(From LAShTAL.com) Buratti Fine Art presents a special exhibition showcasing the various traditions and expression of esoteric art ranging from automatic drawing, digital art, printmaking, sculpture and painting. The work of contemporary artists are shown alongside international and historical artists and who have paved the way in one of the art world’s most exciting genres. Artworks previously exhibited at the Pompidou Centre and Palais De Tokyo will be on show.
You don’t play the ANS synthesizer with a keyboard. Instead you etch images onto glass sheets covered in black putty and feed them into a machine that shines light through the etchings, trigging a wide range of tones. Etchings made low on the sheets make low tones. High etchings make high tones. The sound is generated in real-time and the tempo depends on how fast you insert the sheets.
This isn’t a new Dorkbot or Maker Faire oddity. It’s a nearly forgotten Russian synthesizer designed by Evgeny Murzin in 1938. The synth was named after and dedicated to the Russian experimental composer and occultist Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872–1915). The name might not mean much to you, but it illuminates a long running connection between electronic music and the occult.
You can find traces of the occult throughout the history of electronic music. The occult obsessed Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo built his own mechanical instruments around 1917. The famous Moog synthesizer made an early appearance in Mick Jagger’s soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s occult film Invocation of My Demon Brother in 1969. And in the late 1970s Throbbing Gristle built their own electronic instruments for their occult sound experiments, setting the stage for many of the occult themed industrial bands who followed. The witch house genre keeps this tradition alive today.
It’s little the surprise otherworldly sounds and limitless possibilities of synthesizers and samplers would evoke the luminous. But there’s more to the connection. The aim of the alchemist is not just the literal synthesis of chemicals, but also synthesis in the Hegelian sense: the combination of ideas. Solve et Coagula. From the Hermetic magi of antiquity, to Aleister Crowley’s OTO to modern chaos magicians, western occultists have sought to combine traditions and customs into a single universal system of thought and practice.
The summer solstice usually falls on June 21 but moved up in 2012 because it’s a leap year. On this day, the Earth’s axis is tilted at 23.4 degrees to the plane of the solar system, and the North Pole is most tipped toward the sun, which means more daylight than any other day if you live north of the equator …
Over the years, the solstice triggered massive celebrations at places like Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Egypt, which were designed to have the sun set exactly between two pyramids on the solstice itself’ …
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In Quebec, Canada, the celebration of (the summer solstice on) June 24 was brought to New France by the first French colonists. Great fires were lit at night. According to the Jesuit Relations, the first celebrations of St John’s day in New France took place around 1638. In 1834, Ludger Duvernay, printer and editor of La Minerve took the leadership of an effort to make June 24 the national holiday of the Canadiens (French Canadians). In 1908, Pope Pius X designated John the Baptist as the patron saint of the French-Canadians. In 1925, June 24 became a legal holiday in Quebec and in 1977, it became the secular National Holiday of Quebec. It still is the tradition to light great fires on the night of the 24th of June.
Simon King of Witches
Bruce Kessler, USA, 1971, 91 min
Simon Sinestrari (Andrew Prine), a cynical Ceremonial magician, is on a quest to become a god. Simon lives in a sewer, selling his charms and potions for money, when he is befriended by a young male prostitute named Turk (George Paulsin). Turk introduces Simon to his world of drugs, wild parties, and hysterical Wiccan rituals featuring a goat and Andy Warhol star Ultra Violet. Death and mayhem ensue, along with romance for Simon with the district attorney’s daughter (Brenda Scott)
