Essay 2nd trimester: Kenneth Anger and the occult

Kenneth Anger and the occult

Kenneth Anger (born in 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker. Throughout his career he has produced around 40 works. In his films, Anger mixes surrealism, camp homoeroticism together with features borrowed from the occult. Writings about his work mostly focus on his fascination of the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ (camp), the depiction of gay male sexuality and the fact that his creations can be seen as an early form of music video. With this essay I would like to dive deeper into his world and the content of his films by analyzing its occult side. By doing so I hope to get a better understanding of his work in general and begin my personal research into avant-garde filmmaking and its practices.

Photo by: Sebastian Kim (for Interview Magazine)

Early movies
Both Anger and Maya Deren are seen as the forerunners of a generation of visionary filmmakers like Brakhage, Harrington and Markopoulos. An analogy is often made between the work of Anger and Deren. In their early works there are indeed parallels that can be drawn. Fireworks (1947), At Land (1944), and Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) can all be seen as psychodrama, which is “a genre of American avant-garde film in which the filmmakers dramatize disturbed states of consciousness” (McDonald, p. 50). As Anger explains in a conversation with Nicolas Winding (source: youtube, see bibliography), the idea of Fireworks came to him after a dream occurred to him in which after he witnessed sailors hunting down and beating up Mexican children in downtown L.A.. Juggling between an erotic dream and a nightmare, Fireworks displays a tension following one’s gay desire and the risk of violence that went with it at the time (homosexuality was illegal in America in 1947). As McDonald mentions: “Fireworks represents the impossibility of denying gay desire, even in a repressive antigay society” (McDonald p.52).

Like a dream in a dream, the 14 minutes film shows a young man awakening with what seems to be an erect penis under the sheets, which turns out to be an African statue of some kind. While dressing up he picks up photographs of him (Anger) being carried by a sailor in a Pieta-like pose, a tableau which he has just woken up from. As he tosses the photographs in the not-yet-lit fireplace, Anger procedes towards a door near which a wire sculpture is hanging (reference to Cocteau) that marks a sign with the text ‘gents’ on it. Behind the door he finds a sailor flexing his muscles. Anger is taken aback, keeps watching and eventually decides to offer the muscular man a cigarette. The man first appears to enjoyAnger’s gaze but suddenly gets aggressive and starts slapping him in a comic manner. The silly slapping stops and Anger now has a cigaret in his mouth. The sailor offers to light up Anger’s cigarette with a big bush of burning twigs. Anger accepts but out of a sudden a group of sailors holding chains are staring together at him and start chasing him down. At this point one visualizes the kind of risk encountered by gay men as I previously described above. As the sailors catch him, they strip him down and start beating until he is full of blood. A bottle of milk is smashed and the chards are used to cut open his chest. In place of a heart, Anger has a functioning mechanical ticker. The sailors then clean away the blood from Angers face and body with milk (or seamen). The movie ends with a scene in which the first sailor from the beginning opens his zipper to unveil a roman candle, which he proceeds to light up, sparking as ‘fireworks’ from his pants. Everything ends well as we find Anger awaking again, lying in bed with a young man whose face is scratched away on the film. Was it just a dream?

Stills from Fireworks

The representation of inner conflict shown in Fireworks is the ideal showcase of a psychodrama. In this sense the comparison between Anger and Deren makes sense. Later on both artist distance themselves from psychodrama and start making use of ritual in their films.

The occult and use of ritual

In her text Illuminating Lucifer, Carol Rowe argues that “recent critical work attempting to draw parallels between the films of Derek and Anger through their mutual preoccupation with mystical ritual is misleading.” (Rowe, p.26). She argues later that Anger is “not a surrealist who puts blind faith in his own dream images and trusts his dreams to convey an ‘uncommon unconscious,’” and further asserts that the filmmaker “works predominately in archetypical symbols.” (Rowe, p. 27).

This was not that much the case in Fireworks but indeed, there is a huge difference between the two artists’ use of ritual in their films.

As described in the following quote from the article page 26 Rowe classifies Maya Deren as a forerunner of structuralist but also notes that Deren was concerned with occultism as a classicist, which embodies the way of thinking of the enlightenment.

“(She was) influenced by classical aesthetics, she experimented with trans temporal continuities and discontinuities found in the cinematic structure. With Deren the narrative form orders the subconscious into a design; Ritual is used to impose an ideal order on the arbitrary order of art and the chaotic order of the world. The interior event is presented as a matrix out of which a pattern is made, and this pattern of ritual elements is combined to form the overall structure. Historically, it is useful to view Deren as a forerunner of the works of Alain Resnais or the experimental structuralists of today, such as Frampton, Weiland, or Snow, rather than to see her work as simply a part of the ‘trance film’ trend in the early American underground.” (Rowe, p.26)

Anger on the contrary is a romanticist and sees occultism as a source of hermetic knowledge. As Rowe puts it, Anger’s “narrative model is constructed through a comparative analysis of myths, religion and rituals and their associations external to their respective systems” (Rowe, page 26). To be more precise, Anger describes his movie-making process like casting a spell. The major influence on Anger’s work came from Aleister Crowley’s invention of ‘Magick’, which is “[…]the performance of ritual which seeks to invoke The Holy Guardian Angel (the aspirant’s higher self)[…]” (Rowe, p.27). It is spelled with ‘ck’ so that there would be no confusion with stage magic performances. Anger calls Magick his life goal and therefore cinema his Magickal apparatus. The goal of his films was not only to invoke his Guardian Angel but also to cast a spell on his audience. He tried to achieve this by the use of certain colors, symbols and other alchemist signs.

Magick, Thalema and "the wickedest man of the world”
To understand Magick a little more one has to look at its creator, Aleister Crowley. The controversial mage was born in 1875 as the son of a preacher in the highly puritanical Plymouth Brethren sect in Victorian England. After his father passed away he inherited a large amount of money which he used to travel the world, work on his writings and pursue one of his hobbies: mountain climbing. From an early age Crowley was fascinated by poetry and paganism.

Crowley first became acquainted with magic rituals in 1898 when he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. To put it roughly, ritual magic has to do with the theory and practice of trying to access and communicate with unseen natural or universal forces. The Golden Dawn was a secret society which performed ritual magic and combined Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Rosacrucianism, Kabbalah and other esoteric traditions.

In the eyes of his contemporaries Crowley was described as an lunatic sex addict who performed beastiality.

“Rejecting the morality of his Christian youth, Crowley set out to overturn what he saw as the oppressive, hypocritical attitudes of Victorian England, by identifying sex as the most central aspect of the human being and the most profound source of magical power. The popular press, of course took no end of delight in sensationalizing Crowley’s promiscuity, which was described in elaborate, often hilarious detail throughout the newspapers of the day.” (Urban, page 11).

Although this reputation has prevailed until today. Crowley did at a certain point conclude that he could reach his highest self through sex magic. The practices of magical sex or Magick started around 1899. After being in contact with Eastern spiritual traditions, and also likely Indian Tantra, he soon started Magick rituals with his partner Rose Kelly. Sex Magic is based on the belief that the most powerful moment of human existence is the orgasm. The logic behind it is as follows:

“For if ordinary, natural, undirected sexual intercourse can give birth to a new living being – a fairly miraculous thing in itself – then it is not terribly difficult to imagine that ritualized, intentional, willfully directed intercourse might give birth to effects of a supernatural, magical, divine (or demonic) character” (Urban, p.6).

Crowley saw Sex Magic as an essential component for his vision of a new era in human history. The main idea was that sexual freedom would also bring about political and spiritual freedom. In his eyes, sex that was considered abnormal back then (masturbation, homosexual intercourse, and perhaps even beastiality) possessed extra special powers. In fact Crowley’s saw himself as a sort of Messiah who would bring upon a new Utopian world. In 1904 he received his first great revelation:

“[..]and the knowledge that he was to be the herald of a new era in human history. According to Crowley’s own account, his guardian angel, Aiwass appeared to him and dictated the Book of the Law (Liber Legis). His most famous work, the Book of the law announces the dawn of a third aeon of mankind: the first aeon was that of the Goddess Isis, centered around matriarchy and the worship of the Great Mother; the second aeon was that of Osiris, during which the patriarchal religions of suffering and death –i.e., Judaism and Christianity – rose to power. Finally with the revelation of the Book of the Law, a new aeon of the son, Horus, was born. “In this aeon the emphasis is on the self or will, not on anything external such as gods or priests.” (Urban, page 9/10)


In The Book the of Law the Thelema ideology is drawn out of which the key point is to “do as thou wilt”. It appropriated a number of deities from ancient Egyptian religion. It also introduces the above mentioned ‘Third Aeon’ or the Aquarian Age/the Age of Horus.

Although he was a self-proclaimed Messiah, Crowley’s life ended up as a bored, disillusioned and penniless heroin addict. In this sense Crowley was a man who embodied the ‘Faustian’ spirit and therefore could be seen as the manifestation in person of the very idea modernism. While modernism bloated itself with big ideals, the believe of endless progress and a of new utopian world, its reign eventually tragically ended with WW2, the Holocaust, global misery and confusion.

Conclusion:
Anger’s work has been greatly influenced by Crowley’. As previously mentioned, Anger attempts in his films to put a ‘spell’ on his audience. In order to do so, he follows a system of correspondences which establishes connections between certain colors, planets, plants, smells, etc., which are combined with talismans and other occult symbolisms. To illustrate this I added a simplified chart taken from the text “Aleister Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis” written by J.F. Brown. Crowley wrote a whole book, Liber 777, which was a complete dictionary of the correspondences of all magical elements (see Appendix 1). The rites which where performed by Crowley in a near dark theater intended similar goals as Anger for his audience.

For now I can conclude that Anger is a true occultist with Crowley as his guru. Casting spells on his enemies and trying to reach a higher self through his movies by the use of occult symbols, color, Egyptian deities etc. 

As a next step I would also like to make a short film shot in two day (as Anger did with Fireworks), as a continuation from the Eye filmproject. The main goal will probably not be to cast a spell on my audience, but who knows.

Bibliography:
Brook, V (2006), Puce Modern Moment: Camp, Postmodernism, and the films of Kenneth Anger, University of Illinois Press
Brown, J.F. (1978), Aleister Crowley's Rites of Eleusis, The MIT Press (not directly quoted, but I used it for the appendix table)
Owen, A (1997), The Sorcerer and His Apprentice: Aleister Crowley and the Magical Exploration of Edwardian Subjectivity, Cambridge University Press
Rowe, C (1974), Illuminating Lucifer, University of California Press
Urban, H.B. (2004), The Beast with Two Backs, Aleister Crowley, Sex Magic and the Exhaustion of Modernity, University of California Press

Other sources:
Nicolas Winding Refn in conversation with Kenneth Anger Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h957MkWxaEU&t=941s

Appendex 1: