The film Hereditary was scary successful last year. Writer/director Ari Aster’s feature debut delivered an incendiary performance by Toni Collette and a tightening noose of a story that gradually strangled viewers in supernatural sights, occult symbols, real life tragedies and heavy themes about the generational traumas that can ripple though family lines. Hereditary is a work of art that transcends the horror genre, and it belongs in the same conversation as The Shining and The Wicker Man. The Wicker Man is the ultimate example of the folk-horror sub genre, and while Hereditary eventually found its way to a pagan place, Ari Aster’s new film is one long fertility rite freak-out, and it’s probably the best bad boyfriend revenge movie we’ll see this year.

Christian (Jack Reynor) and Dani (Florence Pugh) are a young couple on the rocks. Christian is sort of a shiftless jerk who can’t decide what his graduate thesis should be. He’s been with Dani for four years, but he constantly considers breaking up, but he constantly doesn’t have the courage to do that. He can’t remember how long they’ve been together and even forgets her birthday. Christian is a boy-man who won’t commit to decisions because he doesn’t want to face their consequences. That said, Dani is not an easy person to be with – her family brings sky-high drama, and she’s steadily popping anti-anxiety meds and sleeping pills throughout the film. Christian should leave Dani in the first act of Midsommar so he and his buddies can go stag on a secret trip to a summer solstice festival in Sweden. He should be the selfish loafer that he really is and leave Dani and her troubles to their own fates. Instead he chickens-out and passive-aggressively takes his frustrations out on her. He claims to apologize but doesn’t say sorry and he gaslights her until she’s the one apologizing to him. Dani joins Christian and the guys on their trip to the communal Swedish farm where their friend Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren) grew up.

Midsommar’s greatest strength is its ravishing visuals. Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski points his camera at a frozen Swedish forest in the throes of a howling twilit blizzard in the film’s first frames. The shot gives us foreboding trees, ominous winds and announces the central trope of folk horror: the isolated landscape. It’s a great opening, but this is a movie that takes place in Sweden over the summer solstice when there are only a few hours of darkness at night. One of Midsommar’s gimmicks is that it’s a horror movie taking place in broad daylight and the beauty of the Swedish countryside, the colorful designs decorating the farm buildings, and the embroidered robes and masks worn by the revelers positively sparkle in all that mountain majesty. Add to these colorful sights throbbing and shimmering psychedelic hallucination effects and a totally disorienting upside down camera shot that announces the group’s arrival at the festival and there is plenty to trip out on here.

Unfortunately, Midsommar disappoints in fundamentals like story and characters. Aster’s characters are exactly the “smart ass,” “nerd,” “jerk,” personas we find in the most cliché horror films where we know all those city kids are going to go into the countryside to die. Aster could have set the audience up with those expectations, but that would result in shock or surprise or some other experience that you won’t find here. Midsommar is a new skin for an old ceremony. It dresses up like a folk horror classic, but it’s better enjoyed as a simple, predictable female revenge film that hinges on a combustible third act performance from Pugh.

Here’s a great short introduction to the folk horror sub-genre and the revival we’re witnessing in pictures like Midsommar…

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Over the weekend I was stoked to find out that a new biography of Led Zeppelin guitarist, Jimmy Page, had recently hit the book shelves. According to a review in The London Times the book is a no-holds-barred excavation of Page’s debauchery and excess with a particular emphasis on the musician’s associations with the occult and especially with Aleister Crowley. Here’s a bit from the review…

“In 1970, Jimmy Page bought Boleskine House, an 18th-century lodge on the banks of Loch Ness. The monster that drew Led Zeppelin’s guitarist there was not Nessie, but Aleister Crowley, the late ‘great beast’ of British occultism who had bought the house in 1899. Boleskine, built on the site of a 10th-century church that burnt down with its congregation inside, had allegedly been left brimming with demons after Crowley was called away mid-ritual, which was all part of its appeal to the 26-year-old Page, who had been in thrall to Crowley’s ideas since adolescence.

“For a generation of long- haired rock fans, ownership of Boleskine House confirmed Page’s apparently close alignment with supernatural forces. ”

Read the full review here, and check out this great video that traces the connections between the magus and rocker…

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Stanley Kubrick is a giant among filmmakers and cinema fans for his excruciating attention to detail, the stylized performances he evokes, and the sheer scope of outrageously ambitious projects like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon. The director’s 1999 film, Eyes Wide Shut, closed-out both the 20th century and Kubrick’s career as the filmmaker died shortly after he’d finished his final cut of the movie. Eyes Wide Shut was released posthumously.

Eyes Wide Shut offered a chilling peek into the cultural underbelly of wealthy super-elites engaging in occult sexual rites and power plays involving routine murder, control of the press and police, and child prostitution. The subject matter along with Kubrick’s sudden death make this movie a beacon for conspiracy buffs who see the film as a kind of documentary exposé that Kubrick paid the ultimate price to make.

To shed some light on Kubrick and the making of his final film, here’s my favorite YouTube film analyst, Rob Ager, discussing Kubrick’s deep-dive into occult research in preparation for Eyes Wide Shut…

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If you’re a reader of this blog you know that I’m fascinated by the occult and the darker sides of the paranormal. I love the skanky, gritty American cinema of the 1970s, and I’m enamored with the disturbing art of painters like Bosch and Bacon. That said, I’m a sucker for Christmastime. I love everything about the most magical time of the year to the point where I’ll shout out “the most magical time of the year” without any irony. Of course, Christmas’ pagan underpinnings can actually lead us to actual magick if so inclined, and even the traditional bible story about the birth of Jesus is packed with otherworldly creatures and bizarre happenings. But its the general revelry, merriment, togetherness, food, gifts and the respite at the end of another busy year that speak to me the most. That’s why the discovery of this lost Paul McCartney Christmas album is a perfect gift during this first week of December. Here’s a bit from Paul explaining the 1965 recording on the Uproxx site…

“I had two Brenell tape recorders set up at home, on which I made experimental recordings and tape loops, like the ones in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ And once I put together something crazy, something left field, just for the other Beatles, a fun thing which they could play late in the evening. It was just something for the mates, basically.

It was called Unforgettable and it started with Nat ‘King’ Cole singing ‘Unforgettable,’ then I came in over the top as the announcer, ‘Yes, unforgettable, that’s what you are! And today in Unforgettable…’ It was like a magazine program: Full of weird interviews, experimental music, tape loops, some tracks I knew the others hadn’t heard. It was just a compilation of odd things. I took the tape to Dick James’ studio and they cut me three acetate discs. Unfortunately, the quality of these discs was such that they wore out as you played them for a couple of weeks, but then they must have worn out. There’s probably a tape somewhere, though.”

Check it out here and click the link below to subscribe to my YouTube channel…

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I’ve got a bit of a difficult film writing assignment hanging over my head this week so rather than posting another horror film post, here’s a selection of recordings from the 1920′s and 1930′s featuring Aleister Crowley reciting occult poetry in both English as well as the Enochian language that Queen Elizabeth I’s court wizard claims to have transmitted from actual angels. Here’s the skinny on Aleister Crowley: The Great Beast Speaks…

20 minutes’ worth of devious recitations, transferred off the original wax cylinders. Wonderful piece of spoken wordedness, with the only drawback being that it’s a horribly crackly lo-fi recording (though faithfully bootlegged into the digital medium). It sounds spooky, and it’s definitely the Man, though it’s really hard to hear what he’s saying. Then what do am I supposed to expect, right; it was made in 1920. More poetry than ritual, I’m afraid, but you do get to hear Uncle Crowley sing in the last track.

This playlist seems to lineup pretty well:

1.
The Call of the First Aethyr (Enochian Version)
2.
The Call of the First Aethyr (English Version)
3.
The Call of the Second Aethyr (Enochian Version)
4.
The Call of the Second Aethyr (English Version)
5.
La Gitana
6.
The Pentagram
7.
One Soverign for the Woman
8.
The Poet
9.
At Sea
10.
The Fingernails
11.
The Titanic
12.
Hymn to the American People
13.
Excerpts from the Gnostic Mass
14.
Vive La French Republic

Now here’s the voice of The Beast…

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I spent the morning writing a review of the 1970, psychedelic classic Performance. For me this is one of the few films from America’s mid-century cultural revolution that still lives up to its shocking reputation. Most people associate Performance with its cinematographer and co-director Nicolas Roeg. Even if you are a die-hard fan of outre, countercultural cinema you might not leap to attention at the mention of the name of Roeg’s partner Donald Cammell.

A painting prodigy as a young man, Cammell was making a living with his brushes by the age of 19. Having built the foundations of a lucrative portrait painting career, Cammell moved to Paris in search of a more inspired path in art. This shunning of commercial opportunity for artistic possibility marked Cammell’s pursuits in the years to come. It’s both the reason why he’s not more widely known and why he continues to be re-discovered by lovers of cinema on the fringes.

Returning to Swinging London in the 1960′s, Cammell decided that painting was dead and that he needed to turn his talents towards cinema. He lived a bohemian lifestyle and became the embodiment of the era’s libertine ideals. He befriended the Rolling Stones and teamed up with Nicolas Roeg to co-direct their sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll classic. Although Roeg is usually associated with the film, its troubled production saw Roeg disconnecting from the post-production process and the film’s final cut, with its revolutionary editing style really belongs to Cammell.

After Performance, Cammell maintained an uneasy relationship with the Hollywood studios. Holding his creative integerity in the highest regard, he made ends meet selling treatments and scripts while trying to develop projects and find funding independently. He wrote a script for William Burroughs that found the author playing a Supreme Court Justice who is kidnapped to North Africa. Cammell also starred as Osiris in his friend Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising.

In addition to his friendship with Anger, Cammell had deeper links to the occult — is father was a friend of Aleister Crowley’s and he even wrote a book about the Great Beast. Cammell told Anger that he’d sat on Crowley’s lap when he was a little boy. Anger promptly sat on Cammell’s lap in an effort to complete the circle!

While Cammell would never secure a star turn in the Hollywood system, his place among experimental filmmakers is beyond dispute. Find out more about Donald Cammell in this fascinating documentary. Here’s Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance…

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Charles Stanfeld Jones was two men in one: On one hand Jones was a London accountant born in 1886. On the other, he was a brilliant ceremonial magician whom Aleister Crowley recognized as his “magical child” when Jones shared his brilliant insights into Crowley’s own The Book of the Law. Jones went on to found the first O.T.O. lodge in North America. Here’s the story of the man who took the name Frater Achad, and his pioneering work as one of the 20th century’s most important occultists and authors of the esoteric…

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The other night I woke up before my alarm and started listening to a podcast on my phone in hopes of getting back to sleep for a little while longer. At some point the conversation on this ‘cast turned to the fact that artist, filmmaker, curator Harry Smith had been working on a movie about John Dee’s Enochian Tablets before he died. I looked all over the internet and couldn’t find much about the project, but I did find a fun section on Wiki that talks all about Smith’s interest in the occult.

BTW I just donated $20 bucks to Wikipedia and if you like this blog I hope you’ll consider supporting them as well. Thanks!

Here’s the lowdown on Smith’s scrying the higher planes…

Smith said he had become acquainted with the Lummi Indians through his mother’s teaching work and claimed to have participated in shamanic initiation at a young age. He recorded Lummi songs and rituals using homemade equipment and notation of his own devising and developed an important collection of Native American religious objects.

Tarot cards were another of Smith’s interests. A set of “irregularly-shaped Tarot cards” he designed was apparently used for the degree certificates for a branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis founded by occult “magus” Aleister Crowley.[34] In the late 1940s in California Smith is said to have worked with the reputed occult “magus” Aleister Crowley’s one-time acolyte Charles Stansfeld Jones,[citation needed] a convert to Roman Catholicism, and later with Jones’s “trusted student”, Albert Handel[35] in New York.

Smith frequented the Samuel Weiser Antiquarian Bookstore, a used book store on New York’s “Book Row” that specialized in works on comparative religion, hermeticism, and the occult. The store also had a publishing house, Weiser Books, which used Smith’s designs for its paperback edition of Aleister Crowley’s Holy Books of Thelema.[34]

Sanders recounts that Smith was the key advisor for Allen Ginsberg and the Fugs’s effort to levitate The Pentagon. “In the fall of 1967,” he wrote:

a bunch of us decided to exorcise the demons from the Pentagon as part of a big demonstration against the Vietnam War. (You can get a flavor of that day from Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night.) I was in charge of coming up with a structure for the Exorcism. I knew Harry would know what to do so I conferred with him. He gave me the basic outline, which was to use the symbols of the four directions, and to use the symbols of earth, air, fire, and water. He also suggested adding a cow, to represent the Goddess Hathor. We did have a cow prepared, painted with mythic symbols, but the police stopped it from getting near the Pentagon. The Exorcism was duly recorded by WBAI’s Bob Fass, and can be found on the Fugs album Tenderness Junction.[34]

Smith also studied the Enochian system in depth and as it was recounted by Edward Kelley and John Dee, and as later elaborated upon by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis. He also compiled a concordance of the Enochian language with the aid of Khem Caigan, his assistant throughout much of the 1970s and early 1980s.[citation needed]

In 1986 Smith was consecrated a bishop in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, which claims William Blake and Giordano Bruno in its pantheon of saints. Smith had long been a familiar figure in the New York branch of Ordo Templi Orientis. After his death, Smith’s branch of the sect performed a Gnostic Mass in his honor at St. Mark’s Church in the East Village.[34]

I just recalled some music from a post from last July. Here’s a bit about the record from the folks at Smithsonian Folkways…

In 1964, Harry Smith (who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music) was held for a week in the Anadarko, Oklahoma, jail on suspicion of stealing guns, and there he met several Kiowa Indians who introduced him to peyote rituals and songs of the Native American Church. In 1973, Smith returned to Anadarko to record. He decided to set up his equipment in singers’ homes or his hotel room, rather than at an actual ceremony, because the Kiowa often sang the songs in casual settings; he also would be able to record commentary.

Here’s The Kiowa Peyote Meeting…

Stay Awake!

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Austin Osman Spare was a British artist and chaos magician whose work was all but forgotten before author and occultist Kenneth Grant published Spare’s books like: Zos Speaks! Encounters with Austin Osman Spare, Fulgur Limited, 1998; Images and Oracles of Austin Osman Spare, Fulgur Limited, 2003; Borough Satyr, The Life and Art of Austin Osman Spare, Fulgur Limited, 2005.

Spare’s work ranged from religion, to the occult, sex, magic, atavisms, and ghosts, and his visual art is truly, well, visionary.

We’ll be celebrating Spare’s 130th birthday on December 30. Newbies can get caught up with this great primer on the magician and his wondrous workings. Here’s Austin Osman Spare: The Bones Go Last…

Stay Awake!

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I’m not fanatical about comic books, but I’ve always enjoyed graphic stories of all kinds, and I’ve been impressed by much of Marvel’s screen universe especially the brooding Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Daredevil‘s first season on Netflix. I recently attended a preview for Doctor Strange and it’s got much to recommend to readers of a blog like this one: it’s a psychedelic tale about an arrogant surgeon who must let go of his own ego to realize his true vocation as the Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel Comics Universe. He does this by training with an ancient shaman to master occult powers that reveal new levels of consciousness and access to a multiverse of parallel dimensions. Sounds pretty cool, right? Also, there’s demons.

I flipped a story about the artist who created Dr. Strange with Stan Lee into Remnants the other day. Here’s a bit about Steve Ditko…

“Steve Ditko was almost primarily responsible for bringing the alter-ego into the comic book narrative.”

“Here’s the co-creator of Spiderman at the top of his game — Spiderman’s the most popular character by now at the end of the sixties — and he’s giving away ten-page stories on his superhero ‘Mr. A.’,” says Bell.

Here’s a fascinating BBC doc about Ditko, the role he played in creating Marvel cornerstones like Spiderman and Doctor Strange, and his mysterious, reclusive retreat from the characters he brought to life, and the audiences and readers that love them…

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