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‘Songs of the Witch Woman’: Exclusive footage of Marjorie Cameron reading ‘Anatomy of Madness’
01.13.2015
12:56 pm
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MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles has extended their Marjorie Cameron exhibit by a week—it’s closing now on the 18th—so if you’re in town and haven’t seen the show, you still have a chance to catch it. In order to bring attention to these extra dates, MOCAtv‘s director Emma Reeves has kindly offered Dangerous Minds readers this exclusive glimpse at some never before seen footage of the artist/occultist reading poetry at the Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood in 1989.

The show’s catalog is titled Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman and it’s quite worth owning if you like this sort of thing.

Via MOCAtv:

Prior to “Cameron: Songs For The Witch Woman,” October 11, 2014–January 18, 2015 at MOCA Pacific Design Center, the largest survey of Marjorie Cameron’s artwork was “The Pearl of Reprisal,” a retrospective at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 1989. The exhibition spanned thirty years, from the notorious Untitled “Peyote Vision” (1955) to Pluto Transiting the Twelfth House (1978-1986), pen and ink drawings that lent insight to the artist’s psychic state at the time.

Before the opening reception, Hedy Sontag introduced a program titled “An Evening With Cameron: The Pearl of Reprisal.” Sontag screened two films that feature Cameron: Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) and Curtis Harrington’s lyrical documentary The Wormwood Star (1955). After the screening, Cameron emerged barefoot to give a dramatic reading of her poetry by candlelight. Pleasure Dome cast members Samson De Brier and Paul Mathison were among those in attendance.

The reading, which was art directed by Sontag, evokes Cameron in her Topanga Canyon studio, deep in thought as she detaches from the lived world and navigates the subconscious. A prolific writer who shared her work with friends, Cameron was private when inspiration struck. She was known to write in her notebook in social settings, fervently and silently; she forbade visitors to her studio, a sanctum where art-making and writing mingled with astrology and occult ritual.

Though the dates of these journal entries and poems are not known, in their language of mourning and invocation, and use of sacred and Romantic imagery, they are of a piece with the notebooks Cameron kept after the death of Jack Parsons in 1952, as well as the verses she recites in The Wormwood Star, which describe the birth of a spiritual child born of psychic union with Parsons. Notably, Cameron reads prose from “Anatomy of Madness” [5:39], a mixed-media folio included in the exhibition and on view at MOCA. First published in Wallace Berman’s Semina 1 (1956), the text recounts a life cycle of death, rebirth, metamorphosis, and finally, a transcendent spiritual breakthrough.

This never before seen footage, courtesy of the Cameron Parsons Foundation, is a rare document of an artist whose practice had delved further inward, away from the public eye. Due to the quality of the recording, this video has been subtitled. Every effort has been made by MOCA and the Cameron Parsons Foundation to ensure accuracy of the transcription. Please note that the original footage was edited in camera and portions of the reading and poems were omitted by the cameraperson.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.13.2015
12:56 pm
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Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman


 
Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art has announced the mounting of 91 artworks and ephemera relating to the life’s work of the eccentric LA bohemian legend Marjorie Cameron. The show goes up on October 11 at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center annex and will close on January 11, 2015. “Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman” will feature paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, poetry and correspondence between Cameron and her husband rocket scientist/occultist Jack Parsons, and with the great mythologist Joseph Campbell.

In recent years Cameron’s work has begun to be reassessed by the art world, in part inspired by her close association with artists like Wallace Berman and George Herms, actor Dennis Hopper and underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger. As interest in their work increased, so has curiosity about the odd, flaming haired creature from Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Sadly much of her work was deliberately burned by the artist herself in the 50s and can only be glimpsed at in Curtis Harrington’s short cinematic portrait of Cameron, “Wormwood Star.” (See below)
 

 
The show will highlight the recent publication of Songs for the Witch Woman, an absolutely stunning coffee table art book / facsimile reproduction of Cameron’s drawings and watercolors along with Parsons’ metaphysical and occult poetry produced by Fulgur Esoterica. (The book was printed in a very limited edition, and is available now. If this seems like the kind of item that you would like to own—it’s a knockout, finely published at a very high quality—buy it now instead of waiting until next year when it’ll be selling for $500 on eBay. If you like this kind of thing, I’ll say it again, it’s particularly nice. There’s a beautifully composed foreword by the OTO’s WIlliam Breeze, who knew Cameron, to recommend it as well.)
 

 
The exhibition is being organized by guest curator Yael Lipschutz with MOCA’s senior curator Alma Ruiz along with the Cameron-Parsons Foundation. The museum will produce a full color catalogue with 75 illustrations for the exhibit.

Below, Curtis Harrington’s “Wormwood Star.” Heartbreaking to consider how many of these paintings are gone forever.
 

 
And speaking of Cameron, her biographer, Spencer Kansa sent me this curious piece of 60s experimental filmmaking that Cameron was involved with:

Za is an early-70s cinepoem by Elias Romero, the underground filmmaker, and one of the main pioneers of the liquid light shows that he began projecting in the late-50s in San Francisco and at Ben Shapiro’s Renaissance Club on the Sunset Strip. Za was filmed in Big Sur and features the movie actress Diane Varsi, portraying an alchemist cum poet. Varsi had already runaway from the superficiality of Hollywood by the time this was filmed, in order to pursue a more artistic and meaningful life. And, interestingly, the raggy dayglo outfits she wears in the film were created by Cameron, no less. Cameron and Elias were old friends by the time this film was made. He had been married to Cameron’s confidante, the poetess Aya. In Wormwood Star Aya admits that: “For years, Cameron never forgave me for splitting up with Elias.”

Watching it today, the film is, er, interesting. I guess back then it probably helped that most of its original viewers were heavily dosed-up.

 

 
Thank you Lyvia Filotico!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.30.2014
03:08 pm
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The Wormwood Star: Extraordinarily freaky cinematic portrait of occult artist Marjorie Cameron


 
It’s certainly no slight to the late director Curtis Harrington to describe The Wormwood Star, his visually arresting 1955 portrait of occult artist/beatnik weirdo Marjorie Cameron as being “Anger-esque” considering that he’d served as the cinematographer for Kenneth Anger’s Puce Moment and that it stars Cameron, one of Anger’s most well-known cinematic avatars (Cameron famously played “The Scarlet Woman” in Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome and Harrington himself portrayed “Cesare the Somnambulist” in that film. Additionally, Paul Mathison, who played “Pan” in Anger’s druggy occult vision was the art director of The Wormwood Star).

Until The Wormwood Star came out on DVD and Blu-ray recently via Drag City/Flicker Alley as part of The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection, it was very, very scarce and very difficult to see. You either had to be a friend of Curtis Harrington, probably, or have had a mutual friend with the late director (that’s how I saw it) or maybe see it in a museum. Now it’s on YouTube, of course.

So we’ve established that’s it’s, er, Angery, meaning that there’s more than a fair share of visual flair, drama and a hefty dollop of authentic occult creepiness. Cameron, for those who don’t know, was the wife of rocket scientist/wannabe Antichrist Jack Parsons and a participant in the infamous “Babalon Working” magical rite that also involved future Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. She was a dedicated follower of Aleister Crowley and his occult philosophy of Thelema (“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”).

Curtis Harrington told Cameron biographer Spencer Kansa in his book, Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron:

Before I made the film I’d heard from Renate [referring here to painter Renate Druks] that Cameron had spent some time in the desert trying, through magical means, to conceive a child by the spirit of Jack Parsons without success.  Cameron never spoke of Jack directly, but I do remember feeling sometimes when I talked to her, of her going off into a realm that I didn’t understand at all. It was sort of an apocalyptic thing and it’s there in her poetry.

What you should know as you watch this is that the vast majority of Marjorie Cameron’s paintings were destroyed by her—burned—in an act of ritualized suicide. There are very few pieces by Cameron that have survived—a few paintings and some sketches—and The Wormwood Star is the only record of most of them (outside of the astral plane, natch. What does survive of her estate is represented by longtime New York gallerist Nicole Klagsbrun). Cameron has long been a figure of fascination for many people and I think I can say with confidence that this film meets or even far exceeds any expectations you might have for it.

As with Anger’s films, I deeply appreciate the careful aesthetic balance between beauty and evil and, as such, it’s an extraordinary document of both Marjorie Cameron Parsons’ very essence as a human being and of her creative output. As cinema, it’s a mini-masterpiece that can stand alongside any of Anger’s films, Ira Cohen’s magnificently freaky Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda, Jack Smith’s Normal Love or Yayoi Kusama’s Self-Obliteration.

Below, the seldom-seen short film, The Wormwood Star. If it looks this good on YouTube, it must look really amazing on Blu-ray. Order The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection on Amazon (I just did).
 

 
Curtis Harrington and Cameron would work together again on 1961’s Night Tide, one of Dennis Hopper’s first starring roles. Her role as the “Water Witch” was brief, but oh so memorable…
 

 
Thank you Spencer Kansa, author of Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.12.2013
04:06 pm
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James Franco and Brian Butler to perform Aleister Crowley ritual in Los Angeles art gallery

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Three magi: Kenneth Anger, James Franco and Brian Butler

Occult artist / musician / filmmaker Brian Butler will be performing Aleister Crowley’s “Bartzabel Working” tomorrow night, Tuesday, December 4, at the L&M Arts gallery space in Venice Beach, CA. This occult ceremony is part of the gallery’s current “Martian Chronicles” theme exhibit and will employ custom robes made in the original A∴A∴ (Crowley’s magical order) designs and a circle, altar and triangle fabricated in vivid colors. Actor James Franco and Noot Seear from Twilight: New Moon will also participate in the ritual.

In conjunction with the current exhibition For the Martian Chronicles, L&M Arts is pleased to present The Bartzabel Working, a performance by filmmaker and artist Brian Butler. Based on a ceremonial evocation of the spirit of Mars, first written and performed in London in 1910 by the famed British occultist Aleister Crowley, the ritual later became part of Los Angeles history in 1946 when Jet Propulsion Laboratory rocket scientist and Crowley protégé Jack Parsons conducted his own version of this rite, with the intention of placing a martial curse on a pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard.

For his reinterpretation of this historical performance, Butler will conjure Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, evoking the site that was once home to the late sci-fi author Ray Bradbury and currently comprises L&M Arts. The ritual will have Butler as Chief Magus, leading a cast drawn from his upcoming feature film King Death and featuring Henry Hopper as Assistant Magus, Noot Seear as Magus Adjuvant, and James Franco as Material Basis, the vessel though which the spirit of Mars manifests.

The performance will take place on Tuesday, December 4th at 8:30pm, followed by a reception with tunes courtesy of DJ & artist Eddie Ruscha.

Butler’s work has been shown at LAXART, in Portugal, Greece and in China. He recently performed with Kenneth Anger at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles as Technicolor Skull. www.brianbutler.com

“The Martian Chronicles” exhibit, honoring the work of sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, runs through January 5, 2013

L&M Arts, Los Angeles, 660 South Venice Boulevard, Venice, CA, 90291, 8:30 - 11:30 PM

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.03.2012
06:45 pm
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Antichrist Superstar: Jack Parsons on film

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This week marks the 60th anniversary of the death of rocket scientist and occultist John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons. In addition to being a pioneer in the filed of rocketry—at the age of 25, Parson was part of the first US Government’s first official rocket group. He later invented the formulation of the solid rocket fuel that eventually put man on the moon—Parsons was a follower of Aleister Crowley, a one-time associate of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and a self-proclaimed Antichrist.

From the bio on the Cameron-Parsons Foundation’s website:

MARVEL WHITESIDE PARSONS, always know as Jack, was born October 2, 1914 in Los Angeles, California. A chemical engineer and explosives expert, he was a principal scientist in the experimental rocket research group attached to the California Institute of Technology during the 1930’s. Their testing range in the area of Devil’s Gate Dam above Pasadena has since grown to become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Parsons was also a co-founder of the Aerojet General Corporation.

Together with his first wife, Helen Parsons Smith, Parsons joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in 1941, the same year as his most successful scientific achievement, Jet Assisted Take-Off (JATO). He was very much the young lion of the occult Order and, under the tutelage of Aleister Crowley, briefly served as the acting master of Agape Lodge. His now famous invocation, “The Babalon Working,” was first performed in 1946, with former WAVE Marjorie Cameron serving as Scarlett Woman and L. Ron Hubbard, future founder of the Church of Scientology, channeling words from the ether as Scribe while Jack performed as Priest.

The “Working” reset the course of Parsons’ life, ending his relationship with Aleister Crowley and the O.T.O. In his surviving essays and polemical writings, Parsons anticipated by many years the ethical, moral, religious and social dilemmas of the future.

Parsons died in an explosion of mysterious origin at his chemical laboratory at home in Pasadena on June 17, 1952. His second wife and collaborator, the artist Cameron, preserved and carried on his work until her death in 1995. In 1972 the International Astronomical Union named a crater on the moon (37°N 171°W) after Parsons in recognition of his pivotal role in developing the solid fuel rocket.

 
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Painting of Jack Parsons by his widow, Marjorie Cameron

Additional reading:
Rocket Man by Scott Hobbes

The Crying of Liber 49: Jack Parsons, Antichrist Superstar (From my Book of Lies anthology)

Short film of Jack Parsons and others at March Field in Southern California, August, 1941, for the first successful test of jet-assisted takeoff (JATO). (YouTube)
 

More film footage of Jack Parsons after the jump

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.22.2012
12:30 pm
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The Master: New look at PT Anderson’s upcoming L. Ron Hubbard film

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The marketing campaign for director Paul Thomas Anderson’s fictionalized L.Ron Hubbard flick, The Master, is starting to heat up. Yesterday a mysterious trailer with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Joaquin Phoenix was released and it looks like this is going to be a fascinating film.

Here’s all it says on IMDB at present:

“A 1950s-set drama centered on the relationship between a charismatic intellectual known as “the Master” whose faith-based organization begins to catch on in America, and a young drifter who becomes his right-hand man.”

Hoffman as Hubbard is an inspired bit of casting (although I think the ultimate portrayal of Hubbard will come one day from The Mighty Boosh‘s Rich Fulcher) but are Adams and Phoenix supposed to be based on Marjorie Cameron and Jack Parsons? It kinda looks that way.

One of the film’s producer, JoAnne Sellar, denied any connection to Hubbard or Scientology: “It’s a World War II drama. It’s about a drifter after World War II.”

Yeah, right…

With a tense soundtrack from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. The Master is scheduled for release on “Crowleymass,” October 12th. I wonder if that is a co-incidence or deliberate?
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.20.2012
12:26 pm
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Marjorie Cameron: The Wormwood Star
02.08.2011
12:47 pm
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Writing a book is an heroic process, it really is, but even more so when it comes to biographies. Especially these days when so few people bother to read books anymore and the rewards are seldom very remunerative for most authors. In the case of biographers, it’s a different kind of satisfaction. It takes a real sense of purpose and desire to see someone’s story told properly; to get things down as accurately as possible for history’s sake before the participants are picked off by time. In this sense, there is often a very real race against the clock. 

I’m quite partial to biographies. I have a pretty sizable personal library, and by far the largest part of the books I own are life histories, especially the tales of cult figures or rebellious type people (Beats, Lenny Bruce, Leary, Crowley, Dali, Warhol, etc). There is a special fondness I have for books about extremely marginal personalities (Andy Milligan, Charles Hawtrey, Charles Ludlam) and I appreciate the effort, the true labor of love, that goes into such obscure endeavors. The more obsessive, the better.

Marjorie Cameron (1922-1995) was a “witchy woman” and Beatnik artist known widely in several overlapping Los Angeles bohemian circles, but she was hardly famous. Since her death, there has been a gradually growing public awareness of Cameron’s art, or at least what’s left of her work, that the artist herself did not destroy in a moment of mental instability. Her paintings, now highly sought after by collectors, can sell for in the tens of thousands of dollars. In recent memory, her work has been exhibited in major museums (The Whitney’s “Beat Culture” show and the the excellent “Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle” exhibit) and the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in NYC published a gorgeous monograph of her work in 2007.

Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron by Spencer Kansa is a fascinating and very, very well-researched look into Cameron’s perplexingly strange life. The title refers to Cameron’s belief that she was the end-times “Whore of Babalon” prophesied in the Book of Revelations, in the flesh, This was a result, she thought, of a black magic ritual performed to summon or “conjure” her by her future husband, rocket scientist Jack Parsons, and L. Ron Hubbard, in his pre-Scientology days.

Cameron’s often wobbly orbit in life saw her cross paths with significant cultural players like underground filmmaker Kennth Anger, who cast her as “The Scarlet Woman” (typecasting!) in his 1956 film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, which also featured author Anais Nin. (Anger was Cameron’s roommate at several points over the decades they knew one another). She was certainly a part of Wallace Berman’s intimates and co-starred in. Night Tide a low-budget horror film with Dennis Hopper (who recounts a brief period of sexual intimacy with the older woman). Crisscrossing the country and tracking down all of the various characters the author spoke to must have been quite a chore, and as a reader and longtime admirer of Cameron’s work, I’m grateful for the attention Kansa paid to detail.

Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron is one of those books that’s obviously not for everyone, but me, I’ve probably read Wormwood Star three times in the past month. If it sounds like something that might interest you, well, it probably is.

Below, one of Cameron’s brief, but memorable, scenes in Curtis Harrington’s Night Tide.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Dennis Hopper stars in creepy 60s Beatnik cult film, ‘Night Tide’

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.08.2011
12:47 pm
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The Unknown God: Wilfred T. Smith and the Thelemites

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Recently finished Martin Starr’s epic “The Unknown God: W.T. Smith and the Thelemites,” published by Teitan Press, an immaculately researched history of Aleister Crowley’s neo-religion Thelema after Crowley’s personal story trails off. Crowley’s life has been documented ad nauseum, what hasn’t been is the history of his ideas after his death and what happened to the people who took them seriously (“By their works shall ye know them”). Martin Starr fixes that historical oversight here, providing fascinating insights not only into occultism during the two World Wars (including all the bickering infighting between the various occult orders?

Posted by Jason Louv
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01.14.2010
01:37 pm
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