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