A lot has been written on the work of independent filmmaker Kenneth Anger. In fact, so much has been written on his work that I really don’t have much to add other than my appreciation for what Anger’s work has given to me on a personal level. And so in this writing I would like to convey my appreciation for his films as they were meant to be taken, as literal rituals in the magickal arts. This entails elucidating the reader on some of the historical facts of Christianity, Paganism, Magic and Alchemy.
I have great personal interest in the ancient practices and have dedicated a bit of time in the study of each of the above mentioned; I also have a passion for film and art, making the films of Kenneth Anger interesting to me on a variety of levels. Much has been written on the films of Kenneth Anger, but nothing that I’ve read has encapsulated the importance of Anger’s use of film on a ritualistic level and how his system of beliefs could effect the world we’re living in today.
It’s well-documented that Anger’s films are meant to be magickal spells cast upon the viewer and although the symbols used are mentioned I haven’t read anything that goes into further detail. What do the symbols mean in a broader context? Is Anger using the symbols as they are meant to be used or has he appropriated them to use within the context of his own, unique cosmology? A lot has been written about the demonic nature of the films and Lucifer or Satan are popular figures within most of what I’ve read. We know that Anger holds Aleister Crowley in very high regard using his teachings as a basis for his practices. Anger is a prodigious filmmaker and artist which has also been documented rather thoroughly.
What I feel is missing, and what I hope to remedy in this piece, is the importance of an artist whose appreciation for ancient ‘religious’ practices didn’t die in the seventies along with the love and peace movement. Anger has literally, with cinematic and artistic mastery, documented magickal spells! Spells that are meant to be cast upon those who view his film. In a world that seems to be falling apart due to a lack of understanding about the world that we live with, the ideas and images that Anger puts forth in his films are more relevant than ever.
I may be reading a lot more into his films than he intended, but art is meant to be absorbed, processed and perceived by the viewer. This is my perception, I in no way pretend to know the mind of Kenneth Anger. I do believe that in order for one to fully appreciate Anger’s films one must have a basic understanding of Paganism, Magic, and Alchemy (presently and within an historical context) and how those practices were affected by the rise of Christianity.
There is a possibility that such attention to the Demonic and Luciferian aspects of Anger’s work has brushed aside the more valuable aspects of the films; especially if one considers the absolute importance of ancient practices. One of the threads tying together Paganism, Magick & Alchemy is the reverence for the intrinsic bonds that exist between humankind, nature and the Universe. Unfortunately, this is often overlooked perhaps in an attempt to exploit the darker elements of such practices as the dark side is far more romantic.
For example, I recently watched a documentary on Alchemy; the documentary didn’t mention anything about the practice other than the transmutation of lead into gold and the negative health effects of the practice. No mention of the fact that Sir Isaac Newton was a practicing Alchemist who wrote over one million, unpublished, words on the subject (After his death in 1727 the Royal Society deemed them “not fit to be printed”). Newton was a traditional Alchemist in the sense that he accepted the idea that Alchemy originated with Thoth (Hermes) in ancient Egypt. It was Newton’s Alchemical work that guided him to his findings on light and gravity.
Nostradamus was also a practicing Alchemist and physician. ‘His prophecies were composed with the aid of magical, astrological and cabbalistic books and were published in two parts, in 1555 and 1568. Both Napoleon Bonapart and Adolf Hitler, in their respective centuries, believed that their careers had been foreseen in Nostradamus’ prediction…’ (The Encyclopedia of Magic Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood, page 163)
So I’d like to make an attempt at shedding some light on the positive elements of these ancient practices as used in Anger’s work and as I see it…
To understand the history of European religion and Christianity’s place in it is to understand how we’ve arrived in the current state of delusion; a state of crises as the environment is being destroyed by humankind’s overwhelming stupidity and it seems that we are in a constant state of war which we start under many guises but that, in reality, are all about the small percentage of the rich and powerful who wish to remain on top of the monetary garbage heap. At the expense of the welfare of the majority of people and of the environment these ‘Christians’ (as many of them are) seem to be without conscience.
Unlike Christianity Paganism, Magic and Alchemy held the natural world in very high regard seeing ‘Nature as a theophany, a manifestation of divinity, not as a Fallen creation of the latter’. (A History of Pagan Europe, by Prudence Jones & Nigel Pennick, page 2). Therefore Paganism, Magic and Alchemy create a sense of balance and equality among all living entities rather than taking the hierarchical, dominating approach that Christianity takes. The duality of Christianity, represented as good verses evil, strictly contrasts the Pagan view ‘which sees the rule of nature as either good (e.g. Stoicism) or neutral.’ (A History of Pagan Europe, by Prudence Jones & Nigel Pennick, page 59).
With the birth of the monotheistic approach of Christianity (and like religions) and the death of the plurality of Paganism came the further subjugation of the non-ruling classes by not only the state but also by the church which eventually became one. Like Paganism and Magic, the practice of Alchemy allowed the individual to empower themselves through the intrinsic bonds that exist in the natural world (the individual didn’t need a church or ‘priest’ to commune with ‘God’, ritual could be an individual experience, one on one with the elements); these bonds have been severed by Christianity further benefiting the ruling classes as Christianity is about the sanctioned domination of other cultures, societies, lands and nature.
Paganism, Alchemy and Magic use elaborate rituals linking ‘the people and the land in a sacred relationship.’ (The Encyclopedia of Magic Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood, page 11) This appreciation for nature stems from animism, the belief that spirits reside in the natural elements. It would become quite natural for Christians to view themselves as superior to all things and beings in the material world including nature. Perhaps our current environmental crises and constant war mongering are a direct result of the egoism of Christianity.
In an attempt to maintain control and reign dominant over lands and people the Church deemed the establishment judge and jury persecuting and / or executing any group or individual who challenged their authority, ‘Christianity looked to extend its authority over its congregation, and as a result it began increasingly to view dissident sects with suspicion and to see them as a threat to its supremacy. All those who deviated from the Church’s orthodoxy in any way became labeled as heretics.’ Those individuals who the Church viewed as dangerous to their organization were subjected to various forms of torture and / or execution.
Throughout the High Medieval Period (950-1350) European rulers were persuaded and influenced by Christianity; as Christianity became the official religion of the kingdoms monotheism and the practice of androtheism (referring to God as masculine) reigned supreme. ‘In Christian Lands, the High Middle Ages were the crusading years. Christian dualism, never far beneath the surface of its official monotheism was first turned against the Islamic conquerors of Palestine, then against its Pagan
neighbors in the Baltic, and then against alleged heretics, infidels and apostates within its own jurisdiction.’ (A History of Pagan Europe, by Prudence Jones & Nigel Pennick, page 196)
The death penalty was introduced in 1215 in an attempt to deter ‘heretics’ and Pope Innocent III established the Inquisition affording the Church the opportunity to ‘take action’ against those who deviated from the System.
Up until the twelfth century the Church had viewed tales of Witches as nothing more than innocuous stories and superstitions. This changed in the 12th century as the Church became paranoid that secret organizations, who didn’t share the Church’s system of beliefs, were plotting the overthrow of the Church. The Church had always been suspicious of dissident sects, but with the growth of dissent came the growth of the Church’s lust for domination. Jews, lepers and homosexuals were believed to have been plotting the overthrow of the Church and thus became viable targets of persecution.
The Inquisition evolved into the Witch hunt leaving mostly women, although some men and children were effected, open to severe persecution. Once again accusations of orgies and the sacrifice of babies for the purpose of gaining supernatural powers flew through communities, ‘Trial records show accounts of Sabbaths and nocturnal flying from 1420 onwards.’ (The Encyclopedia of Magic Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood, page 130)
The propagandistic tools utilized by the Church in its early days became apart of the institution. Accusations of cannibalism and the sacrifice of small children or babies to obtain blood for the Eucharist abounded striking fear into the followers of Christianity. In the 12th century the Waldensians became one of many groups who became the target of the Church’s dissatisfaction. When attempts to silence the Waldensians failed the group was excommunicated and then condemned three years after that. Threats of being burnt at the stake could not deter the Waldensians who chose a humble life of poverty; in observance of Christ they chose to renounce worldly pleasures.
Witchcraft was seen as the most deplorable of crimes as witches were thought to work against God; the Judge saw it as his natural duty, and right, to God to eradicate the evil that permeated society in an attempt to taint the good of humankind. ‘To this end, judges and magistrates were seen to have great power over the devil and his assistant demons…’ (The Encyclopedia of Magic Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood, page 130) Various methods of torture were utilized in an attempt to gain confessions; the methods used by the courts ‘worked’ as convictions mounted.
One of many such [sadistic] accounts of torture took place in Germany, ‘In Germany, many courts used a ‘witches’ chair’, which was heated by a fire below.’ (The Encyclopedia of Magic Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood, page 131) Another documented account of the atrocities committed by the Church /State reads as follows, ‘In Scotland, according to a pamphlet called Newes from Scotland published in 1591, a witch suspected of treason against the king, “was put to the most severe and cruell paine in the world, called the bootes”, and “his legges were crushte and beaten together as small as might bee, and the bones and flesh so bruised, that the bloud and marrowe sputed forth in great abundance.”’ (The Encyclopedia of Magic Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood, page 131)
A modern parallel to the Witch hunts of the 13th century can be seen in the not too distant past; in the US, McCarthyism sent a surge of paranoia into the minds of Americans who saw communists as the modern day ‘witch’. The movement destroyed careers as people were ‘Black Listed’ most notably in the film industry. The eponymous movement began with a more ambitious than patriotic Joe McCarthy who began making outlandish accusations in 1950 against people working in the state department. The fervor lasted until 1954 (The same year that Anger’s original ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ was completed) when a group of senators took a stand against McCarthy. Unfortunately, this four year ‘witch hunt’ left many with unsalvageable careers.
For over twenty years, from 1952 to 1973 (not including the prior and subsequent persecution of gays), homosexuality was thought to be an illness, gay people were thought to be sick; the persecution of that time extended its ugly tentacles of oppression out to African Americans, women and other ‘minorities.’ Through his films, Kenneth Anger broaches the un-broachable pulling queers out of the closet and setting them up where they belong, center stage. Christianity has continued to rob women of their proper positions of power (think Isis). Anger, unapologetically, gives it back.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Romantic Paganism:
“…Classical Paganism underwent a new phase in Northern Europe. It was through Thomas Taylor’s translation of the Orphic Hymn to Pan (1787) that the romantic poets rediscovered the soul of all things. The Romantic poets developed nostalgia for lost ages, as in Schiller’s Gotter Griechenlands. In England, they had a mutually shared esteem for Paganism. After the death and destruction of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars came the ‘year without a summer’ (1816), when famine swept Europe, accompanied by food riots. After the disintegration of the Old Order, the Romantic poets saw Paganism as the only remedy for the ‘wrong turnings’ of Christianity and industrialization. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (22 January, 1818), Leigh Hunt wrote:
I hope you paid your devotions as usual to the Religio Loci, and hung up an evergreen. If you all go on so, there will be a hope some day…a voice will be heard along the water saying ‘The Great God Pan is alive again’, -upon which the villagers will leave off starving, and singing profane hymns, and fall to dancing again.
In his letters Thomas Love Peacock signed himself ‘In the name of Pan, yours most sincerely’. In October 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to Thomas J. Hogg:
I am glad that you do not neglect the rites of the true religion. Your letter awoke my sleeping devotions, and the same evening I ascended alone the high mountain behind my house, and suspended a garland, and raised a small turf-altar to the mountain-walking Pan.
Later in the nineteenth century, Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was influential in the Pagan movement. He was a member of several socialist groups, including William Morris’ Socialist League and the Fellowship of the New Life, from which came the Fabian Society. Giving up his Anglican ministry in 1874, he promoted neo-Pagan as a return to the essentials of life. In 1883, he set up a self-sufficient community at Millthrope between Sheffield and Chesterfield. In Civilization: Its Cause and Cure he wrote:
The meanings of the old religions will come back…On high tops once more gathering he will celebrate with naked dances the glory of the human form and the great processions of the stars, or greet the bright horn of the young moon which now after a hundred centuries comes back laden with such wondrous associations – all the yearnings and the dreams and the wonderment of the generations of mankind- the worship of Astarte and Diana, of Isis and the Virgin Mary; once more in sacred groves will he reunite the passion and the delight of human love with his deepest feelings of the sanctity and beauty of Nature; or in the open, standing uncovered to the Sun, will adore the emblem of the everlasting splendour which shines within.
Oscar Wilde echoed the sentiments of Carpenter, when he wrote:
O goat foot god of Arcady!
The modern world hath need of thee!
At this time in this intellectual milieu, there was a feeling that a new religion was about to be created: ‘A religion so splendid and all embracing that the hierarchy to which it will give birth, uniting within itself the artist and the priest, will supplant and utterly destroy our present commercial age’. This was none other than ‘the creative Pagan acceptance of life’ promoted by playwright Eugene O’ Neill.
During the nineteenth century, the Germanic legends were collected by the Grimm brothers, and crafted into a powerful mythos by Richard Wagner. As Wagner himself wrote in his essay, ‘What is German?’: ‘In rugged forests, in the long winter…he transmutes his home-bred myths of the gods in legends manifold and inexhaustible.’ …another constant theme in his art was the tension between the Christian asceticism which he inherited and the Pagan affirmation of life to which as an artist he was committed. Wagner’s commitment to recreating the spiritual-emotional catharsis of Greek tragedy in his temple of music drama at Bayreuth was encouraged and partly shaped by his friend, the classicist Friedrich Nietzsche.’ (A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones & Nigel Pennick)
Symbolism & Magic(k) in Cinema:
‘There is a way of going to the movies as others go to church and I think that, from a certain angle, quite independently of what is playing, it is there that the only absolutely modern mystery is celebrated.’ (The Age of Gold by Robert Short, Intro: Ocular Alchemy page 9)
‘It is certain that any image, however prosaic or banal, arrives transformed on the screen. The smallest details, the most significant objects take on a meaning that belongs to them alone. By the fact that it isolates objects, it gives them a life apart which acquires a growing independence and detaches itself from the customary meaning of objects. A twig, a bottle, a hand start to live a quasi-animal existence.’ (Antonin Artaud quoted in The Age of Gold: Surrealist Cinema, page 14 by Robert Short)
‘Anger’s content can be understood as Decadent mainly in the content of his images, which are icons taken from a sick and dying society (Invocation of My Demon Brother…Scorpio Rising). The images in Scorpio or Invocation are carefully portrayed as symbolic representations of death. In Scorpio objects (tools, machines) are portrayed as fetishes which act as milestones on the protagonist’s [I question whether or not it is Scorpio’s Death that we witness. It seems to be one of the racer’s whose Death we witness as Scorpio orchestrates the procession (race) form the church altar] one-way trip down death’s highway. But these images of heroes and objects are presented to us for our judgement, not solely for our titillation…Anger records history as well as demythifies it…Scorpio Rising is an extension of self-gratification into self-immolation. The machine (now a motorcycle) is totemized into a tool for power: the “charioteer” is Death (the ultimate “dream lover” by Romantic standards). Violence replaces the poetic extension of personality and violent eroticism is combined with the tragic death of the highway hero (“the last cowboys”)… (Moonchild the Films of Kenneth Anger / Myth and Symbolism: Blue Velvet, pages 13 and 21 essay by Carel Rowe)
In Scorpio Rising Anger uses chains to decorate the floor of the garage and to decorate the bikers themselves; He also uses chains in Fireworks as ‘weapons’ used by the sailors on Kenneth Anger. Aleister Crowley used the chain to represent salt one of the three Alchemical principles. Within Alchemy Salt (Lion) represents fixity; the chain as salt, ‘serves to bind the wandering thoughts and for this reason is placed around the neck of the magician…these instruments also remind us of pain, death, and bondage…the chain restricts any wandering.’ (Magick: Book Four-Liber Aba, page 58-59)
Kenneth Anger made the following statement regarding Scorpio Rising as, ‘A "death mirror held up to American culture" - Brando, bikes and black leather; Christ, chains and cocaine. A "high" view of the myth of the American motorcyclist. The machine as totem from toy to terror. Thanatos in chrome and black leather and bursting jeans.’
In Greek mythology, Thanatos (Thanatus) is the God or daimon of non-violent death. Like his twin brother Hypnos (sleep) Thanatos has a light, gentle touch; in his duality he can be seen as the deliverer of man from the pains and sorrows of life or he can be seen as the destroyer.
Eros was the mischievous god of love, a minion and constant companion of the goddess Aphrodite; armed with either a bow and arrow or a flaming torch, it was Eros who lit the flame of love in the hearts of the gods and men; he was also the object of cult. Eros was often portrayed as a child, the disobedient, but fiercely loyal, son of Aphrodite.
The Thanateros Ritual:
‘…Before any magical work is undertaken a “banishing ritual is performed”. This is a preparation and centring exercise, which allows the magician to focus on the task ahead rather than on more mundane thoughts…banishing rituals typically have three parts. The first section focuses awareness on the magician and is aimed at clearing the mind of unwanted thoughts by the visualization of white light being drawn through the body. The second creates a symbolic Universe with the magician at the centre…
‘These are my weapons
Expressions of my will
I grasp them lightly
I stand poised at the centre
The Universe dances for my pleasure’-Phil Hine
The third section involves an identification of the chosen source of inspiration…By meditating on the death of self in the act of sex, and the birth of self in an encounter with death, the ritual simulates encounters with both sex and death, and then with both of these experiences simultaneously, which is said to force conception beyond its normal limits. After a statement of intent and litanies, Eros and Thanatos are invoked…
Invocation to Eros:
So come Eros we invoke thee
You who created us
In the chaotic conjunction
Of genetic roulette
Come create us anew
And kill us again!
Our lover approach
Our breathing quickens
As they come closer
Our breathing quickens
As we are clasped together
Our breathing quickens
At the thrill of touch
Our breathing quickens
We begin to gasp
We are ready to surrender
Three, Two, One
(Cry of Climax)!
Invocation to Thanatos:
So come Thanatos, we invoke thee
We accept your bargain
Come kill us again
And create us anew
Our nemesis approaches
Grinning skull and upraised scythe
Our breathing quickens
Closer it comes and closer
Our breathing quickens
Death stares us in the face
Our breathing quickens
Upraised terrible scythe
We begin to gasp
When it falls we shall die
Three, Two, One
(Cry of Death Terror)!
…the energy being raised is either to be used for itself or to cast a spell.’ (The Encyclopedia of Magic Witchcraft, by Susan Greenwood, page 244)
‘Scorpio’s iconoclasm is effected by the critique which the film conducts on itself, demythifying the very myths it propounds by interchanging them with one another and integrating them into a metamyth. Christ/Satan (religion), Brando/Dean (popular culture), and Hitler (political history) are reduced to sets of systems which destroy one another through an internarrative “montage-of-attraction”. Thus, the film itself is a metamyth of the films which constitute it. Different dogmas are equalized (and subsumed by) their structural and idealogical parallels.’ (Myth and Symbolism: Blue Velvet, page 24-26 by Carel Rowe)
‘In Alchemy, as in psychology, the goal is to develop a balance of the elements within the individual. Personal transformation and individual integration are dependent upon balancing the elements within the psyche, and the deeper relationships of the elements (whether they oppose or complement one another)…According to Jung, when two opposing elements encounter each other in the personality or are brought to the surface in a situation, there are three possibilities: 1) they may generate psychic energy; 2) they may neutralize each other; or 3) they may combine or unite. In Alchemy and psychology, the third case is the most profound, for the union of opposites is the Conjunction of Opposites (Coniunctio Oppositorum), the creation of a higher unity and transcendence of conflicting polarities.’ (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 51 by Dennis William Hauck)
In her essay on Anger’s use of color in his films Deborah Allison points out the dominant colors of Scorpio Rising as being red and black with the strategically placed colors blue and green. She points out that the color black, for example, has many, ‘clear and consistent associations. It is most commonly connected with death and night…These associations are often linked to emotional impressions such as misery and defeat.’
Allison also points out the use of the Skull as it is used in Scorpio Rising and Invocation of my Demon Brother, ‘The combination of this colour scheme with specific iconography provides an example of the way in which colour can reinforce visual symbols. Scorpio Rising had associated black and red in a clear and consistent manner with the death/rebirth polarity. In Invocation, this association is less schematic, although the use of the skull as an image of death is certainly one that echoes their frequent appearance in Scorpio. In this sequence, the colour red has perhaps a stronger association with the joint that the skull supports, rather than the skull itself.’ (Deborah Allison)
In Alchemy, the color black is linked with the black phase (nigredo) during which the subject of transformation is purified by breaking it down. In this first operation known as calcination the substance is burned (Fire was very important to Alchemists, who were often referred to as “Philosophers of Fire”) until it is reduced to ashes and turns chalky white. After calcination the substance at hand is no longer affected by common fire. The black crow is one symbol of this Black Phase while the Skull is one of many classic symbols of the process of calcination. Other images include funeral pyres, hell, bonfires etc.
The color green as represented by the symbol of a green serpent is the unrefined or unclean Mercury that must be redeemed during the first (Black) phase of calcination. ‘In the Alchemist, this is the false identity or poisoning ego that fights desperately for its survival but must be devoured in the flames of higher consciousness.’ (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 187 by Dennis William Hauck)
The color Red (Rubedo) in Alchemy represents the third and final stage of transformation in which the substance at hand is perfected through the union with the cosmic (or divine) forces.
In Astrology the colors red and black are attributed to the sign Scorpio which is ruled by the ‘Red Planet’ Mars. Mars is the third stop on the Ladder of the Planets. Like Earth, Mars has active volcanoes one of which is the largest yet discovered in the solar system. In older astrological systems Mars was considered a “malefic” indicator, bringing ill health and problems…Only recently have astrologers begun to see in Mars a redeeming value. It is through Mars the Warrior that we can mobilize the forces within us to reverse course, move toward the goal of divine liberation, and find the true peace that passes understanding. (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 91-92 by Dennis William Hauck)
And so it is understood, as presented to us in Scorpio Rising, that in order to make way for the new the old must be destroyed. Furthermore, the strength of the individual will (as demonstrated throughout history) to resist mass cultural influence must be exerted if one is to find true liberation.
Christ & Christianity:
In Scorpio Rising, Anger clearly conveys his irreverence for Christianity with the inter-cutting of Jesus doing his good deeds for the day and the bikers being bad boys (boys will be boys). ‘Blasphemous inter-cutting continues when a pious relief of Jesus’s face follows a flash-frame of bare buttocks.’ (Moonchild: the Films of Kenneth Anger (2002) The Occult: A Torch for Lucifer, Anna Powell)
I can’t pretend to know much about Christianity as a religion, however, my understanding of Jesus puts him in the position of being the rebel. Jesus certainly wasn’t squirting mustard on his nude apostles (at least not as far as we know, although it’s difficult to surmise what kind of shenanigans a guy who could turn water into wine might come up with), but he was a rebel to the extent that he went against the grain and was persecuted and eventually executed or sacrificed for his beliefs.
Jesus was a rebel living on the fringe of society; and like all subcultures Christianity gained acceptance and popularity as it became marketable.
The consumption and subsequent regurgitation, through the discourse of contemporary film and music videos, of Anger’s once marginal work has led to his being crowned the ‘Godfather of MTV’ a crown of thorns I’m not sure I’d want to rock as MTV totally sucks.
The Church really was the corporation of it’s time amassing extraordinary power and wealth in a relatively short time. The corporations of today are no different; they take what they can market from subcultures (Jazz, Blues, Hip Hop, and Punk Rock would be perfect examples although there are many examples that one could choose from) and recycle and reconfigure it to the point where one forgets the origin which is always far more interesting. The cultural roots are yanked out leaving a shell of the movement’s former self and relegating the original to the history books.
As ironic seeming as the juxtaposition of Nazi imagery (before its appropriation by Nazi Germany the swastika was a symbol of light (Lucifer) and life, since this appropriation the symbol is swathed in darkness) and Christian icons (Christians adopted Lucifer the lord of light making him the prince of darkness) appears to be, there are very strong parallels that can’t be ignored putting Christians of the past in the same genocidal category as Hitler and his cronies.
Christians sought ‘converts’ through whatever means necessary including extreme violence, threats of death and execution to those who would not allow themselves to be subjugated by this organization. They understood the power of linguistics and rhetoric using terms like ‘crusade’ ‘inquisition’ ‘heretic’ ‘barbarians’.
Although most Christians of today don’t condone overt violence against non-believers they have found more peacefully subversive ways of eradicating cultures from within thus the ‘mission through missionary’. Through these ‘missions’ the Church has successfully done away with many shamanic (the oldest ‘religion’ known to humankind) practices. And there’s no doubt in my mind that the average Christian’s feelings of superiority creates cognitive dissonance which makes the invasion (most currently Iraq) and subsequent murder of people seem somehow justifiable.
And so Anger’s choice of images hold very deep meaning for me. Far beyond being funny, which they are, the images make uncomfortably accurate comparisons of contemporary Western culture within an historical context. The images remind us of what many, throughout history, would love for us to forget; they are a reminder of what can happen when the individual stops thinking for oneself (the Patriot Act Etc).
Alchemy & Film:
Because Anger is a solo artist he has kept total control over the end result of his work; and, when he so desires, can make changes (evolution) to his films. I can almost envision Anger as a Cinematic Alchemist working in his lab; in isolation from the impure (ultra conservative) thoughts of the outside world meditating and ‘praying’ for his version of the Perfect Matter (Gnostic Mass perhaps?).
At the core of Alchemy, the precursor to chemistry, is an amalgamation of religion, medicine and science, ‘based on ancient methods of finding truth that combined all ways of knowing.’ (Sorcerer’s Stone: A Beginners Guide to Alchemy, by Dennis William Hauck, page 3) The practice of Alchemy involved not only work in the laboratory, but also extensive meditation and prayer; the experiments that took place in these laboratories were surreptitious performances because the Alchemist believed that the impure (greed, self-serving) thoughts of any other person could destroy the end result of the experiment.
The medieval alchemist was therefore independent from organized religion; this independence of thought, will, and practice was frowned upon by the church and the state as it threatened their control and would soon enough lead to the persecution of the Alchemist by the Church and State. (Diocletian)
Furthermore, Alchemists believed that through their transmutations, which took place in the laboratory, was a simultaneous transformation or evolution of everything on the planet and in the Universe including oneself. The transmutation of baser metals into gold or other substances directly reflected the evolution of the Universe and the Alchemist performing the work.
‘To alchemists, the whole universe is slowly evolving toward perfection.’(Sorcerer’s Stone, by Dennis William Hauck, page 6) Alchemists believe that Humans play a direct role in the evolution of the Universe serving as a sort of conduit. In stark contrast to Christianity, which separates divinity and humanity, and expounds Faith over Reason, the alchemist’s beliefs empowered the individual encouraging the use of both intuition and intellect bringing about the divinization of people and matter.
Allusions have been made to the Alchemical aspects or symbolism within Anger’s films with no explanation of the true nature of Alchemy. This dismissal is important because most people don’t understand that Alchemy is much more than the transmutation of baser metals into gold or the search for an elixir of immortality. Although there were Alchemists whose sole desire was that of material gain, the ‘real’ Alchemist wasn’t after such trivialities; and so the term ‘puffer’ was coined, the puffer being the superficial Alchemist, as a way of differentiating between the disparate practices. Another paradox is the world of cinema wherein the independent filmmaker / artist (Anger) is supplanted by the massive, money making productions that the movie industry (Hollywood) turns out.
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome:
‘Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome mixes the sacred and profane. Originating in a fancy dress masque where guests dressed as mythological deities, Anger’s own performers engage in a decadent occult Eucharist. They are accompanied by the swelling organ notes and rapturous drumming of Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass (1923) into which screaming is mixed. Here, the deities are given a Crowleyan slant, and feature Pan, Astarte, the Great Beast and the Scarlet Woman. They are joined by Cesare, the Somnambulist from Robert Wiene’s German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1922)…References to “strange drugs” feature strongly, from Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan which is evoked in the films title, to Crowley’s opium pipe, the Scarlet Woman’s “big fat joint”, and narcotic wine and powders…Shiva adopts different forms to receive each guest, becoming Osiris to Isis. He gradually induces the loss of individual identities as characters blend into each other and unite in him at the ritual’s consummation. This mystic melding lends itself naturally to superimposition, the film’s dominant technique…Flash-frame and superimposition add photographs of Crowley, the unicursal hexagram and alchemical symbols, such as the white lion and the red eagle.’ (page 68 moonchild)
In Alchemy the Lion represents, ‘any salt or fixed substance obtained from metals. It is red, green, or black according to its state of perfection.’ The eagle (Aquilla) is the worldly bird of soul; in some depictions it represents the feminine side and the elements Water and Earth. The Eagle is ‘a symbol of volatilization. For instance, an Eagle devouring a Lion indicates the volatilization of a fixed component by a volatile component. Denotes sublimation or distillation.’
Salt (Lion) is the third heavenly substance in Alchemy, which represents the final manifestation of the perfected stone. The Emerald Tablet calls it “the glory of the ‘Whole Universe’.” It has also been associated with the Astral Body. In general, Salt represents the action of thought (meditation, prayer) on matter (metals, other substances), be it the One Mind acting on the One Thing of the universe or the Alchemist meditating in his inner laboratory.
When Alchemists discuss the Universe they are referring to the material Universe in which we live; when they speak of the ‘Whole Universe’ they are referring to not only the material Universe in which we reside (Below) but also the spiritual universe (above). That which is below corresponds to that which is above, and that which is above corresponds to that which is below.
‘Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome associates light with the precious stones swallowed by Shiva, who later eats a crystal pendant, a pearl and a gold snake. Such mixing of sight and taste recalls the experiments in synaesthesia by Baudelaire and other Symbolists. This process involves the extension and melding of the senses conditioned into five different spheres. As the jewels intrinsically possess light, the action of swallowing them suggests a talisman which only releases its power when ingested as food for the inner being. In Crowley’s teachings, the oral ingestion of fluids in a sex-magick context deploys the absorption of supernatural force. This produces intoxication with the god until the body is gradually purified by inner light. It is not sufficient to merely contemplate the light, but it must be consumed to be fully effective.’ (The Occult: A Torch For Lucifer, page 56 by Anna Powell)
‘We see then that there are in nature certain scenes, certain classes of objects, certain materials, possessed of the power to transport the beholder’s mind in the direction of its antipodes, out of everyday Here and toward the Other World of Vision. Similarly, in the realm of art, we find certain works, even certain classes of works, in which the same transporting power is manifest. These vision- inducing works may be executed in vision-inducing materials, such as glass, metal, gems or gemlike pigments. In other cases their power is due to the fact that they render, in some peculiarly expressive way, some transporting scene or object.
The best vision inducing art is produced by men and women who have themselves had the visionary experience; but it is also possible for any reasonably good artist, simply by following an approved recipe, to create works that shall have at least some transporting power.
Of all the vision-inducing arts that which depends most completely on raw materials is, of course, the art of the goldsmith and jeweler. Polished metals and precious stones are so intrinsically transporting that even a Victorian, even an art nouveau jewel is a thing of power. And when to this natural magic of glinting metal and self-luminous stone is added the other magic of noble forms and colors artfully blended, we find ourselves in the presence of a genuine talisman.
Religious art has always and everywhere made use of these vision inducing materials. The shrine of gold, the chryselephantine statue, the jeweled symbol or image, the glittering furniture of the altar-we find these things in contemporary Europe as in ancient Egypt, in India and China as among the Greeks, the Incas, the Aztecs…For Ezekiel, a gem was a stone of fire. Conversely, a flame is a living gem, endowed with all the transporting power that belongs to the precious stone and, to a lesser degree, to polished metal (think of the motorcycle, in Scorpio Rising, that scintillates as it is swathed in light.’ (The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell, page 106,107,108 by Aldous Huxley)
And so humankind, it would seem, has a natural attraction to the scintillating and the luminous. Furthermore, Humans seem to have a primal attraction to evolution. Like metals (think Alchemy), precious gems form in many different environments in the earth. Almost all gems are formed beneath the earth’s surface. Some gems are brought to the surface by man through mining and many are brought to the surface through the forces of nature (faulting, folding, large scale uplift, volcanism).
The interaction of water with copper-rich rocks will form malachite and azurite or turquoise. Magmatic gems crystallize in magmas or in gas bubbles (holes) in volcanic rocks. Examples include: zircon, topaz and ruby. Deep mantle gems such as kimberlites are eruptive volcanics that come from quite deep in the mantle and carry with them diamonds. Diamonds are made from carbon. The stable form of carbon at the Earth's surface is graphite. High pressures and temperatures are required to convert graphite to diamond. Thus, almost all diamonds formed about 100 miles below the Earth's surface. Dates suggest that their formation was restricted to in the first few billion years of the Earth’s history.
Precious gems are the perfect manifestation of evolution; the combination and transformation of liquids, gases and solids into the perfect, raw matter. We literally deck ourselves in evolution without giving our accoutrement a second thought. Think of the semi-precious stone Amber which is the preserved resin of prehistoric trees that grew tens of millions of years ago. Beyond their obvious beauty there exists a much deeper attraction and I believe this attraction rests with our intrinsic, instinctual desire to move beyond what we are and what we ‘know’; the attraction rests with our desire to evolve.
‘Intertextuality is shown by the filmmaker’s casting of bohemian writer of erotica Anais Nin as Astarte, goddess of the moon. Swinging her glittering mesh net she blurs our perspective and hypnotizes us. The net references the pivotal Priestess card in Crowley’s Thoth Tarot deck…In the film, focus on Astarte’s feet in black mesh (fish net) stockings. The symbolic meaning of feet in the Correspondence Tables is “the elder witch”, referring to one aspect of the triple goddess.’ (The Occult: A Torch for Lucifer, page 68 by Anna Powell)
Astarte: was the West Semitic counterpart of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar (the Sumerian Inanna) worshipped in Mesopotamia. Like Ishtar, she had both a benevolent and a terrifying aspect-she was a goddess of love and fertility, but also of war. This latter aspect was dominant in the goddess’s Syro-Canaanite manifestation – she appears as a war goddess in the Hebrew Bible (I Samuel 31) and entered Egypt in this guise during the New Kingdom where she was particularly linked to the military use of chariots and horses. She is mentioned on the Sphinx Stela set up by Amenophis II (perhaps her first appearance in Egyptian texts) as being delighted with the young prince’s equestrian skill and, like the Syrian goddess Anat, was believed to protect the pharaoh’s chariot in battle. She was adopted into the Egyptian pantheon as a daughter of Re (or sometimes Ptah) and wife of the god Seth with whose fearsome and bellicose nature she could easily be equated. According to the fragmentary 19th-dynasty story of Astarte and the Sea, the goddess seemed to have been involved in thwarting the demands of the tyrannical sea god Yam, though the details of this myth are lost to us. While the sexual aspect of Astarte does not seem to have been as pronounced in Egyptian religion as in her Canaanite homeland, it was probably not entirely absent in her Egyptian mythology.
Pan: PAN was the god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. He wandered the hills and mountains of Arkadia playing his pan-pipes and chasing Nymphs. His unseen presence aroused feelings of panic in men passing through the remote, lonely places of the wilds.
Pan was depicted as a man with the horns, legs and tail of a goat, and with thick beard, snub nose and pointed ears. He often appears in the retinue of Dionysos alongside the other rustic gods. Greeks in the classical age associated his name with the word pan meaning "all". However, its true origin lies in an old Arkadian word for rustic.
Aleister Crowley was a controversial figure, but there is no doubt that he was extremely influential in the shaping of modern magic. Crowley’s major philosophical influence was through a liberation philosophy that focused on creating a powerful magical self, and his impact stemmed from his connection of themes of human evolution (the Aeon of Horus) with modernism (the development of the self through the will). He is also identified as playing a part in the creation of modern witchcraft as a nature religion, although how much he actually contributed is contested. His poem, ‘Hymn to Pan’, written in 1929, displays classical themes combined with a focus on Nature:
Thrill with the lissome lust of the light,
O man! My man!
Come careering out of the night
Of Pan! Io Pan!
Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea
From Sicily and from Arcady!
Roaming at Bacchus, with fauns and pards
And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards,
On a milk white ass, come over the sea
To me, To me,
Come with Apollo in bridal dress
(Shepherdess and pythoness)
Come with Artemis, silken shod,
And wash thy white thigh, beautiful God,
In the moon of the woods, on the
marble mount,
The dimpled dawn of the amber fount!
Dip the purple of passionate prayer
In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare,
The soul that startles in eyes of blue
To watch thy wantonness weeping through
The tangled grove, the gnarl’d bole
Of the living tree that is spirit and soul
And body and brain – come over the sea,
(Io Pan! Io Pan!)
Devil or God, to me, to me,
My man! My man!
‘Light and colour are expressively used to indicate shifts in consciousness. Shiva changes colour several times, becoming purple, green and pink as he contains all colours within himself. A red shot of him laughing is followed by a white image in the lotus pose of calm contemplation.’ (The Occult: A Torch for Lucifer, page 68-72 by Anna Powell)
Shiva: is referred to as 'the good one' or the 'auspicious one'. Shiva - Rudra is considered to be the destroyer of evil and sorrow. Shiva - Shankara is the doer of good. Shiva is 'tri netra' or three eyed, and is 'neela kantha' - blue necked (having consumed poison to save the world from destruction. Shiva - Nataraja is the Divine Cosmic Dancer. Shiva - Ardhanareeswara is both man and woman. S/he is both static and dynamic and is both creator and destroyer. S/he is the oldest and the youngest, s/he is the eternal youth as well as the infant. S/he is the source of fertility in all living beings. S/he has gentle as well as fierce forms. Shiva is the greatest of denouncers as well as the ideal lover. S/he destroys evil and protects good. S/he bestows prosperity on worshipers although s/he is austere. S/he is omnipresent and resides in everyone as pure consciousness.
Cesare the Somnambulist: In the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Cesare’s character is a peaceful sleepwalker who is forced to carry out the mad whims of his ‘master’ Caligari.
‘The mystical artist Marjorie Cameron, married to Jack Parsons, played the imperious Scarlet Woman. Against a dark ground, in black and white robe, her flaming red hair is thrown into relief, but a later shot shows her pallid, bleached out by the white light of ecstasy.
The Scarlet Woman: ‘Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men.’
‘Black and white squares recall the floor of Solomon’s temple reproduced in ritual context. The contrasting elemental colours of blue and red are used for the eye in the triangle, a Masonic symbol of God’s all-seeing unity. Fire and flame imagery increases, to apocalyptic effect, with the brassy sheen of infernal fires as the damned fall into an abyss. A thirteen-petalled sunflower in mandala form has golden petals round a vermilion centre. Golden light emanates from Shiva’s hand in benediction. The predominance of fire at the end signals Anger’s belief that the declining Piscean Age had to be destroyed before the New Aeon of Horus could be born. The lavish costumes, elaborate sets and gorgeously jeweled colours create the effect of stasis and a decadence turned in upon itself and drained of energy…’ (The Occult: A Torch for Lucifer, page 72-73 by Anna Powell in Moonchild: the Films of Kenneth Anger)
Invocation of My Demon Brother:
‘The film as it now stands is based on fragments of a larger-scale unfinished work, a template from which Lucifer Rising was also produced. Its fragmentary nature is, however, its chief source of strength in mounting Anger’s ‘attack on the sensorium’. Viewers find this the most difficult of the Magick Lantern films. This is due to the rapid editing of confusing images, rarely on screen long enough to make meaning from them. Its visual flow is minimal, and for Tony Rayns “every cut hurts”. The demands of watching are compounded by the endless repetition of a monotonously abrasive riff on the moog soundtrack. Sitney connects the chaos to the lack of a centre of gravity, so that every image has an equal weight and “the burden of synthesis falls upon the viewer.” (Moonchild: The Films of Kenneth Anger / The Occult: A Torch for Lucifer, page 84 by Anna Powell)
‘"Invocation of my Demon Brother", a short, intense, ritualistic film with a jagged, rough, almost naive synthesizer soundtrack by Mick Jagger that had quite a disturbing effect…’ http://victorian.fortunecity.com/updike/723/page.html
It’s important to note that Bob Moog (rhymes with Vogue) saw musical instruments and computers quite literally as extensions of the human body and consciousness. Furthermore, he saw the Moog synthesizer as an instrument to be used as a means for communing with beings in outer-space; he took his beliefs very seriously up until his death and probably beyond. Perhaps he continues to communicate through his instruments from the space that is between here and outer-space.
‘New techniques for undermining conscious control are introduced. The most striking of these is Vietnam footage of a helicopter setting down a troop of Marines…The footage is intended to heighten the viewer’s anxiety…As the ritual progresses, Sitney notes the increase of abstraction and anamorphosis. This is the first use in Anger’s work of an anamorphic lens for the kaleidoscope effect of multiplying an image. This was a common technique to connote psychedelic states in the late 1960’s. A more innovative effect is the ball of light which rushes downstairs after a ragged procession of musicians to announce “Zap-You’re pregnant-That’s witchcraft!” This enigmatic message could either imply the natural miracle of birth or the gestation of the Demon Brother in a mortal mother.’
The 1960s saw the concentrated power of youth as it culminated in Berkeley in the form of anti-war demonstrations. This open opposition to the authoritative control of government spread like wild-fire across the country fueling college town after college town with an intense desire to end America’s abuses against Vietnam. Baffled adults watched in utter confusion as their children took to the streets in mass. Kenneth Anger himself got involved in the movement; in October 1967 Anger tried to ‘exorcize’ the Pentagon while Allen Ginsberg tried to ‘levitate’ it and Abby Hoffman, at the advice of Hopi Indian shaman Rolling Thunder, counted heads to make sure he had enough people to completely encircle the Pentagon. All of this in an attempt to end the vicious war against the people of Vietnam.
Powell points out that the announcement “Zap-You’re Pregnant-That’s witchcraft!” could either imply the natural miracle of birth or the gestation of the Demon Brother in a mortal mother. I prefer to think of the Demon Brother from an alchemical perspective. In Alchemy there rests the belief and subsequent desire for the evolution of not just Nature and man, but of the entire Universe; the true Alchemist believes himself, and all of humankind, to be a conduit for this change or evolution. This change happens naturally over time or the change can be helped along a bit by the adept. When I read about the ‘Demon Brother’ as realized in Anger’s films I think less of a ‘Guardian Angel’ and more of the idealized or evolved self brought on by either natural maturation or quickened through ritual as would be the case of the Demon Brother portrayed in Anger’s films. And so the ‘gestation’ of knowledge of the self brings about the inevitable ‘Birth’ of the new self inspired by erudition of the esoteric belief systems of the ancients.
‘The filmmaker himself returns to the screen in his most substantial role of Magus in a ritual to invoke the Demon Brother in “the shadowing forth of Our Lord Lucifer, as the Powers of Darkness gather at a midnight mass”. Anger’s billowing robe acts as a screen for flickering movie images of apocalyptic scenes. For a magickian, the robe symbolizes the aura. He gyrates widdershins (counter-clockwise) around the solar swastika as “Swirling Spiral Force” to enable the Bringer of Light to break through. In the Kabbalah, the swastika is an emblem of continuous spirit. Its symbolic use here as a flag is, however, difficult to dissociate from its historical deployment in the Nazi version of black magic…To reinforce the spell, Hell’s Angels and hippies dancing wildly at a festival are superimposed, along with Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan in San Francisco. The potentially magickal effect of rock music and drugs on young people is underlined. Recognisable people are used in the film to intensify its impact on the spectator. Crowley’s influence is shown in a still of Anger reading Moonchild. His system is expanded here by the inclusion of LaVey. Jagger, Faithfull and members of the Stones are featured at the Hyde Park memorial concert for Brian Jones. Bobby Beausoleil plays Lucifer and his psychedelic band, The Magick Powerhouse of Oz, is featured. As with Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Anger’s own circle are used to personify aspects of his magick.’ (The Occult: A Torch For Lucifer, page 87-88 by Anna Powell)
‘It is even possible to work in reverse (counter-clockwise) rotation, which is known as the Death Rotation. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus (500 B.C.) described the process thus: “Fire lives the death of Earth, and air lives the death of Fire; water lives the death of Air, and Earth lives the death of water.” In his book Purifications, Empedocles uses the reverse rotation to cleanse the soul of broken promises, crimes against humanity, and other bad karma.’ (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 55 by Dennis William Hauck)
In the 1960s individuals like Charles Manson and groups like the Process saw bikers and their gangs as ‘the shock troops of the coming Armageddon’. Manson himself tried to [ingratiate] himself with a few bike gangs like the Straight Satans, Satan Slaves, and the more appropriately named Jokers Out of Hell. These gangs are a far cry from the bikers that we love and lament in Scorpio Rising.
We saw Marianne Faithfull in all of her hip-ness in the biker film ‘Girl On a Motorcycle’ (aka Naked Under Leather). Faithfull portrays a beautiful wife who sneaks out of bed and away from her husband to embark on a two wheeled cross-country excursion. She strips out of her delicate night gown and wifely duties, pulls on her second skin/alter ego, a leather jumpsuit and black leather boots with chrome buckles, and then rides off into the darkness of night.
Bikes were Big…
The Rolling Stones and their gorgeous side-kicks Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithful stoked the Pagan fire of desire most notably with Jagger and Richards’ song ‘Sympathy For The Devil’. The song was supposedly inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’ (1967) which was given to Jagger by Marianne Faithfull. Jagger’s hymn to Satan then inspired Jean-Luc Godard’s film ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ also known as ‘One Plus One’ which featured black militants, news reports about the ‘revolution’, and a recitation from Mein Kampf. The inclusion of these rock and roll raconteurs in ‘Invocation’ is more than appropriate given the times and their seeming proclivity for walking the left-hand path. Anger was certainly not alone in his love for Lucifer.
‘The film’s abrasive impact on the spectator merits Anger’s description of it as a “burn”. If we are prepared to go with it, our usual mode of cognition is consigned to the flames. Anger defines his performance of the ritual, The Equinox of the Gods, at the Straight Theater on Haight Sreet, San Francisco on September 21st, 1967, as belonging to “the last blast of Haight consciousness”.’ (The Occult: A Torch For Lucifer, page 91 by Anna Powell)
The Ritualization of Drug Use:
Anger uses drugs in a ritualistic manner in three of his films beginning with Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Eucharist, the Scarlet Woman’s big fat joint, Crowley’s opium pipe, Coleridege’s poem Kubla Khan, narcotic wine and powders), Scorpio Rising (Crystal Meth), Invocation of my Demon Brother (Marijuana). The esoteric, erotically charged, ecstatic foundation on which the above films are built produce an induction to altered states of consciousness. The films are so effective.
The ritualized use of drugs pervaded(s) the lives of traditional cultures. Psychoactive plants held within them deep value, mysteries and meaning for the members of these societies; the ‘witch doctor’ who cures the sick, the shamanic priest who communicates with the spirits beyond, and the drugs use in the initiation of youth in their coming-of-age-rites. Mind altercation is a part of the ethos within these cultures in the same way as Rx drugs have become a socially acceptable aspect of life in Western culture.
It is crucial, yet difficult for the Western mind, to understand that hallucinogenic drugs as used within the context of shamanic principles are never used for recreational purposes. Rather, the drug is always used in the context of ceremony. The ritual begins with the harvesting of the plant, roots or herbs; it continues through the process of preparing the matter for ingestion and continues still through the administration of the finished product. ‘The use of mind altering drugs as religious sacraments was not restricted to a particular time and place but characterized nearly every society on the planet (with the possible exception of certain Eskimo and Polynesian communities)’. (Acid Dreams, page 65 by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain)
For the Aztecs there was peyote and ololiuqui, a small lentil like seed containing lysergic acid; the Aborigines of Australia chewed pituri, a desert shrub; the natives of upper Amazon had yage, the telepathic vine. Certain scholars believe that the fabled Soma of the ancient Vedic religion in Northern India was actually the fly agaric mushroom, and there is strong evidence that ergot, from which LSD is derived, was the mysterious kykeon used for over two thousand years by the ancient Greeks in the annual Eleusinian Mysteries…
For thousands of years the shaman has journeyed ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ in the ecstatic trance; the trance can be induced in several ways some of which include deprivation of food or the senses, rhythmic drumming, and often times by the use of psychoactive drugs. ‘The initiate must visit the underworld where the shaman will undergo dismemberment. The initiate must ‘die’ in everyday reality and enter a special relationship with spirit beings, a process whereby knowledge and teachings about the spirit world are communicated’
The barbaric suppression of European witchcraft by the Holy Inquisition paralleled attempts to eradicate indigenous drug use among the colonized natives of the New World. The Spanish outlawed Peyote and coca leaves in the Americas, and the British later tried to banish kava use in Tahiti. Such proclamations were part of an imperialist effort to impose a new social order that stigmatized the psychedelic experience as a form of madness or possession by evil spirits.
‘It wasn’t until the late 18th century that industrial civilization produced its own “devil’s advocate,” which spoke in a passionate and lyrical voice. The romantic rebellion signified “a return of the repressed” as drugs were embraced by the visionary poets and artists who lived as outcasts in their own society. Laudanum, a tincture of opium, catalyzed the literary talents of Coleridge, Poe, Swinburne, De Quincy, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, while the best known French writers, including Baudelaire, de Nerval, and Victor Hugo, gathered at Le Club des Haschischins, a proto-bohemian enclave in Paris founded by Theophile Gautier in 1844.’ (Acid Dreams)
For the visionary poets modern society was the bummer, and they often viewed the drug experience as a tortured means to a fuller existence, to a life more innately human. It was with the hope of alleviating his own tortured mental condition that Antonin Artaud made an international trek in the 1930s to participate in the peyote ritual of the Tarahumara Indians in the Mexican highlands. Artuad did not take such a risky journey as a tourist or an anthropologist but as someone who wished to be healed, as a spiritual exile seeking to regain “a Truth which the world of Europe is losing.” The desperate Frenchman experienced a monumental bummer-“the cataclysm which was my body…this dislocated assemblage, this piece of damaged geology.” Yet somehow, despite the nightmare visions and the somatic discomfort, he managed to scratch out a perception of the Infinite. “Once one has experienced a visionary state of mind,” Artaud wrote in the Peyote Dance, “one can no longer confuse the lie with truth. One has seen where one comes from and who one is, and no longer doubts what one is. There is no emotion or external influence that can divert one from this reality.”
“…one can no longer confuse the lie with truth.” This is a profound statement; it then comes as no surprise that the authoritative, power-hungry and exceedingly greedy would rather keep the truth thickly veiled behind distraction. Perhaps this is the larger purpose of the so-called ‘War on Drugs’.
And the main stream film industry is all about distraction often times in the form of propaganda…
Kenneth Anger puts it in your face. One can’t help but feel the extraordinary insight and power of the individual’s attempt at something that moves far beyond our culture as it stands in all of its dismal glory. The façade has been cracked and it seems that it may not take more than a slight shove before it comes crashing down.
“Primitive man,” Wrote Huxley in 1931, “explored the pharmacological avenues of escape from the world with astounding thoroughness…to Huxley, the urge for transcendence and visionary experience was nothing less than a biological imperative. “Always and everywhere,” he asserted, “human beings have felt the radical inadequacy of being their insulated selves and not something else, something wider, something in the Wordsworthian phrase, ‘far more deeply interfused.’…I live, yet not I, but wine or opium or peyotyl or hashish liveth in me. To go beyond the insulated self is such a liberation that, even when self transcendence is through nausea into frenzy, through cramps into hallucinations and coma, the drug induced experience has been regarded by primitives and even by the highly civilized as intrinsically divine.” Continue (ACID DREAMS page 67)
Every Man and Woman is a Star:
Kenneth Anger quotes Aleister Crowley in his book Hollywood Babylon, ‘Every man and every woman is a star’ The double entendre as quoted in Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon can be taken as a nod to Hollywood film stars and the fact that most of us walk around feeling like we are at the center of our own quasi-universe (ego) where we write, produce and direct the story that is our life; or the quote can be taken quite literally, ‘Like Pythagoras before him, Paracelsus believed the Quintessence is what the stars are made of and that within every living thing there exists a hidden star that was that thing’s Quintessence. Indeed, one of the symbols for the Quintessence is the star’. (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 55-56 by Dennis William Hauck)
‘…The final step in the Great Work (Alchemy) is to redeem matter itself, to manifest the light of consciousness in a whole new embodiment, what the great Alchemist Paracelsus called the Star (or Astral) Body. The Star Child has been created through the purification and union of the universal forces within us, or as the alchemists would put it, through the “fusion of the planets.”’ (Sorcerer’s Stone: A Beginners Guide to Alchemy, by Dennis William Hauck, page 108)… ‘Alchemists believed that if you could not create this perfected body (Astral Body) during your lifetime, you were destined to be reabsorbed into the cosmos and recycled until you got it right.’ (page 238)
The essence of Thelema is contained within the axiom "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and its rejoinder "Love is the law, love under will", and the statement "Every man and every woman is a star". Thus find your true will and do it under the constraints of the law, whose nature is love. Thelema recognizes the divine potential in everyone - we are all stars in the body of Nuit (the Stellar Goddess) containing the divine spark within us. This again is found in the Book of the Law "Every man and every woman is a star".
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:8ScxLMYBrd4J:www.avalonia.co.uk/magick/thelema.htm+every+man+and+every+woman+is+a+star+aleister+crowley&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=us
‘Develop the Body of Light until it is just as real to you as your other body, teach it to travel to any desired symbol, and enable it to perform all necessary rites and invocations. In short, educate it…You may also try “Rising on the Planes.” With a little practice, especially if you have a good guru, you ought to be able to slip in and out of your Astral Body as easily as you slip in and out of a dressing gown.’ (Magick Book Four-Liber Aba, Aleister Crowley)
In Alchemy, the Pentagram (star within a circle) is thought to represent the body of humankind.
To better understand the Quintessence it is helpful to take a look at Western Alchemy’s Eastern counterparts, ‘In Chinese Alchemy, the fifth element is Wood, which is a product of the plant kingdom and things that grow. In Taoist Alchemy, the Quintessence is known as Chi, an unseen energy that flows through the body and can be accumulated and directed in moving meditations such as performed in Tai Chi and Chi Kung. In Tantric Alchemy, the quintessence is the kundalini sexual energy coiled like a sleeping serpent at the base of the spine. In Hindu Alchemy, the Quintessence is the spirit of breath known in Sanskrit as prana. In all of these traditions, both East and West, there is only one thing that the Quintessence can be. It is the life force itself.’ (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 56-57 by Dennis William Hauck)
Egyptian astronomical texts and representations mention many gods and goddesses of the night sky-some representing planets as well as astral bodies-which are conveniently called star deities. Most important of these were the “Imperishable Ones” representing the Northern circumpolar stars which were visible each night…These constant stars symbolized the idea of eternal survival for the Egyptians and it seems to have been the goal of early kings to join their numbers in the afterlife…so that the deceased king is said to be the morning star…The brightest object in the night sky after the moon, the planet Venus (the ‘morning star’) was viewed even from early times as an important deity; and from at least the Middle Kingdom the Egyptians recognized five of the planets which they called ‘stars that know no rest’ and which were represented as Gods who sailed across the heavens in their own barques. These were Mercury (Sebegu, perhaps a form of Seth), Venus (‘the one who crosses’ or ‘god of the morning’), Mars (‘Horus of the horizon’ or ‘Horus the red’), Jupiter (‘Horus who limits the two lands’), and Saturn (‘Horus bull of the heavens’).
Crowley’s Nuit (Stellar Goddess) may be seen as the Egyptian Goddess Nut who was primarily perceived as the, ‘personification of the vault of the heavens, though her character included many different aspects within this role…Nut thus fulfilled an important cosmogonic role-she was not only the great sky whose ‘laughter’ was the thunder, and whose tears were the rain, but she was also the ‘mother’ of the heavenly bodies who were believed to enter her mouth and emerge again from her womb each day. The sun was thus said to travel through the body of the Goddess during the night hours and the stars traveled through her during the day…fearing the usurpation of his own position, the sun god placed a curse on the sky Goddess stopping her giving birth on any day of the 360-day year. The God Hermes (Thoth) came to Nut’s aid, however, and won five extra days for the year enabling the Goddess to bear her children…Nut also became inextricably associated with the concept of resurrection in Egyptian funerary beliefs, and the dead were believed to become stars in the body of the Goddess. According to Heliopolitan (Greek) theology Nut united with her brother Geb, the earth god, to produce Osiris and those deities associated with him in the great mythic cycle of resurrection. (The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, page 160-161, by Richard H Wilkinson)
The Pentads: ‘Although not a common numerical grouping of deities, pentads are occasionally found in Egyptian mythology. The five ‘epagomenal’ days added at the end of the Egyptian year to raise the total of days from 360…to 365 were assigned as the ‘birthdays’ of the deities Osiris, Isis, Horus, Seth and Nephthys, making a distinct group of these related deities. In the Hermopolitan tradition the title ‘Great of Five’ was also applied to the God Thoth (Hermes)’ (The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, page 77 by Richard H. Wilkinson)
Thoth (Hermes) has been mentioned throughout this text; it is important to point out the connection that runs through Alchemy and the above systems. Traditionally, Thoth is considered the first Alchemist; he lived in ancient Egypt when anthropomorphic Gods and Goddesses lived side by side with humankind sharing their knowledge with ancient peoples, ‘Thoth (Tehuti, which is his most ancient name) was part of a “group of nine” who arrived in Egypt with an advanced spiritual technology that enabled them to manipulate matter.
Thoth was an intermediary between the godlike beings and the humans of the time. He was known as a scribe, the inventor of the sacred language of hieroglyphics (literally, “Holy Writing”)…His symbol was a pair of serpents twisted around a central staff (the caduceus). Since snakes represent the life force in most ancient cultures, the caduceus became the symbol of healing and medicine. There is a remarkable similarity between Thoth’s caduceus and the structure of the DNA molecule, the double helix of proteins that is the blue-print of all life. Perhaps this further explains his odd association with baboons. Could Thoth have manipulated the genetic material of baboons or apes to speed up the evolution of mankind? Such an act would certainly be in line with his role as the first Alchemist.’ (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 16-17 by Dennis William Hauck)
Lucifer Rising:
A film that took Anger longer than ten years to complete, Lucifer Rising is my personal favorite out of the Magick Lantern Cycle; and, for reasons I can’t quite comprehend, it is Anger’s least talked about film, ‘Lucifer Rising incorporates a number of scenes in which the iconography of demons is visually transformed by editing which unambiguously associates what we initially take to be ominous images with ceremonial headgear, the forces of nature, and other things that we do not associate with evil. Anger's Lucifer has followers who are pagan conjurers, but they are not Satanists in the malignant sense that name usually confers.’ (Robert Haller, “Kenneth Anger” http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/1162/HCAngerBio_html.html )
...Haller’s elucidation on the subject of Pagan conjurers as not being ‘Satanists in the malignant sense that name usually confers’ deserves a bit more attention; it is crucial to understand that Paganism and Satanism are totally disparate practices. Many Christians would have us throw all non-Christian practices into the same ‘Satan Loving’ category which has had nothing but disastrous effects on our culture’s psyche and the environment. And with the acceptance of Satan (Lucifer) as he is represented by Christian mythology is the automatic acceptance of a Christian God.
‘The film Lucifer Rising is my answer to Scorpio Rising -- which was
a death mirror held up to American Culture. And for my own sake
I had to make an answer to it even though I still see plenty of
thanatic elements at work in America; it's a film about the Love
generation, but seen in depth -- like in the fourth dimension. And I
call it a love vision, and it’s about love --the violence as well as the
tenderness...I began shooting with the spring equinox. I'm type
casting in my film, and one thing I've found is that since my film is
about demons -- but love demons -- I have to work fairly fast
because they tend to come and go...A demon is just a convenient
way of labeling a force..." (Kenneth Anger quoted in Robert Haller’s “Kenneth Anger”) http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/1162/HCAngerBio_html.html )
‘“Lucifer,” writes Kenneth Anger, “is the patron saint of the visual arts. Color, form, all these are the work of Lucifer.” It was Anger who first understood that film, properly used and respected, is a spiritual form, a magical ceremony involving the display of trapped light. We often forget that the word “media” is the plural of the word “medium”, the most common word for a channeler of spirits. The filmmaker is an artist working in light, his camera a ceremonial instrument of invocation, the cinematograph his magical sceptre. And the lord of light of course, is Lucifer.” (Moonchild the Films of Kenneth Anger, Introduction: Force and Fire, page 6 by Mikita Brottman)
The following is an article pulled from the internet regarding the Christian’s adoption of Lucifer (light) as Satan (darkness):
The word "Lucifer" in Isaiah 14:12 presents a minor problem to mainstream Christianity; and it becomes a much larger problem to Bible literalists… John J. Robinson in A Pilgrim's Path, pp. 47-48 explains:
"Lucifer makes his appearance in the fourteenth chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah, at the twelfth verse, and nowhere else: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"
The first problem is that Lucifer is a Latin name. So how did it find its way into a Hebrew manuscript, written before there was a Roman language? To find the answer, I consulted a scholar at the library of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. What Hebrew name, I asked, was Satan given in this chapter of Isaiah, which describes the angel who fell to become the ruler of hell?
The answer was a surprise. In the original Hebrew text, the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah is not about a fallen angel, but about a fallen Babylonian king, who during his lifetime had persecuted the children of Israel. It contains no mention of Satan, either by name or reference. The Hebrew scholar could only speculate that some early Christian scribes, writing in the Latin tongue used by the Church, had decided for themselves that they wanted the story to be about a fallen angel, a creature not even mentioned in the original Hebrew text, and to whom they gave the name "Lucifer."
Why Lucifer? In Roman astronomy, Lucifer was the name given to the morning star (the star we now know by another Roman name, Venus). The morning star appears in the heavens just before dawn, heralding the rising sun. The name derives from the Latin term lucem ferre, bringer, or bearer, of light." In the Hebrew text the expression used to describe the Babylonian king before his death is Helal, son of Shahar, which can best be translated as "Day star, son of the Dawn." The name evokes the golden glitter of a proud king's dress and court (much as his personal splendor earned for King Louis XIV of France the appellation, "The Sun King").
The scholars authorized by ... King James I to translate the Bible into current English did not use the original Hebrew texts, but used versions translated ... largely by St. Jerome in the fourth century. Jerome had mistranslated the Hebraic metaphor, "Day star, son of the Dawn," as "Lucifer," and over the centuries a metamorphosis took place. Lucifer the morning star became a disobedient angel, cast out of heaven to rule eternally in hell. Theologians, writers, and poets interwove the myth with the doctrine of the Fall, and in Christian tradition Lucifer is now the same as Satan, the Devil, and --- ironically --- the Prince of Darkness.
So "Lucifer" is nothing more than an ancient Latin name for the morning star, the bringer of light. That can be confusing for Christians who identify Christ himself as the morning star, a term used as a central theme in many Christian sermons. Jesus refers to himself as the morning star in Revelation 22:16: "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star."
And so there are those who do not read beyond the King James version of the Bible, who say 'Lucifer is Satan: so says the Word of God'...."
Henry Neufeld (a Christian who comments on Biblical sticky issues) went on to say,
"this passage is often related to Satan, and a similar thought is expressed in Luke 10:18 by Jesus, that was not its first meaning. It's primary meaning is given in Isaiah 14:4 which says that when Israel is restored they will "take up this taunt against the king of Babylon . . ." Verse 12 is a part of this taunt song. This passage refers first to the fall of that earthly king...
How does the confusion in translating this verse arise? The Hebrew of this passage reads: "heleyl, ben shachar" which can be literally translated "shining one, son of dawn." This phrase means, again literally, the planet Venus when it appears as a morning star. In the Septuagint, a 3rd century BC translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, it is translated as "heosphoros" which also means Venus as a morning star.
How did the translation "lucifer" arise? This word comes from Jerome's Latin Vulgate. Was Jerome in error? Not at all. In Latin at the time, "lucifer" actually meant Venus as a morning star. Isaiah is using this metaphor for a bright light, though not the greatest light to illustrate the apparent power of the Babylonian king which then faded."
Therefore, Lucifer wasn't equated with Satan until after Jerome. Jerome wasn't in error. Later Christians were incorrect in equating "Lucifer" with "Satan".
Egyptian Cosmology & Lucifer Rising:
‘Although it maintains a contemporary focus, Lucifer Rising is also a return to ancient mythology. It still uses dynamic clashes, but also features the alchemical “union of irreconcilables”, connecting the elemental binaries of sun and moon, water and fire. Images of nature’s power predominate, along with the ruins of ancient Egypt and visions of its re-animated gods…The film opens with the natural magic of volcanic eruptions and lava flows, manifesting the element of fire. Fire joins with sea, land and sky in an elemental conjunction to prepare for Lucifer’s rise. The rising mud and the hatching egg of the crocodile suggest the Nile’s fertility before Horus is born.’ (The Occult: A Torch For Lucifer, page 92-93 by Anna Powell)
‘The film opens with the natural magic of volcanic eruptions and lava flows, manifesting the element of fire.’ The volcano represents far more than the Fire element. The volcano is the primordial and chaotic beginnings of life through the forces of destruction. It has been posited that the extinction of the dinosaurs was due to volcanic force. Fire is life through destruction.
‘The rising mud…’ Our word ‘Alchemy’ comes from the Arabian phrase “al-khemia,” which literally means “from the black soil of the Nile Delta.” Significantly, Egyptian Alchemists had used the term “khem” to refer to the First Matter or life force, which they believed was carried by the fertile, black dirt in the delta.
‘…the hatching egg of the crocodile suggests the Nile’s fertility before Horus is born.’ The crocodile was one of Egypt’s most dangerous animals and it is not difficult to see why the creature held an impressive degree of religious and mythological status…
‘In the form of Horakhty, Horus may appear as a falcon or even as a falcon-headed crocodile…’ (The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, page 202 by Richard H. Wilkinson)
Ammut: The Ammut was a composite mythical creature whose head- and therefore most essential aspect- places her with crocodile deities. Her name meant ‘female devourer’ or more fully, ‘female devourer of the dead’ In this role, as an underworld deity, she was also called ‘great of death’ and ‘eater of hearts’…
Sobek: was venerated from at least the Old Kingdom times, and while the name of the god means simply ‘crocodile’, he was regarded as a powerful deity with several important associations. In the pyramid texts he is said to be the son of Neith and called the ‘raging one’ who ‘takes women from their husbands whenever he wishes according to his desire’ but who also makes green the herbage of the fields and river banks-tying him to both procreative and vegetative fertility. He was, quite naturally a god of water (it was said that the Nile issued from his sweat) and of areas such as marshes and riverbanks…He was linked with the cults of certain other gods, such as Amun, Osiris and especially that of the sun god in the form of Sobek-Re. (The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, page 218-219 by Richard H. Wilkinson)
The crocodile deities represent another example of death and / or destruction and life / fertility; death as forbearance to life, and the intrinsic duality of nature.
‘Visual Rhymes are a key structural element in the overall grand design. Among these we connect the sun in the sky and a volcano on earth; the opening eye of a crocodile and a mud bubble; an ankh carved in stone and the implement in the hand of Isis.’ (The Occult: A Torch For Lucifer, pages93-95 by Anna Powell)
The origin of the glyph for copper and Venus is the symbol for the life force used by the Egyptians. Known as the ankh, it depicts a circle over a cross, denoting the emergence of the solar archetype from the cross of the elements or the triumph of spirit (life force) over matter. Our word “veneration” literally means to “pay homage to Venus.” Venus is the brightest star in the sky and appears as both the ‘evening star’ and the ‘morning star’ Venus is a goddess of both birth and death-the Goddess of Generation involved in the complete cycle of being…The religion of Venus, just as in the Hermetic tradition of Alchemy, promised a sacred marriage (the Conjunction) through which the initiate could escape the cycle of rebirth and be reborn on a whole new level of reality. Death was thus seen as a transformative event and became associated with ecstatic sexual climax. (Sorcerer’s Stone, page 92-93 by Dennis William Hauck)
‘The juxtaposition of paired opposites is a portentous conjunction. Isis is paired with her consort, Osiris, then with her opposite, Lunar Lilith.’ (The Occult: A Torch For Lucifer, page 95 by Anna Powell)
Nut and Geb gave birth to Osiris and to Isis, and their brother Seth and sister Nephthys. Osiris became the first King of Egypt and the creator of civilization, and his sister-wife Isis ruled in his absence. However their brother Seth was jealous and conspired to kill Osiris. He constructed a chest and tricked Osiris into lying inside it, whereupon the lid was nailed shut and it was thrown into the Nile. The chest floated to the coast of Byblos and lodged itself in the branches of a tree, which grew up around it and enclosed it. The tree was so beautiful that the king and queen of Byblos had it made for their palace.
Isis was stricken with grief and started to search for the chest. Disguising her divinity she waited by a well in the city of Byblos. She befriended some of Queen Astarte’s maidens and braided and perfumed their hair. When the maiden returned to the palace the queen sent for the person who had created such a wonderful fragrance, and made her the nurse to her child. Isis gave the child her finger to suck instead of her breast and each night placed him in a fire to remove all his mortality. Meanwhile she transformed herself into a swallow and flew around the pillar. One night Astarte entered the room and was horrified to see her son lying in the fire. At this, Isis revealed her true identity and asked to be given the pillar. The king and queen agreed.
Taking the chest containing the body of Osiris, Isis set out for Egypt. While she was in the boat she took the form of a kite, hovered over her husband and conceived their sun Horus. Then she hid the chest and went to Buto to raise her child. However, Seth discovered the chest one night while he was out hunting; he tore the body into 14 pieces and scattered them around the country. When Isis discovered what Seth had done she searched for the pieces, aided by their sister Nephthys and her son, the jackal headed Anubis. Isis found every part of Osiris’s body except his penis, for which she made a replica. When she fanned the reassembled body with her wings Osiris came to life again, to become the ruler of Eternity judging the souls of the dead.
This myth shows the interconnections between the human world, the realm of the Gods and nature. Osiris dies with the parched land, the withering grain, the waning moon and all that is destructive. He returns to life in the rising waters of the Nile, the growing grain, the waxing moon and the affirmative nature of human beings. Osiris is brought to life by Isis. The creative force of Osiris, as the flooding of the Nile, and Isis, as the earth, is interrupted by the necessary element of death and destruction, represented by Seth: from death comes life, and in life there is death. Both are part of the same cosmic unity. This primal Egyptian myth demonstrates the human connection with both the natural world and the spiritual realm of the gods; all are interlinked in the magical process of life and death.
‘Isis is paired with her consort, Osiris, then with her opposite, Lunar Lilith.’
Lilith (Marianne Faithfull): Many other Goddesses, as well as a Great Mother Goddess, are venerated. Some, such as Lilith, embody the dark and death as well as more obvious life-giving and nurturing qualities. Lilith, a hybrid bird woman, was Adam’s first wife, but she refused to lie beneath him, and, uttering the magical name of God, flew away to the wilderness where she gave birth to demons. God sent three angels to bring her back to Eden, but she refused to return. Lilith is perhaps the source of ideas about strix, striga, or striges, the owl like creatures in classical and European folklore, and later the prototypes of the diabolical witch a stereotype created and fostered by the established Christian Church. She is considered by some to be the original feminist.
The visceral beauty and intensity as seen through the eyes of a visionary can not be underestimated. Anger is not the first or only artist to recognize magical art as catalyst for change, but he is unique in his mastery of his choice of medium. One should also keep in mind that Anger is the ultimate sub- cultural sponge soaking up the ideology, fashions, and music of the youth’s zeitgeist amalgamating his system of beliefs with theirs. During the making of Scorpio Rising he was at least 33 years of age and by the time he began Invocation of My Demon Brother he was around 40 years of age. Anger’s Lucifer in Invocation of My Demon Brother, Bobby Beausoleil, was a mere 21 years old. Bobby was a beautiful, blue eyed misguided baby. Mick Jagger was in his mid-twenties and Marianne Faithfull was in her early twenties.
Kenneth Anger as 'Godfather of Punk Rock':
Anger has been given the lofty title of ‘Godfather of Punk’ (probably because Malcolm Mclaren played one of his favorite films, Scorpio Rising, at the Sex Pistols 1976 show The Screen on the Green) is a bit of an overextension as the origins of punk are well rooted in the New York scene.
The Punk Rock movement didn’t begin with the Sex Pistols or Scorpio Rising’s supposed influence on Vivienne Westwood / Malcolm McLaren’s choice of fashion for their shop Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die (this shop carried biker wear). The shop was Too Fast Too Live in ’73 (three years before the Sex Pistol’s show at Screen on the Green and about two years before the Sex Pistols had been created); it went through its transformation, becoming Sex in ’74. Sex carried Westwood’s iconic bondage regalia, designs she appropriated from fetish mags and bondage catalogues. The Sex Pistols played their first show November 5, 1975. The opening of Sex preceded the birth of the Sex Pistols.
The origins of punk reach back to the Beats (Burroughs has been referred to as the ‘Grandfather of Punk’) and then to the Warholian 60s touching down with Warhol’s Factory and The Velvet Underground. Iggy Pop, The New York Dolls, Patti Smith and many others among the New York scene can be credited with the birth of Punk Rock. Not Malcolm McLaren’s contrivance.
Malcolm McLaren was an infamous culture vulture; he modeled the Pistols after The New York Dolls (in attitude, not style) and he modeled himself and his punk posse after Andy Warhol and his Factory (guess who played the part of Warhol). McLaren scavenged and devoured the New York subculture regurgitating his version of the Warholian Factory which very much included The Velvet Underground and their ‘Fuck You, We Hate Everything’ attitude.
The Factory had already adopted the leather jackets, black t-shirts, jeans, and speed as their uniform of choice. Leather, collars and chains had already been a part of the look among many of the New York pre-punk and punk bands. And Punks have never looked like bikers. Furthermore, a heavy dose of rebellion is the key ingredient to every sub-cultural movement dating back centuries. Giving Anger credit for rebellion is akin to giving God credit for Creation, a perpetuation of myth.
Anger’s book title Hollywood Babylon may have influenced the Misfits song title ‘Hollywood Babylon’, but none of the aforementioned would put Anger in the position of having influenced the movement itself.
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