During the mid-1970s David Bowie entered his “Thin White Duke” phase, and this period has uniquely added to the Bowie mystique as well as become an object of special fascination to Bowie fans. (Among other things it produced my own favorite Bowie album, Station to Station.) It’s especially fascinating to us, I think, because Bowie seems to have lost track of himself a little bit in a way that was never true in any other period, in his phantastical ruminations about Nazis, Manson, cocaine, and his own bodily essences. Just a couple of weeks ago, DM featured a comic book about this period called “The Side Effects of the Cocaine,” the title of which comes from a line in Bowie’s song “Station to Station.”

When he arrived in 1975, Bowie was staying at the Los Feliz house of Glenn Hughes, bassist for Deep Purple, who lived just down the road from “the LaBianca house,” as Hughes recalls, being the site of one of the Manson murders in 1969, specifically the killing of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca two days after the murder of Sharon Tate and several other people in Benedict Canyon. As 1975 progressed and faded into 1976, Bowie would suffer from powerful forebodings right out of another connection to Roman Polanski, Rosemary’s Baby.
 

Bowie in his “Thin White Duke” phase, here during a 1976 concert in Toronto
 
The artistic and sensitive Bowie clearly perceived a malign influence from the Manson connection to Hughes’ home. He was using huge amounts of cocaine. According to Marc Spitz’s 2010 Bowie: A Biography, Bowie was “obsessed with using occult magic to attain success and protect himself from demonic forces.”

(A brief note on Spitz. Spitz is not a careful writer, and his book is riddled with annoying typos and mistaken facts. However, on the general subject of whether he is a reliable source, he does appear to have gotten his interviewees on the record. Peter Bebergal, author of the recent Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, appears to regard him as a reliable source.)

According to Hughes, “David had a fear of heights and wouldn’t go into an elevator. ... He never used to go above the third floor. Ever. If I got him into an elevator, it was frightening. He was paranoid and so I became paranoid. We partied in private.” Bowie himself has stated the effect that the cocaine was having on his paranoia: “Cocaine severs any link you have with another human being. … Around late 1975 everything was starting to break up.”

Quoting Spitz again: “Bowie would sit in the house with a pile of high-quality cocaine atop the glass coffee table.” Bowie became obsessed with the book Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune (Bebergal confirms this bit), which describes itself as a “safeguard for protecting yourself against paranormal malevolence.” Among other things, “Bowie began drawing protective pentagrams on every surface.”

As Hughes says, “He felt inclined to go on very bizarre tangents about Aleister Crowley or the Nazis or numerals a lot. … He was completely wired. Maniacally wired. I could not keep up with him. He was on the edge all the time of paranoia, and also going on about things I had no friggin’ idea of what he was talking about. He’d go into a rap on it and I wouldn’t know what he was talking about.” As Bowie himself remembered, “My other fascination was with the Nazis and their search for the Holy Grail. ... I paid with the worst manic depression of my life. … My psyche went through the roof, it just fractured into pieces. I was hallucinating twenty- four hours a day. ... I felt like I’d fallen into the bowels of the earth.”

At his wit’s end, Bowie reached out to Cherry Vanilla, a former employee of Bowie’s management company MainMan, who witnessed much of this paranoid, debauched phase. Cherry Vanilla verified the connection between Bowie and a “white witch”—racial connotations aside, and those are by no means absent from this story either, but the term is intended to distinguish witches whose effects are “good” and “evil”—who would purify his living premises. “He had this whole thing about these black girls who were trying to get him to impregnate them to make a devil baby,” says Vanilla. “He asked me to get him a white witch to take this curse off of him. He was serious, you know. And I actually knew somebody in New York who claimed she was a white witch. She was the only white witch I ever met. So I put him in touch with her. I don’t know what ever happened to her. And I don’t know if she removed the curse. I guess she did.”
 

This comic by Vaughn Bodē from July 1973 is one of the few surviving visual depictions of the self-professed “white witch” Walli Elmlark.
 
That “white witch” was one Walli Elmlark, who had taught some classes in magic at the New York School of Occult Arts and Sciences on Fourteenth Street in New York. She wrote a gossip column in the rock magazine Circus and had known Jimi Hendrix and was also friendly with Marc Bolan. A couple years earlier, Elmlark had recorded a spoken-word album with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp named The Cosmic Children; it has never been released. According to Sid Smith’s book In The Court Of King Crimson,
 

In June 1972, Fripp finished recording an album with a Wiccan journalist, called Walli Elmlark. The album was called The Cosmic Children. Side one consists of Fripp and Elmlark in conversation where she outlines her experiences and commitment to Wicca. On side two, she talks to DJ Jeff Dexter about cosmic children—spirits from other places who take physical forms such as Hendrix, Bolan, Bowie and Mike Gibbons, drummer with Badfinger. Talking to NME’s Simon Stable, Fripp stated: “The function of the album is to reach out to the children like the drummer from Badfinger, I want to say; ‘You’re not nutty, you’re not a freak because you can’t relate to what’s around you.’”

 
Elmlark had also published (per Spitz) “a cosmic paperback full of collages, poetry, personal confessions and observations,” which bore the title Rock Raps of the 70’s. It was co-written with occultist Timothy Green Beckley. According to that book, Elmlark was fond of wearing a “floor length clingy high necked long sleeved black jersey, and a floor length chiffon over dress that floats around me like a mysterious mist of motion.”
 

 
Summoned to Bowie’s residence, she quickly and apparently successfully exorcised the pool. This next bit is confirmed in Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie the memoir by Angie Bowie, David’s wife during this period who was also living there at the time: “At a certain point in the ritual, the pool began to bubble. It bubbled vigorously—perhaps ‘thrashed’ is a better term—in a manner inconsistent with any explanation involving filters and the like.” As Spitz wrote: “Elmlark wrote a series of spells and incantations out for Bowie, in case the demons return for a dip, and remained on call for Bowie as he continued to wrestle with the forces of darkness.”

Of all the people in this narrative, the one who knew Elmlark the best was Beckley, by far. Beckley was the director of the New York School of Occult Arts and Sciences where Elmlark taught and also co-wrote the Rock Raps book with her. In the Conspiracy Journal, issue #549, Beckley describes her as follows:
 

Wallie was known widely as the White Witch Of New York. Because of her contacts in the music industry, she had established quite an eclectic clientele for whom she would offer spiritual guidance, and occasional good luck or love spells, but always of a positive nature. She didn’t dabble in black magick or even gris gris (a New Orleans form of “gray magick” that incorporates poppets and the use of talismans kept in a personal mojo bag). Walli was lively, imaginative, energetic, well spoken, and quite attractive in her flowing white garments complete with fashionable silver moon adornments. Oh did I forget to mention long black hair, complete with dyed green streak highlights? Indeed, Walli made a very bold fashion and occult statement wherever she went.

 
There is surprisingly little about Walli on the Internet, for someone who “made a very bold fashion statement,” introduced Robert Fripp to the occult, and exorcised David Bowie’s house, you would think her name would be a staple in rock and roll lore—but it doesn’t appear to be the case. I couldn’t find a picture of her, aside from the Bodē cartoon above, and the main thing she is known for on the Internet is her authorship of the Rock Raps book. I was unable to find Walli’s obituary.

Spitz says that “Elmlark departed from this plane of existence in 1991.” Based on a few ramblings I saw on a message board I don’t take too seriously, it’s possible that she overdosed on barbiturates. Beckley, overly addicted to euphemism, says, “Several years went by and Walli met an untimely passing as she could not remove the demons in her own life, even though she had a dramatic impact on almost everyone she came in contact with,” before recounting a lot of incidents from the 1970s like the Fripp album and so on. His final words on Walli are, “Somehow I can’t exclude the fact that Walli looks down from time to time and perhaps sings along with David Bowie as he performs all over the world in concert.” 

I don’t know about you, but after all that, I could stand to hear “Station to Station”:
 

 
Vaughn Bodē comic copyright Mark Bode 2015

For the uncensored version, see here.
 
The ultra-chic dermal trousers above are housed in Strandagaldur, the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft, but they are not the last intact pair of necropants—slacks of human skin that some 17th century Icelanders believed brought wealth and good luck to the wearer. These beautiful britches are a actually a facsimile of the last intact pair, which the museum does possess, but presumably keeps more covertly hidden, lest some fashionable sorcerer up and runs off with them. And how’s it done?

If you want to make your own necropants (literally; nábrók) you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his dead. After he has been buried you must dig up his body and flay the skin of the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into the pants they will stick to your own skin. A coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper. Consequently the coin will draw money into the scrotum so it will never be empty, as long as the original coin is not removed. To ensure salvation the owner has to convince someone else to overtake the pants and step into each leg as soon as he gets out of it. The necropants will thus keep the money-gathering nature for generations.

Cringe if you must, but they’re arguably a more ethical garment than a pair of sweatshop Old Navy cargo shorts, since one had to ask permission from the man before flaying his legs, feet and genitals. If you need a ridiculous visual aid, check out the instructional video below. I like that the phrase “coin purse” can be used both literally and figuratively to describe the process! Also, theft from widows!

(Disclaimer: Neither myself nor Dangerous Minds endorses the wearing of human skin, for either witchcraft or magical purposes. In fact, unless you are Lemmy, maybe stay away from leather pants altogether, huh?)
 

 
Thank you Royal

 
Although he (apparently) vanished off this mortal coil in 1981, three decades after his death musician/magician Geoffrey Crozier (or Jeff Crozier or Geoffrey Krozier or any number of variations on that theme) still makes ghostly appearances all over the world via documents of his work that have been posted posthumously on the Internet like freaky little occult bombs with long fuses.

Crozier was called “the high priest of exorcism-rock,” “the Mad Magician,” “High Priest of Magick” and billed as a “voodoo psychedelic magician.” To think of him as merely an Aussie Alice Cooper (or Arthur Brown for that matter) is to entirely miss the point of the truly impressive CHAOS this guy was able (and quite willing) to orchestrate as a performer. Alice is, and always was, just a stage act. This guy obviously meant it. Like a man possesed, Crozier was also clearly doing whatever it was he was doing for his own benefit and only secondarily for the audience’s entertainment.
 

 
Suffice to say, I don’t think anyone who ever saw the man perform, let alone they who performed with Geoffrey Crozier, ever forgot him. Although he played with quite an assortment of different musicians, it seemed like his modus operandi changed little throughout the years. Loud music. Pandamonium. Pyrotechnics. Flashing lights. Illusions. Always a distinctly Dionysian, if not downright evil, flavor to the proceedings. No matter who was backing him at a given time, the idea was to have them just “play”—that is play whatever, basically, I don’t think he was fussy as long as it was half or fully crazed.

Duncan Fry, who played guitar in one of Crozier’s earliest groups, writes:

What he wanted was free-form continuous music for the 30 minutes or so that he performed, while clouds of oily smoke, flashpots, and strobe lights alternately choked and dazzled the audience. Most of the musicians who turned up for the audition couldn’t handle such a laissez-faire attitude to the music side of things.

“But what songs are we going to play?” they would whine. “No songs, just play, play” Geoff would reply, setting off another flash pot.

While Crozier did his thing, he would talk-sing in a freeform surrealistic schizophrenic poetic manner, often using snatches of Aleister Crowley. The effect was not unlike a demon-possesed jabberwocky-spouting Vivian Stanshall in many respects.

Here’s a loose transcription of the sort of thing he’d…uh… rap, quoted from a fascinating 2006 post about Crozier on Julian Cope’s Head Heritage website:

“Pope Pubic, 13th of March, April 1972 and the year of rats as big as cats, hmmm, what a well-hung door… Flamshot was his well-oiled name, and he was a supreme and utter no nonsense around here mate or I’ll rip your lungs out and flush your entrails into my hair he said. Face me when you talk to me, son of a tinker’s curse, all hail the redback, and let’s take drugs together, and let’s get pissed together and let’s fuck one another and let’s drown in one another’s bubbling bloodbath as we cut each other’s throats… mmm I’d like to see you squirm, I’d like to see you burn, and finally the coin stopped spinning and fell back to earth, and they both got what they wanted… a Shiva hand-job!”

 

 
There are fragments of Krozier’s biography scattered here and there (the best perhaps being “Geoff Krozier – A Magik Story” an essay from his friend and collaborator Rob Greaves). The (very) short version is that he was born Jeff Crozier in Australia in 1948, started off as a stage magician/illusionist in the mid-60s at a young age. His act was becomes something darker and much wilder incorporating psychedelic rock music with the formation of what ultimately became known as Geoff Krozier’s Indian Medicine Magik Show, having previously been called The Magic Word, or when they performed in more conservative parts of Oz, the Magic Pudding!
 

 
He ends up in New York during the punk era, living on Staten Island in a tiny room with “a dog called Schroeder, a black cat named Quasar, a dove named Tweedledee and a monkey with the unlikely moniker of Sarcophagus Mayhem.” There he performs with Kongress, a mind-bending mid-70s NYC punk outfit that also included berserk No Wave legend Von LMO on drums and Otto Von Ruggins on synthesizers. (We’ve covered Kongress before on the blog here). After that implodes—Crozier and Von LMO apparently felt homicidal towards one another—he returns to Australia, is given the Australian Society Of Magicians’ Magician Of The Year award and in 1980 he hooks up with an electronic group called The Generator (or Rainbow Generator) and records and performs with them.
 

 
Crozier hung himself on May 17th 1981. With the details of his biography scattered hither and yon like digital ashes, it’s impossible to say too much about him with much assurance. Google him yourself and you’ll see what I mean. [Try alternate spellings of his name: Jeff Crozier, Geoff Crozier, Geoff Krozier, etc to tease out more mentions of this fascinating character.]

The clip below is an insane 1970 vintage performance of Geoff Krozier’s Indian Medicine Magik Show from an Australian television program called Hit Scene that has got to be the single most demented thing anyone did on TV (let alone in private) anywhere in the world that year. As I watched this, I wondered how such a thing could have been allowed to happen and I found that the answer that Krozier’s day job at the time was as a set painter at Channel 9, so he had connections at the various TV shows taped there and was able to fill in at a moments notice if another act cancelled, so that is the answer as to “how” something this insane occurred and was beamed into middle class living rooms some 45 years ago.

However it happened, I’m just glad that it did. Press play….
 

 
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.
 

 
Doorways to Danger is a 1990 British short film warning of the risks in flirting with the occult. Here’s the description from the Amazon listing:

Dabbling in the occult is widespread and often thought of as harmless entertainment. But this video shows why it is dangerous to get involved with spiritism, fortune telling, witchcraft, magic, and Satanism. The program introduces the real life stories of those who have been involved in these activities and shows the way out based upon a Biblical perspective.

A description also opens the video, and what comes next is pure gold: A cheesy montage of occult images with a song poem-esque number underneath warning of the hazards of looking up your horoscope and fooling around with a ouija board. And we’re off!

The anecdotal evidence that follows—offered up by supposed experts and decidedly non-experts alike—often seems scripted and/or total B.S., and the “slippery slope” examples given as gateways to full on devil worship (playing Dungeons and Dragons; watching Ghostbusters II!) are a hoot-and-a-half. One of the highlights is the segment with the band Heartbeat (“one of Britain’s top Christian groups”), who we get to see recording and then have an obviously rehearsed conversation about occult dabbling. The late ‘80s fashions they’re sporting will also surely induce a chuckle or two (and dig those hairdos!).

The video was produced by an organization calling itself the “Christian Response to the Occult.” Forming in 1982 by the Deo Gloria Trust, “to give a Christian answer to the inroads that occultism was making into society at that time,” the group later merged with the existing and ideologically similar, Reachout Trust.

Here’s Tom Poulson, the director of the CRO and the man behind Doorways to Danger:

We have a divine commission both to warn and inform our friends, family and neighbours that there is an enemy of God, actively engaged in both blinding them to and drawing them away from Jesus. We neither want to shout ‘FIRE!’ so loudly that people rush towards it, nor remain silent and see people receive life-endangering burns from their involvement with the occult.

Indeed, no one actually shouts “FIRE!” in Doorways to Danger, but to say that believing in things like “bad luck” could lead you into the arms of Satan comes pretty damn close.
 

 
Francis Barrett’s pictures of fallen angels and demons remind me of a few recalcitrant boozers fleeing the bar on a Saturday night. The sketches were included in his book The Magus—a compendium of several esoteric books, most notably works by Cornelius Agrippa and Peter d’Abano—which was once considered a primary source for occult and ceremonial magic when it was first published in 1801. The book led to a revival of interest in spiritualism, magic and the occult and was a highly influential religious text on minds as diverse as Joseph Smith and his Church of Latter Day Saints, the Freemasons and occultist Eliphas Levi.

Published over two volumes, The Magus begins with an introduction to “Natural Magic” which Barrett described as “a comprehensive knowledge of all Nature”:

...by which we search out her secret and occult operations throughout her vast and spacious elaboratory; whereby we come to a knowledge of the component parts, qualities, virtues, and secrets of metals, stones, plants, and animals;

He goes on to discuss charms, amulets, “occult virtues,” and magic before giving a history and instruction on “alchymy” and the Philosopher’s Stone, and a long section on “The Celestial Intelligencer,” which primarily deals with talismanic magic. The second volume examines magnetism, the “Cabala” and ceremonial magic, the practice and composition of the “Magic Circle,” various rites and a word of warning to would-be adepts, before concluding with a brief history of key occultists—from Zoroaster to John Dee.

For those with an interest in such arcane writing, you can read the whole book here.
 

 

 

 
More occult angels and demons, after the jump…

 
The ironic phenomenon of ugly Christmas sweaters hit shark-jump levels of cultural saturation so rapidly that I actually can’t even remember any early window of time when it wasn’t irritating (though in all fairness, I get irritated pretty easily). Entirely apart from its annoying ubiquity, the whole thing feels kind of shitty, like it’s not really mocking Christmas to wear them, it’s more like mocking people who just happen to like gaudy sweaters. And is that not punching down?

The upside of this dopey annual crap-pageant has been the profusion of cheeky takedowns. The Descendents have been making awesome gag Christmas sweaters for years, and now, the twisted bastards at Middle of Beyond have given the world outright Satanic Christmas sweaters. MoB, regular DM readers may remember, are the preposterous visionaries who gave the world devil tarot card throw rugs and winter gear patterned after the carpeting in the Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrik’s film version of The Shining. I actually plunked for one of those Shining scarves, and to my horror, I found, when it arrived, that it was 100% acrylic (my own fault for neglecting the fine print). But for Christmas sweaters, that material isn’t just a requisite, it’s positively a boon. Designs include a straight up old-fashioned Satanic goat head snugly nestled in a red pentagram, Cthulu, Krampus, and a zombiefied Santa Claus festooned with braaaaaaiiiiiiins. So why settle for giving Christmas the finger when you can flash it the goat horns?
 

 

 

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Merry Krampus: ‘horribly distasteful Christmas sweater’
Righteous Motörhead Christmas sweater

 
Fancy buying a sword that maybe cursed, haunted by ghosts and source of chaos? Well, if you do then an elderly woman in Austin, TX. is selling just that very thing on Cragslist: a mighty double-handed 18th century broadsword that looks nearly as tall as its seller stands.

How does this wise old lady know it’s haunted? Well, since the sword has been in her home, life has descended into chaos. If that weren’t enough to convince you, when her knitting group came over to visit “they all said they could feel a strange energy in my sword room”. Quite.

Here’s the advert:

Sword For sale WARNING might be haunted - $150

This sword is from the 1700s. I got it at an antique store in my memaw’s home town back in 1984. The person who sold it to me told me to be careful because there is a 90+% chance that it is cursed. Since it’s been in my house my life has descended into pure chaos. My knitting group came over and they all said they could feel a strange energy in my sword room (I have a collection of over 100 swords. This is my only haunted sword). Since i got this sword, about 3 times a week a crucifix will fall off of my wall for no reason. I am 76 years old. I cannot have this cursed item in my house anymore. Please take it off my hands!!

Okay, I admit I am intrigued and think this haunted weapon could be a fun thing to have around the home—though anyone who’s read Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box, in which a rock star bought a haunted suit, will know what could follow.
 
Via io9

 
A couple of weeks ago Arthur’s Jay Babcock tweeted that he had stumbled upon a fascinating two-page Hawkwind spread while “trolling thru the online International Times archive.” It turns out it wasn’t just any Hawkwind spread, it was a full Hawkwind tarot deck! Here’s a look at the spread, rotated 90 degrees. (If you click on the image, you can see a much larger version.)
 

 
This spread appeared in Issue 117 of International Times, or IT, which bears a publication date of November 18, 1971, a date that coincides neatly with the release of Hawkwind’s second album, In Search of Space or X In Search of Space, depending on who you ask, which had come out just a few weeks earlier. Linking to Babcock’s tweet a couple of days later, John Coulthart speculated, “Is this an overlooked Barney Bubbles design?”

Bubbles had designed the cover for In Search of Space, which featured a die-cut interlocking foldout. Coulthart himself designed the covers for the 1980s Hawkwind comps Zones and Out & Intake. According to Paul Gorman’s Reasons to Be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles, Coulthart once credited Bubbles with inventing “cosmic art nouveau” in his early work for Hawkwind.

For any readers of IT wanting to make a deck of their own, the following instructions are provided: “Paste this page down onto a stiff sheet of cardboard. Wait till it’s dry. Then cut out each card until you have a pack of 21. Shuffle and deal into three rows of seven. Read the image / word combinations thus formed. The Galactic Tarot does not speak of the future or the past, for all galactic time is contained in the present.” Yeah, man, faaaar out….. (Cannabis and quaaludes are not mentioned.) If you’d like help deciphering the text, this page is very helpful.

Here are the cards. The text on the cards is a little bit puzzling. If you forgive a transposed word or two, the cards contain the full text of two Hawkwind songs: “Born to Go” and “Infinity.” (If you order the cards Earth-Atlantis-Pluto-Jupiter-Flying Saucer-Sun-Pyramid-Alien-Horus-Machine, you get the verses and chorus for “Born to Go,” and if you order the cards Winged Hero-Icarus-Mercury-Time Card-Aquarian Age-Galaxy-Mars-Saturn-Venus-Infinity, you get the verse and chorus for “Infinity.”) The truly bizarre thing is that neither of those songs appears on In Search of Space—“Born to Go” first appears on the live album Space Ritual, which was released in 1973, while listeners had to wait eight solid years, until 1979’s PXR5, to hear “Infinity.” (Since not everything works out so neatly, the left-over “Space” card has a line from “Black Corridor.”)
 

Earth: “We Were Born to Go / We’re Never Turning Back”
Pyramid: “We Were Born to Go / As Far As We Can Find”
 

Atlantis: “We Were Born to Go / And Leave a Running Track”
Flying Saucer: “We Were Born to Blaze / A New Clear Way Through Space”
 

Space: “Space Is the Absence of Time and of Matter”
Alien: “We Were Born to Blow / To Blow the Human Mind”
 

Time Card: “Infinity So Beautiful / Has Turned My Soul to Ice”
Machine: “We’re Hatching Our Dreams”
 

Sun: “A Way Out of the Maze / That Held the Human Race”
Winged Hero: “I Used to Be of Human Kind / I Had a Life to Lead”
 

Galaxy: “I Met Her in a Forest Glade / Where Starbeams Grew Like Trees”
Horus: “We’re Breaking Out of Our Shell / We’re Breaking Free”
 

Icarus: “But Now I’m Frozen in a Dream / My Life Is Lost It Seems”
Aquarian Age: “And Crystallized Eternity / For All My Future Time”
 

Infinity: “In a Dream / Infinity”
 

Mars 12a: “I Did Not Take Her for a Witch / She Wasn’t What She Seemed”
Jupiter 12b: “We Were Born to Learn / We Were Born to Grow”
 

Saturn 12c: “She Led Me to a Palace Gate / With Constellation Towers”
Venus 12d: “She Is the Keeper of My Fate / I Sleep Locked in Her Powers”
 

Pluto 12e: “We Were Born to Go / And Leave No Star Unturned”
Mercury 12f: “She Turned the Key / Of Endlessness and Locked Me”
 
“Born to Go”:

 
“Infinity”:

 
In 1971, artist Jan Parker, who’d been a sketch artist on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey, executed a series of macabre illustrations for Witchcraft and Black Magic by the prolific occult author Peter Haining.
 

 
Though he wrote some reference works on Doctor Who, Haining may have become most well known for arguing, in two books, a claim that Sweeney Todd was a real person. That assertion has never been widely embraced, and Haining passed in 2007. Jan Parker, on the other hand, is alive and well, and remains active as an artist. But if all you know of him is work like we’ve reproduced here, you wouldn’t recognize his current output. No longer a dark and surreal arbiter of fantasy and the arcane, he’s now a painter of almost flourescently vivid impressionistic abstractions. Though some of his newer pieces are indeed quite striking, the lurid horrors below are more our speed.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…