Ithell Colquhoun...magick works..

Ithell Colquhoun

"Scylla" 1938

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) is best known today for being a painter and author of great prominence on the British surrealist scene. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London and soon also studied the arts in France, and there met the master Salvador Dalí which made a great impact on her artistic expression. She made her debut at a exhibition in 1936 and by then already had developed her style which she herself described as "magic realism", showing strong influences of Dalí.

From 1939 and onwards Ithell often used a technique which can best be described as "automatic painting", i.e. the artistic equivalent of automatic writing, not uncommon amongst surrealist painters such as her mentor Salvador Dalí. It was also used amongst certain symbolist painters and writers, such as the Golden Dawn Adept William Butler Yeats. This is also a technique which naturally can be found in some occult circles, which leads us to Ithell's connections with the occult community, in which she was known as Soror Splendidior Vitro (see monogram at far right for this magical motto). Ithell in fact took part in the movement today commonly known as the Golden Dawn. There she used her artistic abilities in full bloom to express its occult worldview, especially connected to the Qabalistic glyph of the Tree of Life.

In the Golden Dawn community Ithell is best known to us for her seminal work and personal interpretation of the history of the Golden Dawn, called The Sword of Wisdom: MacGregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn. This book, which basically is a biography on S.L. MacGregor Mathers, was published by Spearman in 1975 and is currently out of print. Compared to the more academically rigid and hence dispassionate works of authors like Ellic Howe and R.A. Gilbert, the work of Ithell Colquhoun is written with love and passion for the tradition and from the perspective of an initiate. This makes the work the more interesting as it draws from many sources not strictly speaking legitimate from the academic angle, such as word of mouth traditions and gossip amongst initiates, etc.

Ithell also wrote one more occult work, the hermetic-surrealist novel Goose of Hermogenes, published by Peter Owen in 1961. This work was probably developed under the influence of automatic writing, or so Steve Nichols asserts us, and can be best regarded as a modern oracle. In short Ithell's heroine finds out, while visiting her uncle at his island that exists out of time and space, that he actually is in search of the philosopher’s stone. Goose of Hermogenes can best be described as an esoteric fantasy novel which draws from scenes and imagery mostly derived from medieval occult sources. Each chapter title is also correlated to different stages in the alchemical work. It is a reading worth while for any student of the Golden Dawn or of Hermeticism.SR

her magical works..

more to follow...

moon dreams

ex-libris...

Sen noci svatojanske. Midsummer night dream...by Jiri Trnka

Cupid is a knavish lad,
Thus to make poor females mad

Puck's comment on the bedraggled Hermia, as she gives up the pursuit of Helena and Lysander.

Thought-forms...

Nonphysical entities which exist in either the mental or astral plane. Each entity is created from the thought. Every thought is said to generate vibrations in the aura's mental body, which assume a floating form and colors depending on the nature and intensity of the thought. These thought-forms are usually seen by clairvoyants; and may be intuitively sensed by others.

Theosophists and clairvoyants Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater placed thought-forms in three classifications: (1) the image of the thinker (see Bilocation); (2) an image of a material object associated with the thought; and (3) an independent image expressing the inherent qualities of the thought. Thoughts which are of a low nature, such as anger, hate, lust, greed, and so on, create thought-forms which are dense in color and form. Thought of a more spiritual nature tend to generate forms possessing a greater purity, clarity, and refinement.

Thought-forms can be directed toward anyone, but to be effective they must latch onto a similar vibration in the other person’s aura. If they are unable to do so, they can boomerang back on the sender. Thus, working according to the occult theory, one who directs evil toward another runs the risk of having it return.

The strength and clarity of the original thought determines the duration, strength and the distance of travel of its developed thought-form. It is said that thought-forms can have the capability to assume their own energy and appear to be intelligent and independent. Equally strong thought-forms can disperse them, or they may disintegrate when their purpose has been accomplished. Some may stay in existence for years, while others can become uncontrollable and turn on their senders.

Thought-forms, in magic, are also called "artificial elements," which are created through ritual involving intense concentration, repetition, and visualization. (see Egrigor) They can be directed toward individuals to protect or heal, or to harm. Also, thought-forms can be created to perform low-level tasks and errands.

Other thought-forms can occur spontaneously, for example, "Group minds" that emerge whenever a group of people concentrate on the same thought, ideas, or goals, such as a team of employees or a crowd of demonstrators. To a certain extent the group-mind possesses the group, such is seen in psychic bonding and power that coalesces in crowds, and in the synergy of a close-knit working group. Usually when the group disbands the power of the group-mind dissipates too. A.G.H.

An excerpt from

THOUGHT-FORMS

BY ANNIE BESANT
AND C.W. LEADBEATER

The text of this little book is the joint work of Mr Leadbeater and myself; some of it has already appeared as an article in Lucifer (now the Theosophical Review), but the greater part of it is new. The drawing and painting of the Thought-Forms observed by Mr Leadbeater or by myself, or by both of us together, has been done by three friends—Mr John Varley, Mr Prince, and Miss Macfarlane, to each of whom we tender our cordial thanks. To paint in earth's dull colours the forms clothed in the living light of other worlds is a hard and thankless task; so much the more gratitude is due to those who have attempted it. They needed coloured fire, and had only ground earths. We have also to thank Mr F. Bligh Bond for allowing us to use his essay on Vibration Figures, and some of his exquisite drawings. Another friend, who sent us some notes and a few drawings, insists on remaining anonymous, so we can only send our thanks to him with similar anonymity.

It is our earnest hope—as it is our belief—that this little book will serve as a striking moral lesson to every reader, making him realise the nature and power of his thoughts, acting as a stimulus to the noble, a curb on the base. With this belief and hope we send it on its way.
ANNIE BESANT.

illustrations of thought forms


FIG. 11. RADIATING AFFECTION


FIG. 39. IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS


FIG. 12. PEACE AND PROTECTION


FIG. 15. UPWARD RUSH OF DEVOTION


FIG. 16. SELF-RENUNCIATION


FIG. 37. SYMPATHY AND LOVE FOR ALL


FIG. 38. AN ASPIRATION TO ENFOLD ALL

Thought Forms

María Sabina: Mujer Espíritu

Ah, Jesu Kri
I am a woman who shouts
I am a woman who whistles
I am a woman who lightnings, says
...
Woman who resounds
Woman torn up out of the ground
Woman who resounds
Woman torn up out of the ground
Woman of the principal berries, says
Woman of the sacred berries, says
...
Book woman
Book woman
Morning Star woman
Cross Star woman
God Star woman
...
Because I can swim in the immense
Because I can swim in all forms
Because I am the launch woman
Because I am the sacred opposum
Because I am the Lord opposum

I am the woman Book that is beneath the water, says
I am the woman of the populous town, says
I am the shepherdess who is beneath the water, says
I am the woman who shepherds the immense, says
I am a shepherdess and I come with my shepherd, says

Because everything has its origin
And I come going from place to place from the origin...


My space for Maria Sabina >>
www.myspace.com/mariasabinaamor

After Hans...

Annie le Brun...Twelfth Ring

Text- Annie le Brun

Illustration- Toyen

Henriette Hardenberg ...

from the German poet Henriette Hardenberg (Margarete Rosenberg) 1894-1993






 An image of fear     


Evil pond surrounded by full lips
Angry ruby glass bursting off the bottom.
Secret tiger paths, sandy,
Drawn around golden almond flowers,
Labyrinth passages.
And hot rain pouring down
Among a spark dance of bodies.
Mangling through and through,
Sound from the top of the tower of need.



Spring

Birch-white leg,
Love landscape,
Hips,
Her flower balcony,
Tender and gone to seed,
Full fragrance of narcissus,
You, man
I love!


Hands

Like rare animals they move up and down
And lie deep at the bottom of the sea;
Moon-colored is the stone, like a wound
Set in flowering plumage.

I fear this hidden motion,
Like wind held up in branches;
So few fingers, in figures,
Will excite thoughts in me.

The sea divides so that I can reach it -
In swaying underbrush of crystal night -
This hand, extended flat yet softly sunk,
There before my pallid face.

I don't know whether the little bones,
Rinsed by the sea, will drift and mingle,
Or if, wrapped in clouds,
They will reach up for music and dance.

I know that dreams without fragrance,
Like dead fingers rigid in the joints,
Do not give shrouded magic
For which the living call in sleep.



White and red

Clouds tumble from the skies,
Impenetrable hedges of white roses grow,
The heart, of marble, lies slain.
Snow stars float
In whitewashed time space.

A human being, resurrected, screams,
Blood sprays from the fountains of the heart,
Roses burn in arms,
Dusk shed by a lamp brightens the tears.


Longing

The houses wished for the moon;
unable to stand the edges, the hardness any longer,
they had to bend.
I lay in my room and felt
how they were shaking with longing,
how sick they were, how they swayed.
And the moon came,
and my heart grew along with it,
and its loneliness grew.
The houses held on to each other tight that night.
I kissed the moon and cried.

your mouth for a pillow...

Unica Zürn...new line of vision...

A few scans from one of my favourite books

The House of Illnesses

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A remarkable illustrated text produced during one of the author’s stays in a mental institution.

After a childhood which she describes as “wonderful,” a 7 year marriage and the birth of her two children, a carreer at the Ufa film studios in her home town Berlin when she also began to write and paint, Unica Zürn’s life changed abruptly following a series of chance meetings with the painter Hans Bellmer in 1953. She left at once for Paris with Bellmer, who had already established himself in Surrealist circles there. He encouraged her to make automatic drawings and to write the anagram poems which later brought her much acclaim. Although the two lived together in growing isolation from their outside surroundings, Bellmer introduced Zürn to many of his contemporaries: Brauner, Arp, Man Ray, Ernst, Waldberg, and above all Henri Michaux. This meeting precipitated the mental illness that was to hound the last thirteen years of her life, Zürn believed him to be the incarnation of a childhood fantasy figure, which she described lated in The Man of Jasmine: “A few days later she experiences the first miracle in her life: in a room in Paris she finds herself standing before the Man of Jasmine. The shock of this encounter is so great that she is unable to overcome it. From this day on she begins, very very slowly, to lose her reason.”

The House of Illnesses was written shortly after this meeting, during a bout of fever induced by jaundice. It was originally included in the book The Man of Jasmine but without the illustrations which accompany it here. With its sometimes wistful, sometimes humourous and ultimately hopeful mood, this text contrasts strongly with many of the other texts in that book, which bear harrowing testimony to her mental crises and her dizzying descent into her own self and a world of hallucinated images.

above text from publishers of this book

@tlas press

...my drawings