Louis Cattiaux. The Place of the Vision.
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Beginning the process
Louis Cattiaux
The Place of the Vision The Clock of God's Night and Day
Louis Cattiaux appears photographed painting in his home-studio workshop,
an a temporal and magical space located in the ground floor of St. Clotilde's square, right in the middle of Paris. Emmanuel d'Hooghvorst described it as follows: "His small painting studio, magically decorated, seemed to enclose the entire universe. There one breathed the perfume of some internally guarded Garden of Eden; and one kept returning frequently, without really knowing why, perhaps simply magnetized by the heat. Because, what emanated from this man was a kind of warmth never reached, totally different from simple cordiality, and also the sense of an immense secret, alive, but jealously guarded, as the philosophical fish that swims in deep waters. He lived candidly, with sobriety, with poverty according to the men, joyful and contented as a child and as such, without malice."
In the small writing desk that appears in the first level, he wrote his most important work: The Message Rediscovered in which he condensed his hermetic experiences.
Photograph of Louis Cattiaux.
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2 of 12. The Secret of the Pyramid
Surrealism opened the doors of art towards the more obscure zones of the human spirit, but, across this threshold, the majority of the artists of the age only found out how to investigate or examine the depths of their own psyches. Very few succeeded in distinguishing the spiritual light germinating in the midst of the darkness. In any event, the great surrealistic adventure would have owed continuing their trip to the realm of the beyond described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, to cross the night of being, for coming by day again. But, in general, it wasn't that that was accomplished, for this reason Cattiaux wrote with respect to the surrealist painters: "they have used deceit and seem to be inspired by the scenes of madness from the subterranean chambers of the Great Pyramid."
Egiptian fresco width the scenes from The Book of the Dead, or using the literal translation The Book of coming forth by daya .
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3 of 12. The Angel of Death
In order to access the occult worlds beyond what is visible, it is requisite to receive a visitation from the Angel of Death that separates bodies from spirits. Pico de la Mirandola in one of his Conclusions describes this visitation as follows: "The manner in which the rational souls are sacrificed to God by the archangel (matter that the Kabbalists don't explain), is nothing more than the separation of the soul from the body, and only accidentally the body from the soul, as happens in the death by the kiss, about which has been written in Psalms 116, 15: For the Saints in the presence of the Lord the death by the kiss is precious. Thanks to this separation, the visionary is consciously introduced to the dominions of Diana, the goddess of Night and of Magic.
Louis Cattiaux, "The Angel of Death", c. 1947.
Ethiopian Miniature, XIX century.
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8 of 12. The Mysteries of the Light
From the dark chaos, symbolized by the mysteries of the night, surges the new virginal light, the first matter of the alchemists, which will bring to light the glorious fruit whose light will illuminate the entire world. In this painting by Cattiaux, titled "Maria Paritura", behind the shadow of an old man who surges from the depths appears a luminous reality, to the right of the image, represented by the Virgin and Child. The Midnight Sun presides over the scene, flanked by angels render homage.
Louis Cattiaux, "Maria Paritura", undated
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10 of 12. The Mercurial Trace
In Cattiaux's work one find continual references to Alchemy, that he termed "the ancient royal art of the wise." One deals with an art that, as in Cattiaux's paintings, reveals, but also hides its only subject matter: the gift of Heaven. Without it, one cannot begin the alchemical work. This first matter, also known under the name of Mercury, appears shown between his father and his mother, the Sun and the Moon, such as is said in the famous Emerald Tablet, in his hand he bears the philosopher's stone.
- Louis Cattiaux, "The country Mercury" 1947.
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12 of 12. The Power of Magic
As Cattiaux wrote, a work of art ought to be a magical creation and, in this sense, we must refer to the long tradition of magical portraits destined to protect its owners that the art has produced throughout the centuries. Oscar Wilde found out about such procedures and wrote The Portrait of Dorian Gray to illustrate them. Cattiaux recovered the tradition and painted various magical portraits that impress through the feeling of the "presence" that they emit.
Louis Cattiaux, "Self-Portrait", painted to illustrate the first edition of The Message Rediscovered.
Image of an oni, African bronze, XV century.
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