Automatism and the occult
Automatism was not invented by the Surrealists. Automatic writing was a traditional technique used by mediums and spiritualists who would put themselves into a trance-like state in order to receive dictation from the spirit world. Additionally, occult researchers such as Austin Spare in England had sometimes experimented with automatic drawing. (1) For the surrealists receptivity to the internal unconscious was the motivating factor. For occultists, the driving force was access to the external spirit world.
For Colquhoun, automatism was not simply the adoption of a state of mind which suspended conscious control. Whilst disconnecting herself from her conscious self, she was also connecting herself with a larger whole. In choosing the word ‘mantic’ to describe automatic methods, Colquhoun was deliberately using a word which, derived from ancient Greek, refers to a process of divination arising from divine possession. Colquhoun aimed to lay herself open to internal, unconscious, forces as well as external spiritual ones. Inspiration could come from any source, internal or external. All that was necessary was some degree of dissociation in the operator, although, for her, ‘this seldom reaches the stage of trance’. (2) In automatism, the act itself, not just the resulting image, is significant, just as the way in which a magical ritual is performed significantly influences the outcome.
Although she was dismissive of the cosy platitudes usually produced by spiritualist mediums, Colquhoun certainly regarded their approach as capable of revealing great discoveries. She cited the work of the Elizabethan alchemist, Dr John Dee and his partner Edward Kelly as one example, and the archaeologist F. Bligh Bond and his scribe John Alleyne as another. Dee and Kelly had, reportedly, discovered the Enochian system of magic through mediumistic activities, whilst Bligh Bond’s discovery of the Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey through automatic writing had been a cause celebre in 1918. (3) She was also well aware that the poet W.B. Yeats, who was also a significant figure in the occult world, had made extensive experiments in automatic writing with his wife that resulted in his metaphysical book A Vision. (4)
One of the reasons why automatism became central to Colquhoun’s work was because it provided her with methods that, to her mind, linked the surreal with the hermetic both philosophically and technically. For example, in arguing the point that the forms created by automatic methods are closely dependent upon the unconscious mood of the operator, she drew a parallel with the alchemist who sees, in his retort, the contents of his own subliminal fantasy. Similarly, just as the apparently random pattern of tea-leaves in a cup may suggest the shape of the future, so, too, an ink blot or stain may possess divinatory powers. In elaborating this, she drew clear parallels between alchemical transformation and automatism, suggesting that the four traditional elements of alchemy each have corresponding automatic methods. Fire can be related to fumage, water to écrémage and parsemage and earth to decalcomania. Air can be related to techniques where powdered materials are blown or fanned and allowed to settle on the artist’s surface. (5)
Whilst some surrealist artists emphasised automatism’s role in discovering hidden aspects of the artist’s psyche, others, such as Roberto Matta, valued it as a means for uncovering hidden aspects of objects; to explore what lies beyond the confines of the visible world and within other worlds and other dimensions.
The optical image is just one aspect of the existence of an object. Galaxies, crystals and living matter go through processes of creation, existence and destruction. They exist in time, change with the passage of time and can be observed from multiple perspectives. Conventionally, however, they are only depicted at a fixed point in their history, from a single point in space and, inevitably, with a palette limited to colours which reflect light of a visible wavelength. To his attempts to use automatism to give form to those things which cannot be seen except as an inner vision, Matta gave the name psychological morphology, a phrase Colquhoun used to describe her paintings of the 1940s.
The act of painting, therefore, became an act of divination that connects the artist to natural and spiritual forces. Automatism and the occult represent linked routes to spiritual self-development.
Notes
1. see Choucha, N. Surrealism and the Occult. Mandrake, Oxford, 1991.
2. Colquhoun, I. Notes on Automatism. Melmoth No. 2 1980. pp. 31-32.
3. Colquhoun, I. Notes on Automatism, op cit. The role of automatic writing in the discovery of the Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury Abbey is described in Bligh Bond, J. The Gate of Remembrance. Blackwell, Oxford, 1918.
4. Yeats, W.B. A Vision. Macmillan, London, 1937.
5. Colquhoun, I. Children of the Mantic Stain. Athene, May 1952, pp. 29-34.
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