Dolorosa... a drawing for Austin O Spare ..2011

to  Cabinet Readers Love and Magick to accompany you in the mystery tour of 2012! ♥

Dolorosa  ~ A drawing for AOS on his birthday ~ Raving Mouthed 30th Dec 2011

                                                              White pencil on black paper

Austin Osman Spare... Happy Birthday!

click on image to enlarge

Stealing the Fire from Heaven 1911-12

 

The Complete Ritual and Doctrine of Magic

Ecstasy in Self-love the Obsession

My dearest, I will now explain the only safe and true formula, the destroyer of the darkness of the World, the most secret among all secrets. Let it be secret to him who would attain. Let it cover any period of time, depending on his conception. There is no qualification, nor ritual or ceremony. His very existence symbolising all that is necessary to perfection. Most emphatically, there is no need of repetition or feeble imitation. You are alive!

from my favourite AOS book The Book of Pleasure (self-love) The Psychology of Ecstasy

more > AOS 

Lettice Sandford.. illustration from the Song of Songs 1936

1:1 The Song of Songs, which is for Solomon. 1:2 Kiss Me with the kisses of your mouth, for your love is better than wine. 1:3 Your oil has an excellent scent, but your name is the most exquisite oil – for this, all the maidens love you. 1:4 Draw Me after you. Let us run. The king has brought Me to his chambers. We will delight and take joy in you, savoring your love. Like new-pressed wine, they love you.

previous  Lettice Sandford

T. Sturge Moore (1870-1944)... Pan as an Island...c1902

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 a scan from The Modern Woodcut by Herbert Furst 1924

Johannes von Schwarzenberg... bookplate...1534

a scan from The Devious and Grotesque in Art by Wilhelm Michel 1919

James Ensor... print....1895

Skeletons warming up 1895

H Meyer...Bookplate... c1793

bookplate from Letters to the advancement of humanity by Johann Gottfried von Herder

GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832)...Zur Farbenlehre ...bookplate 1810

"To divide the united, to unite the divided, is the life of nature; this is the eternal systole and diastole, the eternal collapsion and expansion, the inspiration and expiration of the world in which we move."  ~ Goethe

Based on his experiments with turbid media, Goethe characterized colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness and light. Rudolf Steiner gives the following analogy:

    Modern natural science sees darkness as a complete nothingness. According to this view, the light which streams into a dark space has no resistance from the darkness to overcome. Goethe pictures to himself that light and darkness relate to each other like the north and south pole of a magnet. The darkness can weaken the light in its working power. Conversely, the light can limit the energy of the darkness. In both cases color arises.
    —Rudolf Steiner, 1897 >

Ex Libris... Martin Erich Philipp... 1914

previous Martin Erich Philipp

Ex Libris... K. Schönberger... 1899

Arthur Rackham...the Wind in the Willows..illustration..Satyr

"White nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour" 1940 - The Wind in the Willows 

"Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

Kenneth Grahame

Dolorosa... new work ...watercolour

Dolorosa  ~ the Morphology of Vertebrates 2011

Ex Libris... Rudolf Koch...1960

Paraphilia Magazine ISSUE XlII ...& ...New work

La Santisima 2011 ~ Dolorosa

ISSUE XIII

Featuring interviews with J.G. Thirlwell, Mike Garson, Shooter Jennings, Jon Savage, Black Earth, Bart Powers, Arrica Rose, and Voltera, and a cornucopia of goodies from: Dolorosa De La Cruz, F.X. Tobin, Andrew Maben, Matt Leyshon, D M Mitchell, Heather Harris, Susan Te Kahurangi King, John Kruth, David Gionfriddo, Sid Graves, Michael Butterworth, Patricia Wells-Stein, Tom Garretson, Mike Hudson, Robert Earl Reed, Ele-Beth Little, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Stagger Lloyd, Brian Routh, Dixē.Flatlin3, Richard C. Walls, Díre McCain, Christopher Nosnibor, Tony Visconti, Lara Visconti, Cricket Corleone, Richard A. Meade, Melissa Mann, Lana Gentry, Craig Woods, Max Reeves, Vadge Moore, Nick Louras, Claudia Bellocq, Lisa Wormsley, Hank Kirton, Rick Grimes, Bob Pfeifer, Keith Jones, Chris Madoch, Alan Perry, Syd Howells, and Ron Garmon

Cover © 2011 Dolorosa De La Cruz

Satty... The illustrated Edgar Allan Poe

another scan from a favourite book ....

click on image to enlarge

Yet, for a while I saw; but how terrible an

Exaggeration! I saw the lips of the Black-Robed Judges.

The Pit and the Pendulum ~ Edgar Allan Poe

previous SATTY

Sascha Schneider... Wood Engravings ... 1896

 click on image to enlarge

The Mammon and its slave

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Around a Soul

Pinax microcosmographicus...Johann Remmelin & Hara Sanshin ...Flap books

Johann Remmelin's Pinax Microcosmographicus  1667

Japanese version of Johann Remmelin's Pinax Microcosmographicus. Copy made by Hara Sanshin, 17c.

more early Japanese anatomical illustrations HERE

Jan Konupek... Temptation...1910

click on image to enlarge

previous Konupek

Dolorosa... new drawing 2011 & Ithell Colquhoun poem...

Dolorosa ~ Arch Old Inquest ~2011

Sent Away

Sent away

By Light of day

I return

When candles burn

Ithell Colquhoun

František Tichý & Gerard de Nerval ...Chimeras 1949

Front cover illustration by František Tichý  for Chimeras by Gerard de Nerval 1949

Gilded Verse

And so! Everything is sentient!

-Pythagoras

Man, free thinker! You think you alone think

In this world where life splatters everywhere?

You're free to dispose of your charge,

But the firmament's gone from your schemes.

Respect the spirit that moves in beasts:

Every flower a ghost that opens to Nature,

Every alloy harbors the secrets of love;

“Everything is sentient,” & everything can change you,

Fear the eyes in blind walls,

Even dead matter is infused with a verb,

Don't use it perversely.

Even in the shunned ones lives a secret god,

Like a nascent eye obscured by its lids,

A pure spirit blooms behind the veil of stones. 

The Chimeras ~ by Gerard de Nerval  translated by Translated by Mark Lamoureux

Josef Váchal's mystical Tarot cards...1912

more > HERE

Josef Váchal... A Cycle of Wood Cuts 1912

A Cycle of Wood Cuts Accompanied by a Very Nice Ode to Ingenious Doctors and Healers, self-published by Josef Váchal, Prague 1912

previous VCHAL

Ex Libris... Walter Steineck... 1920

Dolorosa... Vowed Series no 9...2011

Dolorosa ~ Vowed no 9 2011

This is the last of my Vowed Series of drawings you can see all the rest here > VOWED

Igor-Alban Chevalier... graphic works

Sorting through some old files I came across a folder with these wonderful images, if anyone knows of their origin please could you leave a comment. Many thanks.

with many thanks to Tororo Shiru for solving the mystery of the artist > Igor-Alban Chevalier's blog HERE

Frederick Carter... The Dragon of the Alchemists... 1918

Frederick Carter’s deep interest in alchemy and all aspects of the supernatural and the occult, led him to produce an esoteric symbolism which is apparent throughout his work. Nowhere is this displayed more clearly than in his works for The Dragon of the Alchemists. Frederick Carter provided little or no explanation regarding the significance of his imagery which combines symbols of established religion with those of mysticism and it is likely that he intended the meaning of many of his images to remain shrouded in mystery.

Persus

Ship of Dreams

The Balance

The Babe of Fire

Silence

To-day it is maintained that a certain morbid psychological alteration in what is called "the function of reality" bears traces of archaic thought: though what is called archaic may be basic and independent of morbidity. It was accepted without hesitation in the Renaissance that myth extended the range of mental vision, and mythical incidents and classical names were so used until that mode of metaphorical expression became stereotyped. The subjective response and understanding died; a rationalised meaning took its place and nullified its appeal. But the "libido" was then, and is yet, capable of being led into sublimer paths by the use of myth, image, and metaphor: a sound mode of analogy had, as it ever has had, an impetus and a power of moving the mind that brings poetry to life. The poet was a stargazer, and found in his heaven the images of perfection.

from ~ The Dragon of the Alchemists

Armand Rassenfosse (1862 - 1934)... Singulier animal ,colour engraving,1893

previous Armand Rassenfosse

Ex Libris... Vitezslav Fleissig... 1925

Dolorosa... Vowed Series no 8...2011

Dolorosa ~ Vowed Series no8 2011

Works of art....Japanese Carved Ivory Okimono... circa 1900

An Unusually Large Japanese Carved Ivory Okimono of a Human Skull
Entwined with snakes and rats
Perhaps made by a particular workshop as an example of excellence and achievement
Meiji period (1868-1912)

the god of death

has passed me over...

autumn dusk

Haiku of Kobayashi Issa

(1763 - 1828)

Ex Libris... M A Falor...

Ernst Fuchs... Vision... 1953

click on image to enlarge

previous Fuchs

A vision

I lost the love of heaven above,
I spurned the lust of earth below,
I felt the sweets of fancied love
And hell itself my only foe.

I lost earth's joys but felt the glow
Of heaven's flame abound in me
Till loveliness and I did grow
The bard of immortality.

I loved but woman fell away
I hid me from her faded fame,
I snatched the sun's eternal ray
And wrote till earth was but a name

In every language upon earth,
On every shore, o'er every sea,
I give my name immortal birth
And kept my spirit with the free.

John Clare

(1793 - 1864)

Edgar Allan Poe poem... Dolorosa pen & ink sketch...

pen and ink sketch Dolorosa

A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow--

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand--

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep--while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Austin Osman Spare ... Illustration...1909

click here for larger image

Cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum 1909

from

On the Oxford circuit, and other verses  by Mr Justice Darling 1909

CUJUS EST SOLUM EJUS EST USQUE 
AD COELUM 

'ELUSIVE maxim! Hardly Heaven 
they hold 
Whose lands in fee to central Hell 

descend. 
Though from the soil its lords the 
stars behold, 
With the thick air extremest titles end. 

Wladd Muta.... Graphic Works... Golden Scarab 2011

click image for detail

Maman Brigitte ... Jessica Grote, poem & Claude Saintilius, art.

click on image to enlarge

Maman Brigitte by Claude Saintilius

~~ Our Lady of the Cemetery: Maman Brigitte ~~

The Face of Death

Ruby-red drops of blood mix with the white flour. The strong

alcohol is still burning in her throat. Passion overcomes her,a

yearning, a desperate physical hunger, spreading her legs wide

open, shivering through her body. She wants to embrace...the

Dead. 

Fixing her gaze on the purple candle, raising it high

above her head, she whispers... Maman... Ma mere... An irresistable

urge has her pouring the purple wax over her body

while calling out to HER...

You are walking down the long and sparely lit hallway.

Following a noise, a whisper, the distant echo of MY voice.

It is cold, you are alone and yet you know we are all around -

waiting for you.

Treading on the path of the unknown, you feel fear, my child,

I know.

Be brave, go ahead, follow MY call, open that door.

I am over here, standing below the willow on that old cemetery

Yes, it is music coming out of this crypt. Have a look, go inside,

you will see strange rites but also merry dancing and laughter.

Dance with the Dead, my child! Dance with my children!

Do not take yourself too serious!

I am the Mother of the Dead and we are everywhere. In fact

everyone is a walking Dead.

So why not laugh in the face of Death?

by Jessica Grote ~October 2010 excerpt from Atua