Dark House: ... NIGHT: DOMAINS Dark House: Nocturnal Architecture in the Art of Leonora Carrington

Peter Lamborn Wilson Romantic will to beauty, the Romantic will to truth, the Romantic will to action” MAGIC OF THE EGG are “insuperable” (unüberwindlich) acquisitions of modern culture. In a To be performed on the Night of St. John the little-noticed but highly significant Baptist (June 24) essay in the form of a dialogue, also from 1913 (“Dialog über der Religiosität On the Eve of St. John take the egg of der Gegenwart”), he writes that “we a black hen and a glass of water outside all still live very deeply immersed in the under the night sky. Break the egg and discoveries of Romanticism” and that we drop it, shell and all, into the glass. At have to thank romanticism for the most dawn, go to look at it and you will see, powerful insights on “the nocturnal side in its shapes, the fate and troubles you of the natural.” Sharply criticizing the will have to endure. reduction of men to working machines —from “Mysteries of Sorcery,” a and the debasement of all work to the manuscript from the time of the Moors technical, he insists, in opposition to the in The Book of St Cyprian the Sorcerer’s illusions of progress and evolution, on Treasure1 the need for a new religion (whose prophets would be Tolstoy, Nietzsche, In one of his first publications (under and Strindberg—i.e., cultural critics of the pseudonym “J. Ardor”), the short modern civilization) and for a new, notice “Romantik” (1913), Benjamin “sincere” (ehrlichen) socialism, very criticizes the “false romanticism” taught different from the conventional one. in school and calls for the birth of a — Michael Löwy, On Changing The “new Romanticism,” stressing that “the World2 162 SCAPEGOAT 10 163 ... Nocturnal Architecture in the Art of Leonora Carrington NIGHT: DOMAINS THE SCHOOL OF NITE and Dream, inhabit a silent subterranean and subsist on the nourishment of that shrouded palace of green and black marble food, and are called anthropophagoi, with one gate of horn and one of ivory— or “cannibals.” Also that there are men whence she sends out true dreams or false. in the same latitude having one eye in Perhaps this edifice is egg-shaped, like a the middle of the forehead and called womb/skull palazzo in Hieronymus Bosch’s Arimaspi, who are of the appearance Garden of Eden—or Adam’s first rude hut, that the poets give the Cyclopes. That shaped like a half-buried egg by Odilon Redon: there are also in the same region other one side: gate of horn men, of marvellous swiftness, whose other side: gate of ivory feet are turned backwards and do not point forwards, as in the rest of mankind. In other words, there exists an architecture Further, that it was handed down by of the Nocturnal, and it constitutes of course tradition that in a distant land called a school—the School of Night, or as I spell it, Albania men are born whose hair turns the School of Nite, the kind you might see white in childhood and who see better by Isaac Oliver. Young man seated under a tree. advertised on a panel in the NY subway, a night than in the daytime. 1590 [Probably the Earl of Northumberland] place for tired workers to take evening courses — Aulus Gellius Attic Nights3 in useless esoteric subjects simply for the occasion an able military commander— pleasure (“jouissance”) of learning. The genre of literature described here is but his chief bent was for science, known technically as “pseudoxography” mathematics and philosophy, which in Odilon Redon. L'oeuf. 1885 ALBINOS OF ALBANIA because the original Greek sense of “paradox” the popular verdict meant “magick,” and “The nocturnal assumes the shape of an is something like “amazing thing”—just earned him his nickname as the “Wizard egg.” — Gaston Bachelard WHEN I was returning from Greece like “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” “Attic Nights” Earl.” In these pursuits he was assisted to Italy and had come to Brundisium, refers to Greece, not your Granny’s attic, by his friend and chief scholar, Thomas I’ve been quoting this tag from Bachelard for after disembarking I was strolling about which as it happens is also full of strange Hariot, whom he kept on a handsome so long I’ve forgotten exactly what book it’s in that famous port. [. . .] There I saw things and can assume an atmosphere of salary of £100, and provided with a from. I read it as a reference to the alchemical some bundles of books exposed for dream, late at night by the light of a single house and laboratory. Hariot was a poly- “egg of chaos,” as in Hesiod’s evocation of sale, and I at once eagerly hurried to dim (lunar) bulb—which casts a glow—in the math in the late Renaissance mold: the originary cosmogonic deities, “Chaos, them. Now, all those books were in shape of an egg. The denizens of such a mathematician, astronomer, philoso- Eros, Earth and Old Night”—or Chuang Tzu’s Greek, filled with marvelous tales, things microcosm might well be livid / pallid and pher, geographer. He is an important depiction of Chaos as a Humpty-Dumpty- unheard of, incredible; but the writers silver-haired like Johnny Winter or Jack Frost figure in the history of science—he cor- like oviform creature, Hun Tun, whose were ancient and of no mean authority: (since Earth’s night is in fact its Winter), and responded on optics with Kepler; he was disintegration releases “the 10,000 things” of Aristeas of Proconnesus, Isigonus their country might be an other-dimensional a pioneer of the “perspective trunk,” material creation. His name in turn constitutes of Nicaea, Ctesias and Onesicritus, Albania, or Alba (Scotland), or even Albany—a or telescope; and he compiled the first a pun on Won Ton, the dumpling that englobes Philostephanus and Hegesias. The city of white nights (as in Bely’s St Petersburg) thorough logarithmic tables—but he a gallimaufry of good things in a “primordial volumes themselves, however, were or of White Knights (as in the Alice books). was also deeply imbued in Renaissance soup.” Taoists slurp won-tons on December filthy from long neglect, in bad occultism. Another scientist in the Earl’s 21, the winter solstice, or “Chaos Night.” condition and unsightly. Nevertheless, I THE WIZARD EARL retinue was Walter Warner, whose the- The longest night is a kind of New Year’s drew near and asked their price; then, ories on the circulation of the blood celebration because Night precedes Day, as attracted by their extraordinary and The original “School of Night” centred on the predated the more famous William in the Bible, or the Islamic calendar, where unexpected cheapness, I bought a large sixteenth-century Earl of Northumberland, a Harvey’s. According to Aubrey, Warner’s each day begins at sundown—because it’s number of them for a small sum, and fabulously wealthy young Elizabethan courtier left hand was missing: “he had only a a lunar calendar, like that of the Paleolithic ran through all of them hastily in the suspected by his contemporaries of being a stump with five warts upon it” and he cultures revealed by archeological discoveries course of the next two nights. [. . .] wizard. They were correct: he was.4 His coat of “wore a cuff on it, like a pocket.” Hariot of sticks and bones engraved with 7, 14, or arms was azure blue with silver moons; hence and Warner, together with the geogra- 28 notches. The moon is our first “clock” or Those books, then, contained matter his association with Night. Here’s Charles pher Robert Hues, came to be known time measure, the calendar our first ideology, of the following sort: that the most Nicholl’s description: as the Earl of Northumberland’s “three and night the realm of the mystic cave. In remote of the Scythians, who pass their He was a man of eclectic skills—a gar- magi,” and in his later years of impris- Greek myth Night and her daughters, Sleep life in the far north, eat human flesh dener, a chemist, a horseman, and on onment in the Tower they attended 164 SCAPEGOAT 10 165 Dark House: ... NIGHT: DOMAINS on him: a little “academy of learn- servitor (to impose on freshmen and magi—also influenced Marlowe, Shakespeare, hurl deliberate poison in the reservoir of ing” within those bleak walls. simple people) would tell them that the School of Night and all subsequent scions rational discourse sometimes he would meet the spirits, of Hermeticism, and I can only recommend LSD in the punch of Both Thomas Hariot and Walter Warner coming up his stairs like bees.” them all to the modern reader.7 sustainable development were close associates of Marlowe. Without a grasp of the Hermetic They were named by Thomas Kyd This is the “vulgar” view: hostile and Tradition we will fail to overcome religion— 4/ as Marlowe’s familiar friends, “such half-fearful. It is the view of the mob— the great Project from Bruno to Nietzsche— Sorelian mythemes as he conversed withal.” Marlowe’s the mob that ransacked Dr Dee’s library without jettisoning the Spirit and falling unique as snowflakes involvement in the Northumberland and laboratory at Mortlake; the mob into the trap of vulgar materialism and fall in this little glass bulb coterie brings him into contact with that lynched the astrologer John Lambe “information ontology.” We must (re)build hermetically sealed with a scene of these speculative minds: scientists in the streets of Southwark. It was for ourselves a School of Night—or anyway, children lost in pine forest or “magi” according to view, really also the view of certain anti-Raleigh of Nite—and to accomplish this we need first gingerbread house or something of both. It probably also propagandists, who described this an architecture of the nocturnal. As a step Queen of Night brought him into contact with the coterie as no more than a “school of toward this goal, I offer an auto-commentary whose white roots smell famous Dr. John Dee. Dee was the grand atheism.”5 on my poem, “Ode to Nite,”8 in the style obscene as Japanese radishes old man of Elizabethan occultism. He of Eliot’s Wasteland notes. or shovelfull of halffrozen dirt was not a protégé of Northumberland, Above all (at least for the purposes of this but he was associated with this group, essay), the Earl’s “School” was influenced ODE TO NITE 5/ and particularly with Hariot: many by Giordano Bruno, the greatest of all the Old Night abstruse meetings between the two are Renaissance magi, and a primary source for “Let me associate with the low-brow’d a face of moonbeams & allusions recorded in Dee’s diary. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. In 1583 Bruno landed in Night” Old Mole London (perhaps as a spy) and gave a series —James Thomson, “Winter,” from The little gentleman in gray velvet Another important friendship of the of lectures at Oxford incensing most of his Seasons, 1726 king over the water Earl’s—important to Marlowe’s story— hearers, who denounced him as a madman, eternal pretender was with Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh pagan, “atheist,” and mountebank. However, 1/ Old Moth Old Mouth the great Elizabethan adventurer, he made friends with a few connoisseurs of Lead us backwards into the dark ALL-NITE panegyric diner courtier and poet, was an older man, the strange, such as John Florio, Fulke Greville, blinking on/off blue neon and different in temper, but there was a Sir Philip Sidney (to whom he dedicated lunar dynasty roomfull of white moths marriage of minds between them. two of the three dialogues he wrote and bombs placed delicately photographed by pin-hole camera This coterie of philosophers and poets, published in England) and Northumberland GONE FISHING for coral in the mere centered on Northumberland and and his cronies—including probably Marlowe Restore the Ming! of yr precious ablutions Raleigh, is a classic expression of late and Shakespeare (who used Brunonian ideas that poisonous subliminal hum smelling moonflowers Elizabethan occultism. The mood is in The Tempest). Nicholl quotes Bruno’s self- where the old frog jumped in sceptical, speculative, experimental: introduction at Oxford; either you warm to this darkness breeds superstition to protect itself scientific in one sense, but still linked kind of thing, or not: like an opera cape 6/ to the animistic precepts and mystical “Behold now standing before you,” The Logothete spins a world of words aspirations of Renaissance magic. he wrote in 1585, “the man who has 2/ then lives in it. Needless to say this group was highly pierced the air and penetrated the sky, flame when it’s blown out goes Once in Byzantium controversial, and its activities attracted wended his way amongst the stars and back into the treasure cave of universal this was a salaried position. suspicion. As Aubrey writes, about overpassed the margins of the world, phlogiston Henry Darger, Charles Fourier one of Northumberland’s followers, who has broken down those imaginary leaving split-second entoptic signature crusted w/ jewels like lobster molé Thomas Allen: “In those dark times, divisions between spheres—the first, known to adepts as the Salamander w/ pink champagne astrologer, mathematician and conjuror the eighth, the ninth, the tenth, what a moth appears around the dying wick mouths filled with gold dust, moth dust, were accounted the same things, and you will—which are described in the becomes a mouth: rebus fairy gold, dead leaves, graveyard dirt. the vulgar did verily believe him to false mathematics of blind and popular whispering welcome to the dark and I Marie Laveau Voodoo Queen of this poem be a conjuror. He had a great many philosophy.”6 proclaim you my sexual zombie mathematical instruments and glasses 3/ let me be your political guru in his chamber, which did also confirm Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Marsilio Ficino, fanatical luddites blow up power plants inculcating iconodules into the cult the ignorant in their opinion, and his and John Dee—the other great Renaissance to liberate the Queen of Night of the Secluded Imam 166 SCAPEGOAT 10 167 ... Nocturnal Architecture in the Art of Leonora Carrington NIGHT: DOMAINS 7/ in Mozart’s Freemasonic opera, Magic Flute, line 4, Henry Darger: Mad, perverse ** Prostrate yourself to Night’s vast cube also a night-blooming perfume-flower in India, Chicago artist who created a world. Charles As for the spirits of aire, which have no “Queen of the Night” heaviest of attars similar to jasmine. Fourier: mad, utopian socialist who created a other visible bodies or form, but such nightingale drunk on vintage port line 4, “LSD”: Unfortunately, you can’t world; see his Theory of the Four Movements. as by the constant glimmering of our Khaqani’s Mallarmean marmalade dose a reservoir with LSD because it will float The Surrealists adore him because he was both eies is begotten; they are in truth all venom. Phosphorescent words murmured to the top and lose potency before it reaches an anarchist and a Hermeticist. See also my show and no substance, deluders of by mummies in pansophic panspermic anyone’s faucet. A nice metaphor, tho. Escape from the Nineteenth Century, essay on our imagination, & nought els. Carpet cinemascope hsst—rattle rattle—organ music Part 4, line 1, Georges Sorel: Theorist Fourier. knights, politique statesmen, women & swells the mystic word, Pharaoh’s phallus of the Myth of the General Strike, syndicalist line 5, “Lobster molé” (chocolate and children they most conuers with. Carpet our favorite hieroglyph. anarchist. chile sauce) and pink champagne: Salvador knights they inspire with a humor of line 8: The Queen is compared to Dalí’s favorite meal, because it looks like bugs setting big lookes on it, being the basest COMMENTARY a white Japanese radish, which is jokingly in shit sauce, but is delicious. cowards vnder heauen, couering an thought to resemble the vulva. line 8, Marie Laveau: The “Voodoo apes hart with a lions case, and making Quotation from Thomson: The Seasons is a Part 5, line 1, “Old Night”: As in Hesiod; Queen” of New Orleans in the nineteenth false alarums when they mean nothing fine proto-Romantic poem, and includes the see above. century. I visited her tomb when I was ten but a may-game. Politique statesmen great line: “Sons of Indolence, do what you lines 3–5, “Old Mole”: The mole years old; my first initiation. they priuily incite to bleare the worlds will,” echoing Rabelais and foreshadowing is the symbol of underground subversion line 12, “secluded Imam”: The Fatimid eyes with clowdes of common wealth Aleister Crowley. and resistance. According to legend, the Ismaili child Caliphs were never seen in public. pretences, to broach any enmitie or Part 1, line 2, “lunar dynasty”: certain Hanoverian King’s horse tripped on a mole- Eventually they disappeared into the Imaginal ambitious humor of their owne vnder Indian kings of the Vedic era. hole and threw off the King, who broke his Realm, from which they will return (or are a title of their cuntries preseruation. line 4, “Restore the Ming”: Slogan of neck. So the Jacobites (supporters of the always already returning).10 To make it faire or fowle when they the Triads and Tongs, secret anti-Manchu Stuart Pretenders) used to toast to “the little Part 7, line 1, “Night’s vast cube”: Night list to procure popularity or induce a societies in China during the Ching era; the gentleman in gray velvet.” Another toast, takes the shape of a black velvet-draped preamble to some mighty peece of Ming was the previous dynasty, of indigenous “to the King,” was spoken while holding the Kaaba. prowling, to stir vp tempests round Han lineage. The Tong initiatic space was wineglass over a decanter of water, signifying line 4, Khaqani: A great Persian poet I about, & replenish heauen with prodigies known as “The City of Willows.” Around 1900, that the real King was “over the water,” in compare here to Mallarmé. and wonders, the more to ratifie their the Triads were influenced by anarchism. exile (in France or Italy). line 6, “Pansophic”: All wisdom; the auaritious religion. Women they vnder- line 6, “Darkness breeds superstition”: line 8, “ALL NITE panygyric diner”: The syncretism of Hermeticism. “Panspermia”: hand instruct to pownce and boulster The most effective force for ecological school of Nite is compared to a diner (shiny everything is alive, the whole universe is out theyr brawn-falne deformities, to resistance would be the superstitious fear of silver, shaped like an old Art Deco RR car) in seeded with life. new perboile with painting their rake- Nature Elementals. which the Pretender and the Queen are being line 8, “Pharaoh’s phallus”: The leane withered visages, to set vp flaxe Part 2, line 2, “phlogiston”: Supposedly praised by poets. The blue neon sign blinks dismembered member of Osiris (see Plutarch), shops on their forheads when all their discredited Neo-Hermetic concept of an “ALL NITE.” also used as a hieroglyph. owne haire is dead and rotten, to sticke “essence of fire”; the great radical scientist line 10, “Moths”: I once lived in a their gums round with Comfets when Joseph Priestley supported this idea, as did the haunted house in Boulder, Colorado, where CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT they haue not a tooth left in their Montgolfier Brothers. one room was found to be full of white moths. heads to help them to chide withal. line 3, “entoptic”: The patterns you see line 12: In Atalanta fugiens the alchemical Those spirits of fire, however, I tearme Children they seduce with garish obiects when you close your eyes. operation is depicted as “fishing for coral.” them comparatiuely good in respect of and toyish babies, abusing them many line 4, “salamander”: The Paracelsan line 14, “moonflowers”: Psychotropic a number of bad, yet are they not simply yeares with slight vanities, so that you Nature Elemental of Fire; see the illustration in datura blossoms. well inclinde, for they bee by nature see all their whole influence is but Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens. line 15, “old frog”: As in the haiku by ambitious, haughty, and proud, nor do thin ouercast vapours, flying clouds line 6, “rebus”: A pictorial figure Basho: they loue vertue for it selfe any whit, but dispersed with the least winde of wit or standing for a word; a hieroglyph. old pond: because they would ouerquell and out- vnderstanding. Part 3, line 1, “luddites”: Followers of frog jumps in— strip others with the vaineglorious — Thomas Nashe, from The Terrors of General Ned Ludd, early nineteenth-century water sound ostentation of it. A humor of monarchiz- the Night machine-smashers in England; supported by ing and nothing els it is, which makes Shelley and Byron (who said, “No King but Part 6, line 1, “logothete”: The Byzantine them affect rare qualified studies. Many So far we’ve considered “nocturnal King Ludd!”)9 courtier in charge of documents; a person who Atheists are with these spirits inhabited. architecture” only from its good side, as line 2, “Queen of Night”: A character creates a reality out of words; a poet. dream space, fecund darkness—but a properly 168 SCAPEGOAT 10 169 Dark House: ... NIGHT: DOMAINS dialectic perspective would urge us to examine Thomson (not to be confused with the author And crossed their javelins on the black also its negativity, its halloweenish aspect of “The Seasons,” above) was born in Glasgow sky-span; as “haunted house,” nightmare alley, bad and educated in Scotland. His Irish sweetheart The zenith opened to a gulf of flame, memories, shadows of arid gloom. My friends died young, thus plunging him into a lifetime The dreadful thunderbolts jarred earth’s Raymond Foye and Philip Taaffe called my of “melencholia.” She haunts the poem. His fixed frame; attention to the seventeenth-century painter pen-name, “B.V.,” Bysshe Vanolis, was meant The ground all heaved in waves of fire Monsù Desiderio, a painter of uncertain as a tribute to both Shelley and Novalis, that surged identity sometimes thought to be François though he lacked the Romantic optimism of And weltered round me sole there de Nome, an eccentric obsessive and proto- the former and the Romantic mysticism of the unsubmerged: surrealist whose work consists almost entirely latter. But his words could certainly serve as Yet I strode on austere; of sinister antique cities seen by night, often captions for Monsù Desiderio: No hope could have no fear. in flames, or falling down in earthquakes or wrath-of-God destructions, with scenes of City of Dreadful Night ** horror and murder taking place amidst urban Steal forth and haunt that builded Monsu Desiderio. An Architectural Capriccio With the Martyrdom vistas of menacing statuary. Philip Taaffe The City is of Night, but not of Sleep; desolation, of Saint Agatha, detail . 17th century owns a few of his works, including one I was There sweet sleep is not for the weary Of woe and terrors and thick darkness able to examine, “Martyrdom of St Agatha.” brain; reared. Here the cityscape presumably represents The pitiless hours like years and ages Catania, Sicily, where the saint was executed creep, ** on 1 February 251 AD (aged 20 and of course A night seems termless hell. This Who in this Venice of the Black Sea beautiful) by wicked pagans—by having her dreadful strain rideth? breasts cut off. (In her honour a pastry is Of thought and consciousness which Who in this city of the stars abideth. . . ? still made by Italians representing breasts in never ceases, marzipan and cream topped by cherries—I Of which some moments’ stupor but ** used to eat them at Di Roberti’s sadly now- increases, From wandering through many a solemn vanished coffee shop on 1st Avenue in NYC.) This, worse than woe, makes wretches scene Monsù’s Catania is overcast and glum; evening there insane. Of opium visions, with a heart serene is closing in. Weird “angels,” pagan deities, And intellect miraculously bright: and spectral gargoyles crowd the façades ** I wake from daydreams to this real and roofs of classical buildings—the statues As I came through the desert thus it night.12 are painted with extra impasto to make was, Monsu Desiderio. The Burning of Troy them look more 3-D and solid; otherwise the As I came through the desert: Lo you, ** brushstrokes are quite free and impressionistic, there, Boats gliding like dark shadows of a although from a proper distance the canvas That hillock burning with a brazen glare; dream, appears “smooth” in a neo-classical way. A Those myriad dusky flames with points Are glorified from vision as they pass crowd of pagans, looking rather Saracenic or a glow The quivering moonbridge on the deep Jewish, attend a flaming altar; a sheep and Which writhed and hissed and darted to black stream; cow are being dragged to a blood sacrifice and fro; Cold windows kindle their dead glooms near a statue of Mars. The doomed animals A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped of glass also appear in sculptural freizes, and columns pell-mell To restless crystals; cornice, dome, and are adorned with dying birds. For Devil’s roll-call and some fête of column, I include here a few more reproductions Hell: Emerge from chaos . . . of Monsù to give an idea of his neurotic Yet I strode on austere; obsession with nocturnal architecture. In No hope could have no fear. ** literature he finds his twin in the Scottish I sat me weary on a pillar’s base, Victorian poet James Thomson (1834–82), And leaned against the shaft; for broad Monsu Desiderio. Ruins on Fire who is remembered now only for his long As I came through the desert thus it was. moonlight poem “The City of Dreadful Night,” perhaps As I came through the desert: Meteors O’erflowed the peacefulness of the most depressing poem ever written.11 ran cloistered space, 170 SCAPEGOAT 10 171 ... Nocturnal Architecture in the Art of Leonora Carrington NIGHT: DOMAINS A shore of shadow slanting from the The Shadow of Night (1594).14 Unlike his rival Goddess as muse, in a sense, of “secret of rest, right: Thomas Nashe, who reacted to The Shadow skill”—i.e. what we call science: All sorts of men, to sorted tasks The great cathedral’s western front in his prose pamphlet The Terrors of the Night address’d, stood there, (1594), Chapman writes solely of the positive Great goddess, to whose throne in Spread this inferior element, and yield A wave-worn rock in that calm sea of aspects of darkness. For him the School is a Cynthian fires, Labour his due: the soldier to the field, air. kind of “Lunar Society” (a club frequented This earthly altar endless fumes expires; Statesmen to council, judges to their in the eighteenth century by neo-Hermetic Therefore, in fumes of sighs and fires of pleas, ** scientists like Joseph Priestley and Erasmus grief, Merchants to commerce, mariners to The sense that every struggle brings Darwin); for magic has always served as the To fearful chances thou send’st bold seas; defeat wellspring of “science,” at least until the later relief, All beasts, and birds, the groves and Because Fate holds no prize to crown development of the Royal Society led to a Happy, thrice happy type, and nurse of forests range, success; nineteenth-century divorce between science death To fill all corners of this round Exchange, That all the oracles are dumb or cheat and all sense of reverence for a living world— Who, breathless, feeds on nothing but Till thou (dear Night, O goddess of most Because they have no secret to express; between spirit and matter, between alchemy our breath, worth) That none can pierce the vast black veil and chemistry, between an art of abundance In whom must virtue and her issue live, Lett’st thy sweet seas of golden humour uncertain and life, and an art of profit and death. Or die for ever;—now let humour give forth; Because there is no light beyond the Novalis (George Friedrich Philip Freiherr Seas to mine eyes, that I may quickly And eagle-like dost with thy starry wings curtain; von Hardenberg, 1772–1801) can be seen weep Beat in the fowls and beasts to Somnus’ That all is vanity and nothingness. as one of the last neo-Hermeticists: like The shipwrack of the world: or let soft lodgings Swedenborg, Goethe, and Erasmus Darwin, he sleep And haughty Day to the infernal deep, Thomson seems to attempt a text that will was both seer and scientist. Romantic science (Blinding my senses) loose my working Proclaiming silence, study, ease, and damn the reader to Hell just by reading it—a and Naturphilosophie inherited the mantle of soul, sleep. “modern” atheistic version of the legendary alchemy, i.e. the poiesis which is both art and That in her highest pitch she may control All things before thy forces put in rout, book of the magus Michael Scot13 or H.P. science, and which constitutes the “world we The court of skill, compact of mystery Retiring where the morning fired them Lovecraft’s apocryphal Necronomicon. Poe have lost,” so that we are now headed toward Wanting but franchisement and memory out. might have imagined such a text, but he never “extinction” thanks to a heartless vulgar To reach all secrets: Then in blissful would’ve written anything as crude as “The materialism and technolatry. Novalis’s Hymns trance ** City of Dreadul Night.” Thomson obviously to the Night15 lacks the springtide optimism of Raise her, dear night, to that Fall, Hercules, from heaven, in tempests meant it as the ne plus ultra of Victorian Chapman’s poem, and is much (not just half) perseverance, hurl’d, pessimism and atheist despair, and although it “in love with easeful death”—but it should be That in my torture, she all Earth’s may And cleanse this beastly stable of the succeeds in a certain kitsch-surrealist manner read in conjunction not only with Chapman’s sing, world: (and is genuinely depressing) it must be seen proto-Romanticism, but also with Novalis’s And force to tremble in her trumpeting Or bend thy brazen bow against the sun, as a bit ludicrous. Nietzsche might have used own essays, fictions, and aphorisims in which Heaven’s crystal temples; in her powers As in Tartessus, when thou hadst begun it as a casebook example of the exhaustion of he expresses a positive program for the implant Thy task of oxen: heat in more extremes the will of the over-civilized terminal human “poeticization of science” (e.g. The Disciples Skill of my griefs, and she can nothing Than thou wouldst suffer, with his of the dreadful nineteenth century, sapped of Sais). Like James Thomson, Novalis lost want. envious beams. of animal vigour and too sick to experience his adolescent ladylove to death, and himself Now make him leave the world to Night irrational joy. was to die still young and handsome; his Night and Sleep (Somnus) preside over all and dreams. melancholy, however, reminds us not so much esoteric knowledge, all Orphic genius: Never were virtue’s labours so envied HYMNS & SHADOWS of Victorian pessimism as of the “creative As in this light: shoot, shoot, and stoop melancholy” of a Renaissance magus such as And as when hosts of stars attend thy his pride. George Chapman (1559–1634), now Ficino (in his Books of Life, also translated flight, Suffer no more his lustful rays to get remembered chiefly for Keats’s poem “On by Dick Higgins), or the Hermetic figure of Day of deep students, most contentful The earth with issue: let him still be set First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” can Melancholia depicted so famously by Dürer. night, In Somnus’ thickets: bound about the be restored to dignity not only as a fine poet, Thomson worshipped Novalis, who was of The morning (mounted on the Muses’ brows, dramatist and translator, but as the ideologist course a far greater poet. steed) With pitchy vapours, and with ebon of the School of Night; its manifesto, so to Chapman begins his Hymnus in Noctem Ushers the sun from Vulcan’s golden boughs. speak, can still be read in Chapman’s “first (Part One of his poem, “the Hymn to the bed, thought best thought,” his first published work, Night”) with an evocation of the Moon And then from forth their sundry roofs ** 172 SCAPEGOAT 10 173 Dark House: ... NIGHT: DOMAINS And whom her fugitive and far-shot rays did gild In which two hundred twenty columns Costly balm Disjoin, and drive into ten thousand With sunny foil, that lasted but a day: stood, Drips from your hand, ways, For night must needs importune her Built by two hundred twenty kings of From a bundle of poppies. Night’s glorious mantle wraps in safe away. blood, In sweet drunkenness abodes, The shapes of every wholesome flower Of curious beauty, and admired height, You unfold the heavy wings of the soul, And frees their necks from servile and tree Pictures and statues, of as praiseful And give us joys labour’s loads: She gave those types of her felicity. slight, Dark and unspeakable, Her trusty shadows succour men And Form herself she mightily conjured Convenient for so chaste a goddess’ Secretly, as you are yourself, dismay’d, Their priceless values might not be fane Joys which let us Whom Day’s deceitful malice hath obscured, (Burnt by Herostratus), shall now again Sense a heaven. betray’d: With disposition baser than divine, Be re-exstruct, and this Ephesia be How poor and childish But make that blissful court others to Thy country’s happy name,come here The light seems to me, ** shine with thee, With its bright things, Since Night brings terror to our frailties With all accomplishment of architect, As it was there so shall it now be How joyful and blessed still, That not the eye of Phoebus could framed, The day’s departure. And shameless Day, doth marble us in ill. detect. And thy fair virgin-chamber ever named. So now, Form then, ’twixt two superior pillars since Night makes All you possess’d with indepressed framed ** Its servants strangers, spirits, This tender building, Pax Imperii named, The mind hath in herself a deity, You’d sow Endued with nimble, and aspiring wits, Which cast a shadow like a Pyramis, And in the stretching circle of her eye Gleaming spheres Come consecrate with me, to sacred Whose basis in the plain or back part is All things are compass’d, all things In the far spaces Night Of that quaint work: the top so high present still, To show your Omnipotence, Your whole endeavors, and detest the extended, Will framed to power, doth make us Your return light. That it the region of the moon what we will. In the times of your distance. Sweet Peace’s richest crown is made of transcended: More heavenly stars, Without, within it, every corner fill’d For Novalis, the Night also appears as a Than those flashing stars Most certain guides of honour’d By beauteous form, as her great principle of Imagination and Creativity, but it In those far places we mariners, mistress will’d. is death itself (as eternal rest) that coincides Imagine endless eyes No pen can anything eternal write, Here as she sits, the thunder-loving Jove with the beauty of Night—because Novalis Which the Night That is not steep’d in humour of the In honours past all others shows his love, (unlike Thomson) has faith in Jesus and Mary Has opened in us. Night. Proclaiming her in complete Empery, and eternity. More than that, his daring soul Farther they see Of whatsoever the Olympic sky equates Jesus with death. God is not dead, as Than the palest With tender circumvecture doth with Nietzsche (who so strangely resembles Of all those countless hosts. In Part Two, the “Hymn to Cynthia” (as Moon), embrace, Novalis in so many ways); God is Death itself Not needing Light we find a specific description of nocturnal The chiefest planet that doth heaven and thus also Night as Saviour. Thomas J.J. They look through depths architecture that looks forward to Leonora enchase. Altizer bases the “Death of God” school of Of a loving soul, Carrington’s surrealist “palaces”: theology on the premise that Christ is both Which fills a higher space He compares his visionary pyramid to the God, and a god who dies. In that death, which With wordless delight. See then this planet of our lives Temple of Artemis (Cynthia, Diana) in is the life of Night, Novalis finds his Romantic Praise to the world queen, descended Ephesus, famously burned by Herostratus—but Christianity: The high messenger To rich Ortygia, gloriously attended, the School of Night will never be so destroyed; Of a holy world, Not with her fifty ocean nymphs; nor yet such “holy monuments” where “pillars stand, Have you also The guardian of blessed love. Her twenty foresters: but doth beget where every Grace and Muse shall hang her A human heart, You come, beloved— By powerful charms, delightsome garland” will live on forever in our hearts: Dark night? The Night is here— servitors What are you holding My soul’s enraptured— Of flowers and shadows, mists and Thy glorious temple, great Lucifera, Under your cloak, The earthly day’s past meteors: That was the study of all Asia, That grabs so unseen, strongly And you’re mine again. Her rare Elysian palace did she build Two hundred summers to erect, At my soul? I look into your deep dark eyes, With studied wishes, which sweet hope Built by Cherisphrone thy architect, You seem only fearful.— See nothing but love and bliss 174 SCAPEGOAT 10 175 ... Nocturnal Architecture in the Art of Leonora Carrington NIGHT: DOMAINS We sink onto the altar of night those flashing stars the endless eyes Onto the soft bed— seem, which Night opens up in us. They ** The veil is gone see farther than those palest of those [M]y secret heart stays true to the Night, And, lit by the warm pressure, countless hosts—having no need for and to creative Love, her daughter. There glow the pure embers Light they see through the depths of a Of the sweet offering.16 loving soul—which fills a higher space The Hymns close with praise of Night’s with unspeakable delight. Praise the mother, the Virgin Mary as Sophia (or Divine Throughout the poem Novalis is concerned world queen, the higher messenger of Wisdom)—which, incidentally, was the name with Night as a space, and indeed with a holy word, a nurse of blessed love— of Novalis’s dead beloved. nocturnal space as an enclosure (heaven) lit she sends you—tender, beloved—Night’s with stars, not very different from Bachelard’s lovely sun—now, I wake—for I’m yours Death summons to the wedding, “egg.” To understand this we also need to and mine—you called the Night to life The lamps burn brightly— read the prose version of the passage already for me,—humanized me—consume my The virgins stand in place— quoted: body with spirit fire, so I can mix with There’s no lack of oil— you more intimately, airily, and then the If the distance would only sound Away I turn to the holy, the unspeakable, wedding night will last forever. With your procession— the secretive Night. Down over there, And the stars would only call to us far, lies the world—sunken in a deep ** With human tongues and tone. vault—its place wasted and lonely. In Must the morning always return? the heart’s strings, deep sadness blows. Will earthly force never end? Unholy To you, Mary, Leonora Carrington. Lepidopteros. 1969 In dewdrops I’ll sink and mix with the busyness devours the Night’s A thousand hearts are lifted. she escaped to Spain but went mad and was ashes. Memory’s distances, youth’s heavenward approach. Won’t Love’s In this shadow life institutionalized—the subject of her great wishes, childhood’s dreams, the short secret offering ever burn forever? They would yearn only for you. autobiograpical text, Down Below.17 joys of a whole long life and hopeless Light’s time was measured out to it; After her release she made her way to hopes come grey-clad, like evening mist but Night’s reign is timeless, spaceless. ** Mexico, along with other Surrealists, and lived after the sun has set. In other places Forever’s the length of sleep. Holy there for the rest of her life, till she died on 25 Light’s pitched happy tents. Should It sleep—don’t make Night’s elect too Whoever, loving, has the faith May 2011, aged 94. The best description of her never come back to Its children, who are rarely happy in this earthly day-labor. Weeps painfully at no grave. I’ve found is in the first volume of Alejandro waiting for it with simple faith? Only fools misrecognize you and know Of love’s sweet possession Jodorowsky’s autobiography, Spiritual Journey, What wells up so menacingly under no sleep but the shadow which, in that No one can be robbed— where she appears as a kind of sorceress—but the heart and gulps down the soft air’s twilight before the true Night, you, To soothe him in his longing, it’s important to know she was also a great sadness? Are you pleased with us, pitying, throw over us. They don’t feel And inspire him there’s the Night— cook, famous for her Surrealist cuisine. See dark Night? What’re you holding under you in the grapes’ golden flood—in for example “Lepidoptorus” (1969), in which your cloak, that grabs so unseen at almond trees’ wonder oil—in poppies’ Chapman and Novalis both construct palaces six masked magi feast together on fruit, while my soul? Costly balm drips from your brown juice. They don’t know it’s you of Night and Sleep. Both see Night as fecund one of them (perhaps “Leonora”?) feeds hand, from a bundle of poppies. You hovering around a tender girl’s breasts and creative. And both visions are needed in pomegranate seeds to a flock of black swans. raise up the soul’s heavy wings. Darkly, making her womb heaven—and don’t order to build the School of Nite. This takes place inside a darkened room unspeakably we feel moved—I see a suspect that, out of old stories, you, at night, and gives a sense not only of the serious face startled with joy, it bends opening heaven up, come and carry the CONCLUSION: NOCTURNAL ARCHITECTURE purpose of nocturnal architecture, but also a to me softly, reverently, and under the key to the Dwellings of the Blessed, IN THE WORK OF LEONORA CARRINGTON taste of Leonora’s famous Surrealist banquets endlessly tangled locks of the Mother’s quiet messenger of infinite mysteries. in Mexico City—the “holy supper” as a kind of dear youth shows. How poor and childish Leonora Carrington (born 6 April, 1917) temporary Fourierist phalanstery of shared luxe the Light seems now—how happy and ** came from a wealthy British family with Irish and gastrosophic pleasure. blessed the day’s departure—So now, [W]hoever’s stood up on the world’s connections (hence her lifelong fascination Carrington’s art ranks among that of since Night turns your servants away watershed, and looked over into the with Celtic lore). Beautiful and rebellious, she the veritable archons of Surrealism; perhaps from you, you’d sow gleaming spheres new land, into Night’s dwelling—truly ran away at nineteen to become a Surrealist. only Ernst could be considered more original, in the far spaces to show your own such a one won’t come back to the Breton admired her, Max Ernst married her. and Dalí more skillful—but comparisons are omnipotence—your return—in times world’s doings, to the land where Light She broke with him in 1940, but by then had invidious. In one area, however, she clearly of your distance. More heavenly than is housed in eternal unrest. proven herself as an artist; during the War stands above all the rest, and achieves a status 176 SCAPEGOAT 10 177 Dark House: ... NIGHT: DOMAINS The 1956 painting “AB EO QUOD” presents the Work,” referencing The Emerald Tablet us with a perfect illustration of (among other of Hermes Trismegistus, the basic text of things) an ideal nocturnal architecture. In a Hermetic alchemy. A third egg or purse is chamber with walls of Pompeian ochre we see held by a headless white woman accompanied sigils of occult import, reminiscent of demons by a headless black man; their blood spouts from old grimoires, Vodoun Vèvès, magic and mingles in the air, like that of the Tantrik diagrams, a bi-frontal, bi-sexual deity, etc. The Kali (Chinnamasta) who sacrifices herself for great Egg of the Work itself sits on a table; the nourishment of her disciples. The blood overhead a white rose drips (semen?) onto here symbolizes the Elixir. Another couple, a it and causes it to glow or emit steam: the beastman and a hermaphrodite, dance with Rose is Eros, the Egg is Chaos, the exudate a black dog and a snake—yet another figura represents Creation or cosmogenesis. The of the marriage of Sulphur and Mercury, of White is “married” to the Red in the form of the ambiguous nature of Hermes. A nude wine: Mercury and Sulphur, the feminine and Leonora Carrington. The Garden of Paracelsus. 1957 woman rides a horse of darkness set with masculine. Bread indicates transubstantiation, stars—usually the horse represents Leonora as in the Mass, but is accompanied by the herself. She receives a ray from a bird-shaped pagan pomegranate of Persephone (the very constellation (possibly the spirit of Max Ernst, goddess of the School of Nite) and the grapes who depicted himself as a bird). A black of Dionysos. Under the white tablecloth a banner flies in the night over the Hanged Man Leonora Carrington. AB EO QUOD. 1956 black face of grass, the nocturnal version of of the Tarot. Two gryphons flank the scene the Green Man, peeps out as if being born. like heraldic “supporters.” A book—no doubt Like the haunted room in my poem, this one by Paracelsus—emanates a magic geometric is full of moths, symbols of transmutation (or phantasm. The viewer “lives” this scene as spirits of the Dead?). On a fire-screen we with the fabulous dreamscapes of Bosch—but read the words “Ab eo, Quod nigram caudum this is no Hell for sinners. This picture reveals habet abstine terrestrium enim deorum est,” the Night itself as a palace of love and music, meaning “Stay away from anything that has but also of black magic and transgression; a black tail, for it belongs to the terrestrial once again, her sermon in paint on antinomian gods (that is, demons).” Carrington probably “immorality” (as Nietzsche would say): Magic found this line attributed to Marsilio Ficino’s Leonora Carrington. Crow Soup. 1997 as auto-theosis or becoming a god. translation of a Pythagorean text cited in Finally, please turn back to the “cover” Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy.19 An egg and a itself actually sports a black tail! By embracing of this essay: an etching by Leonora called white rose appear also in the magisterial “The the forbidden Black,20 we ascend to heaven: “Dog, come here into the dark house. Come Chair: Dagda, Tuatha dé Danaan.” The Dagda the antinomian secret of Hermeticism—and of here black dog” (1995). A black dog has great is the “good god” of the Celtic pantheon, the Surrealism. magical power, said St. Cyprian. One example Tuatha dé Danaan, or Tribe of the Goddess Even more relevant to our theme, of this is given in the grimoire Occult Powers Dana. He appears sometimes as a giant with an “The Garden of Paracelsus” (1957) contains of Hate and Love discovered by the Magician enormous phallus and a magic cauldron—here a wealth of Hermetic imagery that would Jannes and Practised by St Cyprian. Find a represented by the Chaos Egg as the source take a whole book to unpack. Perhaps the Trovisco plant, one of the toxic Thymelaeacea of all creation, as in Hesiod or Chuang Tzu, or most important and innovative thinker about such as Daphne laureola, or D. gnidum, or Leonora Carrington. The Chair, Daghda Tuatha De indeed in the usual alchemical symbolism. The alchemy in the entire European (and Islamic) Thymelaea villosa. St Cyprian says, on page Danaan. 1955 Chair is empty—like the Chair of the Hidden tradition, Paracelsus presides unseen over the 23 of his grimoire, that a man trying to attract unique in Western art since the Renaissance: Imam in mystical Shi’ism or Manichaeism— nocturnal architecture of this astounding work. a young woman should tie the tail of a black she understood Hermeticism. Not only is her but the Chair “is” also the Dagda himself as The basic architectural form here, a pyramid dog to the stem of a Trovisco. Once the dog work learned in magic, it is magic. While other solar deity. (I visited his Sun Castle near Derry of stars, holds within itself one nocturnal egg has pulled it up, scorch it and peel it and make Surrealists were inspired by Hermeticism,18 she in Northern Ireland, where I saw the biggest (in the arm-crook of a goddess in white who a belt to tie around your waist and a bracelet actually practiced it; other Surrealists talked rainbow ever; I also had a vision of him while dances with a sable demon), while a twin for your right wrist. Shake the woman’s hand about it, but she lived it. under the influence of “pookies,” or magic egg is held in the sky above by a bird: “as and she will give you “all sorts of finenesses.” mushrooms, in County Wicklow.) The screen Above, so Below—for the accomplishment of Or else: make ash by burning the eyelashes, 178 SCAPEGOAT 10 179 ... Nocturnal Architecture in the Art of Leonora Carrington NOTES a third-rate Coleridge or De nail clippings, and hair of a black dog, roll it in 1 St Cyprian of Antioch Quincy. CHRISTIAN PROPHECY a cigarette and puff the smoke at your desired is patron saint of sorcery and 13 As described by Sir magic. This translation of “his” Walter Scott in his wonderful victim. book is by José Leitâo, Hadean “Lay of the Last Minstrel” and These are Black dogs are seen as uncanny in Press (France), 2014. Thanks to James Hogg in his excellent the Last Mustafa al-Layla Bey. Three Woes of Man. The many cultural traditions. Faust had a black 2 Michael Löwy, On real Michael Scot served Days, but poodle who was Mephistopheles. In Ireland the Changing The World (Chicago: as court magician to the there’ll be Haymarket, 2013), 144–145. Emperor Frederick II; see dreaded Pooka appears as a huge black dog 3 Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights the great biography by Ernst many more with glowing red eyes. (Incidentally, the IX, 4. Thanks to R. Podgurski Kanterowicz. Scot’s body Nights. for sending me an offprint of was buried in the Abbey of psilocybe semillanceata mushroom is called “Introduction to Paradoxical Melrose in the Midlothian. a “pookie” in Ireland.)21 Leonora’s black dog Texts” by Rachel Hardiman. 14 In The Works of 4 See Muriel Bradbrook, George Chapman: Poems seems to contemplate a “poppet” (magic doll) The School of Night (1936), and Minor Translations, with or mandrake root. She calls him “into the which, however, is weak an introduction by Algernon on occult matters. More Charles Swinburne (London, dark house”—the magic space, the arch- enlightening is Charles Nicholl’s 1875). itecture of Night. He will be our “familiar” erudite The Reckoning: The 15 Translated by Dick Murder of Christopher Marlow Higgins (Kingston, N.Y.: as we practice the witchcraft of love. (1992); see also Frances Yates’ McPherson and Co., 1978 Finally, let me add one more work, not A Study of Love’s Labor Lost, [1988]). arguing for Shakespeare’s 16 This passage is from contained in Susan Aberth’s book but owned “membership” in the School. the manuscript version of the by her and kindly shared with me during 5 C. Nicholl, The Hymns, which Novalis later Reckoning, op. cit. 194-196. re-worked as poetic prose my visit (with Chuck Stein) to her magical 6 On Bruno, there’s still for the published version in octagon house in the Catskills. “Crow Soup” nothing to beat Dame Frances Athenaeum 3, no. 2 (1800). Yates, Giordano Bruno and 17 She also wrote the very is a lithograph, and shows a scene in an the Hermetic Tradition (1964); best Surrealist fiction, e.g. The underground crypt with a gothic ceiling. A you’d think by now someone Hearing Trumpet, The Oval would’ve gone beyond her, but Lady, The Seventh Horse, etc. crow (Nigredo again) presides over a gathering sadly such is not the case. See the bibliography in Susan of two white cows (or goats?), a flying two- 7 Especially Agrippa’s L. Aberth, Leonora Carrington: Three Books of Occult Surrealism, Alchemy and Art legged fish or dolphin, another fish in a Philosophy, Paracelsus on (London: Lund Humphries, fountain, an old crone wearing the Isis Sun/ the Imagination and the 2010). Nature Elementals, Ficino’s 18 See the quirky but Moon headdress, smoking a pipe and carrying Books of Life, Dee’s Monas informative work by Patrick what might be a peyote button; there is also hieroglyphica—and Bruno, Lepetit, The Esoteric Secrets especially De Magia and De of Surrealism: Origins, a lion, a disciple, and a white rose (or vinculis in genere. See also Magic, and Secret Societies cabbage). Here we reach the innermost Ioan Couliano, Eros and Magic (Rochester: Inner Traditions, in the Renaissance (Chicago: 2012), which includes some chamber of the School of Nite, where love University of Chicago Press, good material on Carrington. becomes Wisdom, and we practice Magic. 1987). 19 See Wouter J. 8 In School of Nite, with Hanegraaff, “A Visual World: art by Nancy Goldring; (New Leonora Carrington and York: Spuyten Duyvil, 2016). the Occult,” in Abraxas: 9 See Kirkpatrick Sale, International Journal of Esoteric ENDQUOTES Rebels Against the Future (New Studies 6 (2014): 101–112. This York: Basic Books, 1996). issue also includes Susan L. 10 See F. Daftary, Aberth’s “Leonora Carrington “. . . Ariadne . . . From time to time we The Ismailis (Cambridge: and the Art of Invocation.” practise magic . . .” Cambridge University Press, 20 That is, the Nigredo or 1992). Putrefactio, which is already in —Nietzsche, last letter to Jacob 11 First published 1874, potentia, the very Philosopher’s Burckhardt, 5-6 January 1889, Turin collected in The City of Stone. Dreadful Night and Other 21 See my Ploughing the Poems, (London: Reeves and Clouds: The Search for Irish “’Tis Magick, magick that hath ravisht Turner, 1880). Thanks to Jake Soma (San Francisco: City Rabinowitz for suggesting I Lights, 1999). me!” read it. C. Marlowe, Faustus 12 Note: I’m sure the reference to opium is no mere metaphor. Thomson, like half the denizens of the nineteenth century, was obviously addicted to laudanum in some form,

180 SCAPEGOAT 10 181