Earthbound (audio)

https://soundcloud.com/james-sheer-phaily/earthbound777

Please find attached a sketch in progress-a "handmade" audio recording of one of my latest pieces of writing(EARTHBOUND)-Thanks to Steve Wilson for the drum machine track and Jim Stanley for the bongo's-DOOMANTIA xj

Please "CLICK" the link above to hear the sounds! xj

Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule:Distillatio Exhibition

Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule: Distillatio exhibition Hundred Years Gallery, London
 June 25th-28th

Over the last nine years the Australian esoteric artist Orryelle has been involved in the creation of an alchemical book-web of graphic grimmoires entitled the Tela Quadrivium. The books (of which there are four in number) weave a wyrding way through the alchemical process utilising many deific pantheons and archetypes in order to illustrate, with sublime illustrative aestheticism, humanity’s relationship with Godhead, identity, creation and existence itself.

With the launch of Distillatio the artist has graduated from pencil with occasional flourishes of silver and gold to an adept execution of vivid, sensual, egg tempera paintings.

As Distillatio is the white book (in the weave) and white contains all colours, the splitting of this spectrum into the myriad of colours which form the Cauda Pavonis, (Peacocks Tail) exacts as it’s subject a truly beautiful and breathtaking collection of paintings which are not only adept in their execution but resonate with an alchemical immediacy which is somewhat akin, not only to sacred temple art but also to a magical otherworldly resonance seen only in the greatest of surrealist art.

When set in the weave of the book and now upon its completion, in all four books, the magic of Orryelle’s art becomes somehow vital and alive. This forms a surreality which the artist transmutes from the “going of the god’s” into the physical plane of Malkuth. What is also important is that Orryelle’s paintings also lose nothing of their vitality when taken out of the book-weave and placed in the gallery.

 The sublimity of his painterly technique and his mastery of it cannot be denied and as a painter myself, this artist found it awe-inspiring, sensual and very emotional to behold.

In conversation with the artist I found him affable and excited to talk about the process he had gone through in the execution of the White Book. Interestingly enough through working at the easel for many hours Orryelle told us how the distillation of his art onto the canvass induced a kind of hypnogogia which manifested itself as “not only a greatly increased awareness and perception of colour and it’s effects in the physical waking world, but also a delirious array of flickering myriad-hued mandalas when I closed my eyes after a long night at the easel”.

 Surely then the aesthetic alchemical process Orryelle has been involved in during the distillation of this book has not only transformed the apprehension of his art but the alchemist himself?

Performance
On the evening of Saturday 27th June Orryelle and a member of his company (Alison Rockbrand) treated us to an evening of performance music and dance. The set which the artist has prepared for his visit to our hemisphere commenced with an alchemical chess game (complete with newly forged and commissioned set) between the Red King and the White Queen (Red Lion/White Eagle).

As the music and action spiralled and unwound the  cowled figure of Orryelle (complete with voice and violin) was unshrouded to reveal the sacred blue deportment of Melek Taus (Peacock Angel) and the White Queen unveiled. Somehow in that “lightning bolt” moment, the journey of the Tela Quadrivium from Conjunctio to Distillatio was convoked to enthusiastic applause.

It was then that Orryelle (sans Alison) launched into one of this audience members favourite tracks from Orryelle- “Melek Taus” first aired in 2002’s Metamorphic Ritual Theatre Opera “The Choronzon Machine” and it has to be said the artist held us spellbound as the combination of Voice and Violin penetrated our cosmic sphere. The use of a loop pedal was also used adeptly by Orryelle in order to add a very unique sonic collection of cadences to the performance.

Orryelle then played a song called “If ” which can be heard on Soundcloud and of which I first heard last year at a Magical symposium in Leicester with a collective of other Castlemaine musicians called “Well of Wyrd”-one of the most optimistic numbers I have ever heard and one which I hope is on the next album.

This was followed by Sserpent Ssong which I believe is an invocation to Tiamat serpent of the Sumerian/Babylonian creation myth and finally Alison rejoined Orryelle in the performance space for “Kalikaye” from his ‘rechtaWatcher’ album, an awe-inspiring musical evocation of primal energies.

 

 

James Phaily 720 Words 

 

Deux ex Machina(Fifteen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf4Hk3XsS4Y

During the course of my Master's degree in Fine Art at The University of Lincoln I made a series of large "mythopoeic" paintings and an accompanying book entitled "The Book of Heathen and Earth"-these, accompanied by a recording of a performance I did at thee "Sonics of Magick" gig at FUSE artspace in Bradford enabled me to create this "flicker" film-which was installed in the gallery at the University-Please CLICK on the link above to access this fragment xj 

Tommorow Knows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHY8d0cnH7A

This film was made as a response to the "Central England Movie Archive"-it features footage of people buying tickets for a Beatles concert in 1962 and my own version of the last track from The Beatles album Revolver(1966)-"Tomorrow Never Knows." As the footage and we are going back in time the film is called "Tomorrow Knows."

I chose this track because it marks the point in time when The Beatles stopped touring and the advent of the psychedelic era, the point for me when music started getting interesting! xj

Please CLICK the link above to watch my film! xj   

EARTHBOUND

 Earthbound

 

Scene: The unfettered primordial darkness, resurging through and from the throne room of the most ancient one...

  Into the astral forest above the sky-blackout!

 I (re)awaken far beyond the valley that cloaks the abyss...

As  i regain consciousness, limber-up and earth-ride on!

 I find myself going back through night and coming forth by day.

It is with this process that i adroitly gather and bind the silent memory of my experience to a relentless behemoth of unquantifiable  funambulatory ecstasy.

 It is with the mi of my belonging that i transform  the sublime omniversant realm of the en-sorcellor-Atu One!

It is with one-pointed  ecstoical purpose that i  seek what is yet informed ,tirelessly foraging in the hundred-handed darkness of Amenta.  

Third eye ablaze!

 My seven souls, the kindling fire of our true nature...

In the Smashan(cremation grounds): The winged stench of rotting flesh carries the Nigredo Solis of death and dissolution  to a fecund scene where(in) the eyes of men are set ablaze and the lumeniscence  of consciousness  projected onto the hand of my most assured magickal purpose.

 

- My nascent starlit skywalk adeptly recieveth me. A negation of thought ,  in metatronic familiarity of dream re-rememberance  aligned to an acute earth-flight ,(a)risen  from behind the light of my kiaoetic shark’s desire...

Persistence of vision tears aside the silent veil as i silently depart this tangled mind-forest...

My heathen purpose rip and rend creating an  esoteric  poesis from the fecund “death and dissolution” of the black earth.

 The aesthetic  nature of this clandestine ritual of self-love is located at the night-side of the eclipse, generating radiations of primal energy through and from the  seventh wind  of the Sumerian way...

 The al-khem-ical  nexus which is hereby created forms the alembic that has at it’s nebula-the eye of the void...

I reify our shamanic playground  through a “know myself not” dream-weave of feather and scale, earth and sky. ..

Through earth and sky i assume the polemic, tooth and claw taking root- in the soil of the nigredo, saturated by the waters of the Nile. The mandragoria of creation reconfigures as a chtonic uprising...

I hurl myself out of the window and into the astral-twin above the sky...

In a parallel universe i stand on the bridge of night casting a malefic working...

 I project my cosmic apparition far beyond the ken of the mundane hustle of day-lit (un)dead zombie hunger...

I am a denizen of reified shamanic  surreality, ascetically carved from  a reconfigured  arcane cadence  of Sumerian haze and malefic import.

 The constitution and chemogenic properties of it’s exacting opaque reflection offers un-summoned  a cloak of fearless, starlit everlasting night which is mine to shield as arcane scimitar’s of sensorial aspect carve illuminating singularities into the hitherto previously impenetrable chaosphere of time and space...

The subjective signatory mind-warp of these nascent astral pathway(s)  and multi-dimensional  polarities gestate righteously beneath the  sublime  lycanthropic fullness of a hundred feathered thousand eyes...

In the Smashan, the heightened atmosphere  of  a most definite saturnalia reaches amoral pandaemonium . The retching stench of my rotting corporeality fucks the seven winds as i hang within  the cracks between the worlds. ..

This death posture stasis resembles  an  odaenism  of sacrificial inner-vision, the abscence of my left-eye-a qlipothic  passage rite into the cave of Lilitu.

A nexus escalating higher and higher weaving it’s wyrding , witch-blood countenance through and from the “blackening” phase of sacred Al-Khem, risen from behind the light-infinite slayerology...

Meanwhile...this twilight realm of death and dissolution, extricates and incinerates   it’s fecund backward-winding way ,infernally ablaze with all that should not be...

I stand shrouded in deadly dark exordium...

It  is here i make my stance – a polemic where no sole apart, as i look through  from behind the scene of mine own eye, guided by a lamp of invisible light-the eye of Thoth.

Out of the deep, i tirelessly seek, in the wake of my seventh gate, transcending duality, breaking dawn- annhiallating the useless  enforced machinery of some kind of man...

 I transcend duality, slaying godhead and identity with the one- pointed clarity of my warrior soul...

I am reborn and am chosen- as i genuflect in the throne room at darkly noon...

 The inner-space metamorphosis of the ever open door razor’s a smokeless fire whose apparition invites eternal anti-systems whom answer the arcane cadence of that which cannot be summoned...

 I utilize the call, bracing the immediate liminality of my surroundings  in painterly omens and portents- arisen, earthbound as i unlock the word- horde of my sphinx catacomb. I form a new aesthetic-steppin’ in and outside the circles of the nuclear winter of all that cannot be...

 Our blazing, flying saucer attack placates an outer -necessitation receptive of one’s signal to noise shamanic  karmic  vision...

Through the initiation i transmute in it’s entirety a selection of geospheric inter-dimensional  messages from the righteous  re-remberance of the magnetic  ziarah’s of the Dark City...

 The burning sky escalates it’s Arch-Loki space-ways through earthbound, folded-in  space, infinite( en-sorcelled by the seven angels of the young light)!

This alembic symbol, this space invading-aoratic medicine hat stand, gazing at my fur-lined  second sight-not taught- but lovingly opposed with the silver dagger of evil against evil...

It is mine I...

 A psychonaut in shroud  of human skulls and nomadic risen form doth  commit the body to solid black amplifier worship  in the wizened “mask  of death” that is the flickering invocation of the  phoenix...

- deep with: in the valley that cloak the abyss...

-Azazel ‘s (aeonic) mirror of doubt shatters shards of the shrouded starlit  glome...

I-stab the analogue cut-ins from the onslaught of gradations in aspect of singularities emitted-sweet nectar from the divine countenance of the thought  of  living moment ...

 A utopian sliver smashes a heat-tip sonic monololith  of Amplifier Worship in the arc-lite constant of neither opposite and i regress  the static...

 We shatter the wounded galaxies-of the Zu Heathen skullfuck-the eyes of men-our hands,  the prescient  prey of our illustrious incandescent Wolf-Father wretching catatonically  through the funerary backward-winding premonition of those  who  paint  with words...

In the run from the fire, i hear godly laughter and shatter the medicine hat of the outer void...

THE  terrestrial mind-fire in the wake of my unicorn sojourn,in the stoner coven of the aaoratic is entirely something else, a laughing jag  of relentless, tireless auteur enquiry?

 Seventh wind-weave of this endaemonic  tattoed mind-chain, keep-looking righteously in psycho-astral  heathen willow  tomes of  clandestine one-pointed cold –blood,in  warrior-aspect of spectral luminescence...

This oroboros  chimaeric  dark-star orbital  bleeds  the seven angels of our fecund black earth-green-blood and blue-skin of genuflected sacred mushroom edition...

 I am the feather and scale of a folded-in  heavy-metal Styxx river re-birth...

Dark globe ellipsis is a blue planet Ka...

A reincarnation of adept unity, it’s nature, a cosmically ensorceling ascetic-luna-(un)a-bashed, culminating in a funambulatory  passage rite. It’s location, the curved consciousness of visionary perception-an intoxicating rainbow convocation on the spokes of the kaaos metatron, space-craft of X-pass(ed)prescient future-daze.

To kindle a fire of honourable unfettered resurgence in the Voudon white darkness of a thousand Skies...

A  denizen of a thousand skies cloaked by the Willow’s that toll the bell...

 An astral mind-forest, ‘cos tree’s are people too... An amoral ,multi-dimensional  summoned entity  that cannot be-seen through the eye of  pale lies which men miscall their lives.

 I emerge from the most ancient one, a channelled Ragnarok laying waste to ill-communicated Ica-rian luminescence...

A pan-theurgic-Varg-ridin’ shape-shift -deadly dark...

I stand-seismically shifing earth and sky- melting above the sky, the sentinels and the blood of heaven-locked: in...

  A kaleidoscopic psychometric  extra  sensory perception, a strong  (shield  o’er )chaospheric  thirteen pointed earth-ride of coming back through night, starlit, sonic ,smokeless fire, carved in an endaemonic  depth-charge, eternally resurging my heathen surreality under  inner-space gloom of the blackened sons.

I -silent inner-space: Loki-Skywalker....

Mythopoeic Bookwork

The nature of my practice is occult-led and deals aesthetically with the manifestation of primal atavistic energies. It is through the invocation and channelling of these essentially spiritual energies in paint, sigil, found object, cut-up or spell that I have in mind the intention to create poetry through these magickal children and offer to the reader and  also myself (as creator) the sense of  an ongoing social/cultural and historical mythology. These atavisms apply themselves to both the conscious and perhaps more importantly the unconscious mind.

 

This mythopoesis takes the form of a book which as you read around aids the magickal process and unifies us for art’s sake for the chance of division.

 

Thus to all I offer, a reification of the Shamanic Playground and a transmutation of flesh to spirit   

 

MURAL777

Originally intended as a response to Crowley’s mural’s at the Temple of Thelema in Sicily, I soon realized that the constraints of time, space and audience were important contributory factors in its realization.

 

The mural was executed at a bar/restaurant called “La Campania” in the Church Square of a village called Los Montesinos on the Costa Blanca in Spain.

 

The space given to me was approximately one metre square, not as large as I had hoped but definitely achievable in the time I had to realize the project. It was an excellent creative feeling to know that I had free reign to do anything I wanted in the space but I also understood that it had to be suitable for the owner “Stacy Burnett” and his clientele

 

I began by whiting over the space with emulsion, after two coats, the surface held none of its original colour and we were good to go.

 

The painting was executed over three days and I worked on it for about three hours on each of those days. I worked steadily, applying the paint in patterned formations until a subject seemed to will itself out of the foundations. This was the point when my creativity really started to take hold and its subject matter achieved dominance.

 

The resulting picture is an example of a Shamanic avatar; the project shows an arcane preacher complete with Medicine Hat and third eye. It used patterned motifs to build up the picture and fills the space nicely. I used all the skills taught to me in my academic career at the University of Lincoln and I am more than happy with the result. 

 

It was great working with the people in the bar; they were all very inquisitive and more than happy to give their opinion. There was a point when I realized that I had actually got to pull the project off and it made me feel very nervous indeed what with everyone standing around watching me paint. Thankfully I had no problems and everything went well. A great experience.                

The Cutup....

The Cutup in the work of William S. Burroughs

“Life is a Cutup”-William S. Burroughs

 

Burroughs was introduced to the cutup technique by Brion Gysin (a painter) whilst they were staying in the Beat Hotel in Paris in 1959.The cutup technique is somewhat similar to montage techniques used in painting and structural film editing popularized by Eisenstein. “Burroughs immediately saw the similarity to the juxtaposition technique he had used in Naked Lunch (Grove Press 1959) and began extensive experimentation with text, often in collaboration with other writers”.[1]

 

The cutup is essentially a mechanical method of juxtaposition in which Burroughs literally cuts up passages of prose by himself and other writers and then pastes them back together at random. Burroughs often supplemented this literary version of the collage technique by transcribing taped cutups(several tapes spliced into each other),film cutups(montage) and mixed media experiments(results of combining tapes with television, movies, or actual events.[2] The fruition of these experiments can most clearly be seen in two avant-garde films with which he collaborated with Gysin and director Anthony Balch entitled “Towers Open Fire”(1963) and “The Cutups”(1963).

 

Cutup Theory

 

As Burroughs experimented with the Cutup technique he began to develop a theory of the Cutup and incorporated this into his pseudoscience of addiction. “Along with drugs, sex and power as examples of man’s addictive nature, Burroughs added an analysis of control over human beings exercised by language (“The Word”), time and space (i.e man’s physical existence and mental constructs he uses to survive and adapt).”[3] 

 

“In Burroughs cutup theory drugs, sex and power control the body, but “word and image locks” control the mind, that is “lock” us into conventional patterns of perceiving, thinking and speaking that determine our interactions with environment and society. The cutup is a way of exposing word and image controls and thus freeing oneself from them, an alteration of consciousness that occurs in both the writer and reader of the text”[4]

 

For Burroughs as an artist, the cutup is an impersonal method of inspiration, invention and an arrangement that redefines the work of art as a process that occurs in collaboration with others and is not the sole property of artists. Thus Burroughs cutup texts are comparable to similar contemporary experiments in other arts, such as action painting, happenings and aleatory music. His theory of the cutup also parallels avant-garde literary theory, such as structuralism and deconstruction.[5]          

---

[1] Jennie Skerl, William S.Burroughs,1985,Massachusetts,G.K Hall and Company

[2] www.languageisavirus.com

 

[3]  Jennie Skerl, William S.Burroughs,1985,Massachusetts,G.K Hall and Company

[4] Ibid.

[5] www.languageisavirus.com

 

 

Cutups....

ZONE TRIPPER

 

 

 SOMETIMES I FEEL DOOMLORD OR SPACE DESERT COWBOY HEAVY METAL SEX MACHINE  ALWAYS A FUCKIN PIRATE….

 

EITHER WAY WE’RE ON MY SHIP WE ROCK THE OCEAN PSYCHEDELIC ONE-WAY TRIP A MAGIK CARPET PILOT….

 

RIDE MY SONIC WAVEFORMS DIGGIN’ SOME LOWDOWN FREQUENCIES SELF-AFFLICTED BASSLINE JUNKIE SILENCE OFFERS INSULTS NOISE ATTACKS WITH NECCESITY LOUDNESS IS SO CALM TO MAXIMUM VOLUME YIELDS MAXIMUM RESULTS….

 

THERE IS ALWAYS TIME N’ER TO WORRY GOT TO KEEP IT FOOLISH IF YOU ARE CHASING THEN YOU CANNOT KEEP UP DON’T JUST SAY IT DO IT

 

 

The Cutup

 

Heavy low-down bass line frequencies, Desert doom-lord ship, cutting through psychedelic space ocean, silence always yields a one-way fuckin’ pirate….

 A magic-carpet, sex-trip cowboy upon this volume affected metal tripper.

A junkie pilot digging the ride, noise attacks my zone, chasing sonic waveforms offering loudness which yields maximum results….

 

It is never foolish to feel calm necessity,in order to keep myself, I insult worry,either way, just keep on it…. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Original

 

An eclectic measure

Some hectic leisure

It’s electric treasure,

With narcotic pressure,

 

Nerves explode to erupt with pleasure

Rainbow space, LSD coloured nebula,

 

Always partake,

Never say never,

You cannot predict,

Heavy cosmic weather.

 

 

Version1:

 

And cut:Heavily-spaced explosion.

All with-in, hectic cosmic weather.

 

Some leisurely prediction and always rainbow-coloured LSD25,

Eclectic pleasure in other peoples leisure.

 

Some say-thee electric eclectic nebula.

Never, never cannot measure-erupt!

Nervous breakdown treasure….  

 

Version 2:

 

I-always take a heavy measure of narcotics.

LSD pressure, it erupt in electric cosmic rainbow coloured azure.

Nerves explode, nebulizing predictions…

 

Ion’s, the weather you partake.

T’is omega pleasure with narcotic pressure,

Never cannot say with never.

I-infinite space….

 

 

My friend Tom Walsh sent me some short poems so I created some cutups from them in the manner of Bowie,Burroughs and Gysin-Enjoy!x

 

 

 

To-ward thee Avant-Garde....

According to the Oxford online dictionary the definition of “avant-garde” is someone who is working with new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music and literature. Or  a group of artists, musicians or writers working with new and experimental ideas and methods. This is an accurate description of the pathway I am travelling in my artistic practice and it is with this in mind that I seek to flesh out some of my  influences  and attempt to hone the parameters of my artistic journey and workout exactly what I am actually trying to investigate within the context of my postgraduate study. 

 

 

I remember reading Kerouac’s “on the road” when I was in my mid-teens and was inspired by it’s viscerality and immediacy, from then on I always wanted to write and make art, whether it be performance, fine art or the written word.

 

In Burroughs groundbreaking first successful novel Naked Lunch (1959),named so by Kerouac,(the analogy being that you can see exactly what is on the end of your fork), Burroughs presents his humanity in the upmost honesty and is unequivocally nude. Burroughs writes in the manner of a set of routines which accurately prognosticate the instruments of control(algebra of need)that manipulate our socio/political horizon. This relates more especially to the authors constant battle with heroin addiction and the modus operandi which that implies. It is non-linear yet perfectly formed with the most beautiful poetic sense and is “savagely funny.”(newsweek)

 

 

 Since then Burroughs has always been my favourite author, his non-linear style, routines and shocking honesty about himself has always struck me as being the  best that literature can offer. The way he uses the time and space continuum as an artifice to exorcize a socio-political point, (for example in the “Cities of the Red |Night” trilogy) the inherent intelligent of his prose urges me to keep inverstigating his prose and the “novels” they are contained in. I find his cutups to be sublime and the denizen of a lot of hidden truth as to the nature of our existence,for example the uncanny merging of dream and reality. As Burroughs says in the 1991 documentary “Commisioner  of Sewers,” “Your life is a cutup.”

 

For Burroughs image and word can be substituted, for when you read a word or collection of, an image definitely pops up in your mind.The random sublimnity of these words and images makes the cutup a great tool for exorcizing the control that others have over your destiny, opens your mind and allows you to feel freely and open your mind to new ways of thinking.

 

This idea of the cutup translates well to the world of avant-garde cinema, more epecially in Burroughs and Bryon Gysins,“Towers Open Fire,” which plays with ideas of word and image control and the concept of  a “persistence of vision, ”brought about by treating the image and soundtrack as if it were a dream, the reification of the open mind if you like engaged by the opening of the pineal gland/third eye.

 

The jump-cut, montage and energizing of sign and symbol can also be seen in the cosmic artifice and occult laden work of Kenneth Anger’s “Magick Lantern Cycle”. Painstakingly created over many years and often-reworked in new editions Anger’s films use image, sign and symbol as a direct link to Jung’s “collective unconscious” and is influenced heavily by |Crowley’s Thelema, the mysteries of Hollywood and in later years the counter-culture of the late sixties.

 

In terms of avant-garde music, arguably the most surreal and groundbreaking is Captain Beefhearts 1969 double album “Trout Mask Replica.” The record has the intention of being taken as an anthropological field fecording,it is experimental and abrasive and although it sounds extremely chaotic,there is within it an extreme control and trust in this chaos, legitamized by the vision of Captain Beefheart and the tireless diligence of his magic band.

 

On the record sounds spill around, mistakes become motiff’s on cappella tracks such as “orange claw hammer” and “the dust blows forward and the dust blows back,” the recording benefit’s from the Captain(Don Van Vliet) hitting pause on the tape recorder and starting lines over again. The recording was documented and produced  by Frank Zappa on a SHURE eight-channel mixer and an UHER portable tape recorder. Many of the vocals were initiated without the use of headphones, rendering them only slightly in synch with the instrumentation.

 

To develop the album the band lived together and practiced for up to fourteen hours a day, they were so attuned to each other that when it came for the band to record it only took four and a half hours. Beefheart wrote most of the album on piano and the parts were transposed for the benefit of the magic band, learning and executing this music must have took extraordinary effort, however the recording does not sound like the work of control freaks.

 

So during this term I intend to explore the notion of word and image in relation to the avant-garde. I shall write a book which will be illustrated by my paintings and also make recordings which refer to this material in an attempt to understand the juxtaposition between word and image and how greater truths can arguably be gleaned through this juxtaposition.                 

RED 777

As both artist-practitioner and post-graduate student, my primary objective in terms of the “serious and diligent matter,” regarding the creation of “new work,” centres around the eclectic logistics of “studio life” and the harnessing of the “promethean fire”of creativity which when alchemically filtered, through liminal planes of “silent memory”-from eye to hand, allows for inspiration to energize and fulgurate ones own “creative flow”.

 

The base matter of my academic investigation concerns the creation of an ascetic modus operandi developed through ceremonial and solitary ritual means, utilized through fasting and sleep deprivation for the purpose of creating a new aesthetic. The unified symbiosis of this line of inquiry both practical and theoretical has arisen from the notion of the known universe as unquantifiable and therefore stoically subjective in philosophy this is known as “logos,” the sentient principle governing the cosmos and is central to my practice.

 

I traverse an aesthetic pathway of creative endeavour which involves the tireless investigation of surreality, in flux. I seek to record and legitamize  states of consciousness reified through the current of what author Alan Moore terms “The Art,” an archane concept elucidated in his illuminating article “Fossils Angels.”[1] A “razor-sharp firestorm”  treatise, which seeks to petition the idea of making the symbiosis between the occult and contemporary art vital again.

 

 Although the planes of consciousness that partly make up my being and the mirrored reflection that is my “magical reality” is tangible to mine own perception- “as a means to art,” the draughting and production of my (good not great)[2] artefacts  is driven by natural laws, thus the nature of it’s ontology can never be truly apprehended

 

The dealt implications of this chosen journey suggest on all levels that I harness the opportunities afforded me by the coterie of “well-adjusted” peers and “sympathetic” academic staff allowing the substance of my endeavours in studio and seminar to be tempered  by quiet time of reflection and critical anaylsis. This implies beyond the academic sphere and into the world of concept and exhibition. My practice therefore  is primarily concerned with the relationship between the occult and the avant-garde

 

The intention of my practice is not dissimilar from the shamanism of Beuys and owes not a little from the “paranaoic-critical method” of Dali. I take as my polemic that of the artist-mage, my remit being, not unlike the Antoepedian entity “Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule’, “the shamanic services of bringing back visions and their wisdom to the tribe in dance, or chant or symbol.”[3]  It is with this “backbrain resurgence” in mind, I seek to reify my own “surreality”, in the flesh, in pencil and paint and in performance.

 

And so it is that I seek to  reify the “path-indirect,” in pencil, in ink, in flickering colours of righteousness, the cracks and hollows of the immediate, liminal spaces inbetween -a true record of my magical reality.

 

It is through private study of the art and ethos of Austin Osman Spare(1886-1956) that it  can arguably be said that no-one can deny the mastery of Spare’s line and form. It is with this in mind that I seek to perpetuate my own drawing and painting skills, harness the vital and submit my endaemonic ethos to THE(good but not great)ART. It is with due fortitude that i seek to develop and create a body of work based on Austin Osman Spare’s (not only but also) tract in his final Grimmoire(Zos Speaks!,Fulgur Limited (1997) concerning “The Ecstoicism of Zos vel Thannatos.”This mindset being a preliminary setting of the consciousness in order to drive my “Zos” (the body considered as a whole), to the shores of “mythos,” there I shall ride the “kia”(the reification of the Shamanic playground) to the second position of the death posture.[4]

 

 

The Audio-Visual has also nascently genesized itself in the form of tentative ritual/ambient soundscapes. At this moment (in the (inner) time/space continuum), the visual aspect is not unlike John Dee’s[5] obsidian mirror, whose scrying. analogised itself in the form of the “Traces du Sacre” exhibition at the “Centre Pompidou” (2008). The exhibition’s raison-d’etre, was to document not only esotericism but those practitioners whom have developed their aesthetic within the context of secular non-monotheistic tone and collectively intend to invoke (through their art) a relationship with the unknown. The time frame for this being the last two-hundred years(nineteenth and twentieth century). My conclusion, there is little vital and truly occult until DuChamp’s readymades and the freedom of Dada, the realm of the heathen?

 

Anger’s “Magick Lantern Cycle”(1948-1980) was my first inspirational portal into the realm of occult artifice, sign and symbol. It introduced me to the possibilities of the jump-cut, juxtaposition and montage which the filmmaker manipulates. It is based on Eisenstein’s structural theory of editing which Anger utilizes with total effect, aided by his sense of the visionary.The notion of Hollywood being a kind of Twentieth Century  Babalon and the “do what thou wilt,” attitude of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema.

 

Anger wields the cinematograph as a magickal weapon often spending years splicing  rendering, painting on the celluloid, often the only product surviving is a sketch of the original vision.

 

 The magnum opus of the cycle is undoubtedly “Lucifer Rising”(1972), it is within it’s cell’s that the cinematographers utopian vision is reified “as now,” in qabbalistic symmetries of Luciferian invocation.

 

Through “suspension of disbelief”  (ourselves the viewer as acolyte)  we actually see the Egyptian deities calling forth the Aeon of Horus the idea being that Crowley’s Book of the Law[6] reifies itself on the moving image-the auteuric perambulations offer something else entirely, beyond the abstract and the shock of Warhol’s “White Car Crash x 24.”

 

In the coming months I hope to develop my audio-visual skills and create more performance based work embodying a more total harnessing of the possible occult and conscious changing properties available through the creation of “sonisphere’s of aoratic power,”  possibly using actual instrumentation. I am also interested in collaborations with likeminded individuals.

 

I would also like to continue writing, drawing and painting and hopefully create my own book.

 

 

 

 

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[1] See ABRAXAS-Journal of Esoteric Studies,SPRING EQUINOX (2012)

[2] Ibid.

[3] www.crossroads.wildnet.au

 

[4] [4] “A simulation of death by the utter negation of thought, i.e the prevention of desire from belief  and the functioning of all consciousness through the sexuality” Spare, Austin Osman, The Focus of Life(REDUX)(1921),London, Fulgur Limited,2013

 

[5] John Dee (1527-1608)

 

(a)”For the nature of true alchemy is that it changes not only the “Al-Khem” but the alchemist “Himself”.(Sister Nema of Horus-Maat Lodge.)

 

(b) “As within:So without”

…(Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956)

[6] A complex work setting out the word of Thelema delivered to Crowley by his guardian angel Aiwaz in Cairo(1904)

 

ALTAR

I thought the best way of consolidating all my work for my Master's in Fine Art this semester,was to build a Shrine/Altar in the Project/Space of the M.A studio.I really enjoyed collaging all the elements together and the project hopefully gives off a strong aura of the esoteric and the liminal.We seem to hang in a vacuum of sheer Surreality as we study it's contents and I feel that I am finally getting somewhere in terms of the strength of the line in my work,how this relates to form,the use of colour and the concept of creating a ritual/devotional environment that may very well give birth to further installation work! x

https://soundcloud.com/james-sheer-phaily/hekt2

Please check out the soundscape above which informs the installation! x

 

SATURNALIAN ONSLAUGHT

PERFORMANCE - Greyfriars, Lincoln, XMAS PARTY-2013

 

After the success of my Samhain Vigil I was conscious I should mark and give some recognition to the onset of the Solstice and the start of the Ancient Roman (twelve day) feast of Saturnalia.

 

  On the morning of the party I decided I would like to perform, so rang up my friend Tom (who was helping organize it), who gave me the go-ahead. I was thrilled. Tom asked me if I had a mystic cowl to wear (as I have done on previous occasions) but explained that I only borrowed that. It was decided then that I would perform shirtless and go barefoot, which I have become used to ritually, after hanging out with my friend the Australian Artist/Mage Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule.

 

The performance went really well, things seemed to flow really well and everyone was in good “spirits”. I got a good reaction. The highlight of my performance(for me) was undoubtedly Orryelle’s TIA-MAAT chant from his Labyrinth LP.

 

Overall I think it flowed seamlessly, allowing the performance to be a moment in itself. I really liked being in the Zone and making people happy. PLEASE LISTEN TO THE RECORDING OF MY SET BELOW x 

 

https://soundcloud.com/james-sheer-phaily/greyfriars1-wav

 

PENITENZIAGITER

PENITENZIAGITER

The pervading otherness that demonstrates itself in all I artistically undertake is concerned with that which is occult(hidden),otherwise known as the esoteric. For arbitrary convenience sake I call this “Thee Arte.” It’s true nature is that which is endlessly resurging,”united for (thee) arte’s sake for the chance of division”(orryelle defenestrate-bascule).Or as 19^th century occult milestone “Aleister Crowley” said “we are united for loves sake, for the chance of (re)union”. My practice is an appending embodiment of my own (un)conscious mind, a “transformation of flesh to spirit”(Carl Mcoy) if you will? In it’s creation I harness a subjective persistence of vision and “lucid symbolism,” that manifests itself in a multi-disciplinary approach embodying, drawing and painting ritual performance and a desire to enter into the construction of installation and the audio-visual.

In essence, my work has the intention of a visceral Pan-Theurgy,the Promethean process of “stealing the fire from heaven”1.an allegory from Austin Osman Spare’s “book of pleasure”(1913)

As a polemic I inhabit the (in-between spaces) within the assumed stance of the esoteric renegade. As prop-agitant(employing ecstatic elements of stoicism and asceticism) i invoke, evoke and convoke entities, not only of the corporeal but the "myriad of familiars and elementals which partly make up my being".(aos) Through “the Arte”, I communicate with the Astral mind, bending(through the manipulation of the Chaosphere)and breaking the bodies and spirits which are  channelled aesthetically into artefacts of magical import. In simple terms “the Shamanic remit of bringing one’s visions back to the tribe.”2.Taken from artist/mage Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule’s “mutation parlour”www.crossroads.net/au         

I have now a possible solution to the fulfilment of the modular criteria of this stage of the Master’s Programme and it is currently underway. My journey has begun by taking esoteric connections of an essentially lunar, arachnean nature(spiders are great connectors although some people are afraid of them) and have now started manipulating them into a creative magical current based on my association with the global artistic and magical community “The Hermaphroditic Chaorder of the Silver Dusk”.

Project:ALTAR

It is my artistic intention to create a space (in sensorium) suitable for invocatory purposes. The altar shall use found objects of a sacred nature and paintings and drawings created specifically for devotional purposes, a cornucopia of the chaosphere if you like? It should be cluttered and pleasing to the eye, a feast of the visual, would be nice to create a short video loop to go along with it.

As well as the visual I shall create a malefic atmosphere through the creation of a soundscape, to further attack the sensorium. The soundtrack will use elements of drone, chant and spoken word and shall be of an invocatory nature. The soundtrack shall be influenced by Sunn0))), Earth, Boris and OM also the audio work of Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule. As a mythopeic, avant-garde production,the films of Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle shall be referenced. Texts utilized include Austin Osman Spare’s “Focus of Life,”his “Book of Pleasure”and “Earth Inferno.”AOS’ current of Zos Kia Cultus is intrinsic to the workings of the project. Of prime importance to it’s construction shall be the graphic grimmoire’s (an alchymical bookweb) of the Tela Quadrivium by Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule,The Typhonian Trilogies of Kenneth Grant and also William S. Burroughs “Cities of the Red Night” Trilogy. This should be completed before assessment in January.

Project:The Book of XUL vel ENDYMION

It is one of my greater desires to create my own “graphic grimmoire,” to further clarify and elucidate my own magical ethos and it’s relationship to my artistic practice.it would be nice to publish this privately on recycled paper in paperback. Xul vel Endymion is my magical name within the order, Xul being the Sumerian word for Daemon and Endymion in Greek mythology,a shepherd who first tracked the movements of the moon and by virtue of this was in love with her(Selene).

I’m going to take my time with this one, want it to be arresting, exciting and vibrant utilizing all the skills I have gathered since I set out on my artistic journey. Text’s will be of my own creation and shall illuminate the visual(the opposite applies)....