Art Gnosis, Alan Moore and True Will

[Nightgrowler]

Greetings everyone!
My reentry into the world of occult occurred on New Year’s night of 2019, when I read Alan Moore’s essay “Fossil Angels” for the first time. The whole essay can be summarized by a short “Art=Magick. Magick=Art” but I highly encourage you to go down that rabbit hole by yourself and read through the whole text, it is just outstanding. Since that night my life was changed forever. Later on I have read Moore’s Promethea, a comic book about Goddess of Imagination which if applied in a certain way can organize you one on one meeting with this goddess. For more than six years now I am diving into mysteries of this Art Magick and hundreds of artworks were made along this way.
How do you apply Arts in your practice? Do you have maybe music component, or sculpture arts?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[Robert Ramsay]

My only art is writing - I've written some short stories with occult themes and hopefully publishing them this year!

Your artwork is amazing!

 

[divandan]

I am not full fledged practitioner, but the art helps me focus when I draw or color. Once or twice when I had an illness I drew the part of my body that hurt and talked to it. The next day it was gone, or greatly calmed down.
I feel the pull of an magick instinct in me lately and last night I started reading Alan Moore the Moon and the Serpent Bumper book. It's funny that I stumbled on another person being nudged by the Bearded Moore.

 

[deus ex machina]

I've come to see ceremonial magic and art as indeed inseparable. You could say it is performance art for a limited audience, sometimes only personal, but still performance art. Indeed I think this is really key to understanding magic and maybe even the arts themselves. Of course, all the related/preparatory activities are also arts/crafts so there is that too. In some ways this view also somewhat normalizes ceremonial magic as well (if it was in any need of normalizing or if we even consider artists normal) and folds into a more natural part of your life/self-expression.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I've come to see ceremonial magic and art as indeed inseparable. You could say it is performance art for a limited audience, sometimes only personal, but still performance art. Indeed I think this is really key to understanding magic and maybe even the arts themselves. Of course, all the related/preparatory activities are also arts/crafts so there is that too. In some ways this view also somewhat normalizes ceremonial magic as well (if it was in any need of normalizing or if we even consider artists normal) and folds into a more natural part of your life/self-expression.

This is why I recommend Stanislavski's 'An Actor Prepares', for magicians. If you read it from a magical point of view, it's pretty mind-blowing.

 

[deus ex machina]

Just ran into an Instagram post (which is otherwise in theme for wizards out there too) that really also addresses this point:
"Beauty is not merely adornment - it is a tool that awakens within the soul its innate powers, guiding it back to the Sublime, the Eternal, and the True..."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[stalkinghyena]

There was a time when my art and my magic were two separate conceptual spheres, which is weird looking back because I was always trying to paint fantasy art - though more in the direction of Frazetta, Vallejo-Bell, and whoever did those 80's AD&D Gary Gygax book covers. This tendency devolved into perfectionist "babe art", which I thought meant money (I had aspired towards "commercial art"), but there was a drive for something deeper. I mean, one can only do so much with girls and swords or general phallic symbolism plus a side-kick reptile as an aesthetic - but seeing Olivia De Berdanaris' work was always crushing. "Pinup" just doesn't describe her sublimity!

(And I disagree with a friend who says that "airbrush was the AI of the 90's. That's because I sucked at airbrush).

That 20th century fantasy art was derivative of the occult fascinations coming out of the Symbolist Movement didn't occur to me until recent research. There's a current I am drawn to there, but I must face the hairy satyr dances of Joseph Peladin... urrr...

As to ceremonial though, making wands and pentacles and wall symbols &etc - all that seemed absolutely necessary to fulfill the GD temple aspirations in a tiny apartment - but a lot of acrylics ended up staining the floor in the quest of perfection. I've learned a lot since then, especially recently since I came across Grant's appropriation of the term "creative occultism". That is, an individualistic interpretation of "universals"... but it's too early for me to go in deeper on that.

One more thought though - gnosis is absolutely possible through art. I mean not just the visionary sense, but a real transformation of awareness beyond the delusions of object-relations ignorance. For me, it's kind of like how Aryeh Kaplan talks about the Sephiroth can only truly experienced in momentary flashes. I can describe being "zapped" - but nothing can really capture what lies beyond representation. Transcendence really is a "stripping away" to the deepest essentials - and even these are but layers of more layers.