ut of the flesh of our mothers come dreams and memories of the Gods. Of other kind than the normal inducement of interest and increasing skill, there exists a continual pressure upon the artist of which he is sometimes partially conscious but rarely entirelyaware. He learns early or late in his career that power of literal reproduction (such as that of the photographic apparatus) is not morethan slightly useful to him. He is compelled to find out from his artist predecessors the existence, in representation of real form, of super-sessions of immediate accuracies; he discovers within himself a selective conscience and he is satisfied, normally, in large measure by the extensive field afforded by this broadened and simplified consciousness.
Yet beyond this is a region and that a much greater one, for exploration. The objective understanding, as we see, has to be attacked by the artist and a subconscious method, for correction of conscious visual accuracy, must be used.
Thus writes Leonardo da Vinci:— “Among other things, I shall not scruple to discover a new method of assisting the invention; which though trifling in appearance, may yet be of considerable service in opening the mind and putting it upon the scent of new thoughts, and it is this: if you look at some old wall covered with dirt, or the odd appearance of some streaked stones, you may discover several things like landskips, battles, clouds, uncommon attitude, draperies, etc.
Out of this confused mass of objects the mind will be furnished with abundance of designs and subjects, perfectly new.”
From another, a mystical writer “Renounce thine own will that the law of God may be within thee.”
So Automatic drawing, one of the simplest of psychic phenomena, is a means of characteristic expression and, if used with courage and honesty, of recording subconscious activities in the mind.
Automatism being the manifestation of latent desires (or wishes) the significance of the forms (the ideas) obtained represent the previously unrecorded obsessions.
Art becomes, by this illuminism or ecstatic power, a functional activity expressing in a symbolical language the desire towards joy unmodified — the sense of the Mother of all things — not of experience.
In the ecstatic condition of revelation from the subconscious, the mind elevates the sexual or inherited powers (this has no reference to moral theory or practise) and depresses the intellectual qualities. So a new atavistic responsibility is attained by daring to believe—to posses one’s own beliefs—without attempting to rationalize spurious ideas from prejudiced and tainted intellectual sources.
The Hand must be trained to work freely and without control, by practise in making simple forms with a continuous involved line without afterthought, i.e. its intention should just escape consciousness.
The Mind in a state of oblivion, without desire towards reflection or pursuit of materialistic intellectual suggestions, is in a condition to produce successful drawings of one’s personal ideas, symbolic in meaning and wisdom.
Occult Aspects 