May 15th will mark the 53rd anniversary of Austin Osman Spare’s death. A short video depicting a posthumous “interview” with Spare has been produced by Jamie Gregory & Neil Dineen in commemoration.

The video is comprised of photographic stills and images of Spare’s paintings and sketches are interspersed throughout. Philip Glass‘ ‘Spaceship’ provides the soundtrack.

The “interview” is conducted via oracle, with a dice, playing cards, Beck’s and Zos Speaks!, and related through scrolling text on the screen. Questions are posed in places Spare had a connection with: the Royal Academy in Piccadilly where two paintings were exhibited in Spare’s youth, the British Museum which inspired Spare’s imagery, and the Goat Tavern he frequented with Kenneth and Steffi Grant.

For all that, the responses calculated to the questions are interesting, though this may be attributed more to Spare’s enigmatic style. Repeat answers, however, dull some some of the potency of this method for the spectator.

Amusingly, the oracle declined to answer the question “What really happened between you and Aleister Crowley?”

Following the “interview” two “new” automatic images are produced “via the menstruum of undines”, and a thankful toast of Budweiser is offered at Spare’s grave.

The twelve-minute video can be downloaded from LaShTAL.com at “An Interview with Austin Osman Spare – a commemorative video“.

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It’s been interesting reading the responses to guest blogger Dr Dave Evans‘ review of the new Aleister Crowley film Chemical Wedding over the past week. In addition to responses posted here, there have been a number of positive (or at least amused) comments on private blogs and journals, and at several which have been more public.

Crowley forum LAShTAL.com has been collecting Chemical Wedding reviews from various media sources, comparing and contrasting them and commenting on what they find, including the one posted here. Dave’s replies to commentators on the forum explore the various positions from which he disliked the film.

Taylor Ellwood‘s response in his blog Experiments of a Magician struck me as rather odd. Rather than taking an interest in the film itself, Ellwood seemed pleased the movie received a terrible review because he hates Crowley. Continue reading »

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Dave, a British academic and magician, is the co-founding editor of JSM – The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic and is author of The History of British Magic After Crowley (Hidden Publishing, 2007) and several other books.

I’m just back from the late-night regional premiere of the new Crowley-based film, Chemical Wedding, here in England. Much anticipated, this film is the brainchild (or should that be Moonchild?) of Bruce Dickinson. He is apparently a long-time Crowley fan, and will be better known as the screaming front man of perennial stadium heavy-metallers Iron Maiden . Apart from a few peripheral references in recent mainstream film (one of the Hellraisers, Razorblade Smile etc), Crowley hasn’t really been touched on for decades – you have to go back to the often appalling sixties’ Hammer Horror stuff, based on Dennis Wheatley’s books, or the 1950s classic Night of the Demon.

The prospects here looked good, with a prominent Shakespearian/Dickensian actor (Simon Callow) in the lead role instead of some unknown no-hoper. The plot encompassed some science fiction angles (the film Weird Science from the 80s immediately sprang to mind) and it is set in a modern-day Cambridge University, with a chaos-mathematics/quantum physics slant on to proceedings. Crowley is essentially called back to life via virtual reality technology, and possesses the body of an elderly and befuddled professor, who suddenly becomes the Beast renewed (in a rather natty purple velvet suit). Sounded like a great premise, and the online trailer, released ages ago, was simply fabulous.

Well, now I’ve seen the film… Continue reading »

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The Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey, has allowed new footage to be taken of their rites and interviews with current High Priest Peter H. Gilmore and other members of various ranks.

Independent filmmaker Joshua P. Warren and co-producer C. Eric Scott are self-described as agnostic and Christian respectively, but state: Continue reading »

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While we’re on the subject of films featuring Aleister Crowley, ((See “[cref 156]” and “[cref 161]“.) I thought I’d mention a trailer I recently stumbled across for Perdurabo, a short 40 minute film which will form the first part of a feature-length movie.

The film was written and directed by independent Spanish film maker Carlos Atanes and stars Manuel Solàs as Aleister Crowley.

The English on Atanes’ website, Wikipedia entry and IMDB film synopsis is awkward, and all sources lack specific details on the film’s contents.

In time of Mussolini, a mysterious man travels to Sicily looking for famous British magician Aleister Crowley. But when he arrives, he discovers that Crowley has vanished, and into the Abbey of Thelema (the Abbey where people does his True Will) the confusion and the despair reigns. During his stay, he’ll knows the Sexual Magick principles and the thelemic way of life.

- Film synopsis of Perdurabo from IMDB.com

A brief trailer can be seen on Blip.TV here.

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