The sorcerer in this painting is using Sepher ha-Razim, a spellbook from around 300 CE written in the Land of Israel that combines Jewish angel magic with Hellenistic magical techniques. Here you see ring characters from the book adorning their robe--or perhaps forming in the air between the sorcerer and the Fire spirit (angel) before them. I feel like I make better images of spirits if I don't try to portray them in any anthropomorphic way but instead use abstraction. At the same time, I allowed for a lot of abstraction of the sorcerer, because even though they are using a magic book from a particular place and time, that book has been and is used for magical purposes in many different places and times and all sorts of people. I therefore wanted the image of the sorcerer not to be pinned to history, much less race, nationality, gender, or other socially mediated characteristics.  

I started this painting without any plan in mind, allowing the images to simply arise from the paint in the way of the Surrealists. I feel like this method is very close to a magical practice, although the Surrealists would have said the images came from the artist's subconscious. Okay, but that part of the mind is, IMO, one of the chinks in the brain's armor that lets in the spirit world. 

 The giclee print on archival paper is 9 x 12". The original painting has been sold.