Elmer Crowley

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A Katabasic Nekyia
Tom Bradley
(illustrated by David Aronson & Nick Patterson)

Elmer Crowley / USA & AUS / $22.00

Elmer Crowley / UK / £15.00


Elmer Crowley
A Katabasic Nekyia
Tom Bradley, David Aronson, Nick Patterson.
Format: Softcover/132 pp – illustrated – many in colour.
ISBN: 978-1-906958-55-8
US $22.00 / UK £15.00
Subjects: Aleister Crowley & Thelema/picaresque graphic novel.

Bless me,
curse me.
For better or worse, my fallopian fall into matter. . .

After making careful preparations to ensure himself a proper reincarnation,
the dying ALEISTER CROWLEY flubs one syllable of the magickal incantation . . .
and comes back as ELMER FUDD.

———————–

– Back story on this publication –

David Aronson has become ill, and is unable to complete the illustrations for ELMER CROWLEY. But the good news is that the great Nick Patterson has agreed to step in. Nick collaborated with Tom Bradley on a couple of books, including FAMILY ROMANCE (Jaded Ibis Press)–

www.thedrillpress.com/sad/2012-08-01/sad-2012-08-01-romance-tbradley-01.shtml

Just by coincidence, this happens to work out perfectly.
After making careful preparations to ensure himself a proper reincarnation, the dying Aleister Crowley flubs one syllable of the magickal incantation…and comes back as Elmer Fudd.

The pictures David Aronson did before getting sick are black and white. They take Crowley from his death, through his judgement in the Hall of the Divine Kings, and stop just as he is being sucked into Looney Tunes Land.

At that point, Nick Patterson takes over, and the color is switched on. It’s like the old movie, when Dorothy gets out of Kansas and arrives in Oz. The different style of pictures announces the big change in scene.

—-

– Praise for Elmer Crowley: a katabasic nekyia

Reading Elmer Crowley is like reading Crowley’s inner dialogue at 3am, after an intensive journey into his own inner abyss. It is, therefore, a magickal working that Crowley himself would be proud of.
– Gwendolyn von Taunton, author of Northern Traditions

Of Aleister Crowley’s many fictionalizations, this novel gets best into his head. Erudite, prideful, lascivious, funniest man of his time, and the mightiest spiritual spelunker–he speaks and shouts from these pages as clearly as he did in his Autohagiography, which is paradoxical, given the irreal setting.
– Barry Katz, HTMLGIANT

This book…captures the feel of Crowley with his bawdy, politically incorrect irreverence, his arrogance and his committed magickal spirituality and awareness.
– Charlotte Rogers, author of P is for Prostitute

The voice is dead perfect…I can’t imagine a hip Thelemite NOT having this book in her library.
– Don Webb, author of Through Dark Angles, former High Priest, Temple of Set

This self-described “picaresque graphic novel” reads like an account of Crowley’s death-bed fever dream or an afterlife bardo journey gone terribly wrong, wherein the fifty-eight Wrathful Deities take on the aspect of warped and sinister versions of Looney Toons archetypes…. the result reads like a trippy, post-mortem, long-lost epilogue to The Confessions.
– Richard Kaczynski, author of Perdurbo: The Life of Aleister Crowley

David Aronson

David Aronson lives and works in the Philadelphia area. His quirky, offbeat drawings, paintings and illustrations combine traditional media such as watercolor, ink, graphite and colored pencil with digital media and digital collage. His work ranges from whimsical to fantastic, from highly stylized to realistically rendered, and has been called unique and highly imaginative. It mixes lowbrow with fine art elements and often employs unusual juxtapositions. Thematically, David often delves into the realms of mythology and psychology.

He has created art for CD covers, music videos, magazines, books, music posters and tour t-shirts. David is also an oil painter and has completed several public and private commissions. His digital animation has been featured on MTV2 and Fuse, and his drawings and illustrations have appeared in Silkmilk, Ritual, Inside Artzine, Khooligan, Fugue and BigNews, as well as being exhibited nationally in galleries and museum shows. His work has been featured in a college level illustration textbook, and most recently in the book The Immanence of Myth.

David is an art teacher, working with both children and adults, teaching several different media. He was once the sole owner and operator of a small art school in the Philadelphia suburbs. He is also a certified hypnotherapist, professional astrologer, and published poet.

 

Reviews blurbs:

Aronson is one of the most powerful / disturbing living artists…putting an erotic spirituality, equal to that of William Blake, into a nightmare that is darker than H.R. Giger’s.
–Frank Moore, Cherotic Revolutionary Magazine

David Aronson’s work is nothing short of digital alchemy; a spiritual, energetic example of subversion that does not detract from the reverence for his chosen subject matter. To look upon his work is to see through the eyes of a man achingly familiar with a broad spectrum of emotion. It is, quite simply, Truth, filtered through a stained glass window in another world.
–Glossolalia Black, Odd Culture

If you were ever a fan of Omni magazine or Salvador Dali you will be thrilled by David Aronson’s work. He conjures up horrific psychological landscapes in his surrealist cauldron; personal exorcisms writhing with erotic fantasies. His work also possess a hidden warmth, an empathy, which is woven throughout his nightmares serving to make his work embraceable. Whether this is done intentionally or as a cathartic result of the art itself is a mystery. And this would be just one of many dark mysteries inspired by David’s art.
–Robin Parry, Origivation Magazine