For the Martian Chronicles exhibit and The Bartzabel Working performance

For the Martian Chronicles is an exhibit at L & M Arts in their West Gallery space located in Los Angeles. This overall exhibit includes works by a number of artists, such as Kenneth Anger, Brian Butler and Cameron Parsons.

“L&M Arts is proud to present For the Martian Chronicles, an exhibition that pays homage to the late writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), who in the 1940’s lived in a home located on the current L&M Arts property.”

“Curated by Yael Lipschutz in honor of Bradbury and his journey into the red unknown, the exhibition will include the original manuscript of The Martian Chronicles …” [via]

The exhibition itself will feature a nightly film loop that includes films from Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother, Brian Butler’s Night of Pan.

 

Tonight, on Tue, Dec 4th from 8:30p–11:30p, there will be a special performance of The Bartzabel Working by Brian Butler, actor James Franco and others.

“Based on a ceremonial evocation of the spirit of Mars, first written and performed in London in 1910 by the famed British occultist Aleister Crowley, the ritual later became part of Los Angeles history in 1946 when Jet Propulsion Laboratory rocket scientist and Crowley protégé Jack Parsons conducted his own version of this rite, with the intention of placing a martial curse on a pre-scientology L. Ron Hubbard.

For his reinterpretation of this historical performance, Butler will conjure Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, evoking the site that was once home to the late sci-fi author Ray Bradbury and currently comprises L&M Arts. The ritual will have Butler as Chief Magus, leading a cast drawn from his upcoming feature film King Death and featuring Henry Hopper as Assistant Magus, Noot Seear as Magus Adjuvant, and James Franco as Material Basis, the vessel though which the spirit of Mars manifests.

The performance will take place on Tuesday, December 4th at 8:30pm, followed by a reception with tunes courtesy of DJ artist Eddie Ruscha and a choreographed performance by artist Nana Ghana and Future Eyes.” [via, also]

Consider also:

  1. Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, Part 3 of 3
  2. As Above, So Below
  3. “A girl played the violin during the rites. She was a good violinist, but under the influence of the ceremonies, she was more; she played sublimely, like a supreme virtuoso, in the magical invocations directed upon her.”
  4. “But in order to find the ‘perfect points of entrance’ to this secret (and we are told elsewhere that ‘straight is the way and narrow the gate, and few there be that find it’) emphasis again is laid in our teaching upon the necessity of complete moral rectitude, of utter exactness of thought, word and action, as exemplified by rigid observance of the symbolic principles of the square, level and plumb-rule.”
  5. Aleister Crowley gets a mention and another imagined relative in this book review