Inner Visions: Explorations in Magical Consciousness

by Nevill Drury

Drawing on examples as varied as Salvador Dali and Pink Floyd, Nevill Drury shows how art and music today are feeding on myth and ancient magic.

Genres: Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Nevill Drury PhD is an independent historical researcher whose specialist interests include modern Western magic, shamanism, transpersonal psychology and visionary art. His most recent publications include The Varieties of Magical Experience (co-authored with Lynne Hume; Praeger, January 2013), Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman Spare (Salamander, 2012); Stealing Fire from Heaven: the Rise of Modern Western Magic (Oxford University Press 2011); Homage to Pan (Creation Oneiros 2009), The Dictionary of Magic (Watkins 2005) and The New Age: the History of a Movement (Thames & Hudson 2004). He received his Ph.D from the University of Newcastle in 2008 for a dissertation on the visionary art and magical beliefs of Rosaleen Norton (awarded 'Best Humanities Ph.D'. in that year).

Born in England in 1947 but resident in Australia since 1963, Nevill has worked as an international art-book publisher, lecturer and magazine editor and is now a full-time writer. He is the author/co-author/editor of seventy books covering a range of subjects like contemporary art (Images in Contemporary Australian Painting, New Sculpture, Australian Painting Now, Fire and Shadow: Spirituality in Contemporary Australian Art), Aboriginal culture (Wisdom from the Earth), holistic health (The Healing Power, Inner Health) and the magical traditions (Dark Spirits; Stealing Fire from Heaven: Sacred Encounters; Homage to Pan, Inner Visions). He is also the author of a work of mythic fiction, The Shaman's Quest, which was described by Publisher's Weekly as a 'poetic' book that 'could become a classic'. His work has been published in 26 countries and 19 languages.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short volume explores the themes of magical consciousness in contemporary art and music, particularly focusing on the imagery of the tarot and kabbalah.

The first section details the history of western occultism and magick, and explores the themes and symbology of the tarot and qabalistic tree of life.

The second half explores the work of The Surrealists (unfortunately many key players, notably the female surrealists are entirely absent here - no Leonora Carrington!?) as well as Ernst Fuchs, Wilfred Satty, and Rosaleen Norton - who Drury wrote an entire book on later in his career.

This book was written in the 70's as so it misses a lot of later musical groups and artists that would now deserve a mention. Ultimately though a good deal of the content is still relevant, and the occult theme in art certainly hasn't waned. It would be satisfying to see a richly updated edition, with the inclusion of more female creatives alongside musicians such as David Tibet, Jhonn Balance and Peter Christopherson etc. Worth reading all the same, though the themes could have been explored in much greater depth.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read on the resurgence of metaphysical/occult in pop culture & popular religion/spirituality. The section on pop music was particularly interesting. Overall, however, I found a lot of disconnected ideas throughout this book.... I also think the author was "reaching" in many of his interpretations.

[Patrik Sahlstrøm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly boring. This book has three parts, the first part is a vaguely interesting interesting interpretation of the Tree of Life, where the author at least has the sense to point out that the Tree of Life merely is a tool for communicating experiences that lie beyond the realm of ordinary language. The second part is a very boring critique of modern art, only of interest to other art critics and the last part is an attempt to inject a spiritual meaning into the music of his favorite bands. Possibly worth getting to a novice on a spiritual journey, but nothing really interesting here.

[Joseph F. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another bizarre occult book. I only read this one because It had some unusual surreal paintings, and I wanted to see how the author interprets them in light of the counterculture. Some names are known: Magritte, Dali. But most of the others are not household names. Which is fine.
He makes some interesting points, but most of the book is the usual magical mumbo jumbo of expanding your consciousness by climbing the Kabbalistic tree of life and using the images of the Tarot to help with various visualizations blah, blah , blah.
The Tarot and the Kabbalah have nothing to do with each other, no matter how much occultists like to think they do.