Surrealism and Operative Alchemy: The Secret Language at the Origins of the Surrealist Movement

• Draws on rare primary documents to reveal the connections between surrealism, 20th century alchemy, and 19th century occultism

• Explores Éliphas Lévi, Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, and Hermeticism to show how surrealist symbology contained an initiatory dimension or “secret teaching”

• Details collaborations between surrealists André Breton, Bernard Roger, and Salvador Dalí and alchemists René Alleau, Eugène Canseliet, and Fulcanelli

Over the last century the symbols and strangeness of the...