Publisher's Synopsis
This book includes 17 original Surrealist paintings, plus rare artwork from Ithell Colquhoun and Austin Osman Spare, reproduced in full colour. Surrealism has always embraced magick. Surrealist automatism owes nothing to traditional sciences but a good deal to spiritism and occultism. We here present a republication of two of our earlier books, Dreaming Thelema and Magical Art (2016), rewritten from a metaphysical point of view. In some respects, Magical Art is a vindication of the work of the English scholar and poet Thomas De Quincey and his Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It also examines the work of English Surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun. The second book concerns the doomladen cosmic vision of H.P. Lovecraft, for it is central to the ideas expressed in the topsy-turvy world of orientalist Kenneth Grant, which are here subjected to rigorous intellectual scrutiny-as is the work of Aleister Crowley. Thelema is explained from a metaphysical perspective.
