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Harry Smith

Smith's early efforts in the field of fine art painting were freeform abstractions intended to visually represent notes, measures, beats and riffs of the beatnik era jazz music that inspired him. There is photographic evidence of Smith's large paintings created in the 1940s; however, the works themselves were destroyed by Smith himself. He did not destroy his work on film (although he did misplace a few) and this legacy supplements the nature and design of his paintings. Smith created several later works, some of which have been serially printed in limited editions. Much of his imagery is inspired by Kabbalistic themes such as the Sephirah, where the Planetary Spheres are distributed like musical notes upon a staff. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Everett_Smith#Visual_art] In my early twenties I became aware of the art of Harry Everett Smith. As a young Artist working with Crowley’s magical system the expression of Magick through Art became particularly fascinating. I first came across Smith’s analogy between the Enochian Watchtowers and the Scottish Highland Tartans in an early Magical Link. This journey found me in Alphabet City in New York, late at night knocking on the door of the Harry Smith archives whose door was answered by Rani Sighn, who graciously accommodated my curious requests by pulling out some examples of Smith Artistic endeavours with the Enochian Magical System, and pointed me towards Khem Caigan who worked with Smith on an Enochian Language concordance. What become apparent upon looking at this example of Smith’s work is that he had taken his cues from Crowley’s Liber Chanokh which contains the Golden Dawn’s representation of the Enochian Watchtowers refracted though an Elemental magical framework. Although Dee was familiar with the four elements of Aristotle, there is no explicit link made between the Watchtowers and these Elements in his writings. Rather they are associated with the four directions of the compass and each Watchtower is sub-divided into four angles. [http://zeroequalstwo.net/harry-smiths-enochian-watcher-tartan-analogy-inspires-artwork/]
Uploaded on Apr 27, 2018 by Suzan Hamer

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