An atypical course… Manitoba by its artist name lives and works in Biganos on the Arcachon basin. French international artist born in 1966 in Algéria, self taught psychedelic and visionary artist, began his career at 48 years old , he took a 180-degree turn and left his job as a chemist to devote himself to his revelation, painting. This total questioning allowed him to express his great freedom as an artist.
An Eye on Emptiness
In the heart of the moment,
where time unravels,
At the heart of oneself, where no one
Others can go, build
Where to rebuild from nothing
What completes us
To just have to be
Fill this emptiness
Who fills the gaps
As long as we dare to share
Without hesitation without shading
As beautiful nature made us
In the blood fire
From our boiler
To happiness that fills us
The heart, like the child, the bird
Who paws and whistles the curious
Impatience of in body
To be surprised to be...
And drill
The mystery,
There where
transparent
The silence
Of between
The
Words...
To the life
In love
An artist, on the one hand in reaction to societal behaviors that paralyze many minds. But also to shake off this gloom and this funny habit that humans have to complain and believe that everything comes from outside …
The Emergence of the Sunflower
Presentation in the sun
To the heliotrope thought
As we turn
Towards the star of light
I light the fuse
tinder, fungus
Trees, saprophyte
If any, getting rid of
Slag and other lures
Societal, for its petals
Get out of the futile, the straightjacket
Of what will you say
and leave the flower in the beak
Beat nature awakening
In and around you.
Let consciousness emancipate
Brillamos, a little, a lot
To insanity
the cat's paw Man
Live the emergence and cultivate our nature
And the one who welcomes us, a good vibe
The Dead Flower More
Manitoba takes us on a journey through its colorful and spiritual universe where shapes and colors combine infinity. His art transmits passion and thirst for life, inspired by an original movement in the spirit of an ancestral memory, close to the primary arts. The artist invites us to the source, of all these lives around us and this natural song of hope that grows beyond borders and other forms of conditioning. A little shamanic, he invites us into the silence between the words, as if out of time, for a moment …
Incubation is perhaps most easily understood in contrast to the art of Theurgy or ‘Work of the Gods.’ Theurgy is a process of anabasis or magical ascent whereby practitioners, such as the early Neoplatonists, especially Iamblichus and Proclus, achieved henosis or mystical union with a deity or the demiurge. However, anabasis was not always of primary importance, or even of interest, to many of the ancient Greek philosophers and magicians. More than five hundred years before the Neoplatonists arrived on the scene, Presocratic poets and philosophers, including Pythagoras and Parmenides, were preoccupied instead with katabasis—a dreamy descent to the domain of the dead, and to the dark goddess who rules over that realm.
Mirror Gazing Ecdysis Mitchell Pluto 2022
For the Platonists, katabasis was understood as the descent of the soul into a body upon incarnation. Hades, additionally, was allegorized and viewed as the very world in which we, as incorporated beings, inhabit. Socrates says to Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias, for instance, “[perhaps] in reality we’re dead. Once I even heard one of the wise men say that we are now dead and that our bodies are our tombs.” Again, in the Phaedo, Plato has Socrates say to Simmias of Thebes, “[we], who dwell in the hollows of [the earth], are unaware of this and we think we live above.” And, later in the same dialogue, “Those who are deemed to have lived an extremely pious life are freed and released from the regions of the earth as from a prison; they make their way up to a pure dwelling place and live on the surface of the earth.” Therefore, the only way to go, for Plato and his successors, was up—in an anabatic flight to the demiurge, through the various planetary spheres that separate the divine nous and Monad from the sensible world below. Theurgy was the means by which such an anabasis was accomplished. The Presocratics, conversely, leaving Mount Olympus to the gods, for the most part, focused their energies instead upon katabasis; on transporting themselves to the netherworld.
Dream Mare Mitchell Pluto 2022
The means by which these iatromanteia or “healer-seers” directed this delirious drop was via the use of an ancient divination and healing technique known as incubation. In ancient Greece, this was generally done inside of sacred and secluded caves that were sacred to certain gods, daimons, nymphs, and other metaphysical entities. Eventually, the practice would be translated to special temples dedicated to the technique, and finally into a special incubation chamber, usually positioned adjacent to the temple itself. The ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, recognized as the ‘Father of Western Philosophy,’ Pythagoras of Samos, for example, is said to have descended to Hades by entering an underground cave. While Pythagoras left no writings of his own, the late Neoplatonic philosopher, Algis Uždavinys, a past head of the Department of Humanities at the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts, Kaunas, explains,
the subterranean tomb-like chamber represents Hades for Pythagoras. Hence, Pythagoras descended into Hades, that is, the subterranean holy chamber (like the Holy of Holies, entered by the Jewish High Priest on the occasion of Yom Kippur) that he had made himself, according to Diogenes Laertius (Vitae phil. 2). When he came up, withered and looking like a Shaiva ascetic, he said that “he had been down to Hades and even read out his experiences [aloud to the crowd].”
A similarly famous although obscure Presocratic philosopher, Parmenides of Elea, celebrated as both the ‘Father of Logic’ and the ‘Father of Metaphysics,’ wrote a dactylic hexametrical poem recounting his trip to Hades, and the underworld goddess whom he encountered. At the junction of three roads, the goddess instructed Parmenides as to the true nature of reality. His proem to “Peri Physeôs” begins,
The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of the divinity, the road that carries the man who knows through the vast and dark unknown. […] And the goddess welcomed me kindly and took my right hand in hers and spoke these words as she addressed me…
In his proem, the divinity proceeded to instruct Parmenides in the laws of logic that we know today. That is, it was a mysterious, underworld goddess from whom Parmenides received the very rules of reason, with which he returned to the land of the living for the inauguration a new era. To a world which turned on mythos—mythology—Parmenides introduced the novel pivot of logos—logic. Although, we must admit that the weird way in which the ‘Father of Logic’ acquired that understanding appears to contradict the very laws with which he was entrusted. Moreover, Parmenides’ words may provide us with a subtle indication of just what incubation may have entailed for these heroes of Hades. The first thing the poet mentions are the mares that pull his chariot. The chariot is a token of the sun god, whose solar vehicle is pulled throughout the skies by a handsome team of heavenly horses. Indeed, ever since the time of the worship of Shammesh or Utu, the sun god of ancient Mesopotamia, the chariot has been the province of the Sol. But, the sun isn’t just about the light—for, the sun also journeys into the Underworld, like Osiris in the Dwat, through the dark, intuitive animations of Aidoneus’ alcazar. Every time we venture into sleep, we quietly and blindly slide into the Stables of Silence. Hence the false etymology suggested by the word nightmares, ‘horses of the dark.’ Like the Hunter’s three-legged horse in the fairytale of the Princess and the Tree, these ‘nightmares’ “know everything”—including the invisible way to the “legendary road” that leads to “the divinity.” The archaic techniques of dream incubation are akin to these mystical, Moiraic mares, and they alone are possessed of the potential to move us from the familiar to the fringe—down the alien road that carries the “man who knows” through the “vast and dark unknown.”
P.D. Newman October 16, 2022
P.D. Newman
P.D. Newman is an independent researcher located in the southern US, specializing in the history of the use of entheogenic substances in religious rituals and initiatory rites. He is the author of the books, Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry, Angels in Vermilion: The Philosophers’ Stone from Dee to DMT, and the forthcoming title, Day Trips and Night Flights: Anabasis, Katabasis, and Entheogenic Ekstasis in Myth and Rite. The Secret Teachings of All Ages (TV Series documentary) 2023
The Hug Acrylic on canvas 60x80cm Hoda Hussein 2022
14 September 2022 7:17 pm Earth Greenwich time zone
A letter from Oranous to Pluto on the Sleep Temple
Who believed their bed was a four-legged bear taking them on their back for a night sky ride as their own bear cub? I did. And I always woke up in the morning and kept my eyes shut till I hear family voices in the house so I am sure my parent bear landed me in the right place to start another day acting like a human. It takes practice to master acting like a human this is why we have to do it every day. But we must also not forget who we are this is why parent Bear kept their legs and body in the human house but with their tail and head on their own and took me as their child on journeys and trips at night where I can be in awareness of all that is. No wonder it was very difficult to pretend I am afraid of the scarab that landed on my hand in the nursery! I was not. The teachers were. And that was weird to me. I suppose I also was weird for them. However, I kept that memory of the friend scarab insect that tickle my palm and I still smile at that. Who would think I had an oil well in my salon where I bathed in whenever exhausted and opened my veins to it renewing my blood completely in sessions where Hathor was standing at my back massaging me? Okay well, I had a Native American tribe settling their tipi in my living room so… Let’s say this is normal in my life. So what is a sleep temple or a dream temple? I am! Well, I guess we all are in a way. Always just believed in a sacred temple where the blood circulates around the heart like pilgrims around the sacred cube of “Ka’ba” hence ka and ba. But as I can move and I am not still at all I prefer to see myself as a Mer-ka-ba “boat in Arabic”. Oh, how I loved this when I knew that Mer meant beloved in the ancient Egyptian language! Yes I know I am loved and visited but all types of loving beings. This is so beautiful! Still, I don’t think I learned yet to act humanely perfectly and instead I look for my equals who also could not really perfect the like human acting. There is something beautiful in our imperfections. Kind of childish and more related to the womb than birth. A whole multiverse moving changing developing evolving in action inside the womb of space. A multiverse that is in fact one single child in process of becoming. Did I tell you I once dreamed of having surgery on my lungs and my heart? Well, I did. And the woman doctor gave me a prescription. That I followed! I would not be that committed following a prescription of a daily life touchable doctor, so-called “real” anyway.
Hugs Bye for now
Hoda Hussein
Hoda Hussein
Egyptian creative writer poetess and novelist, artist painter and translator. Published many poetry books and novels in Arabic language. Represented Egypt in poetry and novels festivals and encounters in several countries like Yemen, Spain, India, France, Cuba, and Chile. Made creative writing workshops for kids in many schools in Cairo Egypt. Received rewards for poetry, novels and for translations in Chile, Macedonia and Egypt Was entitled as a universal ambassador for peace by the peace ambassadors circle that works under the UNESCO
The Inhabitant of the Dream Temple Verónica Cabanillas Samaniego
The temple of dreams is located in principle in an unlimited place, it is not exactly an island, it is the sky itself in immense melancholy, surrounded by the sea and in the absence of farewells. Towards all directions a path towards you, and I discover each treasure at the bottom of the word. In the absence and presence of everything, I hear bordering a harmonious song flowing like an infinite abyss around us.
The Temple of Sleep in self. Verónica Cabanillas Samaniego
The paradise that we have penetrated and invented is resolved like the design of a luminous dream, which we glimpsed to see a long time ago, until we rediscover the trace, shake off the dust and build the raft that takes us from me to you and vice versa, yes, on this side the sleep is deep, in this temple of gods we are simple people, trying to take forever a piece of heaven and looking for a dignified death, where our names are heard and pronounced only by hallucinated insects and dogs on the last day of the humanity, we only dream that on the last day of the world we will not forget to feed them, and the last poem we wrote and the last brush stroke on the white we gave, undermine my pain to the depths, and be reborn in a beautiful pack of dogs, in another time, another planet, another galaxy as far as we can see in the temple of dreams. Because only the measure of the vision is equal to the measure of what is imagined and because everything that one builds is the measure of what he managed to imagine. In the temple of dreams I realized that, and why I was already here
Verónica Cabanillas Samaniego. Algarrobo, Chile, Octubre 2022.
Verónica Cabanillas Samaniego
Verónica Cabanillas Samaniego (Lima, 1981), is a poet and visual artist. She has exhibited individually in Lima and collectively in Europe and Latin America: El asombro del colmillo, Le Petit Canibaal, Valencia (2014); Ludwig Zeller, composing the illusion, Taller de Rokha Gallery, Santiago de Chile (2017); One hundred years of Surrealism, Espacio Matta Cultural Center, Santiago de Chile (2019-2020), International exhibition of surrealism, Kudak Gallery, Cairo-Egypt (2022), Echo of contemporary surrealism, French Institute of Alexandria, Egypt (2022). She published in 2014 TUyYO by desktop publishing and participates in various poetry anthologies: IXQUIC. International Anthology of Feminist Poetry (Editorial Verbum, Madrid, 2018); Wagered deep on the run of six rats to see which would catch the first fire / Surrealist and Outsiders (RW Spryszak, Chicago, 2018); Liberoamericanas, 80 contemporary poets (Liberoamerica, Spain / Argentina / Uruguay, 2018); Narrow doors in wide green fields / Surrealists and Outsiders (RW Spryszak, Chicago, 2019). She has participated in the V Lima Poetry Festival (2014); IV Antifil Alternative Book Fair, Lima (2019). Her visual work is published in Derrame magazine (Chile), Canibaal (Spain), La vertèbre et le rossignol N ° 5, Vies de Saint-Artaud (Canada), Vol (France), The Room (Egypt). She is part of the book 120 nights of Eros, a compendium of surrealist women made by Floriano Martins, ARC editions, Brazil (2021). She currently co-directs with Magdalena Benavente the magazine Honidi Magazine, in Algarrobo, Chile.
Rene Fernando Ortega Villarroel
FROM THE SOUL.
The melody of silence. I search endlessly for labyrinths across the fields I will find. Plants have eyes and they see me. I spill my blood of color pigments. With the wind I always seek to know infinite mountains wrinkled by time. That golden light lets me dominate, with veiled rain and magical scents from my hidden memories of a man of the land. Luminous nature with an open belly shows me a trace of the sun. Conscientious without desolation, living nature, the plants have begun to love me.
DESDE EL ALMA.
La melodía del silencio. Yo busco laberintos sin cesar a campo traviesa voy a encontrar. Las plantas tienen ojos y me ven. Derramo mi sangre de pigmentos de color. Con el viento siempre busco conocer infinitas montañas arrugadas por el tiempo. Esa luz dorada me deja dominar, con lluvias veladas y olores mágicos de mis recuerdos ocultos de un hombre de tierra. Naturaleza lumínica y de vientre abierto me muestra un trazo del sol. De conciencia sin desolación, naturaleza viva las plantas han comenzado a quererme.
Rene Fernando Ortega Villarroel Santiago, Chile, Octubre 2022
Rene Fernando Ortega Villarroel
René Ortega, was one of the winners in the international biennial of contemporary art October 3, 2022. Rene has exhibited work in Chile and Argentina. He is involved in many cultural art programs that have related to hospitals, children and teaching art professionally. His most recent show was Mental Labyrinthsat the Til Til Cultural Center Art gallery on June 18, 2022
“My concern is the human figure as a feeling of primitive and irrational states, whose main point are the heads, universal thought of the creation of man and center of the universe. All this led to a mutation of the plastic and pictorial language”.
Featured art photo Rene Fernando Ortega Villarroel
Delphine Cadoré French Outsider Artist born in Paris 1972
Immerse yourself in a universe where, under the gaze of the painter, the shapes come undone, round off and blend together. Guessing a fish that reminds us of the softness, the slowness, the fluidity of water.
The one where we all bathed, in the hollow of our mothers’ bellies. Meet the wolf, in all its guises: nurturer, progenitor, and also the least tender who ate the grandmother. A wolf, disturbing and comforting, like the passage of time; it swallows, digests and ends up carrying within itself lives and entire cities.
Discover, here and there, the bird, bearer of poetry. Light and soft, it soothes and lifts your head into the clouds. Then meet a woman who bathes in these waters, in this atmosphere of dream and creation. In this atmosphere where life explodes, the children clinging to the breast, and the vaginas still open from childbirth.
Delphine Cadoré offers us to discover her universe where metaphors rub shoulders with life, the real, the most visceral.
She paints in a powerful energy in which she embeds supports and techniques. She draws, inks, paints, coats, scratches, cuts… for the magic to work. And the magic works: we are caught up in the movement, and each canvas lifts us a little more into this universe of raw poetry.
I don’t consider myself an artist, I think that each of us is, but some have forgotten that, children are artists in their own right because they have retained this spontaneity that we later lack.
I have no real artistic influence, I like Francis Bacon as well as Paul Gauguin and many others, it’s quite heterogeneous in fact and I discover great artists every day via social networks. As a child, I had the chance to rub shoulders with many artists, illustrators, photographers, musicians, we lived in a community, so I think I always drew.
I am the mother of 4 children, two of whom are already adults and on their own, but I still have two little ones! it’s not always easy to reconcile my work and everyday life! I would say that what I miss the most is the time and above all a studio, a real studio!
Inner space, mathematical entities, organic architecture and time doors from the liminal mind of artist René Ortega
From TvoTiltil October 3, 2022
El artista plástico y vecino de Huertos Familiares, René Ortega, resultó uno de los ganadores en la bienal internacional de arte contemporáneo que se desarrolló la semana pasada en Cali Colombia. En el encuentro participaron más de 3000 pinturas y representantes de 15 países y fue trinfador en la categoría de arte abstracto. La premiación se llevó a cabo en la Universidad Santiago de Cali. Sin duda es el logro y reconocimiento más importante en mi carrera hasta la fecha nos indicó el artista hace instantes.
The plastic artist and neighbor of Huertos Familiares, René Ortega, was one of the winners in the international biennial of contemporary art that took place last week in Cali, Colombia. More than 3,000 paintings and representatives from 15 countries participated in the meeting and it was the winner in the category of abstract art. The award ceremony was held at the Santiago de Cali University. Without a doubt, it is the most important achievement and recognition in my career to date, the artist told us moments ago.
Rene Fernando Ortega Villarroel
Feature art photo was selected as the award-winning work.
I still don’t know if I’m an artist. I have always considered that calling oneself an artist is something pretentious. It is true that I create new things from an intellectual and also a subconscious act, but I feel more comfortable when I think I am creative. On the other hand, I have not studied Fine Arts and this fact makes me think that I am an outsider. However, I don’t care about everything because I’ve been painting since I was a child and I will always continue to do so. Painting has allowed me to pay rent and eat, other times it has not been like that. If I defined myself as an artist, would I change anything?
Above all, nature inspires me. I can paint something like a portrait of a person, but it will never be quite so. The animals, the plants, the mountains, the rivers, the universe, the water, the rain, all the elements and the stones, also the cells, scales, wings, spores. All of this is always present because it is Nature and I feel that humanity ceased to be a part of it a long time ago. That is why I try to bring these two worlds closer together through painting and dreams. It is like imagining a hopeful future for the planet, even though it is not actually possible.
I am not a tarot expert. I have many different decks, even an oracle of my own creation. My intention is to edit a deck of Major Arcana as soon as possible, it is a project that is taking me a long time precisely because I understand the tarot in my own way. And I think there is no universal way to understand it, so the fact that I am not an expert in tarot would not be a big problem because I would know my own tarot perfectly.
I think it is a language in itself, another kind of language. But I also believe that its divinatory character is a construction. When Visconti decks appeared in fifteenth-century Italy, their intention was not to guess but to memorize the hierarchies and their functions. Divination as such is much older. The current tarot brings together many characteristics of memoizable hierarchical archetypes that we now identify as tools for self-knowledge. I believe that the tarot can help us to know the things that we don’t know that we already know. It is like walking at night along a path full of brambles but illuminated by the soft glow of the full moon
I started a dream journal and loved the experience but didn’t have enough consistency to stick with it. I would love to be able to take it up again but I need a suitable environment and environment that I don’t have right now. I remember dreams from decades ago and from time to time they come back to my mind and give me the same sensations as at the time of the dream. Other times my dreams return to places I have already dreamed of, as if they wanted to finish telling stories. Somehow I keep in my memory the most relevant dreams, their sensations and what they brought me throughout my life. On the theories of dreams and their materialization in daily routines and in life, I would like to recommend the literary work of Julio Monteverde.
I try to make my relationship with the subconscious conscious when I’m awake. Creations are born from that place and we must remain attentive to their movements. For me it is like a call at any time of day or night that reveals other realities to me. Sometimes I know how to take advantage of that call and transform it into what you can understand as art. Other times it is too blinding a light that has the power to paralyze me and shows me through its light a deep and infinite darkness. It is what you can understand by anxiety.
Nature is the biggest influence I have. There are also some people and artistic movements in those influences, either because of the color in their works, because of the absence of color, because of their way of describing heaven and hell. There are too many but these are a very small sample of what I mean: Chagall, Redon, Remedios Varo, William Blake, Teresa de Ávila, El Greco, Goya, Diane Arbus, baroque music.
I’ve been under another the name Jupiter for quite a few years. This month (September 2022) I have started a new cycle that has been brewing since spring. I would like to get more light on the road and be able to keep my feet on the ground, something that has never happened in my life.
Alto Giove è tua grazia è tuo vanto il gran dono di vita immortale che il tuo Cenno sovrano mi fà Ma il rendermi poi quella già sospirata tanto Diva amorose e bella è un dono senza uguale come la tua beltà
High Jupiter it is your grace it is your pride the great gift of immortal life that your sovereign nod makes me But then making me that one already longed for so much Loving and beautiful diva it is a gift without equal like your beauty
For this reason, through Jupiter and almost by way of a “sigilo”, I intend to attract another way of seeing things without leaving aside my causality and gloom. I could have chosen Saturn and it really is what I wanted but we already know how Saturn treats already melancholic souls. I can’t afford that. Jupiter, as in the piece that Nicola Porpora (Alto Giove) composed to be performed by Farinelli, was a haven of peace in the stormy world of Felipe V. Leaving aside the stupid monarchy, Diana was a lunar goddess, daughter of Jupiter. In an astrological sense, Jupiter is associated with positive concepts such as abundance and optimism. And finally, I often say that “I live on Jupiter”, referring to the fact that I live in the clouds, that I am not attentive to reality and that I am a dreamer.
Lechuza is one of my music bands. We have started this summer of 2022 and we have just published our Demo. We are two friends making music, working with our hands on record packaging and trying to make nice videos of our songs. We are called Fantasmita and Ruda. Proceeds from sales go to an animal shelter. All the information is on our Bandcamp, and of course the music.
written by Diana Calabaza de Júpiter
Diana de Júpiter artistic training is intuitive and self taught. She prefers not to rely on any institution to interfere with her experience. Her themes hang between the dark and silent. She has worked for several Spanish publishers such as Aurora Dorada and La Felguera. Diana has had solo and group exhibitions in Spain, Mexico and the United States. She is currently preparing a complete tarot deck while painting daily.
“The time will come to assert the ideas of women at the expense of those of men, whose failure is consummated so resoundingly today. It is up to the artist in particular, if only in protest against this scandalous state of affairs, to make everything that arises from the feminine system of the world as opposed to the masculine system predominate to the maximum; of emphasizing exclusively the powers of women; better still, of appropriating her to the point of making it jealously hers, of that which distinguishes her from man in her way of evaluating and wanting.” André Breton, Arcanum 17
17 Star Tarot Card 9in x 6 1/2in André Breton Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren
This is another example of the surrealist passion for tarot. The title of Breton’s long prose poem, Arcane 17, refers to tarot card 17, the “stars” card (Les étoiles), usually a symbol of free-flowing love and renewal of forces. However, Breton’s imagination brought new associations, multiplying the morning stars and infusing them with fluid meanings. Breton describes the figure in the center of the card as a naked young woman kneeling as she pours out the contents of two urns, one into a pond, the other onto the ground. He associates this woman with the legendary figure of Mélusine, a legendary mermaid who became a symbol of the difficulty to reconcile “reality” and “magic.” There is hope, however, that the “inexhaustible” urns could renew our disenchanted world. Indeed, even though the pond gives off the “pestilential odor” of social conventions, it is still longing for “a new dream.” The fragile butterfly is another symbol of “consoling mystery.” Chilean painter Roberto Matta designed the four colorful illustrations in the shape and size of tarot cards (or “arcanas”) pasted in the book.
Love descending incandescent and calm from the primordial nature of the universe to embrace the hope full of your walk in your women’s hands that welcome in your womb container of light on your lips that educate and dismiss poetry on your back that holds the arcanum of the morning with that epiphany that looks like your body. This is how I take flight rebellious bathed by the celestial of the bodies wrongly called celestial, where I learned to love the brevity of the possible in the impossible to go up with my luggage to another utopia clearing away the old tears in front of a showcase that is empty and that is condescending with my people in its persistent lack where I also know my measurements and who excessively hugs them in these hours of opaque tides with their lost leviathans of heads sunk in the mud of consumption without noticing the hands of those who ask between remains of bodies that are invisible to him and alien.
Morning Prayer Monroe Tsa Toke
A star, as Bernard Roger recalls, “has served forever as a guide to nocturnal navigators whether over the oceans of the globe or over the philosophical sea of the Argonauts.” Echoing him, Jorge Camacho notes the star “has shown the solitary sailor his route over the high seas. By faithfully following it throughout his long voyage, he is sure to reach port safely.” The star burns with such an intense gleam in the surrealist imaginal realm that in 2004, the Czech painter Martin Stejskal organized a large exhibition near White Mountain in which it “was declined in all its natural, cultural, as well as mythical aspects, in the union of traditions (astrology, kabbalah, alchemy, Freemasonry) as in the poetic union of the male and female in each individual, borne by the work of surrealist friends, and by the uncarved stone placed at the castle entrance that bore this phrase that sings in our hearts like a magical couplet: constructed on the side of abyss, on philosopher’s stone . . .” as Marie Dominique Massoni points out in issue 5 of S.U.R.R. However, “You can never see this star like I saw it. You don’t understand: it is like the heart of a heartless flower,” as Nadja, the “magician,” says.,,
A harmony founded on the spiritual in all its forms, love of humanity in all its beauty, we can thus clearly see the richness of the esoteric domain approached this way by the surrealists, who incidentally made the Star, in the Deck of Marseille, the symbol for the suit of Dreams, whose face cards are Lautréamont, Alice in Wonderland, and Freud. This deck was conceived (these things are never invented) between the Villa Air Bel and the café Au Brûleur de Loups.
Star Tarot Symbolique Maçonnique Deck by Jean Beauchard
“A very powerful myth continues to have a hold on me, and no apparent contradiction of it in the course of my previous adventures can prevail “Find the place in the formula” merges with, “possess truth in one soul and one body: That the highest hope has the power to unfold before it the allegorical arena which holds that every human being was thrown into life to search for a being of the opposite sex and only that one who is paired in all respects, to the point where one without the other seems like the result of the dissociation of dismembering a unit of light”
It is then when the tree that tomorrow will summon the thorns loses its leaves, and the bumblebee falls, prey to the polar trails, to reinvent the powerful patient engineering of lytic promises, Well, that’s where I shelter, and where I rescue the omens, there I drink from the Paleozoic salts, which today move the migratory herds, those who come to the eyes without ears, of those attending Sunday services. By nature, I approve!!
They speak of love, and my bet is more on compassion, which is a kind of continuum in a collective warp, of an ineffable equation that they will never understand. Because perhaps love (like that image shown to us) does not exist and if it does exist it is a sum of chemical reactions where a set of hormones stimulates our syntax, and which may also be subject to the need for genes to be perpetuated. Maybe?. But there is also one who breaks this previous theory; crazy love, passionate love, eternal love, etc. that love that becomes unclassifiable. I only know that I know nothing. After all, I believe in love. Does the egg use the chicken to make more eggs? It is possible, but in a global and precisely circular analysis, the plot of existence is supported in a shed crossed by the polyform reality of infinite logics and illogics, where each of its corresponding paradoxes and balances avoids its critical tension. But, we can order them in the not well understood compassion, which could be a feeling deeper than that of the corruptible flesh (physical theory and cognitively plausible), which leads to understandable and celestial simplicity. But what if an infinitesimal were more than an integer, or if that time circulated in all directions? or love will not mean more than a necessary impulse to take risks in order to live the contradictions, so that the soul, when dying, will return with the pertinent knowledge to correct, deconstruct or ratify the whole of the so-called divinity . For this reason, the next step opens the temporality to dedicate more time to essential reflection, and to put aside an imposed competitiveness for the accumulation of objects that lead to the void that means pursuing a way of life that is subordinated to the symbolic relationship. of the object or objects, which is useless and inconducive (a simulacrum of the society of the spectacle) for our true purpose in this brief transit called life. Ars longa vita brevis. Or your existence is just an accident to offer a limited amount of data to accompany the equation that gives additional information to find the way out of the answer. By the way; nobody takes me into account, since my infallibility is very poor since periodically and statistically, my failures are more abundant than my certainties. And therein lies my wisdom; in realizing that my hypotheses are only attempts to find the truth within infinity. To think otherwise would be to err drastically and in the process lie to them. It would be, subjecting myself from the ego to an option to dress elegantly, but in the end, it would strip my limits. It is better to be honest in clumsiness than false in an inane and temporary charade. But: What if love were one of that unknown design in my intrinsic astral writing, waiting for you?
Primordial circulation approaching from a past spring, acrylic on Fabriano paper 250 gm. 35x45cm
So the wide dividing width will unload its useful molecules in this useless impertinent distance there where the lightning reigns without asking for their blind blows. Is when my pale measures they embrace their designs devoid of elytra to save the waters possessed of salt and fire that bathe the limits of my suffering body without entering the first cause that brings me down from within the muscle periphery.
Eros Phasianidae, acrylic and ink on Canson 300 gms paper. 11″ x 8.3
EROS PHASIANIDAE Yo And she saw the chicken rise from the ground a brilliant and ectoplasmic epiphany and she remembered the words of the feathered prophets: “before the primordial egg was the verb” and the pyrrhic evolutionary expedition embraced me so necessary and indeterminate where we are more but under sheds and I saw the grayish uncertainty that shakes my being h = 6.626 0693 (11) x 10 – (34) J. s = 4,135 667 43 (35) x10–(15)eV. s and the beast arose from the miasma without the feminine warmth it was in the offensive of the arches thousands of years ago on the Cartesian line of Har Meggido under the law of y = m x + b and those tears originated at 32°34’59″N 35°10’56″E. II huge old stars leaning out on the horizontal cobblestone sheets were dictated by an ancient manual of glorious epic forms where I did not read the cunning locks and from there lights fall like eagles that are suspended in front of your pale fortifications and despite the fact that I descend without air I cling to the desiccated edges of this abyss turning away from the waves of floral promises with summer mentions that anoint you. Thus the amaranth silence returns to rock the star and like the silent lymph you seek to break beyond the fundamental shell the one that you got to know in a primitive way in the sweet rooms of belief.
Interruption, acrylic on cut Fabriano paper, on black cardboard. 18x24cm. The inclination of one of the elements is voluntary.
GOLDEN VISION
The nothing, the void hold my duplicate fragments (Φ2 = 2.61803398874988…) It is the hollowness of the past and the future what you don’t have and don’t want the illusion of time and line Infinity so love surrounds swelling wisdom while on the musty boards of a camp absent light filters to tilt reciprocal reality that drives your transformation (1/Φ = 0.61803398874988).
Maybe this reality is true on this twilight island where the already worn bones falter by the persistent violet stings, and there is no choice but to live among the cyclones that guard the whimsical and invisible knots with its container meshes that hide half-open portals, those that I will leave like this for a while, since everything circulates in the promised packaging.
I discovered Photomorphosis way back in 1972 while attempting to copy an illustrated article in the Times magazine article on Yves Tanguy on an office copy machine. At night, in the dark. A clandestine maneuver. Photomorphosis is the enchanting process by which an organism changes or experiences metamorphosis under the influence of light… It is a natural process in the realm of photosynthesis, photolysis, etc., indicating the importance of light on living things, akin to shedding light on the darker areas of the mind…
A Wedding in the gardens of Yemen 2021
As an external organic process entering another level of meaning, it became an internal manifestation of an evolving morphology of the psyche. Under the sway of obsessive desire, I combined the words photograph and metamorphosis to signify the photomorphic process, without realizing that such a word already existed.
Salive, Copper and Moonlight
But, further research revealed that photomorphosis was no longer used by the scientific community to denote the organic process of light-induced metamorphosis and had been replaced by photomorphogenesis. Thus, by my investigation, I have given a new meaning to the abandoned word ‘photomorphosis’… by surrealizing it. To paraphrase André Breton: photomorphosis has been given to me to make surrealist use of it. The sustained investigation of the imagination is raised to the level of delirious curiosity, by the introduction of the activity of looking inward to discover, or in effect, to shed light on, the darker areas of the mind. To illuminate becomes a perfect analogy for the photomorphic process… The depths of the imagination open, the fields widen, things become visible… and metamorphosis is inevitable.
Alusofore’s Morning 2021
I drew pictures of strange animals as a kid, tried painting as a teen, and didn’t like the smell of the oils. I did nothing really, until about 19 years old after finding an anthology of French poets… That started my writing – loved surrealist poetry. Poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Eluard. But mainly Andre Breton. He was the most interesting and inventive of them all really. Extremely magical. These days, or more recently, Rene Char (but mainly during his surrealist beginnings). I really like Jacques Dupin (who toyed with surrealism but became even more interested in the realm of language.) I am inspired mainly by Breton’s vantage point in the mind.
We have marvelous weapons
Having abandoned the copy machine at the end of 1999, I discovered that I could do the same thing on the computer and more, using Photoshop, in color, and with more tools…
Armed and Dangerous 2019
Most everything inspires my work. All of which are very much similar to collage. Both visual and textural. A deep synthesis between my writing and my visual works. How I work these days, well, it all stems from my own real-life experiences. However automatic and mostly strange, it’s not art, really, but a further investigation of the psyche… between the real and the imaginary.
The luminous bodies meeting for the first time…
Many years ago, I actually did hear and experience that voice of pure automatism. It startled me completely. I think, once you actually hear and listen to it, it opens a door a little, which stays open, and whenever I feel the urge to write or make imagery, it just comes out. It is believed that one is always dreaming, it’s just under the layer of normal perception of reality. One just stumbles upon it accidentally and feels an inkling, a glimmer of something out of that persistent dream. Like a Deja Vu experience.
Resolution of Pleasure 2019
There are vast differences today between the different countries and their systems of belief with regard to surrealism; not to mention the differences in approach between various groups of surrealism. All this eventually led to the founding of La Belle Inutile and the 6 or so people who had problems with modern surrealism, academia, social groups, etc. Problems to be solved.
written by J Karl Bogartte
The Wedding Guests Have Arrived Cover for Philip Lamantia’s book Becoming Visible
J. Karl Bogartte, born September 8, 1944, of Dutch and Irish descent, is both an artist and poet, schooled in anthropology, photography and various esoteric traditions. He has been an active participant in international surrealism for more than 50 years, and cofounder of La Belle Inutile Éditions. He presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Bogartte, is both an artist and poet, having published eight books of poetic writings: The Mirror held Up In Darkness, The Wolf House, Secret Games, Luminous Weapons, Primal Numbers, A Curious Night For A Double Eclipse, Auré, The Spindle’s Arc, and Antibodies: A Surrealist Novella. Long aligned with international surrealism, Bogartte is also a cofounder of La Belle Inutile Éditions. His work has appeared in the following anthologies: ANALOGON#65, Melpomene, Hydrolith #1 and #2, La vertèbre et le rossignol #4, Peculiar Mormyrid #2, Paraphilia, Silver Pinion and The Fiend online journal.
I had the desire to paint and draw very early on but I didn’t practice much because I didn’t have any confidence in myself. I was not attracted by academic drawing, I was self-taught and I did not know how to draw. It took me a long time to find my way, I had to hold on, experiment, let go and everything went better when I understood that I should no longer try to have control but welcome the unexpected and appropriate it. Then began a dialogue with the invisible
Then I use pencils, gouache or pastels to give shape to these presences that appear in the material. For the black and white drawings, they are made with charcoal and black chalk in automatic drawing.
I work with fluid materials to begin with, such as water, ink and watercolor, because these mediums are particularly conducive, as far as I am concerned, to revealing the beyond appearances, they help me to cross borders and to access parallel worlds.
Concerning the cyanotype technique, it is an old photographic printing or reproduction technique, I use it to make multiple prints in limited series of some of my drawings: it consists in putting on a sheet of paper a chemical product which is sensitive to light, one puts on the sheet a negative of the photo which one wishes to reproduce (for me a negative of my drawings which I prepare myself), it is necessary to put it then in the sun a few minutes then to pass the sheet under water and there always appears in blue a reproduction of the drawing drawn from the negative. I particularly appreciate the blue obtained with this technique which is close to the dreamlike world.
My inspiration can come from everyday things, I like to look at where appearances fall and see the magic in a realistic environment. I am for example very inspired by tomato slices, when I cut up tomatoes while preparing food I marvel at what I see inside each slice, I find the tomato particularly inhabited by a wonderful world, hence the origin of my Tomato Heart drawings.
I also made a series of drawings from photos of the surface of the river, these photos were for me like a freeze-frame of a story that the river tells or perhaps this river water is a bearer of memory, that of the countries and times it has crossed? So I drew from these photos to give shape to what I saw appearing.
Nature, women, animals or hybrid creatures, spirituality are the main sources of inspiration for my paintings, all set in a dreamlike universe. As in tales and fables, my drawings try to give us back the sense of wonder and to open doors to a magical world where everything is possible
How do you put yourself into a trance or into a place that’s receptive to the subconsciousness?
I find the act of drawing in itself to be trance inducing. I first became obsessed with automatic drawing in high school because it felt like it would light up my brain and smooth out all of my anxious energy. It would literally feel like I was drawing my way out of a stupor and waking up to the strangeness of my own mind.
Drawing helps me reach that valuable state where I can feel awake and alert, yet simultaneously relaxed. I find that my breathing slows down when I’m drawing and time feels more fluid. It helps to have a quiet studio where I can go and disappear for hours at a time. I think of the imagination as a living thing that I have an ever evolving relationship with. If I meet it halfway and submerse myself in the creative process, I get to interact with and explore the subconscious and come back with artistic documentation.
What interests inform and inspire you?
So many things. I love outsider, folk, visionary, and ancient art. Whenever art is made from an inner need or impulse, I find it extremely valuable. I love children’s art. I have 2 kids and love watching the way their minds work. I love creative collaboration as a way to relate to another person’s mind and bring out something totally unexpected and new.
I’m interested in neuroscience and new scientific thought around the so called Hard Problem of Consciousness and Theories of Everything. I love to read. Especially speculative fiction, strange fiction, and comics. I’m hugely inspired by nature and spend a lot of time in the woods. Learning some carpentry skills is another thing that’s been opening me up to new art possibilities. Just sitting and trying to clearly see images or hear music in my head is an ongoing practice.
What role do you think the artist has in the 21st century?
The best thing an artist can do is follow their own unique impulse. Artists need to push back against the bizarre human drive to homogenize everything. They need to reach beyond the inadequate systems we live inside.
I think diversity of culture and human expression is the most valuable thing we can cultivate as a species. I also think it’s important for artists to have an anti-cruelty stance. There’s so much cruelty in our history and baked into our systems. I think the artist’s role is to look unflinchingly at this and attempt to untie those knots. Art can be part of the antidote to the bad ideas that seem to cling to our brains and stunt our evolution.
Have you experienced Lucid Dreaming or any kind of encounter with cosmic consciousness?
Yes, I’ve had quite a few experiences that have felt outside of normal cognitive experience. Each of these experiences feel incredibly valuable to me and I’m thankful for them. Mostly I’ve regretted it whenever I’ve tried to describe them to people. They feel like something to internalize and hold close. It’s easy to discount things that don’t fit with the narrative of the everyday, so I try to think about those experiences a lot and not let them fade into doubt.
When did you create or discover your own archetypical patterns?
I started with automatic drawing, just letting my hand draw without knowing where it would go. Through that, a lot of patterns and imagery naturally began to emerge and I would just kind of follow that. Through years of working in this way and contemplating the recurring symbols, a lot of ideas and feelings started taking shape. Making comics became a way to explore that more actively by trying to unlock the stories and concepts that my drawings were revealing to me.
Has your work ever lead you to an experience of intuition or synchronicity?
Following an artistic impulse is in itself an intuitive and synchronistic experience. It adds an extra dimension to my daily life and when I have positive momentum in my work, I feel like that crosses over into my daily life and helps me see connections and meaning. Putting my work out into the world has also allowed me to meet a lot of people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, so in that way, I feel like dedicating myself to making art has allowed me to have important friendships that have inspired and helped me grow.
What do you like to cook?
I love cooking. I cook almost every night. I like to make enchiladas with sauce made from scratch. I like making sushi, jambalaya, grilled pizza, salmon. It’s just fun to work a kitchen and try to be efficient with all the different elements in play and it’s satisfying to serve up something good to my family. Cleaning up the kitchen afterwards is not as fun.
Theo Ellsworth is a self-taught artist living in Montana. His previously published comics include Capacity, The Understanding Monster, Sleeper Car, and An Exorcism. The New York Times once called his work, Imagination at firehose intensity. He has been the recipient of the Lynd Ward Honor Book Prize and an Artist Innovation Award. He loves creative collaboration, cooking, and making family folk art with his kids. He is constantly making invisible performance art in his head that no one will ever see.
Mitchell Pluto 