Possessed of Alchemystic Powers

In 1949 Ithell Colquhoun—artist, writer, and occultist—produced a manifesto, titled “The Mantic Stain,” in which she called on her readers to follow French Surrealism’s practice of “pure psychic automatism.” It was, Breton wrote, “the real working of thought. Dictation of thought, without any control exercised by reason, and beyond any preoccupation, aesthetic or moral.” “Mantic” […]