Entertainment For Lively Minds
Satan!
Posted by Clerk Kent on 2 March 2010 - 3:41pm.
Just been reading Satan Wants Me by Robert Irwin and wondered if any of the massive ever dabbled in Satanism in the sensational Seventies. If so, are you over it and what was it like?
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Fantastic book
I thought I was the only one to have read it. Whenever there is a recommended read session here I always throw it into the mix. Funny and progressively more scary. Kind of Adrien Mole's version of Rosemary's baby as written by Dennis Wheatley - if he'd gone post-modern Afraid I haven't joined a coven, though I confess a love of Crowley as a Great British Character.
Yes!
"Kind of Adrien Mole's version of Rosemary's baby as written by Dennis Wheatley - if he'd gone post-modern."
Ha ha - that's an incredibly accurate description. Irwin's great at twisty bendy disorientation. There's a real nice "horribleness" to the book that I don't think other writers often achieve on purpose.
My brother's in a witch's coven (think he got into it from reading Wheatley as a little lad), but Wicca's a whole different bag. The other members I've met all seem really nice - no virgin sacrifices etc.
I didn't realise that Wicca
is apparently (although denied by Wiccans) a complete invention around 1946, and is England's one true claim to an original religion. Like Ploughman's Lunch, you're led to believe it's much older and traditional than it actually is.
See also...
...the druids.
See also
most of the Occult. It professes to be a "craft" practiced by the Egyptians but most of the rituals and workings practiced now are based on stuff made up by a coterie of odd balls in Victorian London
That
sounds excellent! I was sceptical about the whole thing before, but now I want to sign right up. If they'd just combined it with "science" it would be perfect.
I did dabble. Annually. Many still do.
There was much ritual. The sacred sock would be hung and the mince pie and glass of sherry left out otherwise He would not visit..
Santaism. I believe.
Satan in the Winter Olympics
Miroslav Satan, Slovakia
Maybe someone ought to ask Mick Jagger and James Fox
Ok, well it was 1968/9. But there were reportedly some very strange goings-on on and around the set of Performance, which Anita Pallenberg may or may not have had an alledged hand or two in.
But something very odd clearly happened at that time, and which led James Fox to have a nervous breakdown, enter a monastary and become an envangelical christian, God help us. And Pete Townsend, in a filmed interview that accompanied the Rock and Roll Circus DVD, said that Jagger had come back from the shoot strangely empowered in some way: Townsend said that something had obviously happened to Jagger that had profoundly affected him.
It's all bollocks in my view, but there you are.
Suggested amendment
it's all drugs in my view, but there you are ;-)
Donald Cammell
The co-director was a very strange character. His dad was a close friend of Aleister Crowley and Cammell Jr knew The Great Beast as a kid. He was also a friend of Kenneth Anger - another Crowley acolyte - who made things like Scorpio Rising and is a friend of Jimmy Page. It's rumoured (without much evidence I think) that Cammell got the cast involved in Crowleyite occult rituals, many of which involve sex, drugs, and ego destruction, which are basically the central themes of Performance, aren't they?
Cammell committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, allegedly while in front of a mirror so he could watch himself die. There's a very dark film in this somewhere, I think.
Surely ripe for a remake then?
I see Adam Sandler, Russell Brand and Megan Fox starring - let's do lunch!
growing up with Satan
As someone brought up surrounded by one brand of Christianity (Northern Irish Presbyterianism) the whole concept of Satan's temptations was never far away. So much so that when I embraced rock in all its heavy forms I was truly shocked by revelations like the back masking of records (play Stairway backwards and apparently you hear "Sweet Satan"), the Ramirez murders being inspired by AC/DC's Night Prowler, KISS allegedly meaning Kids in the Service of Satan, and things going bump in the studio when Maiden recorded the No of the Beast. Then Judas Priest were in court for writing lyrics which, when played backwards, told American teengaers to kill themselves (case thrown out)
All utter tripe and, looking back now, its incredibly funny how the moralising Christian right believed it at the time.
As Ozzy once said about Black Sabbath touring America, everyone thought the band were into black magic yet the only thing he could conjure up was, as he put it with characteristic honesty, "a good fart in bed".
Judas Priest backwards messages
I believe the key moment in the trial was when the defence decided to buy some bubblegum pop record at record, play the whole thing backwards, then pick one segment and play it in court.
They then announced to the judge that the segment they were going to play had the message "fluffy marshmallow" (or something) when played backwards, and sure enough you could hear that. The judge's face at that moment (it was televised) was a real "light coming on" instant.
Dabbling
as I type.I often have a dabble with one hand as I type with the other.Multi-Tasking Satanism is the next big thing.Not read Robert Irwin,I shall seek him out,when I stop dabbling.