Thursday, June 26, 2008

Crowley in Paris

Just time to visit if you are in Paris: the paintings of Aleister Crowley!

Until June 29 at the Palais de Tokyo, as part of the general exhibition "Traces du sacré" at the Centre Pompidou until August 11.

Aleister Crowley settled at Cefalù (Sicily) in the 1920s. There he founded the Abbey of Thelema, the site of social experiments and research into the field of the occult. The series of paintings exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo was discovered a few years ago in a nearby village. Some of them of course conjure up the “Abbey”, or its wider context. The series makes explicit the importance of the image and symbol in the occult field. Recent study of the series demonstrates its connection to the Thoth Tarot cards, a form of the game devised by Crowley 20 years later (1938-1942).

Between oneiric visions, psychotropic hallucinations and the utopia of a primitive paradise, the whole of his work has influenced the counter-culture and pop music to an equal extent. The discovery of these paintings provides an opportunity to question the complexity of this heritage.

Alternative Expressions of the Numinous

The Esoteric Studies Research and Teaching Group
in conjunction with the
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the
University of Queensland

presents the

3rd annual
Alternative Expressions of the Numinous Conference


Friday 15 – Sunday 17 August 2008, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, Brisbane, Australia

Keynote Speakers

  • Doug Ezzy – ‘Religion as the Etiquette of Relationships’
  • Nevill Drury – ‘Black Magic, White Magic and the Cosmology of Rosaleen Norton’

Abstracts (250 words, by Monday 30 June 2008) are invited for, but not limited to, the following strands:

  • Esotericism
  • Mysticism
  • Alternative expressions of major religions
  • Religions of re-enchantment
  • Popular culture religions
  • Indigenous religions
  • Paganism and Neo-Paganism
  • New Religious Movements
  • Personalised religion
  • Alternative methodologies

Papers are also invited for a session to run in Second Life, to be run in parallel with the real life sessions.

Conference Website: http://www.uq.edu.au/hprc/index.html?page=64294&pid=0