Esoteric Secrets of Surrealism

Patrick Lepetit has written several books in French on esoteric traditions and surrealism. He is a member of the Grand Orient de France and of the Mélusine Network of scholars interested in surrealism. He lives in Mons en Baroeul, France.

• Foreword by Bernard RogerIntroduction: Tolerance and Acceptance of Difference 1 Under the Sign of the Goose: Surrealism and Liberation of the Mind 2 Surrealism and the Sacred 3 Surrealism and the Labyrinth of the Mind 4 Surrealism and Divination 5 Surrealism and Astrology 6 Surrealism and Dark Romanticism: “In the Closed Palace” 7 The Unappeasable Shadow of Arthur’s Companions: Surrealism and Celticism 8 Surrealism and Alchemy: “You with Lead in the Head, Melt It Down to Make Surrealist Gold” 9 Surrealism and Magic 10 Surrealism, Freemasonry, and Voodoo: Ogun Ferraille, the Elect Cohen, and the Great Tradition 11 Surrealism and Gnosticism 12 Surrealism and Tradition: Occult Sources, Histories of Orders and Churches 13 Surrealism and Myth 14 Keeping a Level Head? Notes Bibliography Index

“This book is a necessary resource for those readers interested, or rather compelled, by the implicit and explicit relationships between surrealism and the initiatory forms that comprise the great traditions of the esoteric and occult arts. The author, whose enthusiasm for his subject is equaled by his erudition, provides for the first time in English translation numerous excerpts from noted surrealists commenting directly on the subject at hand, whether it be divination, astrology, dark romanticism, the Celtic world, or alchemy, magic, Voudoun, Gnosticism and mythopoesis. His exegesis and conclusions are ripe, and should provoke the reader not only in terms of encountering the texts and works discussed throughout the various ages and contexts they were created in but also in recollecting, or revisiting, quite personal moments that have acted as levers or axial junctures from which much else evolved. Patrick Lepetit’s scholarship in this regard is revivifying and precise. A much needed looking glass into a still evolving gyre in which science, as a capacity for astute observation, and poetry, where our internal and external theaters merge, have ever the potential of reaching new syntheses.”