Greetings fellow occult travellers.
As we delve into the research and writing of our first collaboratively-written book, The Celluloid Bough: Cinema in the Wake of the Occult Revival, we invite discussion, ideas, suggestions, blessings, spells, fruit baskets, casseroles, gold fountain pens, parchments, rare occult books and assorted talismans from any and all interested readers. Our proposal is coming together nicely and we are very excited to be working on this project.
Stay tuned for news and updates!
3 comments:
Your mention of the Occult Revival piques my curiosity. When do you date that too?
Part of why I as is that one could easilly look at the huge upsurge in Spiritualism and occultism at the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries as a seed bed for the revival of the 60's...
of course a part of this is my way of leading into suggesting Universals 1930's era movie The Mummy starring Boris Karlof... The mummy is defeated when the heroine, now fully remembering her memories of her past life or posessed by her former self, Prays to Isis for help and the nearby statue of Isis raises an arm and destroys the papyrus keeping the Mummy alive!!
I also wanted the chance to suggest a favorite Cheesy occult movie "Simon, King of the Witches" saw it on eith the Elvira's Movie Macabre or on Night Flight as a kid...
I look forward to your book!
Thanks
Pax
Hi Pax,
Although there are a number of "occult revivals" one might point to (the Romantic poets might suggest their own heydey, for example, and the Victorians would vote for the fin de siecle obsession with ceremonial magic), we are specifically interested in the period which engendered the contemporary expression of occult imagery in the US by way of the UK, which begins somewhere in the mid to late 1960s. If we have to choose a year to begin it will probably be 1967...but of course, as you wisely point out, this later revival is surely influenced by the earlier ones, and we will certainly be mentioning this. And of course we will be looking at earlier films and their influence upon later works...
best,
peg
Peg, this is an area of interest for me as you can see on my posts on TheoFantastique. I'm looking forward to your posts on these topics, and your forthcoming book. Welcome to the blogosphere.
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