cairo, 1912–d. Paris, 1991)

Translated by Keith Waldrop

I

No-man's-land, obsessed page

A dwelling-place is a long insomnia

in the hooded trails of a mine.

My days are days of roots,

love's yoke extolled.

The sky is always to cross and

foreground to be bed with new nights.

I form, in my weeds,

a wedge in the wall's opaque brightness.

The earth is steeped in

empty dreams of travel.

VI

Land beyond night, which the sun wrenches from

meditation, from the thorns of doubt.

Flowers parade their artful candor. The stems

emulate grand adventures in space.

Honey flows between stones

which this cement will join.

VII

Around the branches, the world mimes its hunger.

So many cries for a tree, fragrant god to

plant, to bend by a magic round. . .

My secrets are orchards.

There is no trick to the mystery.

* with thanks to Ruairi

Unica Zürn... drawing...

she opens out, forming a shining star 
made of countless new arms and legs 

and necks and heads, 

she becomes a beautiful, flower-like monstrosity....  

from the Man of Jasmine -Unica Zürn

*with  thanks to Wladd Muta

my works...Frida

what Frida gave me ...

Edvard Munch...drawing... c1908/9

previous MUNCH

Andre Domin ...illustration for "Litanies de la Rose"...1919

"Litanies de la Rose"
Remy de Gourmont (Author)
Paris: Editions Rene Kieffer, 1919

Rose with dark eyes,
mirror of your nothingness,
rose with dark eyes,
make us believe in the mystery,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.

Rose the colour of pure gold,
oh safe deposit of the ideal,
rose the colour of pure gold,
give us the key of your womb,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.

Rose the colour of silver,
censer of our dreams,
rose the colour of silver,
take our heart and turn it into smoke,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.

Remy de Gourmont

William Sharp, a.k.a. 'Fiona Macleod' & John Duncan...The Celtic Twilight

                                                         ETAIN

[Dreamily

I have heard. . . . I have dreamed. . . .I,
too, have heard,
Have sung . . . that song: O lordly ones that
dwell
In secret places in the hollow hills,
Who have put moonlit dreams into my mind
And filled my noons with visions, from afar
I hear sweet dewfall voices, and the clink,
The delicate silvery spring and clink
Of faery lances underneath the moon.

from the immortal hour by Fiona Macleod

an enjoyable paper on Sharp and Duncan and the Celtic Twilight

Lynd Ward... Mad Man's Drum.. Part 1

a few scans from one of my favourite artists, and one of the finest wood engravers of the twentieth century .. 

Lynd Ward

 Mad Man Drum ~ A Novel in Woodcuts

Cadavre Exquis... Affections...

S Dali, Gala, A Breton, V Hugo

Apuleius' ... "Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass"... illustrations and translations...

'

'Lend me your ear, reader: you shall enjoy yourself'

 The Golden Ass 

Illustrations and translations of the Latin novel the

Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius

Isis Revealed

illustrated by Percival Goodman. New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1932.

‘Looking up I saw the full orb of the Moon shining with peculiar lustre and that very moment emerging from the waves of the sea. Then the thought came to me that this was the hour of silence and loneliness when my prayers might avail. For I knew that the Moon was the primal Goddess of supreme sway; that all human beings are vitalised by the divine influence of her light; that all the bodies which are on earth, or in the heavens, or in the sea, increase when she waxes, and decline when she wanes. Considering this, therefore, and feeling that Fate was now satiated with my endless miseries and at last licensed a hope of salvation, I determined to implore the august image of the risen Goddess.
  So, shaking off my tiredness, I scrambled to my feet and walked straight into the sea into order to purify myself. I immersed my head seven times because (according to the divine Pythagoras) that number is specially suited for all ritual-acts; and then, speaking with lively joy, I lifted my tear-wet face in supplication to the irresistible Goddess: ....

translated by Jack Lindsay

illustrated by Percival Goodman. New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1932.



“Queen of Heaven, whether you are fostering Ceres the motherly nurse of all growth, who (gladdened at the discovery of your lost daughter) abolished brutish nutriment of the primitive acorn and pointed the way to gentler food (as is yet shown in the tilling of the fields of Eleusis); or whether you are celestial Venus who in the first moment of Creation min

gled the opposing sexes in the generation of mutual desires, and who (after sowing in humanity the seeds of indestructible continuing life) are now worshipped in the wave-washed shrine of Paphos; or whether you are the sister of Phoebus, who by relieving the pangs of childbirth travail with soothing remedies have brought safe into the world lives innumerable, and who are now venerated in the thronged sanctuary of Ephesus; or whether you are Proserpine, terrible with the howls of midnight, whose triple face has power to ward off the assaults of ghosts and to close the cracks in the earth, and who wander through many a grove, propitiated in divers manners, illuminating the walls of all cities with beams of female light, nurturing the glad seeds in the earth with your damp heat, and dispensing abroad your dim radiance when the sun has abandoned us—O by whatever name, and by whatever rite, and in whatever form, it is permitted to invoke you, come now and succour me in the hour of my calamity. Support my broken life, and give me rest and peace after the tribulations of my lot. Let there be an end to the toils that weary me, and an end to the snares that beset me. Remove from me the hateful shape of a beast, and restore me to the sight of those that love me. Restore me to Lucius, my lost self. But if an offended god pursues me implacably, then grant me death at least since life is denied me.”

Lucius restored to human shape by the Grace of Isis

illustrated by Jean de Bosschère.  London: John Lane - The Bodley Head, 1923.

Thus the divine shape breathing out the pleasant spice of fertill Arabia, disdained not with her divine voyce to utter these words unto me: Behold Lucius I am come, thy weeping and prayers hath mooved mee to succour thee. I am she that is the naturall mother of all things, mistresse and governesse of all the Elements, the initiall progeny of worlds, chiefe of powers divine, Queene of heaven, the principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the goddesses: at my will the planets of the ayre, the wholesome winds of the Seas, and the silences of hell be disposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and principally the æthiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the ægyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee, doe call mee Queene Isis…’

translated by William Adlington

Ex libris... E Aulitzky...Satyr

from exlibris artshop see previous blog for links

Ex libris... R Koch...Satyr

from a good collection of Ex-libris that you can purchase at the Exlibris Artshop

previous > EX-LIBRIS

previous > SATYR

Amodali... Babalon, a celebration of the mystical and erotic imagination ... Liber Incarnadine

The Liber Incarnadine project is an online, experimental installation, the conceptualization and visual design by Amodali, formerly of Sixth comm/Mother destruction, now a solo artist.

'Liber Incarnadine' is essentially a glorification of the human urge towards love, transcendance, and a resanctification of the erotic impulse within a 21st Century perspective. It explores ideas regarding the relationship between lover and beloved, ego and other aspects of being, and one's relation to the macrocosm. It creates an environment for concepts such as 'alchemical marriage' and pansexuality to flourish, and encourages a dynamic exploration of this. Within an infinite love letter, which pays tribute to the dizzying innovation of our erotic imagination and yearnings towards ecstatic consciousness.

"Still they mutter and rumble under my flesh burning with fiery tongues deep into my womb. All of your secret selves that you were not conscious of have written their story into my blood, the immortal, the ancient and primordial, the elemental, the electrophysical. Pristine and scientific 'snapshots' burst through into my consciousness randomly of 'energy profiles' frozen in time when you came in me, complex graphic flows charting the particular erotic topology of a moment, by examining these it's possible to evaluate the precise nature of the energy interchanges that took place, which of the subtle bodies were engaged, eye contact fixing the flux with particular intent..." (Contribution from Amodali to Liber Incarnadine)

L.I. seeks to be a sanctuary for all the most sublime, lascivious passions. Painful or ecstatic, profound or desolate musings; aiming to raise these to the heights of spiritual engagement. To create an open ended document, a testament to our sacred and holy urge towards union. Text submitted anonymously by online individuals will form a seamless stream, sections of the text will be sampled at random during live performances by Amodali and offered as prayers to our lady Babalon in the form of vocalizations/chant.

This is the first, experimental, magical liturgy from 'Incarnadine lodge' a gnostic, illuminist body dedicated to research and exploration of the 156 current, sex-magick and alchemy.

To contribute  > *Liber Incarnadine*

 

Please treat this space as a sanctuary for any disenfranchised aspect one's soul's yearning, erotic impulse, or any desire towards one's 'other' that has not found fulfillment, be this philosophical, spiritual or visceral. The text will be  seamlessly taken into the virtual grail to create an infinite love letter to our lady. Extracts of the text will be taken at random and incorporated into future Amodali performances, where they will be vocalized as chant. Permission for Amodali to sample text donated to L.I. is implicit in the submission. Copyright remains with the owner.

all text from Liber Incarnadine

Jeremias Drexel... Opera omnia....1662

click for larger image

Monica Guevara...erotica

pencil and ink drawing

previous post >MG

Paul Holman... poem... 3

3

 She had been earthed

( had i earthed

her by my intrusion? )

eyes no longer turned

upon phenomena I

could not locate.

She considered me a 

plunderer, a facund man,

a madman: one who

scries alphabets

of daggers, of arrows.

Zigzagged tights in a

knot in her pocket,

the tip of each

hair luminous a fox-

fire or rotten wood,

she opened the violet

gate at her throat

to release the fractal

silhouette of Pan.

Published in a wonderful collection of esoteric poetry and essays > Datura by Scarlet Imprint 

previous POEMS

 

PAUL HOLMAN is the author of The Fabulist (1991) and The Memory of the Drift (2000). He was co-editor of Invisible Books in the 1990s.

Eric Gill.... print

 

engraving from E.Powys Mathers : Procreant Hymn

One of the first Gill was to illustrate for the Golden Cockerel Press

André Masson .... print

etching from Georges Batailles “Sacrifices” (1936)

previous Masson

Harry Crosby... Sun Testament....

SUN-TESTAMENT
(For W.V.R.B.)

I, The Sun, Lord of the Sky, sojourning in the Land of Sky, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby make, publish and declare the following to be my Last Will and Testament, hereby revoking all other wills, codicils and testamentary dispositions by me at any time heretofore made.

First, I hereby direct and elect that my estate shall be administered and my will construed and regulated and the validity and effect of the testamentary dispositions herein contained determined by the laws of the Sky.

Second, I give and bequeath absolutely to my wife, the Moon, four octrillion centuries of sun-rays, this legacy to have priority over all other legacies and bequests and to be free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, successions, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate.

Third, I give and bequeathe the sum of one million centuries of sun-rays net free from any and all legacy, inheritance, transfer, succession, taxes or duties whatsoever, said taxes or duties to be borne by my estate, to my Executors, to be used for the erecting of an Obelisk to the Sun.

Fourth, I give and bequeathe to my beloved wife the Moon my assortment of sunstones, my sun-yacht that for many aeons has navigated the sea of clouds, together with my collection of butterflies which are the souls of women caught in my golden web and my collection of red arrows which are the souls of men caught in my golden web.

Fifth, I give and bequeathe to my sons and daughters the stars, my mirror the ocean and my caravan of mountains.

Sixth, I give and bequeathe to Aurora Goddess of the Dawn a sunrise trumpet and a girdle of clouds.

Seventh, I give and bequeathe to the planet Venus all my eruptive prominences whether in spikes or jets or sheafs and volutes in honor of her all-too-few transits.

Eighth, I give and bequeathe to Lady Vesuvius a sunbonnet, a palace of clouds and the heart she once hurled up to me.

Ninth, I give and bequeathe to the Sun-Goddess Rat the Lady of Heliopolis and a garden of sunflowers.

Tenth, I give and bequeathe to Icarus a sunshade and a word of introduction to the Moon.

Eleventh, I give and bequeathe to Horus (Egyptian Hor) the falcon-headed solar divinity a thousand sun-hawks from my aviary to be mummified in his honor.

Twelfth, I give and bequeathe to Amenophus IV of Egypt my golden gourd that his thirst for me may be assuaged.

Thirteenth, I give and bequeathe to Renofer, High Priest of the Sun, my shares in Electric Horizens and Corona Preferred.

Fourteenth, I give and bequeathe to Louis XIV of France, Le Roi Soleil, my gold peruke.

Fifteenth, I give and bequeathe to Arthur Rimbaud a red sunsail.

Sixteenth, I give and bequeathe to my charioteer Phaeton my chariot of the sun and my chariot-horses Erythous Acteon Lampos Philogeus.

Seventeenth, I give and bequeathe to each of the Virgins of the Sun in Peru, to each and every citizen of Heliopolis, to the Teotitmocars of Mexico who built the giant pyramid to the Sun, to each and every of the Incas, to the Hyperboreans dwellers in the land of perpetual sunshine and great fertility beyond the north wind, my halo, rainbows and mirages, to the Surya-bans and the Chandra-bans of India to each a sunthought and to my lowly subject the Earth ten centuries of sunrays.

Eighteenth, I give and bequeathe likewise to the Japanese Flag whose center is a Red Sun and to the flags of Persia (the Lion and the Sun) and to the flags of Uruguay and Argentine my fiery flames and furious commotion.

Nineteenth, I give and bequeathe to all the inns, cabarets, bars, taverns, bordels whose ensign is the Sun, pieces of brocaded sunlight.

Twentieth, I give and bequeathe sunbonnets to various high monuments in particular the Eiffel Tower, the Woolworth Building, and to an imaginary tower built by the combined height of the phalluses of men.

Twenty-First, I give and bequeathe to Apollo of Greece a temple of the sun to Osiris of Egypt a temple of the sun to Indra of India a temple of the Sun this legacy is over and above any and all commissions to which they may be entitled as executors.

Twenty-Second, All the rest residue and remainder of my estate of whatsoever kind and nature, wheresoever situated, not specifically given or bequeathed hereinabove, including any and all void or lapsed legacies or bequests, I give, devise and bequeathe to Mithra of the Persians and to Surya of the Hindus, or to the survivor with the request that they establish therewith a fund for Sun-Birds (i.i. poets) to be organized and administered by them in their sole discretion and judgement, this fund to be known as the Sun and Moon Fund for Sun-Birds.

Twenty-Third, I hereby nominate, constitute and appoint Osiris of Egypt Apollo of Greece and Indra of India Executors of this my last will and testament.
In witness thereof, I have herewith set my hand and seal to this holographic will, entirely written and dated and signed by me at my Castle of Clouds this nineteenth day of January nineteen hundred and twenty eight.


Signed : The Sun

Signed, sealed, published and declared by The Sun, the Testator above named as and for his last Will and Testament in the presence of us who at his request and in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses thereto.
Hu of the Druids
Ptah of the Egyptians
Vitzliputsli of the Mexicans




Sleeping Together
cry in your sleep and implore
cry autumn’s fire still small
cry as the door to the wind
cry for the touch of the snow upon snow
cry of the things that you fear
cry in the darkness a distant
dream in my ear

(from Sleeping Together, 1929)





previous Harry Crosby

Ex libris... Elfiede Weidenhaus...Satyr

New Work... 2011

... I'm not able to say... What room is this?
and he dissapears in the sky
He can only touch himself from the outside
In what number do you rest beloved Father?

Verbal Mucky Zing~Dolorosa 2011

Elie Grekoff (1914-1985) ... Tiresias...illustrations 1954

from TIRESIAS by Marcel Jouhandeau, 1954

these illustrations are from the Bibliothèque Gay

an interesting essay on Marcel Jouhandeau's Tiresias >>  by Ed Madden
The Anus of Tiresias: Sodomy, Alchemy, Metamorphosis

Francis Picabia ... Untitled drawing & poem

Gstaad

The sea pitches endlessly

The role mirrors her pupils

From memory

So mirthful

Swaying of gravity

Expresses a resonance

Of constant desires

I have excuses

And lack strength and courage

influence is a useless thing

She is the most beautiful of the women

On my mind 

more poems > 

previous PICABIA

Leonor Fini... La Galère/Jean Genet ... 1947 drawing..

Drawing for Jean Genet's La Galère 1947,a long poem written as a homage to murderer

Harcamone, the book was condemned in 1954 and Genet was fined 100.ooo francs.

"By the threads of death
the weapons of these nights
carried my arms paralyzed by wine
the azure of nostrils
traversed by the rose gone astray
where a gilded doe shudders under the brush...
I astonish myself and lose myself
in pursuing your course
astonishing river
from the veins of discourse"         

***

"The tree's blue branches
stretch from the salt to the sky. 
My solitude sings
to my vespers of blood
an air of golden bubbles
squeezing from my lips."

Jean Genet - The Galley

Ex libris... Alfonso Bosco

Ex libris... Vienna Workhops