Bob Eggleton, “Hell-Kaiju”

Dangerous Minds has previously and previouslier told you about an ongoing series of Satanic art exhibits and books, all under the umbrella title “The Devil’s Reign.” The exhibits are put on and the books are published by Andy Howl, a tattoo artist with galleries in Fort Myers, FL, and they’re curated by no less an authority on LaVeyan Satanism than the Church of Satan’s High Priest, Peter H. Gilmore. Howl has told me that he intends the series to continue until it reaches ten exhibits and books—an ambitious goal, and the newest, Daikaiju, is the third, after “The Devil’s Reign” and “The Devils Reign II: Psychedelic Blasphemy.”

The valid question of what giant movie monsters have to do with Satanism inevitably arises, and naturally, the book addresses this matter, with essays by Gilmore and by Hugo Award winning fantasy illustrator Bob Eggleton (Greetings From Earth). Eggleton first:

Kaiju as a word actually means “mythical beast” in Japanese. The mystique of this kind of creature is the fact we don’t know from where it came, the forces that created it, or how, only that it exists. The Japanese have a long, rich history of creatures from the multi-headed Orochi to Yokai—ghosts which take on the form of strange, sometimes playful, sometimes terrifying creatures. All of them very colorful and bizarre, contrary to Western ideas of similar entities. Monsters of this size are not new, they permeate history of human kind. Even “Leviathan” from the Book of Revelations in the Bible is a giant, flame spewing monster, possibly part whale, and part deep sea life form. There has also been The Kraken, and The Mid-gard Serpent which Thor battled in Norse mythology, among many others. Kaiju have been with us from the very beginnings of human history, appearing even as cave paintings in the prehistoric record. In the early part of the 20th Century, writer H.P. Lovecraft concocted a plethora of weird and giant creatures. Foremost among them are Cthulhu, Dagon and his mythos of At The Mountains of Madness, and an abandoned prehistoric Antarctic city created by a race of aliens called “The Old Ones”. He had a gifted penchant for the appearance of demons and monsters to be, in fact, alien in origin from the dark places in the universe. Indeed, the Devils Reign.

And Gilmore:

Since the dawn of our species, humans have been awed by the power and mystery of the grand forces of nature under whose dominion we attempt to survive. Before science was able to explain the mechanisms behind storms, floods, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes, human beings personifed these vast and indifferent phenomena as best they could. The most mighty and terrifying aspects of the cosmos were deemed to arise from monstrous creatures. In Japanese, “daikaiju” specifically means giant monsters—ones with strange and fantastic characteristics—so the terrors of these ancient legends are embodied by this word.

Looking back through the myths of past cultures, we find the Babylonian Tiamat, a chaos dragon, who was transmuted into Leviathan in the Hebrew sacred texts. Behemoth, a vast elephantine monstrosity, and Ziz, a gigantic winged gryphon, were also mentioned in these scriptures, making a trio of biblical daikaiju. The northern peoples imagined Jormungandr as the world serpent, and the ancient Greeks were terrified by Typhon and Echidna, almost incomprehensibly gargantuan monstrosities who spawned a host of lesser hideous beasts. Fantastic giant monsters have thus been a primal aspect of the human imagination for millennia.

 

 

Richard “Tentacles and Teeth” Luong, “The Coming of Azathoth”
 

Peter Santa-Maria, “Giant Turtle”
 
More satanic mayhem after the jump…

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”
 
More after the jump…

Pale Horse, “Through the Gateway,” screenprint

Peter H. Gilmore has long been among the world’s leading authorities on LaVeyan Satanism. An author of countless works on the subject, most notably The Satanic Scriptures, Gilmore was appointed the High Priest of the Church of Satan 15 years ago, and has since served—not without controversy, unsurprisingly—as caretaker of the Anton LaVey legacy, even writing a new introduction to The Satanic Bible, the book that changed his life in his early teens (say what you will about that, hey, at least it wasn’t Atlas Shrugged).

Gilmore has recently endeavored to curate a Satanic art exhibit called “The Devil’s Reign” (a cheeky nod to an old film) for Howl Gallery, a combination exhibition space/tattoo shop in Ft. Myers. FL. The show is traveling, and it opens tonight, April 1, 2016 at Stephen Romano Gallery In Brooklyn, and it’ll travel to Eridanos Gallery & Tattoo in Boston for an opening on May 6th. The show seeks to acquaint viewers with expressions of devils from many cultures, though deities that were turned to devils and demons by Christianity are by far the most often featured, and curiously, figures from the Lovecraft mythos make appearances. “Since all deities and devils are invented,” Gilmore writes in his foreword to the exhibit’s companion book, “Satanists can employ any, from whatever fiction they find inspirational, as a means for emotional excitement in ritual.” He continues:

Whether the artists crafted these images to purge themselves of some withheld impulses or as celebrations of others, they function as visual rituals, offering viewers much over which to ruminate. Of this tenebrous throng, some will have been or will be inscribed upon human flesh. Their bearers might wish to absorb and dominate them, or to boldly proclaim allegiance to these sovereigns of Hell.

Devilish art has long been said to mock authority, to frighten the gullible into beliefs contrary to their nature, and to both embody and expose complex elements of the human animal and his frequently savage societies. The Church of Satan proposes that one can explore and fulfill one’s desires when they are experienced as controlled indulgence, not frenzied compulsion—an Epicurean rather than Hedonistic approach. Each artwork here can thus be a means for self-reflection, or for seeing worldly perspectives that may previously have remained hidden.

 

Herb Auerbach, untitled, ink & watercolor on paper
 

Uncle Allan, “Mephisto,” pen, ink, watercolor
 

Dusty Neal, “Naamah,” ink, liquid acrylic
 
More demonic art after the jump…