The Egyptian Postures

On September 29, 2017, Friday Night of the Stedelijk Museum will be all about books, as there will be the second edition of the Stedelijk Book Club: Press! print! Publish! Presentations, performances and lectures by several writers and artists take place in the newly furnished entrance area and many other places in the museum. Two exhibitions can also be visited for the first time this evening, namely: The Best Dutch Book Designs and Always at Risk, yet never in Danger. Rietveld Graphic Design 2017 . As part of this event Ian Whittlesea & Pádraic E. Moore will discuss The Egyptian Postures with curator Margriet Schavemaker.

The Egyptian Postures is a guide to the most advanced Mazdaznan exercises that Johannes Itten taught his students at the Bauhaus. Often performed while singing or humming the postures were intended to activate glands and re-channel internal energies, stirring the blood in ways that contributed to the perpetual evolution of humanity. They were also said to induce auto-illumination, the participant’s body generating an intense light from within.  This edition of Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish’s original instructions has been newly edited and illustrated by Ian Whittlesea with images of actor Ery Nzaramba demonstrating the postures and an in-depth essay by Pádraic E. Moore that explores the relationships between esoteric movements, their racial theories and early modernism’s embrace and eventual dismissal of the occult, Mazdaznan and Itten.