R.I.P. YOU GLORIOUS SOUL
Photographed & Styled by Brian Ward {c. May 1971}
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The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.-David Bowie
Robert Cornelius – Self Portrait – 1839
The FIRST ‘Selfie’ , as well as the first ever photograph of a human being in history. Not bad for a dead guy . . .
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“Why do you like me more when I was prouder and wilder, more full of words, yet emptier?”
― Friedrich Hölderlin
Don’t quote me on this one, but I feel like I’ve been hearing/reading a lot of talk about Kim K being the inventor of the selfie. She released her book SELFISH , and whilst you can attribute the ‘success’ of her following (52.8 million and counting) to her candid take on life posting bits and bites of her online constantly, she wouldn’t be the first or last to take a picture of themselves.
Nowadays ‘selfies’ are rampant on the internet, and its quite curious to see a generation of children growing up with the notion that there is an essential need to post one’s image ‘online’ at all times. There’s a saying these days that ‘if you don’t see it on Instagram, it didn’t happen‘ – which by all standards seems a little reductive to the actual experience of life and living, don’t you find?
While Kim may have been one of the forerunners in the popularization of the ‘selfie’, and even pushing the boundaries of the process of raising your phone in front of your face and pushing a button to some form or medium that one could consider ‘art’ . . . ? ? ?
Too much self-centred attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centred attitude is the source of suffering.
-Dalai Lama
Yes, that’s what’s strange and hilarious about this whole ordeal, when in fact, if you take a look at a ‘selfie’ from the past, they are a whole lot more interesting than the run-of-the-mill duck face, booty-tooched, tiara-faced, bicep crunched, mid drift bared, grainy narcissism that is usually made to elicit some form of hype or attention; rather they are candid, curious moments immortalized by light and silver taken in a manner that is even more technically advanced and complicated than your phone or tablet.
Hope I didn’t offend anyone and their phone or tablet, but its the gosh-darn truth. And even before the advancements of the photograph in general, we had artists who painstakingly mixed pigment and with brushes artfully illuminated their souls onto canvas in what are often the best works by any artist- the self portrait, as we have come to call it.
It’s good to be selfish. But not so self-centred that you never listen to other people.
-Hugh Hefner
It would seem as a collective whole; as a community through history – we have always been fascinated by our true image, or at least, the image we leave behind of ourselves when we are gone. Perhaps its a stab at not being forgotten, or perhaps it is the artists own way of insuring they remember the times that were.
So in true E.O.F. style, we want to take a look back at the great ‘selfies’ of the past, remembering where we came from, and hopefully we can invigorate some imagination to add a flux to our inevitable futures.
Some things never change . . . certain aspects can change drastically on a dime, but as a whole, I think our tendencies tend to stay consistent.
The oldest ‘selfie’ we included in the gallery is of Ancient Egyptian sculptor Bak, who was chief sculptor to the pharaoh Akhenaten (father to the very famous Tutankhamun) who drastically shifted Ancient Egyptian customs during his rule which included their religion, as well as the world of art. Amazingly, this sculpture that depicts Bak and his wife dates from 1345 BC and is one of the earliest known examples of an artist taking to their own self image.
My personal favourite is that of Grand Duchess Anastasia (fourth from last) which dates from 1913. 13 at the time, she uses a Kodak Brownie (circa. 1900) propped on a chair in front of a mirror to curiously capture her own self image and remains one of the most famous ‘selfies’ ever taken (sorry Kim…) due to the circumstances of her death just five years after she took this photo.
Curious how things change. Curious how they stay the same, also.
Keep your eyes open. The past lives everyday around us.
Just takes a little squinting of the eye to see it so clearly.
Until we meet again,
{theEye}
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It was August 10, 1901 and Miss Moberly had taken the afternoon to visit the palace of Versailles with her good friend, Miss Eleanor Jourdan, only to curiously find themselves, while wondering through the palace’s vast and elaborately decorated corridors, beginning to see many people dress in clothes of the 18th Century – including what Miss Moberly would swear was the late, great, Marie Anotinette. They recounted feeling dreamy and depressed, and their surroundings as flat and unnatural.
Everything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant; even the trees seemed to become flat and lifeless, like wood worked in tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade, and no wind stirred the trees.
– Miss Charlotte Moberly
It then seems as quickly as they found themselves interacting with these ghosts of the past, they were brought back to the present day, ending off their visit with a cup of tea at the Hotel des Reservoirs, and not mentioning it again until several months later when they began to research more heavily into the incident.
No parties were booked on that day, and they found that many of the landmarks they had seen were in fact missing from the present day layout of the palace. The two would publish their tale in a book entitled An Adventure, which was released in 1911 with much praise by various Paranormal societies.
It is a mystery unsolved to this day.
Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.
– Stephen Hawking.
This is just one of many incidents throughout history that people have claimed to somehow slip through the borders of the present to live through the past, and sometimes even the future. There are little to no explanations to how these strange events occur, and perhaps its better off there never be. This phenomenon is known as a Time Slip.
Dating back thousands of years, stories of time travellers run amuck throughout world culture, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Who knows how many people have taken the opportunity to slip through the sands of time, and exist completely somewhere else as someone else. How long could this last for?
With future knowledge, these individuals might be set to live their life in a much more bountiful and exuberant way by leaving the present to stake claim on the past. Perhaps this is why man has always taken interest in this idea.
I mean, what better advantage in life would you have if you could simply turn back the clock and erase your mistakes? Stop wars. Cure diseases. But where would we be now if this was to happen?
Maybe time is a much more powerful entity that can pick and choose as it pleases whom it takes on its journey. Perhaps like any skill, it just takes some practice and training to accomplish. One things for sure, if we were part of the Time Traveller’s Academy, we’d be doing just fine, dressed to nines, looking spiffy in all that vintage clothing the past has to offer.
That’s why we decided to look back, and make it a mission to curate some images of the initiates who may have indeed slipped through the fragile barriers of past, present, and future. For selfish reasons, or style reasons, these are our friends who have locked themselves in the realms of history. What is their mission? What do they hope to find? Will they ever be free?
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When is now? When was then?
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– Bill Nye.
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Focus is key, as you don’t want to invoke the wrong spirit for the day. But if you are able to summon from deep within that one spirit that can transform you, and in turn, how you are perceived by the world, then you have a real chance of winning. But, making that metamorphosis is something only a genuine and true individual can truly take on.
For centuries, hundreds, maybe thousands, of secret societies have existed looking to possess the power of these sacred secret spirits. From the mysteries of Egypt and Ancient Greece, to Yeats’ and Crowley’s “Golden Dawn”, to the secret dormitories of the Ivy League, members of certain sacred orders have endured through the ages and kept alive this powerful knowledge.
The most powerful spirit they hope to set free is that of the ‘Rebel‘. The most courageous and strong of any being. The ‘Rebel’ is fearless and has been able to survive with its’ strong will, determination, and unwillingness to submit to anyone, or anything.
“The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them.”
{Peter Redgrove, “The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real”.}
Long ago, high up in the sky a rebel band of Angels existed, unhappy with their destiny. Instead of sitting pretty playing harps and twirling their fingers through their hair, they followed their leader, the bold Lucifer, and leaped down from the sky and into the river Styx where they still reside to this day, invulnerable to the world, and ready to play as they please . . .
Invoking the rebel spirit is one of the things we do best here at The Eye, and possessing oneself with the invulnerability of the River Styx will without a doubt work in your favor, no matter the circumstance. Who wants to be vulnerable anyway? Instead, own your destiny, and write a place in history for yourself.
We have explored the history of these sacred orders and secret societies and have been entranced by this tradition of rebellion. The deeper you begin to look, the deeper you can understand that we are in fact living in a {Rebel Society}.
There is a warning, however, in summoning the ‘Rebel’ to pervade the soul: always remember that the ‘Rebel’ spirit doesn’t work for anyone, and once summoned, there is no guarantees how long they might want to stay, or the darkness they might uncover once you are shown the light.
Do you think you have what it takes to invoke the ‘Rebel’ spirit? If so, take a ride with The Eye of Faith and lets aim for Styx!
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Sincerely,
{theEye}
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“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”
-Lord Byron: George Gordon Byron {6th Baron Byron}
“I love not man the less, but Nature more”
-Lord Byron: George Gordon Byron {6th Baron Byron}
Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt
From all affection and from all contempt: (I, XII)[2]
“The Corsair” (1814) by Lord Byron
–+Lord Byron {Jan 22 1978 – April 19 1824}+–
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Until next time,
LIKE US on FACEBOOK & FOLLOW US on TWITTER
{theEye}
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[SOURCE: The Laughing Squid]
Have you heard yet about the rotating statue at the Manchester Museum, in Northern England?
This tiny 3,800 year old guy has been turning heads, as many people allege the simple stone statue to be possessed by a mummy’s curse as video footage shockingly reveals the statue had been moving in a rotation over the course of a day, baffling curators, employees, and experts, alike.
Apparently the supernatural behaviour has been debunked and is believed to be caused by the vibrations of the many visitors throughout the day causing the wobbly base of the statue to move and thus rotate.
Question is, why hasn’t this feature been noticed before by anyone? After all, the museum claims the statue had been sitting behind class for 80 years, and it was not until this year that any unusual behaviour had been spotted. Or what about all the other statues in the cabinet?
That’s 2013 for you, I guess.
What do you think?
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Until next time,
{theEye}
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{The Eye of Faith}
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Inspiration we are still reaping today! Take for instance, Ryan Gosling’s iconic gold satin jacket with scorpion on the back in 2011’s “Drive” – it was Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising”, an experimental film made by Anger in 1963 about bikers, the occult, the underground, Catholicism, and Nazism that inspired the logo that would become synonymous with Gosling’s “Driver” character.
Throughout his work you can see his love for cinema, for art, for style, for fashion, for creative people that don’t see the world the way other people do. People who gather together to be the truest, and most extreme versions of themselves they can be. It takes a true creative mastermind to bring that into fruition.
Blending the world of the occult with pop culture and art-house cinema, Anger’s films are all one-of-a-kind, kaleidoscopic dreams (and sometimes nightmares).
For instance, take “Invocation of My Demon Brother” from 1969. With music by Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones Mick, Yes), and cameos by some of 1960s California’s most notorious esoteric celebrities including Founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey (making yet another appearance here at EOF), and Bobby Beausoleil (later charged in committing a first degree murder with members of the “Manson Family ).
Invocation of My Demon Brother” is a rare glimpse into a dark underground world, as well as a visual poem to the horrors of War, humanity, and nature itself.
There’s nothing really to be scared of here. Just a bunch of Hocus-Pocus…Movie MAGIC, if you will. It’s really lucky to recieve an entire commentary on the film by the artist himself, as there are not many interviews with the often recluse director.
Anger usually centres his work on ideas of the divine, spiritual, decadent, sexual, and supernatural. The now 86 year old auteur (Happy Belated! His birthday was February 3) got his start in the glorious heydays of Hollywood Babylon itself, as the Changeling Prince in Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle’s 1935 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
Having seen the ins and outs of Hollywood and such a young age- a land full of magic, glamour, decadence, and of course, EVIL – it is fantastic to invite yourself into a Kenneth Anger piece, as you can always leave from it feeling a certain “je ne sais quoi”, as the French would say.
The French, and Europe in general, have always lauded this Prince of Darkness for his unique dark styles, as well as humor (yes, Humor!). Though it took upward of 40 years (40 YEARS!!!), the Fashion World finally seemed ready to let out a little Anger, and the American Auteur was given the helms of a short fashion video for Missoni’s “A/W 2010-2011.
We’re having that “je ne sais quoi” type of feeling again, how about you? If you want to learn more about the dark Prince of style you can visit his official website here. And to buy his masterworks, click here.
Until next time,
{theEye}
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Word on the street is The Tammy’s are regarded as one of Girl Group history’s greatest treasures.
You may not have heard of them, but you’re not to blame, as this is just one of their remarkable gems they managed to leave behind for us all to hear. In fact, this single was all but lost until being found again at the beginning of this century.
“In the spring of 1964, it peaked at #30 on Cleveland rock music surveys, and #15 in Pittsburgh. It was popular at high school and college dances throughout the Midwest, but somehow never made it onto the national charts…”
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{“Pyramidically Speaking . . .”}
The pyramids have always had mighty power over man.
Will we ever learn their secrets?
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{Ancient Aliens from 2,000 b.c.! By Artist Joe Kubert}
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