Electricity & Imagination: Karl von Eckartshausen and Romantic Synaesthesia

Recently I acquired a copy of Fulgur’s Touch Me Not, a facsimile, transcription and translation of the Wellcome Library’s notorious Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae (MS1766). This manuscript has circulated quite widely over social media during the last year or so, mostly owing to a fascination with the diversity of demonic genitalia on display therein!

However, little was said about the textual content of the manuscript. We might immediately deduce that it is 17th century, German, and likely connected with the overtly dark and demonic ‘Höllenzwang‘ magical literature, most often associated with Faust. Intrigued by the images, I was excited to discover that an edition was in the works, edited and translated by Hereward Tilton and Merlin Cox, the description of which promised ‘psychedelic drug use, animal sacrifice, sigillary body art, masturbation fantasy and the necromantic manipulation of gallows-corpses.’ My copy arrived last week, and it is a very handsomely produced volume indeed.

Such lurid descriptions as those above undoubtedly make good copy, but what I found most interesting was the way the text interpolated material – chiefly on narcotic salves and fumigations – from the Aufschlüsse zur Magie (1788/1792) of Karl von Eckartshausen. I was only dimly aware of the work of Eckartshausen, but Touch Me Not compelled me to find out more…

Images from MS1766 – a necromantic operation gone awry (and a demon described by Tilton & Cox as ‘dolichophallic’!); sigillic body art, as part of an operation to conjure Astaroth.

Hexadic Eudaimons

A couple of announcements!

First, I’m very proud to have a track on Ben Chasny’s forthcoming Hexadic III collection. It’s an organ improvisation in the Hexadic style, entitled Zoa Pastorale. The release date is February 23rd, but pre-orders are open now!

The album also features Moon Duo, Tashi Dorji, Stephen O’Malley (and company), Richard Youngs, Jenks Miller (Mount Moriah) and Meg Baird & Charlie Saufley (Heron Oblivion). I’ve been bowled over by the diversity of sounds on display in this album – from motorik psych, to doomy sludge, ethereal folk, sunshine rock and Baroque floridity – all wrought from Ben’s system of tonal organisation. You can even dance to a couple of tracks!

Read more and place your pre-orders over at the Drag City website.

 

Second, you may know that I hold the poet Kathleen Raine in high esteem, having previously named an album after a line from one of her poems, and written at some length on the relationship between her vision of nature and the poetic imagination and its relation to sonic arts. I was excited, therefore, to discover that Delphine Dora had recently finished an album of songs that spontaneously interpret Raine’s poetry. She invited me to contribute an English text to accompany her album, Eudaimon (to be released early 2018 by three-four records), and this is what I wrote:

The twentieth century has had its share of poets exploring magic and mysticism. However, it is Kathleen Raine who has articulated the deepest spiritual vision throughout the entire body of her work. Having studied William Blake – and, in the process of doing so, reading all that he had read – Raine believed poetry to be an art-form that could open readers to an awareness of a divine, transcendental world which expresses itself to us through in the language of symbols.

As an example: for Raine, a tree is never ‘just’ a tree: iIt is a symbol of the unity of the universe. This symbol draws meaning from its presentation in the poem: it may blossom, decay, or be felled – each of these express different relationships between humanity and the universe. For Raine, nature and its symbols express an archetypal world, which she described as burning “with an interior light and glory, awe-inspiring.”

When we become acquainted with Raine’s symbols, we begin to see the world very differently: full of meanings and spiritual significance. Her vision of the poetic symbol has deeply influenced many artists – myself among them – and has led to a number of musical settings of her poetry. However, these are predominantly in the ‘art-song’ genre of classical composition – here, Raine’s simple and intimate language is often obscured by the compositional settings and vocal techniques that the classical idiom demands. What Delphine Dora has achieved here are naturalistic settings of Raine’s words, which present her poems in a new light. Delphine’s work interprets Raine’s poems in a style that is by turns ethereal, lively, melancholic and innocent – the last of these terms evoking the idea of the innocence of souls: who, being incarnated in the lower world, become corrupted and seek to return to their source through the gates of death.

Indeed, death is one of Raine’s prominent themes, and is explored on in the opening song on this album. H.G.A. sees Raine reflect on her proximity to her Holy Guardian Angel, who will soon lead her immortal soul away from sphere of creation, and, consequently, she will forget all that she now remembers about the material world. Many of us would be inclined to approach such a theme sombrely, but the melancholic sweetness of Delphine’s interpretation captures something of the yearning for the otherworldly and unknowable world of light that Raine believed to be the soul’s true habitation. This angel is the same as that sung about in Eudaimon, who sees her depart the celestial realms for the ‘prison house’ of the world, but who will one day bear her back to her true home in the stars.

Like Raine’s own poems, the songs on Eudaimon are pure in their simplicity and austere style. Yet they also shine with the crystalline fire of the world beyond: that same light which bleeds through the symbols that Raine believed helped our souls recall their original states. If you do not already know Raine’s work, there can be no better introduction.

 

Raine may also be due a wider revival: I notice that she also features prominently in Gary Lachman’s forthcoming Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.

More news soon, I hope, on the new Hawthonn album… and even a gig or two…!