Dangerous Minds pal artist/filmmaker/musician Brian Butler will be premiering an ambitious live performance art piece this Saturday, January 21 in Los Angeles at the Ruskin Theatre in Santa Monica. His muse, Annakim Violette (daughter of rockstar Tom Petty) will be at the center of this black magic occult ritual.

From the press release:

Union of Opposites is an experiment in ritual magick, combining the use of sound and light with the intent of creating a collective out-of-body experience. A film screening will transform into a live performance in which the artist and his team execute an occult rite inspired by Aleister Crowley’s mysterious Ritual of the Mark of the Beast. In this incantation, Butler explores ideas of reversal and the use of geometric figures as channels of occult power. The work will feature a spontaneously improvised soundtrack that experiments with the effects of sound frequencies and rhythmic chanting on our chakras and mental state.

Butler’s interest in expanded cinema will fold the performance space into the work. He views the film, performance and musical accompaniment as a singular entity, where the performers will “expand from two dimensional screen to three dimensional existence” as themes of astral projection and projective geometry interplay with the auditory and visual stimuli.

Butler—who has communed and consulted with occultists and magicians from Europe to South America—explains that “magick is an art unto itself. In a sense, is the art of living in a creative and free way.” Influenced by the work of British arch-occultist Aleister Crowley, Butler believes that magick is conducive to and “complements” all manner of creativity, helping practitioners access different parts of the mind as well as spiritual realms. Butler explains: “The occult is defined as the hidden levels of the mind or the hidden information about how things work…A really intense performance is like hypnosis. You go to a certain state of mind and your presence brings those around you to the same place.”

A part of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, in the Ruskin Theatre at the Santa Monica Airport, 3000 Airport Ave, 5pm. Produced in conjunction with Annie Wharton Los Angeles.

Below, Butler’s 42-second film “Night of Pan” from the OneDreamRush collective show, featuring Kenneth Anger, Vincent Gallo and Twiggy Ramirez.
 

 
Thank you Susan von Seggern!

 
Okay, so this incredible “standoff” between The Great Beast and the Best Movie Villain of All Time is photoshopped. It’s still an amazing image, though. Happy Halloween!

Image by coffin_person on Flickr.

(via IHC via Boing Boing )

Artist, alchemical filmmaker, musical archeologist and avant garde shaman, Harry Smith’s obsessive interests made him an influential, yet not widely known, figure of 20th century Beat culture and beyond. If Smith was only responsible for preserving the folk and blues musical traditions of early America in his Anthology of American Folk Music set from 1952, we would have him to thank for providing a way forward for a young Bob Dylan and the whole of the 60s/70s folk scene.

But Smith was far more than that, he was a filmmaker of astonishing originality, making stop motion animations influenced by 19th advertising art and the elaborate Middle Ages alchemical paintings of Robert Fludd. When I first saw VHS dubs of Smith’s films in the 1980s, I was impressed of course, but as I later learned, in actual fact what I had seen was only a part of what Smith had intended. He made his films as magic lanterns, with several projectors running at once and spinning lamps complementing the central image. When I saw his restored masterpiece No. 18: Mahagonny at the Getty Center in Los Angeles a few years back, it struck me how difficult it must have been to sync up four projectors at once (and the musical accompaniment, a recording of Kurt Weil and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny opera).

The restored version of Smith’s celluloid tetraptych was a marvel to behold, with all of the four images now perfectly in time to one another, and looking like a great psychedelic kaleidoscope of imagery taken around New York City, in particular the Chelsea Hotel and its bohemian denizens. Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg and the Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin all make cameo appearances. Seen, digitally restored and as Smith had intended, it was simply breath taking.

Apparently Smith never met a drug he didn’t like and would take any pill, drink any drink, smoke any joint, or snort any powder offered him and he was not at all averse to huffing gasoline, it’s been said, when that’s all that was around. For long periods of time he lived off the kindness of others and borrowed lots of money he had no intention of ever repaying. Yet Smith himself was said to be generous to a fault. Strange anecdotes about Harry Smith abound, many of them collected in two books about him American Magus: Harry Smith (edited by Paola Igliori) and Think of the Self Speaking (edited by Rani Singh, who is Smith’s archivist). My favorite story about Smith is how, if he’d find a pair of glasses, try them on and could see out of them better than the ones he was wearing, he’d toss the old pair in the garbage. Smith also claimed that Aleister Crowley was his father. All in all, you could say he was a colorful guy.

I am reminded of Harry Smith every day. I have one of the original Tree of Life prints that Smith made in the 1950s and gave as a gift to Allen Ginsberg. It’s still in the original brass frame that Ginsberg put it in. His handwriting is on the back in pencil along with a sticker from the Whitney. It’s in our dining room now.

In the last couple of years, New York-based artist M Henry Jones, who worked with Smith and continues to project Smith’s work as it was intended to be seen (click here for a short interview with Jones and some footage of one of his special Smith screenings. It’s really interesting to see, trust me) has put up a few fascinating videos of Smith being interviewed:

 
Happy Crowleymas everyone. On today’s date, October 12th in 1875, the British occultist, poet, mountain climber, artist and eccentric was born. “The Great Beast 666,” as he liked to think of himself, was voted the “seventy-third greatest Briton of all time” in a 2002 BBC poll along with Johnny Rotten, J.R.R. Tolkien and Julie Andrews.

And here’s a timely item: The 1920s site of Crowley’s “Abbey of Thelema” in Cefalù, Italy is for sale. This dump can be yours for a mere 850,000 euros!
 

 
You can see a photo gallery from the real estate listing here.

One of the wall paintings by Crowley at the Abbey, via Hunter 333’s Flickrstream
 

 
Below, a goofy episode of Scariest Places on Earth that focuses on The Abbey of Thelema. There are some pretty hilarious moments if you can wade through the boring parts. I noticed that they’ve got edits from an obscure, early Psychic TV video intercut here whenever they want to indicate evil or malevolence. What’s with the voice over???
 

 
Part II is here. After the jump, a closer look at the Abbey of Thelema’s ruins.

 
Over at Facsimile Dust Jackets you can find (and purchase) an incredible selection of scans of dust jackets from classic novels by Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K Dick, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Christopher Isherwood, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Agatha Christie, Aleister Crowley, Dennis Wheatley, Robert Bloch, Len Deighton and many, many more. Have a look for yourself here.
 

 

 

 

 
More fab facsimile dust jackets, after the jump…
 

 
Fantastic portrait series titled “Saints and Sinners” from New York City-based artist—and founder of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School—Molly Crabapple. Each print is available for $80 over at Molly’s website.

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Great Beast 666 Ouija board, handmade by James Woodford:

Litho print mounted onto hand stained and treated board with colour matched felt backing for that luxurious touch. Complete with planchette designed and fabricated by myself. In wood. Again hand finished to a high standard. Each board has a hand-made bag for safe keeping, covered in Crowleys unique interpretation of the Unicurcal hexagram.

This will be in a limited edition of 50 Ouija boards. £200.00. Order here.

Aleister Crowley and the Ouija Board by J. Edward Cornelius

 
Take a look at the amazing stained glass portraiture by Neal Fox. Fox’s work reminds me of the work of many different artists, including Gilbert & George, Roy Lichtenstein, even Joe Coleman (composition, not details, obviously!). I’ll bet this exhibition is impressive “in the flesh.”

Daniel Blau Ltd. is pleased to present Neal Fox’s latest project Beware of the God. Fox’s drawings depict a phantasmagoric journey through the detritus and mythology of pop culture. From a life-long obsession with the tales of his dead grandfather, a World War II bomber pilot, writer and hell raiser, his large-scale drawings have developed into increasingly layered celebrations of the debauched and iconoclastic characters whose ideas have helped shape our collective consciousness.

Fox’s latest project takes many of the recurring subjects of his drawings and portrays them through the medium of the stained glass window. As traditional church windows show the iconography of saints, through representations of events in their lives, instruments of martyrdom and iconic motifs, Fox plays with the symbolism of each character’s cult of personality; Albert Hoffman takes a psychedelic bicycle ride above the LSD molecule, J G Ballard dissects the world, surrounded by 20th Century imagery and the eroticism of the car crash, and Johnny Cash holds his inner demon in chains after a religious experience in Nickerjack cave. One quality in particular binds these characters and the others together; a refusal to conform and conviction in their own ideology.

Working with traditional methods at the renowned Franz Mayer of Munich manufacturer, Fox is producing a set of twelve 2.5 metre high stained-glass windows; exhibited in a single room – an alternative church of alternative saints.

Neal Fox’s “Beware of the God” at Daniel Blau Ltd., 51 Hoxton Square, London until August 10th.

 
More after the jump…

 
Aleister Crowley and the Other Loch Ness Monster is quirky and fascinating short documentary on the “most wickedest man in the world” and his time at Boleskine House, at the turn of the last century. Crowley purchased the estate on the shores of the south-east shore of Loch Ness in order to carry out rituals from The Book of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage, as he required:

...a house where proper precautions against disturbance can be taken; this being arranged, there is really nothing to do but to aspire with increasing fervor and concentration, for six months, towards the obtaining of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

Crowley described Boleskine in Confessions:

The house is a long low building. I set apart the south-western half for my work. The largest room has a bow window and here I made my door and constructed the terrace and lodge. Inside the room I set up my oratory proper. This was a wooden structure, lined in part with the big mirrors which I brought from London.

For Crowley, Boleskine House was a “Thelemic Kiblah”, a “Magical East”, where he practiced the Black Mass and summoned demons, which may have caused disruption to Loch Ness, as Crowley later claimed in his autobiography:

...the spirits he summoned got out of hand, causing one housemaid to leave, and a workman to go mad. He also insinuates he was indirectly responsible for a local butcher accidentally severing an artery and bleeding to death. Crowley had written the names of some demons on a bill from the butcher’s shop.

Garry S. Grant’s documentary is never less than engaging, and contains fine contributions from Kenneth Anger, Colin Wilson, Neil Oram, Head of the UK OTO, John Bonner and Mogg Morgan. The commentary is read by former Jesus of Nazarerth actor Robert Powell.
 

 
Jump about 5:50 in to hear how Michael Jackson contacted the spirit of the flamboyant pianist using a favorite occult technique of the Great Beast 666!

There is ten freakin’ hours of They Sold Their Souls for Rock N Roll.

Can you imagine being forcibly subjected to all ten hours by fundie parents?
 

 
Via The American Jesus

Image via LA Weekly
 
Certainly the members of OFWGKTA know how to do what they wilt, but the big question about the controversial hip hop collective’s big performance this weekend at the Coachella music festival is"Will Earl Sweatshirt be there?”

 
Kenneth Anger gives a wonderfully loose and informative talk on Aleister Crowley. From his birth in 1875 to his death in a boarding house in 1947 (not 1974 as said here), Anger gives snapshots of Crowley’s life through commentary on his painting, his use of writing paper, his mountaineering expeditions, his potboiler Diary of a Drug Fiend, Cefalu, the Blitz, to his involvement with the Occult and why the “Most Wickedest Man in the World”:

Crowley was not afraid of devils, in fact, they were part of his family.  He was never afraid of anything on the other side - angel, devil, these are names you put on entities - but he said, ‘Welcome friend.’”

Anger also sketches in his own life and interests, and explains why he was officially declared a fire hazard.
 

 
This should be interesting. Ken Russell is Aleister Crowley in a new short (which is currently in the edit) from Imperium Pictures.
 
Previously on DM:

Ken Russell’s banned film ‘Dance of the Seven Veils
Before ‘The Devils’: Bad-boy Director Ken Russell calls down the Angels, in 1958

Crowley self-portrait, 1920
 
‘The Man We Want To Hang’ is a film shot by Kenneth Anger documenting an exhibit of Aleister Crowley’s paintings at London’s October Gallery in April 1998. The score is by Liadov.

I was amazed when I found this video. I thought I’d seen all of Anger’s films, but I was wrong. While it’s neither the trippy spectacle or erotic fetishism one expects of Anger, it still has moments where you sense the Anger ‘touch’. But mostly Kenneth steps out of the way and let’s Crowley’s paintings take center stage.

‘The Man We Want To Hang’, the title of the film also the title of the notorious Sunday Express article which had denounced A.C. as the “Wickedest Man In The World.” The title is also a pun on art being hung on gallery walls, and a possible reference to The Hanged Man of the Tarot—who appears in the film a few times—although nothing jumped out at me as I looked over that entry in The Book of Thoth to back up that line of thought (but I’m sure those with well wore copies of 777 and The Book of Thoth and a knack for undoing and uncovering occult puzzles may have better luck that I did ...)

The art works themselves—drawn of the collections of Keith Richmond, Jimmy Page and the Ordo Templi Orientis International—depict a variety of subjects. Simple landscapes of mountains, volcanoes and sea, serpents and malevolent beings from some daemonic reality, portraits of individuals familiar to those versed in A.C.‘s biography—such as Gerald Yorke and various Scarlet Women—and self-portraits of A.C., some evoking grey aliens or Lam.

If this was the only output of an artist they would have at most been a curious and obscure art historical footnote, if even that. But when put into the context of A.C.‘s life they have more value.

Throughout his life A.C. expressed his higher nature in a multitude of ways. Poetry, painting, ritual magick, sexual athleticism, writing, mountaineering, exploring higher consciousness. While he was middling in such expressions as painting and poetry, his non-fictional magickal texts are genius, a Joyce or Fassbinder of occult and esoteric philosophy, and most of us would be extremely lucky to create a single work of genius over a lifetime, let alone a multi-volumed network of texts like A.C.‘s.

Aside from his texts of magickal philosophy and ritual his other great work of art was his life, which encompassed the lowliest degradations and the highest and holiest exalted states. The art works provide a visual accompaniment to it—the settings, the personalities, the extraordinary experiences.

They also provide a reminder of A.C.‘s role as a prototype of the type of current creative spirit, with his multiple means of expression (poetry, art, journalism, adept, etc.) a forerunner of the of the typical artist of today, who is just as likely to write a novel, play in a band, star in a porn, run a small business, blog, than lock themselves in one monolithic way of expressing creative currents.

He ran a preview of this social reality movie like all successful intelligence agents do.” Jason Lubyk

 
Update: resident Crowley expert R. Metzger has informed me that The Man We Want To Hang is available as part of the Anger boxsets that were released a few years back. Available here.
Metzger also directed me to a film that Anger did on Crowley’s paintings called The Brush Of Baphomet, which you can watch after the jump…

 
Aleister Crowley teapot by artist Charles Krafft. According to LAShTAL, the price tag is $666.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Aleister Crowley Action Figure!

(via Coilhouse)