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Dark Spirits are with us!

14 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by Salamander and Sons in A.O. Spare, Magic Books, Rosaleen Norton

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Austin Osman Spare, Book, Dark Spirits, Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare, Dr. Nevill Drury, Magic, Rosaleen Norton, Witch of Kings Cross

In the poem accompanying the illustration ‘Black Magic’ in The Art of Rosaleen Norton, the Australian ‘Witch of Kings Cross’ wrote:

Panther of silence; god of Night; Lord of the wild inhuman stars:
You are my own; teeming soul of solitude.
Here is no loneliness, secret Master –
You, Dark Spirit are with me.

The welcome news for many admirers of the magical art of Rosaleen Norton and that of Austin Osman Spare – admirers who have patiently waited for many months – is that Dark Spirits is with us!

Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare

Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare

Small batches of the standard hardcover edition manifested on 05 December 2012 (the 33rd anniversary of Rosaleen Norton’s death), and have been arriving gradually since. The Deluxe Edition, fully bound in black leather, is due for delivery this day. As such, we happily anticipate shipping copies during the week of 17-21 December 2012.

Some (but not many) copies of the standard hardcover edition of Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare remain available.

Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare

Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare

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Dark Spirits, Part Two: Austin Osman Spare

15 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by Salamander and Sons in A.O. Spare, Magic Books

≈ 3 Comments

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Art, Austin Osman Spare, Automatic Art, Book, Chaos Magick, Dark Spirits, Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare, Dr. Nevill Drury, Magic, Magical Art, The Book of Ugly Ecstasy, The Golden Hind, Zos / Kia cosmology

Page spreads from Part Two of Dark Spirits

Page spreads from Part Two of Dark Spirits

Part Two of Dr. Nevill Drury’s much-anticipated Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare consists of three chapters examining the life, art, publishing ventures, sigil magic, and occult cosmology of the substantially misunderstood British visionary artist, Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956).

Chapter Four details the early life of Austin Osman Spare, a true Cockney born at home in Snowhill, near Smithfield, London, on 30 December 1886, within the sound of the bells of Saint Mary-le-Bow. From his relationship with his parents and siblings, to his teenage artistic emergence and early accolades – including being proclaimed a genius by John Singer Sargent, then President of the Royal Academy, and other notable artists of the day – to his study at the Royal College of Art in South Kensington and early bookplate commissions and illustrations, Drury sketches a life of Spare as an independent, eccentric urban visionary:

From his art student days onwards Spare always emphasised that he sought to be his own person, developing his own style, and he disliked being compared to other artists. In an anonymous article entitled ‘Boy Artist at the R.A.’ published in The Daily Chronicle during 1904 Spare was quoted as saying, ‘I never copy other people. I prefer to take my subjects from my own imagination and to draw them according to my ideas of what they should be.’

Acclaimed as the ‘darling of Mayfair’, and with his artworks receiving significant public attention, Spare turned his back on an unsuccessful marriage to the actress Eily Gertrude Shaw and “the ‘hypocrisy’ of the fashionable art set” and ventured into self-publishing numerous works including Earth: Inferno (265 numbered copies, 1905); A Book of Satyrs (300 copies, first edition 1907; 300 copies, second edition 1909); The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy (380 copies, 1913); The Focus of Life: The Mutterings of Aaos (650 copies, 1921), and Anathema of Zos: The Sermon to the Hypocrites (100 copies, 1927).

Despite being compared to notable graphic artists of the day, like Charles Ricketts (illustrator of Oscar Wilde’s The Sphinx) and Harry Clarke (illustrator of Goethe’s Faust and Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination), Spare’s highly unconventional esoteric imagery was regarded by some as “medicine … too strong for the average man” and he was shunned by all but his most ardent friends and supporters – the latter including, most notably, the critic, editor, lyricist, translator, novelist, hymn writer, and poet Clifford Bax, with whom Spare co-edited a quarterly illustrated literary magazine entitled The Golden Hind; the journalist, drama critic and spiritualist Hannen Swaffer, with whom Spare would maintain a lifelong friendship; and his early patron Pickford Waller. Drury also elaborates upon Spare’s complex relationship with the so-called ‘Great Beast 666’ and self-styled messiah of the New Aeon, Aleister Crowley – a relationship which, he writes, “underwent dramatic shifts ranging from cordial friendship to passionate disdain.”

Drury describes how Spare “embraced his south London working class roots and maintained a series of studios in the Elephant and Castle region of The Borough,” and how during this period Spare created “an impressive body of realist portraits featuring ‘Southwark locals’,” along with “glamorous renditions of movie stars and celebrities, [painted] from existing photographs to create unusually slanted compositions that he referred to as ‘sidereal’ portraits.” Spare’s penchant for exhibiting his artwork in taverns or inns is also discussed:

Spare’s natural inclination to exhibit in popular drinking houses – a characteristic he shared with Rosaleen Norton – is indicative of his total lack of pretension during this phase of his life. With the Golders Green period now well behind him, he felt very much at home with ordinary run-of-the-mill workers, and this may be another reason why he eventually tired of Aleister Crowley who was, by contrast, very much an elitist and in no sense a man of the common people.

Having “suffered through a heavy German air raid which damaged his arm and utterly destroyed his studio in Walworth Road, along with much of surrounding Southwark,” during May 1941, Spare lived the rest of his days in Brixton with a female companion, Ada Millicent Pain. He exhibited works in London in November 1947 (paintings), October-November 1955 (paintings and drawings), and during 1952 and 1953. These would, however, be the last exhibitions of his lifetime. On 09 May 1956 Spare was rushed to hospital with a burst appendix, dying six days later due to complications arising from extensive abdominal inflammation.

Page spreads from Chapter Four of Dark Spirits

Page spreads from Chapter Four of Dark Spirits

Chapter Five consist of an extensive analysis of Spare’s Zos / Kia cosmology. According to Drury:

… Spare uses his concept of Kia to refer to the primal, cosmic life force which can be channelled into the human organism, Zos. In one of his later esoteric texts Spare refers to the life force as ‘a potency’, – and his magical technique for arousing the elemental energies latent within this life potency – a technique he termed ‘atavistic resurgence’  – involved focusing upon magical sigils which he employed as vehicles of his magical will. When the mind was in what Spare called a ‘void’ or open state – achieved, for example, through meditation, exhaustion or at the peak of sexual ecstasy – magical sigils could be used to send ‘commands’ to the subconscious mind. Later, these magical commands would be intentionally forgotten in order to remove them from conscious awareness but, in the meantime, according to Spare they would ‘grow’ within the seedbed of the subconscious mind until they became ‘ripe’ and manifested once again in the familiar world of conscious reality, thereby achieving the magician’s initial intent.

Spare’s magical philosophy is thoroughly examined, with influences ranging from archetypal mythic imagery from ancient Egypt and a fascination with the sexual energies of the subconscious mind to Taoism and the ‘reification’ of ideas and thoughts to visible, sometimes even tangible, appearance. The central importance of the ‘void moment’ to Spare’s magical process is also discussed, alongside his Death Posture technique and “creation and use of ‘sentient’ magical sigils that could act as vehicles or ‘messengers’ to the subconscious mind.” Spare’s influence upon the Pact of the Illuminates of Thanateros – often simply known as The Pact, or the IOT – and subsequent role as ‘grandfather’ of Chaos Magick is also described.

Page spreads from Chapter Five of Dark Spirits

Page spreads from Chapter Five of Dark Spirits

In addition to developing his concept of the Death Posture and the Zos / Kia cosmology, Spare also explored the spontaneous creative process of automatic drawing. In his exposition upon Spare’s automatic art in Chapter Six of Dark Spirits, Drury writes:

It has been argued that Spare can legitimately claim to be the first Surrealist artist because his earliest atavistic artworks preceded the 1924 Paris Surrealist Manifesto by at least a decade … his attraction to automatic drawing is directly linked to the psychic automata, or elementals, which he believed surrounded him at all times.

The contents of the two major limited edition collections of Spare’s automatic art published since his death in 1956 – A Book of Automatic Drawing (Catalpa Press, London, 1972) and The Book of Ugly Ecstasy (Fulgur, London, 1996) – inform Drury’s critique of Spare as an artist now acknowledged as one of the key figures of the 20th century Western magical revival and one of its most original thinkers.

Page spreads from Chapter Six of Dark Spirits

Page spreads from Chapter Six of Dark Spirits

A seventh chapter sets out the parallels between the trance states associated with the Zos / Kia cosmology of Spare and the trance magic of the Australian visionary artist Rosaleen Norton.

Some copies of Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare remain available. Both the Deluxe Edition and the standard hardcover edition will be published on 05 December 2012 in order to coincide with the 33rd anniversary of Rosaleen Norton’s death.

Dark Spirits, Part One: Rosaleen Norton

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by Salamander and Sons in A.O. Spare, Magic Books, Rosaleen Norton

≈ 7 Comments

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Art, Dark Spirits, Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare, Dr. Nevill Drury, Gavin Greenlees, Magic, Magical Art, Magical Cosmology, Magical Practice, Occult Visions, Pan, Rosaleen Norton, Trance Magic, Witch

Part One of Dr. Nevill Drury’s long-awaited Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare consists of three chapters elaborating upon the life, magical cosmology, trance magic, and occult visions the notorious (or, some might say, notoriously unknown) Australian visionary artist Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979).

Chapter One offers a thorough portrayal of the 62 years of life of Rosaleen Miriam Norton, known to her friends as ‘Roie’ – from her birth during a violent thunderstorm in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 02 October 1917, to her death at the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dying at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, on 05 December 1979. Norton’s childhood and adolescence – including family life and school – are detailed and discussed, along with her love of animals (her many pets included “an assortment of cats, lizards, mice, guinea pigs, a possum, an echidna, a goat, tortoises, dogs, and various toads” – spiders too), her early creative urges, and eventual enrollment at East Sydney Technical College, where she studied art for two years under the tutelage of the noted sculptor and head of the art school, Rayner Hoff. In an article published in The Australasian Post during February 1957, Norton said of her mentor:

He [Hoff] freed me from routine and let me spend my time at figure drawing and composition … and since for the first time I was encouraged to work continuously at my own art form, I became an exemplary student.

Drury details Norton’s stint as a cadet journalist and art model; her marriage to Beresford Conroy and relationship with her frater philosophicus, the poet Gavin Greenlees; the controversial exhibition at the Rowden White Library at the University of Melbourne, and publication of Norton’s and Greenlees’ collaborative work, The Art of Rosaleen Norton; her run-ins with police and judiciary, including vagrancy charges, obscenity trials (one magistrate deemed Norton’s artworks “obscene and an offence to chastity and delicacy”) and censorship, and being falsely accused – on more than one occasion – of holding a ‘Black Mass’ at her flat in Sydney’s Kings Cross; her scandalous relationship with the English-born orchestral musician and conductor, Eugene Goossens, and flaunting of the popular image of herself as the ‘Witch of Kings Cross’ during the 1950s and 1960s; and her almost complete obscurity and physical decline during the 1970s.

Page spreads from Chapter One of Dark Spirits

Page spreads from Chapter One of Dark Spirits

Chapter Two delves into Norton’s magical cosmology, including how her assertion that she was born a witch – replete with a range of bodily peculiarities she equated with ‘witch marks’ – informed her personal and artistic development, magical practice, and her belief in Pan-as-All, the metaphysical being who, in her view, ruled the world. Of the development of her instinctual ritual desire, Norton once remarked:

If the Kingdom of Pan had always been with me, it had been mostly in the background, overlaid by what was called reality: Now it had begun to emerge and pervade the latter. Awareness grew stronger and stronger that the tedious world of childhood didn’t really matter, because this held the essence of all that called to my inmost being: Night and wild things and mystery; storms; being by myself, free of other people. The sense of some deep hidden knowledge stirring at the back of consciousness; and all about me the feeling of secret sentient life, that was in alliance with me, but that others were unaware, or afraid of, because it was unhuman. So my first act of ceremonial magic was in honour of the horned god, whose pipes are symbol of magic and mystery, and whose horns and hooves stand for natural energies and fleet-footed freedom: And this rite was also my oath of allegiance and my confirmation as a witch. I remember my feelings on that occasion well, and they are valid today: If Pan is the ‘Devil’ (and the joyous goat-god probably is from the orthodox viewpoint) then I am indeed a ‘Devil’ worshipper.

According to Drury:

Norton’s cosmology is based upon an understanding that Nature and the cosmos are innately sacred. Divinity is ‘divided’ into a number of gods and goddesses, and these ruling deities – headed by Pan – are able to exist and function in more than one dimension of reality. Norton’s concept of a hierarchy of spirits headed by Pan – ‘whose body … is the … Earth’ – is reminiscent of the ancient Gnostic archons who were thought to rule different regions of the heavens, while also maintaining governance of the Earth. Archons were celestial rulers – ‘gate-keepers’ guarding entry to the higher spheres – and their powers transcended and encompassed all aspects of human activity. In Norton’s conception, Pan equated with the totality of human experience and existence – although she expanded his reach to embrace the totality, or ‘ground’, of all being. In a sense Pan, for her, embodied and represented the furthest reaches of the sacred universe – extending to infinity in all directions. It is all the more remarkable that Norton began to develop this concept of Pan while she was still an adolescent …

Drury expounds upon the other ancient deities and supernatural entities that provided inspiration and guidance to Norton – prominent among them Hecate, Lilith and Lucifer, the latter in his role as ‘The Adversary’. The role that a number of other magical beings from different cultural traditions – such as Bucentauro, Eloi, Makalath, Fohat, Erzulie, the Dubouros, Val, Kephena, Borzorygmus, Mwystingel, and Trudgepig – played in Norton’s eclectic and idiosyncratic pantheon is discussed, as is her ‘Familiar Spirit-in-Chief’ Janicot (a being she knew by many different names, including the Monk, Frater Asmodeus and Brother Hilarian). Norton’s knowledge and experiences of the sephiroth and qliphoth – including her terrifying encounter with the Werplon entity – are considered alongside her experiments with self-hypnosis, trance states and magical techniques of invocation. Discussion of Norton’s concept of the magical universe also features prominently in the second chapter of Dark Spirits.

Page spreads from Chapter Two of Dark Spirits

Page spreads from Chapter Two of Dark Spirits

Chapter Three examines how Norton incorporated elements from her magical practice into her visionary art –from her early compositions which “drew more upon graphic styles associated with popular conceptions of ghouls, demons and disembodied spirits …” to her more artistically accomplished and ‘authentic’ (in the sense that her art drew increasingly upon her personal mystical and trance experiences) work of the late 1940s and early 1950s, to her “increasingly more lurid and garish” works “crudely executed in oils” during the 1960s and 1970s. This chapter alone features 15 of Norton’s artworks (including four in full colour) with extensive annotations, and Drury’s expertise as an author and publisher of books on contemporary art is apparent.

Page spreads from Chapter Three of Dark Spirits

Page spreads from Chapter Three of Dark Spirits

And where does Austin Osman Spare fit into all this? Part Two of Dark Spirits – consisting of three chapters devoted to Spare – will be described in a later post.

Some copies of Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare remain available. Both the Deluxe Edition and the standard hardcover edition will be published on 05 December 2012 in order to coincide with the 33rd anniversary of Rosaleen Norton’s death.

Dark Spirits, creeping closer

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by Salamander and Sons in A.O. Spare, Magic Books, Rosaleen Norton

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Art, Austin Osman Spare, Books, Dark Spirits, Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare, Dr. Nevill Drury, Magic, Magical Art, Rosaleen Norton

By late April 2012, all pre-order copies of the Deluxe Edition of Dr. Nevill Drury’s Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare – strictly limited to 95 copies numbered by hand, fully bound in black leather with gilt title and device, silk bookmark ribbon, and accompanied by an exclusive hand numbered print of the terrible Werplon entity encountered by Rosaleen Norton – had been snapped up by a mix of dedicated esoteric practitioners, astute bibliographic investors and ‘curious readers’. Sincere gratitude to the fine individuals who subscribed to the Deluxe Edition:

Steven Doelan, Michael Thompson, Jesse A. Mantyh, Scott Madison, Thomas Karlsson, Robert Wallis, Maria Azambuja, Michael Gallant, Alan Kostrencic, Jonathan Davies, Angi Patton, Lutz Lemke, Paul Bisanti, Gary Owen, Simon Buxton, David Beth, Richard Kaczynski, Peter Oravetz, John Smith, Cameron Lindo, AJNA, Arild Stromsvag, Neil Graf, Mark Corcoran, David Kairis, Jesper Petersen, Adam McLean, Paul Prescott, Esoteric Source, Stanton Marlan, William Kiesel, Tim Hartridge, Melissa Reaburn-Jenkin, Allan Harrison, Mariusz Doering, Jacqueline Maher, Darcy Kuntz, Sue Cavanagh-Lang, William Morris, Matthew Ward, Amy Duncan, William Burkle, Paul Bland, Patrice Maleze, Michael Douglas, Gudni Gudnason, Jerusalem Press, Aron Clark, Robert Wyatt, Mitch Stargrove, Judith Illes, Andersen Andrews, David Heney, Orryelle Defenestrate Bascule, Greg Brown, Evelyn Hall, David Metcalfe, David Greenhill, Shellay Maughan, Brian Broadt, Kenneth Iverson, and Mark Mould.

Cover artwork for the Deluxe Edition of Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare, fully bound in black leather

Cover artwork for the Deluxe Edition of Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare, fully bound in black leather

Due to considerable demand from those who had missed out on a Deluxe Edition of Dark Spirits, we elected to publish a standard hardcover edition, also limited to just 95 copies. This edition will be bound simply in cloth with a dust jacket, unnumbered and without the Werplon print.

Cover artwork for the standard hardcover edition of Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare

Cover artwork for the standard hardcover edition of Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare

Both the Deluxe Edition and the standard hardcover edition will be published on 05 December 2012 in order to coincide with the 33rd anniversary of Rosaleen Norton’s death – and with our profound apologies for the necessary revisions of publication dates. Later posts during October will feature more updates, excerpts and page spreads (the latter of which are currently being proofed by the author).

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