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It’s time for another pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat, high-fun-ated HOUSE OF KNOW! Darkest Hours: the Sulfurous Splendor of Le Calendrier Magique
Lounging succubi! Unspeakable rites! Fiendish frogs! Few works capture the decadent imagination of fin-de-siècle Paris as vividly as the Calendrier Magique. Published in 1895 to mark the opening of Siegfried Bing’s Maison de l’Art Nouveau, this strangely elongated codex emerged as a kind of esoteric book of hours, born at a moment when occult reverie and dark romanticism held the French capital in thrall.
Penned by the eccentric poet and folklorist Austin de Croze, and illustrated by Manuel Orazi—whose imagery also graced Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal and Wilde’s Salomé—the Calendrier wove together risqué allegory, satanic chic, and irresistible theatricality. Printed in just 777 copies, it survives as a delirious relic of Paris’s occult underground, a bibliophile’s fever dream.
This talk will explore the cultural climate that allowed such a work to flourish: a city intoxicated with occult salons, satanic posturing, and the whispered “wizard wars” of the 1890s. Month by month, we will turn its diabolical pages, tracing how Orazi’s illustrations crystallized a moment when fin-de-siècle aestheticism danced with occult play.
Recently reissued in a facsimile edition by Metastasis, with contextual notes by Laetitia Barbier, the Calendrier Magique invites us to rediscover a chapter of esoteric art history where decadence and darkness move hand in hand. Copies of this rare and ravishing book will be available at the event.
But wait! There’s more…
Ghost Stories from the World’s Tallest Peaks: Mountaineering is dangerous—everybody knows that, at least if they know what’s good for them. Hypothermia, hypoxia, swelling of the brain at altitude—these are not to be messed with. But the world’s tallest peaks also have plenty of tales of the mythic, the mind-bending, and the downright ghostly. Is it just the last gasps of your oxygen-starved brain? Or is something weirder going on?
Just who ARE these people?!
French-born Laetitia Barbier is an independent scholar, as well as a professional tarot reader and teacher. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in Art History from La Sorbonne University Paris in 2009. Laetitia has worked with Morbid Anatomy from 2012 to 2024 as a programming director, head librarian, and occasional curator. Her book Tarot and Divination Cards: A Visual Archive was published in 2021 with a foreword by Rachel Pollack. Along with her friend Lou Benesch, she’s the co-creator the Camena Tarot. As a writer and scholar, she has the privilege of collaborating with the iconic French maître-cartier Grimaud, notably on the exquisite re-release of their 1930s Tarot de Marseille and Belline Oracle. Laetitia has lectured, taught and read cards for various cultural institutions, such as Greenwood Cemetery, Artyard, Fotografiska NY, the College of Psychic Studies in London or the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Jane Rose is a writer in Brooklyn. She previously created and led the Lovecraft in Brooklyn tour for Morbid Anatomy and for Boroughs of the Dead. She also used to work on scary movies. She feels bad that most of her mountaineering experience is of the armchair variety.
#houseofknow is every third Sunday of the month from 5-8pm at #flyingfoxtavern
Admission is free, tips are welcome!
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Flying Fox Tavern, 678 Woodward Avenue,New York,NY,United States, Maspeth
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
