The Chemical Wedding
I decided to watch Bruce Dickinson's "Chemical Wedding" tonight, over a glass of wine or two.
A fun bit of Hokum Pok'em.
I doubt that people who still have Crowley down as a mystical teacher will enjoy it all, although the opening sequence has a very convincing Crowley (John Shrapnell)dying in 1947.
From then on we go into a possible parallel universe with all the buzzwords of Chaos Theory and Quantum Physics, computers and all.
Simon Callow has wonderful fun as the professor who gets possessed by the spirit of Crowley, and the film enjoys all the possibilities of sex and drugs and rock 'n roll, with references to Jack Parsons and ElRon (although they tiptoed around getting sued by Scientology).
Both within the film, and in the DVD 'extras', people veer between pronouncing him correctly, like The Crow, and the other pronounciation (think Bowie for ambiguity).
Worth a watch, I reckon. (And the watch remains the McGuffin).
"Art is the Priestess of Nature, Nature is the daughter of Time."
- Bogus's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Yeah, well I meant 'enjoyed' in the sense of a light-hearted bit of Hammer horror, not a serious biopic.
Everyone sees things differently. I mean, I consider The Wicker Man totally laughable, but some people take it very seriously indeed. Of course I know it got hacked to bits and released as a support film etc, (double bill with Don't Look Now) but I was 'unfortunate' enough to go into a cinema where these two films cycled around, and saw Don't Look Now first. Now that is a genuinely evocative and spooky film, so when The Wicker Man came on afterwards (while I was still in shock from the ending of Don't Look Now) it just seemed silly.
On the link you offered, someone from the OTO comes into the conversation, all prissy and correct, but I am so used to being corrected in conversation and speculation by Christians, or vegans or feminists, etc (the gist always seems like 'you wouldn't understand' - as if the thing called imagination didn't exist) that I get tired of the whole idea of a sustained discussion with them.
When somone has spent as much time self-mythologising as AC did, an objective biography would always prove difficult, and when so much of it (the magick, the masonry, the spying) remains secret, it could prove really difficult to make something that would interest people. More to the point, what need do we have for a biographical film? He wrote his books (still available) and set up his organisations (you might have difficulty finding out the genuine apostolic lineage, and that world contains con-men, fantasists and all that - as well as serious researchers), but you could. His work here is done.
Does any biopic do people justice in ninety minutes? Leonardo, Van Gogh, Henry Miller - such movies tend to pick an incident, or some odd character flaw, or a stereotype cliche - like the tortured artist - and put that on screen.
Viewpoint seems like the essence of film to me, so I don't think of it as a medium for presenting an objective truth.
An extended and well-researched documentary, on the other hand, could prove really fascinating!
Seriously!!! Why the fuck isn't there a bad ass movie out there on Crowley? WTF? Where is everyone on that? It could be so GREAT!!!
After watching Orson's 'F For Fake', for the first time kindly posted by Bobby, and being flawed by it, I must fess' up, I see Crowley all over it, or, I was moved to thinking of 'the book of lies' falsely called. And the kind of magikal juxtapostion of images, sounds and words of a master, caring, artful trickster genius...etc. A dynamo of opposities, hologrammic cinenmatic method perfected thrice!
I have to continue watching f is for fake, thanks fly! Great perspective to keep in mind while viewing it, and I watched the first portion the other day, so I'm on my way!
I was flipping through channels the other day, and there was a movie on called Bless the Child. At the moment of flipping, I noticed Crowley references - the bad guy had a group called the "new dawn" & had written a book about doing what thy will, etc. This movie was so fucking lame and made me that much more pissed that there isn't a good biographical movie on Crowley.
Yes, thanks alot for uploading F for Fake Bobby, I've been waiting to watch it for years. I thought it was very good, but had recently watched the documentary "Welles over Europe" by Simon Callow (Welles biographer and from Chemical Wedding) which gave the ending away.
As for a Crowley documentary, I haven't watched it yet but there's "In search of the great beast 666":
http://www.aleister-crowley-666.com/HOME.html - trailers and info
http://www.piratebay.org/search/in%20search%20of%20the%20great%20beast%20666/0/99/0 - torrent
http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/Reviews-req-showcontent-id-53.phtml - review
Having watched F for Fake and thinking about it I think Orson Welles might of made a very interesting film about Crowley.
Oh Bogus, I think fuzzbuddy is calling you out. You have to do it! You've already written for Welles before . . . it's only natural for you to write this killer movie that Orson Welles should have made about Crowley!
I don't like this documentary from the trailers. I'm envisioning something like Amadeus or Immortal Beloved. A good movie that isn't informational but shows the subject as a character acting out his life. Something like what is described in that article. That would be so enjoyable!
Thanks for the link, Fuzz Buddy!
I've got the movie downloading now, looks like it should be a hoot!
There's this funny BBC Scotland Documentary called "Aleister Crowley- The Other Loch Ness Monster"
Which reminds me the movie version of Crowley I'd like to see the most would be in an adaptation of "Masks of the Illuminati."
Oh Poor, Bogus! He doesn't even like AC, but keeps getting called to write on him! Incidentally I've made it a few steps closer to starting in on the expanded print version of "magical means"...
Heh heh
Actually, I don't dislike AC, Bobby - but I feel a bit wary of some of his 'followers'.
Any resistance you perceived may arise from some of my own chip-on-the-shoulder based in British class systems, people with Cambridge educations and inherited wealth, etc.
I have certainly gotten involved in some disputes about how people perceive him, but he remains a wonderful provocateur, I just don't think he so entirely escaped his early conditioning as he might have liked to claim - any more than most of us!
As it happens, my full avatar name came from a book about him! (Just my little joke).
When you search in Google you will come across the link...it arises in a simulation of him at a trial...and in real life he certainly mocked the courts he attended (just as some Yippies and others did in the 60s).
*****
The Court will rise. Enter the Magister Templi and Scribe of Thoth, Brother Paul, his Ibis-feather headgear a little askew. He is sweating. This is going to be the Trial of Trials, the Trial of the Aeon.
He boots up his iMac to review the Akashic Record.
Magister: Read the charges.
iMac: Edward Alexander Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) stands accused of the standard crimes - Satanism, murder, reefer madness, hi-jacking the Rituals of the Golden Dawn, riding the Scarlet Women to death, whipping a minor poet with nettles, inspiring Black Metal cultists, abandoning his comrades to the snow demons of the Himalayas, failing to settle his bills at the Cafe Royal, and being a British gentlemen who should have known better than to become a bogus magus perpetrating bombast and buggery -
Magister: (wearily) We have heard all this before. Mr. John Symonds and his King of the Shadow Realm, Mr. Colin Wilson and his Nature of the Beast, Mr Alexander Hutchison's The Beast Demystified, and all these ancient scandal sheets and psychedelphic papyri...is there any new evidence?
*****
Good to hear that Magical Means continues to grow. I greatly enjoyed finding a moment in time (20th September 1903) when Houdini and AC genuinely could have met in real life, and particularly liked the fact that it showed them in their youth, before either had reached the great fame/notoriety of their later years. Let me know if you want any tweaks, etc.
hahahhaha, see I was going to apologize for sticking my hopes and desires on Toby's to do list, but it just so fits!
"failing to settle his bills at the Cafe Royal, and being a British gentlemen who should have known better than to become a bogus magus perpetrating bombast and buggery"
I love that you gave us this link because my first intro to Wilhelm Reich was through a similar work: RAW's Wilhelm Reich in Hell. And everytime I read both Reich and Crowley, I feel like I'm reading letters from my two long lost granddads!
That little bit could be the outline for a great script! I'm now willing ot work on manifesting my own hopes & desires, how about that! Like, there'd be the courtroom, and there'd be visitations to all those allusions made in the courtroom showing those parts of his life acted out. Maybe?
Adaptagenie was at first saying it was me calling Bogus out. Haha, sneaky.
Yeah Bobby I think a screen adaptation of The Masks of the Illuminati would be cool. Thanks for putting up that Loch Ness monster video, hadn't heard of it before. Did you watch the other video yet? worth watching?
Yes, you guessed it, I'm gonna copy/past some Finnegans Wake, but only because of the courtscene in that book, that reads to me, as one of the most straight ahead parts of that book, starting around 573' '74.
"The jury (a
sour dozen of stout fellows all of whom were curiously named
after doyles) naturally disagreed jointly and severally, and the
belligerent judge, disagreeing with the allied jurors'
disagreement, went outside his jurisfiction altogether and ordered a
garnishee attachment to the neutral firm. No mandamus could
locate the depleted whilom Breyfawkes as he had entered into an... --FW Pg. 574
Also, I found this excerpt, for an example of how the thought of 'Crolwey on Trial' kinds of fits with some parts of the wake where we may find Magikal symbolism, and especially egyptological traits. See Mark L. Troy
"Those four claymen clomb together to hold their sworn
starchamber quiry on him. For he was ever their quarrel, the way they would see themselves, everybug his bodiment atop of
annywom her notion, and the meet of their noght was worth two
of his morning. --FW Pg. 475.
I wouldn't mind if it was cheesier and or funnier. I thought it was a bit interesting just to see a screen version of Crowley though.
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/297869/why_hasnt_there_ever_been_a_good_aleister_crowley_movie.html