With Gary Dickinson at the Moot-with-No-Name
Wednesday 17th February 2010
In the final decade of the crumbling Manchu dynasty, accompanied by wife and child, Aleister Crowley made an epic three-month trek along part of the old Silk Road across China’s remote south-western Yunnan Province. There, he says, the magnificent scenery of China ‘penetrated his soul’. For Crowley that journey culminated in April 1906 with an invocation of Aiwass in the burgeoning treaty-port of Shanghai.
The ‘Walk Across China’ reflects another, inner journey Crowley made through an equally wildly romantic landscape; a ‘China’ of popular myth. That journey began in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1901 and continued through to the end of his sojourn in New York during the years of the First World War.
To celebrate the Chinese New Year, in ‘A Walk Across China’ Gary Dickinson retraces Crowley’s footsteps, looking at some of the places he visited using photographs taken around the time Crowley was there, and examining some of things he saw and the people he met.
Gary Dickinson is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, an expert on Chinese art and was an historical consultant for Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning film ‘The Last Emperor’. He has lectured in major museums throughout the world and, after some 30 years of study of the ancient Chinese oracle, has recently started an I Ching consultancy service.
The Moot-with-No-Name is held at the Devereux Arms, Devereux Court, a side-street opposite the Royal Courts of Justice, in The Strand, London.
7.30pm for an 8pm start.
For further information, please contact either Geraldine or Bali at The Atlantis Bookshop
Tel: (0)20 7405 2120