Contemporary Forms of Occult Theatre

Author(s): Edmund B. Lingan

Source: PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art , Sep., 2006, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 2006),
pp. 23-38
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of Performing Arts Journal, Inc

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4140008

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Performing Arts Journal, Inc and The MIT Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF
OCCULT THEATRE

Edmund B. Lingan

The Metropolitan Museum

September 27 and December of Art
31, 2005, entitled inMedium:
The Perfect NewPhotog-
York City held an exhibition between
raphy and the Occult, in which more than 120 photographs taken between the
1860s and World War II were displayed. Most of the photos in the exhibition were
taken to either support or debunk spiritualists who claimed to be able to communicate
with spirits, levitate, or use their bodies as a passageway for objects sent from the
spiritual realm into the physical realm. Among the photos depicting mediums in the
process of allegedly contacting the dead or expelling otherworldly substances from
various orifices were photos showing performance spaces and audiences. The Perfect
Medium therefore shed some light on performances associated with Spiritualism, one
of many occult movements to have emerged during the Occult Revival.

The occult and performance are also known to have interacted during the time of
the Occult Revival in European Symbolist theatre. Symbolism drew so liberally
from occultism during the fin-de-si'cle heyday of modern esotericism, that Daniel
Gerould and Jadwiga Kosicka use the term "symbolist drama" interchangeably with
"occult drama."' Pre-symbolist and symbolist playwrights such as August Strindberg,
Villiers de l'Isle Adam, and Maurice Maeterlinck dramatized the effect of invisible
forces upon everyday events. The belief in the existence of such forces is central
to the occult. Some symbolist playwrights were members of occult societies. W.B.
Yeats was a member of the London-based Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
and Andrei Bely was a member of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society. These
playwrights drew from their studies in esoteric studies, including alchemy, tarot
cards, ceremonial magic, and Rosicrucianism in order to help them depict spiritual
events in dramatic form.

This connection between the occult and experimental theatre did not wane with
the decline of symbolism or the end of the Occult Revival. In "Alchemical Theatre,"
Antonin Artaud argues that theatre is capable of transforming human beings in a
manner that is analogous to the transformation of matter through the alchemical
process. In 1942 a young Peter Brook hired Aleister Crowley-a leader of the Occult
Revival who continues to be influential among occultists today-to give suggestions
for the conjuring scenes in his production of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. Michael Chekhov

@ 2006 Edmund B. Lingan PAJ 84 (2006), pp. 23-38. N 23

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
studied Rudolf Steiner's teachings about eurythmy-a movement-based art intended
to render the spiritual visible-and these influenced his theories of acting. In 1974
Snoo Wilson's play about Aleister Crowley, The Beast, had a successful run at The
Place in London. In the 1980s Richard Foreman staged productions that revealed
secret worlds lying behind physical existence, just as the symbolists had done. In
her 1998 play, Crave, Sarah Kane quotes Aleister Crowley's motto, "Do what thou
wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law. Love under will." The occult still
serves as a dramaturgical tool in contemporary theatre, and this is no secret.

Less is known about the occultists who use theatre to give expression and form to
their esoteric teachings. In June 1978, 7he Drama Review published an "Occult
and Bizarre" issue that contains two articles (J.E Brown's "Aleister Crowley's Rites
ofEleusis" and Robb Creese's "Anthroposophical Performance") in which Brown
and Creese examine the relationship between Crowley's and Steiner's beliefs and the
theatre they produced with the same seriousness that a scholar of medieval theatre
might discuss the relationship between Christian theology and cycle plays. Brown
talks about Crowley's incorporation of ceremonial magic, music, poetry, and drugs
into his 1910 production of the Rites of Eleusis, which took place at Caxton Hall
in London. He also mentions the critics of English tabloids who labeled Crowley's
productions as blasphemous and sexually depraved. Creese's article discusses the
performance of Rudolf Steiner's four Mystery Dramas, The Portal of Initation, The
Soul's Probation, The Guardian of the Threshold, and The Soul's Awakening, which
he wrote and directed between 1910 and 1913. He discusses the theatre-temple
known as the Goetheanum that Steiner built in Dornach, Switzerland to house his
Mystery Dramas, and relates Steiner's plays to his teachings about reincarnation,
karma, planes of existence, and the spiritual realm.

Creese and Brown are primarily focused on theatre by occultists who lived during
the Occult Revival. I am concerned with such theatre in the present. For not only
have theatrical traditions associated with these the Anthroposophical Society and
Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis continued into the present, but occultists
between the 1950s and the present have developed new theatrical traditions. Many
of these performances are rooted in Gerald Gardner who introduced the witch
religion known as Wicca to the world when England repealed the Witchcraft Act
in 1951. Gardner and his coven members performed magical rituals outside and in
the nude. Alex Sanders, who promoted a competing form of modern witchcraft,
allowed phO.T.O.graphs of his nude rituals to be published in an English newspaper
in 1965. Thus, between the 1950s and the mid-1960s, Wicca and modern witchcraft
initiated a performance current that bore certain resemblances to the work of the
Living Theatre and the Performance Group in the late 1960s.

By encouraging Wiccans not to limit themselves to rituals passed down from an

initiating High Priest but to create and perform original rituals, Gardner's Wicca
contributed to an atmosphere in which freeform occult rituals multiplied among the
membership of many small bodies of "neo-pagans" who practiced magic and identified
themselves as witches, druids, and priests/priestesses. Although they exhibited differ-

24 U PAJ 84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ences from one another, many of these neo-pagan groups were united by their belief
that the performance of creative rituals can transform human beings. For instance,
many feminist neo-pagans believe in the physical, psychological healing powers of
the Triple Goddess, whose forms are the maiden, mother, and crone. Performance
is so prevalent among neo-pagans that they have established large festival at which
occult theatre is a central feature.

The range of theatre forms created within the context of occult movements is so
diverse that they cannot all be included here. However, viewing a few examples of
such theatre will show its connections to theatre in general and how it intersects
with other streams of ideas and activities.

Director Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule founded the Australia-based Metamorphic

Ritual Theatre (MRT) in 1994. MRT tours in Australia and Europe and performs
in numerous venues, including occult and pagan festivals. When speaking about
MRT's performances, Orryelle puts the word "play" in quotation marks. Although
their performances are sometimes fully scripted, they are interactive and often move
from a conventionally theatrical situation (i.e., audience passively viewing performers)
into one of revelry in which the audience and the performers become almost indis-
tinguishable. With this method, Orryelle seeks to create a performance medium that
lies between ritual, which he describes as "private," and theatre, which he describes as
"public." Orryelle envisions the performance of such theatre as a magical ceremony
in which the performers are no longer pretending but taking part in a real event.
One might refer to an MRT event as a "magical happening."

MRT subjects the body to physically strenuous treatment, such as suspension and
piercing, and uses the body to behave in ways that challenge the socio-sexual norms
of middle-class, Western society. These methods also help to induce an ecstatic state
that could be interpreted as "magical." In a 2002 performance called The Wild Hunt,
the members of MRT performed combination of actions in a London art gallery
that agreed with Gardner's descriptions in Witchcraft Today of a fertility ritual prac-
ticed by the female members of an ancient pagan religion. The MRT performers
leaped up and down on broomsticks and covered their bodies with a soot-colored
ointment. As sometimes happened during the performances of the Performance
Group's Dionysus in 69, members of the audience chose to participate in the ritual
of The Wild Hunt.

MRT's use of body piercing is in keeping with an international current of performed

piercing, which recently manifested itself in July 2005, when artists Ray Aims and
Crystal Goldmine gave a piercing performance at Galapagos Art Space in Wil-
liamsburg, Brooklyn. MRT used piercing in its series of "Chakra piercing rituals."
At MRT chakra piercing rituals, audience members, referred to as "initiates," along
with MRT performers, have the front of their bodies pierced at the locations that
are associated with the chakras of Eastern meditation. In the "Pentagrammaton"
piercing ritual that took place in Melbourne, Australia, thread was run through the
metal hoops that projected from the participants' torsos. The thread connected the

LINGAN / Beyond the Occult Revival m 25

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 lii

... .......

Rite ofMars, ca. 1984, produced by Lon Milo and Constance DuQuette in the
backyard of their Costa Mesa, California home. Photo: Courtesy Lon Milo and
Constance DuQuette.

26 U PAJ 84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
pierced individuals to one another and simultaneously formed a pentagram in the
air between them.

Some of the philosophy behind MRT's activities is revealed in the company's mani-
festo-in-progress that Oryelle sent to me. The manifesto is entitled "HermAphroditic
ChAOrder of the Silver Dusk" (Orryelle's capitalizations). This name pays homage
to the legendary Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was founded in
March of 1888 in London. The membership list of the Golden Dawn is a who's
who of theatre that includes W.B. Yeats, Annie Horniman, financial patron of the
Abbey Theatre, and Florence Farr, the English actor and director who introduced
the plays of Ibsen, Yeats, and G.B. Shaw to the London stage. Aleister Crowley was
also a member of the Golden Dawn, and during his time there he wrote plays. S.L.
MacGregor Mathers, one of the founding members of the order, produced occult
ritual called Rite of Isis in Paris (also funded by Annie Horniman). Although all this
theatrical potential existed, there was dissension among the members of the Golden
Dawn that had ripped the society into four new orders by 1909.

While the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn did not create an occult theatre
tradition that continued to the present, Orryelle and MRT see the Golden Dawn
as the genesis of a flow of magical theatre that they are now continuing. The mani-
festo distinguishes MRT's ChAOrder of the Silver Dusk from the Golden Dawn;
it describes the latter as an occult society controlled by artists and the former as a
ritual theatre company controlled by occultists. The manifesto urges the reader to
recognize that the members of MRT are composed of magicians who use theatre as
magical ceremony, as opposed to dadaists, surrealists, and artists from other modern-
ist movements who used the occult for artistic inspiration. However, the manifesto
does embrace some avant-garde theatre and film artists as fellow initiates, including
Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud, and Alexandro Jodorowski.

Like the members of MRT, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) experimented with produc-
ing public magical rituals. These were the previously mentioned Rites ofEleusis that
he produced in Caxton Hall in London in October 1910. The Rites ofEleusis were
composed of seven rituals performed on seven different evenings; these were The Rite
of Saturn, The Rite of upiter, The Rite of Mars, 7he Rite of Sol, The Rite of Venus, The
Rite ofMercury, and The Rite ofLuna. The Rites ofEleusis tracks humanity's struggle
with the riddle of existence, and, as veil after veil is pulled aside to reveal each of
the seven gods of each ritual, it is discovered that the deity in question cannot solve
life's mysteries. At the end of the final ritual, 7he Rite of Luna, the god Pan pulls
back a final veil, revealing the child of the new eon of human existence. This child
lives in harmony with his or her Divine Will and, subsequently, the forces of the
universe. Living in harmony with one's Divine Will is the central principle of the
Thelema, which is the worldview that Aleister Crowley revealed to his followers in
1904. When Crowley wrote "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," he
was referring to the Divine Will of the self-actualized Thelemite-not the whimsi-
cal will of the unenlightened human being. Crowley also promoted the practice of

LINGAN / Beyond the Occult Revival n 27

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ceremonial magic, or "magick," as he spelled it, as a way to strengthen one's con-
nection to his or her Divine Will.

After the personal attacks by the English tabloids in response to Rites ofEleusis,
Crowley never produced public magical rituals again. He also urged his followers only
to perform such rituals before audiences made up of initiates of the same mysteries.
Thus, it is not surprising that Crowley's followers abandoned public ceremonial magic
between 1910 and 1978. What is unexpected is that in the late 1970s the members
of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), the magical society that Crowley led between
1912 and his death in 1947, revived public performances of the Rites ofEleusis, and
initiated regular public performances of the "Gnostic Mass" that Crowley wrote in
1915 for the membership of the O.T.O. The re-emergence of the public performance
of Rites of Eleusis by the O.T.O. is discussed in an article contained in an O.T.O.
newsletter by a writer named Annatar.2 Annatar credits the late Lady Chandria of
El Sobrante, California as the individual behind the initial revival of the Rites of
Eleusis. Chandria joined the O.T.O. after leaving the NROOGD (New Reformed
Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn), which operated in the San Francisco Bay
Area from 1968 to 1977. Chandria's came from a neo-pagan background, and this
most likely informed the value that she placed on the performance of rituals.

Between 1977 and 1978, Chandria began holding staged readings of the Rites of
Eleusis with her local body of the O.T.O. in Northern California. Other members
of the O.T.O. admired Chandria's productions of Rites ofEleusis, which were open
to the public, as well polished and professionally produced. By the 1980s, other
productions of Rites ofEleusis began to appear at lodges in other parts of California.
Lon Milo and Constance DuQuette, members of the Heru-Ra-Ha Lodge in Cosa
Mesa, produced Rites ofEleusis and the Gnostic Mass on numerous occasions in
the 80s. On a recent trip to California, Lon and Constance allowed me to come to
their home and copy photographs from these productions for this article and for
the online database that I am developing for the emerging International Institute
for the Study of Performance and Spiritual Movements, a research that I founded
to foster research into the performance traditions of various types of new and alter-
native spiritual movements worldwide.3 Lon and Constance's rituals took place in
Costa Mesa, California in the rooms and backyards of various houses in which they
had lived during the 1980s. The photographs of Lon and Constance's productions
of the Rites ofEleusis reveal domestic performances that were produced with careful
attention to detail in the areas of costume, scenery, and props. The repeated appear-
ance of large bowls of burning alcohol in living rooms is striking and unsettling.
Lon and Constance even wrote a new theatrical ritual, Rite ofEarth, which is based
on the myth of Persephone and therefore points back to the ancient mysteries of
Eleusis through content, as an addendum to Crowley's Rites ofEleusis. It refers to
the Eleusian mysteries only in the title. The content of the rituals has nothing to
do with the myth of the ancient Eleusian mystery religion.

Lon and Constance suffered at least one hostile reaction to their work when they
produced The Rite of Mars in their backyard. The performance took place in the

28 U PAJ 84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
early 1980s, a time when the press and some fundamentalist Christians leaders were
spreading a scare about Satanism by trying to prove that society was riddled with
groups of Satan worshippers who were secretly kidnapping and sacrificing children.
(For more information about this read Ronald Hutton's 2001 book Triumph of the
Moon: A History ofModern Pagan Witchcraft.) Lon admitted that the ritual had many
elements that might seem to confirm the fears of a person who believed these reports
of Satanism. Robed figures walked about and a woman performing a sword dance
jumped over a fire. During the performance, a policeman arrived and explained that
their next-door neighbor had called the authorities and accused Lon and his friends
of being a band of Satanists preparing to sacrifice a child. The policeman went on
to say that their neighbor had called her minister, who told her to hide her children
in the closet and call the police.

Lon and Constance sometimes experimented with mise-en-scdne. In one production

of 7he Rite of Venus they abandoned the traditional robes of Crowleyan magic for
formal wear. Lon explained that such experimentation is acceptable in the case of Rites
ofEleusis because these texts are considered Class B documents by the membership
of the O.T.O. It is acceptable to adapt and/or change Class B documents. Class A
documents, such as The Book of the Law, which is the central text of Thelema, are
not to be tampered with. Not only Lon and Constance, but also other bodies of the
O.T.O. have exercised their right to alter the Rites ofEleusis and to create new ritu-
als and plays that are based upon Crowley's original texts. For example, the Scarlet
Woman lodge located in Austin, Texas maintains a Website that announces the lodge's
intention to produce original works of "ritual theatre" based upon Crowley's rituals,
and the lodge timeline shows that in 2002 the Scarlet Woman lodge produced a
performance called Beyond Eleusis: The Rites of Initiation.4

In order to learn more about the plays of the Scarlet Woman lodge, I contacted
Omega Baphomet, who was the lodge master between 2003 and 2005. Omega is
also the author of a play that the Scarlet Woman lodge members performed in 1996
called 7he Rite of Pluto. Like Lon and Constance's Rite of Earth, The Rite of Pluto is
a continuation of Crowley's Rites of Eleusis. In this play we discover all of the gods
who appeared in the Rites ofEleusis having a miserable time in Hades under the rule
of Pluto. Their suffering comes to an end when Pan arrives and announces that he
has come to Hades to entertain himself, since there is no life left on Earth. Much to
Pluto's annoyance, Pan dances about gleefully and clashes with the gloomy atmosphere
of Hades. When Pluto can stand it no longer, he begrudgingly offers Pan anything
he wants in exchange for the goat-god's exit and a return to normalcy. Pan returns
to earth with Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury, and Luna in tow.

Lon and Milo also revived Crowley's Gnostic Mass in the 1980s. Members of the
O.T.O. value the Gnostic Mass as one of the most significant Thelemic rituals, and
it is regularly practiced by O.T.O. lodges worldwide. A Class A document, the Gnos-
tic Mass is performed with great attention to the details for poses, gestures, words,
costumes, and set design that Crowley prescribes for the Gnostic Mass. Among the
elements necessary for the Gnostic Mass are a High Altar that is seven feet long, three

LINGAN / Beyond the Occult Revival U 29

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
feet wide, and 44 inches tall covered in crimson cloth with fleur-de-lys. Two pillars
are placed on either side of the High Altar, and in front of it are three steps that are
painted with black and white squares. Upon the altar sits the "Stele of Reveling,"
which is a reproduction of an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic painting that Crowley
saw shortly before he allegedly encountered a spiritual being named Aiwass who
dictated The Book of the Law to him. Two rows of candles, a goblet full of wine, and
a plate that holds a "cake of light"-the paten of the Gnostic Mass-are also on the
altar. At the other end of the temple is an upright cabinet from which the Priest first
emerges. Other objects used in the mass include a censer, a sword, and a container
of salt. All of the robes, altars, and ritual objects are basic tools of ceremonial magic
that appear in many other magical societies. There are three officers of the Gnostic
Mass. One is the Priest, who wears a white robe and carries a lance; another is the
Priestess, who wears white, blue, and gold; finally, the Deacon wears a white and
yellow robe and carries The Book of the Law.

In October 2005 I was allowed to attend a Gnostic Mass. This is a privilege that
is only open to members of the Tahuti lodge and visitors for whom a member has
vouched. Lon introduced me to one of the founding members of the lodge. I was
instructed via e-mail to go to a park in Queens on October 12 at 1:45 P.M. and
wait. When I arrived, I found about 18 other people waiting. Some were members
and some were guests, like myself. The Deacon of the mass came out in his white
robe and we followed him into the ground level of an apartment building. Before
entering the temple, which was hidden behind a veil, we were instructed to take
off our shoes. The veil was pulled aside and I saw a space that had been designed
and equipped according to Crowley's stipulations for the Gnostic Mass. Before the
ritual began, the Deacon politely informed us that this was a eucharistic ritual and
gently added that if anyone was uncomfortable with fully participating they should
feel free to leave now. Everyone stayed.

The audience/congregation sat on the floor in two single rows on opposite sides of
the performance space, with the playing space High Altar at one end of the two rows
and the upright cabinet at the other end. The Deacon began the performance by
bowing before the High Altar, kissing The Book of the Law three times, and placing
it on the High Altar. The Deacon then said, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole
of the law. I proclaim the law of light, life, love, and liberty in the name of aum."
The audience responded this statement by saying together, "Love is the law. Love
under will." Various call and response passages took place between the Deacon and
the congregants during the ritual.

The Priestess was presented as a force of invoking idealized masculine sexual energy.
She wore a negligee, and evoked the High Priest forth from the upright cabinet.
The Priest held a lance vertically against his chest with both hands. After placing a
red robe and a crown on the Priest, the Priestess said, "Be the Serpent thy crown, O
thou priest of the lord." She then kneeled before him and stroked the spear several
times. When she stopped stroking the spear, she said, "Be the lord present among
us." The congregants responded to this by saying, "So mote it be." Thus the Gnostic

30 n PAJ 84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 I

1 ~mr ~1-
r

6
I

b q

!ni

?i

r?

V ")"

r I ~-?1 -?a ?rr r

Top: Pentagrammaton Chakra Weaving Ritual,

1998. Photo: Courtesy Orryelle Defenestrate-
Bascule; Left: Participant in meditative
I

49I contemplation during a "snake journey" that is

;rt;?
part of a Dream Healing with Snakes workshop.
?-? - rQI Photo: Courtesy Serpentessa; Bottom: Katherine
Tingley's Greek theatre (now on the campus of
Point Loma Nazarene University), 2004. Photo:
Courtesy Edmund B. Lingan.

Y "?

iC;

IS

F,.

i \

LINGAN / Be

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Mass represents the interactions between the masculine and feminine forces of the
universe.

The Gnostic Mass ended with the eucharistic meal, in which each member of the
congregation stood before the High Altar and consumed a glass of wine and a cake
of light. Each person ate and drank while gazing upon the Priestess, who sat on
the center of the High Altar, and the Priest, who stood to her right with the spear
in his hand. After eating the food, each congregant turned around, faced the other
congregants, formed an "x" over their chests with their forearms, and proclaimed,
"There is no part of me that is not of the gods."

The adherence on the part of the officers of the Gnostic Mass to previously established
methods of design and performance is reminiscent of the traditionalist tendencies
of the stage company that performs Steiner's Mystery dramas at the Goetheanum in
Dornach, Switzerland. In 2000 I traveled to Dornach to see Steiner's plays performed
at an Anthroposophical Christmas conference. The theme of the conference, which
lasted one week, was "Reincarnation and Individuality." Each of Steiner's four plays
took an entire day to perform.

The auditorium of the Goetheanum holds approximately 1,100 people. The esoteric
nature of Anthroposophy is expressed through the spiritual beings represented in
the monochromatic stained-glass windows in the auditorium. These figures include
Ahriman, a Zoroastrian character who represents the spirit of materialism in Anthro-
posophical teachings. Lucifer also appears in the windows. Anthroposophists view
Lucifer as a being that can lead human beings to a higher plane of consciousness.
Although both Ahriman and Lucifer are essential to human existence, if either one
of them dominates the psyche of a human being disastrous results will follow. An
overdeveloped Ahrimanic influence is thought to lead to shallow materialism, while
an overdeveloped Luciferian impulse can lead to delusions of grandeur.

The struggle for Ahrimanic/Luciferian balance is the unifying action of all four of
Steiner's Mystery dramas, and it is represented in performance with fantastical sets,
costumes, movement, and vocal techniques. The sets effectively represented the
interpenetration of the physical and spiritual planes of existence. Even scenes set in
the mundane physical realm were related to non-physical spheres. For instance, in
the first scene of 7he Portal oflnitiation two women talk in a living room. In the
performances that I saw there was nothing unusual about the interior of the living
room. However, between the top of the walls of the living room and the curtains at
the top of the proscenium opening was a cyclorama decorated with esoteric symbols.
The juxtaposition of the living room to the cyclorama gave the sense of an immense
spiritual cosmos interacting with everyday events. The eighth scene of 7he Guard-
ian of the Threshold takes place in Ahriman's kingdom. In performance, a greenish,
transparent screen hung in the proscenium opening during this scene, causing the
activity in Ahriman's dimly lit realm to appear somewhat hazy and dreamlike. The
actor playing Ahriman wore a green tunic and his chin and head had been unnatu-
rally lifted with latex extensions. All of the actors in the production spoke Steiner's

32 U PAJ84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
verse using the method known as Sprachgestaltung or "speech formation." This is a
slow, deliberate, musical form of speaking. Professional Sprachgestaltung artists train
for four years before they perform, and their tone sounds like an incantation. The
three performers who played Philia, Astrid, and Luna performed eurythmy. Philia,
Astrid, and Luna are spiritual forces that influence human beings. When human
characters achieved a clairvoyant state, these three eurythmists glided across the stage,
and their light and colorful silk costumes seemed to carve colorful trails through
the air along the trajectory of their movements. The words that Philia, Astrid, and
Luna spoke were delivered by three Sprachgestaltung artists who stood on the side
of the stage apron and wore gray tunics.

Since the early twentieth century, the Goetheanum stage ensemble has attempted
to maintain the performance techniques that Rudolf Steiner established when he
directed the Mystery dramas. The preservation of Steiner's Anthroposophical per-
formance tradition may have also resulted in the preservation of early avant-garde
performance techniques. The scrim that was used in the scene depicting Ahriman's
dark kingdom resembles Frantisek Deak's description of the techniques of symbolist
director Paul Fort in Symbolist Theatre: The Formation ofan Avant-Garde. In an 1891
production of Pierre Quillard's The Girl with the Cut-offHands that took place at the
Theatre d'Art, Fort obscured a dimly lit scene by hanging a transparent gauze scrim
between the actors and the audience. The actors in this production wore tunics and
spoke in tones that were deliberately slow and musical, and designed to allow the
verse of the play to "express the soul of the characters."5

Like eurythmists, Serpentessa (Gretchen Brown) practices a spiritualized form of

dance. She is a "Snake Priestess" who belly dances with live serpents to invoke the
healing power of the Triple Goddess. In a 2002 article in a magazine SageWoman,
dedicated to the Goddess worship, Serpentessa discusses how snake dancing helped
her to deal with a painful condition that resulted in infertility. Serpentessa's condi-
tion made her feel distant from her own femininity and from any conceptualization
of femininity as a sacred or spiritual ideal. This changed after she was given a boa
constrictor named Sofia. Serpentessa began to dance with Sofia at home, and this
inspired her to view Sofia as a friend and artistic partner. One night as Serpentessa
watched Sofia shed her old skin in one piece she gained a personal understanding of
the concept of the Triple Goddess. Sofia's process of leaving an old aspect of herself
behind and emerging in a renewed state seemed to be a metaphor for Serpentessa's
monthly struggle with pain, which she always endured and overcame.

After reading about an ancient heritage linking the Snake with the moon, Serpent-
essa sensed that she had been a snake priestess "practicing the moon mysteries" and
"honoring the Triple Goddess in all her manifestations" in previous incarnations. She
determined to bring the healing power of the serpent and the Triple Goddess that
she experienced to others by devising a sacred theatre of dance. Some of this work
is theatrical in arrangement, with spectators viewing her performances. Serpentessa
spoke to me about a performance called Shedding a Skin, in which she appeared in
two forms of the Triple Goddess-the crone and the sexually mature woman. Her

LINGAN / Beyond the Occult Revival U 33

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
version of the crone was "Mad Hettie," a bag lady who has been planting the seeds
of renewal for centuries. Through the process of a strip tease, Serpentessa became
the sexually mature Goddess who danced with another manifestation of herself in
the form of the Serpent.

When talking about her work, Serpentessa stresses that dancing with snakes precludes
the establishment of predictable patterns of movements. The dancer must have such
command of the dance that she can execute the movements while responding to the
impulses of the snake. The dancer must simultaneously dance and respond to the will
of the snake as it moves. Thus, the essence of Serpentessa's art form lies in her ability
to temper her assumptions as a dancer to the whims of the serpent. This process is
a surrender of the artistic ego, and leads Serpentessa to a contemplative, meditative
state of mind. Serptentessa helps others to achieve this state in her workshops on
ritual performance and dream healing. In these workshops, participants dance and
meditate while allowing a snake to move across their bodies. On Sunday, November
20, 2005 Serpentessa lead a workshop entitled "Serpent and Moon Temple Belly
Dance" at the Temple of Jehan in Queens, New York.

Serpentessa performed as a Snake Priestess in the Off-Broadway production,

Goddessdance, which ran during the summer of 2002 at the American Theatre of
Actors on 54th Street in Manhattan. Goddessdance was produced by Jehan, one of
Serpentessa's trainers in the art of belly dancing, and was advertised as a celebration
of the beauty, sensuality, and changing role of women throughout history. It was
comprised of a series of vignettes, including a harem scene in which rival wives
murder a new concubine. In Goddessdance, Serpentessa danced with a python to
music that was composed and arranged by Jehan. Jehan's music blended traditional
and modern elements and the instrumentation of the music included a flute, a
didgeridoo, Middle Eastern drums, and hand clappers.

Serpentessa shares an interest in non-Western performance forms with other experi-

mental theatre artists such as Antonin Artaud, who found inspiration in Balinese
dance, and Eugenio Barba, who drew from Aztec art, Balinese dance, Kabuki, and
Indian Odissi dance in his search for principles of performance that transcend
cultural barriers. However, Serpentessa differs from most creators of intercultural
theatre because she claims that her blend of art forms from around the world has
the power to heal.

Karen James, who worked with Lon and Constance DuQuette during the 1980s to
revive the public performances of Crowley's Rites of Eleusis, has been operating an
interactive retreat of therapeutic ritual theatre, called Eleusian Mysteries, in various
California campsites for the past 15 years. Karen operates this venture with her
husband, Doug James, and her associates Katlyn Miller and Travis Mead. Eleusian
Mysteries is comprised of visits to performance stations where participants encoun-
ter and interact with the gods and goddesses of the myth of Persephone, including
Demeter, Dionysus, Persephone, and Hades. No pictures of these private and intimate
events exist, but Karen tells me that both the performers who play the deities and the

34 U PAJ 84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
participants who encounter them dress in colors and clothing that reveal the nature
of the gods that they meet during this five day, dramatic occult initiation ritual.

Karen refers to the characters who appear in the myth as "archicharacters," and she
encourages participants to view these archicharacters as symbols of various aspects
of their own lives. Viewing the archicharacters in this way is intended to provide the
participants with an opportunity to view their personal qualities from an objective
distance and to determine what changes they would like to make in their lives. This
hope for change is given expression at the end of the event with a metaphorical
sacrifice, in which each participant symbolically sacrifices something from their life
that they want to leave behind. Karen refers to this therapeutic, interactive perfor-
mance as "mythopsychology."

Karen carefully conceals the specific details of the Eleusian Mysteries when she talks
about it. One must go through the experience to gain access to these secrets. How-
ever, the assertion that the participants view the characters that they encounter as
extensions of their own lives brings to mind Russian director Nikolai Evreinov's
ideas about monodrama as a form in which everything that appears on the stage is
a projection of the inner experience of the character. She seems to have developed a
participatory, therapeutic monodrama. Karen James's Eleusian Mysteries are outdoor
performances, which have been prominent in modern witchcraft and neo-paganism
since Wiccans began to perform rituals outside in the 1950s.

In 1986 the Starwood Festival was founded and became one of the most well known
neo-pagan festivals. People of various occult worldviews continue to meet at Starwood
to participate in workshops, classes, concerts, and theatre. Starwood features diverse
forms of entertainment, such as the Shard Live Performance Collective's production
of a play about Allen Ginsberg, Cry Out!, experimental music played on electronics
and found objects, projection displays, and fire effects.

Connecting to nature is accomplished most easily if rituals are performed in a natu-

ral setting-like the Starwood Festival and James's Eleusian Mysteries. In a city like
Manhattan, the lack of rural settings render such nature worship challenging. On
June 26, 2005, I attended a 2:46 A.M. summer solstice celebration lead by Mama
Donna, an urban shaman who has run a tea garden and healing center in Brooklyn
for over 30 years. A professional organizer of nature rituals, Mama Donna led a
circle of attendants through an invocation of the moon. It was a simple and intimate
ritual, and most of the 13 people there were women. We stood in a circle and played
percussive instruments while Mama Donna chanted "Reverence, reverence, rever-
ence to her," in honor of the lunar goddess. Later she asked each of us to mention
a quality that we associated with the moon and that we would like to possess until
the arrival of the next summer solstice. I was struck by Mama Donna's choice of
location: the end of Pier 21 on the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan. Here
we stood at the edge of Gotham next to the river and under the moon, trying to
get as close to nature as possible.

LINGAN / Beyond the Occult Revival U 35

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 FIRt

-- N

JI

Orryelle Defenstrate-Bascule as the Hanged Man with the cast of Hanged Man in
Pentagrammaton Rites, 1998. Photo: Courtesy Orryelle Defenestrate-Bascule.

36 U PAJ 84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Esoteric outdoor performance is traceable to the outdoor theatre movement that
thrived in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Frank Waugh
discussed the outdoor theatre movement in Outdoor Theaters: The Design, Construc-
tion and Use of the Open-Air Auditoriums (1917), and so did Sheldon Cheney in 7he
Open-Air Theatre (1918). Both Waugh and Cheney mentioned the outdoor Greek
theatre that was constructed in 1901 under the authorization of Katherine Tingley,
who led the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society (UBTS). The Greek
theatre stood on the grounds of the UBTS headquarters in Point Loma, California,
just outside of San Diego. Here, Tingley produced Theosophical productions until
she died in 1929.

Katherine Tingley anticipated a contemporary current of neo-pagan activism when

she produced a series of peace demonstrations during World War I. In June 1915,
a little less than two years before the U.S. entered World War I, Tingley produced
a street performance called The Procession of the Seven Kings, in which performers
enacted a Swedish legend about seven kings from seven nations who come together
under seven trees, sign a treaty, and inaugurate perpetual peace for humankind. The
performers portraying the seven kings paraded through the streets of San Diego and
onto the Point Loma grounds, where they signed the treaty. (Photographs of this
performance can be viewed at the online exhibition located on the Website of the
International Institute for the Study of Performance and Spiritual Movements.)6

Today's most well known U.S. occult activist is Starhawk. One of the most influen-
tial neo-pagan and Wiccan writers of the present time, Starhawk demands that the
practitioner of magic take responsibility for the health of nature (which is, for her,
the health of the goddess) by performing peaceful acts of activism. Starhawk has
been jailed for acts of eco-activism, and she offers activism resources on her Website.
On her Webpage, Starhawk has a link to an organization called the "Pagan Cluster,"
which is a group of people who "bring an earth-based spirituality to global justice
and peace actions" and attempt to change "global consciousness by incorporating
music, drums, ritual, myth, humor, and magic into [their] actions."7 Starhawk's work
and the work of the Pagan Cluster demonstrates that esotericism and occult theatre
can make an impact by inspiring political action and promoting agency within the
neo-pagan community.

The examples contained here represent only a small portion of contemporary the-
atre created by occultists. They illuminate the diversity of form that such theatre
takes, as well as a current movement of occult theatre that bubbles to the surface of
Western culture in connection with activism, alternative healing, and experimental
theatre. If one viewed such theatre with increased depth and breadth, one would find
occult theatre serving other purposes that have not been considered here and taking
unexpected forms. Furthermore, if one were to search for it globally, contemporary
occult theatre would appear in unexpected locations worldwide. Nevertheless, even
this quick glance shows that the bond between the occult and theatre remains strong
long after the end of the fin-de-sitcle Occult Revival.

LINGAN / Beyond the Occult Revival U 37

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
NOTES

1. Daniel Gerould and Jadwiga Kosicka, "The Drama of the Unseen-Turn-of-the-

Paradigms for Occult Drama." The Occult in Language and Literature, New York: N
Literary Forum, 1980, 4.

2. Annatar, "An Introduction to Aleister Crowley's Rites of Eleusis." Light in Ex

The Official Newsletter of LVX Oasis-O. TO. 5 (January 2005): 6-7.

3. <http://nml.gc.cuny.edu/PSM>.

4. <http://www.scarletwoman.org>.

5. Frantisek Deak, Symbolist Theatre: The Formation ofan Avant-Garde, Baltimor

Hopkins University Press/PAJ Books, 1993, 142-43.

6. <http://nml.gc.cuny.edu/PSM/el s6.htm>.

7. <http://www.pagancluster.org>.

EDMUND B. LINGAN has a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies from The Graduate

Center, CUNY and has taught academic and practical theatre courses at
NYU, Baruch College, Marymount Manhattan College, Hunter College,
and City College. He is an adjunct instructor of theatre at NYU, a guest
director at Baruch College, and the founder/director of the International
Institute for the Study of Performance and Spiritual Movements.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay ispart ofan ongoing PAJ series on 'Art, Spiritu-
ality, and Religion" which explores artworks and artpractices circulating around
this theme, beginning with PAJ 72 (2002).)

38 n PAJ 84

This content downloaded from

204.14.37.103 on Sun, 16 Mar 2025 15:44:47 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms