At 55, the Northampton hermit will take no more credit for the film than he did for From Hell, the screen adaptation of his Jack the Ripper comic book, which starred Johnny Depp, or for the anodyne film version of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Moore’s name will not appear on the credits of Watchmen and his share of the cash goes to his illustrator on the series, Dave Gibbons.

So what? Aren’t “Hollywood botches the book” or “Hollywood cashes in against the wishes of the writer” stories a dime a dozen? What’s different is that Moore is, for all intents and purposes, “one of us”. By that I mean he’s an occultist/magician who possibly worships the “sock-puppet god” Glycon, and is currently hard at work writing a “a clear and practical grimoire of the occult sciences”. In addition, he also wrote an outstanding 32-issue comic series that doubled as primer in magic entitled “Promethea”. Yet, despite all that, Moore isn’t really a figure of much discussion outside the small subsection of comic-book collecting Pagans and occultists. Neil Gaiman in contrast, who has a comparable track-record of critical and mainstream successes, has a huge Pagan following. Perhaps it’s that Gaiman is far more outgoing, Internet-savvy, and willing to work with Hollywood? Whatever the reason, you’re far more likely to hear a Pagan talk about “Coraline” (which was great) than the fact that Moore’s upcoming “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” comic sequel (due out in April) will prominently feature fictional/literary versions of Aleister Crowley.

“…an apocalyptic plot masterminded by obscure W. Somerset Maugham villain Oliver Haddo, a parody of Aleister Crowley; it almost goes without saying that Moore seizes the moment to populate Haddo’s entourage with fictional creations of the actual, prolific Crowley, while steeping the diabolist’s scheme in arcana from Crowley’s 1917 novel Moonchild.”

So when you head off to the theatre to see “Watchmen”, keep in mind that what you see on the screen is merely an echo, a fannish recreation (warning: spoilers at that link) of a work specifically created for the comics medium. A work not intended to be adapted to big-screen action. Or better yet, why not spend the weekend (and the money you might have spent on admission, a large popcorn, and soda) getting to know one of most brilliant writers of his generation. A writer who happens to share with us an interest in the practice of magic. I think that in retrospect, historians of our wider religious and philisophical movement will pay far more attention to the influence of people like Moore than the dozens of “Wicca 101″ niche writers we currently argue and debate over. Perhaps it’s time more of us got a jump on those historians.

Well, the first episode of the BBC’s new series “Merlin” premiered yesterday, what did the critics think? I think it’s safe to say that Mark Pickavance at Den of Geek hated it.

“…it’s all over the place. One minute it’s legend, then slapstick, then panto, then drama, horror and then mystery – they missed out the science fiction and western genres, but we’ve another 12 episodes of this for that to be rectified.”

Meanwhile, TV Scoop was far more kind.

“…for those of us who were holding our breath and hoping against hope that Auntie’s latest Saturday night blockbuster series wouldn’t be another turkey like Robin Hood, or, worse, another Bonekickers, that bated breath was released in a rousing cheer of appreciation. This time, they’ve really pulled it off.”

It seems the more you’re expecting historical realism or accuracy, the more you’re going to be disappointed. Something to keep in mind when it debuts this Winter in America.

Speaking of Brits who practice magic, the Los Angeles Times interviews Alan Moore, author of “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”, “Promethea”, “V For Vendetta”, and “From Hell” about his upcoming projects and his opinion about the currently-in-litigation film adaptation of his critically acclaimed work “Watchmen”.

“Moore has no intention of seeing the film and, in fact, he hints that he has put a magical curse on the entire endeavor. “Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it’s been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come.” Moore said all that with more mischievous glee than true malice…”

In addition to cursing Hollywood (a regular pastime for Moore) he also plugs a recent documentary made about him entitled “The Mindscape of Alan Moore”, and his upcoming book of magical instruction and history entitled “The Moon & Serpent Bumper Book Of Magic”.

While I’m on the subject of Hollywood ruining good stories, Neil Labute thinks his atrocious and wrong-headed remake of the cult-classic “The Wicker Man” is misunderstood.

“The director thought he was taking his personal battle-of-the-sexes theme to its logical extreme by presenting “the uber male nightmare of ‘Here’s an island of women, and this is what happens when they rule the world.’” But many folks couldn’t get past Nicolas Cage in a bear suit. “I’d been very used to polarizing people, and there would be as many benefactors as detractors, but people sort of got together on that one and said, ‘You know what? I think we’re all in agreement. We just don’t care for this,’” LaBute reflected matter-of-factly.”

He thinks the film, like the original, was simply marketed wrong. With that I can only agree, Labute’s remake should have been marketed as a comedy. In a separate interview, Labute actually disses the original Wicker Man, proving he just didn’t “get it”.

“I love this movie, love the ending, but it’s not that well made. The songs are goofy. I can do something else with this.”

Well, he certainly did “something else” with it.

In a final, not-really-pop-culture note, go check out the saga of an angry Wiccan taking down a scam money-for-spells online site. This one has it all, multiple identities, drama, intrigue, and pro-anorexia ties!

“FastSpells.com is a scam website that claims they will cast Magick on your behalf for various sums of money. They claim to be able to find you love, give you an abortion, cure your cancer, grant you immortality, and change you sex organs. No, I’m not kidding about any of those.”

Make sure you read the comments, here. It looks like his expose has resulted in the offending sites being taken down by the scam-artists.

That is all I have for now, have a great day!
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/wild-hunts-pop-culture-round-up.html/feed 5 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/11/pagan-news-of-note_25.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/11/pagan-news-of-note_25.html#comments Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:29:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/11/pagan-news-of-note-35.html My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

If you have ever read any of Alan Moore’s occult-tinged comics and wondered if he would ever come through on his promise to write a grimoire of his own, wonder no longer! Top Shelf Publishers have posted promotional information concerning Moore’s forthcoming book on magickal theory.

“Splendid news for boys and girls, and guaranteed salvation for humanity! Messrs. Steve and Alan Moore, current proprietors of the celebrated Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels (sorcery by appointment since circa 150 AD) are presently engaged in producing a clear and practical grimoire of the occult sciences that offers endless necromantic fun for all the family. Exquisitely illuminated by a host of adepts including Kevin O’Neill, Melinda Gebbie, John Coulthart, Jose Villarrubia and other stellar talents (to be named shortly), this marvelous and unprecedented tome promises to provide all that the reader could conceivably need in order to commence a fulfilling new career as a diabolist.”

The bad news? It isn’t scheduled for release until 2010. In the meantime you’ll have to content yourself with the recently released “The Black Dossier”, which features all sorts of occult tidbits for the careful reader.

The Tropaion blog has dug up a well-regarded History Channel documentary about the ancient Greek gods and goddesses on Google Video.

“History Channel once again had produced a remarkable documentary presenting the ancient Greek gods and heroes. The narrator will guide you with an extreme sense of respect towards the Hellenic religion’s believes and practices giving you just the recorded facts and letting eminent Classicists from US’ Universities to add their opinion. It is, thus, this combination that makes this documentary a classic work on the ancient Greek gods and their most eminent rites and rituals in the Hellenic world.”

You can find a direct link to the video, here.

The Religion Clause blog is documenting “War on Christmas” skirmishes so you don’t have to. Of particular interest is a legal showdown brewing in Menominee, Michigan, where an atheist group is unhappy about the erection of a nativity scene in a public park.

“The co-president of Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., said in a Nov. 15 letter that the display would violate the separation of church and state. “It is unlawful for the city of Menominee to maintain, erect or host a display that consists solely of a Nativity scene, thus singling out, showing preference for and endorsing one religion, and commemorating its most holy day,” Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote to Menominee city manager Eric Strahl.”

The city of Menominee is trying to legally protect itself by having a provision stating that “non-Christians be allowed to add their symbols”. I can only hope that this means an enterprising Pagan group or two are getting public displays ready to sit next to the nativity scene. What about a baby Mithras? A mini-temple to Saturn? How about a Yule Goat? Lets get creative here!

It isn’t the holiday season without a visit from the ghost of Satanic Panic’s past. A strange case involving a mayor in a small Arkansas town who claimed he was kidnapped by Satanists and brainwashed into his current identity made the national news recently. To make sense of it all, Bartholomew unravels all the “Satanic Panic” connections.

“LaRose claims that he only regained his original identity after being brainwashed when he was given a truth serum by Dr. Marvin DeHaan, brother of the radio evangelist Richard DeHaan. Richard W. DeHaan is the author of Satan, Satanism, and Witchcraft, published in 1972 by Zondervan. The book came out at a time when popular Christian paperbacks on Satanism were in their heyday: a year later, Mike Warnke (with the help of David Balsiger) produced The Satan Seller, a now thoroughly-debunked memoir of life as a Satanist. The momentum from books like these eventually led to the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s.”

Looks like Satanists aren’t just good for selling pulpy Christian books, they can also help you start a new life when things get rough. Is there anything imaginary Satanists can’t do?

In a final note, check out esoteric author Erik Davis’ write-up of “hard-core, shamanic, eco-metal” band Wolves in the Throne Room for Slate.com.

“The contours of this myth echo what my chat with the band after the Santa Cruz show confirmed: Wolves in the Throne Room are hard-core tree-huggers, with a Manichaean view of the environmental crisis and a pagan faith in the transformative powers of nature.”

You can also read a (somewhat) longer commentary by me on this story at my music blog “A Sweeping Curve of Sound”.

That is all I have for now, have a great day!
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2007/11/pagan-news-of-note_25.html/feed 0 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2006/12/why-empire-fell.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2006/12/why-empire-fell.html#comments Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:55:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2006/12/why-the-empire-fell.html Comic Book Resources features a short excerpt from a longer editorial by writer Alan Moore (writer of Promethea, V for Vendetta, and worshiper of a possible hand-puppet) concerning pornography for the magazine Arthur. In the article Moore details the history of imagery and stories meant to titillate, and their importance to civilization.

“In bygone Greece we see a culture plainly unperturbed by its erotic inclinations, largely saturated by both sexual imagery and sexual narratives. We also see a culture where these attitudes would seem to have worked out quite well, both for the ancient Greeks and for humanity at large. They may well have been hollow-eyed and hairy-palmed erotomaniacs, but on the plus side they invented science, literature, philosophy and, well, civilization, as it turns out.”

So where did it all go wrong? Well, in the opinion of Moore, Christianity and the shaming of sex influenced by such thinkers as the Apostle Paul.

“Sexual openness and cultural progress would seem pretty much to have walked hand in hand throughout the opening chapters of the human story in the West, and it wasn’t until the advent of Christianity, or more specifically of the apostle Paul, that anybody realized we should all be thoroughly ashamed of both our bodies and those processes relating to them. Not until the Emperor Constantine had cut and pasted modern Christianity together from loose scraps of Mithraism and the solar cult of Sol Invictus, adopting the resultant theological collage as the religion of the Roman Empire, did we get to witness the effect of its ideas and doctrines when enacted on a whole society.”

This massive social experiment, in Moore’s opinion, eventually brought about the fall of the Roman Empire.

“If we take a traditional (and predominantly Christian) view of the collapse of Rome, then conventional wisdom tells us that Rome was destroyed by decadence, sunken beneath the rising scum-line of its orgies, of its own sexual permissiveness. The merest skim through Gibbon, on the other hand, will demonstrate that Rome had been a heaving, decadent and orgiastic fleshpot more or less since its inception. It had fornicated its way quite successfully through several centuries without showing any serious signs of harm as a result. Once Constantine had introduced compulsory Christianity to the Empire, though, it barely lasted for another hundred years.”

In his view, this compulsory conversion experience destroyed the syncretic and (mostly) religiously tolerant (for its time) society of Rome. Specifically, it hurt the recruitment of foreign military who didn’t wish to toe the new religious line making Rome weak to invasions by barbarians. Moore’s conclusion?

“…sexually open and progressive cultures such as ancient Greece have given the West almost all of its civilizing aspects, whereas sexually repressive cultures like late Rome have given us the Dark Ages.”

It should be interesting it read the entire article to hear Moore’s views on the tension between libertine excesses and repressive shame in our modern era. It seems that no happy balance has yet to be struck. With one side often losing its own compass with issues regarding the degradation of women, and the other so worried about homosexual sex that it sees such impulses as demonic possession and pure evil.
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