Sunday, May 15, 2011

Austin Osman Spare ... The Formula of Atavistic Resurgence...



~ Austin Osman Spare ~
30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956



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The Formula of Atavistic Resurgence
Zos-Kia Cultus
 Austin Osman Spare created this Stele embodying the secret glyphs and sigils of the Cultus.


"There is a Grimoire of symbology, of vague phonic nuances that conjoins all thoughts and is the cryptic language of the subconscious world." AOS

"I teach the equal reality of all things, man and his illusions: Dreams shall flesh ...some day." AOS


Whatever the value of Spare’s contribution to art and psychology, his contribution to experimental occultism is supreme, for he discovered a method of reifying the dream world under the controlling aegis of the fully conscious will.



Friday, May 13, 2011

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Hans Bellmer...print.... undated





“The body resembles a sentence that seems to invite us to dismantle it into its component letters, so that its true meanings may be revealed anew through an endless stream of anagrams.”  
Hans Bellmer

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André Pieyre de Mandiargues on Bellmer...

“He was highly intelligent and seemed to have no sense of culpability or sin—there was innocence in his perversity. His eroticism was intellectual rather than sensual, cold rather than hot: this attracted me to him because like me, he was basically a puritan, and like me, he had no time for vulgar sensuality.”



Conrad Meili 1895-1969.. print



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Maili 1931

click on image to enlarge



Saturday, May 7, 2011

Wormwood Star - The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron ...





 
The first biography of the artist, performer, poet, and occult practitioner, Cameron (Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel) is out now... was delighted to be at its launch in Treadwell's Books in London

Cameron embarked on a lifelong spiritual quest, a journey reflected in the otherworldly images she depicted,
many of them drawn from the Elemental Kingdom and astral plane, some you can see here


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Published by Mandrake of Oxford

Wormwood Star written by Spencer Kansa traces the extraordinary life of the enigmatic artist 
Marjorie Cameron,
 one of the most fascinating figures to emerge from the American Underground art world and film scene.
With so much of her life and work shrouded in mystery, Wormwood Star sheds new light on this most remarkable  artist and elusive occult icon.


for more info > www.spencerkansa.com

previous >  Cameron









Friday, April 29, 2011

Austin Osman Spare ... Ugly Ecstasy ...Satyr...



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from the Book of Ugly Ecstasy 1924 - Fulgur 1996



it would be sentimental to say that the figures in Ugly Ectasy and Automatic Drawings
are happy despite theirhideous appearances....in the words of WH Audens poem, 'In Memory of Sigmund Freud' -

Down among the lost people like Dante, down
To the stinking fosse where the injured
Lead the ugly life of the rejected.

Nevertheless, Spare signed off Automatic Drawing on a defiant and innuendo-laden note: "Great is he who pleasures this difficult life," he wrote, and  "He has found wisdom who knows how to spend"*

*Victorian euphemism for ejaculation.


excerpt from Austin Osman Spare - The Life and Legend of London's Lost Artist