Orlon Borloff, untitled collage
Last spring, Dangerous Minds told you about “The Devil’s Reign,” a traveling exhibit (and its companion book) of Satanic art curated by Peter H. Gilmore, author of The Satanic Scriptures, and the High Priest of the Church of Satan for fifteen years. The exhibit endeavored to explore expressions of the diabolical from many cultures, though it mostly focused on ancient deities that were repurposed as devils and demons by Christianity, and, as that’s a pretty damned (haha) fertile artistic field to harvest, a second book has been published. The Devil’s Reign II: Psychedelic Blasphemy, as the title implies, focuses on trippy and surreal expressions of the profane, as Gilmore writes in his introduction:
Blasphemy is a conscious act of rejection, showing contempt for or derision of established sacred icons. Typically it is directed at objects, people, and concepts placed on pedestals by religions. As secularism has grown, one may also deem irreverence and disgust for things held above criticism by herd culture as today’s implementation of that idea. When we dismiss what by consensus is held to be inviolable, we are blasphemers.
The 1960s spawned a movement whose intent was the expansion of the mind through the use of mind altering substances as well as meditation or sensory stimulation/deprivation techniques. Shattering what had been prior paradigms, exponents of this “counter-culture” employed non-Western sources for inspiration in creating music and visual art as a means for sharing their own inner-explorations, often fueled by drug-induced “trips.” The art in particular was characterized by bright colors, complex geometric patterning, and often employed cartoon-derived stylization to emphasize heightened sensibilities and new juxtapositions of images that embraced surrealism.
The follow-up book, like the first, is limited to 666 copies, and both are available from Howl Books, an imprint run by Florida-based tattoo artist and gallerist Andy Howl. Dangerous Minds has graciously been permitted by Howl to share a selection of images.
Ian Bederman, “Mushroom Cave”
Ramon Maiden, “Hell’s Messenger”
Joseph Butler, “Satan”
Nek, “Censer”
Jimmy Utah, “Jesus and Satan are Brothers”
Jim Pavelec, “Schrei”
FAUST, “From the Abcess Arose The Worm”
Lindsey Kuhn, “The Overseer”
Arturo Fresan, “Lucifer”
Shaun Beaudry, “Bloody Blasphemy”
Ryan Case, “The Great Goat”
Alexander L. Brown, “Inferno”
Matthew Lackey, “Heresies of Benedict IV”
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘The Devil’s Reign’: Demonic art exhibit curated by Church of Satan’s High Priest
SATAN! Amazing trove of outsider art found in Detroit
Rare pix of Anton LaVey performing Satanic rites, cavorting with Jayne Mansfield and Forry Ackerman