Papers by Christian Giudice
When the sociologist Max Weber postulated his theory of disenchantment of the world, arguing that... more When the sociologist Max Weber postulated his theory of disenchantment of the world, arguing that the Western world had gone through a process of cultural rationalization, he also admitted that, within traditional society, there would remain pockets that would resist the impact of modernity and become ‘a great enchanted garden’.
Since the advent of modern society, according to a plethora of scholars, Ernest Gellner in primis, the individuals who could not adapt to the ‘malaise of modernity’ sought refuge in what Gellner defined ‘re-enchantment creeds’, such as Jungian psychoanalisis, Marxism or phenomenology. The occult revival witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s in Great Britain and the United States, too, has been seen to represent a strategy of re-enchantment of the modern world.
In this paper, I would like to argue that a process of re-enchantment of the British landscape was attempted through the medium of cinema, within the very small niche of films that comprise the genre known as British Folk Horror: through the analysis of what has been called ‘the unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films, Michael Reeves’ The Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggards’ Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s cult classic The Wicker Man, I will strive to highlight the antimodern red thread that runs through these three themes: such an antimodern stance is best characterised by the three films’ rural setting, seen as an opposition to the process of urbanization, and the recourse to British folklore and pre-Christian motifs as a means to re-sacralize the characters’ beliefs and the very landscape captured in the movies in all of its pagan allure.
The analysis will also briefly extend to minor films and tv series such as James McTaggart’s Robin Redbreast (1970), Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1969-70) and Trevor Ray’s Children of the Stones (1976).
Julius Evola, Religion and Dadaist Art
Outside of its national boundaries, studies regarding twentieth-century
Italian occultism have b... more Outside of its national boundaries, studies regarding twentieth-century
Italian occultism have been sorely lacking. While the role of occultism and
occultists in nations such as England, Germany, France and the United
States has been studied in detail, the events and main characters that
influenced the esoteric circles in early twentieth-century Italy have been
mostly neglected or relegated to very cursory enquiries. It is my intention
in this paper to focus on the theme of a Pagan new beginning for the
newly reunited Italy, first sketching a historical portrayal of the influence
that the idea of Ancient Rome had on both artists and occultists, then utilizing
recently discovered archival material, to focus on poet and playwright
Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo and his tragedy on the birth of
Rome, Rumon Sacrae Romae Origines, viewing the play as an attempt to
mass-initiate the audience to the alleged palingenetic virtues of Roman
traditionalism, in view of a new Italian renaissance.
Talks by Christian Giudice
When the sociologist Max Weber developed his theory of disenchantment of the world, arguing that ... more When the sociologist Max Weber developed his theory of disenchantment of the world, arguing that the Western world had gone through a process of cultural rationalization, he also admitted that, within traditional society, there would remain pockets that would resist the impact of modernity and become ‘a great enchanted garden’.
Since the advent of modern society, according to numerous scholars, Ernest Gellner in particular, the individuals who could not adapt to the ‘malaise of modernity’ sought refuge in what Gellner defined ‘re-enchantment creeds’, such as Jungian psychoanalysis, Marxism or phenomenology. The occult revival witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s in Great Britain and the United States, too, has been seen to represent a strategy of re-enchantment of the modern world.
In this talk I will explore the idea that a process of re-enchantment of the British landscape was attempted through the medium of cinema within the very small niche of films that comprise the genre known as British Folk Horror. Through the analysis of what has been called ‘the unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films; Michael Reeves’ The Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggards’ Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s cult classic The Wicker Man, I will highlight the antimodern red thread that runs through these three themes. Such an antimodern stance is best characterised by the three films’ rural setting, seen as an opposition to the process of urbanization, and the recourse to British folklore and pre-Christian motifs as a means to re-sacralize the characters’ beliefs and the very landscape captured in the movies in all of its pagan allure.
The analysis will also briefly extend to minor films and TV series such as James McTaggart’s Robin Redbreast (1970), Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1969-70) and Trevor Ray’s Children of the Stones (1976).
In the past 15 years, the study of Western esotericism has focused more and more on what may be c... more In the past 15 years, the study of Western esotericism has focused more and more on what may be considered the most influential among Twentieth-century occultists: Aleister Crowley. Since 1999, when Crowley scholar Marco Pasi published his seminal study Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics, a plethora of essays, articles and books have been devoted to the many facets of the British magus’s life: Crowley as magician, as Edwardian taboo-breaker, as mountaineer extraordinaire, as countercultural icon of the acid sixties, are all aspects that have been, to a certain extent, explored, and Crowley’s rise to academic fame was further established with the publication of a scholarly anthology edited by Henrik Bogdan and published by Oxford University Press. One aspect, which has been touched only in scarcely circulating publications, mostly in the same articles translated into different languages, is an attempt at interpreting Crowley’s paintings, which with the discovery of the Palermo collection in 2006, comprising of a dozen of hitherto unknown works by Crowley, has become an even more urgent task.
The aim of my paper will, due to time constraints, be devoted to a particular aspect of Crowley’s art: after a brief introduction on the artistic circles he moved in in the early Twentieth century and the description of some incidents which determined his artistic career, I will move on to analyse gender characterization and gender identity in the works I am going to analyse. The two main questions I would like to pose, and provide with a tentative answer, to be developed in further studies are: why do Crowley’s portraits represent the women who posed for him in an ugly, almost animalesque fashion? And what can these portraits tell us about Crowley’s own concerns with gender identity?
The aim of this paper is to trace the influence of Oriental traditions, chiefly Hinduism, and, no... more The aim of this paper is to trace the influence of Oriental traditions, chiefly Hinduism, and, not without some controversy, Christianity, upon the Traditionalist milieu of early-twentieth century Italy, with a focus on the two thinkers Arturo Reghini and Julius Evola. Reghini’s almost dogmatic approach to what he referred to as the Italian Tradition, handed down generation after generation since the rise of the Roman Empire, has brought most scholars to oversee the great influence that the early exponents of the Theosophical Society had on him. Modern scholarship on Reghini dismisses his Theosophical period, so rich in influences from the East, as a mere youthful fancy, which he discarded once becoming acquainted with the Traditionalist school of thought; at the same time, most scholarship on Evola has focused on his pioneering studies on Tantrism and Left Hand Path schools in India, while glossing over the very basics of Hindu spirituality on which he founded part of his Traditionalist edifice. It is therefore my intention to trace two main strands of thought, which both authors were clearly intrigued and influenced by and that came from milieus which attempted to bridge a gap between East and West in the late-Nineteenth and early-Twentieth centuries: the anti-Christian sentiment which characterised the Blavatsky years of the Theosophical Society and the elements of Hinduism so typical of the School of Traditionalism which had enthused both Italian thinkers, that of French philosopher René Guénon.
To the enthusiast of American Avant-garde cinema, no figure incarnates the occult and magical sid... more To the enthusiast of American Avant-garde cinema, no figure incarnates the occult and magical side of motion pictures more than artist Marjorie Cameron (1922-1995). An occultist in her own right, Cameron was briefly married to one of Aleister Crowley’s (1875-1947) most notorious followers, magician and rocket-fuel scientist John Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952).
Following Parsons’ death in 1952, Cameron, while continuing to work with magic, engaged herself more prominently with the fringe of the 1950s American artistic milieu. Thus, in the span of less than ten years, Cameron appeared in Thelemic cineaste Kenneth Anger’s (b. 1927) Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1953), portraying many occult-inspired roles in the same work, and in two films by Curtis Harrington (1926-2007): the experimental short Wormwood Star (1956), a paean on celluloid celebrating Cameron’s own occult art, and the director’s mainstream debut Night Tide (1961), in which Cameron plays the haunting role of the water-witch.
On 19 September 2013, occultist and artist Brian Butler presented a short film at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles entitled Babalon Working (2013). This eight-minute ‘psychedelic occult trip’, heavily inspired by Anger’s use of colour and visuals, seeks to recreate the atmosphere of a magical operation undertaken by Parsons and the future head of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986). According to Parsons, the working was aimed at offering him a Scarlet Woman, a term used by Crowley to describe the female partner in operations of sex-magic. The ritual had apparently succeeded, since almost immediately, redheaded Cameron had knocked on his door, thereby granting their magical and romantic relationship the most unusual of beginnings.
My paper will seek to analyse the ever-changing roles played by Cameron in the cinema of Anger, Harrington and Butler and her undisputed position as icon of esoteric art: from Scarlet Woman, to occultist and painter, to witch, and finally to an ominous invisible presence in Butler’s work. Through personal interviews with Anger, whose relationship with Marjorie Cameron was intense and long lasting, and Butler, I will be able to engage the subject matter of the paper with ad hoc questions directed at the filmmakers themselves.
While many female occultists have finally started to receive their due recognition in academic circles in the past years, Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) in primis, I strongly feel that Cameron, as an actor, painter and undisputed icon of the 1950s Los Angeles underground scene deserves major visibility within scholarly studies on the interaction between the arts and occultism, and I hope my paper will succeed in addressing this lacuna.
‘Why is the last mile the hardest mile?’: Mountaineering as an metaphor for spiritual advancement... more ‘Why is the last mile the hardest mile?’: Mountaineering as an metaphor for spiritual advancement in Julius Evola and Aleister Crowley
On the cover of the latest edition of Traditionalist thinker Julius Evola’s (1898-1974) Meditazioni sulle Vette (1974), the reader will find a sticker bearing a quote by Reinhold Messner (b. 1944), one of the greatest mountain climbers of all time, and the first to have successfully ascended all of the fourteen peaks over 8000 meters high: ‘I am not interested in the peaks, nor in the hardships or the breaking of records, but what happens to man when he draws close to mountains’.
Mountain summits, because of their impervious and unreachable nature, have always been seen by mystics and wisdom-seekers as the source of esoteric knowledge: thus in the West, Mount Abiegnus was a central trope of Rosicrucian lore, William Wynn Westcott describing it as ‘a mystic name "from whence, as from a certain mountain, Rosicrucian documents are often found to be issued”’. In the East, too, mystics and sages have considered mountain peaks in a similar fashion: Milarepa (c. 1035-c.1135), Tibetan yogi and poet wrote that ‘walking up savage mountains is a path to liberation’. The Theosophical Society (est. 1875) also recognised the Himalayas as the abode of their spiritual Masters, and one of the greatest visual synthesisers of Eastern and Western occult lore in the film industry, Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929), located the end of the an extenuating tour de force to knowledge on the tip of a Holy Mountain (1973).
My paper will strive to highlight the similarities and the contrasts between Evola’s approach to mountain-climbing and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), one of the greatest representatives of twentieth-century occultism, but also arguably among the finest alpinists of his day. From their published writings and diaries, it is clear that both thinkers considered this dangerous discipline as more than a mere physical feat, and that an clear connection between physically climbing and ascending to higher spiritual realms was recognised and embraced by both intellectuals.
It is undeniable that for both occultists, the ability to climb a mountain also conferred a spiritual superiority, which Evola, throughout his works, defines as the achievement of an ‘aristocracy of the spirit’, and valued these efforts as ‘a conquest of one’s self’. In a different vein, with his proverbial dry wit, Crowley comments that ‘ the ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript. ’
While, thus, sharing similar views on the basic idea of mountaineering, it will be my aim to also draw attention to the differences in Evola’s and Crowley’s personal aims in climbing, by confronting some of the major Traditionalist theories developed by one of the great ideologues of Western traditional thought with those advanced by the self-proclaimed prophet of Thelema.
Arturo Reghini (1878-1946) was arguably one of the greatest occultists of the Italian milieu of t... more Arturo Reghini (1878-1946) was arguably one of the greatest occultists of the Italian milieu of the early twentieth century. After a brief affiliation with the Theosophical Society in the final years of the nineteenth century, Reghini received initiation into the Memphis Rite in Palermo, in 1902, and was instrumental in the foundation of the Lucifero Lodge in Florence, in 1905.
It was only in 1910, after meeting occultist Amedeo Rocco Armentano (1886-1966), that Reghini was truly introduced to the Pythegorean theories on which he would base his future ideas for a complete reformation of the Italian mores. In that year, at the Passo del Vestito in the Apuan Alps, Reghini was initiated into the Schola Italica, which claimed an uninterrupted chain of initiates hailing back to the ancient school of Pythagoras (570 BC – 495 BC).
My talk will analyse Reghini’s use of numbers and Pythagorean doctrines, in order to better elucidate his occult theories. With a degree in Mathematics from the prestigious University of Pisa, Reghini’s writings on numbers and their symbology are revealing and the most relevant works, such as Per la Restituzione della Geometria Pitagorica (1931), ll Fascio Littorio (1935), Dei Numeri Pitagorici -Prologo (1940) and I Numeri Sacri nella Tradizione Pitagorica e Massonica (1947), will be scrutinized in order to best exemplify the strict connection between Reghini’s occult ideas and the revival of neo-Pythagorean ideas witnessed in early twentieth-century Italy traditionalist circles.
On 12 July 1985, Grady Louis McMurtry (1918-1985), then head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, role wh... more On 12 July 1985, Grady Louis McMurtry (1918-1985), then head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, role which had been previously covered by occultist and ceremonial magician Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), died at the age of 67.
As indicated by an O.T.O. report of the same year, total membership then amounted to 700 members worldwide. After a council of the higher grades of the Order joined on the autumnal equinox of 1985, William Breeze (1955- ) was elected as the future head of the order, under the hieronym of Hymenaeus Beta.
This paper will attempt to appraise the evolution of the O.T.O. from Crowley’s leadership to Breeze’s election: the necessary statistical data will be thoroughly analysed, including numbers of members, their provenance and their subdivision along the degree ladder of the Order. Beyond the mere numerical data, attention will be drawn to the increase in visibility, including an analysis of publications, both of books by Aleister Crowley and of independently lodge-published material. The Order’s ability to use new technologies and benefit from a globalized environment will also be acknowledged as will the concept of whether the media and society in general have adopted a different stance towards the Order and the figure of the Great Beast himself throughout these years.
Since Aleister Crowley, over 60 years after his death, continues to inspire occultists, musicians, authors and film-makers, it is crucial to scrutinize the Ordo Templi Orientis, and see how significant the changes in its infrastructures and practices, it’s image in the eyes of the non-initiated and its own influence on the occult milieu, have changed and evolved over the past 80 years.
"Throughout the history of Western esotericism, many groups and individuals have devoted their li... more "Throughout the history of Western esotericism, many groups and individuals have devoted their lives to ameliorate the ailments of the sick and suffering: the Fama Fraternitatis (1614) described the Brothers of the Rosie Cross as swearing an oath to cure the sick free of charge, and alchemist Nicholas Flamel (ca. 1330‐ 1418) is reported to have financially helped build hospitals for the poor in Paris, with the gold gained from his alchemical pursuits.
The same humanitarian traits can be found in one of Italy’s twentieth‐century most important occult figures, Ciro Formisano, better known by his hieronym Giuliano Kremmerz (1861-‐1930). This Neapolitan philosopher, alchemist and therapeutist, founded, in 1898, after an alleged sojourn to Montevideo, during which he had possibly been in contact with the witch-doctors of South America, the Schola Philosophica Hermetica Classica Italica Fratellanza Terapeutica Magica di Miriam. Following the teachings of his mentor Pasquale de Servis (1818-‐ 1893), who traced his lineage back to the pre-‐Christian hermetic traditions of the Italian peninsula, Kremmerz founded Miriamic academies in many Italian cities, including Rome, Naples, Bari and La Spezia, with the sole aim of applying the ancient hermetic sciences to ‘medicine, therapeutics, psychurgy and thaumaturgy.’
The aim of this paper will be twofold: on the one hand, the Italian occult milieu most influenced by Egyptian sources will be briefly sketched, in order to place Kremmerz in a clear cultural and philosophical milieu; on the other, aspects of his therapeutic magic practiced under the aegis of Miriam/Isis will be addressed, in order to better specify what the notions of ‘health’, ‘healing’ and ‘hermetic medicine’ meant for Kremmerz and his followers.
"
Lux in tenebris: the dim ray of light cast on a projector screen has always possessed the almost ... more Lux in tenebris: the dim ray of light cast on a projector screen has always possessed the almost magical quality of turning still images in a living flow. Since the invention of the cinematograph in 1895, at the hands of Auguste Lumière and his brother Louis, directors have often included elements drawn from the world of the fantastic and of magic, of the secret and the irrational. One must only turn to one of the masterpieces of German Expressionism, Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), to witness the story of the somnambulist and seer Cesare; moreover, the myth of the Golem, a creature linked to the most folkloric aspect of Jewish Kabbalah, was represented on screen by Paul Wegener in his Der Golem (1920); and the subject of witchcraft and its gruesome history through the ages was filmed by Benjamin Christenensen, who named his project Häxan (1922).
Kenneth Anger, born in Santa Monica, California, in 1927 was one of the pioneers and most revered figures of independent cinema. His works range from the homoerotic Fireworks (1947) or Scorpio Rising (1964), which at the time defied conventions and the laws prohibiting homosexuality, to real masterpieces of esoteric cinema such as Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969) and Anger’s most widely praised film to date, Lucifer Rising (1972). The three latter movies are imbued with esoteric symbolism and owe much to the teachings of Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) and to the philosophy elaborated by the magus, Thelema, in which Anger is a firm believer. Highly inspired by the Golden Dawn’s brand of cerimonial magic, Crowley held the visual aspect of magic in high esteem, often garbing himself in elaborate robes and ostentatious jewellery: some of the rituals penned by the English magus actually prescribe the colour and length of the garments, the correct disposition of the practitioner’s tools upon the altar, and the colours and symbols to be used according to Kabbalistic correspondences. What the scholar can only read of in Crowley’s writings wildly comes to life in an almost bewildering use of colours and symbols in Anger’s work: unicursal hexagrams, the hallmark symbol of Thelema, flash intermittently, while brightly painted magic circles are traced. Being there no verbal communication between the actors in Anger’s films, the divinities of the thelemic pantheon, Nuit, Hadit and Horus, come to life and relate to the viewer through the use of symbols and gestures, the visual element always being the key aspect.
The presentation will review Kenneth Anger’s triptych of thelemic films, analyzing the debt owed to Aleister Crowley’s works and the adaptability of the latter’s brand of magic to the medium of cinema. Emphasis will be drawn to the similarities between the lives and beliefs of the two characters and to Anger’s merit in making Aleister Crowley the most widespread occult figures in popular culture.
"
The concept of an occult brotherhood employing mysterious techniques to harness its inner ur... more "
The concept of an occult brotherhood employing mysterious techniques to harness its inner urge to ameliorate the destiny of humankind recurs throughout the history of Western esotericism.
The thelemic Horus Maat Lodge (est. by Margaret Ingalls [Soror Nema] in Ohio, in 1979) forms one curious modern expression of this notion. For the most part, its members focus on solitary rituals and communicate through an e‐list and a website.
The order’s collective workings are not executed in the physical realm: on the night of every New Moon, its members astrally project to a Temple based in a crater of the Moon to enact the ‘Eleven Star Working’ in order to generate a non‐violent leaderless consensus model for humanity. Throughout 2012, the Workings will be devoted to creating a shift in global consciousness and enhancing the international ‘Occupy’ movement. Unusually for an occult order, Horus Maat shares with the Movement a complete rejection of authority and hierarchical structure, epitomized by the
mantra/slogan ‘We are the 99%’. In this paper, I will shed light on the Lodge’s novel attempt to assist the Occupy Movement, highlighting similarities and differences with previous endeavors to aid socio‐political struggles via magical means."
"""At 17:30 of 6 May 1923, on the Palatine hill, Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo (1866-1937), bette... more """At 17:30 of 6 May 1923, on the Palatine hill, Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo (1866-1937), better known by his pseudonym ignis, staged one of the most unconventional plays to be composed in Italian language: Rumon.
With hundreds of extras hired for the occasion and a substantial financing by Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) himself, the play re-enacted the struggle between Romulus and Remus and the successive foundation of the Eternal City. More than a simple, albeit unlikely, example of pagan pageant, Rumon was the most noticeable expression of a cultural current set to bring about a new pagan Golden Age in Rome and, more generally, Italy.
More than one critical review described Rumon as a potent rite of birth which heralded a new dawn for Rome and the traditons of its ancient cives, and the play itself features archaic invocations to Roman deities, the exaltation of Roman lineage and the use of the secret and magical names of Rome.
In this paper I will briefly analyse the pagan milieu of Rome which no doubt influenced Musmeci Bravo, successively highlighting the most relevant passages of Rumon in which the birth of a newly pagan Rome was so majestically portrayed."""
Books by Christian Giudice
Female Leaders in New Religious Movements, 2017
This chapter will try to shed light on this unique figure in the history of
new religious movemen... more This chapter will try to shed light on this unique figure in the history of
new religious movement: alleged former fiancé to world-renowned boxer
Sugar Ray Robinson (1923–1989), and head of a ring of prostitution
involved with the Profumo scandal in London in 1963, founder of a new
religious movement, which even to this day titillates the minds of musicians, artist and members of the counterculture: Mary Ann MacLean’s
character and leadership methods within The Process Church will be
assessed thanks to interviews with surviving member of the Church and previously unreleased documentation linked to the social dynamics of the
movement.
In Hakl, H.T. ed., Oktagon, Vol. 2 (Gaggenau: Scientia Nova, 2016)
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Papers by Christian Giudice
Since the advent of modern society, according to a plethora of scholars, Ernest Gellner in primis, the individuals who could not adapt to the ‘malaise of modernity’ sought refuge in what Gellner defined ‘re-enchantment creeds’, such as Jungian psychoanalisis, Marxism or phenomenology. The occult revival witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s in Great Britain and the United States, too, has been seen to represent a strategy of re-enchantment of the modern world.
In this paper, I would like to argue that a process of re-enchantment of the British landscape was attempted through the medium of cinema, within the very small niche of films that comprise the genre known as British Folk Horror: through the analysis of what has been called ‘the unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films, Michael Reeves’ The Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggards’ Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s cult classic The Wicker Man, I will strive to highlight the antimodern red thread that runs through these three themes: such an antimodern stance is best characterised by the three films’ rural setting, seen as an opposition to the process of urbanization, and the recourse to British folklore and pre-Christian motifs as a means to re-sacralize the characters’ beliefs and the very landscape captured in the movies in all of its pagan allure.
The analysis will also briefly extend to minor films and tv series such as James McTaggart’s Robin Redbreast (1970), Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1969-70) and Trevor Ray’s Children of the Stones (1976).
Italian occultism have been sorely lacking. While the role of occultism and
occultists in nations such as England, Germany, France and the United
States has been studied in detail, the events and main characters that
influenced the esoteric circles in early twentieth-century Italy have been
mostly neglected or relegated to very cursory enquiries. It is my intention
in this paper to focus on the theme of a Pagan new beginning for the
newly reunited Italy, first sketching a historical portrayal of the influence
that the idea of Ancient Rome had on both artists and occultists, then utilizing
recently discovered archival material, to focus on poet and playwright
Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo and his tragedy on the birth of
Rome, Rumon Sacrae Romae Origines, viewing the play as an attempt to
mass-initiate the audience to the alleged palingenetic virtues of Roman
traditionalism, in view of a new Italian renaissance.
Talks by Christian Giudice
Since the advent of modern society, according to numerous scholars, Ernest Gellner in particular, the individuals who could not adapt to the ‘malaise of modernity’ sought refuge in what Gellner defined ‘re-enchantment creeds’, such as Jungian psychoanalysis, Marxism or phenomenology. The occult revival witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s in Great Britain and the United States, too, has been seen to represent a strategy of re-enchantment of the modern world.
In this talk I will explore the idea that a process of re-enchantment of the British landscape was attempted through the medium of cinema within the very small niche of films that comprise the genre known as British Folk Horror. Through the analysis of what has been called ‘the unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films; Michael Reeves’ The Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggards’ Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s cult classic The Wicker Man, I will highlight the antimodern red thread that runs through these three themes. Such an antimodern stance is best characterised by the three films’ rural setting, seen as an opposition to the process of urbanization, and the recourse to British folklore and pre-Christian motifs as a means to re-sacralize the characters’ beliefs and the very landscape captured in the movies in all of its pagan allure.
The analysis will also briefly extend to minor films and TV series such as James McTaggart’s Robin Redbreast (1970), Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1969-70) and Trevor Ray’s Children of the Stones (1976).
The aim of my paper will, due to time constraints, be devoted to a particular aspect of Crowley’s art: after a brief introduction on the artistic circles he moved in in the early Twentieth century and the description of some incidents which determined his artistic career, I will move on to analyse gender characterization and gender identity in the works I am going to analyse. The two main questions I would like to pose, and provide with a tentative answer, to be developed in further studies are: why do Crowley’s portraits represent the women who posed for him in an ugly, almost animalesque fashion? And what can these portraits tell us about Crowley’s own concerns with gender identity?
Following Parsons’ death in 1952, Cameron, while continuing to work with magic, engaged herself more prominently with the fringe of the 1950s American artistic milieu. Thus, in the span of less than ten years, Cameron appeared in Thelemic cineaste Kenneth Anger’s (b. 1927) Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1953), portraying many occult-inspired roles in the same work, and in two films by Curtis Harrington (1926-2007): the experimental short Wormwood Star (1956), a paean on celluloid celebrating Cameron’s own occult art, and the director’s mainstream debut Night Tide (1961), in which Cameron plays the haunting role of the water-witch.
On 19 September 2013, occultist and artist Brian Butler presented a short film at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles entitled Babalon Working (2013). This eight-minute ‘psychedelic occult trip’, heavily inspired by Anger’s use of colour and visuals, seeks to recreate the atmosphere of a magical operation undertaken by Parsons and the future head of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986). According to Parsons, the working was aimed at offering him a Scarlet Woman, a term used by Crowley to describe the female partner in operations of sex-magic. The ritual had apparently succeeded, since almost immediately, redheaded Cameron had knocked on his door, thereby granting their magical and romantic relationship the most unusual of beginnings.
My paper will seek to analyse the ever-changing roles played by Cameron in the cinema of Anger, Harrington and Butler and her undisputed position as icon of esoteric art: from Scarlet Woman, to occultist and painter, to witch, and finally to an ominous invisible presence in Butler’s work. Through personal interviews with Anger, whose relationship with Marjorie Cameron was intense and long lasting, and Butler, I will be able to engage the subject matter of the paper with ad hoc questions directed at the filmmakers themselves.
While many female occultists have finally started to receive their due recognition in academic circles in the past years, Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) in primis, I strongly feel that Cameron, as an actor, painter and undisputed icon of the 1950s Los Angeles underground scene deserves major visibility within scholarly studies on the interaction between the arts and occultism, and I hope my paper will succeed in addressing this lacuna.
On the cover of the latest edition of Traditionalist thinker Julius Evola’s (1898-1974) Meditazioni sulle Vette (1974), the reader will find a sticker bearing a quote by Reinhold Messner (b. 1944), one of the greatest mountain climbers of all time, and the first to have successfully ascended all of the fourteen peaks over 8000 meters high: ‘I am not interested in the peaks, nor in the hardships or the breaking of records, but what happens to man when he draws close to mountains’.
Mountain summits, because of their impervious and unreachable nature, have always been seen by mystics and wisdom-seekers as the source of esoteric knowledge: thus in the West, Mount Abiegnus was a central trope of Rosicrucian lore, William Wynn Westcott describing it as ‘a mystic name "from whence, as from a certain mountain, Rosicrucian documents are often found to be issued”’. In the East, too, mystics and sages have considered mountain peaks in a similar fashion: Milarepa (c. 1035-c.1135), Tibetan yogi and poet wrote that ‘walking up savage mountains is a path to liberation’. The Theosophical Society (est. 1875) also recognised the Himalayas as the abode of their spiritual Masters, and one of the greatest visual synthesisers of Eastern and Western occult lore in the film industry, Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929), located the end of the an extenuating tour de force to knowledge on the tip of a Holy Mountain (1973).
My paper will strive to highlight the similarities and the contrasts between Evola’s approach to mountain-climbing and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), one of the greatest representatives of twentieth-century occultism, but also arguably among the finest alpinists of his day. From their published writings and diaries, it is clear that both thinkers considered this dangerous discipline as more than a mere physical feat, and that an clear connection between physically climbing and ascending to higher spiritual realms was recognised and embraced by both intellectuals.
It is undeniable that for both occultists, the ability to climb a mountain also conferred a spiritual superiority, which Evola, throughout his works, defines as the achievement of an ‘aristocracy of the spirit’, and valued these efforts as ‘a conquest of one’s self’. In a different vein, with his proverbial dry wit, Crowley comments that ‘ the ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript. ’
While, thus, sharing similar views on the basic idea of mountaineering, it will be my aim to also draw attention to the differences in Evola’s and Crowley’s personal aims in climbing, by confronting some of the major Traditionalist theories developed by one of the great ideologues of Western traditional thought with those advanced by the self-proclaimed prophet of Thelema.
It was only in 1910, after meeting occultist Amedeo Rocco Armentano (1886-1966), that Reghini was truly introduced to the Pythegorean theories on which he would base his future ideas for a complete reformation of the Italian mores. In that year, at the Passo del Vestito in the Apuan Alps, Reghini was initiated into the Schola Italica, which claimed an uninterrupted chain of initiates hailing back to the ancient school of Pythagoras (570 BC – 495 BC).
My talk will analyse Reghini’s use of numbers and Pythagorean doctrines, in order to better elucidate his occult theories. With a degree in Mathematics from the prestigious University of Pisa, Reghini’s writings on numbers and their symbology are revealing and the most relevant works, such as Per la Restituzione della Geometria Pitagorica (1931), ll Fascio Littorio (1935), Dei Numeri Pitagorici -Prologo (1940) and I Numeri Sacri nella Tradizione Pitagorica e Massonica (1947), will be scrutinized in order to best exemplify the strict connection between Reghini’s occult ideas and the revival of neo-Pythagorean ideas witnessed in early twentieth-century Italy traditionalist circles.
As indicated by an O.T.O. report of the same year, total membership then amounted to 700 members worldwide. After a council of the higher grades of the Order joined on the autumnal equinox of 1985, William Breeze (1955- ) was elected as the future head of the order, under the hieronym of Hymenaeus Beta.
This paper will attempt to appraise the evolution of the O.T.O. from Crowley’s leadership to Breeze’s election: the necessary statistical data will be thoroughly analysed, including numbers of members, their provenance and their subdivision along the degree ladder of the Order. Beyond the mere numerical data, attention will be drawn to the increase in visibility, including an analysis of publications, both of books by Aleister Crowley and of independently lodge-published material. The Order’s ability to use new technologies and benefit from a globalized environment will also be acknowledged as will the concept of whether the media and society in general have adopted a different stance towards the Order and the figure of the Great Beast himself throughout these years.
Since Aleister Crowley, over 60 years after his death, continues to inspire occultists, musicians, authors and film-makers, it is crucial to scrutinize the Ordo Templi Orientis, and see how significant the changes in its infrastructures and practices, it’s image in the eyes of the non-initiated and its own influence on the occult milieu, have changed and evolved over the past 80 years.
The same humanitarian traits can be found in one of Italy’s twentieth‐century most important occult figures, Ciro Formisano, better known by his hieronym Giuliano Kremmerz (1861-‐1930). This Neapolitan philosopher, alchemist and therapeutist, founded, in 1898, after an alleged sojourn to Montevideo, during which he had possibly been in contact with the witch-doctors of South America, the Schola Philosophica Hermetica Classica Italica Fratellanza Terapeutica Magica di Miriam. Following the teachings of his mentor Pasquale de Servis (1818-‐ 1893), who traced his lineage back to the pre-‐Christian hermetic traditions of the Italian peninsula, Kremmerz founded Miriamic academies in many Italian cities, including Rome, Naples, Bari and La Spezia, with the sole aim of applying the ancient hermetic sciences to ‘medicine, therapeutics, psychurgy and thaumaturgy.’
The aim of this paper will be twofold: on the one hand, the Italian occult milieu most influenced by Egyptian sources will be briefly sketched, in order to place Kremmerz in a clear cultural and philosophical milieu; on the other, aspects of his therapeutic magic practiced under the aegis of Miriam/Isis will be addressed, in order to better specify what the notions of ‘health’, ‘healing’ and ‘hermetic medicine’ meant for Kremmerz and his followers.
"
Kenneth Anger, born in Santa Monica, California, in 1927 was one of the pioneers and most revered figures of independent cinema. His works range from the homoerotic Fireworks (1947) or Scorpio Rising (1964), which at the time defied conventions and the laws prohibiting homosexuality, to real masterpieces of esoteric cinema such as Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969) and Anger’s most widely praised film to date, Lucifer Rising (1972). The three latter movies are imbued with esoteric symbolism and owe much to the teachings of Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) and to the philosophy elaborated by the magus, Thelema, in which Anger is a firm believer. Highly inspired by the Golden Dawn’s brand of cerimonial magic, Crowley held the visual aspect of magic in high esteem, often garbing himself in elaborate robes and ostentatious jewellery: some of the rituals penned by the English magus actually prescribe the colour and length of the garments, the correct disposition of the practitioner’s tools upon the altar, and the colours and symbols to be used according to Kabbalistic correspondences. What the scholar can only read of in Crowley’s writings wildly comes to life in an almost bewildering use of colours and symbols in Anger’s work: unicursal hexagrams, the hallmark symbol of Thelema, flash intermittently, while brightly painted magic circles are traced. Being there no verbal communication between the actors in Anger’s films, the divinities of the thelemic pantheon, Nuit, Hadit and Horus, come to life and relate to the viewer through the use of symbols and gestures, the visual element always being the key aspect.
The presentation will review Kenneth Anger’s triptych of thelemic films, analyzing the debt owed to Aleister Crowley’s works and the adaptability of the latter’s brand of magic to the medium of cinema. Emphasis will be drawn to the similarities between the lives and beliefs of the two characters and to Anger’s merit in making Aleister Crowley the most widespread occult figures in popular culture.
The concept of an occult brotherhood employing mysterious techniques to harness its inner urge to ameliorate the destiny of humankind recurs throughout the history of Western esotericism.
The thelemic Horus Maat Lodge (est. by Margaret Ingalls [Soror Nema] in Ohio, in 1979) forms one curious modern expression of this notion. For the most part, its members focus on solitary rituals and communicate through an e‐list and a website.
The order’s collective workings are not executed in the physical realm: on the night of every New Moon, its members astrally project to a Temple based in a crater of the Moon to enact the ‘Eleven Star Working’ in order to generate a non‐violent leaderless consensus model for humanity. Throughout 2012, the Workings will be devoted to creating a shift in global consciousness and enhancing the international ‘Occupy’ movement. Unusually for an occult order, Horus Maat shares with the Movement a complete rejection of authority and hierarchical structure, epitomized by the
mantra/slogan ‘We are the 99%’. In this paper, I will shed light on the Lodge’s novel attempt to assist the Occupy Movement, highlighting similarities and differences with previous endeavors to aid socio‐political struggles via magical means."
With hundreds of extras hired for the occasion and a substantial financing by Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) himself, the play re-enacted the struggle between Romulus and Remus and the successive foundation of the Eternal City. More than a simple, albeit unlikely, example of pagan pageant, Rumon was the most noticeable expression of a cultural current set to bring about a new pagan Golden Age in Rome and, more generally, Italy.
More than one critical review described Rumon as a potent rite of birth which heralded a new dawn for Rome and the traditons of its ancient cives, and the play itself features archaic invocations to Roman deities, the exaltation of Roman lineage and the use of the secret and magical names of Rome.
In this paper I will briefly analyse the pagan milieu of Rome which no doubt influenced Musmeci Bravo, successively highlighting the most relevant passages of Rumon in which the birth of a newly pagan Rome was so majestically portrayed."""
Books by Christian Giudice
new religious movement: alleged former fiancé to world-renowned boxer
Sugar Ray Robinson (1923–1989), and head of a ring of prostitution
involved with the Profumo scandal in London in 1963, founder of a new
religious movement, which even to this day titillates the minds of musicians, artist and members of the counterculture: Mary Ann MacLean’s
character and leadership methods within The Process Church will be
assessed thanks to interviews with surviving member of the Church and previously unreleased documentation linked to the social dynamics of the
movement.
Since the advent of modern society, according to a plethora of scholars, Ernest Gellner in primis, the individuals who could not adapt to the ‘malaise of modernity’ sought refuge in what Gellner defined ‘re-enchantment creeds’, such as Jungian psychoanalisis, Marxism or phenomenology. The occult revival witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s in Great Britain and the United States, too, has been seen to represent a strategy of re-enchantment of the modern world.
In this paper, I would like to argue that a process of re-enchantment of the British landscape was attempted through the medium of cinema, within the very small niche of films that comprise the genre known as British Folk Horror: through the analysis of what has been called ‘the unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films, Michael Reeves’ The Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggards’ Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s cult classic The Wicker Man, I will strive to highlight the antimodern red thread that runs through these three themes: such an antimodern stance is best characterised by the three films’ rural setting, seen as an opposition to the process of urbanization, and the recourse to British folklore and pre-Christian motifs as a means to re-sacralize the characters’ beliefs and the very landscape captured in the movies in all of its pagan allure.
The analysis will also briefly extend to minor films and tv series such as James McTaggart’s Robin Redbreast (1970), Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1969-70) and Trevor Ray’s Children of the Stones (1976).
Italian occultism have been sorely lacking. While the role of occultism and
occultists in nations such as England, Germany, France and the United
States has been studied in detail, the events and main characters that
influenced the esoteric circles in early twentieth-century Italy have been
mostly neglected or relegated to very cursory enquiries. It is my intention
in this paper to focus on the theme of a Pagan new beginning for the
newly reunited Italy, first sketching a historical portrayal of the influence
that the idea of Ancient Rome had on both artists and occultists, then utilizing
recently discovered archival material, to focus on poet and playwright
Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo and his tragedy on the birth of
Rome, Rumon Sacrae Romae Origines, viewing the play as an attempt to
mass-initiate the audience to the alleged palingenetic virtues of Roman
traditionalism, in view of a new Italian renaissance.
Since the advent of modern society, according to numerous scholars, Ernest Gellner in particular, the individuals who could not adapt to the ‘malaise of modernity’ sought refuge in what Gellner defined ‘re-enchantment creeds’, such as Jungian psychoanalysis, Marxism or phenomenology. The occult revival witnessed in the 1960s and 1970s in Great Britain and the United States, too, has been seen to represent a strategy of re-enchantment of the modern world.
In this talk I will explore the idea that a process of re-enchantment of the British landscape was attempted through the medium of cinema within the very small niche of films that comprise the genre known as British Folk Horror. Through the analysis of what has been called ‘the unholy trinity’ of British Folk Horror films; Michael Reeves’ The Witchfinder General (1968), Piers Haggards’ Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s cult classic The Wicker Man, I will highlight the antimodern red thread that runs through these three themes. Such an antimodern stance is best characterised by the three films’ rural setting, seen as an opposition to the process of urbanization, and the recourse to British folklore and pre-Christian motifs as a means to re-sacralize the characters’ beliefs and the very landscape captured in the movies in all of its pagan allure.
The analysis will also briefly extend to minor films and TV series such as James McTaggart’s Robin Redbreast (1970), Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1969-70) and Trevor Ray’s Children of the Stones (1976).
The aim of my paper will, due to time constraints, be devoted to a particular aspect of Crowley’s art: after a brief introduction on the artistic circles he moved in in the early Twentieth century and the description of some incidents which determined his artistic career, I will move on to analyse gender characterization and gender identity in the works I am going to analyse. The two main questions I would like to pose, and provide with a tentative answer, to be developed in further studies are: why do Crowley’s portraits represent the women who posed for him in an ugly, almost animalesque fashion? And what can these portraits tell us about Crowley’s own concerns with gender identity?
Following Parsons’ death in 1952, Cameron, while continuing to work with magic, engaged herself more prominently with the fringe of the 1950s American artistic milieu. Thus, in the span of less than ten years, Cameron appeared in Thelemic cineaste Kenneth Anger’s (b. 1927) Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1953), portraying many occult-inspired roles in the same work, and in two films by Curtis Harrington (1926-2007): the experimental short Wormwood Star (1956), a paean on celluloid celebrating Cameron’s own occult art, and the director’s mainstream debut Night Tide (1961), in which Cameron plays the haunting role of the water-witch.
On 19 September 2013, occultist and artist Brian Butler presented a short film at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles entitled Babalon Working (2013). This eight-minute ‘psychedelic occult trip’, heavily inspired by Anger’s use of colour and visuals, seeks to recreate the atmosphere of a magical operation undertaken by Parsons and the future head of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986). According to Parsons, the working was aimed at offering him a Scarlet Woman, a term used by Crowley to describe the female partner in operations of sex-magic. The ritual had apparently succeeded, since almost immediately, redheaded Cameron had knocked on his door, thereby granting their magical and romantic relationship the most unusual of beginnings.
My paper will seek to analyse the ever-changing roles played by Cameron in the cinema of Anger, Harrington and Butler and her undisputed position as icon of esoteric art: from Scarlet Woman, to occultist and painter, to witch, and finally to an ominous invisible presence in Butler’s work. Through personal interviews with Anger, whose relationship with Marjorie Cameron was intense and long lasting, and Butler, I will be able to engage the subject matter of the paper with ad hoc questions directed at the filmmakers themselves.
While many female occultists have finally started to receive their due recognition in academic circles in the past years, Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) and Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) in primis, I strongly feel that Cameron, as an actor, painter and undisputed icon of the 1950s Los Angeles underground scene deserves major visibility within scholarly studies on the interaction between the arts and occultism, and I hope my paper will succeed in addressing this lacuna.
On the cover of the latest edition of Traditionalist thinker Julius Evola’s (1898-1974) Meditazioni sulle Vette (1974), the reader will find a sticker bearing a quote by Reinhold Messner (b. 1944), one of the greatest mountain climbers of all time, and the first to have successfully ascended all of the fourteen peaks over 8000 meters high: ‘I am not interested in the peaks, nor in the hardships or the breaking of records, but what happens to man when he draws close to mountains’.
Mountain summits, because of their impervious and unreachable nature, have always been seen by mystics and wisdom-seekers as the source of esoteric knowledge: thus in the West, Mount Abiegnus was a central trope of Rosicrucian lore, William Wynn Westcott describing it as ‘a mystic name "from whence, as from a certain mountain, Rosicrucian documents are often found to be issued”’. In the East, too, mystics and sages have considered mountain peaks in a similar fashion: Milarepa (c. 1035-c.1135), Tibetan yogi and poet wrote that ‘walking up savage mountains is a path to liberation’. The Theosophical Society (est. 1875) also recognised the Himalayas as the abode of their spiritual Masters, and one of the greatest visual synthesisers of Eastern and Western occult lore in the film industry, Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929), located the end of the an extenuating tour de force to knowledge on the tip of a Holy Mountain (1973).
My paper will strive to highlight the similarities and the contrasts between Evola’s approach to mountain-climbing and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), one of the greatest representatives of twentieth-century occultism, but also arguably among the finest alpinists of his day. From their published writings and diaries, it is clear that both thinkers considered this dangerous discipline as more than a mere physical feat, and that an clear connection between physically climbing and ascending to higher spiritual realms was recognised and embraced by both intellectuals.
It is undeniable that for both occultists, the ability to climb a mountain also conferred a spiritual superiority, which Evola, throughout his works, defines as the achievement of an ‘aristocracy of the spirit’, and valued these efforts as ‘a conquest of one’s self’. In a different vein, with his proverbial dry wit, Crowley comments that ‘ the ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript. ’
While, thus, sharing similar views on the basic idea of mountaineering, it will be my aim to also draw attention to the differences in Evola’s and Crowley’s personal aims in climbing, by confronting some of the major Traditionalist theories developed by one of the great ideologues of Western traditional thought with those advanced by the self-proclaimed prophet of Thelema.
It was only in 1910, after meeting occultist Amedeo Rocco Armentano (1886-1966), that Reghini was truly introduced to the Pythegorean theories on which he would base his future ideas for a complete reformation of the Italian mores. In that year, at the Passo del Vestito in the Apuan Alps, Reghini was initiated into the Schola Italica, which claimed an uninterrupted chain of initiates hailing back to the ancient school of Pythagoras (570 BC – 495 BC).
My talk will analyse Reghini’s use of numbers and Pythagorean doctrines, in order to better elucidate his occult theories. With a degree in Mathematics from the prestigious University of Pisa, Reghini’s writings on numbers and their symbology are revealing and the most relevant works, such as Per la Restituzione della Geometria Pitagorica (1931), ll Fascio Littorio (1935), Dei Numeri Pitagorici -Prologo (1940) and I Numeri Sacri nella Tradizione Pitagorica e Massonica (1947), will be scrutinized in order to best exemplify the strict connection between Reghini’s occult ideas and the revival of neo-Pythagorean ideas witnessed in early twentieth-century Italy traditionalist circles.
As indicated by an O.T.O. report of the same year, total membership then amounted to 700 members worldwide. After a council of the higher grades of the Order joined on the autumnal equinox of 1985, William Breeze (1955- ) was elected as the future head of the order, under the hieronym of Hymenaeus Beta.
This paper will attempt to appraise the evolution of the O.T.O. from Crowley’s leadership to Breeze’s election: the necessary statistical data will be thoroughly analysed, including numbers of members, their provenance and their subdivision along the degree ladder of the Order. Beyond the mere numerical data, attention will be drawn to the increase in visibility, including an analysis of publications, both of books by Aleister Crowley and of independently lodge-published material. The Order’s ability to use new technologies and benefit from a globalized environment will also be acknowledged as will the concept of whether the media and society in general have adopted a different stance towards the Order and the figure of the Great Beast himself throughout these years.
Since Aleister Crowley, over 60 years after his death, continues to inspire occultists, musicians, authors and film-makers, it is crucial to scrutinize the Ordo Templi Orientis, and see how significant the changes in its infrastructures and practices, it’s image in the eyes of the non-initiated and its own influence on the occult milieu, have changed and evolved over the past 80 years.
The same humanitarian traits can be found in one of Italy’s twentieth‐century most important occult figures, Ciro Formisano, better known by his hieronym Giuliano Kremmerz (1861-‐1930). This Neapolitan philosopher, alchemist and therapeutist, founded, in 1898, after an alleged sojourn to Montevideo, during which he had possibly been in contact with the witch-doctors of South America, the Schola Philosophica Hermetica Classica Italica Fratellanza Terapeutica Magica di Miriam. Following the teachings of his mentor Pasquale de Servis (1818-‐ 1893), who traced his lineage back to the pre-‐Christian hermetic traditions of the Italian peninsula, Kremmerz founded Miriamic academies in many Italian cities, including Rome, Naples, Bari and La Spezia, with the sole aim of applying the ancient hermetic sciences to ‘medicine, therapeutics, psychurgy and thaumaturgy.’
The aim of this paper will be twofold: on the one hand, the Italian occult milieu most influenced by Egyptian sources will be briefly sketched, in order to place Kremmerz in a clear cultural and philosophical milieu; on the other, aspects of his therapeutic magic practiced under the aegis of Miriam/Isis will be addressed, in order to better specify what the notions of ‘health’, ‘healing’ and ‘hermetic medicine’ meant for Kremmerz and his followers.
"
Kenneth Anger, born in Santa Monica, California, in 1927 was one of the pioneers and most revered figures of independent cinema. His works range from the homoerotic Fireworks (1947) or Scorpio Rising (1964), which at the time defied conventions and the laws prohibiting homosexuality, to real masterpieces of esoteric cinema such as Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969) and Anger’s most widely praised film to date, Lucifer Rising (1972). The three latter movies are imbued with esoteric symbolism and owe much to the teachings of Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) and to the philosophy elaborated by the magus, Thelema, in which Anger is a firm believer. Highly inspired by the Golden Dawn’s brand of cerimonial magic, Crowley held the visual aspect of magic in high esteem, often garbing himself in elaborate robes and ostentatious jewellery: some of the rituals penned by the English magus actually prescribe the colour and length of the garments, the correct disposition of the practitioner’s tools upon the altar, and the colours and symbols to be used according to Kabbalistic correspondences. What the scholar can only read of in Crowley’s writings wildly comes to life in an almost bewildering use of colours and symbols in Anger’s work: unicursal hexagrams, the hallmark symbol of Thelema, flash intermittently, while brightly painted magic circles are traced. Being there no verbal communication between the actors in Anger’s films, the divinities of the thelemic pantheon, Nuit, Hadit and Horus, come to life and relate to the viewer through the use of symbols and gestures, the visual element always being the key aspect.
The presentation will review Kenneth Anger’s triptych of thelemic films, analyzing the debt owed to Aleister Crowley’s works and the adaptability of the latter’s brand of magic to the medium of cinema. Emphasis will be drawn to the similarities between the lives and beliefs of the two characters and to Anger’s merit in making Aleister Crowley the most widespread occult figures in popular culture.
The concept of an occult brotherhood employing mysterious techniques to harness its inner urge to ameliorate the destiny of humankind recurs throughout the history of Western esotericism.
The thelemic Horus Maat Lodge (est. by Margaret Ingalls [Soror Nema] in Ohio, in 1979) forms one curious modern expression of this notion. For the most part, its members focus on solitary rituals and communicate through an e‐list and a website.
The order’s collective workings are not executed in the physical realm: on the night of every New Moon, its members astrally project to a Temple based in a crater of the Moon to enact the ‘Eleven Star Working’ in order to generate a non‐violent leaderless consensus model for humanity. Throughout 2012, the Workings will be devoted to creating a shift in global consciousness and enhancing the international ‘Occupy’ movement. Unusually for an occult order, Horus Maat shares with the Movement a complete rejection of authority and hierarchical structure, epitomized by the
mantra/slogan ‘We are the 99%’. In this paper, I will shed light on the Lodge’s novel attempt to assist the Occupy Movement, highlighting similarities and differences with previous endeavors to aid socio‐political struggles via magical means."
With hundreds of extras hired for the occasion and a substantial financing by Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) himself, the play re-enacted the struggle between Romulus and Remus and the successive foundation of the Eternal City. More than a simple, albeit unlikely, example of pagan pageant, Rumon was the most noticeable expression of a cultural current set to bring about a new pagan Golden Age in Rome and, more generally, Italy.
More than one critical review described Rumon as a potent rite of birth which heralded a new dawn for Rome and the traditons of its ancient cives, and the play itself features archaic invocations to Roman deities, the exaltation of Roman lineage and the use of the secret and magical names of Rome.
In this paper I will briefly analyse the pagan milieu of Rome which no doubt influenced Musmeci Bravo, successively highlighting the most relevant passages of Rumon in which the birth of a newly pagan Rome was so majestically portrayed."""
new religious movement: alleged former fiancé to world-renowned boxer
Sugar Ray Robinson (1923–1989), and head of a ring of prostitution
involved with the Profumo scandal in London in 1963, founder of a new
religious movement, which even to this day titillates the minds of musicians, artist and members of the counterculture: Mary Ann MacLean’s
character and leadership methods within The Process Church will be
assessed thanks to interviews with surviving member of the Church and previously unreleased documentation linked to the social dynamics of the
movement.
Since the publication of the Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (2004), the contemporary study of Western esotericism has taken the concept of gnosis in great account, with Wouter J. Hanegraaff describing gnostic knowledge as ‘the highest level in a hierarchy of knowledge that includes reason and faith’., and conceding that ‘although countless scholars have tried to answer the question “what is Gnosticism”, serious attempts to answer the question “what is gnosis” are extremely scarce’. The ideas of Gnosticism and gnosis are ubiquitous through the modern history of Western esotericism, and touches upon the works of Gerard Éncausse (1865-1916) and Jules Doinel (1842-1903) and their Église Gnostique; the neo gnostic elements to be found in the sexual magical writings of Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875) and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947); the works of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) and his gnostic-inspired Septem Sermones Ad Mortuos (1916).