‘Arriton’ by Ayis Lertas
Ayis Lertas, Arriton, London: Scarlet Imprint 2024.
by Mark Hewitt
Some of my fondest early memories are of Saturday visits into town with my grandmother. There was a general shape to most of these trips; a wander around the market, a stroll around the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, an amble around Coventry Cathedral and finally, a visit to Coventry Central Library. The library was one of my favourite places. It wasn't necessarily the promise of reading, but the promise of image that caught my imagination. I’d always enjoyed reading from a young age, but the accompanying illustration from the books I pored over burnt into my memory with more force than text alone. I was particularly fascinated by books of medieval history, with their full colour examples of illuminated manuscripts presenting battle scenes and romances.
I also had a very close relationship with the available books that covered the paranormal, being particularly drawn to the fantastical photographs of bleeding crucifixes and weeping statues. Unable to fully express in words alone the impact of these images, my only recourse was to persist gazing into them, hoping greater comprehension would perhaps be gleaned by the raking of fresh light or intrusion of novel thought. It is a dance I continue to tread today.
This context, whilst personal to me, is an experience shared by many others. The power of illustration and image transcends the written word, which as wonderful as it is, unspools in certain circumstances. This is particularly evident in magical texts, where specificity of language is crucial, but sometimes becomes so specialised as to reach the point of bewilderment. In such cases, images can often serve to fill this gap in comprehension.
This is why I was so excited when Scarlet Imprint announced the second Mutus Liber from the multi-talented Ayis Lertas. Readers will no doubt be aware of his previous work with Scarlet Imprint, the playful, medieval woodcut inspired 72 (2018), with its phantasmagoria of barely contained, inky ciphers featuring wriggling chthonites and banished angels. But whilst 72 was based on an established and recognisable visual lexicon of western daemonology, Lertas's most recent offering presents its audience with only fragments of such perceivable imagery. Preliminary impressions of these lamp-blackened shades captured on desert-dry parchment evoke narrative origins blown in on perfumed zephyrs from distant Cathay and Arabia; along forgotten tributaries of the silk road towards the eastern ports of the Mediterranean, cast out westward on salt-blasted seas onward to Alexandria and Andalusia. The engagement by such dense and deeply sedimented vistas is as fulfilling as it is overwhelming.
With such a diasporic breadth of inspiration, the reader can be forgiven for being lost when initially confronted with Arriton. Yet, there are subtle markers in these uncharted lands. Aside from the homologous links to the demons Araton and Ariton (and by extension Egyn), and the Hadean depths their lore may shade upon this work, such initial expositions are side-tracks. A perhaps more reliable introduction comes from examining the foundational structure of this work.
The book features 92 images, the main body of work flanked by pre- and postface ideograms. However, the overall composition possesses a novenary scaffold, with nine sections of nine images, each section preceded by the illustration of what appears to be a seated holy man, seeking, communing with or being enlightened by a point or object of illumination. Readers fond of gestural and symbolic analysis will no doubt spend many hours engrossed interrogating these figures alone. The playful use of and potency of such numbers that appear in this book should not surprise. Whilst the significance of the nine-by-nine lunar kamea may well be an obvious starting point for investigation from the perspective of western occultism, Lertas's influences are tectonically deeper than this. Hints of eastern mysticism and Chinese numerology may prove equally as fruitful to those who wish to explore these particular aspects of the images more deeply.
Without wishing to overly describe the content, which must be experienced on a personal basis, each image displays a central charaktêr which is orbited by numerous lines of spectral text and whispering glyphs, their forms hailing from everywhere and nowhere. Some appear to be inspired by those found on gnostic or hermetic magical gems, whilst other figures resemble those found in the Greek Magical Papyri. Various seals bear similarity to those found in the Hygromanteia and in Sak Yant designs, whilst examples of text feature nods to Arabic, Chinese and Japanese calligraphy as well as Coptic, Demotic and Greek letterforms. However, such attempts to comprehend the structure and content are pyrrhic. Grasps at the familiar are, whilst initially useful, fleeting and deceptive; the pages of Arriton contain homeless ghosts whose whispers restrain the reader on the threshold of perception. This may well be one of the many aims of Lertas's silent dramatis personae. In this sense, it is hardly revelatory that alongside the Greek translation of the word Arriton being “ineffable: incapable of being expressed in words, unspeakable, not to be uttered”, the Hebrew translation of Egyn, a demon often conflated with Ariton, means “to delay” or “to hinder.” To confront these images is to both acknowledge their occulted potentialities, caked in the calcified patinas of mystery and taboo, but to also be sharply aware of their evasive independence.
The official blurb for this publication suggests that these depictions may perhaps be the last vestiges of a textual legacy from legendary Babel. These mytho-historic fragments speak of a time that never was, but eternally is, reinforcing the ideas of philosophers such as Latour that we have never been modern. Cultural and cultic exchange is the reciprocal lingua franca human beings have always possessed, beautifully and silently presented by Lertas's work in Arriton.
As to be expected with all Scarlet Imprint publications, Arriton is materially beautiful, the deep burgundy of the cover contrasting wonderfully with the flashing gold of the binding and stamped front. Likewise, the paper quality is exemplary, and the form and formatting invites extended periods of reflection with the images seated within. To be with such works, without the certainties of context or the expected telos of a standard book is an acquired taste.
Not all who encounter such aphonic volumes do so comfortably or enjoyably. Similar works such as The Occult Reliquary (2010) by Three Hands Press have been pressed into service as contemplative divinatory tools, which is exactly how Graham King, previous custodian of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, related to his copy. Arriton sits in the often incommodious hinterland where words fail to grasp the gnosis of experience. This sense of discomfort is magnified by the teasing uncanniness of Lertas's design. Though my own odyssey of these pages is in its infancy, the powerful agitation this technique achieves has been a primary revelation; the pain of recognition, then non-recognition is a firm strike of the disciplinarian’s rod to let these figures speak for themselves. The journey this book invites its readers to embark upon is certainly not of universal appeal. Yet, for those intrigued by the power of visual culture and willing enough to surrender to the taciturn spirits Lertas has conjured into these images, a profound pilgrimage awaits.