Magic Art by André Breton
Description
What is ‘Magic Art’?
In 1953, André Breton, founder of the surrealist movement, was invited by a prestigious French publisher to explore answers to this question. His resulting analysis is wide-ranging and evocative. Beginning with a literary review of magic and art, Breton draws upon Novalis and Baudelaire before considering the prehistoric rock art of Spain and France, the native art of the Pacific Northwest, the magical grimoires and alchemical symbolism of the Middle Ages, and the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Antoine Caron, Paolo Uccello, Gustav Moreau, Paul Gauguin and the Surrealists. Through these and other diverse sources, Breton traces a mystery that lies at the heart of our timeless fascination with otherness and seeks to place surrealism as a successor to a magical sensibility that began with art itself. First published in 1957 as L’Art magique, this important text is offered here as an English translation for the first time. Working from manuscript notes for the original project, this edition presents the iconographic content as Breton intended, together with more than 300 new citations and a comprehensive bibliography that emphasizes sources found in Breton’s own library.
If you like this, you might also like:
The Holy Books of the A.'.A.' by Aleister Crowley
£69.99
Books of the Great White Brotherhood.
Features include:
Smyth-sewn and bound in soft Italian imitation leather;
Printed in black and red on heavy octavo Quran paper;
Rounded corners and red page edges on all sides;
A black double-sided satin ribbon marker;
Two-column format with a 10pt Roman typeface;
Cross-references between all "Class A" texts;
Brand-new critical apparatus to Libri CCXX and CDXVIII;
A legible reproduction of the holograph MS of Liber Legis;
No Egyptian portals, post-Crowley imprimaturs, or unclassified comments
to distract the reader.
Rituale Corvorum by Aleister Crowley
£55.00
Official rituals and instructions of the Great White Brotherhood presented in a format similar to a Catholic Missal or a Protestant Prayer Book.
Mysteriorium Libri Quinque: Dr. John Dee's Five Books of Mysteries by Joseph Peterson (ed)
£66.60 £74.00
A central text of occult literature, now for the first time in a deluxe hardcover edition with new ancillary material by one of the most renowned scholars of occult literature.
Discovered in a hidden compartment of an old chest long after his death, the secret writings of John Dee, one of the leading scientists and occultists of Elizabethan England, records in minute detail his research into the occult. Dee concealed his treatises on the nature of humankind’s contact with angelic realms and languages throughout his life, and they were nearly lost forever. In his brief biography of John Dee, Joseph Peterson calls him a “true Renaissance man”, detailing his work in astronomy, mathematics, navigation, the arts, astrology, and the occult sciences.
All this was preparation for Dee’s main achievement: five books, revealed and transcribed between March 1582 and May 1583, bringing to light mysteries and truths that scholars and adepts have been struggling to understand and use ever since. These books detail his system for communicating with the angels and reveal that the angels were interested in and involved with the exploration and colonization of the New World and in heralding a new age or new world order. While Dee’s influence was certainly felt in his lifetime, his popularity has grown tremendously since. His system was used and adapted by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and subsequently by Aleister Crowley.
First published by Weiser Books in 2003 as John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic (Quinti Libri Mysteriorum), his new edition will include:
· Updates to the introduction that reflect twenty years of research by the editor, Joseph Peterson, since the previous edition was last published
· Corrections to text based on a review of high-res scans of the original manuscripts that the British Library only recently made available
· New, high resolution images of Dee’s drawings, symbols, sigils, and diagrams
· New appendices reflecting more recent scholarship.