Full Moon in Taurus

Excellent advice for Taurus: 

Bauhaus School Halloween

Spectacular creativity. Wish I could have been at this party!

Definitive Proof Nobody Did Costume Parties Like the Bauhaus

Friday, October 31, 2014, by Rachel B. Doyle

Photo by Karl Grill via The Charnel-House

Most people attribute Germany’s Bauhaus school with the following: being on the vanguard of minimalist design, the paring down of architecture to its most essential and non-ornamental elements, and the radical idea that useful objects could also be beautiful. What may be overlooked is the fact that the rigorous design school, founded by modernism’s grandsire Walter Gropius, also put on marvelous costume parties back in the 1920s. If you thought Bauhaus folk were good at designing coffee tables, just have a look at their costumes—as bewitching and sculptural as any other student project, but with an amazing flamboyance not oft ascribed to the movement.

These Bauhaus shindigs were nothing like typical Halloween parties, where everyone expects to find a few topical doppelgängers. Back in Weimar, competition among the creatives was fierce: students and teachers like artists Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Piet Mondian, László Moholy-Nagy; architect Mies van der Rohe; and furniture designer Marcel Breuer all tried to out-do one another by designing uniquely fantastical creations. According to Farkas Molnár, the late Hungarian architect who was a Bauhaus student in the early ’20s, the school’s renowned typography studios and cabinet-making workshops were taken very seriously, but “the greatest expenditures of energy, however, go into the costume parties.”

Photo via The Charnel-House

“The essential difference between the fancy-dress balls organized by the artists of Paris, Berlin, Moscow and the ones here at the Bauhaus is that our costumes are truly original,” Molnár wrote in a 1925 essay entitled “Life at the Bauhaus.” “Everyone prepares his or her own. Never a one that has been seen before. Inhuman, or humanoid, but always new. You may see monstrously tall shapes stumbling about, colorful mechanical figures that yield not the slightest clue as to where the head is. Sweet girls inside a red cube. Here comes a witch and they are hoisted high up into the air; lights flash and scents are sprayed,” he continued.

The parties began as improvisational events, but later grew into large-scale productions with costumes and sets made by the school’s stage workshop. There was often a theme to the evenings. One party was called “Beard, Nose, and Heart,” and attendees were instructed to show up in clothing that was two-thirds white, and one-third spotted, checked or striped. However, it’s generally agreed that the apotheosis of the Bauhaus’ costumed revelry was theMetal Party of 1929, where guests donned costumes made from tin foil, frying pans, and spoons.Attendees entered that party by sliding down a chute into one of several rooms filled with silver balls.

Photo via The Charnel-House

The theater workshop responsible for many of these resplendent events was led by Oskar Schlemmer, a charismatic painter and choreographer best known for his Triadic Ballet, an avant-garde dance production that premiered in 1922. The three-part play with different colors and moods for each act was widely performed throughout the twenties, and became something of a poster child for the Bauhaus movement.

Photos via The Charnel-House

The Triadic Ballet’s 18 costumes were designed by matching geometric forms with analogous parts of the human body: a cylinder for the neck, a circle for the heads. Schlemmer made no secret of the fact that he considered the stylized, artificial movements of marionettes to be aesthetically superior to the naturalistic movements of real humans. These elaborate costumes, which were generally too large for their wearers to sit down in, totally upped the ante at the Bauhaus school’s regular costume balls.

Photos via The Charnel-House

Although there aren’t many photos of Bauhaus luminaries wearing the costumes they labored over in the name of socializing, thankfully Farkas Molnár has chronicled some of their style proclivities:

Photo via The Charnel-House

“Kandinsky prefers to appear decked out as an antenna, Itten as an amorphous monster, Feininger as two right triangles, Moholy-Nagy as a segment transpierced by a cross, Gropius as Le Corbusier, Muche as an apostle of Mazdaznan, Klee as the song of the blue tree,”Molnár wrote in 1925. “A rather grotesque menagerie…”

Photo via The Charnel-House

Walter Gropius used to dress up as Le Corbusier? It doesn’t really get better than that.

Photo via The Charnel-House

· Bauhaus Online [Official site]
· Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Costume Parties (1924-1926) [The Charnel-House]
· Exhibitionism: Bauhaus – Art As Life at the Barbican [Theatre of Fashion]
· All Bauhaus posts [Curbed National]
· The Ultimate Guide to Dressing Like an Architect for Halloween[Curbed National]

Celtic Halloween

From the Astrarium:

“The Celts, however, perceived an even simpler pattern behind the Wheel of the Year: the two fundamental seasons of fire and ice, or summer and winter. In Celtic tradition the new year began on Samhain, October 31, now called Halloween, which for them was the first day of winter. This day was a very powerful time in Celtic spirituality, for it belonged neither to the old year nor to the new one. It stood between the years. It was a time between time. Not only did it end the old year and begin the new, but it lifted the veil between the worlds. Witches still believe that the boundaries between spirit and matter are less fixed at this moment in time and life flows more easily between the two worlds. Spirits can visit our world of denser matter and we can make forages into their world to communicate with our ancestors and loved ones. The great exchange of energy, so important in keeping the worlds of spirit, nature, and the human in balance, takes place at Samhain, as the old year flows into the new. Witches take advantage of this time to communicate with the other side, retrieve ancestral knowledge, and prepare for the coming year.”

- Laurie Cabot
Power of the Witch: The Earth, the Moon, and the Magical Path to Enlightenment 
http://amzn.to/1GTUOko

Image Credit: azielonko @ DeviantArt

Spirits of Nature: Venus 5 degrees Virgo

Venus is currently at 5 degrees Virgo. The Sabian Symbol for this degree is: 

"A man becoming aware of nature spirits and normally unseen spiritual energies."

Have you noticed the spirit world in a peculiar way this week? This Sabian Symbol is active, AND we're approaching Halloween. Autumn is the time of year when the veil between our world and the spirit world is at it's thinnest point of the year.

Walk around in nature and take in the change of season. The air smells different, the light is lower... it's truly an amazing time! Spirits are nothing to be afraid of by the way. They often appear on waking or sleeping or in the corner of your eye.


From the expert on Sabian Symbols, Lynda Hill:

"This Symbol implies strong feelings of another level of awareness around you. Your rational mind is, at times, being overshadowed by intuitive thoughts and feelings. Your imagination or spirituality is showing a clearer path to understanding and knowledge. Equipped to see the invisible, you penetrate into the mystical levels of life. There may be messages to bring back into your waking consciousness.

This can show a creative, attuned mind that can perceive subtle phenomena, shifts and changes in the environment. Tap into your clairvoyance, but don’t be thrown off track by it.
 
Creative fantasies. Fairy tales. Seeing things or just imagining them? Fantasizing about people or experiences. Attuned minds. Seeing entities. Fairies. Nature spirits.

The Caution: Confusion or lack of true perspective. Time wasted. Being a space cadet. Losing the plot. Mental institutions. Not being taken seriously. Schizophrenia. Skepticism."

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sketches of Middle-Earth

These are so interesting! Check them out:

See the Sketches J.R.R. Tolkien Used to Build Middle-Earth