Robert Irwin: Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics and the Sixties (2011)

“For many children of the sixties a’journey to the East’was a necessary rite of passage. In an extraordinary memoir Robert Irwin contrasts the contexts of England – the new culture and the hippy trail – with those of Algeria – bombs and guns and mysticism.

In the summer of 1964, while a military coup was taking place and tanks were rolling through the streets of Algiers, Robert Irwin set off for Algeria in search of Sufi enlightenment. There he entered a world of marvels and ecstasy, converted to Islam and received an initiation as a faqir. He learnt the rituals of Islam in North Africa and he studied Arabic in London. He also pursued more esoteric topics under a holy fool possessed of telepathic powers. A series of meditations on the nature of mystical experience run through this memoir. But political violence, torture, rock music, drugs, nightmares, Oxbridge intellectuals and first love and its loss are all part of this strange story from the 1960s.”

Publisher Profile Books, April 2011
ISBN 1847654045, 9781847654045
239 pages

Reviews: Steve Jelbert (The Independent), Barnaby Rogerson (The Independent).

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Luciano Chessa: Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult (2012)

“Luigi Russolo (1885–1947)—painter, composer, builder of musical instruments, and first-hour member of the Italian Futurist movement—was a crucial figure in the evolution of twentieth-century aesthetics. As creator of the first systematic poetics of noise and inventor of what has been considered the first mechanical sound synthesizer, Russolo looms large in the development of twentieth-century music. In the first English language study of Russolo, Luciano Chessa emphasizes the futurist’s interest in the occult, showing it to be a leitmotif for his life and a foundation for his art of noises. Chessa shows that Russolo’s aesthetics of noise, and the machines he called the intonarumori, were intended to boost practitioners into higher states of spiritual consciousness. His analysis reveals a multifaceted man in whom the drive to keep up with the latest scientific trends coexisted with an embrace of the irrational, and a critique of materialism and positivism.”

Publisher University of California Press, 2012
An Ahmanson Foundation Book in the Humanities
ISBN 0520270630, 9780520270633
284 pages

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See also Luigi Russolo’s The Art of Noises (1987)

John F. Moffitt: Alchemist of the Avante-Garde: The Case of Marcel Duchamp (2003)

“A fascinating book demonstrating the influence of alchemy and esoteric traditions on the mature art of Marcel Duchamp.

Acknowledged as the “Artist of the Century,” Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) left a legacy that dominates the art world to this day. Inventing the ironically dégagé attitude of “ready-made” art-making, Duchamp heralded the postmodern era and replaced Pablo Picasso as the role model for avant-garde artists. John F. Moffitt challenges commonly accepted interpretations of Duchamp’s art and persona by showing that his mature art, after 1910, is largely drawn from the influence of the occult traditions. Moffitt demonstrates that the key to understanding the cryptic meaning of Duchamp’s diverse artworks and writings is alchemy, the most pictorial of all the occult philosophies and sciences.”

Publisher SUNY Press, 2003
Suny Series in Western Esoteric Traditions
ISBN 0791457095, 9780791457092
468 pages

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