Scarlet imprint: A Pleasure Dome
Brighton Saturday July 21 2012
11am to 11pm
Tickets £15 in advance.
We decree a Pleasure Dome in the spirit of the visions of Coleridge and Kubla Khan. An opportunity to actively engage in the dreams and visions that will inspire a new generation’s Jubilee.
This year we focus on the visionary aspects of magic, from Anger to Jarman, cut-up to performance, possession states to poetry, surrealism to the sacred. A happening will unfold with an a stellar cast of magicians, witches and media manipulators.
Our line up for the day and night with six speakers, two dancers, ritual, theatre, poetry and a magic lantern show comprising the best occult short films.
A major visionary event for the European magical community.
Carl Abrahamsson
A recent focus in Abrahamsson’s writings/lectures has been the multicoloured area between art and the occult: their many intersections and often vital offspring. In 2011, he “initiated” an occult art project which deals with the creation of a “mega-golem”: one magical being consisting of artworks. His talk at the Pleasure Dome will touch upon this, in relation to a tradition of visionary art. www.edde.se
Al Cummins
Cut-up – the manipulation of existent material to form new / the sundered newspaper, the exploded ticket / aleatoric juxtaposition, dada hagiography, dub literature / paeans to Atropos, lady of the sacred scissors – patron of mosiac, collage and chimeras / the Fate who widens the windows of the soul. / a talk on cut-up by cut-up. / fragments of poetry, prose, lecture and improvisation / “…divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.” / a celebration of chaos, beauty and the spaces dilated. / paired like lips, two scissor blades make one cut.
Alkistis Dimech
BABALON: Embodiment of Mystery.
Peter Grey
Apocalyptic Witchcraft.
Stuart Inman
Connections between Surrealism and the world of the occult are real enough but are widely misunderstood. This illustrated talk will look at some of the artists and writers who have delved into occult studies (especially alchemy) the relationship between Surrealism and Hermetic ideas and will also consider the meanings of the 1999 exhibition in Prague ‘Svatokradez’ – Sacrilege – The Magical Against the Sacred..
Levannah Morgan
Kenneth Anger is a magician who produced an extraordinary series of short films between the late 1940s and 1981 including INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME, SCORPIO RISING, INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER and LUCIFER RISING.Initially working withn Aleister Crowley’s magickal system he developed a system of uniquely cinematic magick: films which were created as magickal rituals and which work on their audiences as such. Anger was also the muse and an inspirer of the Luciferian counterculture of London in the 1960s. Every image, every detail of these films as a magickal meaning and purpose. From the orgiastic Rite of Pan which is INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME, through the Geburic “attack on the sensorium” (Anger, 1966) of INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER, to the lyrical expression of Anger’s personal Lucifer mythos in LUCIFER RISING these films are a brilliantly luminous form of creative magick. In this talk I will look in detail at how Anger created this magick and how it works, and will demonstrate that Anger should be regarded as one of the leading magicians of the 20th century.
performance by:
Michael Azzato
Returning to give another Egyptian Sha’abi dance after his flamboyant performance at the Summer of Love. Michael has been studying and practising witchcraft and occult since his adolescence with an affinity for the divine feminine in world traditions and folklore, this led him to pursue Oriental Dance or Raqs Sharqi. He discovered its misconception as an archaic mystical dance promoted by pop culture which in its modern conception was born in the back streets of Cairo’s cabaret bars, which nevertheless developed into a performing art expressing the soul of Arabic music and its themes in this emotive and coquettish dance-style.
Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule
The Ancient Greek bard Orpheus torn limb from limb by the Maenads, wildwomen in the retinue of Dionysos. A disembodied head, alone on the currents, adrift on the elements, found by the Knights Templar and become their oracle… A head, having learnt presence, wise and carnal, desires to make a new body… This ritual theatre performance features live song and dance accompanied by a stop-animation film.
http://www.crossroads.wild.net.au/
Lila Liltih
Tantric dancer and Goddess devotee Lila Lilith will be performing. Full bio to follow
Poetry Readings
Paul Holman
Chris Page