Category Archives: Mystics

Gusto Gräser

Dress-down Friday: Gusto Gräser

Gräser’s idealism, ascetic lifestyle and incessant wanderings bring to mind a Herman Hesse character. And little wonder; Hesse was one of Gräser’s followers and worked both the personality and teachings of his guru through several of his books.

Gusto Gräser

Dress-down Friday: Gusto Gräser

Gräser’s idealism, ascetic lifestyle and incessant wanderings bring to mind a Herman Hesse character. And little wonder; Hesse was one of Gräser’s followers and worked both the personality and teachings of his guru through several of his books.

Fidus Beethoven Tempel

Fidus | temple designs

Fidus absorbed Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach’s vision of an englightened society turning its back on industry and materialism and re-embracing nature, and transformed it into a religion, going as far as producing several designs for temples.

Fidus Beethoven Tempel

Fidus | temple designs

Fidus absorbed Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach’s vision of an englightened society turning its back on industry and materialism and re-embracing nature, and transformed it into a religion, going as far as producing several designs for temples.

AOSpare

Austin Osman Spare | automatic drawings

“When the mind is oblivious,” Spare asserted, “great success is assured”.

AOSpare

Austin Osman Spare | automatic drawings

“When the mind is oblivious,” Spare asserted, “great success is assured”.

Joséphin Péladan

Pearls: Joséphin Péladan

“Making the invisible visible: that is the true purpose of art and its only reason for existence.”

Joséphin Péladan

Pearls: Joséphin Péladan

“Making the invisible visible: that is the true purpose of art and its only reason for existence.”

Harry Everett Smith

Harry Everett Smith | paintings

Some of Smith’s paintings appear like freeze frames of the lysergic mandalas and shamanic patterns of his experimental films, not surprising given that he used the painstaking method of painting on celluloid to achieve some of his cinematic effects.

Harry Everett Smith

Harry Everett Smith | paintings

Some of Smith’s paintings appear like freeze frames of the lysergic mandalas and shamanic patterns of his experimental films, not surprising given that he used the painstaking method of painting on celluloid to achieve some of his cinematic effects.

P_10Jun_gustav

Uh-oh…

Best known for his adaptation of the Jewish folk legend The Golem, Gustav Meyrink is attracting attention almost 80 years after his death for an eerily prophetic short story written in 1903.

P_10Jun_gustav

Uh-oh…

Best known for his adaptation of the Jewish folk legend The Golem, Gustav Meyrink is attracting attention almost 80 years after his death for an eerily prophetic short story written in 1903.

Maya Deren

The rhythm divine

Deren became fascinated by voodoo, which embodied multiple overlapping interests which she had already explored in film, including dance, ritual and altered states of consciousness. Choreographer Katherine Dunham described her as “possessed by rhythm”.

Maya Deren

The rhythm divine

Deren became fascinated by voodoo, which embodied multiple overlapping interests which she had already explored in film, including dance, ritual and altered states of consciousness. Choreographer Katherine Dunham described her as “possessed by rhythm”.

Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln

Jewish Presbyterian Buddhist Nazi spy, MP

The annals of espionage and counter-espionage offer few stranger cases than that of Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln, born to a Hungarian Orthodox Jewish family but converting to Christianity soon after his arrival in London, where he joined the Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews.

Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln

Jewish Presbyterian Buddhist Nazi spy, MP

The annals of espionage and counter-espionage offer few stranger cases than that of Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln, born to a Hungarian Orthodox Jewish family but converting to Christianity soon after his arrival in London, where he joined the Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews.

Joséphin Péladan

A sâr is born

Joséphin Péladan was a keen self-publicist, describing himself as “the sandwich man of the Beyond”, and the opening night of the Salon des Rose+Croix in 1892 was mobbed by punters just as keen to lay eyes on the extraordinary “Sâr” as the work of such artists as Jean Delville.

Joséphin Péladan

A sâr is born

Joséphin Péladan was a keen self-publicist, describing himself as “the sandwich man of the Beyond”, and the opening night of the Salon des Rose+Croix in 1892 was mobbed by punters just as keen to lay eyes on the extraordinary “Sâr” as the work of such artists as Jean Delville.