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Kenneth Anger question..

  
 
rizla mission
12:45 / 17.10.02
My friendly local arts cinema is showing Anger's film 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome' next week, and I imagine it's just going to be shown with no introduction and explanation and everyone's going to go "fucking hell, that was good, wonder what it was all about?"

So I thought I'd start this thread - here rather than in the film forum - to ask if anyone's familiar with the magickal intent behind this particular film, and whether you could kind of tell me the score before I just sit down and let it hit me in the face, so to speak..
 
 
Malle Babbe
14:18 / 17.10.02
Well, i have just recently read two books on Anger's films, which provide detailed synopses of Pleasure Dome as well as his other works.

Anger : an unauthorized biography of Kenneth Anger
By Bill Landis
ISBN: 0060167009

and

Moonchild: The Films of Kenneth Anger (Persistence of Vision, 1)
by Jack Hunter (Editor), Mikita Brottman (Introduction)
ISBN: 1840680296

The second book has synopses done by people that have more of an understanding of the ritual mechanics seen in the films (as well as better illustrations, but alas, not in color), but the first has more info on Kenneth Anger's life.

'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome', IIRC, has the basic outline of a Magus-figure summoning various gods and goddesses, and absorbing their essences into himself. They emerge one by one into the ritual area, and each brings with them an intoxicant of some sort (Yage, etc). Provided I just haven't confused this film with "Lucifer rising"...

What is interesting is that the costuming and characters involved in "Pleasure dome" are in large part based on a costume party Anger attended, with "come as your personal demon (I think) as the theme. Supposedly Anais Nin's outfit in the film was similar to the one in the party.
 
 
rizla mission
10:34 / 18.10.02
useful. thanks.
 
 
illmatic
11:19 / 18.10.02
I swear that read somewhere that Kenneth Anger based one of his films on a specific Crowley rituals but I haven't been able to find a reference on-line. . I thought it was his Liber Samekh, a ritual he designed for the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel but maybe not, though this would be a good thing to film, lots of symbolism encoded in the barbarous names. This in turn was based on a ritual called the "Preliminary Inovation of the Goetia" which he drew on (throught the Golden Dawn?) from a text called "A fragment of a Graceo-Eygptian rite".
 
  
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