LILITH preview

A detail of the first image from the Magical Calendar project.  The full image will be revealed first to those who purchase the print, available this coming Friday.

The image is a silver print, hand colored and painted.  Other details for the calendar are rendered in india ink and paint.

To be notified as soon as this print, limited to an edition of only 13, is available, please email rikgarrett@gmail.com with the subject "magical calendar."

The inspiration for this image comes from a long history of portraying the figure of Lilith as a serpent figure, bearing knowledge. 

Possibly the most famous representation of this is Michelangelo's Temptation and Fall from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

For more images of this throughout history, visit here.

I'd been fixating on this subject while on our honeymoon in Vienna.  While there, we visited a museum of Medieval armor and chanced upon this:

It was at this point that I decided that it made perfect sense for Lilith to be the first month of this year in magic. 

Magical Calendar update

Besides working on other projects, I've been pushing forward with the Magical Calendar project - finishing up the little details on the original piece for January, as well as planning the rest of the year.

Over the course of the year, I intend on tying together themes, imagery, symbols and beliefs from a variety of magical, mythological and religious belief systems from around the world.  I'll be drawing connections (many already well established, some less so) between traditions including Alchemy, ceremonical magic, Thelema, Paganism, Gnosticism, classical mythology and more.  This isn't cafeteria-style pick-and-choose syncretism, but rather my personal way to visually draw connections between different paths and traditions.  Rather than being a form of proselytization for any certain belief system, the result will be an open-ended exploration.  

Whether you are well-versed on subjects mentioned or have no interest in them at all, if you enjoy my other artwork I believe that you'll love this project.

The first three months' themes will be:
January - Genesis (Lilith)
February - Language of the Birds
March - Babalon

As previously mentioned, each month's print will be made available on the second Friday of the previous month.  In order to account for the holidays, the January print is planned to be released one week early, on December 7th.

Each print will be 13x19 inches, printed as an archival inkjet print on rag photo paper with no optical brighteners, signed and numbered in very limited editions.  The price of each print is planned to be $200 USD.

January's Lilith print will be limited to a very small edition of only 13.  In order to assist those who wish to collect the entire year's worth of prints, those who purchase any print will have early access to purchase others throughout the year.  For example, if you purchase the January print, you will have the ability to purchase the February print one day before the general public.

As an additional bonus, anyone collecting the entire year's calendar will also receive for free an additional 13th print not available for purchase otherwise.  

If you wish to be notified of the release of the first print, please send an email to rikgarrett@gmail.com with the subject "calendar updates."  

working on more Earth Magic photographs

Photograph of myself preparing a glass plate by Ayse Idil Idil.

Kirlian devices, auras and exploration

I've had several people contact me recently regarding my work with Kirlian devices, so I thought I would write a bit about the subject.

After reading about Kirlian devices for several years, I finally found myself determined to own such a device.  While there are devices available for sale on the Internet, I wanted something that I could play with and modify.  I searched online and dug through old books and magazines for plans and historical information, then set to work.

To be honest, my skills with reading schematics are rudimentary at best.  I found myself on the phone with my brother Doug, harassing him to help me with my projects.

In the end, I was able to come up with a couple of devices which I am able to modify to suit my needs.

Early experiments were fairly basic - the standard leaf or hand on a sheet of photographic paper.  I then quickly moved on to more ambitious projects.

This is Jane's face.

 Here are both of our faces on one image.

 

This is a Kirlian portrait of both of our hands.  I have not seen anyone else take Kirlian photographs of two people touching.  If someone else has done this, I would love to see the results.  This is a bit more tricky as the electrical energy circulates through both of our bodies in order to create the circuit needed to make this image appear.  As such, the potential for a bit of a shock presents itself.


If I haven't said it before, I consider myself lucky to have a wife willing to go through such ordeals (i.e. - electrical shock) in order to help with my art projects. 

I decided that these images were a bit hard to read visually, so I wanted to try something a bit different.  I used Fuji instant film (similar to Polaroid pack film) to take a photograph of Jane, then apply the Kirlian device to the photograph before processing the image.  The result is my Aether Field Portrait series.

Aether Field Portrait, Figure 1-1 (December 18th, 2011)

I was then curious if I would be able to create a full-body Kirlian image of myself.  Armed with a roll of RA-4 color photographic paper, a darkroom, a color processor and a makeshift Kirlian device, I set to work

 This resulted in a number of full body Kirlian scrolls, approximately 7-8 feet in length.

This is a closeup of the facial region.

For scale, here is a photograph of myself with the image.

Believe it or not, this series actually stems from many of the same themes as the Symbiosis series.  I'm merging my interest in arcane photographic techniques and attempts to utilize the photographic process to capture the invisible with my quest to understand the new circumstances in my life.  I'm utilizing Kirlian photography, aura photography, Radionics and other approaches to investigate my personal life.

For more in this vein, see the Subtle Bodies series on my website.

Thoughts on the Magical Calendar

I mentioned briefly my Magical Calendar project for 2013. While I work on it, I thought that I'd give a bit more information on this project.

As I mentioned previously, I've been highly inspired by the Calendrier Magique of 1896.  While I am inspired by the aesthetics and approach of Austin De Croze and Manuel Orazi, I will be diverging a bit in some regards.  They illustrated different facets of magical history, and in some ways I will do the same.

I will be tying together visually information culled from a variety of sources, in an attempt to create a linear  "story."  I'm stockpiling information that could well become a book, but honestly I trust my ability to create images more than my ability to write words.

2013 is the perfect year for this project, immediately following the "apocalypse" that has been the topic of much debate.  As "apocalypse" means "the lifting of the veil," I look forward to depicting a post-apocalyptic world of mystery and secret knowledge passed down through the ages.

Images will be composed of photographs that I have taken, retouched via photocollage and other mixed media approaches.  Prints will be museum quality archival inkjet reproductions, signed and numbered in very small editions.

I will be releasing information regarding each monthly image on the third Friday of each month, at which point the limited number of prints will be immediately available.  Those who have purchased prints in the series previously will have access the the purchase information one day early, in order to assist those attempting to collect the entire year's worth of images.

January's image will be entitled "Genesis," focusing on the figure Lilith.

A new project...

I've been secretly planning a new project for six months now, and Halloween seems like the best time to announce it.

For the past few years I've been fixating on the Calendrier Magique - a magical calendar by Austin de Croze and Manuel Orazi made to document the year in magic for 1896. 

This is the image for January 1896.  We have a large-scale reproduction of this hanging in our living room.  The entire calendar can be viewed online at the website of the Fantastic in Art and Fiction archives, a department of Cornell University's library.

I've been planning my own version for the year 2013.  I've been reading, taking notes, sketching, taking photographs and making tests.  I should probably not be mentioning this until the release is a bit nearer, but honestly I've been keeping it quiet for so long that I can't hold back any longer.

The images will be created via photographs, photo collage and mixed media. 

Rather than rush to release my "calendar" as a bound piece at the beginning of the year, I've decided to release a very limited number of prints of each month as it arrives.  People will be able to collect a single month, or the entire year's worth of images.

I'm still sorting out some of the logistics, and am very open to suggestions.

I'll have more to say (and show) about this project soon.  If this is of interest to you, please let me know!

Returning

I've decided to return to Blogspot.  Wordpress just didn't work out.

I've been more quiet than usual for a lot of reasons.  A list of things that I've been up to lately:

1.  Getting married.  Jane and I got married on August 12th.  The whole thing was incredible.

2.  Honeymoon in Vienna.  Also amazing.  We spent ten days eating tortes, drinking coffee, wandering through art museums and marveling at the magnificent city.  Having been obsessed with serpent symbolism lately, I told Jane that I was going to document snakes on our honeymoon.  Every time we turned the corner, we found more snakes:  statues, paintings, mosaics, etc. 

I also said that I wanted to find this Sethian altar that I'd heard rumors about.  We found it in the first wing of the first museum we visited in the city.

3.  Working on my red book, the last handmade book in my long-running alchemical book cycle.  While this video is mainly about the white book, Albedo, there is information about the in-progress red book at the end.

 4.  Venturing out into the woods to take more Earth Magic photographs before the harsh Chicago winter sets in.

5.  Along with Jane, planning, building, launching and maintaining the new website Occult Guide.  Occult Guide is a website dedicated to building a worldwide map of user-submitted locations of occult interest.  The site has been online for two months now, with some amazing locations having been added already.

6.  Research, development and tests for other future art projects.

I can't say much more right now, but I can say with confidence that 2013 is going to be an amazing year.