L'Abbatiale de la
Liturgie Apocryphe

Montréal, p.Q.

 

Chasseurs de fantômes et néo-sorcières
Arte, Allemagne, 2024, 30 min

 
 

Le surnaturel connaît un regain d’intérêt. Les rituels spirituels, l’ésotérisme et le tarot ont trouvé leur public sur les réseaux sociaux, mais aussi dans le monde de l’art. Que cache ce phénomène ? Pourquoi les sorcières, chamans et chasseurs de fantômes des temps modernes sont-ils revenus sur le devant de la scène ?

 

Les sciences occultes ont toujours été une source d’inspiration pour les artistes. Dans un monde de plus en plus régi par la technologie et la rationalité, l’art sous toutes ses formes prend le contrepied en se réappropriant les motifs des contes, légendes et autres rituels antiques.

 

Alliant tradition ancestrale et technologie omniprésente et omnisciente, l’artiste italienne Ginevra Petrozzi se glisse dans la peau d’une “cartomancienne numérique”. Sorcière d’un nouveau genre, elle ne lit pas l’avenir dans les cartes mais dans le téléphone portable des passants curieux.

 

Au Royaume-Uni, Danny Robins, comédien et podcasteur, enquête sur les apparitions paranormales dans les maisons, les théâtres et même les stations de métro. Il raconte ses découvertes dans “Uncanny”, son podcast réalisé pour la BBC et couronné de succès.

 

Le groupe de musique folklorique nordique Heilung conçoit savamment ses concerts comme des rituels d’un autre temps. Le rythme des tambours de cérémonie accompagné des sonorités vaporeuses des textes, écrits exclusivement en langues anciennes, plongent le public dans un état de transe.

 

L’artiste Katharina Zwirnmann s’est inspirée de manuscrits magiques datant de la Réforme et du siècle des Lumières, conservés à la bibliothèque de l’université de Leipzig.

 
 

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ANNIE BAILLARGEON 'Posture des soins 2' (2022)

ANNIE BAILLARGEON ‘Posture des soins 2’ (2022)

 

Sorcières : de l’ombre à la lumière

Une exposition sur les sorcières, figures fascinantes aux multiples facettes
25 octobre 2024 — 6 avril 2025
Pointe-à-Callière, cité d’archéologie et d’histoire de Montréal

 
 

Sorcières : de l’ombre à la lumière propose un parcours envoûtant à la découverte de la figure mythique et plurielle de la sorcière. Personnage incontournable, cette exposition révèle l’histoire méconnue des sorcières et plonge dans leur univers mystérieux. Une expérience entre mythes et réalités faisant la lumière sur ces femmes dont les multiples représentations et pratiques ont traversé les siècles, inspirant la culture et la société moderne.

 
 

Une immersion dans l’histoire et l’univers des sorcières

 

Laissez-vous porter par une scénographie captivante et explorez plus de 400 objets provenant de collections européennes et américaines. Objets ethnographiques, manuscrits, peintures, ces témoins authentiques permettent de raconter l’histoire des sorcières dont le sombre chapitre de la chasse aux sorcières, où des dizaines de milliers de femmes furent persécutées et condamnés à des destins tragiques entre le 16e et le 17e siècle.

 

Cette immersion historique mène le public à travers les croyances, les symboles et les pratiques fascinantes de sorcellerie qui se transmettent depuis des générations. Pendules, cristaux, cartes de tarot, herbiers, et dispositifs interactifs vous inviteront à explorer certaines de ces pratiques, telles que la divination, les envoûtements, les rituels de guérison et de protection.

 
 

Sorcières d’hier à aujourd’hui

 

De la vieille dame des contes folkloriques aux jeunes sorcières rebelles des films et séries modernes, découvrez l’évolution fascinante de la figure de la sorcière à travers le temps et la culture populaire. Des costumes, des archives audiovisuelles et des objets iconiques illustrent ces changements de représentations au fil des époques.

 

Devenue symbole du féminisme moderne, la sorcière incarne aujourd’hui la résilience et l’émancipation, reflétant les luttes et les avancées des mouvements féministes contemporains. L’occasion de croiser les regards de sorcières modernes revendiquant leurs savoir-faire, leur savoir-être et leur art.

 
 

DÉTAILS

 

Genius or crank? Rosaleen Norton was the most persecuted, prosecuted and daring female artist in Australian history

 

In 1950’s Sydney, artist Rosaleen Norton becomes a media sensation when the police confiscate her paintings and charge her with obscenity. Initially, she plays along, hoping the publicity would help sell paintings. But before long, allegations of satanic rituals, unexplained murders and sex orgies hit the headlines. Her lover, the famous conductor Sir Eugene Goossens’ career is destroyed in the crossfire between a cop intent on jailing her and a journalist desperate for a scoop. At the vanguard of feminism and the counter culture revolution, Rosaleen Norton was persecuted for her dangerous ideas that now appear prophetic.

 

Ultimately, the film is an inspirational story of a brave woman who dared to be different.

 

The Witch of Kings Cross

 

 

ROSALEEN NORTON

 

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ROSALEEN NORTON (September 10, 2014)
Syrinx (1965) par RYAN LARKIN (May 31, 2011)

sympathy-for-the-devil_the-true-story-of-the-process-church-of-the-final-judgment_neil-edwards_2015_uk_101-minSympathy for the Devil : The True Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment (2015) by NEIL EDWARDS


Sympathy for the Devil : The True Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment
Neil Edwards, UK, 2015, 101 min



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 7:30PM


Spectacle
124 S 3rd St, Brooklyn, NY 11249


Filmmaker NEIL EDWARDS in attendance



Google ‘The Process Church of the Final Judgment’ and you will discover a long list of lurid conspiracy theories. The cult has been accused of being the inspiration for Charles Manson’s ‘crimes of the century’, influencing the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, and being the root of the notorious Son of Sam serial killings.


Formed in 1960s England, many of its members were drawn from wealthy families and aristocracy. Newspapers branded them the ‘Mindbenders in Mayfair’ and ‘The Devil’s Disciples’. Ever since, members of The Process have adopted a secretive stance. Only now, have former members of the inner circle agreed to reveal the truth behind the conspiracy theories, and open up about their beliefs, rituals, and the closely guarded secret of the real power behind it all.


The film gets behind the veils of the cult and tracks their journey from their formation in London’s prestigious Mayfair district, through wilderness experiences in Mexico, flirtations with pop royalty, and their spread state-side that resulted in them being ‘christened’ ‘One of the most dangerous satanic cults in America.’


With contributions from leading former members of the cult, and insights from filmmaker John Waters (who encountered the cult whilst living in New Orleans) George Clinton (who included Process writings on his Funkadelic albums). Plus artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, and renowned authors Gary Lachman, Robert Irwin, Gaia Servadio (who infiltrated the group in 1966), and Manson biographer Simon Wells.




Visions in Magickal Cinema
Dir. Brian Butler, Carl Abrahamsson & Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt, 2009-2016
Total running time of 106 min


SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 – 10PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 5PM


Spectacle
124 S 3rd St, Brooklyn, NY 11249


Filmmaker PIERE-LUC VAILLANCOURT in attendance



The manifestation of Nuit, its visions in the hypnagogic fields of cinema. These magickal films are exploring various realms of consciousness, challenging the nature of cinema by their singular artistic visions, esoteric sensibilities and remarkable metaphysical insights.


Resonating with the ideas of great visionaries such as Aleister Crowley, John Dee, Edward Kelley and Derek Jarman, these films are reaching the furthest regions of perceptive ocular vision, where the eyes and the noumenal world unite. Dazzling visual alchemy, hypnotic magnetic pulsations, mesmerizing electronic compositions and beautiful magick rituals resides in these powerful mind-bending films.


NIGHT OF PAN
Dir. Brian Butler, 2009
USA, 6 min.


BABALON WORKING
Dir. Brian Butler, 2016
USA, 9 min.


PHANTOM LIMBS
Dir. Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt, 2015
Canada, 8 min.


AUTOPSY LIGHTS
Dir. Pierre-Luc Vaillancourt, 2015
Canada, 23 min.


SUB UMBRA ALARUM LUNA
Dir. Carl Abrahamsson, 2016
Sweden, 60 min.


***


Union of Opposites (2012) by BRIAN BUTLER (January 10, 2013)
Loch Ness Magick (2008) by BRIAN BUTLER (June 2, 2011)
BRIAN BUTLER’s Magick Act (June 2, 2011)

GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE: a pandrogenous devotee of sex magick. Photograph: Peter Dibdin/Publicity image

GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE: a pandrogenous devotee of sex magick. Photo Peter Dibdin/Publicity image



GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE and TONY OURSLER have spent many years exploring paranormal phenomena through their artworks. Now, both have major exhibitions in New York – and suddenly they’re not alone in their interests.

Drugs, blood, caskets, fish and hair all feature in the arsenal of supplies enlisted for art by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE. A few more, for variety’s sake: bones, a brass hand, dominatrix shoes and the discarded skin of a pet boa constrictor.


Best known as a musical dissident with the proto-industrial band Throbbing Gristle and later Psychic TV, BREYER P-ORRIDGE has made visual art for decades as part of a ritualistic practice in which boundaries tend to blur. The first transmissions of musical noise started in the 1970s, but art has been part of the project from several years before then to the present day. Work of the more recent vintage makes up the bulk of GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE: Try to Altar Everything, an exhibition on view at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York.


The Rubin show focuses on correspondences between global contemporaneity and historic cultures from areas around the Himalayas and India, and the show surveys, in an expansive fashion, BREYER P-ORRIDGE’s engagement with ideas from Hindu mythology and Nepal. Nepal is a favored haven away from the artist’s home in New York, but – as with most matters in BREYER P-ORRIDGE’s realm – worldly matters turn otherworldly fast.


Reliquary by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE. Photo Invisible Exports

‘Reliquary’ by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE. Photo Invisible Exports



Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by two large illuminated portraits of nude bodies on the surface of caskets standing on end, one belonging to the artist and the other to h/er late partner and muse LADY JAYE BREYER P-ORRIDGE. The unorthodox pronoun “h/er” is not a mistake but the preferred way to address the genderless existence of the pandrogyne, a state of male-female fusion the two were seeking to achieve by way of surgical incursions and rituals to combine souls. The undertaking was chronicled intimately in the 2011 documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, released to wide acclaim four years after LADY JAYE fell prey to cancer and died (or “left her body,” as GENESIS tells it). Now, Try to Altar Everything brings some of the couple’s collaborative artwork into the light.


Blood Bunny, made over 10 years until its completion in 2007, is a sculpture under glass of a wooden rabbit covered in blood. Hanging from its head is a ponytail made from LADY JAYE’s hair, bright blond in contrast to the dark blood all but black in its desiccated state. The source of it was needle pricks from injections of the powerful drug ketamine, which the couple took – and BREYER P-ORRIDGE reveres still – for its fabled out-of-body experiences.


“It’s such a powerful material that we don’t waste it – we use it. We’ve got little vials of blood in our refrigerator at home,” BREYER P-ORRIDGE says while staring the bunny down at the museum on a recent sunny afternoon.


'Blood Bunny': includes blood infused with ketamine. Photo Invisible Exports

‘Blood Bunny’: includes blood infused with ketamine. Photo Invisible Exports



Nearby are a small sculptural shrine with dried fish slathered in sparkles over an abstract mandala design (Feeding the Fishes, 2010) and an odd clock remade with fossil teeth, feathers and bits of gold alluding to alchemical forces (It’s All a Matter of Time, 2016).


Works of the sort in the show serve as reliquaries or tools for use in rituals rooted in a mixture of familiar religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, voodoo) and inclinations toward the more arcane realms of black magic and the occult.


“We’ve investigated lots of avenues and that includes occulture of various types,” says BREYER P-ORRIDGE, who uses the word “we” exclusively in reference to a sort of individual and collective self. Early learning from occult figures like ALEISTER CROWLEY and mysterious magical sects like the Ordo Templi Orientis led to a lifelong devotion to ritualistic practice that has expanded and evolved.


S/he speaks highly still of “sex magic, where the orgasm is the moment when all forms of consciousness in your mind are joined, temporarily, and therefore you can pass a message through.” And other ceremonial endeavors involving age-old symbols and codes continue to be part of a method of art-making that is as much about the making as the end result.


GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE 'Feeding the Fishes': a small sculptural shrine. Photo Invisible Exports

GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE ‘Feeding the Fishes’: a small sculptural shrine. Photo Invisible Exports



An essay in the catalog for the Rubin show refers to BREYER P-ORRIDGE’s earliest work’s dedication to “the ‘discovery of intention’, meaning it created and unearthed its message and relevance through performance, not before,” while characterizing h/er ritual-abetted communion with LADY JAYE as a “living, experimental work of art in the process”.


The exhibition, which continues through 1 August, arrives in the midst of a certain vogue for art attuned to occult practices. Last fall, a survey of demonic and deranged paintings by MARJORIE CAMERON, an associate of notorious rocket-scientist/occultist JACK PARSONS and film-maker KENNETH ANGER, showed at the gallery of prominent New York art maven JEFFREY DEITCH. A group show titled Language of the Birds: Occult and Art gathered work by the likes of BRION GYSIN, JORDAN BELSON, ANOHNI, LIONEL ZIPRIN, CAROL BOVE and many more (including BREYER P-ORRIDGE) in the 80WSE Gallery at New York University. Uptown at the American Folk Art Museum, a show titled Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art drew visitors before closing in May.


Enough interest has been fostered and fanned out to make one wonder about the source of it all. Is it a yearning for art made for purposes other than mere aesthetic enterprise? A desired deferral to forces other than those proffered by markets and asset-class finance deals? A curiosity about creations devised with a mind for matters at play outside internal dialogues within just the art world itself?


TONY OURSLER, who has a new exhibition with paranormal proclivities on view at the Museum of Modern Art, says he can see the appeal of looking beyond the artistic pursuit for other forms of reason and rationale.


“A lot of people are trying to move into more social practices to find some relevance. It’s probably refreshing for people to see a certain kind of agency that can be offered in other practices,” the artist says.


OURSLER’s show is more playful and inclined toward levity and debunking than BREYER P-ORRIDGE’s. It includes parts of an immense archival collection related to stage magic and historical matters such as spirit photography and telekinetic mediums popular in the early 20th century, when notions of ghosts and transmissions from other worlds were very much part of the cultural conversation. The archive and a fanciful feature-length film, Imponderable, chart a peculiar history involving OURSLER’s own grandfather CHARLES FULTON OURSLER and his real-life dealings with characters including SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, HOUDINI and various spirit-world fixtures who turned out to be hucksters and frauds.


About the magnetism of such a subject, OURSLER speaks of an “unending interest in magical thinking and how it’s generated through media and various social means that led me back to these world views.”

He insists, too, that they are not as anachronistic as many might suspect. “Everyone walks around with a matrix of beliefs through which they view the world,” OURSLER says. “Statistically, if you look at America, it turns out roughly 60% of the population believes in ESP. One in three people do not believe in evolution. Forty percent of the public believes in UFOs. The rationalism we assume to be there might not, in fact, be there.”


BREYER P-ORRIDGE attributes rising interest in the occult to certain fleeting motivations. “Some of it is pure fashion, always,” s/he says. But the role of ritual and faith in its own ends can be a guide. After growing weary of the hierarchies and conscriptions of ceremonial magic as practiced early on (see: robes, chants, gestures with strict limitations and rules), “We thought: Do you need all the fancy theatrics or is there something at the core that makes things happen? Our experience tells us it’s just one or two things at the core. One of those is being able to reprogram one’s deep consciousness through repetition in ritual.”


When a working sense of ritual conjoins with the process of making art, the result might be differently invested. “When we walk around to galleries, we’re nearly always disappointed,” BREYER P-ORRIDGE says of art s/he sees around town. “Most of it is not about anything. It’s decorative at best and looks nice in penthouses. And now it’s gotten more corrupted because it’s like the stock market – people going around to advise people what to buy as an investment. You can’t trust the art world.”


To be trusted instead: “That strange reverberation that tells me what’s fascinating.”



Andy Battaglia
The Guardian


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First Transmission (1982) by PSYCHIC TV (January 7, 2015)
Bight of the Twin (2014) by HAZEL HILL McCARTHY III (July 1, 2014)
Les yeux de GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE présentés à La Centrale (October 1, 2012)
La bible psychique de GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE (December 7, 2010)
‘Thee Psychick Bible’ A New Testameant By GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE (October 27, 2009)

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

‘A groundbreaking tarot by the designers and artists LINNEA GITS and PETER DUNHAM that introduces a 23rd Higher Arcana card, “The Seeker” and five “Luna Cards” – all original introductions to the tarot format created by Uusi and found exclusively in Uusi’s Pagan Otherworld’s Tarot.

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSIPagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

Pagan-Otherworlds-Tarot_Uusi_05

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

Pagan-Otherworlds-Tarot_Uusi_06

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSIPagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

Pagan Otherworlds Tarot (2016) by UUSI

Uusi’s Pagan Otherworld’s Tarot


‘All imagery in this 84 card deck is hand painted using traditional oils by LINNEA GITS and all copy is hand lettered by PETER DUNHAM. The deck is inspired by the visual beauty of nature, early Celtic mysticism and the luminous beauty of Renaissance paintings.’


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HEXEN 2039 (2006) & HEXEN 2.0 (2009-11) by SUZANNE TREISTER (June 2, 2015)

L'Abbatiale de la
Liturgie Apocryphe

"The production of nervous force is directly connected with the diet of an individual, and its refining depends on the very purity of this diet, allied to appropriate breathing exercises.

The diet most calculated to act effectively on the nervous force is that which contains the least quantity of animal matter; therefore the Pythagorean diet, in this connection, is the most suitable.

...

The main object was to avoid introducing into the organism what Descartes called 'animal spirits'. Thus, all animals that had to serve for the nourishment of the priests were slaughtered according to special rites, they were not murdered, as is the case nowadays".