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Morning of the Magicians
by Joachim Koester
The history of the occult is also a history of the obscure. A history
of ideas shrouded in secrecy seeping through the darkness of centuries,
before suddenly resurfacing in the 'mystic' 1960s, and settling
as a minor but constant presence within mainstream consumer culture.
The 'occult' hasn't left many monuments, mostly dusty manuscripts
found or 'rediscovered' in forgotten boxes in libraries or bookstores,
or an occasional alchemical symbol engraved in a church or on a
building, which surprisingly survived the vigilant eye of the Inquisition.
Nor are the historical figures of this 'occult' easy to trace. Real
identities are typically veiled by disguises and pseudonyms making
me doubt if these people ever actually existed. Some relatively
recent and verifiable sources can be mentioned, however. One is
the French Socialist and Kabbalist, Alphonse Louis Constant (1810-1857)
better known as Eliphas Levi, who in his book "The History
of Magic" (1861), brought together several different strands
of esoteric thought - in effect, inventing occultism - and influenced
artists like Arthur Rimbaud, J. K. Huysmans, André Breton
and Erik Satie. Another is The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
an early twentieth century esoteric society in London, and its renegade
member, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Crowley's portrait was included
on the cover of The Beatles's "Sergeant Pepper" album,
and his imagery finds its way into the songs of John Lennon and
David Bowie among others revealing Crowley's position as a progenitor
and avatar of the occult's thriving within the counter-culture.
On March 1, 1920, Aleister Crowley and a group of devotees, arrived
at Cefalù, Sicily, and moved into a small house at the outskirts
of town. The house, formerly called "Villa Santa Barbara",
was renamed "The Abbey of Thelema", inspired by the French
writer Rabelais, who in the concluding chapters of his book "Gargantua"
(1534), describes an ideal community named "Theleme",
which had the governing maxim "Do what you will". Though
hedonistic, centered around Crowley's own version of magick - Kabbalah
and yoga, with a particular empasis on tantric practices, hetero-
and homosexual rituals, and the use of drugs to heighten intensity
- life in the Abbey was often described as bleak. The house had
neither gas nor electricity, and no plumbing. General conditions
were unsanitary in the extreme, and in the summer the air was thick
with flies, gnats and mosquitoes. With Crowley as a drugged, benevolent
dictator at his best, and a gruesome, perverted manipulator at his
worst, the days at the Abbey could be harsh. On top of that, the
magical training was rigorous and unrelenting. Newcomers would spend
the night in "La chambre des cauchemars" - "The Room
of Nightmares" - its principle features - three large walls
painted in fresco, representing earth, heaven and hell, depicting
mostly demons, goblins and graphic sex scenes. Here, the new student
of magick would experience "The nightside of Eden" primed
by a "secret process" - probably a potent mixture of hashish
and opium, administered by Crowley - as the walls came alive. The
idea behind the ordeal was to contemplate every possible phantom
that can assail the soul, to face the "Abyss of Horror",
and thereby gain mastery over the mind. This approach was strikingly
similar to what was practiced 43 years later in Timothy Leary's
community, Catalina, founded in a vacant hotel in the sleepy Mexican
beach town of Zihuatenjo, where members would sit alone in a lifeguard
tower on the beach, dosed on LSD, summoning the forces of the 'irrational',
trying to break through to the other side.
With a curriculum of ordeals like nights spent in "The Room
of Nightmares", daily evocations in the Temple, and solitary
and exhausting 'magical' retreats on the nearby cliff, coupled with
the Spartan living conditions, it is perhaps evident why the "Abbey
of Thelema" never attracted more than a small group of visitors
and benefactors. So much for free love, and "Do what you will".
Crowley was decidedly more lenient with his own sexual excesses
than with others and there was a catch to the word 'will'. It also
didn't help the cause of Thelema that a number of visitors left
with a heroin habit as an unwanted souvenir. But in the end it was
not the liberal use of drugs, the inherent contradictions in the
teachings, or local prejudice that eventually led to the demise
of the Abbey - the Cefalù locals did tolerate the community,
though they were frequently shocked by the members' preference for
bathing nude. It was the tragic death of Raoul Loveday - from enteric
fever, contracted by drinking water from a mountain spring in the
Cefalù countryside - and the ensuing storm in the British
press against Crowley and the Abbey, which prompted headlines like
"Orgies in Sicily", that led Mussolini to order the community
closed. The directive came as part of a crackdown to suppress breeding
grounds for dissent. If not exactly politically dangerous, Crowley
and the others were at best undesirable. On April 22, 1923, the
Abbey came to an end. The Italian authorities carefully covered
the frescos, the magic circle on the floor and other traces of the
previous activities with a coat of whitewash.
According to experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, the villa subsequently
sat abandoned for more than 30 years. Maybe also forgotten - sleeping
- until Anger in 1955 re-found the villa and obtained permission
to remove the whitewash, which had "turned to stone".
Anger spent three months working on the walls and floors, gradually
revealing "all those hyper-psychedelic murals" in "The
Room of Nightmares" and on doors and shutters, planning a photo
shoot on location, in which the costume of the sorcerer in the dreamy
film Children of Paradise (1945) - a blue velvet robe emblazoned
with the word "ABRA" - would appear. Whether the shoot
actually happened is unclear. Anger's documentary, made during his
stay, was lost by Hulton Television. What still circulates is a
series of photographs of the restored Abbey. One of them depicts
Anger in conversation with the sexologist Alfred C. Kinsey. On the
back wall is Crowley's portrait and on a door, one of the newly
uncovered paintings, a mountainous landscape made in a fantasy-like
style. Anger had met Kinsey when the doctor approached him to purchase
a print of his first film Fireworks. While Anger was an ardent follower
of Crowley's magick, Kinsey thought that Crowley was "the most
prominent fraud that ever lived". Kinsey nevertheless saw Crowley
as a brilliant homoerotic writer, and was interested in discovering
more information about Crowley's sex magick practices. More than
likely it was Kinsey who funded Anger's stay in Cefalù.
Today Cefalù is not the small Sicilian fishing village Anger
and Kinsey experienced in the fifties. Situated one hour from Palermo,
it's better described as a booming beachside town, or as a guidebook
states: "the premier destination on the Tyrrhenian coast".
The change in size and appearance of the town, and the vague directions
I had managed to obtain from an older book, made finding the Abbey
a challenge. As I walked through the area, which once was "the
southeastern outskirts" of Cefalù, I started to doubt
whether the house still existed. This area did not share the characteristics
of a place that might accommodate 'leftover' or 'ambiguous' spaces.
Instead of vacant lots I found my way blocked by the barrier of
a gated community, or newly built condos with BMWs and Porsches
crowding the parking lots. It was only after hours of walking in
circles, almost by chance and out of the corner of my eye, that
I caught a glimpse of a caved-in rooof near the stadium. I realized
I had been within meters of the house several times before, standing
in the parking lot of the stadium, scanning the sloping hillside
without noticing the house right next to me, hidden behind a wall
of greenery and palm trees.
The house and garden of the Abbey were completely overgrown in a
strangely evocative way. As I walked the faintly visible path to
what was once the main entrance, I was so overwhelmed by the scene's
dormant qualities that I had to pause. It seemed to me as if sediments,
pieces of leftover narratives and ideas from the individuals that
once passed through this place had formed knots, as tangled as the
bushes and trees that where now taking over, creating a kind of
sleeping presence.
I continued my exploration wondering if the Abbey could be seen
as a sort of monument, when the gaping hole in the roof reminded
me of Robert Smithson's site specific sculpture "Partially
Buried Woodshed". Even though Smithson, in this and other pieces,
intentionally worked with a narrow but very deep historical space,
the "Partially Buried Woodshed" was transformed into a
political landmark by someone adding the graffiti "May 4 Kent
70", to commemorate the four students killed by Ohio National
Guardsmen during an anti-war protest. The later attempts by Kent
University to get rid of the Woodshed were in reality efforts to
obscure this particular history, since what Smithson's ruin symbolized
was viewed as an embarrassment. Eventually, the university planted
a circle of trees around the Woodshed so it couldn't be seen from
the road. And so, the monument dissolved and came to an end, discretely
hidden by a veil of trees.
Thinking about this I climbed through the only window that was not
boarded up, and made my way into "The Room of Nightmares".
The room bore traces of vivid green paint and I recognized a few
of the frescos from Anger's photographs, though in a much worse
state. Its walls were scrawled with graffiti and the rest of the
house a mess of tiles, dust and discarded furniture - it felt like
being in a hollow place. As I climbed out, and stood in the garden
again, I suddenly noticed how close the newly built houses were
- just on the other side of the bushes.
Joachim Koester, 2005
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