X Marks the Spot

Gerhard Richter-Grey House

It hadn’t stopped raining for a moment since his arrival in Eden Falls. The days (if the pale pearl grey light could be classified as day) and the white, starless nights were considerably longer than in most standard regions, clocking in around 36 hours, undoubtedly controlled by decanates and/or Janus-faced daemons. Looking out from one of the innumerable windows, the Melancholy  Lieutenant automatically defined the constant drizzle and mizzle as culchie soft rain, however in his attempts at surveying the territory he soon realised that the very sky looked to deceive. Drenched to the skin and bone he would beat a hasty retreat long before reaching the end of the drive that appeared to lead nowhere, crazy zig-zagging across the arsenic green fields to suddenly stop against a lone oak, a lookout for the massed ranks of its brethren in the faraway forest.

So the Melancholy Lieutenant would while away the time investigating Eden Falls. Up stairs and through corridors he walked, opening doors that led to rooms of angled mirrors or vast chandeliered ballrooms empty apart from a solitary upright piano, past endless colonnades interrupted by the regular statuary procession of mounted tyrants, down steps that finished in mid-air. Somewhere in this maze there must be a clue to the exit, he thought doggedly, determined to be re-united with the Ingénue.

He discovered a room full of globes and atlases, a Map Room of a Victorian gentleman. However the maps were just diagrams and architectural plans with a scale of 1:1, of no longer existing wings and hastily abandoned extensions of Eden Falls. The library seemed to contain a hint of promise, but most of the books were written in Chaldean or Etruscan or Babylonian, or even Agarthaen or Enochian or Lemurian.  The pop-up books contained only cleverly designed miniature 3D versions of rooms he had already trudged through.

That left the jigsaw puzzles that every drawer in the building (be it palace or sanatorium or mental asylum or hotel) seemed to contain. The picture on the outside of the box was always misleading, unsurprisingly enough, he thought.  It was never a street or circus scene, never a Cezanne or a Monet, it was forever the labyrinth of Eden Falls. He had almost given up hope when he found a puzzle that appeared to have a pattern on both sides, though the backside was just two-tone black & white. At least it won’t be another illustration of a prison, he thought, as he began to pierce the ten thousand and one pieces together.

With mounting excitement and dread he realised, as the pieces fall into place, that this was the message he had been waiting for. But what if he didn’t like what it had to say? Perhaps it was a trap set by Le Bateleur? No matter, he had to carry on.

As soon as the Melancholy Lieutenant triumphantly slotted the last tile into place and began to scan the writing, he heard a phone ring out. He hadn’t seen or heard a phone during the entire duration of his time in Eden Falls. Trying to quell his panic he decided to concentrate on the message contained in the puzzle, because something was definitely now happening and what other options did he have?

X marks the spot

You are here

X

But where you should be

Is the other side

Don’t pick up                                                                          Run run double quick

Abra-Xas

\\\\\3-6-5/////

That is that then, he decided, though he never had any intention of picking up the incessantly ringing phone anyway. The warning of the message posed further disturbing questions, but those could wait. It was time to go. He located and grabbed his kit-bag (always packed in case of emergencies and sudden departures) and ran out into the rain.

He kept on running until he had reached the oak that marked the end of the pointless driveway. Pausing for a moment he couldn’t resist a look back at the building, which flickered briefly out of focus, before fading away totally. That gig was up, the nixer nixed, Eden Falls was 86’ed.

The Melancholy Lieutenant, turning his collar to the cold and damned, headed towards the forest, searching for the deepest cover.

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A Wicked Pack of Cards

The Wheel of Fortune-Tarot de Marseille

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes.Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks.
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring,
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

T.S Eliot The Waste Land 1922

It is no surprise really that the Tarot are mentioned at length in the masterpiece of Modernism, T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land from 1922. The notes alone are a treasure trove of esoteric references, making mention of the Cumaean Sibyl, The Golden Bough of James Frazer, the study of Arthurian legend From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston, Buddha’s Fire Sermon, Gérard de Nerval’s densely hermetic sonnet El Desdichado and the Upanishads.

Interest in all matters esoteric and occult had become a feature of the avant-garde ever since the later Romantics, especially Charles Baudelaire and the above-mentioned Gérard de Nerval. Later in the 19th Century there would be Arthur Rimbaud with his theory of  ‘the alchemy of the word’, the Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s stint in Paris as a practising alchemist, known as the Inferno Period, and various writers and painters connected to the Symbolist and Decadent movements, most notably  J.K Huysmans and my personal favourite Comte de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (see To the Dreamers, To the Deriders).

As the century progressed the Tarot became increasingly esoteric itself. This was quite a recent development, previously the Tarot had been a card game popular in Italy, France and Switzerland, though it also undisputedly used in cartomancy as well. However it was a theologian and Freemason, the Count Gébelin who first advanced the theory in 1781 that the Tarot was a repository of lost ancient knowledge, a theme developed at length by that strange figure known as Etteilla, who added that it was initially conceived by Hermes Tristemegistus himself and was actually ‘The Book of Thoth’. When the man responsible for the French Occult Revival, Eliphas Levi incorporated the Tarot into his magical system and tied the 22 cards of the Major Arcana with the 22 characters of the Hebrew alphabet, the occultation of the Tarot was complete and it became an essential tool for any would-be magician. A quick comparison between any of the older versions of the Tarot with the most famous deck, the Rider-Waite-Smith of 1910 makes this clear, the Rider-Waite-Smith is self-consciously more “mystical”, with an over-abundance of symbolism.

In certain respects the Tarot was tailored-made for Modernism and Post-Modernism, with its emphasis on chance, interpenetration and the shifting, elusive nature of meaning. I have written previously on the Surrealist take on the standard deck of playing cards, Le Jeu Du Marseille-A Surrealist Pack of Cards, and both Salvador Dali and Ithell Colquhuon produced Tarot decks. The Italian post-modernist fabulist Italo Calvino wrote The Castle of Crossed Destinies where the entire plot is told through the Tarot. The Chilean-French film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky has written eloquently on the Tarot de Marseille and weaves the arcana throughout the acid western  El Topo (The Mole) and The Holy Mountain.

In Douglas Cammell’s and Nicholas Roeg’s midnight classic movie Performance, the on-the-run gangster Chas Devlin (James Fox) turns up at the Notting Hill home of the reclusive rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) claiming, somewhat inexplicably, to be a juggler. The first numbered card of the Major Arcana is sometimes called The Juggler, though it nowadays most commonly referred to as The Magician. This hermetic figure points both downward (to the underworld) and upwards (to the stars), a perfect illustration of as above, so below, and prefigures the merging identities towards the end of the movie. Turner seems to realise the import of Devlin’s claim to be a juggler as he immediately comments, ‘You’re a performer of natural magic’.

A quick word on the selection of images; there are thousands of variants on the Tarot available so I have limited myself mainly to the classics. My own preference is for the Tarot De Marseille and the Swiss 1JJ, however the most recognisable is the Rider-Waite-Smith.  I have included selections from Dali and Colquhuon as well as the deck designed by Lady Freida Harris for Aleister Crowley. For a contemporary rendition Ulla Von Brandenburg’s excellent deck shows that Tarot continue to fascinate and inspire.

Death-Swiss 1JJ

The Sun-Rider-Waite-Smith

The Devil-Crowley-Harris

The Lovers, Wheel of Fortune, The Moon-Dali

Tarot-Ithell Colquhuon

The Magician-Rider-Waite-Smith

Tarot-Ulla Von Bradenburg-2008

Cosmic Geometry

Emma Kunz

In 1938 the Swiss clairvoyant and telepathic healer Emma Kunz began to channel large scale drawings on graph paper using coloured pencils, crayons and a pendulum. During the creation of a piece, which could take up to 48 hours, Kunz neither slept or ate, subsisting entirely on liquids. Neighbours commented that the light was always on at her home. The drawings were then used as a therapeutic tool for her patients, whom she would encourage to meditate upon the mandala-like patterns.

I was first led to this astonishing artist by a comment about my post on the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, (thank you herongrace). There are indeed similarities, both were female abstract artists with an all consuming interest in mysticism and spiritualism, whose mediumistic art goes far beyond aesthetic formal concerns. Both Klint and Kunz were only discovered after their deaths, and indeed were two-thirds of an exhibition on leading female abstract artists, the other being Agnes Martin. However Klint was a professional artist who kept her groundbreaking innovations a secret, while Kunz had no formal artistic training but thought highly enough of her work (and rightly so) to publish two books.

Since the first exhibition in 1973, ten years after her death, Kunz’s work has been show around the world, including a joint show with Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner. The Emma Kunz Museum in Wurenlos, Switzerland houses 70 of her most important artworks.

Emma Kunz 1

Emma Kunz 2

Emma Kunz 3

Emma Kunz 4

Emma Kunz 5

Emma Kunz 6

Emma Kunz 7

Emma Kunz 8

Deep Dark & Heavy

Valentine Hugo-L’heure exacte 1926

Of course you can give it away;
It’s only love,
Our final hope of everything
Indeed anything.
We’ve always squandered
All opportunities,
Wasted time, money and chances,
Not for gamblers like us
Calculated risks, urged cautions,
Instead all I need
Is a sign: to close my eyes,
Take your hand,
Leap into the deep dark & heavy.

Selene

Configuration-Max Ernst 1974

I can’t believe this
I can’t
I can’t believe this feeling,
In control of my desolation,
Home in the alienation.
You said you’d take me higher,
And I’m higher,
Higher than ever before
I can’t believe that
I’m seeing the blue-green orb
Spinning frenetically
Ceaselessly ebbing, flowing, flooding,
Mutability the only constant
From this vantage-point
Of this Empire of Dust.
But I am tranquil in my isolation,
Calm in the knowledge,
Of this monthly death
And rebirth, the steady
Procession of waxing and waning,
Gibbous and crescent,
The fullness that must pass
Into invisibility before re-commencing
As two celestial bodies approach closer,
You take me still higher
The cycle and phases of lunacy,
Rays of translucent illumination
A ladder of fine silken threads
Leading upwards towards a point
Where I can glimpse some kind
Of knowledge, leading to communion
With the stellar inhuman intelligence,
The Alabaster Goddess
Whose light burns like ice
Through my veins to ignite in my mind
A deadly passion for her chill
Embrace over on the far dark side.

XSES

Darcilio-Lima-Untitled (Detail)

Our love
Has become a prison,
But then again
I never wanted to be free.
Do you?

Ten not nine or eleven
But always ten.

We are singular in our plurality
Locked together double-backed
Casting the old triple hex,
Vexing the world while sexing
The quartet of primordial elements

Can you see the pattern
In all these fragments?

The cracked actor drops the mask
And stares into the shattered mirror,
But reflected back in the jagged shards
Are the faces seen during masquerade,
Not anybody’s idea of tragedy.

Any order imposed is as arbitrary
And as random as chaos.

What direction to take?
Make an invocation to the cardinal points,
Look for a sign or an augury
In this emptiness tending
Towards the never-ceasing absolute.

Taken as a whole, maybe
It contains the summation of a sum.

Past the fabled event horizon:
All is only horror here, a hybrid
Of repetitions and repressions
Under the dominion of a Goddess
The metal arachnid XCES who demands homage.

Where do you fit in?
Circle, square, pentagram or rhombus?

Give me succour and some liquor
Then lacquer this reality, varnish
The truth that the party is over,
Drew the curtains, hide from the day
Keep alive the illusions of night and love.

Intimacy

Rene Magritte-The Lovers 1928

All you ever
All you ever wanted
All you ever needed
All you ever
All you ever looked for
Was that intrusion of intimacy
At first, maybe just a glance,
Then the fleeting touch
That lingers for a brief instance
Suggestive of a succession of eternities
Something yet still more
Than the fiction of painless friction
A sovereign surrender
A paradoxical return to the self
Urging to merge together
Indivisible diversity
Rushing towards a paradise
Of blissful annihilation
All we ever sought
All we ever
All we ever tried to find
In tired old hotel bedrooms
Where the leaky faucets
Taps out a tedious tattoo
On the cracked enamel
All we ever
Amongst the haphazardly scattered
Bricks of centuries old ruins,
Beneath a uniform sky
The very denial of colour
All we ever desired
On the encroaching beach
Torching the landscape
With its scorched earth strangeness
All we ever tried to do
In the wasteland littered
With bric-a-brac and detritus,
The untold story of a million lives
Struggle for pleasure,
Was to become intimate
To really feel someone other,
To escape the terror
However briefly,
Even for an instance,
Of the All-Seeing I.

All I ever needed
All I ever wanted
All I ever
Was your intimacy.

Another Glass of Sangria

Climax-Gaspar Noé 2018

Near the beginning of Gaspar Noé’s dance-horror movie Climax, we are introduced to the dancers via their audition interviews, which are played on a TV surrounded by VHS titles (it is set in 1996), which include such gonzo avant-garde/horror films as Suspiria, Possession, Salo, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Un Chien Andalou, further signalling (just in case you missed the bloodied body crawling through the snow at the start, and that it is a Noé movie) that what is to follow is going to be a full frontal assault on the senses. Whether you love it or hate it, Climax certainly succeeds as an overwhelming experience.

But before we go down to  Hell, we get a glimpse of Heaven in the extraordinary dance scene. Shot in one very long take, the young and diverse dancers, in their final rehearsal before leaving France to tour America, produce a thing of beauty as they krump, vogue, freestyle and strut their awe-inspiring stuff. The exuberance, energy and sense of collective euphoria on display is truly joyous to watch. Naturally the beautiful people want to party after such a success. Simmering with polymorphous sexual tension, a note of discord is introduced in the bitchy and potentially amorous conversations. Following another stunning series of set pieces by individual dancers, filmed from above, and around the time Thomas Bangalter’s Sangria kicks in, the dance crew begin to realise that the sangria which they have been drinking (most of them anyway) has in fact been spiked with LSD, the mood accordingly darkens and the party degenerates rapidly.

What follows is the mother of all bummer trips, an epic Grand Guignol freak out that is almost unbearably intense as the dancers descend into a netherworld of paranoia, violence, debauched sexual excess and over-saturated primary colours, perfectly captured in the nausea inducing camera angles.

Full credit to the cast, who with the exception Sofia Boutella are dancers not actors, and the spectacular choreography of Nina McNelly. The pulsating soundtrack charts the journey from sublime ecstasy to raging madness wonderfully, below are two tracks that feature when the vibes start to get heavy.

Countdown

The Surrealist-Victor Brauner 1947

Count it down,
Let it begin,
So that we be finished,
Better sooner than later.
We never start something
Without wanting it over,
Done with all that,
Time
To start on something else,
Something brand spanking
New
So in descending order
Because to go down
Is really an ascension
Concentrate hard
On the numbers chosen
Whether it be
696, 695, 694
or
93, 92, 91
Or perhaps just
21
Forever significant
(But everything has significance)
So let the countdown …

She turns over the card and pauses,
Lost in contemplation and glances
Over at the abstracted young man
Looking downwards at the table,
There cannot be any doubt, no,
Not this time for once she is sure:
She waits until his coppered stare
Intermingles with her agate rays
Before speaking, carefully considers
The weight and import of each word
“Do you see this card, Le Bateleur,
Numero uno in the pack, but neither
Aleph or alpha, although he juggles
Worlds and words, a natural Magician
With fast hands and silvered tongue,
A grifter and a shyster, but make
No mistake his quick change routine
Is as magic as magick is, all is illusion
After all and he just sells us dreams
Make believe meanings, confidences,
The glittering allure of glamour;
But through such deceptive practises
He rends and tears the veil
To reveal ultimate reality, maybe;
The workings of chance and destiny
The latent manifestation of will.
Well…can you see now?
Do you understand?”
Lowering his eyes he shakes his head
“No? Maybe you will one day,
When you look in some form
Of mirror that will reveal more
Than just the surface of things:
The entire history from the whimper
Back to the lightening strike of the start.”

Occultistry

Claude Cahun

Do I need to spell it out for you?
These words of mine are meant
As a spell neither more or less,
A charm to persuade your sweet self
To surrender in absentia and toto,
Give me the power and I promise,
In fact, swear on all that is unholy
To abuse the privilege you
Have so graciously granted, heedlessly,
Recklessly rushing through all
Of love’s myriad delights and mystery,
Imputing a whole lexicon of desire
In the sections of your shadow
Outlined against the bedroom wall,
In the jutting angles of your legs
For I seek the centre, a still point
Where all yearnings will cease
And desist from transmitting
This urgent ungovernable need
To translate the will divine,
This damnable demonic occultistry
That devours yet is never sated.