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“Kovid'orma Sar” - 2019 Oil on Canvas - 12"x16" - Another Kovid'orma, this time focusing on the rune of soul and divinity, Sar. Surrounded by sacred vid'alvo.

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ALL HAIL

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Occult and esoteric art made by Robert W. Cook

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Single-shot sigils

I’m developing some new sigil products. As far as I can know, they’ll be completely unique - useful, beautiful, working, and ready-to-buy.

Designing a physical product (and not a painting / drawing) has made me appreciate the different ways to encapsulate, hold, and release magick. So this product design phase has reinvigorated my approach to chaos magick.

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What do the runes say, if anything? What language is it written in?

That apostrophe is really throwing me off!

Oh yeah, this is a wireless charging pad from Iluminshop.

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I have just picked it up on the tip of my glove. If I put it down again, and it asks another ant, "what was that?", how would it explain?

G'Kar

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Everything eventually regresses to the meme.

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The Bacchante, Gerome Jean-Leon, 1853 

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If these shadows have offended I shall face god and walk backwards into hell.

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It puzzles me when people cite LOTR as the standard of “simple” or “predictable” or “black and white” fantasy. Because in my copy, the hero fails. Frodo chooses the Ring, and it’s only Gollum’s own desperation for it that inadvertently saves the day. The fate of the world, this whole blood-soaked war, all the millennia-old machinations of elves and gods, comes down to two addicts squabbling over their Precious, and that is precisely and powerfully Tolkien’s point. 

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

So where’s this silly shallow hippie fever-dream I’ve heard so much about? It sounds like a much lesser story than the one that actually exists.

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painted rocks for tonight’s new moon performance (as offerinsg to the sea and the earth)

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Esoteric art symposium, London

I'm at some kind of psychodynamic occult art convention today and this weekend. More details when I know where I am.

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“To the wind cast a fist of salt and go strolling into the laughing dark.” ~ slippery elm

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Bennidinct Humperpatch summons.

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The Urban Tarot

So I backed this on Kickstarter back in 2012 or 2013, and the tarot deck arrived today (I’m in the UK, so USA people will prolly have had it before me).

I’m truly excited by it. It reminds me enough of the Thoth deck that I can just start using it, but I’ve also seen every card develop over the past couple of years. The artist sent emails and blogged her work, and each image started as a photograph. Her care to express explicit and intrinsic meaning in the end results means a lot to me, even if this deck means even more to her. Robin transitioned from male to female during the project, and she sent each Kickstarter backer a message to explain (which, of course, was not necessary, but no doubt a nice step for Robyn to take). So this project is truly a journey, just as every story the tarot tells is.

Bonus, the book is great, going into the development process and meaning of each card.

Bonus bonus, the spread cloth! 

Bonus bonus bonus, the deck bag :)

The original Kickstarter page.

The Urban Tarot website.