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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
Surrealist artist Max Ernst defined collage as the "alchemy of
the visual image." Students of his work have often dismissed this
comment as simply a metaphor for the transformative power of using
found images in a new context. Taking a wholly different
perspective on Ernst and alchemy, however, M. E. Warlick
persuasively demonstrates that the artist had a profound and
abiding interest in alchemical philosophy and often used alchemical
symbolism in works created throughout his career.
A revival of interest in alchemy swept the artistic,
psychoanalytic, historical, and scientific circles of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Warlick sets Ernst's
work squarely within this movement. Looking at both his art (many
of the works she discusses are reproduced in the book) and his
writings, she reveals how thoroughly alchemical philosophy and
symbolism pervade his early Dadaist experiments, his foundational
work in surrealism, and his many collages and paintings of women
and landscapes, whose images exemplify the alchemical fusing of
opposites. This pioneering research adds an essential key to
understanding the multilayered complexity of Ernst's works, as it
affirms his standing as one of Germany's most significant artists
of the twentieth century.
Outline of the processes of cosmic evolution, including detailed
exercises for attaining higher conscious states.
For more than a year, between January 1692 and May 1693, the men
and women of Salem Village lived in heightened fear of witches and
their master, the Devil. Hundreds were accused of practicing
witchcraft. Many suspects languished in jail for months. Nineteen
men and women were hanged; one was pressed to death. Neighbors
turned against neighbors, children informed on their parents, and
ministers denounced members of their congregations. Approaching the
subject as a legal and social historian, Peter Charles Hoffer
offers a fresh look at the Salem outbreak based on recent studies
of panic rumors, teen hysteria, child abuse, and intrafamily
relations. He brings to life a set of conversations - in taverns
and courtrooms, at home and work - which took place among suspected
witches, accusers, witnesses, and spectators. The accusations,
denials, and confessions of this legal story eventually resurrect
the tangled internal tensions that lay at the bottom of the Salem
witch hunts. Hoffer demonstrates that Salem, far from being an
isolated community in the wilderness, stood on the leading edge of
a sprawling and energetic Atlantic empire. His story begins in the
slave markets of West Africa and Barbados and then shifts to
Massachusetts, where the English, Africans, and Native Americans
lived under increasing pressures from overpopulation, disease, and
cultural conflict. In Salem itself, traditional piety and social
values appeared endangered as consumerism and secular learning
gained ground. Guerrilla warfare between Indians and English
settlers - and rumors that the Devil had taken a particular
interest in New England - panicked common people and authorities.
The stage was set, Hoffer concludes, for the witchcraft hysteria.
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