BBC JOURNEY IN TO DAWNING OF BLACK AQUARIUS DISAPPOINTING...BUT INTERESTING SUBJECT NONETHELESS

Although seasoned presenter Matthew Sweet's journey for BBC Radio's "Archive on 4" in to "Black Aquarius" http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05qvr63 was something of a disappointment, the subject matter was sufficiently interesting to overcome the writer's block that has bedevilled this blog for the past 5 years, so we thought it would be good to review the programme.

This was billed as an exploration of "the dawning of the age of Black Aquarius - the weirdly great wave of occultism that swept through British popular culture in the 1960s-70s...(which) matched the late Victorian craze for the occult in its intensity and popularity..." Unfortunately, Sweet undertook what could have been a fascinating journey in the spirit of a 1970s school boy (or girl, as I was then) enthralled by "...the diabolical novels of Dennis Wheatley, lurid accounts of satanic cults in the Sunday papers and the glut of illustrated books, part-magazines, documentary film and TV drama".

At the heart of the programme was a rather clumsy and disingenuous merging of commentaries on the popular horror genre, and sensational cases of real or imagined satanic cults from the period in question, with accounts of contemporary practitioners of the so-called "dark arts" who have more recently become the subjects for scholars such as Ronald Hutton (who did not feature, incidentally). It is, therefore, instructive to compare Sweet's sensationalist - but ultimately rather dull - approach to his subject with an article by Hutton which appeared in The Guardian newspaper last year: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/28/halloween-more-than-trick-or-treat-origins

Entitled "Halloween? It's more than trick or treat", Hutton describes the way in which "the ancient feast of Winter's Eve" has reflected the popular cultures of its day whilst remaining true to its deeper significance: "a dual time of fun and festivity, and of confrontation of the fears and discomforts inherent in life, and embodied especially in northern latitudes by the season of cold and dark."

Sweet and his followers would have fared better had he also taken a more holistic approach to the dual nature of his subject matter. Indeed, by identifying "Black Aquarius" as a shadow-side - in the sense described by Carl Jung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_%28psychology%29 - of  the "Age of Aqarius" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Aquarius or "New Age" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age  the BBC seemed to offer up this prospect. Instead,the wider cultural phenomena of which this darker side formed part were essentially ignored, as were some key dark Aquarians of the global stage like Jim Morrison http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Morrison

Like "Black Aquarius", Morrison's inspirations may be found amongst the mythic revivalism of the late nineteenth century that was later illuminated and galvanised by the work of Jung and the American Joseph Campbell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell His tragic death and that of contemporary Jimmi Hendrix also illustrate very well the warning given by the English Wiccan Doreen Valiente http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doreen_Valiente in the BBC programme of the dangers of unleashing dark forces through actions likely to compromise psychological balance and wellbeing, such as the inappropriate use of mind-altering drugs or satanic ritual practices.

For Sweet, the latter emerges as something of a joke. A journey that encompasses "hugely eclectic counterculture, swinging sexual liberation and new kinds of consumption and lifestyle..(in cosmopolitan London, as well as)...the countryside too, a fantasy of pagan ritual and wicker men, of tight-lipped locals and blood sacrifice at harvest time...." ends with the middle aged school boy contemplating the nature of evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil as manifested in the camp horror films of the 1960s and 70s (I enjoyed these too, incidentally).

To end this review on a postive note, "Black Aquarius" was an interesting Saturday night excursion in to popular culture. However, it would have been better had the production ventured further in to the terroirs (and terrors) of the British Film Institute's 2010 "Old Weird Britain" season, and left historical commentaries on the legacy of English occultism to respectable scholars like Ronald Hutton*   http://ayearinthecountry.co.uk/day-80365-films-old-wierd-britain-celluloid-flickerings-otherly-albion/ http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/newsandviews/news/issue-2010-08.php
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=91435

* http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Triumph-Moon-History-Witchcraft/dp/0192854496

The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker

I'm currently reading the Penguin edition of "The Lair of the White Worm" by Bram Stoker, creator of the classic "Dracula".

This book, like the vampire tale, is cinematic in style, although I hadn't realised that it had been made in to a film, apparently with changed setting, narrative and characters, by Ken Russell.

Stoker's story, published in 1911, is set in the North Midlands and draws on the history of the ancient kingdom of Mercia.

It's certainly the kind of material which would appeal to Russell, and those who enjoy his horror movies.

The book's front page review quote from The New York Times describes it as a "surreal and dark-humoured tale." Great stuff, but not recommended for those of a politically correct disposition !

In short, "The Lair of the White Worm" is definitely more Ken Russell than Ken Loach material, and comes in the spirit of the British Film Institute's "Old, Weird Britain" retrospective last year.

HELLBOY - The Wild Hunt/Dark Horse Books

Not usually a fan of the graphic novel genre in my adult life, I chanced upon Hellboy - The Wild Hunt, published by Dark Horse Books, and really loved some of the illustrations.

In fact, the publication seems to have helped me overcome the writer's block with which this blog seems to have been inflicted since the Summer of last year when I was laid low with a horridble lurgy.

I'm now working on a scenario for a satirical sketch in the gothic style called "The Curse of the Crookbarrow" which may itself draw upon the story of "The Wild Hunt".

Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine

In the past few months I've read a couple of Barbara Vine "psychological thrillers" : "The Minotaur", and "The Chimney Sweeper's Boy". On balance, I preferred the more highly-evolved plot of the the latter, but both exhibit masterful female insight into the minds of men and women, and what W B Yeats described as "the rag and bone shop of the human heart".

The House on the Strand

Virago Modern Classics (the publisher of Women's Literature) has in recent years republished the entire works of Daphne Du Maurier, described by author Sally Beauman as "one of the twentieth centuries most misunderstood and fascinating novelists".

"The House on the Strand" is described on the back cover of its latest reprint as a book "written in the great tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and H P Lovecraft" (see my previous post). However, although a finely crafted page turner, I would suggest it lack's the sense of menace and sheer terror associated with Poe and and Lovecraft's work. This said, the book is still an excellent read, and the characterisation cleverly and poignantly wrought.

It is not without irony that whilst "The House on the Strand" has been re-published by Virago, Du Maurier writes from the first person perspective of her central male character, Dick. Although, on one level, a deeply tragic story, this novel is also genuinely humorous, not least because Dick's drug-induced trips - from which finally he cannot return - bring to this middle aged man some symptoms which many women associate with the so-called "change of life".

However, the changes wrought in Dick's life are rather more dramatic as he journeys back to fourteenth century Cornwall and becomes more and more involved with the lives of the characters from this earlier period, gradually losing touch with present reality.

Like Lovecroft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", Du Maurier's novel is rooted in a particulary powerful sense of place, and it is from this, as much from its characters and story that the sense of dark predestination associated with the best modern Gothic literature derives. As with Lovecroft's work, antiquarian research is also central to the plot of "The House on the Strand", reflecting the shared heritage of both writers.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

If I had to choose a book of the year so far, this would be it. Only vaguely aware of the work of author H P Lovecraft, I came upon the "Creation Oneiros" edition of "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" - by chance or design - in Worcester City Library under the "Occult" category. Do not be put off by the introduction, which, although interesting, for me did not really capture the essence of the book.

"The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" tells the story of a young antiquarian and genealogist, who's studies conjure up evil c18th ancestor Joseph Curwen in 1920s New England. The tale is told in little more than a novella, yet it demonstrates very much that narrative quality need not mean quantity : a lesson sadly lost on many contemporary authors. H P Lovecraft wrote in the first part of the 20th century.

Lovecraft's writing ranges from hauntingly beautiful lyrical descriptions of place (of which I have read few finer), to genuinely scary and suspenseful horror, puctuated by passages of quirky detail and sometimes absurd humour. For instance, when the local c18th worthies gather to run down Joseph Curwen (in his earlier incarnation), "President Manning (is) without the great periwig (the largest in the Colonies) for which he was noted..."

"The Case of Charles Dexeter Ward" is a totally engrossing read from beginning to end, and, its conclusion is suitably ambiguous and disturbing.

The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

Peter Haining's "Mammoth" selection of modern ghost stories has a section entitled "The Ghost Feelers : Modern Gothic Tales". In his Foreword, Haining writes :

" The Gothic Story also returned re-vitalised to address new generations, thanks to the work of an excellent school of female writers, loosely categorised as "Ghost Feelers". At the forefront was the American Edith Wharton, who claimed it was a conscious act rather than a belief to write about the supernatural. "I don't believe in ghosts", she said, "but I'm afraid of them". Even with this reservation, Wharton and others went ahead to create the "new gothic" of claustrophobia, disintegration and terror of the soul, notably Marie Belloc Lowndes, Eudora Welty, Daphne Du Maurier and Jane Gardam".

Of Haining's selection of women writers, it is Daphne Du Maurier who is perhaps the most interesting. As he notes, Du Maurier "has been credited with shifting the Gothic Mode towards romantic fiction" again in her novel "Rebecca" (1938). Her short stories "The Birds" (1952) and "Don't Look Now" (1966) were also both, in Haining's words, "brilliantly filmed". Du Maurier's story of "The Pool" (1959) in this selection is a tale which finely blends modern psychological insights with sometimes dark and otherworldy visions, which draw the reader in as strongly as they do the character of the young woman who beholds them.