My fascination with magic and the occult emerged from growing up in Scotland, which has a long, rich history of witchcraft, fairies, and the 19th century Celtic Revival, which saw a relation between art and magic. For me, the occult is primarily about liberating the imagination and this is what surrealism does. I became enchanted by surrealist art as a teenager which then led me to study History of Art at university. After graduating in 1989, I wrote my book at a time when there was so little available on the relationship between surrealism and occultism, determined to share my passion with other readers.
I wrote
Surrealism and the Occult: Shamanism, Magic, Alchemy, and the Birth of an Artistic Movement
Ithell Colquhoun was a surrealist artist, writer, and an initiate of several magical orders. Her unique novel (first published in 1961) has a haunting and visionary quality in the way it blends surrealist imagery and occult symbolism. The hermetic plot symbolizes alchemical processes and transformations and reading it feels like being guided through an oneiric landscape, evoking myths tangled with bodily sensations and fragments of memories.
Not a novel in the usual sense of the word, but a philosophical and poetic meditation on dreams, desires, and the journey through life. This is a lovely edition, illustrated with a selection of Colquhounâs watercolours which beautifully complement the text.
Ithell Colquhoun was a leading British surrealist artist and writer whose love of the esoteric and the occult had a profound influence on her work. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the weird and wonderful alchemical novel Goose of Hermogenes. An unnamed woman must escape her uncle's island when his sinister attentions fall upon an heirloomâa priceless jewel in her possessionâthat may help in his tireless efforts to conquer death. Gothic, erotic and dreamlike, Goose of Hermogenes is a dizzying work of surrealist imagination. This new edition features five of Colquhoun's watercolor paintings originally painted to illustrate the novel.âŠ
The members of the society would meet in silence to perform rituals beneath a lightning-struck oak tree in a forest outside Paris, evoking the ancient Druid rites described in Frazerâs The Golden Bough, blended with Nietzscheâs philosophy of the Death of God. The book is an outstanding work of scholarship and I would highly recommend this as part of any serious library on surrealism and occultism.
Georges Bataille's secret society, long the stuff of legend, is now revealed in its texts, meditations, rules and prohibitions
This book recounts what must be one of the most unusual intellectual journeys of modern times, in which the influential philosopher, cultural theorist and occasional pornographer Georges Bataille (1897â1962), having spent the early 1930s in far-left groups opposing the rise of fascism, abandoned that approach in order to transfer the struggle onto "the mythological plane."
In 1937, Bataille founded two groups in order to explore the combinations of power and the "sacred" at work in society. The first group, the CollegeâŠ
Author Nyasha Williams, fresh from an outstanding Kirkus review of her new picture book I Affirm Me: The ABCs of Inspiration for Black Kids, has created a unique Tarot deck brimming with dazzling artistic representation. Tarot reading with worldwide roots is a centuries-old practice. It has experienced a bonanzaâŠ
Publi en 1957 tirage limit (rserv un cercle de bibliophiles), L'Art magique reprsentait aux yeux d'Andr Breton la somme de toute une vie : rien de moins qu'une histoire universelle de l'art, des origines prhistoriques jusqu' nos jours - mais une histoire de l'art revisite de fond en comble par le regard et la pense surralistes. Projet grandiose que cette chevauche travers les paysages de la Beaut, servi par la passion ttue d'un homme qui lui consacra, tout au long de son existence, ses recherches et le meilleur de ses intuitions. Projet exaltant surtout : car l'un des premiers crivainsâŠ
This well-researched and in-depth account has been translated from French and discusses the various occult movements which inspired the art and ideas of the surrealists. It covers a diverse range of topics including divination, astrology, myth, voodoo, Gnosticism, freemasonry, alchemy, secret societies, and Celticism and shows how various artists and writers took inspiration from these systems. The book contains a selection of images, copious notes, a substantial bibliography, and a good index making this an indispensable research tool for aspiring scholars of surrealism and the occult. Â
A profound understanding of the surrealistsâ connections with alchemists and secret societies and the hermetic aspirations revealed in their works
âą Explains how surrealist paintings and poems employed mythology, gnostic principles, tarot, voodoo, alchemy, and other hermetic sciences to seek out unexplored regions of the mind and recover lost âpsychicâ and magical powers
âą Provides many examples of esoteric influence in surrealism, such as how Picassoâs Demoiselles dâAvignon was originally titled The Bath of the Philosophers
Not merely an artistic or literary movement as many believe, the surrealists rejected the labels of artist and author bestowed upon them by outsiders,âŠ
Author Nyasha Williams, fresh from an outstanding Kirkus review of her new picture book I Affirm Me: The ABCs of Inspiration for Black Kids, has created a unique Tarot deck brimming with dazzling artistic representation. Tarot reading with worldwide roots is a centuries-old practice. It has experienced a bonanzaâŠ
Sigmund Freud was a profound influence on the surrealist movement and his book, Totem and Taboo, which blends together psychoanalysis and anthropology, is particularly important for understanding how the surrealists saw art as an expression of magic. The essay in this book titled "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts" describes a technique of animism used in ancient and primitive societies. This system of magical thinking was described by Freud as the "omnipotence of thought" and this is what the surrealists attempted to achieve through their art. For surrealist artists, myth and magic were seen as archetypal expressions of the collective cultural imagination, just as dreams were seen as an expression of the individual personal imagination.Â
Originally published in 1918, this landmark collection of essays by the father of psychoanalysis represents one of Freud's most penetrating attempts to decipher the mysteries of human behavior. Its focus is the conflict between primitive feelings and the demands of civilization, i.e., the struggle to reconcile unconscious desires with socially acceptable behavior. Totemism involves the belief in a sacred relationship between an object (totem) and a human kinship group. Men and women bearing the same totem are prohibited from marrying each other, this being a form of incest taboo. Freud identifies a strong unconscious inclination as the basis of taboo,âŠ
