This might seem like a convoluted beginning, but- in Michael Shermer’s book Why People Believe Weird Things, he quotes a sociologist, who comments thus about outbreaks of Witchcraft Mania: there is no “better index to social disruption and change, for outbreaks of witch mania have generally taken place in societies which are- confronting a relocation of boundaries.”

If one considers all the decades of the 20th century: none are as intensely fascinated with the Occult as the period from the late 1960s-the early 1970s. As well, no period evidenced more anxiety over the subject. In previous decades, Witchcraft was seen in movies as innocent Faerey-Tale and as the subject for Romantic comedy. Indeed, in 1964, American Pop-Culture introduced one of its most beloved Witches, in the TV series Bewitched (which ran until 1972). However: reflect upon the fact that the late ’60s sees an explosion of extremely lurid Witch-movies (both in America and in Great Britain). As an example, check out Hammer Film’s 1966 The Witches (released in the United States in 1967 as The Devil’s Own). Starring 1940s Hollywood star Joan Fontaine, the movie depicts a school-teacher uncovering (shock of horror!) an actual Witch-Coven operating in an innocent-seeming English village. If you check out the Trailer here on YouTube, and this Scene from the movie: you will get an idea of the strange cult-like presentation of Witches. These are very subversive Witches, living undercover amongst their neighbors: but dangerous and threatening to their neighbors, to the extent (as you see from the advert to your left) that these Witches endorse Ritual Human Sacrifice- in a very strange, cult-like manner. (They also employ Ritual Circles, as you see, and High Priestesses who wear Horned Head-dresses.)

Of course, nothing can equal a strange, cult-like presentation of Witches like Roman Polanski’s 1968 Rosemary’s Baby. Derived from the earlier novel, the film is one of the greatest horror-movies ever made, and one of the film-classics of the ’60s: a creepy, claustrophobic, paranoid affair. TOTAL SPOILER ALERT: if in the 40 years that this film has been out, you have never seen Rosemary’s Baby; jump to the next section now: I’m totally spilling the beans on Rosemary’s Baby. A really well-acted, well-crafted, well-directed movie (one of Polanski’s accomplishments is to give you such a good sense of the couple’s apartment- the world seems turned upside-down for a minute, when something happens that we don’t expect towards the end), set in a magnificently Gothic haunted house (it was famously filmed at the Grandest of Baroque Manhattan apartment buildings, the Dakota, also the site where John Lennon was murdered): Rosemary’s Baby concerns a young couple’s first pregnancy- a strange, painful pregnancy, the weirdness of which is explained wonderfully when the young mother figures out that her next-door neighbors are Witches; Witches who have summoned the Devil to impregnate Rosemary with the unHoly spawn of Satan.

Witches in this film are the equivalent to Satan-Worshippers in another context. The fact that they are (literally) Hell-Raising WITCHES is made plain (the word is used to describe the coven next-door). It is difficult to argue that this is invalid as a fictional premise, as for the better part of the Middle Ages, “Witch” meant “Devil-Worshipper” (200,000 people were not put to death for “Witchcraft,” but for “Devil-Worshipping Witchcraft”; Witches were not executed at Salem for “Witchcraft” per se, but for contracting with the Devil, to harm through Witchcraft; both the novel and movie continue this trope). Granted, Rosemary’s neighbors could be “Satanic Ritual Occultists”: but Rosemary’s line of shocked apprehension, “They’re WITCHES!!” loses power if it becomes, “They’re Satanic Ritual Occultists!!”  Like The Witches, Rosemary’s Baby imagines a world wherein apparent innocence and normalcy can turn dangerously sinister, in the revelation that the most innocuous of neighbors could turn out to be Satan-Summoning Witches and practitioners of the Dark Arts. (In the Pop-Culture Call-Out Category, one has to note that the marvelous actress Ruth Gordon received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, as the deceptively batty Satanic-Priestess Witch in the apartment next to Rosemary; so popular was Rosemary’s Baby, a TV sequel was broadcast in 1976, a sort of late ’70s fascination with Satanic Occultism.)

Witches become the victims in England’s 1968 Witchfinder General, starring that master-of-horror Vincent Price and based upon the sadistic career of 1640s Matthew Hopkins: a film in which Witch Mania  erupts in a society undergoing terror and upheaval, reflecting times of such dangerous uncertainty that cruel Witch-Hunters may flourish; the innocent with no recourse save to suffer the tortures under which they must break, sooner or later, to the confessions that will earn them execution as “Witches.” (For all that England did not actually burn Witches, as the advert might imply: gentle England, they “merely” hung Witches.)

1968 was quite the year, Occult-Movie-wise: Another Hammer Film from then (Hammer Studios was quite prolific in the late ’60s, we see), that deals with, in Rosemary’s Baby-like manner, the Summoning of Satan is The Devil Rides Out (released in the United States as The Devil’s Bride). Starring Hammer stalwart Christopher Lee as a Good Occultist, the film depicts a Satanic Cult under the leadership of a Bad Occultist (who has gained hypnotic powers over his victims through his Occultism). If you check out the scene that someone has put up at YouTube, you will see the climatic sequence when the deranged Cult, abandoned to wantonness (and wearing pajamas reminiscent of Hugh Hefner), actually (wait for it; no really, wait for it) summons THE DEVIL HIMSELF!! (Christopher Lee’s line: “My GOD!! It’s The DEVIL HIMSELF!!”) Fortunately Mr. Lee pitches a Cross right into that Damn Bastard’s Face and sends the Fiend exploding back to Hell. One of the more campier of the ’60s Occult-Horror Films (check out that Ritual-Circle, though).

A preoccupation with the Occult, and an expression of existential fright through the Occult, continued into the early ’70s, despite the introduction of another beloved Pop-Culture Witch: Witchiepoo, in HR Pufnstuf. The supernatural soap Dark Shadows ran from 1966-71; the creepily spooky series The Night Stalker of 1974 existed for only one season, but is inevitably fondly recalled by anyone who was a TV-watching kid at the time; even the popular cartoon-show Scooby Doo (that started in 1969) featured supernatural story-lines. Then arrived the Grand-Daddy of horror films, The Exorcist (in 1973), followed by the Anti-Christ movie The Omen in 1976 (I remember both movies causing seismic shock-waves throughout the zeitgeist). Considered in this light, the British cult-film of 1973, The Wicker Man, seems a bit more comprehensible, its Twilight-Zone plot a continuation of the surreal sense of dread explored in Supernatural film since the late ’60s. Even its dramatic conclusion arrives within a context, if you consider that human-sacrifice had been a theme introduced first in The Witches and The Devil Rides Out.

Why was there this intense focus on Supernatural themes (frequently involving Witches) bridging the ’60s into the ’70s? If we believe that Witch-Mania will manifest during times when society is “relocating its boundaries”: we might consider the social pressures being exerted, with the Racial, Gender, and Sexual Equality Movements beginning tumultuous upheavals. Likewise, the Hippie Movement, the Counterculture, and the Youth Movement challenged the norms of more conservative times. The Viet Nam War was a ferociously controversial subject, and the Watergate scandal rocked America’s belief in its own government (generating a cynicism towards government that we have yet to move away from). And then, of course, there was the reintroduction of Occult Philosophy into the Psyche, both through the influence of the Age of Aquarius and the nascent Rise of Wicca and Neo-Paganism. But still- by the end of the ’70s, this jittery quality vanished from the scene (to be replaced by the malaise of the Carter years). Just like the Burning Times at the end of the Middle Ages, the time of ’60s-’70s Witch-Scares-and-Popular-Culture just stopped.

Why? Perhaps it is because by then, the social boundaries had been relocated, and there was not the need for projected acting-out through Witch-Drama.

In the midst of this, a little-known movie made its debut upon the scene- a movie that in retrospect, presaged a lot (such as the entire social movement that causes us all to be here today, at the Juggler). Although its director George A. Romero is famous for films like Night of the Living Dead, 1971′s Season of the Witch could not be more removed from any Horror Flick milieu. It is actually a Women’s Lib movie, albeit one with Occult overtones. It opens upon a suburban housewife confronting her life in a pretty house and a dried-up marriage, going through the meaningless motions of it all. She is aware that the Times, they are a-changing around her, but rather than go mad like the heroine in Lucy Jordan’s Ballad, she discovers Witchcraft. Ah, but it’s not the creepy/ spooky kind of Shlock Horror: it is the kind that will come to be called Wicca, and which will lead the way for the Pagan Revival experienced by all of us, here today. As such, it is a remarkable depiction of our early history, the first days of our movement and Cause (it surely must be the first depiction of Wiccan Witchcraft on film). It also presages the next notable development in 20th century Witchcraft Film: Witchcraft (Wicca) as an empowerment. The heroine of Season of the Witch is empowered by her exposure to Witchcraft; she empowers herself through devotion to the Craft: the implication at the end is that she will go on to empower others, as a Priestess of the Craft. Her journey is that taken by all here within the Pagan movement; she is our first representation and cinematic role-model. She will be mirrored by many other women in film later in the century, with the next explosion of Witches in Movies, in the 1990s, as Witchcraft increasingly comes to be seen as an Empowerment for Women, in a movement that might be called, the Rise of the Witch.

Season of the Witch is available at Hulu.com; please check it out, for being the quintessential modern Pagan Film-Classic.

One of the distinct Pop-Cultural Phenomena of the 2000s (for all that the Superman movies started in the ’70s and ’80s, with Batman in the ’90s), has been the explosion of Superhero movies: story-lines intended to recreate in cinematic form the proven formula of the Superhero Tale. An especially Meta-Manifestation of this tendency is the recently released Avengers: foreshadowed in the most recent Marvel Superhero features- the Iron Man films, The Hulk (the one with Edward Norton), and last summer’s Thor and Captain America- the Silver Screen’s replication of Marvel Comics first Meta-Moment, now realized in movie-making, in the pulling-together of a bunch of separate titles into one Meta-Adventure (soon to reach another Meta-Level, as Avengers #1, in its customary pattern, ends with a foreshadowing of Avengers #2).

That this Pop-Culture impulse towards Meta-Superhero Production does not exist in a vacuum: consider that the CW Television Network broadcast Smallville from 2001-2011; an altogether Meta-Inspiration, to take the first Superhero (Superman) and explore his Superhero coming-of-age through the highly intensive format of a weekly TV show. So Meta-Popular proved the idea that a CW Meta-Universe emerged on the show, as Smallville came to introduce other DC Heroes such as The Flash; Aquaman; and Green Arrow (the show took on an entirely new Meta-Direction when Green Arrow basically joined as the second male lead). The Smallville version of the Justice League followed suit, before call-outs began for the Justice Society, the Legion of Superheroes, the Wonder Twins, and Isis. Reconstructing the DC world of comic books in a Meta-Fashion impossible to accomplish without a ten-year television series, Smallville reinforces the impression left by the Avengers (to say nothing of, say, Spider-Man and the X-Men): that there is something Meta-Appealing right now in Superhero story-telling.

All of which reminds me of something that I read as a kid, in Stan Lee’s 1975 Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. According to Mr. Lee, he was giving a radio interview; it was the impression of the show’s host that Marvel Comics (and by extension, comics in general) were in effect creating a new form of modern Mythology. Considering that we have even-more-new versions of Batman, and Spider-Man out this summer, with Superman upcoming (in 2013): there may something to that. In that mind, therefore: I can’t wait for the Avengers movie where they introduce the Scarlet Witch- comics’ most famous Witch Superhero. How totally Meta, huh?

(1) Dark Shadows was unique in TV culture at the time (and since) for being a Supernatural Soap-opera, starring the Vampire Barnabas Collins. The movie is therefore a fantastic Gothic spook-story, populated with Witches, Vampires, Ghosts, Curses, Haunted Mansions, and what-have-you. It opens with a prologue of how the Collins family came from England to America- hilarious for being played in very straightforward-manner as eighteenth century Romance Lit. The young Barnabas Collins “takes up” (as they say) with a servant-wench, whom he jilts. The lesson he learns (the cad): the wench is also a Witch, who gains her revenge (in a couple of spine-tingling spooky scenes) upon Barnabas, by cursing him into a Vampire. The rest of the movie concerns this eighteenth century Vampire reconnecting with his family in the “modern age” of the 1970s. (One of my favorite moments: Barnabas is confronted by a “TV” for the first time, upon which Karen Carpenter is singing “Your love has put me on top of the world.” Barnabas attacks the box, demanding that the “tiny songstress REVEAL herself!!”) A vast amount of humor derives from the efforts of a 200-year-old Vampire to adjust to the 20th century, whilst sending up the tropes of American soap-opera; all the while playing up the unworldly creepiness of a New England mansion haunted by centuries of ghosts and family-hexes and the Living Undead.

(2) Johnny Depp is so spectacularly brilliant as Barnabas Collins, he deserves some sort of notice (such as an Oscar nomination). He probably won’t get it, as Dark Shadows is a “comedy,” and therefore not as “worthwhile” as a “serious drama”- but seriously, show me the actor able to pull off Barnabas Collins as well, or better. Watching Depp inhabit the role of an eighteenth century Vampire so thoroughly, I started thinking, “He must have spent months, like wandering around his house, ‘being’ a Vampire, in order to ‘get into’ the role this fully.” A vast amount of Depp’s performance that sells this picture so wonderfully  comes from “having” the really-romanticized mind-set of someone in the late 1700s, married to a physical characterization of a Vampire that- from napping upside-down, to tapping forks to judge their silver content, to fashioning a “coffin” out of a packing box- captures perfectly what one imagines must be the behavior of the Nosferatu.

Totally his equal in satiric brilliance is Michelle Pfeiffer as the Family-Matriarch. Her genius in sending up the cliches and melodrama of the TV soap is so understated, it might be missed- but again, show me the actress better able to pull off this material without camping it up through the roof. She nails in perfect subtlety the ideal nuance of the soap-convention; her scenes with Depp represent  marvels of the acting profession.

Two things to watch out for: keep your eye open for the sea-captain whom Depp meets in a bar; this is Christopher Lee (the Dracula of the ’60s English horror-films, in a brilliantly called-out cameo); also watch for the scene where they are throwing a party at Collinswood Manor, and Barnabas is greeting his guests at the door. The guests whom you see entering are actors from the original series.

(3) Fun though all of this is, the thing that makes it “Pagan” is the really-complicated 200 year-old love-affair between Barnabas and the Witch whom he loves in spite of himself. It is her (really effective) screen-curse that changes him into a Vampire, and her unrelenting desire to have her revenge upon him and his family that drives the movie. On the one hand, she is a very Empowered individual, due to her Witchcraft. She successfully curses her unfaithful lover (call that empowered as you will); she keeps herself alive over two centuries, amassing a business fortune to rival the Collinses’; she is totally unafraid to go after exactly what she wants (like her Vampire-Lover; the scene where she and Barnabas “get it on” in unabandoned Witch-Vampire sex is pretty amazing). She fits comfortably into the category of “Carnal” or Temptress or Seductress-Witch: the Witch with the Supernatural Erotic wiles (not for nothing is she the Witch in the Scarlet-Red Dress who shows up at the Collinswood Ball).

She is the female counterpart to a male Vampire, in a Gothic horror-comedy; in as much as she is amoral, Barnabas is as well (he gleefully “feeds” upon humans to satisfy his Vampire-thirst: one of the funniest scenes concerns Barnabas “rapping” with a bunch of stoned hippies in the woods- just before he announces sorrowfully that he must kill them all. The camera cuts to a long shot, punctuated by the hippies’ screams as Barnabas gorges on their blood). If a Vampire can get such a pass as this in a Vampire-comedy, presumably so can a Witch, and one notes that oftentimes, the Wicked or Corrupt Witch will actually make an admirable catalyst for a dramatic story-line.

Yet, my friend Gary expressed frustration afterwards, that here again was an instance of a Bad Witch, causing trouble, stirring up mischief, hexing people who piss her off. At the least, he asked rhetorically, could you tweak the script to make mention of GOOD Witches, who might not be so into cursing people for 200 years?

It’s difficult to say what the solution is. On the one hand, we have had Jugglers communicate irritation over the predominantly “bad” or maligned presentation of Witches in pop-culture before (a habit growing, as Supernatural and Fantasy stories gain in popularity). On the other: Bad Witches make for a compelling plot-conflict faster and more neatly than just about any other Supernatural Entity (try imagining The Blair Witch Project with anything else other than a Witch in the title). As the Witch is an Archetypal Symbol, perhaps the most graceful thing is to concede the value of the Bad Witch in Archetypal story-telling.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to agitate for “equal-time,” positive depictions of pop-culture Witches; it is just to recognize that maybe there is a value to both the Good and the Bad Witch, in fictional narrative.

Nell wondered what you could get for a four year-old witchling if you sold him on eBay.

The problem with falling in love with anything is, of course, that any flaws get embraced as part of the enchantment, and there is absolutely no reason to expect that anyone else would similarly fall in love. I often worry about overselling a book to any audience, and Pagans, in particular, generally want to make up their own minds about everything. (Honestly, that fierce psychic independence can be exhausting!)

And so I cannot review this book in the usual fashion. All I can do is report my experience, and try to work out why it had such a powerful effect on me. You may not like the book at all. I suspect, however, that there is a commonality that we all share in what brought us to Paganism in the first place that might provide a basis for you to fall in love with this book as well.

Part of the joy here is that it is telling that hoary old story of a person unexpectedly discovering that she has magical powers, and that there is a secret group of people in the world that share those powers. I probably reviewed a dozen books for this blog that contain those tropes. Harry Potter shares those tropes. (I love Harry Potter, but I am not in love with Harry Potter.) The real antecedent of A Modern Witch are Zenna Henderson’s stories of The People. (I am afraid that Henderson’s stories are being forgotten which is sad. They were, surprisingly, cited by the scholar James Robinson as a modern example of Gnostic literature in his introduction to the first published English translation of the Nag Hammadi Library. Henderson’s books were once popular enough to serve as the basis for a 1972 TV movie starring William Shatner. I saw it when it was first broadcast, and it’s probably not worth seeking out unlike the short stories.) The difference is that the secret community of witches in Harry Potter is not necessarily friendly or trustworthy: Harry enters into a community that has been ravaged by conflict and a continued struggle for power. In Henderson’s and Geary’s worlds, the magical community exists in some tension with the rest of the real world, but is multigenerational and, generally, warm, familial and supportive. Both Henderson and Geary capture that overwhelming sense of coming home and finding your place in a magical community. And being loved and embraced for that.

(Sigh. Okay. So when I was five or six my parents used to watch The Avengers, and there was an episode that featured the characters going down into a grave where some wild, Mod party was going on in a secret complex below the graveyard. I had a dream shortly thereafter in which I similarly entered a grave and discovered that I was part of a secret group of people who were, I don’t know, working to save the world or something. I wanted so much to go back to that dream the next night which, of course, I couldn’t. Henderson’s stories serve as a gateway back for me. As do the magical rituals of my Trad. As does A Modern Witch.)

A Modern Witch is kind of an extended, Techno-Pagan version of one of Zenna Henderson’s stories. We are introduced to a small group of witches chatting online. Nell and her brother Jamie have built and operate a hugely successful MMORPG called “Enchanter’s Realm”. Nell has coded up a spell that will find another witch and bring him or her into chat, and so we meet Lauren a real estate agent in Chicago who was just shopping online for milk and had no idea that she has any magical powers at all when she is pulled into the chatroom. Jamie is sent from Berkeley to assess Lauren’s powers, and Lauren is introduced to world of magic that she had no idea existed.

There is not a whole lot of dramatic conflict in the novel. Lauren has her life in Chicago, and she’s swept into this amazing group of witches in Berkeley where she is given some basic training. Will she choose to stay with her agency and continue her life near her best friend and Yoga instructor, Nat? Or will her new-found powers and friends draw her to the Left Coast? You probably will not find the answers to those questions all that shocking.

Nevertheless, Geary genuinely taps into that sense of the witching community as an ideal. It’s perfect love and perfect trust. It involves a complete span of ages and gifts, and people being cherished for their gifts whether they have magical powers or not. It’s about family. Friendship. Elite communities of amazing people doing wonderful things for and with each other. It is Pagan.

Does the book peg the 100% mark on the Paganometer? Interestingly, the thealogy is occluded at best in this first book of the series. The witches do celebrate all the traditional Sabbats, and every spell ends, “As I will, so mote it be.” But the word “Goddess” does not appear in the text at all, and neither does any other named God or Goddess. There is, however, there is at least one beautiful moment that suggests a bit more than the otherwise secular tone of the novel. That being said, the book pretty much nails the extremes for the other parts of the Paganometer. It’s sex-positive (though there are no on-screen sex scenes), eco-positive, egalitarian (no one’s race is mentioned, and so the characters might be all white, but the sense is that race is largely irrelevant to this particular story), and wildly magical.

The magic system is a bit idiosyncratic, but fun nonetheless. The system is probably overly structured with a strict classification of the types of available powers and how they work together. Circle-casting requires exactly fourteen people, and so on. Charmingly, though, Geary gives lots examples of how the witches play with and ignore those structures. Like Henderson’s stories and Bradley’s Darkover novels, Geary captures the easy intimacy of telepaths working magic together and establishing appropriate boundaries and shields. She creates a world that is easy to long for, and hard to leave while you inhabit it.

Geary has been cranking out these novels at an unbelievable pace over the past year. This first book came out about a year ago, and she followed it with two others in the series, and then started a second series which takes place between the first two books. To date she has published six books in this universe in the past year. Needless to say, I’ll be posting up reviews, if not raves, as I work through them.

Obviously, the first notable instance of a “Witch” movie is one of the most beloved of Hollywood classics: MGM’s 1939 The Wizard of Oz. Possessing two memorable portrayals of Witches- one Good, the other Bad- the film reads, I think, as an Initiation into the Craft of the Witch, undergone by a remarkably visionary child named Dorothy. All of the elements of the Shamanic Initiation are there: Dorothy is carried through the elemental force of a cyclone; to a strange, new world, populated with fantastical creatures; where she undergoes a mystical journey, fraught with peril; before she experiences the terrifying Death Ordeal in the Witch’s castle. Rewarded and lauded at the end, she understands abilities within her previously unknown: all of this is revealed to have been a dream at the end; a dream, or a Shamanic Vision?

Governing this unique experience is a kindly Good Witch- as much a Goddess as exists in Oz, who as memento of Dorothy’s adventure, Magickally places upon her feet a (Freudianly suggestive) pair of ruby-red slippers. (This is also one of the call-outs to the Shamanic Experience, as anything to do with feet is significant, in Shaman-Legend.) As these ruby slippers had previously belonged to the Witch of the East, they symbolically count as Initiation Objects into the Sisterhood of Witchcraft: demonstrated to Dorothy in both its Good and Wicked forms. In all ways, The Wizard of Oz is the quintessential American Movie-Faerey-Tale; its enduring power is demonstrated by the fact that we keep retelling it. It also shows, in an interesting way, how myth can develop and grow, mutating first into this form, and then into that.

There has been an off-shoot retelling of The Wizard of Oz (perhaps you have heard of it) called Wicked: first a runaway best-seller novel, and then a blockbuster Broadway show. It too tells the story of an Initiation into Witchcraft; only this time, considering the point-of-view of the Witch of the West, and taking the position that her inherent powers are exploited by unscrupulous individuals (such as the Wizard), earning her the raw deal of being unjustly called “Wicked.” Clearly, the soil of this 1930s Witch-Myth continues to grow in fertility as the decades wear on.

The 1940s found its Witch in femme fatale Veronica Lake’s 1942 romantic-comedy  I Married a Witch. A screen-siren of the time, Ms. Lake’s presentation as a beautiful and seductive Witch who falls in love with a Mortal plays up the idea of the Female as the Seductress-Enchantress, making courtship between a Woman and a Man as mysterious a thing as Witchcraft. In many ways, the heart of screw-ball comedy lies in the ways that Women and Men will be both drawn to one another, and mystified by one another at the same time. It’s a little like that “Women are from Venus, Men from Mars” thing, rendered in metaphor as “Women are [beautiful] Witches, Men are Mortals- and yet they will fall in Love.” So satisfying is this concept, it is borrowed as the basis for the 1960s television series Bewitched, one of the most beloved depictions of Witches in American pop-culture. I Married a Witch: an intriguing and rather romantic premise for a light-hearted ’40s classic Hollywood comedy.

The same romantic premise forms the basis for the ’50s preeminent Witch: Kim Novak in 1958′s Bell, Book, and Candle. Originally a Broadway play from 1950 starring English actress Lilli Palmer, and then a sturdy touring vehicle for actresses such as Rosalind Russell, Ginger Rogers, and Lana Turner, Bell, Book, and Candle equally follows a beautiful Witch (Ms. Novak is perhaps the most beautiful woman to play a Witch onscreen) as she pursues the Mortal man of her desire. It is interesting that Bell, Book, and Candle provides Ms. Novak’s Witch with a background community of Witches, envisioning a bohemian Greenwich Village setting for this secret, underground society. The movie (and original play) is the first time that metaphor can be read into a dramatic use of Witches: on the one hand, the Witches of BBC are clearly presented in terms of Beatnik culture, as well as the emerging counterculture; the Witches also can easily be read as metaphoric for the underground societies of Homosexuals (situated largely in Greenwich Village) at the time. In the curious sort of way, it almost appears as if BBC is laying the groundwork for the emerging Witch/ Wicca/ Pagan scene, portraying modern Witches living amongst Mortals, for however much the Mortals may be unaware (again, this dynamic is borrowed for Bewitched). One of my favorite moments is when Elsa Lanchester (an English character-actress whom I love, playing Kim Novak’s Witch-Aunt) describes watching the people around her in New York, and wondering to herself, “What would you do if I told you that I am a Witch?” A sublime scene for Pagans, as Pagans often find themselves in the same Secret Society position (Ms. Lanchester, by the way, is otherwise famous in motion pictures for playing the Bride of Frankenstein).

For all that American society was undergoing the Depression, World War II, and the start of the Cold War from the ’30s-’50s, it seems to have retained a certain Romantic sensibility, to judge from the three Witch-Movies representative of each decade. Ah, but the ’60s- that is another matter, reflected in the Witch-films of that period.

One of the first notable experiments with new-fangled film-technology was 1922′s Swedish Haxan (subtitled “Witchcraft Through the Ages”). Born of a visionary attempt to mount a historical presentation of the medieval Burning Times through the new art of “moving pictures,” the film may seem awfully quaint to 21st century audiences (part of its charm, to my mind). It takes great pains, however, to establish the Magickal belief-system of the Middle Ages; explain how Witchcraft fixed into this; and to examine the routes and procedures employed by the medieval church to associate Witchcraft with diabolism.  Most damningly of all, Haxan bluntly displays the torture devices used to force victims into the confessions necessary for execution. One of the first times in the 20th century that the subject of medieval Witch-Hunting had been studied thoroughly, with an eye towards generating public understanding of the phenomenon, this film is one for which I have great admiration and affection.

There were apparently two methods of burning a condemned Witch to death, in the Middle Ages: the one most familiar to us, whereby you set up a stake, build a pyre around it, fasten the Witch to it, and then set the pile ablaze; and the other, whereby you build a huge fire, and having fastened the Witch to a wooden frame, pitch the frame and Witch into the blaze. The latter is depicted in Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film-masterpiece The Seventh Seal. A sort of traveling tour through the Swedish Middle Ages- you meet strolling players, roaming flagellants, and sufferers of the Black Death, as well as victims of Witch-persecutions- the movie follows a disillusioned knight as he continues a prolonged chess game with Death. Moody and expressive, Seventh Seal is regarded as a cinema classic of world renown, preoccupied with the point and futility of Life, and the fear of Death. Few scenes match that of the hysterical, doomed woman, fated to die pitched into a bonfire as a medieval Witch.

Likely as not, when you think of late ’60s English horror films (especially ones starring Vincent Price), you think of something kind of campy and over-the-top. However, 1968′s Witchfinder General is apparently of another sort altogether- more of a historical drama, based upon the horrors inflicted in England in the 1640s, through the criminal activities of the notorious “Witchfinder General,” Matthew Hopkins. Taking advantage of the turmoil of  the English Civil War, Hopkins and a disreputable associate made a brief career “finding” Witches in East Anglia: meaning that they perfected a series of torturous “non-torture” techniques to crush their victims, forcing confessions from them (due to the upheavals of the period, records are difficult, but it may be that Hopkins was responsible for some 300 deaths, in just about two years). Caveat: I have not seen this movie, but I have read such good things about it, that it is on my Witch-Movie Wish-List: apparently it is a cut above the usual low-budget “horror movie” standard, gathering many champions over the years; held at the time to have been extremely violent in its torture scenes, I gather that the shocked reactions came out of watching innocent people broken into acquiescence with charges that will condemn them. Mr. Price is said to be unusually restrained in the menace of his performance, and despite the lurid depictions of Witch-Burnings on the adverts (Witches were not burned in England), Witchfinder General appears to be a good (fictional) representation of the worst episode of Witch-Hunting in England’s history. (When the movie was released in the United States, it was re-titled The Conqueror Worm: which is such a strange identification and term, I’m not clear why they wished to do this.)

 Then there is one of 20th century America’s masterpieces of theater, Arthur Miller’s 1952 play The Crucible. Written in both courageous and brilliantly intuitive response to the McCarthy “Communist Witch-Hunting” hearings, Miller’s play is the defining dramatic representation of the Salem Witch-Trials (although not necessarily the most historically accurate). Miller takes some perfectly acceptable artistic license- for instance, “upping” the age of Abigail Williams to approximately nineteen or so, in order to script a dramatically compelling illicit relationship between her and John Proctor (the real Abigail was something like thirteen); as well, for dramatic value, Miller envisions an actual Witches’ Meeting in the Massachusetts woods, led by the Witch-Slave Tituba, with the Salem Witch-girls participating. Again, very exciting and compelling- but probably not something likely to have genuinely happened in 17th century Puritan New England. However, this is the scene upon which the 1996 movie The Crucible opens. Faithful to the source material, yes, and a thrilling visual to start the film- but an invention, to start things off on an active (supernatural) note. The movie is, however, a very distinguished presentation of Miller’s text (still relevant in the 1990s and the 2000s), performed by a very impressive cast. For an accessible viewing of a well-done adaptation of a brilliantly written play, depicting the quintessential American Witch-Hunt: please check out this movie.

A curious Gallic film-fact, of which I was unaware: There is also, by the way, for those possessed of a penchant for incurable elan, a 1957 French film-adaptation of Miller’s work, called Les Sorcieres de Salem with a screenplay by Sartre (of all people), starring (as proto-American Puritans) Simone Signoret and Yves Montand. I appreciate what must be the existential sympathy felt by the peoples of France, for the victims of New England Witch-Hunting; still, I’m thinking that watching this movie must be a kind of surreal experience.

Joseph Campbell said that the basic shaman’s story is that of an individual transported to a strange new world, made up of mystical animals and fantasy-figures (some of whom are helpful, while others are not). Here in this intermediate world, the protagonist learns lessons about himself, discovering unknown strengths and wisdom. It is interesting that HR Pufnstuf resembles The Wizard of Oz in a number of ways, including the fact that both feature soon-to-be teen-agers, each possessing an emblematic talisman: in the case of Pufnstuf’s Jimmy, a talking “magic flute” (in other words, a phallic symbol with which Jimmy forms a bonding relationship); in Dorothy’s case in The Wizard of Oz, she acquires the Freudian symbol of a pair of ruby slippers. The Kroffts, by the way, were as lucky to sign the British kid-actor Jack Wild (the Artful Dodger from the movie-musical Oliver!) for Pufnstuf, as MGM was to have Ms. Garland for Oz; both young actors had precocious performing skills, well-sufficient to anchor their respective shows. Wild’s Englishness and clever Brits wit make an agreeably unusual element for an American production (he looked much younger than he was, apparently being seventeen when Pufnstuf started, for all that he looked twelve).

The instigator of Jimmy’s removal from the Real World to the Magickal one of Living Island is (as is so often the case) a Witch: in this case, technically a Wicked one, who greedily desires the Power of Jimmy’s Magick Flute for herself. Witchiepoo’s malevolence is off-set by the fact that she is such a Comic Witch: the Witch as a Circus Clown or the Witch as a Fool and Jester. As fortunate as the Kroffts were in signing Mr. Wild to the role of Jimmy, they were equally blessed by fate in finding the character-actress Billie Hayes to play Witchiepoo (real name, Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo); her antic nature and her skills at parodying a “Wicked” Witch sell the show every bit as much as the teen-aged English vaudevillian Jack Wild does. One can see a cartoon-version of Margaret Hamilton’s memorably Wicked Witch in Witchiepoo, down to the cartoon Wicked Castle, with the cartoon Wicked Guards. However, whereas Ms. Hamilton can be so intensely Wicked as to unnerve children (giving The Wizard of Oz the grit that it needs, to work as an Initiation Tale): Witchiepoo is so funny and farcical as to provide a reassuring presence to the kiddies. In an interesting way, I wonder if Witchiepoo’s capriciously willful nature is not attractive to kids (kids being such willful creatures themselves); I remember as a kid, having my imagination so stirred by Witchiepoo (who as a comic figure, seemed a safe candidate for play-acting), I would fantasize about being a similar Witch, living independently in a Witch’s Castle (Witchiepoo’s independence was very attractive to me), flying around the sky in a Vroom Broom (a kind of souped-up mod hot-rod of a broom), with parody Witch’s Familiars such as a cartoon vulture and spider as companions. I guess it’s kind of curious to consider now, but Witchiepoo was sort of a role-model for me (when I was like six) for what an independent, Magick-Working adult Witch’s life might be like; she was (cranky and high-strung) nonetheless an avenue through which a sense of a Witch’s perspective began to seep into my impressionable brain.

A good way to introduce Pagan kids to various Pagan-themes such as the Journey to a Magick Place and the understanding that all Things, such as animals and trees and the four Winds, have Life to them: HR Pufnstuf is available on Hulu.com; its opening (setting up the backstory of Jimmy and his Flute, and how Witchiepoo lured him to Living Island, and how he meets Pufnstuf) is one of the more involved in the history of the television (it’s kind of remarkable how concise it manages to be in covering all this material). Check it out at YouTube; to get a handle on how winning and natural an actor Jack Wild was, check out the exuberant little jig that he breaks out into, at the end.

One of the most dynamic and complex characters in European Literature, Achilles (as portrayed by Homer in The Iliad) is both the pre-eminent warrior of the Greeks, as well as a passionate, somewhat arrogant, and petulant individual. Deprived of a Trojan war-slave by the Greek commander Agamemnon, Achilles (in a famously metaphoric instance) repairs to sulk in his tent, while the Trojans press the Greeks against their own beached ships. Desperate at seeing their comrades in peril, Patroclus begs his paramour Achilles to lend him Achilles’ own armor, to lead a rout against the Trojans. Unable to resist Patroclus’ pleas, and against his easy conscience, Achilles acquiesces- and is beside himself with misgiving, grief, rage, and regret, when he learns that the Trojans (mistaking Patroclus for himself) have struck Patroclus down. In a famous episode of the Trojan War, Achilles takes down Hector (the Trojan prince who slew Patroclus), dragging Hector’s body behind a chariot, around the walls of Troy.

All of which makes for the fascinating back-story to Madeline Miller’s just-released The Song of Achilles (Ecco/ HarperCollins Publishers, 2012), reviewed by the New York Times Book Review (“Mythic Passions,” by Daniel Mendelsohn, Sunday, April 29, 2012, p. 18). Apparently struck by that Mary Renault thing to “bring the archaic Past to Life once again,” Ms. Miller (so the Times reviewer notes) is obliged to start her book very much before the Trojan War, establishing just exactly who Patroclus is; making us identify with him as an adolescent in adolescent-angst (both Judy Blume and Dawson’s Creek are referenced in the Times review, in regards to this part of the book); before he meets Achilles, and they begin that flirtatious dance-of-desire (the section from Ms. Miller’s book selected by the Times describing the first consummation of their love reads a little like soft-porn)- THEN they get on to the Trojan War (and here the NY Times seems to feel that Ms. Miller’s sense of the epic is not quite up to that of either Homer, or Ms. Renault, for that matter). Be that as it may: I want to call out serious props and congrats to Madeline Miller, for having constructed a novel around a major Homoerotic relationship of the Western Culture canon- so famous were Achilles and Patroclus as Lovers, they shared a tomb at Troy, where Alexander and his boyfriend Hephaestion paused on their way to Persia, to offer sacrifice: Alexander to Achilles, Hephaestion to Patroclus.

A note: there is an understandable desire to contribute to the memorialization of the site by tossing handfuls of coins into the Wells (I take it this must come from that Wishing Well thing, although it may ultimately have to do with that Celtic tendency to toss valuables into bodies of water, as offerings to the Gods). While a sincere gesture, please do not do this. The coins can interfere with the water’s circulation; due to the size of the pools, they are devilishly difficult to retrieve; and too many sparkling coins laying about the bottom will corrupt the dignified austerity of the scene. Also, they have security personnel there who will yell at you (like they did to this one lady), that it is NOT allowed to toss coins into the Wells. So please don’t.

The Survivor Tree: despite the fact that the 9/11 site has been planted with hundreds of swamp white oaks, none of the trees had begun to bud yet, on this particular overcast, chilly day in late March- except for one tree that had already burst into full bloom, the remarkable Survivor Tree. A callery pear tree originally planted in the 1970s, it was discovered during the site’s excavation in October 2001, badly burned, its roots snapped, having been demolished by the falling Towers to a mere eight feet- but it was alive, the only thing in the site to have remained so. Taken to a nursery in the Bronx, it was carefully tended, and- despite later being uprooted during a storm- it was replanted at the 9/11 site in December 2010, already re-grown to a height of 30 feet. There it lives now, firmly cabled in place to the ground, but clearly thriving and blooming ahead of its mates. Time and again since, inspiration for resilience and fortitude has been called into the Survivor Tree, as a symbol for the resistance to tragedy and for the renewing hope of new life and the future. If anywhere in Manhattan lies a tree into which a sense of the Sacred has been imbued, it must be the Survivor Tree of 9/11.

The Tridents: then there are what are called The Tridents- massive pieces of the arch-motif facade employed on the ground-floor of the Twin Towers, intended to direct the attention upwards along the Towers into the sky, to “lift” the Towers out of their heavy, block-like base, giving them an airy sense of ascension (literally, it appeared, into the clouds). Also pulled intact out of mountains of wreckage and rubble, the Tridents comprise the most notable feature of the 9/11 Museum (so large, the museum was constructed around them). Fascinatingly calling to mind the emblem of Poseidon, the two reinforce the idea of aquatic healing and renewal already prevalent, as well as emphasize the Olympian scale of the Towers, constructed in what seems now a time of brash innocence. Of course, the Towers now are gone, that innocence assaulted; what remains is a site of Sacred Land, born out of the pain of grief and remembrance, its features memorialized into icons and holy relics.