“Magic ain’t got nothing to do with organs and glands and busted necks,” says Merlin. “Magic got to do with the soul. Only the soul got destiny. It’s got a way, it’s got to fly.”
Arts & Culture
Folk Magic and Hermeticism in “Nosferatu”
|
With its right hand Eggers’s Nosferatu points at all the sex it can, but its left invokes the imagery and the uncanny nature of folk magic.
Arts & Culture
Classics of Pagan Cinema: The Blood on Satan’s Claw
|
There are those who say a witch is born and others who insist a witch is made. This film suggests a third option: that witchcraft can come upon a person as unbidden and inevitable as puberty, and as impossible to understand.
Arts & Culture
Review: Gladiator II and the chaos at the heart of empire
|
“Nearly everyone in this film is obsessed with the Rome that was, where the emperor was a scholar instead of a syphilitic club kid in a toga,” writes Meg Elison in her review of Ridley Scott’s new film. “It is much easier to complain about a bad government than to build one that works. See Virgil for more on this. See Hannah Arendt. See Marija Gimbutas. See all of human history. See the news.”
Arts & Culture
Witches on TV: Pop Culture and Power
|
TV witches have always captivated me. As a child, I would sit cross-legged in front of the screen, completely spellbound by reruns of Samantha Stephens from Bewitched on Nick-at-Nite. I remember watching her effortlessly clean the house with a twitch of her nose, never realizing that there was something deeper going on in these portrayals of witches.
Arts & Culture
Classics of Pagan Cinema: Hocus Pocus
|
“As a nation, we love to cast our projections on the witches of Salem,” writes Meg Elison as she examines America’s favorite film about witches. “What we want from the real people who died by state violence, the places where they hanged, the hysteria that killed them, is fun. We want Salem to be a theme park, to amuse us and titillate us.”