For what it’s worth my synthesis is pending - I am devoutly obsessed. Convinced. Affirmed. Follow the thread.
Recommended listening: Discobog with Saltshaker
I am excited by synchronicity. I am witnessing the convergence of actions and ideas and how wonderfully kind the universe can be to plant seeds of inspiration.
As usual the story begins in the bathtub. The water is so hot my skin is turning pink. I am texting a group chat of Philly queers asking, how does one wrap their head around gender? Do you feel like a man? Do you feel like a woman? What do you feel like? What does it feel like?
Growing up I was told I was a woman, but I don’t know what a woman is. And when I tried to be a man I thought, Aren’t I a man? Why can’t I be a man?
And so I look in the mirror without understanding.
Later, as an act of divination I open a random page from The Book of Symbols. No questions asked, just a call for provocation. I open to the section Hermaphrodite. Pure magic. This section explores examples of the holy hermaphrodite across history and the world over.
For example, Sufi mysticism identifies that the “dualism of the phenomenal world in which we live is false and deceiving.” The only way to achieve “salvation” is by “fusing with divine reality,” or “returning to a fundamental state of Oneness.” According to the text, “such is the meaning of the sobbing of the reed flute” in the proem of the Mathnavi. Countless other examples follow identifying the sacredness of an individual regenerated into wholeness by the integration of male and female.
Emerging from water to something more expansive, I read about Universal Oneness with soft skin and wet hair.
“In the eschatological vision of salvation, the individual is regenerated into a Wholeness, in which the difference between the sexes no longer exists”
From the text:
For the first time I feel resonance with a concept of gender: the holy hermaphrodite, a multitude of opposites that need to be interfused once more.
Metanoia- a transformative change of heart.
I have felt gender apathy for a long time. It felt like the most harmonious place to land as I struggled to understand the “realness” of gender. In the language of the holy hermaphrodite, I feel satiated. Here is an alchemical process, finding unity in opposing energies within us. Here is holy hermaphrodetic harmony.
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With a new framework of gender in my consciousness I mosey onward with life. Work, chores, sunbathing, etc. One evening I am at the studio and my sweetheart says, “Polly says we should check out Ithell Colquhoun.”
And like most wonderful things in life, a new obsession began based on a casual recommendation.
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Nearly 3 years ago, Door of Perception published an article highlighting Ithell Colquhoun and a handful of her works. Apparently in 2019 the Tate acquired 5,000 original artworks by Colquhoun and they are still being catalogued.
My eyes mind and spirit feast. My heart lights up reading this article by Amy Hale, which provides a brief biography of Colquhoun, touching on her attitudes and inspirations. Ithel was devout to the magical world and prioritized communing with spirit through her art practice. She was a teenage occultist. She was obsessed with androgyny and the holy hermaphrodite (!!). She practiced magical color theory (!!!!), which culminated in the creation of Taro of Color in the 1970s. Each card is an enamel painting that was intuitively, or I guess ‘automatically’ channeled by Colquhoun (forgive, forgive - I’m not of the academic art world). From the freak herself: Ithel’s intention was to ‘render the essence of each card by the non-figurative means of pure color, applied automatically in the manner of psycho-morphological movement in Surrealism.’
Colquhoun created these paintings in the image of some cosmic power. It was only after she created the deck that she “saw slides showing nebulas in outer space and the birth of stars. These recalled my designs and confirmed my conviction of their cosmographic function.”
They are beautiful, somewhat terrifying, portals to another dimension. Designed for meditation rather than divination, they are an invitation to transcendence.
The bottom line is Colquhoun was a queer esoteric surrealist painter in the early 20th century, and you deserve to know about her.
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I knew I had to write this because of the rage-response of the few friends I first shared Ithel’s work with. The femmes were pissed - especially the ones who went to art school. The femmes, immediately resonating with something in the enormous breadth of work Ithell created, cry out, “Why haven’t I heard of her before!?”
So this is for you - you precious teenage occultists who don’t yet realize that your art practice is your direct line of communication with the worlds beyond our world.
It feels so good to see the continuous path of expression, doesn’t it?
With gratitude, with gratitude, with gratitude,
Bixa.
P..S… here are some other occultist freak painters who deserve your attention:
Stella Snead and Agnes Pelton (who’s studio was in a windmill)
If you know of more, please share more <3
Excited to spend weeks, months, years integrating Ithel’s work. Thank you for this post (what fertile propagation).