Judith Noble

In this volume we explore the philosophy and practice of elsewhere. Throughout the twentieth century both occult practitioners and artists explored the effects of the patriarchal monotheistic heritage that divorced the mind from the body, privileging the intellect as spiritual and negating and subjugating the corporeal.

In this volume we explore the philosophy and practice of embodiment. Throughout the twentieth century both occult practitioners and artists explored the effects of the patriarchal monotheistic heritage that divorced the mind from the body, privileging the intellect as spiritual and negating and subjugating the corporeal.

Black Mirror is a peer-reviewed series that seeks to examine ways in which the occult and the esoteric have been at the heart of art practice now and throughout the modernist period.

Luminous Screen is our second Special Issue of Abraxas. It is a collection of essays commissioned by guest editor Jack Sargeant that seek to explore the impact of esotericism on cinema.

Our first Special Issue of Abraxas Journal offers 128 large format pages of essays and art drawn from selected papers presented at the 2012 University of Cambridge Conference, Charming Intentions: Occultism, Magic and the History of Art.

Straddling the worlds of Surrealism, occultism and modernist literature, Ithell Colquhoun (1906–88) was widely respected in her lifetime, but her transgressive, esoteric and poetic paintings and writings were long neglected until Richard Shillitoe’s 2009 book Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature initiated her revaluation

Since Antiquity, the idea of the artist as a magician, trickster and powerful creator of new realities has established itself as a fertile idea in the discussion of image-making. The conjuring of illusions, the inherent link between the material and the spiritual and the wish to make the invisible visible are all part of this wider discourse.