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
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