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A curious doodle - ballpoint pen on notebook paper - by an unidentified artist. (Click to enlarge.) |
(This post was originally constructed - as is - in 2021. For a number of reasons, it was stalled in draft mode... but, I found it again recently and decided to let it fly.)
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- From the Wiki entry for Surrealist automatism. Inset right is a 1907 automatic painting by Spiritualist artist (and mystic) Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) found here.
"Austin Osman Spare (30 December 1886 – 15 May 1956) was an English artist and occultist who worked as both a draughtsman and a painter. Influenced by symbolism and art nouveau his art was known for its clear use of line, and its depiction of monstrous and sexual imagery. In an occult capacity, he developed idiosyncratic magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self."
- From the Wiki entry for Austin Spare. For more Austin Spare see the Addendum of this Trans-D post.
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Austin Osman Spare likely would have been completely forgotten were it not for Kenneth Grant, an over-enthusiastic young man who had grown up on H. P. Lovecraft books, who never shook the conviction that Lovecraft was writing codified non-fiction, and who soon undertook a lifelong pursuit of Magick. Like Israel Regardie before him, Grant came into Crowley’s orbit, becoming his secretary in the final years of his life; Crowley obliged the young man by demonstrating occult processes like ether-assisted astral travel."
- Excerpt from Jason Louv's wonderful article: The Strange Life of Austin Osman Spare, Chaos Magician. Inset left is Spare's unique interpretation of the astrological sign of Capricorn - his own birth sign - found here.
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- Excerpt from Kenneth Grants's Austin Osman Spare: An introduction to his psycho-magical philosophy.
"I am interested only in the unknown and I work for my own astonishment."
- Via the great Surrealist - and master of automatism - Roberto Marta. whose untitled work (1965) appears above, inset right. It was sourced from his amazing website.
***
The doodle which appears at the beginning of this post was found several months ago in a book I was cataloguing for a friend. It was a tedious textbook about biological statistics entitled Biometry and the name M. Smartt was scribbled in ink on the front endpaper. My guess is that the doodle emerged in a college classroom during a particularly boring lecture, and, as for the artist, well, let's just say that he or she was compelled to escape into a more surreal, imaginal dimension. On the other hand, doodling is also known as an indirect way to concentrate and multitask.
(New text, 2/13/2025.)
The common doodle is possibly the rawest form of automatism there is. Ideally, it can bring to light the unconscious murmurings of the psyche in it's symbolic language.
For an artist or writer a doodle can be the seed for a larger creation. A good doodle is an almost magical thing, so it's not at all unusual that it would find it's way into the occult world.
As for the amazing doodle above, well, it almost seems like a narrative of a sci-fi creation myth. Not only that, you might even find bit of your own story somewhere among it's multitude of vignettes. Seriously, study it for a bit... it's teeming with symbols!
Just for fun: Doodle Art Alley.
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