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.

Popularity: 4%

Last week I posted about the release of Chemical Wedding, a new movie about Aleister Crowley that will hit theatres May 23rd, following the May 4th premiere at Sci-Fi London (tickets are available at Apollo Cinemas).

Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden front man and writer for the film, and director Julian Doyle will be self-publishing a tie-in book for Chemical Wedding under Matador.

The book will be published to coincide with the film’s release on May 23rd, and will retail for £7.99 and will be available from Matador.

Simon Callow plays bumbling Professor Haddo who becomes Aleister Crowley. John Shrapnel plays Aleister Crowley. Also starring in the film is Kal Weber as Dr Mathers and Geoff Breton as John Symonds.

Apparently there’s even a tie-in with Jack Parsons:

In 1952 Jack Parsons was blown up in his laboratory in Pasadena. L. Ron Hubbard died on his yacht as leader of the Church of Scientology. But did the issue end with these three deaths? Would Crowley, as he claimed, ever return from death to rule the world? Why did US astronauts name a crater on the moon after Jack Parsons? Is L. Ron Hubbard really dead? What had been generated by the ceremony in California that seemed to signal Crowley’s demise? And what happened to the missing pocket-watch?

Unanswered questions till, late in the twentieth century, Dr. Joshua Mathers brought a ‘state of the art ‘Interactive Suit’ from Cal Tech California to Cambridge in England to begin an experiment that, unknown to mankind, changed the course of our planet.

Matador, “Chemical Wedding“

Film synopsis from BruceFans.com:

At Cambridge University a groundbreaking experiment integrates the human brain with a super-computer using a state-of-the art ‘interactive suit’. One of the Cambridge boffins is an obsessive follower of the turn-of- the-century occult leader, Aleister Crowley, and has reduced Crowley’s rituals to a series of equations and entered them in to the system. Bumbling academic, Professor Haddo (Simon Callow) is the willing volunteer, desperate to get inside the mind of the long-dead Crowley. The computer feeds directly into Haddo’s brain, transforming him from a shy and stuttering academic into the charismatic but sexually depraved Crowley who wreaks havoc around the Cambridge campus. Haddo believes himself to be the reincarnation of Crowley and as he plays out Crowley’s rituals, his associates realise he has knowledge that only the real Crowley could have…

I really want to watch this movie. How do you think it will fare?

Popularity: 3%

The Chemical Wedding is a film about Aleister Crowley co-written by Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson and the film’s director Julian Doyle.

Simon Callow plays Professor Haddo, a Cambridge professor who “becomes” Aleister Crowley.

Crowley’s spirit is re-animated by a superconductor mainframe, transforming the shy and stuttering Professor Haddo (Callow) into the charismatic but sexually depraved Crowley who wreaks havoc with the students and faculty of today’s Cambridge campus.

BruceFans.com, “Chemical Wedding Movie Poster Unveiled”

John Shrapnel plays Aleister Crowley. Also starring in the film is Kal Weber as Dr Mathers and Geoff Breton as John Symonds.

The official trailer for The Chemical Wedding was released yesterday and is available on YouTube. The film opens May 2008.

I’m intrigued.

Popularity: 17%

Fenwick Kaidevis Rysen is a chaos magickian best known for his encyclopedic website Chaos Matrix and the creation Fotamecus, a sigil which evolved into a godform which manipulates the experience of time.

This interview was conducted on August 16th, 2006 for issue 4 of RazorSmile, a print-based chaos magick magazine. This is the third and final piece of a three part interview.

Start with [cref 75], and follow with [cref 76] to conclude with this third and final part of the interview.

P: Were you concerned when you realized Fotamecus had transitioned from a viral servitor to an egregore in such a short period of (linear) time?

FKR: Concerned? Not really, I think I was too fascinated with it. There wasn’t any reason to be afraid. The whole process was endlessly fascinating; all we were trying to do was to see how far we could push the little sigil we’d started out with.

P: It was fairly unprecedented

FKR: It’s been modeled since, though. A few folks have used the same methods to over-empower a sigil to servitorhood and then push it the same way to egregorehood.

It works remarkably well for generating a purposeful group gestalt for things like intentional communities. Starting with sigils that represent the goals of the community, you overcharge, get servitors who act as guides you should listen to, and then eventually become overcharged to egregorehood where they steer the energies/fates/whatevers that surround the group. Those are somewhat limited in scope, though, and not likely to pass to godform. Continue reading »

Popularity: 3%

Fenwick Kaidevis Rysen is a chaos magickian best known for his encyclopedic website Chaos Matrix and the creation Fotamecus, a sigil which evolved into a godform which manipulates the experience of time.

This interview was conducted on August 16th, 2006 for issue 4 of RazorSmile, a print-based chaos magick magazine. This is the second of a three part interview.

Start with [cref 75].

P: When Fotamecus first began to spread, where did it go?

FKR: To whoever used it, which were mostly the folks we spoke to via the Internet. Primarily through the z-list of the Z(Cluster) and essays written for Chaos Matrix. Within a year we had at least 200 known individual magicians around the globe using him on a regular basis. As a servitor he fulfilled a useful niche, just about everyone can use expanded and compressed time.

The idea with the network was that whenever you needed expansion and someone else needed compression – even if you were two isolated mages on opposite sides of the globe – the Fotamecus network would pass the balance off.

The idea behind a viral servitor is that it’s a servitor that can spawn copies of itself. Now they can either go their separate ways, or you can tie them together somehow; picture each one becoming a cell in a much larger body, connected by magickal links that form a sort of network. Continue reading »

Popularity: unranked