Nina Antonia
Dancing with Salomé
Dancing with Salomé unmasks the occult aspects of Oscar Wilde’s celebrated tome The Picture of Dorian Gray, whilst exploring how the unseen manifested not just in the famous author’s life but in that of his love interest, Lord Alfred Douglas. The gilded backdrop to their ill-fated liaison was the Decadent movement, a literary and artistic feast of the divine and debauched which redefined the lines of male beauty. Curiously, Aubrey Beardsley, the most renowned illustrator of the Decadents, refused to keep any of Oscar Wilde’s books in his home, as he believed, like many of his friends, that the playwright was accursed. Beardsley’s theory is not as far-fetched as it seems if one takes into account the doomed lineages from which both Oscar and Lord Alfred Douglas were descended.
Through a series of interlinking essays, Nina Antonia takes us to meet the Decadent demi-monde of the 1890’s with whom Wilde and Douglas mingled. Whilst eroticism and mysticism were key themes of the Decadents, there was also a surge of interest in ritual magic, enabled by the flowering of the “Golden Dawn” – the most significant esoteric order in England’s history. Wilde’s wife, Constance, was a member, as was W.B. Yeats, alongside Aleister Crowley and Arthur Machen. All would play a part, directly or indirectly, in the drama of Oscar Wilde’s enchanted & accursed life.
142 pages, 5 x 8". Available as paperback, hardback, and e-book.
Sinclair & Abrahamsson
It's Magic Monday Every Day of the Week
In 2020, psychoanalyst-artist Vanessa Sinclair & author Carl Abrahamsson decided to create an online presence specifically for their magical practice & philosophy. This led to a weekly transmission aptly called “Magic Monday.”
This book sums up the first year of these writings, photos, poems, collages, and cut-ups. In an inspiring tour-de-force for all senses, Sinclair & Abrahamsson touch upon ritual, runes, psychedelics, sex, tarot, individuation, ancestor worship, talismania, the third mind method of Brion Gysin & William S Burroughs, creating sigils, shamanism, the Mega Golem, necromancy & glitchcraft, dealing with death & loss, making charged art, time travel, biospheric morals, and much more... The book also contains more than one hundred colour photographs and collages.
It’s Magic Monday Every Day of the Week is a book that will keep intriguing and inspiring you to experiment freely, and to develop as a human being. With an attitude of cutting up and rearranging the givens – of disrupting the narrative – you can change more things in life than you’ve ever dreamt of.
Sinclair & Abrahamsson share their own intimate, magical experiences and show you how easy it can actually be to take charge and write your own story.
266 pages, full colour, 6 x 9”. Available as paperback, hardback and e-book.
P-Orridge & Abrahamsson
Sacred Intent (Expanded Edition)
Sacred Intent gathers conversations between artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950-2020) and longtime friend and collaborator, the Swedish author Carl Abrahamsson. From the first 1986 fanzine interview about current projects, over philosophical insights, magical workings, international travels, art theory and gender revolutions, to 2019’s thoughts on life and death in the the shadow of battling leukaemia, Sacred Intent is a unique journey in which the art of conversation blooms.
With (in)famous projects like C.O.U.M. Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) and Pandrogeny, Breyer P-Orridge has consistently thwarted preconceived ideas and transformed disciplines such as performance art, music, collage, poetry and social criticism; always cutting up the building blocks to dismantle control structures and authority. But underneath the socially conscious and pathologically rebellious spirit, there has always been a devout respect for a holistic, spiritual, magical worldview – one of “sacred intent.”
Sacred Intent is a must read for anyone interested in contemporary art, deconstructed identity, gender evolution, and magical philosophy. The book not only celebrates an intimate friendship, but also the work and ideas of an artist who never ceased to amaze and provoke. Also included are photographic portraits of Breyer P-Orridge taken by Carl Abrahamsson, transcripts of key lectures, and an interview with partner Jacqueline “Lady Jaye” Breyer P-Orridge from 2004. This expanded edition also contains material written by Abrahamsson after Breyer P-Orridge’s death in March, 2020.
322 pages, 6 x 9" paperback, illustrated with 50 photographic portraits.
