tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14859972002343497882024-03-19T11:30:11.635+00:00MAGONIA REVIEWUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1187125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-56930852422377800062024-03-17T16:39:00.003+00:002024-03-17T16:40:57.788+00:00DOUBTFUL ORIGINS<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi7lwDguHmNSC5_Qv3lVBwANfjpH4HIi3MdE6yuOfuVhnvN0F99K7XpAL_vRchxw2AiwI5Feupg5-IX3dTwULsUV18A1Fx8gu-7E58OcsQSMl7uMw7-UrlSxnkF9S6xkwFjcLFonRD0Syk9O7l1mOu1f2YWH6oYx-dBQuAv4K_YiKUVUbLZLkBpKuCUXk/s1024/00%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="687" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi7lwDguHmNSC5_Qv3lVBwANfjpH4HIi3MdE6yuOfuVhnvN0F99K7XpAL_vRchxw2AiwI5Feupg5-IX3dTwULsUV18A1Fx8gu-7E58OcsQSMl7uMw7-UrlSxnkF9S6xkwFjcLFonRD0Syk9O7l1mOu1f2YWH6oYx-dBQuAv4K_YiKUVUbLZLkBpKuCUXk/s320/00%20BOOK.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>Simon Webb. The Origins of Wizards, Witches and Fairies. Pen and Sword Books, 2023</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This book contains a mass of information and conjecture; all of it diverting, some of it convincing, much of it discredited. The author takes time (55 pages to be precise) to set the context, and to introduce his wide-ranging selection traditions, concepts and images common across Northern Europe. "All these customs [which] are part of our common cultural inheritance. So pervasive we hardly even notice them".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He asks questions and then offers a series of theories to answer them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He asks what inspired Tolkein and C S Lewis; where do we get the pervasive and instantly-recognisable images of the solitary wandering wizard, of Dwarves, Elves and Fairies, Little People, woodland and water-dwelling deities?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">His key and recurring theory is that we should be looking East for our answers, to an ancestral home and people. This theory of common ancestry from the East, of traditions brought by Bronze Age migrants (the Yamnaya) into Northern Europe, is based on tracing linguistic origins, though to my mind scant supporting evidence is offered.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a theory of half-remembered stories, oral traditions passed down through time, first formally recorded by the Anglo Saxons. The author draws a fair parallel with Troy and the Trojan Wars, which were historical fact, Troy a real place. That story was so embellished after 'only' 600 years of oral retelling before being written down, it was long assumed to be fiction.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He picks an eclectic series of common threads and examines them in turn. Some tasters follow.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The European tendency to create gods in their own image. Gods who take human form and walk the earth unrecognised, often as beggars. A child with mysterious parentage. The author is not a big fan of Christianity, and cites King Arthur, but there are similar Biblical examples - Moses, Isaiah - the Jewish tradition of welcoming the stranger /traveller, in case it is Isaiah - even Jesus himself. Or a human elevated to the status of a god, like Julius Caesar.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The recurring 'Rule of Three' (Francis Young, in <i>Twilight of the Godlings</i>, notes this as a particularly British obsession). 'Christmas' traditions in Northern Europe which are claimed to have origins with the Norse Gods. Putting shoes and stockings out for gifts; food for Santa's reindeer (the bearer of the deity).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The recurring idea of a sacrifice in exchange for wishes. Odin, exchanging his eye for wisdom. Customs we are all familiar with - placing a lost tooth under the pillow, exchanged by the fairies for a coin. Throwing coins into a well or fountain and making a wish. Blessing a ship with a bottle of champagne.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxq3HuWJJ-ojACIxpTx8Kv9MFz2CojjttX20gStT8L5N0FNsitkUPValEBvJRP_vraaQkwjvZOO_6H_mKJDeaud9BN3DBZCE9djKAYOO3WQGnPu8TyF6EUMePhA4rNK1y57k2BzoBlG3V3n2qp9Gh9DQN6biT00AO9hX2ujJ53vECsC24g51YXzRuG_TE/s1200/dagenham-idol.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="569" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxq3HuWJJ-ojACIxpTx8Kv9MFz2CojjttX20gStT8L5N0FNsitkUPValEBvJRP_vraaQkwjvZOO_6H_mKJDeaud9BN3DBZCE9djKAYOO3WQGnPu8TyF6EUMePhA4rNK1y57k2BzoBlG3V3n2qp9Gh9DQN6biT00AO9hX2ujJ53vECsC24g51YXzRuG_TE/w190-h400/dagenham-idol.png" width="190" /></a></div>These last practices also hark back to veneration of water sources (another particularly British obsession). Remains have been found of piers and platforms built out into the water for religious purposes, sometimes with valuable offerings such as 'sacred' swords in the water nearby. [1] And then there are the peat or bog bodies, who the author claims were ritually drowned, not just unfortunate travellers who took a wrong path. I was particularly interested in the reference to the Dagenham Idol, [left] a breathtakingly ancient wooden devotional object found in the mud by the River Thames. My own grandfather found a precious golden torc in the same area in the 1930s, which may have also been intended as a watery offering.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Simon Webb describes fairies as potentially dangerous if crossed, and not tiny, more child-sized; dressed in natural colours. The theory he then offers for the origins of fairies and the Little People is primitive Neolithic forebears, earlier occupiers of the land, who were displaced by the invaders from the East. Still, or until recent times, living hidden in the margins of society, camouflaged into the landscape, stealing foods, tools which they were unable to make for themselves and babies to boost their gene pool. This theory is enticing, but is not new and has been soundly discredited by other authors, including Francis Young.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One area where the author does not try to make a case for continuity of folk memory from ancient times is wizardry and witchcraft. Paganism and Wicca are dismissed as modern re-inventions, not echoes of old practices and beliefs. He highlights ancient discoveries of ceremonial items that we nowadays associate with witches and wizards such as wands/staffs and cauldrons and identifies them as originally symbols of plenty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Roman and Celtic beliefs were not always in conflict, he offers the example of Bath; dedicated to Sulis (Celtic) Minerva (Roman). This cultural appropriation of local gods ended with Judeo-Christian exclusivity, the idea of the 'One God', and with it the (regrettable to the author?) bans on magic, fortune-telling and mediums.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Interestingly, the author observes that the well-known Christian ploy of demonising the old gods extends to how the popular image of the devil is localised to resemble the gods originally worshipped in that region. The Southern European /Middle Eastern devil resembles Baal: human-like with wings and a thunderbolt. Whereas in Northern Europe the devil is more Pan-like: with horns, a tail, and cloven hooves.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The author devotes a sobering section of the book to the perverse continuation of some of these 'quaint' traditions and practices. Staking bodies at crossroads, especially murderers and suicides, continued into the 19th century. Even more disquieting are accounts of ritual sacrifices and lynchings; killing a human being, possibly branded as a witch or wizard, to break a curse, to appease the fairies, or to restore a good harvest. Who can forget the Wicker Man film?. He recounts the unsettling tale of Bridget Cleary - you can look it up for yourselves, or read the book! [2] Primitive ideas persisting into in the 'enlightened' modern era.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He looks at the Victorian-era Romantic revival of a yearning for the magical realm in Britain and Germany, with legends of King Arthur and the building of fantastic fairy-tale castles, yet much Nazi ideology was a sinister consequence of this fad.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Just think, next time you throw a coin and make a wish, you are copying your Bronze Age ancestors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Carol Carlile<br /><br /><hr /></li></ul></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ol><li><span style="font-family: Nanum Gothic;"><a href="https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2009/10/peter-rogersons-northern-echoes-october.html">https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2009/10/peter-rogersons-northern-echoes-october.html</a> [Scroll down]</span></li><li><span style="font-family: Nanum Gothic;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Bridget_Cleary">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Bridget_Cleary</a></span></li></ol></div>
<p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-77454667876406906362024-03-09T20:23:00.004+00:002024-03-17T16:41:43.817+00:00SEX, SATANISM AND EATING ONIONS<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDDURwxGpxb6fkA-pjb8V010Wzq2ZnfMKk4rqVPNo4R5k6fxhf5nXZItamZ4TVupOWtucQhCeyqenO5O8AfP88dmE994ZyyapR9IuOFOip5Bo2g0FWLjxokEGhhlS-jIj-jlJ6-kY-EiSAo4riYZEdk6Grrwrr5EuYXrPxRl7aDHSoA_E9nXnW7XutAo/s1500/BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDDURwxGpxb6fkA-pjb8V010Wzq2ZnfMKk4rqVPNo4R5k6fxhf5nXZItamZ4TVupOWtucQhCeyqenO5O8AfP88dmE994ZyyapR9IuOFOip5Bo2g0FWLjxokEGhhlS-jIj-jlJ6-kY-EiSAo4riYZEdk6Grrwrr5EuYXrPxRl7aDHSoA_E9nXnW7XutAo/w133-h200/BOOK.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Perttu Häkkinen and Vesa Iitti. Lightbringers of the North: Secrets of the Occult Tradition of Finland. Inner Traditions, 2022.</b></div></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This enjoyable read has in my view been given the wrong title. I would suggest 'Riotous Assembly' for what follows is just that: a smorgasbord of short biographies mostly from the twentieth century of some of Finland's most notorious characters involved in one form or another in the occult. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔻</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>At one extreme these characters can be described as eccentric if not certifiably mad. At the other end are some profound individuals genuinely in search of the transcendental, and in the middle a scattering of mischievous conmen. In the latter category the figure who immediately springs to mind is Ior Bock, the scion of a wealthy family who began his young adult life by accidentally shooting dead his brother Eric during boisterous indoor games for which he received a short term of imprisonment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bock later practiced a ritual involving 'lying on his back, with his legs bent over his head and his penis in his mouth - "so that he can drink his own semen". Wintering every year in Goa, it was there that he spun tales about his family. In essence he claimed that his family had fled Atlantis eons ago and that temple ruins from that era were located at Lemminkäinen back in Finland. So impressed were a number of his fellow countrymen that they began excavating the site suggested by him, even receiving financial backing from a local bank. It was all nonsense of course but attracted national interest until the Finnish National Board of Antiquities declared the 'temple' a natural formation.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the more serious end of things is the case of Pekka Ervast, the 'Light of the North', who in 1906 opened the first Finnish branch of the Theosophical Society. He was something of a visionary who argued in 1929 in favour of the abolition of nation states and the establishment of a common currency. The underlying principle behind his thinking was his belief in the brotherhood of mankind. On the occult side of things, he received messages from the mythical demigod Väinäöinen, and also promoted freemasonry, in particular Le Droit Humain Freemasonry (open to both sexes).</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Impressive though Pekka Ervast undoubtedly is, he appears dull by comparison to some of the other characters in the book. Amongst them stand out the Satanists. If Satanism as a religion appears flawed in the sense, as others have pointed out, that it can only exist by reference to Judaeo-Christianity, its participants seem to accept it as a form of heady materialism to be fully enjoyed. Whilst the calling of some religious fundamentalists seems to be to hypocritically condemn man and womankind's carnal pleasures, the Satanists in Finland ignored all that and just got on with having a good time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A good example of this is Pekka Siitoin, 'the Archbishop of Lucifer', who achieved national notoriety partly through his written works in the 1970's. His book Black Magic, advised that Satan, 'hates love and wants it to be replaced by bodily lusts and 'animalistic orgies...' Siitoin did not omit in his writings to give precise instructions on how to conduct an orgy through three rituals. In the first four men and four women undress and put their clothes on the floor in the shape of a pyramid, they then stand opposite each staring at each others genitals for eight minutes. Then the men test the women with the fingers of the left hand. Those men who do not get aroused need more practice in the form of 'orgies or group sex', "Eating onions should help too". </div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another ritual includes the proclamation, "O great Satan, here is my humble gift for you. May my cock be like a rock and cold like ice!" In all of this there seems to be little of the search for the transcendental and certainly no question of spiritual retreat from the world. Quite the contrary, Siitoin was heavily involved in politics, although the form it took was a national embarrassment since he advocated a form of neo-nazism, which was difficult to take seriously since he sometimes wore a Nazi uniform and even sported a Hitler moustache.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is not to equate Satanism with the far right. The leftist Alias Reima Saarinem claimed he had hung out with the Red Army Faction and that he and his Korean girlfriend had been pro PLO sharp shooters in the Middle East. Saarinem was a magician/adept of the black arts familiar with Siitoin's Black Magic, as well as Crowley's doctrine of Thelema. Saarinem argued that, "our main leisure pursuit is, of course, the female body...the fact that there is a head on top of the female body is a side issue". Unpleasantly misogynistic though this may appear, perhaps the reverence for sex was a healthy development in a society that had been oppressed in the past by the misanthropy contained within the puritanism of northern Europe.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The authors though show that things in Finland seem to have moved full circle. In 1172 a Papal Bull had condemned the Finns for being 'twice the children of hell' for blasphemy and despising Christianity. When the Catholic Church in 2012 announced the consecration of Finland for the Virgin Mary, the Turku Society for the Spiritual Sciences responded by announcing a simultaneous nationwide ceremony,'to consecrate Finland for Satan'. It is of course impossible to assess the extent of devotion to Satan in Finnish society today but in one respect at least Satanists have proved important. As the authors point out Finnish Satanists have influenced a number of heavy metal bands in the country that has the highest number of such bands <i><u>per capita</u> </i>in the world. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Noted above are just a few of the characters from this seriously impressive relation of Finland's recent occult history, and the reader will no doubt find himself not only entertained but also enlightened.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Dr. Robin Carlile</li></ul></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-41260524550138207872024-02-27T18:56:00.002+00:002024-03-09T20:24:28.325+00:00ALICE IN UFOLAND<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja3-iyPEMzK3V0Gq5qX60rlpv_fOWdUKR_TSmavF_5TVNqxqcuvwpynk9iQ_avwnBIghns6VbCWycrFAgVp_Zwrv3j3X5V_-AGqAvaCzG6fcCmoxbvRlUFKpDPrkHxmu0A190qO7RayctbytmUyMhgAv-UtV0WAYt9B4xmRJDwbuU3SpDeCZ_CXS0eYMA/s1500/AA%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="971" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja3-iyPEMzK3V0Gq5qX60rlpv_fOWdUKR_TSmavF_5TVNqxqcuvwpynk9iQ_avwnBIghns6VbCWycrFAgVp_Zwrv3j3X5V_-AGqAvaCzG6fcCmoxbvRlUFKpDPrkHxmu0A190qO7RayctbytmUyMhgAv-UtV0WAYt9B4xmRJDwbuU3SpDeCZ_CXS0eYMA/w130-h200/AA%20BOOK.jpg" width="130" /></a></div>D.W. Pasulka, Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences, St Martin’s Essentials, 2023.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Pasulka, who is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, regards the belief in UFOs as a ‘nascent religiosity’ and that the perception of the subject is mediated and manipulated by the media and unnamed agents of disinformation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>She claims TV, films, video games and other media give the stereotyped viewpoint that flying saucers come from distant star systems. So she was surprised to meet scientists who live like mystics and believe that we are dealing with interdimensional intelligence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Agreeing with Jacques Vallee, Pasulka believes that to get to the heart of the matter we should speak to the UFO witnesses and experiencers, who are living with ‘alien’ contacts in the here and now. Rather than seeing nuts and bolts craft these people report entering altered realities, encounter angels and demons and are often touched by uncanny coincidences and dreams.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Chapters of the book look at the high-strangeness experiences of Dr. Iya Whiteley a space psychologist, an anonymous scientist who works for a major space agency, José a former US Marine, Simone who researches AI and works for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DAPRA), Patricia Turrisi and Len Filppu. Like indigenous peoples throughout the world their stories tend to reinforce a spiritual aspect to anomalous and UFO experiences that are in synchrony with land and place.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To anyone with anything more than a superficial interest in UFOs none of this comes as a surprise, especially for anyone who regularly reads <i>Magonia</i> or <i>Fortean Times</i>. Indeed, my book <i>Portraits of Alien Encounters</i> carries very similar stories recounted by people in Northern England back in the 1970s.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7PtaSco502gYBiiA5WWr3GvylVLQ-7VpddkbQzeSMJcpbKtRHgma4urDpmURC9UU01ns1Vfy6NYAgZ1mRSLhjStr2sn-IrActg9SfnGFZkUq5z_GY6mL0ohyTPIU9td4a832m0hxGfmyoZI3L5FWEuBVWHb4WaT_UWda_oX8RiDNc3jkR2R07j_z1mA/s1677/rabbithole.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="1677" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn7PtaSco502gYBiiA5WWr3GvylVLQ-7VpddkbQzeSMJcpbKtRHgma4urDpmURC9UU01ns1Vfy6NYAgZ1mRSLhjStr2sn-IrActg9SfnGFZkUq5z_GY6mL0ohyTPIU9td4a832m0hxGfmyoZI3L5FWEuBVWHb4WaT_UWda_oX8RiDNc3jkR2R07j_z1mA/w640-h180/rabbithole.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The people Pasulka encounters are well educated and hold important positions in society, yet are they reporting anything more credible or ‘real’ than nuts and bolts UAP craft? And, do their qualifications make them better reporters?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jacques Vallee towers over the narrative like a modern day guru who guides Pasulka with cryptic comments on how to deal with this subject, but does this blend of techno/mysticism about non-human intelligences who live beyond time and space really add up?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pasulka seems to accept these findings, yet the people she ‘encounters’ are influenced by the same mythmaking structures and the same concerns as those expressed by the people in my (<i>Portraits of Alien</i>) <i>Encounters </i>book. There is no mention of alien abductions and how they fit in with the ‘new’ techno/myths and AI, nor does she address how these ideas have filtered into Congress or how they have secretly powered the US government to study UAPs.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like other important people Pasulka has gone down the UFO rabbit hole and joined the alien bunny club. Nonetheless <i>Encounters</i> is a fascinating look at different people and the sheer variety of their (psychological - I would say) experiences.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Nigel Watson</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-51610740814178784492024-02-16T14:13:00.003+00:002024-02-27T18:57:57.164+00:00TESTING THE LIMITS<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8s-z1tlgAEKaFIs-Xqbynn5FYC6d2IBbXwQGeI7hpZ9-YgiFcpq4LKk8sShFSP05GjF6tEXjEw-41kXd76aTd_-1A7QKIhrhaazHVxh66Pi7aLcJpvJe1dzljTUHm4llBaWYyLTF-R5xVPX9G4jLSbkIak6Qj8BUFa_nt89_YP1HlwO0PIb3zPSPRv7w/s1500/book.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1071" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8s-z1tlgAEKaFIs-Xqbynn5FYC6d2IBbXwQGeI7hpZ9-YgiFcpq4LKk8sShFSP05GjF6tEXjEw-41kXd76aTd_-1A7QKIhrhaazHVxh66Pi7aLcJpvJe1dzljTUHm4llBaWYyLTF-R5xVPX9G4jLSbkIak6Qj8BUFa_nt89_YP1HlwO0PIb3zPSPRv7w/w143-h200/book.jpg" width="143" /></a></div>Joanne Morreale. The </b><b>Outer Limits. Wayne State University Press, 2022.</b><div><div> <br /><div style="text-align: justify;">“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity....</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>"For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to witness the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind ...to the outer limits.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That is the beautifully written voiceover to <i>The Outer Limits</i> TV series that ran from 1963 - 1965. I’ve quoted it in full because apart from deserving to be in an anthology of SF prose poems it still feels resonant in our computerised present. Substitute the word 'screen' for 'television set' and the disturbing sense of an alien /corporate culture controlling our tastes and habits takes on a technological terror.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The voiceover also reminds you of the famous Orson Welles's radio broadcast of H.G.Wells’s<i> The War of the Worlds.</i> And the executive producer of <i>The Outer Limits</i> was Leslie Stephens who as a student had sold a script to Welles’s Mercury Theatre Company.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As for the future, then David Cronenberg’s 1982 <i>Videodrome</i>, with its menacing television that can suck you inside its box, beckons. Back in the sixties we were promised “a great adventure” as this landmark series defiantly stood out amidst much bland and conformist TV. We can now say that the internet can lead us down into a great misadventure – a labyrinth of available porn, adverts in pursuit of us and those cute dogs and Facebook photographs of last night’s delicious meal. Not forgetting how the media tech giants have allowed us to become our own controllers with the ability to intimidate and spy on our neighbours using mobile phones.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The purpose of <i>The Outer Limits</i> was to offer 50 minute SF TV films of ideas. And for series 1, but less so in series 2, it did so. It was a canny mix of ‘low brow SF pulp’ with high bow speculations (Is there a God? What does it mean to be human?). The ABC TV network, nervous about its ratings, let this go unchecked for awhile but stipulated that each episode feature a monster. A lot of the budget went into elaborate creature outfits and special effects.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although <i>The Outer Limits</i> didn’t take on the frequent morality-tale role of <i>The Twilight Zone</i>, many of the first writers on the series were social liberals concerned about technology’s power to curb the freedom of the individual: “If there is one message in the show, it’s a strong preachment against violence, bigotry and prejudice.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim205q1DVpFCnhErX5Wc5-Z_7tuzpLYqfSeXtq8_m5hKBW9pAabA7zwFuFmeTBehi8KtDmwuBRhPpeWnuu1eWI3HrjOAPxjnf-grvVEAYlbSlspF_H-dN2_qoeKhit_5YeSOcVDwVPAOqUX_mD4QymqOTltExrWn9FMmkWooeGhyphenhyphent6gAw0RkYA7H4kYRM/s1707/QUOTE.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1707" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim205q1DVpFCnhErX5Wc5-Z_7tuzpLYqfSeXtq8_m5hKBW9pAabA7zwFuFmeTBehi8KtDmwuBRhPpeWnuu1eWI3HrjOAPxjnf-grvVEAYlbSlspF_H-dN2_qoeKhit_5YeSOcVDwVPAOqUX_mD4QymqOTltExrWn9FMmkWooeGhyphenhyphent6gAw0RkYA7H4kYRM/w640-h204/QUOTE.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">That’s what writer Joseph Stefano said about his script for 'Made in Japan', a Playhouse 90 drama about racial prejudice. Stefano suggested that this was the line that he and his <i>The Outer Limits</i> producer Leslie Stevens should develop. And what better way was there to disguise your message than SF that the networks didn’t take seriously.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joanne Morreale’s monograph <i>The Outer Limits</i> examines four episodes from series 1, 'Nightmare' for combining SF and film noir imagery; 'The Bellero Shield' as a Gothicised SF; 'The Galaxy Being' for being trapped by electronic forces and 'Obit' to illustrate society’s anxiety over surveillance. She succinctly reveals how these stories juxtaposed ideas, styles and genres that proved a disturbing socio-historical commentary on America’s past (fears of communist infiltration) and present (technological advances and the space race). A similar focus is brought to an episode called 'The Architects of Fear' that taps into fears of a nuclear holocaust.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In all these TV films technical innovation is to be found in the use of music and sound design; a conscious decision to photograph the action and sets so as to give them an expressionist, film noir and foreign art-film look – their resident director of photography was the great Conrad Hall. All this was aided by seriously intelligent dialogue (Joseph Stefano, Harlan Ellison and Robert Towne being some stand out writers). Many episodes were directed by such veterans as Gerd Oswald and Byron Haskin working with talented Hollywood actors eager to be in television.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Morreale makes a convincing, well researched case for <i>The Outer Limits </i>to be considered as a TV milestone. For it was a concept, like <i>The Twilight Zone</i>, that was risky, even radical, entertainment for viewers. It’s then disappointing that in her book she couldn’t have spent more time on Series 2 (I appreciate that studio interference meant storylines became conventional but they’re still good SF / Horror tales worthy of discussion).</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I recently purchased the Blu Ray box set of the complete <i>The Outer Limits</i>. My pleasure from going inward into these dramas and outwards to speculate on their view of a cosmos, both for us and against us, has been enhanced by this highly informative 130 page read.</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Alan Price</li></ul></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-1544551205175658852024-02-10T18:13:00.005+00:002024-02-16T14:14:34.502+00:00SHADOWS OF THE FUTURE?<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxLawND2U7FXTtVpajklLe8q3Tw9LfpM8mIKsU31OPGT60veAswVox4KiXn4SXd7tlU5vZYxZKEn3j-vwcucdffQCykXuz6gVc1lcPlQQ8oZ2yDj3xU7Bi2kUoajk-l2cZwcaUrxoY5GcUhTBK8LmYHAmjVGC0gRx-TKr2TD3mo51UuKkK6QTWTfbtJU/s1500/book.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="979" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxLawND2U7FXTtVpajklLe8q3Tw9LfpM8mIKsU31OPGT60veAswVox4KiXn4SXd7tlU5vZYxZKEn3j-vwcucdffQCykXuz6gVc1lcPlQQ8oZ2yDj3xU7Bi2kUoajk-l2cZwcaUrxoY5GcUhTBK8LmYHAmjVGC0gRx-TKr2TD3mo51UuKkK6QTWTfbtJU/w131-h200/book.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>Sam Knight. The Premonitions Bureau, Faber and Faber Ltd, 2022.</b><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is that rarest of literary animals – a book about what might loosely be called the paranormal that not only made it into the mainstream, but received excellent reviews from those who would normally be complete cynics unwilling to soil their eyes on any such work. Sam Knight, however, has cracked it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>For a start, this is a clever, nuanced and meticulously researched book that draws one in immediately with its deceptively direct style. It’s not for nothing that Sam Knight is a staffer at The New Yorker. He knows his way around the art of communication. What is surprising is that this is his first book.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It received such uncompromising acclaim that at first I thought it was a novel. But some eager poking around in display piles in W.H. Smith’s revealed the truth – it’s a ground-breaking work of nonfiction but about a subject only too often thought of as the opposite.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">(Obviously I love and recommend it, but one minor niggle is that he – and others quoted throughout - use the term ‘occult’ as being interchangeable with ‘supernatural’ or ‘paranormal’. It isn’t. The occult refers to what believers actually do – ritual magick, for example. The supernatural or paranormal is what happens anyway, but often can’t be explained. Ok, that’s arguable, some of you might be thinking. Not me, though.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The book is largely concerned with what happened in the 60s, though some elements hark back further. Early comments reveal that there were surveys during the Second World War about belief in the paranormal. One teacher replied: ‘I don’t know where the “supernatural” begins and the “subconscious” ends’, which is a pretty good underpinning for this book.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Actually, one of Knight’s greatest strengths is that he simply tells the story of two British men, one a psychiatrist and one a famous TV scientist, who collaborated on running the Premonitions Bureau of the title, seeking data that would help us understand the phenomenon of receiving information about coming events – almost always tragedies. Knight never slides off into arguments about the subject, unless they are the men’s in question, or anything approaching New Agey waffle. This is intensely historical and factual but buzzing with life.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The early chapters concern one of the UK’s worst peacetime disasters. And if I may, I want to share my own slight experience of those linked to the event because it’s a powerful memory in its own right and serves to underline its towering horror.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was at university in Wales when, one morning, shortly before we young women were about to leave our hall of residence for the day’s lectures, I heard something extraordinary. And I never want to hear anything like it again. It was a dual noise, a huge rising din that battered the eardrums. It was both the sound of throngs of students running headlong down the corridors, their feet thudding and thumping as if to underline the enormity of the event, together with the dreadful sound of their shrieking and howling with panic, shock and pain.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was 21 October 1966. The day that began with the news that that a mining village in the Welsh valleys, a tiny place called Aberfan (pronounced Abervan) had suffered a landslide of slurry from the coalmining tip. It had rushed down the hillside and buried Pantglas Junior School, just as the children were settling in for the day. Many of my fellow students had relatives there. Some were actually from Aberfan.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And the news from Aberfan was only to get worse. Much, much worse. Altogether, 144 people died under the black deluge: 28 adults and 116 children – some still with their colouring-in crayons in their hands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Soon it emerged that some people had relayed weird dreams or feelings about the tragedy before the event. The most famous was the dream of little Eryl Mai Jones, an 11-year-old girl, who told her mother – two weeks before the event – that she wasn’t afraid of death. Her mum Megan replied, ‘Why are you talking of dying, and you so young?’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the very day before the disaster, Eryl said to Megan: ‘Mummy, let me tell you about my dream last night’. Megan said gently that she hadn’t time, but Eryl insisted, saying: ‘No, Mummy, you must listen. I dreamt I went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down over it.’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The next day, Eryl was buried in the black filth at the school.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Forty-two-year-old psychiatrist John Barker visited the scene of devastation, being immensely moved by the human agony – but also dignity – on display. He realised it would have been ‘inopportune’ and tasteless to interview the families then and there but would come back to the event many times in his studies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A senior consultant at a mental institution, Barker was currently working on a book about whether it was possible to be literally scared to death, pursuing that and more esoteric interests – he was a member of the Society for Psychical Research - with what he called ‘a conscious rationalism’.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Aberfan tragedy fascinated Barker, because he discovered that there were many stories of unusual little occurrences that saved lives and ended others. For the first time ever, one little boy overslept, to be sent rushing off to school in tears by his mother - and only to be crushed by the deluge. Weeks after the horror, a bereaved mother found a drawing of massed figures digging in the hillside under the words ‘the end’ by her eight-year-old son, who had also died.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, ‘given the singular nature of the disaster and its total penetration of the national consciousness’ Barker decided to gather together as many premonitions of the Aberfan event that he could, and try to comprehend the data.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So he wrote to Peter Fairley, the science editor of the London *Evening Standard* and later famous broadcaster, asking him to publicise the idea – and a fascinating partnership was born.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fairley was by no means a total sceptic. In 1966 he had suffered a three-month episode of blindness, which he thought would be permanent. One day he found himself wondering about doing some recording about the then hot topic of the space race for blind people. Then his phone rang. It was a radio producer asking him to record a long interview about the space race for blind patients… Fairley said later: ‘You can call it coincidence. But once a few of these things happen you start to wonder.’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And wonder, or at least curiosity, was what galvanised the two men to form the Premonitions Bureau, soon whittling down the would-be psychics to a smallish stable of those given to ‘hits’. In almost all cases, they predicted tragedies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There was a good deal to double check about Aberfan, which they never forgot. One Constance Milder had had a vision at her Spiritualist meeting the day before the coal slide. She told six witnesses immediately about it: she saw an old school, a Welsh miner, and ‘an avalanche of coal’ go rushing into a valley towards an absolutely terrified little boy. Ms Milder recognised him from a photo on the news. He’d been killed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One man suddenly knew there’d be a national disaster on the 21. When the day arrived, he said: ‘Today’s the day.’ He said the feeling came ‘as strongly as might come the thought that you have forgotten your wife’s birthday.’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Barker was anything but a gullible fool, and recognised there were potential problems with data that had been collected after the fact. But he accepted the validity of the most extraordinary and well-witnessed cases, wondering if premonitions might be a sort of symptom of a ‘telepathic shock wave’ induced by the coming disaster, seeing the predictors as ‘human disaster reactors’.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He, and Fairley, also wondered what use the information might be. Even if the dreams and visions had been publicly recorded at the time, there was no reason to suspect they would have been believed or acted upon. And if they were acted upon – say, a plane envisioned on a certain day to have crashed was prevented from even flying that day and therefore didn’t crash, did that mean the premonition was invalid?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is a plethora of other cases discussed, and a large cast of colourful and often engaging characters – all real, all flawed, but all part of Barker and Fairley’s incredible story.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Knight also takes us into the not-always relatable world of 1960s’ psychiatry – a troubling and uncomfortable journey – and into the personal lives of the two researchers, so we know them and really rather like them. But as they continue to work with their supernatural stars, meticulously logging their premonitions, something worrying keeps cropping up – Barker’s own demise. He was a relatively young man. But he died, pretty much as described.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What could he have done about it? Probably nothing. But at least he’d made a note of all those unsettling and deeply personal predictions…</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Lynn Picknett</li></ul></div><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-36576921306097421152024-01-30T19:35:00.016+00:002024-02-16T00:04:27.432+00:00TO WIDDICOMBE AND BEYOND<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVgim7ManfpEoLFdKjT6zQZNYuxspoQ_VQCwJkigIQm6CdKRJneajkwqpqrjfT8HYjZiuLxPFT-zAFfCGkfQFtUMkoTIp95Oo014ZutyAUJlr8UiQoqCuaVaMqbisWAdCsVBbCC6VtCVAgzie4EjDOKORcjoBeySdX6Fxs4lHwGkTJA5EUeElFWf6YPjs/s1000/devon%20folklore.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="667" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVgim7ManfpEoLFdKjT6zQZNYuxspoQ_VQCwJkigIQm6CdKRJneajkwqpqrjfT8HYjZiuLxPFT-zAFfCGkfQFtUMkoTIp95Oo014ZutyAUJlr8UiQoqCuaVaMqbisWAdCsVBbCC6VtCVAgzie4EjDOKORcjoBeySdX6Fxs4lHwGkTJA5EUeElFWf6YPjs/w133-h200/devon%20folklore.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Mark Norman. The Folklore of Devon. Exeter University Press, 2023.</b></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is a certain journalist/commentator who delights in informing us every April 23rd that St George, the Patron Saint of England, "is ackcherly Turkish". I wonder what he would make of the possibility that the old Devonian folk song character Uncle Tom Cobley is ackcherly German?</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Maybe this isn't as implausible as it sounds, as one of the lessons we have learned from studying the background to traditional tales and ancient rituals is that they are seldom as straightforward as we thought.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The suggestion is that the Widdicombe Fair song was brought to Devon by German tin workers who came to work in the mines on Dartmoor, The folklorist Theo Brown, whose influence of the study of Devonshire folklore is discussed in the first chapter of this book, proposes that the 'Old Grey Mare' may be a representation of the<i> schimmelreiter,</i> a ghostly psychopomp, leading the dead to the after-world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In mourning the horse, old Uncle Tom is "weeping for the souls who will now end up in Purgatory, because they cannot be transported to the Otherworld". Deep stuff, but fortunately we do not get led so deeply into rabbit holes in the rest of this fascinating volume.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The first chapter not only discusses Theo Brown (née Jean Marion Pryce), but a number of other figures who have written and recorded Devonshire folklore. These are included to show that it is important for the understanding of the folklore of any nation or region to be aware of the cultural background of the people who have presented it to us and the sources they have used in compiling it and the era in which they have done so.. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mark Norman is careful to preserve a distinction between 'lore' and 'legend'. Much folklore is based on real people and events, and the chapter 'Stories from the Moors' relates stories which have been attached to characters and families from the moorlands which make up almost a fifth of the county's area. The story of the Doone family is now best known to us fictionally from the novel<i> Lorna Doone </i>by R. D. Blackmore, but they were a real family which lived as outlaws on Exmoor in the troubled years during and after the Civil War. Over time so many stories have been attached to the historical account, both before and after the publication of Blackmore's book, that it is now difficult to distinguish between fact and the legend.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Norman calls this mixing of fact, legend and imaginative interpretation 'guidebook folklore', and rather than dismissing it he sees it as a part of the development of folk belief. In the final chapter, 'Modern Folklore' the author looks at the manner in which the public perception of folkloric 'visions and beliefs' have been and are being modified through the media, and in particular social media. He takes as examples a number of historical and contemporary accounts of anomalous phenomena and how they had been reported and misreported. Of particular interest is his necessarily brief account of a haunting in a private house which he and his wife investigated, the narrative of which seemed to have been entirely derived from watching the <i>Most Haunted </i>TV shows.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifKubUeO7kJQhpFoULd1rHU518v4DKBesJbgQxUtSQH08UUBbooE60KTMr84wJBMPuFCCqt2g2726yRer8XPZt0rjFD3atn9GeDvUpYCX_S3y75wWF86U199Xa43TEjb4SfbMTevhJS5LYVbfDh79nbQBqktTw18r0veuFxssq-mZ0Og2CVQZa5wCPz2A/s1568/cream%20tea.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="1568" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifKubUeO7kJQhpFoULd1rHU518v4DKBesJbgQxUtSQH08UUBbooE60KTMr84wJBMPuFCCqt2g2726yRer8XPZt0rjFD3atn9GeDvUpYCX_S3y75wWF86U199Xa43TEjb4SfbMTevhJS5LYVbfDh79nbQBqktTw18r0veuFxssq-mZ0Og2CVQZa5wCPz2A/w640-h190/cream%20tea.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One aspect of Devon folklore which has been greatly influenced by popular media is the Black Dog. Although this is an apparition which is reported under various names across Britain, the Devonian version has extra resonance through the story of the Hound of the Baskervilles, which is probably how most people were introduced to this folkloric meme. Norman looks at the background to Doyle's version of the Black Dog legend, pointing out its similarity to, and differences from, traditional phantom hound stories.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The traditional legend most closely matching Doyle's story relates to a Richard Cabell, who, according to whichever version you hear was either hunted to his death by demonic Black Dogs for the wickedness of his soul, or who was torn to pieces by his wife's favourite hound after Cabell had murdered her for her alleged unfaithfulness. It is not certain to which of three generations of local landowners called Richard Cabell either of these stories are connected to, and by now Doyle's story has more or less taken over from any version of the original.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like most other counties, Devon has plenty of stories of the devil, but of course this is the easily-outwitted folklore devil, not the rather more uncompromising Biblical character. Although many of these tales do have a genuine folk heritage, others are example of 'guidebook folklore', creating a historical background that often overwhelms the original story. Norman cites the example of the Dewerstone, The tradition surrounding this rocky outcrop on Dartmoor tells that the devil would lure men to their deaths from then stones. This belief was based on the story that after a heavy snowfall two tracks of footprints were found leading up the stones, one human and one of a hoofed creature. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course the story of a much later 'Devil's Hoofprints' will be familiar to all Forteans - the trail of footprints in freshly fallen snow, discovered in February 1855 and reportedly stretching for many miles, continuing uninterrupted over roofs and walls. In the 1850s the expanding rail network made it possible to travel quite easily to places like Dartmoor which had previously been inaccessible to most people, and there was a growth in the publication of local guides for these new visitors. In 1856 the folklore collector Richard King was commissioned to write a <i>Handbook for Travellers to Devon and Cornwall</i>, in which he seems to have conflated the Devil's Footprints story with legends about the Wild Hunt and the 'Wisht Hounds' to provide a perfect example of 'guidebook folklore'.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Throughout this book, with its chapters discussing themes such as farming folklore, fairies, witchcraft and ghosts, the author demonstrates that that folklore is a process rather than a static record. It is full of stories that interest and entertain, there is humour and excitement, fear and comfort, a great deal of history and quite a lot of imagination. We even get a dispatch from the front line of the Cream Tea Wars.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although this is a scholarly book, it is not a tough academic tome. It is a lively, easily readable, often humorous account of a living world of story and belief. The blurb on the back of the book says that it will "remain the standard work for may years to come", but I think the author would be the first person to say that there can be no such thing as a 'standard work' on folklore, as it constantly changes and evolves. This book is a fascinating account of Devonshire folklore's origins, growth and evolution, and even a glimpse into its future. Hugely recommended to every Fortean!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Richard Samuels.</li></ul></div><hr /><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Archivo Black;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Mark and Tracey Norman are the authors of <i>Dark Folklore</i>, reviewed in Magonia <a href="https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2022/02/dark-folklore.html"><span>HERE</span></a>.</span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span>Mark Norman spoke about 'Dark Folklore' at the London Fortean Society's 'Haunted Landscape' conference, November 2021: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqE0oz38-30">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqE0oz38-30</a></span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-68699894051771990792024-01-17T16:56:00.002+00:002024-02-10T18:15:07.030+00:00STONE LUKEWARM<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtsiIJkTp2MhECoxwO9nonE9vdOjI0BCa7RNYkMpy6uR44BFZU9ILU96BzeI1UzK8sAUSVnuJLHExTYGehh1k9poS4-bLc7Nk2UCPOqVTG7ZYiBOCfUqhzayarrUMZ9GMpHkpAFzIreUEqRNO8CR9sU2GJsi8qkBChyphenhyphen-fC7UiKETt-wIInlUDdBlRpcQk/s1500/circles.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1018" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtsiIJkTp2MhECoxwO9nonE9vdOjI0BCa7RNYkMpy6uR44BFZU9ILU96BzeI1UzK8sAUSVnuJLHExTYGehh1k9poS4-bLc7Nk2UCPOqVTG7ZYiBOCfUqhzayarrUMZ9GMpHkpAFzIreUEqRNO8CR9sU2GJsi8qkBChyphenhyphen-fC7UiKETt-wIInlUDdBlRpcQk/w136-h200/circles.jpg" width="136" /></a></div><b>Katy Soar [Editor] Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites. British Library 2023.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Katy Soar’s persuasive introduction to<i> Circle of Stones</i> made me pick up a collection of stories exploring the native (wraith-like) stones that cover the British Isles. They are rich objects for human sacrifice, devil worship, pantheistic cults and magic. Stones are ambiguous and mysterious. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>And once they’re set in a circle are rife for Druid intervention and imaginative writing. It’s then a pity to report that Circles of Stone doesn’t deliver sufficient thrills, excitement or plain horror. Soar’s line up of writers includes such great horror practitioners as Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and E.F. Benson but they, with some modern writers and forgotten early 20th century authors, are not at their best. None of the stories is bad. It’s just that given these are weird tales they are often a bit too literal, even prosaic and underwhelming. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps cinema has covered this pagan territory so much that words feel redundant, limping to catch up with strident images. Films like <i>The Night of the Demon, The Wicker Man, The Witches</i> and <i>Midsommar</i> have trespassed, for good or ill, too much on what we’ve read of place and ritual so that it’s harder to be thrilled by this kind of tale. And there’s a tendency in this British Library collection for characters to fall into clichés – talking of dark things we shouldn’t meddle with; not wanting to go to that site on a winter’s night or he /she having vanished from the face of the earth.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are fifteen stories. Their ordering does give a sound and careful exposition of numerous strange ideas surrounding stones, burial sites and ancient practices that impinge on contemporary life. And Katy Soar has logically laid out an anthology according to her theme of magical beliefs. Yet only four stories really gripped me: 'The Tarn of Sacrifice' by Algernon Blackwood, 'Lisheen' by Frederick Cowles, 'Minuke' by Nigel Kneale and 'Where the Stones Grow' by Lisa Tuttle.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sexual obsession causing Christianity to be replaced by satanic worship; to be caught in a trance where you believe a young woman was once your lover in an Ancient Roman past; poltergeists wrecking a new house built on an ancient sacrificial site and the terror of a stone to move about freely and attack you. Here I felt the writers’ supernatural intent was secure, confident and free of the obvious.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">You may prefer other stories over mine. But don’t expect a consistency of intense chills from every author.<i> Circles of Stone</i> is inconsistent in quality but at least the book has a wonderfully designed cover by Mauricio Villamayor from a terrific illustration by Sandra Gomez. If only more stories had lived up to the striking packaging.</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Alan Price</li></ul><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-39201810146417839662024-01-15T18:28:00.007+00:002024-02-10T18:15:25.888+00:00THE MISQUOTATION THAT CHANGED THE WORLD<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTB8chyNZxEwmLJ62juUnKnmdhxvyMRH4jxZlKiERzs0YezFeVS2X5GyzQXZMtgNCMK17YSyezDbgWo_T6Nc7RVNCuMrmRGYRVVsQh3QMiVfit_5YWVuXw7NYB5Mxuyvh5prOG1aL4aPg3Eq1IgDKCAdK6sBJjpW52z6SiwbfnsZ_TzNvrb8ijlJDMhTs/s1491/61pXPX-NVKL._SL1491_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1491" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTB8chyNZxEwmLJ62juUnKnmdhxvyMRH4jxZlKiERzs0YezFeVS2X5GyzQXZMtgNCMK17YSyezDbgWo_T6Nc7RVNCuMrmRGYRVVsQh3QMiVfit_5YWVuXw7NYB5Mxuyvh5prOG1aL4aPg3Eq1IgDKCAdK6sBJjpW52z6SiwbfnsZ_TzNvrb8ijlJDMhTs/w134-h200/61pXPX-NVKL._SL1491_.jpg" width="134" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Chris Aubeck. Saucers. Tracing the Origin of Disk-Shaped UFOs. Aubeck, 2023.</b></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Flying saucers first arrived on the scene in 1947, we all know that. Well we are all wrong, they have been around since at least 1885. And as soon as they arrived on the scene people started shooting at them. Fortunately this did not start a 'war of the worlds', as being shot at was what these paricular flying saucers were designed for.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Created by an Ohian inventor called George Ligowsky, who was inspired by seeing boys at the seaside skipping shells across the water (sound familiar?) these 'flying saucers' were what we now more usually call 'clay pigeons', used in competitive shooting contests. As well as their sporting use, flying saucers were also used in military training, particularly for aerial gunners.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One of the people who was keenest on this form of target practice was the chief of the US Army Airforce - General Henry H. Arnold. Aubeck comments: "Within a mere span of two and a half years, the public's association of 'flying saucers' shifted from one Arnold to an entirely different Arnold." </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Authorised Version of ufology has it that Kenneth Arnold never actually described the objects he saw on that fateful day in 1947 as "saucer shaped", and the term derived from a misquotation by a journalist who conflated his description of their movement with their physical appearance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The process by which Arnold's graphic phrase was quoted and misquotated is laid out in some detail. The reporter Bill Bequette is usually blamed for falsely using the phrase 'flying saucer' to describe the shape rather that the motion of the objects, but the truth is rather more complex. Bequett actually used Arnold's 'bat-like shape' description in his original report for the<i> East Oregonian</i> newspaper. It was a later report by Associated Press that omitted the 'bat-like' description but kept the saucer analogy from Arnold's initial statement, This was the version that most Americans read and assumed that it referred to the shape of the objects.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it is fair to point out that Arnold himself described the objects in different ways at different times, including as looking like a 'pie plate', which clearly indicates a flattened, disc-shaped object. He spent some time revisiting and revising his description of what he saw, at times describing then as crescents, bat-shaped and half-moons, and produced sketches whch varied from a 'flying wing' to an almost complete circle. I was also surprised at reading about how many other UFO sightings Arnold reported, sometimes many years after the original event.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But once the phrase 'flying saucer' was out there, by whatever process, there was no going back. Maybe it was because of the familiarity of the shooting targets or just because it sounded so cool, that it quickly became attached to almost any celestial anomaly. The attractive catchiness of the name was soon demonstrated by the way the flying saucer was exploited commercially. Aubeck presents newspaper advertisments from the late forties and early fifties using 'saucers' to promote anything from savings banks to car dealerships, jewellery and confectionary. And a particularly sickly-sweet form of sherbert confectionary is still marketed under that name today.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But although the name was everywhere, reports of actual flying saucers weren't. Aubeck finds that reports of flying discs form only a tiny percentage of UFO reports overall, and most of those were from the early days of the phenomenon. In the [US] National UFO Reporting Center's analysis of 145,500 sighting reports from 1980 to the present, just under 6% reference a disc or saucer shaped object, and a more recent analysis by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office [AARO] finds that only 2% of cases collected since 1996 have been of saucer shaped objects</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And when did<i> you </i>last see a report of a 'disc-shaped' UFO? So passé. Now we are more likely to read of flying triangles or 'tic-tacs', both shapes which can easily be conjured from a vaguely described phenomenon. Some people seem to find it remarkable that any combination of three lights in the sky will form a 'flying triangle'.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But what of the pre-history of UFOs, surely there are some there? Well of course there were the airships in the 1890s and the 1900s, and mystery airplanes in the 1930s, and ghost-rockets in the immediate post-WWII era. And before the airships there were phantom sailing-ships (<i>vide</i> the<i> Magonia</i> logo), balls of fire (still a popular theme), as well as cigar-shapes, shields, spears and an infinite variety of geometric shapes. Searchers for pre-Arnold saucers claim to have found descriptions of saucers in documents and artworks from earlier centuries, but as Aubeck points out "Unexplained events served religious and political agendas . . . a critical and nuanced reading is required" [1]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy6snnAXwYoj9hU93qLZFBztkw7APTAhTUWxhU93KYY-YjFHic9b7_68diYYyX8yoeWjLlPYpB80Dc-K18J0LlUhTyQYg0PHGt6vnA_Xhupj78HdJG1Vjm3wUKTYUkTP856xvGtfXpPsSjXiqKZ68O_GdYNdRckuW8aOr8lRVH_GK7Z0j3_8mkWyKWh6I/s750/switz.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="750" height="628" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy6snnAXwYoj9hU93qLZFBztkw7APTAhTUWxhU93KYY-YjFHic9b7_68diYYyX8yoeWjLlPYpB80Dc-K18J0LlUhTyQYg0PHGt6vnA_Xhupj78HdJG1Vjm3wUKTYUkTP856xvGtfXpPsSjXiqKZ68O_GdYNdRckuW8aOr8lRVH_GK7Z0j3_8mkWyKWh6I/w640-h628/switz.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The only place where flying saucer shaped craft were found in any great numbers pre-Arnold was in the SF pulps of the 1930s. Here they quite consciously introduced to represent futuristic craft which were unlike anything ever seen previously. They were something truly alien, but that they also referred back to the high-speed spinning clay-pigeon targets that many people were already familar with, showing that they were seen as an aerodynamically effective shape. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Maybe prompted by such thoughts some aircraft designers were beginning to look at whether circular or near-circular craft could be a realistic proposition. Just a month before Arnold's experience the popular magazine <i>Mechanix Illustrated</i> carried a report about the 'Flying Flapjack'. This was a vaguely circular propellor-driven craft, the invention of Charles Horton Zimmerman, who had, with a number of other designers, been working on the concept of circular winged aircraft since the nineteen thirties.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1942 he produced a prototype called the Skimmer, which seemed promising, and in 1943 the US Navy commissioned a prototype. Although successful in test flights it was scrapped almost immediately, the development of jet engines making it obsolete. The prototype version, the XF5U-1, was suggested at the time as perhaps being what Arnold had witnessed. Aubeck quotes the almost prophetic final senstence of the <i>Mechanix Illustrated</i> article: "Don't be amazed when one of these days you hear a whirring sound from the sky and see a blurred circular object scaling across the heavens, at a speed never before attained by man." It looks very much as though 1947 was 'flying saucer time', to adapt Charles Fort's famous phrase.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What becomes obvious from reading this book is that the appearance of the 'flying saucer' phenomenon was the result of an unlikely series of incidents centred around one flight by one pilot. What if on that day in June 1947 Arnold had taken off in his CallAir A-2 ten minutes earlier or later? Would the whole huge UFO/UAP circus that surrounds us now ever had happened? It seems unlikely that it would. Kenneth Arnold provided a category which allowed a wide range of stimuli to be combined into the social construct known as the UFO phenomenon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Chris Aubeck has produced a meticulous historical account with hundreds of examples, often very amusing, of the growth, world-wide spread and eventual decline of the 'flying saucer' meme. Kenneth Arnold's achievement, in just one casual phrase, and by being in the right place at the right time, was to create a phenomenon which took on a life of its own, and went on to change the world in some small way.. This well-illustrated book documents that process clearly and entertainingly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>John Rimmer</li></ul><div><hr /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">[1] <i>For an example of this, see John Harney's explanation of a strange aerial phenomenon at the time of the English Civil War: </i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><a href="https://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-earthlights-controversy-johm-harney.html">https://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-earthlights-controversy-johm-harney.html</a></i></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-61396732610715537502024-01-06T17:17:00.002+00:002024-01-10T17:40:27.770+00:00JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY<div><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDR2itE6A_OhslKcN7fJG3uXA7orKSmmImm70VrW9LxW5tI-vq1CHFGYdLSXIJ9J0c0omWseMRE0_fVxpYa_i4g_MEJxSSfKfRwRznhLywf2TIluLDfZrE0Af-1tLUBmYEG9RUFPwojpK1P2jdTxmloL8pYTo_mh42OvZXBGZ4gZ7CQZVKEGFzA8hPryU/s1352/harryhausen.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1352" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDR2itE6A_OhslKcN7fJG3uXA7orKSmmImm70VrW9LxW5tI-vq1CHFGYdLSXIJ9J0c0omWseMRE0_fVxpYa_i4g_MEJxSSfKfRwRznhLywf2TIluLDfZrE0Af-1tLUBmYEG9RUFPwojpK1P2jdTxmloL8pYTo_mh42OvZXBGZ4gZ7CQZVKEGFzA8hPryU/w148-h200/harryhausen.jpg" width="148" /></a></div>Ray Harryhausen Special Collection. Blu –Ray Box set. Via Vision 2023.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Unsealing this box set of eight Ray Harryhausen films I was reminded of the early 90’s when I met Ray Harryhausen at the Everyman cinema in Hampstead, London. He was delivering an illustrated talk on his work. Apart from myself, and a friend, the cinema was full of young animators who’d come to hear the master of stop-motion animation. It was an inspiring evening.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>During the break Ray opened up a suitcase and took out some models. He noticed me looking dmiringly at a sword-armed skeleton warrior that had fought so fiercely in<i> Jason and the Argonauts</i> (1963) “It’s quite small isn’t it? You can pick it up if you want too.” said a modest Ray who looked pleased by my interest. I nervously held the warrior in my hand, almost wishing that Ray could simply breathe on the skeleton so as to animate it, without having my palm cut by its weapon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Watching again <i>The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad</i> (1957) I’d forgotten that this was when the gruesome skeleton made its first appearance. It’s a terrific moment in a fantasy film bursting with some of Harryhausen’s most memorable creations – especially a rust coloured cyclops. Accompanying the skeleton’s duel is the danse macabre music of Bernard Herrmann: all high trumpets, xylophone and castanets. </div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Herrmann also worked on<i> The Golden Voyage of Sinbad</i> (1973), <i>The Three Worlds of Gulliver </i>(1960) and<i> Mysterious Island</i>. Arguably Harryhausen and Herrmann are the true auteurs on this box set and not really the directors, with the exception of horror film director Gordon Hessler on <i>The Golden Voyage of Sinbad</i> and Don Chaffey on<i> Jason and the Argonauts</i> (1963).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There’s also a later Sinbad film, <i>Sinbad and The Eye of the Tiger </i>(1977) and although this contains some marvellous effects (Fighting ghouls in a tent, enormous wasps and the duel between a smiloden and a troglodyte) the overall tone is annoyingly tongue in cheek. And its villainess Zenobia (Margaret Whiting) isn’t on the same level as the evil magician splendidly played by Torin Thatcher (<i>Seventh</i>) or Tom Baker (<i>Golden</i>) who positively revels in his sorcery. Yet outstanding Sinbad film or not, the actors always took second place to the monsters. It’s Ray’s extraordinary ability to make his monsters live that matters. Their screen presences are stop–motion nuanced to an intense degree of fascination, horror and finally even compassion (when they’re destroyed).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ray’s unique imaginative insight into his beautifully made models is a great validation for the artistry of stop motion: one artist’s sole painstaking control over his creation - all those hours, in solitude, crafting the finally realised results. No team of producers, animation technicians or a committee deciding what’s best, just Ray plundering his knowledge of art, mythology, history and his own unconscious to produce a poetic magic, that is with the exception of the first screen<i> King Kong</i>, Cocteau’s <i>La Belle et la Bete </i>and some early Japanese Godzilla films, unsurpassable in mid twentieth century monster-fantasy film.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJlOwEJifC2SMjAgNXyVY-0CiVDuiYioc5Mqvi36XAEsY3YeD4ziljRS5tzfCutk1gXa8Btvdf8EovuvrizYw1ggje9DsOL_I_g11CXJylSj7n5_Jr1l1dmJE38rmIOSR0AXTggv0VyWrJtVsnBMoVKnJj4CeNa0dFtOHmVHx69hsu3z7RF6WHFZd_fnU/s1403/harryhausen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="374" data-original-width="1403" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJlOwEJifC2SMjAgNXyVY-0CiVDuiYioc5Mqvi36XAEsY3YeD4ziljRS5tzfCutk1gXa8Btvdf8EovuvrizYw1ggje9DsOL_I_g11CXJylSj7n5_Jr1l1dmJE38rmIOSR0AXTggv0VyWrJtVsnBMoVKnJj4CeNa0dFtOHmVHx69hsu3z7RF6WHFZd_fnU/w640-h170/harryhausen.jpg" width="640" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Mysterious Island</i> (1961) has some highly variable scripting and acting but what of those amazing giant crabs, huge bees and enormous hen!? <i>The Three Worlds of Gulliver</i> (1960) was a lost opportunity. They only scripted and shot two adventures and dropped the darkest Gulliver tale, his confrontation with the Yahoos and the Houyhnhms. We can only imagine how Harryhausen would have realised them! Still Ray worked well on the miniaturisation in Lilliput and Brogdingnag, employing clever and effective camera angles.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Both<i> It Came from Beneath the Sea</i> (1955) and<i> Earth vs. The Flying Saucers</i> (1957) are very much products of Hollywood SF when fears of invading communists were projected on to forms of sea monster and UFOs. Yet even when the characters limp and the story falters, their model work has you gripped to the screen. The great jewel in the crown of this Via Vision set still remains Ray’s masterwork, <i>Jason and the Argonauts.</i> He had Bernard Herrmann, a good director and a strong cast of veteran English actors, including Honour Blackman. Triton saving the Argonauts, The Argonauts fighting Talos, Jason tackling the guardian of the Golden Fleece and the skeleton army attack: all remain such unforgettable moments.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The films come with generous extras and are well defined prints with clear soundtracks. It was a Christmas treat to watch them. A lovely set for children, adults and a CGI monster, - or two - looking enviously on.</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Alan Price</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-5562889916555690172024-01-04T17:37:00.000+00:002024-01-10T17:38:41.974+00:00SAUCER AND SWASTIKA<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZmMOMcy9FCdlrPQ781CHMoGg3eE0J4D4QBCrjwZzspANlfPs4DYicWC8CcI55wNz_CJiZwkfrpqKJoMDjHKn5Eab914a1NAU13BpOY8ebkUFopB956MK3kITKbsOYhyEK00gDV2CWsDIHZkYVm2iMWz8a8LMwSMRW_DY3-VPoUiG9YX3BDwlTn7qWx-Q/s500/swastika.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="334" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZmMOMcy9FCdlrPQ781CHMoGg3eE0J4D4QBCrjwZzspANlfPs4DYicWC8CcI55wNz_CJiZwkfrpqKJoMDjHKn5Eab914a1NAU13BpOY8ebkUFopB956MK3kITKbsOYhyEK00gDV2CWsDIHZkYVm2iMWz8a8LMwSMRW_DY3-VPoUiG9YX3BDwlTn7qWx-Q/w134-h200/swastika.jpg" width="134" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>S. D, Tucker,<i> The Saucer and the Swastika: The Dark Myth of Nazi UFOs.</i> Amberley, 2023.</b></div></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The year 1947 is thought of by many to be year zero for the modern age of UFOs. When Kenneth Arnold reported batwing/crescent shapes whose flight he describes as like that of a saucer skipping over water, it was mutated into the phrase that, for many, still describes the phenomenon of strange objects in the sky and sea. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>The origins of theese phenomena are still the subject of heated debate, and, as a result, there are many bizarre and exotic explanations for their origins. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Step forward the <i>Wunderwaffe</i>, or Wonder-Weapon theory. As is widely known, the Nazis during World War 2 designed, amongst other things, some advanced weapons which were mainly utilised towards the end of the conflict. Along with the Me-262, the first jet to see combat, there were the notorious V1s and V2s, early missiles that devastated London and the South East of England. Flying wings and giant, jet-powered bombers helped to make up the unusual armoury that was conceived to turn the war around in favour of Nazi Germany.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">S.D. Tucker has written many books, nearly all of them with an interest in strangeness. The subjects he has covered include science, cryptids, medicine, economics, poltergeists and fairies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is important to note the full title of this book.<i> Saucers and Swastikas: The Dark Myth of </i><i>Nazi UFOs </i>examines the more outré and supernatural ideas that have been promulgated about the Nazis and their supposed survival after 1945. It starts with the literal worship of Adolf Hitler as a god and carries on to the relevance and hijacking of the swastika which, for thousands of years before, was a symbol of peace. It moves on to the shaky ground upon which the lie of Reich-made flying saucers was constructed. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These were presumed to have occupied an area of Antarctica known as <i>Neuschwabenland</i>, a base where, allegedly, Adolf Hitler lived on and was in a position to defeat the rest of the world, thanks to the advanced technology of Nazi scientists. People who fancy themselves philosophers pronounce upon the unlikely continuation of Himmler’s Reich as a magical entity, and a successful one at that. In short, there are many people who write or have written about the survival of the Nazis as either a hyper-advanced, technologically superior nation which has hidden from the world, ready to rise and effortlessly conquer our world.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What is interesting is that the author, who has written similar books before, has researched these writings and has come to the reasonable conclusion that all of it is without any foundation. However, rather than this rendering these extraordinary statements invalid, Tucker is concerned that younger, impressionable readers will take them at face value and become attracted to Nazism. He thinks that some will be taken in by assuming that the Nazis produced machines so sophisticated or magic so powerful that it was a cause worth championing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This book seems, then, to be a warning to anyone who thinks that the absurd mythology built up around the Nazis is harmless. Tucker is convinced that such works may act as recruiting tools, despite their unlikeliness. To recommend this to one type of reader is difficult, although those with a fascination in the more unlikely ideas that congregated around post-war Nazism would find this of interest, as would anyone concerned about the current rise of the far right.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Trevor Pyne</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-51569784459018919082023-12-17T15:28:00.003+00:002024-01-04T17:33:44.648+00:00A RATHER DULL DEVIL<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2YglZP_BKCsBODHQe3EhCxyUIBKTqjjCxUB45VBS8wBXAfyLzaZH_YF1TE0N2fdGZ4jKW64xaQtS4gyaLVeAm4Y706YEmlGQJpX_yLf1wa6qh_69xiWzXiscA-W-yourxpmCEErmdR6ne357XJK-kG97XmPjl4WNMr4V3_3KSyd2FM-akLPJREEP-Drg/s1500/00%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2YglZP_BKCsBODHQe3EhCxyUIBKTqjjCxUB45VBS8wBXAfyLzaZH_YF1TE0N2fdGZ4jKW64xaQtS4gyaLVeAm4Y706YEmlGQJpX_yLf1wa6qh_69xiWzXiscA-W-yourxpmCEErmdR6ne357XJK-kG97XmPjl4WNMr4V3_3KSyd2FM-akLPJREEP-Drg/w133-h200/00%20BOOK.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>Claude and Corinne Lecouteux. Tales and Legends of the Devil: The Many Guises of the Primal Shapeshifter. Inner Traditions, 2023.</b><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The traditional folk devil really was a bit of a loser, no matter what his plans to steal gold, abduct virgins, capture the souls of the virtuous or just generally take over the world. Even if he was able to lure some lonely traveller or adventurous youth to actually enter Hell, they would nearly always escape by outwitting the rather dim demon, and usually taking a chest of gold - or some previously abducted virgin - with them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>The Devil tries to eat you while you sleep? A Russian tales tells us how to put load of tiles in your bed, and sleep in front of the fire so he breaks his teeth when he attacks. In a tale from Transylvania, the devil has a drinking match with the hero, who traps him a cask of ale and wins the hand of the king's daughter. and his entire realm. In a hundred and one ways his plans are foiled by his own anger, greed or lechery. One Swiss peasant earns his treasure by giving the devil an impossible task: make a single hair stand up as straight as the letter 'I'.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This folk devil also seems to have endless problems with his relations and is absolutely terrified of his mother-in-law, in an eighteenth-century Spanish tale.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The stories in this volume come largely from Eastern and Northern Europe, there is nothing from the British Isles. The peculiarly English devil who delights in frustrating villagers trying to build a church by constantly moving it from the top of the hill to the bottom, overnight (or sometimes the other way around) is missing from these tales.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What else is missing from these tales, is entertaining readability. The sources for most of the narratives transcribed here are collections of folk-tales compiled by earnest German academics in the mid-nineteenth century. Their works have titles like <i>Lappländische Märchen, Volksagen, Räthsel und Sprichwörter </i>(1886) or <i>Litauische Märchen, Spiritworte Räthsel und Lieder </i>(1857). These are important works for the history and study of folk legends, but there is problems when presenting them to the modern reader.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is the number of levels of translation and editing they have gone through. If taken from indigenous storytellers, they have first been translated from the native language, either by or for the collector, already introducing possibly two layers of translation. There is also the matter of 'cultural translation' between the world-views of a Sami reindeer herder or a Transylvanian-Saxon farmer, and a middle-class German academic from an ancient university.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This 'cultural translation' waas problematic enough in English folklore with the educational, and particularly class differences between Sussex farmers and middle-class middle aged, English song and story collectors, without the problems of a totally different language. And even within the German speaking regions of Europe, language differences were often far greater than between most English and Scottish dialects.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On top of this you have two further layers of translation, from the German text to Lecouteux's French, and the and the translation into English. Jon Graham, who has translated the English edition, has an interesting introduction to this volume. Now I am sure all these translations are as good as can be, but each presents a layer of detachment to the reader.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And it has to be said, irrespective of the quality of the translations, some of these tales are just rather long and boring! I an sure even at the original campfire, house or pub tellings there were a few listeners dropping off at the back. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A while ago I reviewed Jeremy Harte's <i><a href="https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2023/01/meeting-devil-in-lane.html" target="_blank">Cloven Country,</a></i> his collection of similar stories about the Devil as the 'primal shapeshifter'; the trickster who is easily outsmarted by the wily peasant, and thought how bright and sharp, and close to the spirit of the original they seemed. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But perhaps that is an unfair comparison. as it is a different type of book. It is part of Lecouteux's ongoing collection of folk, occult and mythological texts. The serious tone is demonstrated by the footnotes in the text and the chapter-end notes which give references to motif-indexes and note similar tales in other published collections. I don't think this is aimed at storytellers or those looking for a good yarn of yesteryear, it is clearly aimed as a source and reference tool for the student. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>John Rimmer</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-79233292556643056262023-12-02T14:28:00.003+00:002023-12-17T15:29:52.706+00:00THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigVKw7tnGY8_zSbs6R3Za_WdJgSlLZ7nAfk6JbWQjYgIjmwKOwZWacgCWSA4irZmFMG_KmyK65ubOiJklK1XWIe2cGQBkS3qB5tc8lOhKDkSwoGs7IfzH3Qz7ueuop-9CoqCgsdLAJjcfrabmZVePTIzdf4Cbs_utrHUUKUKzIG59KSQDoAqDmTXsaCIo/s1500/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1207" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigVKw7tnGY8_zSbs6R3Za_WdJgSlLZ7nAfk6JbWQjYgIjmwKOwZWacgCWSA4irZmFMG_KmyK65ubOiJklK1XWIe2cGQBkS3qB5tc8lOhKDkSwoGs7IfzH3Qz7ueuop-9CoqCgsdLAJjcfrabmZVePTIzdf4Cbs_utrHUUKUKzIG59KSQDoAqDmTXsaCIo/w161-h200/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" width="161" /></a></div><b>Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume 2 BFI BluRay. 3 disc set.</b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Director Lawrence Gordon Clark is celebrated for his direction of the seventies TV adaptations of the ghost stories of M. R. James. Clark brought a technical finesse, dramatic pacing and sensitivity to these productions. He was hugely sympathetic to the spirit of James’s writing. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>In the cinema we really only have Jacques Tourneur’s wonderful, but very different, James film, <i>Night of The Demon </i>to equal the BBC Christmas outings (Though James’s influence can also be strongly felt in Piers Haggard’s <i>Blood on Satan’s Claw</i> and Nigel Kneale’s scripts for <i>The Stone Tape</i> and especially the <i>Beasts</i> episode 'Baby'). Above all Clark’s craftsmanship is exemplary in presenting us with spooky televisual drama of a dark intimacy (Of course apart from Clark’s own scripting he also employed seasoned adaptors like John Bowen and David Rudkin).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The James stories in <i>Ghost Stories for Christmas </i>volume 2<i> </i>are the Clark-directed 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' (1974) and 'The Ash Tree' (1975). Yet this ghost story strand departs from M. R. James to also give us Charles Dickens’s story 'The Signalman' (1977) and two contemporary stories, the psychologically disturbing 'The Ice House' (1978) and the folk horror frights of 'Stigma' (1977).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These five short films, ranging in length from 32 to 37 mins, are, for me, masterly examples of not just brilliant ghost / horror tale productions but an important part of a long tradition of short stories / short scripts realised for TV stretching back to programmes like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Almost fifty years on these BBC ghost stories come shining through as classics of TV drama.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The 'Treasure of Abbot Thomas' concerns a treasure of gold to have been hidden in the grounds of a church. Thomas was an alchemist and supposedly in league with the devil. A priest and his friend set out to discover the treasure - a quest resulting in horrific consequences for those who dare. Michael Bryant is superb as the reverend Somerton who’s attacked by the slimy deposits, clinging to his discovery, and then fiercely pursued by a hooded ghostly monk. Clark’s editing is terrifically exact, knowing just when to pull back from or towards subtle shocks. It’s well written (Bowen’s script even incorporates a satirical swipe at mediums) visually arresting and the memorable choral and percussion music of Geoffrey Burgon is appropriately disturbing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'The Signalman' is a powerful study of solitude, mental disturbance and pre-cognition. Denholm Eliot arguably gives us his finest TV performance as the railway signalman haunted by spectres and a train crash. Andrew Davies’s script - or is it really Dickens’s story? - digs deep into the fears of the signalman and his visitor friend. Whilst Clark directs with a rare feel for the uncanny. Those moments containing the cried out question “Hello, below there!” will long stay with you. A wonderful ghostly drama.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'Stigma' is from an original story by Clive Exton and is a horror film rather than a ghost narrative. A family are living in a cottage very near the megalithic stone circle at Avebury. A stone is discovered in their garden. On unearthing it an intense wind strikes Katherine (Kate Binchey) who is then stricken by an ancient curse that causes her to bleed uncontrollably. Exton’s writing explores her bleeding on both the level of paganistic forces and an inferred marital tension with her husband Peter (Peter Bowles). Clark elicits excellent performances from everyone and brings an authentic domestic poignancy to this folkish horror short.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-R6KVpu8E7dMEW8UyNJLLbQUlAjrqmEai0K16MyRATY2fiBeY5f7oUiE3LNGLc1odyUsCaLZL6Dw2gZ6iia5PLB8dGptEsuKcoAVCe1a6yHC46GbpJXbf3g3_z4e-GUvqUfSLBm4zRqettC6BqhWa1YL6ZlrgdM3u7E22NAsYMLaA7t8uI5zRJgyHMLM/s1690/styories.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="421" data-original-width="1690" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-R6KVpu8E7dMEW8UyNJLLbQUlAjrqmEai0K16MyRATY2fiBeY5f7oUiE3LNGLc1odyUsCaLZL6Dw2gZ6iia5PLB8dGptEsuKcoAVCe1a6yHC46GbpJXbf3g3_z4e-GUvqUfSLBm4zRqettC6BqhWa1YL6ZlrgdM3u7E22NAsYMLaA7t8uI5zRJgyHMLM/w640-h160/styories.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">John Bowen’s 'The Ice House' is even less of a ghost story and more of a creepy, surreal depiction of menace and containment more in common with the unclassifiable stories of Robert Aickman.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Paul (John Stride) is recuperating, after leaving his wife, by residing in a health spa in the countryside. His masseur has disturbingly “cool hands” which is the first sign of odd happenings in the spa. Nearby is an old ice house and a strange species of flower. (“The flowers are not self-pollinating. They persist until they are replaced.”). The brother and sister who run the spa speak in a formal manner which has a blank verse quality reminiscent of Harold Pinter. Their ‘intension’ is to freeze the bodies of the residents, keeping them in a state of preservation in order to delay or even defeat death. Paul cannot escape. Powerful, original and brilliantly daring, 'The Ice House' shifts us into the realm of allegorical SF horror.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">David Rudkin realised his talent for evoking the supernatural to great effect in his screenplay for M. R. James’s 'The Ash Tree'. Edward Petherbridge plays Sir Richard / Sir Matthew in an account of the new owner, of Castringham Hall, who is determined not to marry his fiancée and produce heirs. But the ash tree tapping outside of his bedroom window disturbs him along with his ancestor’s involvement with a witch forty five years ago in 1690.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Subtly different viewpoints and perspectives make 'The Ash Tree' so gripping. Through elliptical editing and staging Sir Richard is eerily transported back into a dark past which puts him on trial for his relative’s behaviour during the witch’s hanging. It’s beautifully filmed and acted, maintaining a cryptic and guilty relationship with Richard’s ancestry and his fight to resist a witch’s curse. The scenes in his bedroom when devilish things crawl over his body and the eventual burning of the ash tree are some of the creepiest passages in the whole of the BBC <i>Ghost Stories</i> series.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This three disc set comes with many extras and commentaries. I particularly recommend Nic Wassell’s seventeen minute video essay <i>Spectres, Spirits & Haunted Treasure; Adapting M. R. James </i>(2023). Just about the most succinct film on the differences between the films and the stories I’ve seen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Ghost Stories for Christmas</i> volume 2 also includes two later BBC M. R. James films <i>A View from the Hill </i>(2005) and <i>Number 13 </i>(2006).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I’d have liked to have included them in the seventies productions as outstanding adaptations but alas they are not. They’re perfectly adequate, in their own way, but for me, too detached with a tendency and to muffle the Jamesian horror, and they lack a real sense of belief in their source material.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A year ago I wrote praising the BFI’s <i>Ghost Stories for Christmas</i> volume 1. Volume 2 is equally as good. And the Blu Ray format brings an even greater depth and definition to these films. This is a limited edition that you should snap up immediately.</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Alan Price</li></ul>
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</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-6631634267935067692023-11-29T17:08:00.009+00:002023-12-02T14:29:26.942+00:00WOMEN OF THE PARANORMAL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzK13TYzEIBY8wjN5_7SDMsiUexECO1RWMDT_VawTNYdM0F0y6OX65kdI3rFNaMuG_odKpgIy4Tfi2xzCP2O1w0ryCydU1Nl1ce58RZ1Jo1jgv3Rh51l7_Nntddxsr68s_NazuX3APm6jQ_XbME7LZ0qdcPihC-Z_iHKzEittx9yOmio6kYAHgeV8tNo8/s1500/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzK13TYzEIBY8wjN5_7SDMsiUexECO1RWMDT_VawTNYdM0F0y6OX65kdI3rFNaMuG_odKpgIy4Tfi2xzCP2O1w0ryCydU1Nl1ce58RZ1Jo1jgv3Rh51l7_Nntddxsr68s_NazuX3APm6jQ_XbME7LZ0qdcPihC-Z_iHKzEittx9yOmio6kYAHgeV8tNo8/w133-h200/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><b>Alex Matsuo. Women of the Paranormal. Privately published, 2023.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Writers exploring the history of the paranormal have often noted the prominence of women in the field, most particularly such individuals as Catharine Crowe, Helena Blavatsky, Eleanor Sidgwick, and mediums such as Florence Cook and Eusapia Palladino and the Fox sisters. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>But there were many other woman psychics and researchers who are now virtually forgotten, or whose importance has been overshadowed by husbands, co-workers, or academics.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Alex Matsuo gives brief lives of thirty-three such women. The prominent figures like Crowe and Sidgwick are here, but also figures who will be less familiar to most readers. There is Helen Nosworthy, who is credited with suggesting the name 'Ouija' for what had previous been called the 'talking board', Matsuo suggests that rather then simply being a combination of the French and German words for 'yes' she may also have intended it as an homage to the English writer 'Ouida' (Maria Louise Ramé), whose name she wore on a silver locket.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Spiritualism in the Victorian era was strongly associated with progressive political ideals, and a number of the women described here, such as Annie Besant were active in feminist and abolitionist movements along with lesser known figures like Ascha White Sprague, who campaigned for prison reform and the abolition of slavery, seeming to be inspired by spiritual messages.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Matsuo does not shy away from exploring the more dubious sides of some of her subjects. In her account of the life of Ada Goodrich-Freer, one of the earliest women members of the Society for Psychical Research. While describing her career as an early 'ghost hunter' and her contribution to the SPR, she is also at pains to point out that Goodrich-Freer plagiarised the work of other researchers and was caught committing fraud at a séance. Nevertheless she concludes that “her writings tell us a lot about the perception of the paranormal in the 19th century”.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A particularly interesting figure is Rosina Despard, who investigated a haunting in her own home in Cheltenham, in the 1880s. She was the eldest daughter of her father William and his second wife Harriet, and oddly was named after her father's first wife.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The haunting was the figure of a woman in black which was mostly seen by Rosina, although other members of the household reported similar apparitions. Rosina, who was studying medicine at the time, kept meticulous notes of the phenomena, and experimented by stretching cords across places where the ghost was seen, which remained undisturbed. She recorded these in letters to a friend Catherine Campbell, which came to the notice of the prominent SPR member Frederic Myers.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rosina published an account of her investigations, under the name 'Morton' in the SPR <i>Proceedings,</i> but the full contents of the letters to Campbell were never released, because they contained because they contained ‘matters of a private nature’. It has been suggested that this may have referred to a lesbian relationship between the two women.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After this Rosina had no further involvement in psychic research, and continued her career in medicine, making her publication in the SPR <i>Proceedings</i> as a young woman in her twenties all the more remarkable in the nineteenth century. Peter Rogerson has written an account of the haunting, looking as some of the social and psychological issues, which has been published in Magonia here:</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/12/images-of-imogen.html">https://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/12/images-of-imogen.html</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not all the women described here conducted their research into the paranormal in the comfort of English suburbia, small town America, or the psychical research laboratory. One notable individual who life took her well away from these surroundings, was Alexandra David-Neel. Her adventurous and sometimes dangerous travels through Tibet and Central Asia, and her writings, including translations of obscure Buddhist texts introduced many Western readers to Buddhism and Oriental mysticism, and influenced writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Interestingly, Matsuo gives an account of Mary Hyre, who will probably be unfamiliar to most paranormal researchers, but will be familiar to Magonians. She was the reporter who first publicised the Mothman stories in her columns for the <i>Athens Messenger</i>, Point Pleasant's local paper. With her local knowledge and contacts she was a vital collaborator with John Keel in his investigations, which Keel fully acknowledged.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Inevitably, in any collection like this there will always be people who we would like to have seen included but weren't. This book is described as 'Volume I', I hope a Volume II might include Mary Rose Barrington, the scion of the SPR for many years. I was saddened to learn, through her appearance here, of the death last year of Linda Godfrey, author of <i>The Beast of Bray Road </i>and many other titles, whose investigations into phenomena such as the Goatman and American werewolf reports widened the range of serious research into 'actually experienced' Fortean creatures and phenomena.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Each chapter has a list of useful sources, many available on-line, for readers wishing to learn more. Like many self-published books this would have benefitted from the oversight of an editor, but it provides an interesting reminder of many individuals who may have faded from the historical memory, although it is probably fair to say that the history of paranormal study has been kinder to the memory of its female pioneers than many other fields of research.</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>John Rimmer</li></ul><hr /></div><div><br /></div><div>Linda Godfrey's books have been reviewed in Magonia here:</div><div><b><i><br /></i></b><a href="http://pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/american-monsters.html">http://pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/american-monsters.html</a><br /><a href="http://mrobsr.blogspot.com/2009/08/cryptobeast-roundup.html">http://mrobsr.blogspot.com/2009/08/cryptobeast-roundup.html</a><br /><a href="https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2012/09/real-wolfmen.html">https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2012/09/real-wolfmen.html</a><br /><a href="http://pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/monsters-of-shadows.html">http://pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/monsters-of-shadows.html</a><br /><a href="http://pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/real-wolfmen.html">http://pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/real-wolfmen.html</a><div><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-15332600297821312312023-11-21T18:52:00.002+00:002023-12-02T12:35:41.444+00:00A MORBID ACUTENESS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXiC2o6N5lxYRnYQkWG5D1kQC1liC9NlP7X2P4VQnMZYrkGDC2v4Plt4B3aXG8gCD_1X8punBERcGZfoG3D0jdbKM1bxCyRz7DFpF6MnVAPnHsHxoTArua1ISqcIECLDziX0Trg85CfrsfJycmErS6lgM07-5fqqkBTZy3EEFcmtHaGzheeAPINe4SkE/s1500/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1218" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXiC2o6N5lxYRnYQkWG5D1kQC1liC9NlP7X2P4VQnMZYrkGDC2v4Plt4B3aXG8gCD_1X8punBERcGZfoG3D0jdbKM1bxCyRz7DFpF6MnVAPnHsHxoTArua1ISqcIECLDziX0Trg85CfrsfJycmErS6lgM07-5fqqkBTZy3EEFcmtHaGzheeAPINe4SkE/w163-h200/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" width="163" /></a></div><b>Chris Alexander. Corman/Poe. Interviews and Essays: Exploring the Making of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films, 1960-1964. Headpress 2023. </b><span face=""Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0f1111; font-size: 14px;">978-1915316073</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">From the very beginnings of cinema there have been adaptations of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. <i>Thou Shalt not Kill</i> (1914) directed by D.W.Griffith up to the new Netflix series <i>The Fall of the House of Usher</i> (2023) there lay a long trail of films attempting to capture the frequently morbid sensibility of this hugely influential writer. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>For a generation of baby boomers, and younger horror movie-cultists, the eight films directed by Roger Corman still command attention.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AIP enabled Corman to direct a remarkable body of Poe films that are strikingly sophisticated and intelligent. In colour and wide screen they were a commercial and critical success. Unlike the British period horror films, of sixties Hammer, the Poe period dramas didn’t strive to be naturalistic. Corman viewed them as interior pictures intent on projecting Poe’s world through the prism of Freud and to a lesser extent Jung. Not that they are burdened, for me, with complex Oedipal plot lines, but share, with Poe, an obsession with Thanatos: cleverly merging death-wish ideas with insanity, romantic passion, thwarted control, breakdown of the senses, over-extended mourning, catalepsy and being buried alive.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Chris Alexander’s <i>Corman<b>/</b>Poe</i> is the first book devoted to them. Alexander gives us (a) A plot synopsis (b) An interview on each film with Corman and (c) A film analysis. This is complemented by the now absurd correspondence with the National Legion of Decency over cuts required for <i>The Masque of the Red Death</i> and a lovely selection of film posters (mainly foreign art work).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Roger Corman has been interviewed many times before on the films. And at the age of 94, during lockdown, he sat down to be questioned by Alexander. The affable Corman tends to over-use the term “very good” in gratitude to actors and scripts etc when you want him to flesh out his opinions, but on the whole his replies are revealing even when they are Freudian fixated.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2UvXwQ17ecLEgUzpX7PUORi8MqpfpgU_KoGEcegl1JzzA3Vn4x9BsMspD9JUTOco0pe3yN4H7dpMNspbCkApUNeiH3JyOOD6GDw7HFBmRcCXqQ65bcUi6N9PzFyCadO2BTJ1CrBTKezRlaVDjZXy4xVoYiAqShIGyiD-WRMP1w-xuRR61tDYXlGquSLA/s1415/PIT.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="1415" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2UvXwQ17ecLEgUzpX7PUORi8MqpfpgU_KoGEcegl1JzzA3Vn4x9BsMspD9JUTOco0pe3yN4H7dpMNspbCkApUNeiH3JyOOD6GDw7HFBmRcCXqQ65bcUi6N9PzFyCadO2BTJ1CrBTKezRlaVDjZXy4xVoYiAqShIGyiD-WRMP1w-xuRR61tDYXlGquSLA/w640-h218/PIT.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I thought of both the house in <i>House of Usher </i>and the castle in <i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i> as representative of a women’s body and the front doors of which were metaphorically speaking a vagina, yes. The character enters and then spends time moving down corridors and up and down staircases in ways in which to me were very sexual.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Alexander’s reaction to the films can verge on the hyperbolic. On <i>The Haunted Palace</i> (That’s actually an adaptation of Lovecraft’s <i>The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward</i>) he says “It’s sort of a miserable experience...almost pornographically direct.” This alternates with some sharp and exact descriptions of his Corman experience. <i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i> is for him “...a wild and dramatic freefall into mania and perversion made with an edge of genuine experimentalism, black as night humour and untouchable craft.” I agree.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The Pit and the Pendulum</i> is perhaps Alexander’s favourite of the Poe cycle. <i>The Fall of the House of Usher </i>is ranked high. And <i>The Masque of the Red Death </i>being considered the best of all. But for him <i>The Tomb of Ligeia</i> (highly rated by some critics as the finest) “suffers somewhat by sacrificing that saturated sense of pulp that propelled other entries.” In other words it’s sombre and not camp.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">(My two personal favourites are <i>Usher</i> and <i>Ligeia</i> with <i>Masque</i> a close third being one of the most visually beautiful of all horror films).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Corman<b>/</b>Poe</i> is not a collection of rigorously analytical essays on the Poe films directly aimed at the cinephile (that’s still to come?) yet it’s also much more than uncritical fan worship. Corman/Poe is an intelligent, attentive, appreciative and enthusiastically written book that I really enjoyed. Best of all it asks us to seriously re-engage with a considerable achievement of early sixties horror film.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As Roderick Usher (Vincent Price) plays, on his lute, a funereal composition, he, through Richard Matheson’s excellent script, declares he suffers from “a morbid acuteness of the senses.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was Corman’s triumph as a director to convey that morbidity, and other Poe states of mind, in such an exciting manner. Chris Alexander has perceived that and served Corman’s artistry well.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Alan Price</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-39965848137280395002023-11-14T13:44:00.013+00:002023-11-21T18:54:52.641+00:00THE COMPLETE NIGEL KNEALE<div class="separator"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqxI-og36G1hWnmZyf7n-Quf8ln2dXMp-nR6X9H7L_R7sEU_DIK74LEZ7kUx7-Ra7SaeeCNPbyvVmUi0zu8Gdh9KY9sPGQn7FZbs-3xEcxgySKNXd774EpMwf675DsfCFAIYgczfYDkLZGuRbiw_WMYJPym8CtOLfJAQ9LVQgIFqHDN8wjcxvhWfGEHkc/s645/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="437" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqxI-og36G1hWnmZyf7n-Quf8ln2dXMp-nR6X9H7L_R7sEU_DIK74LEZ7kUx7-Ra7SaeeCNPbyvVmUi0zu8Gdh9KY9sPGQn7FZbs-3xEcxgySKNXd774EpMwf675DsfCFAIYgczfYDkLZGuRbiw_WMYJPym8CtOLfJAQ9LVQgIFqHDN8wjcxvhWfGEHkc/w136-h200/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" width="136" /></a></div><b>Andrew Screen, The Book of Beasts. Headpress 2023.<br />Andy Murray. Into The Unknown, The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale. Headpress 2017.</b><div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Does a book examining the six episodes of Nigel Kneale’s television series, Beasts warrant 430 pages? <i>Beasts</i> is a large, attractive paperback with copious black and white illustrations and undoubtedly a labour of love from author Andrew Screen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>He spent six years on the project. It’s exhaustive and exhausting. Everything you would ever want to know about this television fantasy is here and a lot more (maybe too much) besides. Yet before I explain why this good, definitive and yet sometimes irritating book is excessive, I’d first want to re-engage with a critical viewing of the six teleplays and point up some of Andrew Screen’s conclusions (Screen is often a very astute guide).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A welcome opening extra in this book is the chapter on <i>Murrain. Murrain </i>can be viewed as a loose pilot for <i>Beasts</i>. Although there’s no specific animal presence it fits in well with Nigel Kneale’s ideas. A <i>murrain</i> (pronounced mu-rin) is a death curse usually synonymous with a plague or disease affecting livestock. It was carried over into the days of European witchcraft to signify the power of a witch to blight humans as well as their sheep and cattle with her curse.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On a second viewing I’m still impressed by Kneale’s remarkable skill in creating such a rounded witch character as Mrs Clemens (superbly played by Una Brandon Jones). She’s a recluse living in a cottage close to a farmer named Beeley (Bernard Lee) whose cows have been mysteriously dying. Beeley is convinced that Mrs.Clemens was the cause of this and an eight year old boy falling sick. When Beeley is joined with his gang of farm workers the drama takes on a Peckinpah <i>Straw Dogs</i> attitude. The feet on the ground vet Crich (David Simeon) clashes with a supernaturally inclined mob. All is quickly complicated by the vet’s growing suspicion that Clemens might just really be a modern day witch. Kneale cleverly maintains an ambiguity throughout Murrain. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here Andrew Screen is notably perceptive: "What mattered to him (Kneale) was the shape of the story; his conclusion does not need to confirm whether Mrs. Clemens is a witch or not. What matters is that it confirms the beliefs of the characters with the drama."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>During Barty’s Party</i> is TV horror drama at its most potent. Kneale has said that what interested him was making <i>The Birds </i>with no birds. I agree with Kim Newman’s assessment that this episode is pure horror. Substitute rats with birds and we have a disturbing rat infestation fable that plays with concepts that the rats are the characters' unconscious fears. That’s also a major part of the strength of Hitchcock’s film.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>During Barty’s Party</i> has an English countryside setting that recalls Du Maurier’s short story. It’s beautifully acted by Elizabeth Sellars and Anthony Bate who well convey the bristling disappointments of their marriage as they combat the menacing rats (never shown) in their house. Sellars attempts to get a message of help through to a radio phone-in programme but they are too far away to be rescued. Kneale’s savage parody of saccharine music / chat programmes of the 70s (Barty’s Party) reminded me of the manipulative audience control depicted in Kneale’s prescient <i>The Year of the Sex Olympics</i> from 1966. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although Andrew Screen gives us a rather over-detailed account of During Barty’s Party he rightly drew my attention to Don Taylor’s highly focussed direction and the terrific sound design of rat effects. A note for Andrew Screen - on page forty seven of the book he speaks of some classical music played on the radio, during a respite from the rat terror, as being hard to identify: it's a few seconds from the adagietto of Mahler’s 5th symphony.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Buddyboy</i> is both the weakest and strangest episode of Beasts. Its sleazy tone and ghost genre weirdness make for a genuine oddity of British seventies TV. I mean the presence of a ghostly dolphin that leads its female companion Lucy (Pamela Moiseiwitsch) to commit suicide shortly after she’s got involved with businessman Dave (Martin Shaw), who plans to renovate the rundown dolphinarium into a porn movie cinema. It feels incoherent and a bit silly. Kneale makes some sense of <i>Buddyboy</i>’s ideas but not this main premise. "This muddle of elements makes <i>Buddyboy</i> just too complex for the casual viewer to unpack." That’s Andrew Screen again and he’s spot on.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The Dummy. </i>Imagine a failing actor whose career is revived by playing a Godzilla-like monster through a successful, international film franchise. Yet it’s the monster who receives all the acclaim, not the actor in the dummy suit. One day he arrives on a film set to discover he’ll be acting alongside the man who has just run off with his wife. The monster (Clyde the actor played by Bernard Horsfall) goes berserk and kills a small part actor in a graveyard scene. He then commences to wreck the set. Clyde’s wife and the police are contacted to prevent further death and destruction.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3DrM9bvgDkQQoWjw6SfvdSNr83OiVfGKfIxUbtPqQYZr_ul3zhaFLtqolp5Tsrhj1zg9qeWTreuHXU5bHCthbuwnszhwBXsrsgIx0F-b6jkPQSsTZEpL3hci9q6uUV_kgD1R4h9azcvij12-1iRDIdtq28YfrAG3IEEky85Eb4O8IE9sNkBYqfq4S4QM/s1002/2nd%20class.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="1002" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3DrM9bvgDkQQoWjw6SfvdSNr83OiVfGKfIxUbtPqQYZr_ul3zhaFLtqolp5Tsrhj1zg9qeWTreuHXU5bHCthbuwnszhwBXsrsgIx0F-b6jkPQSsTZEpL3hci9q6uUV_kgD1R4h9azcvij12-1iRDIdtq28YfrAG3IEEky85Eb4O8IE9sNkBYqfq4S4QM/w640-h228/2nd%20class.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The Dummy </i>is an amusing spoof on Hammer Films and a dark portrayal of an insecure actor robbed of his dignity, wife, family and turning into an anonymous entity in a monster suit. A dummy fighting against circumstances beyond his control. A studio controlled monster caught in the horrible banality of his betrayal. As Nigel Kneale says, "If a monster appears in an everyday place, its much more frightening than some Gothic castle where you expect it to be."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Special Offer </i>deals with the phenomena known as telekinesis that received a lot of press coverage in the 1960/70s. Films such as <i>Carrie </i>and <i>The Medusa Touch</i> popularised telekinesis. Yet until this <i>Beast</i> episode I couldn’t recall a British TV film or TV play that did. Set in a small supermarket it has Pauline Quirke giving a fine performance as a Noreen the till checkout woman. She’s unprepossessing, clumsy and has a crush on her antagonistic manager. Noreen’s telekinetic power causes the items to fall off the shelves and explode their contents over customers. The shop owner’s called in to reason with Noreen but to no avail. My only problem with this otherwise excellent play is shared by myself and Andrew Screen: "Plotwise it is puzzling why Noreen is attracted to Colin; he shows her nothing but spite and contempt whilst leching after prettier girls who catch his eye."</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The episodes <i>What Big Eyes </i>and <i>Baby </i>are as dark as <i>During Barty’s Party</i> but not as scary. Well <i>Baby</i> has one great shock moment and <i>What Big Eyes</i> has fascinating ideas about lycanthropy as a mad, but realisable, practical aim and the horror of cultural inheritance (think <i>Quatermass</i> and the evolution of humans from Martians). Patrick Magee is on top form as Raymount the crazy scientist.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He (Raymount) gave a brief lecture to the British Association and capped it all by turning into a wolf...He shot a sample of his filthy bloodstream into that young wolf. I had to put her down, Joe. I felt that was the only thing." says RSPCA man Bob Curry (Michael Kitchen).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After Raymount dies his daughter Florence, deeply resenting his treatment of her, smashes up his laboratory and calls Raymount a fake. Madge Ryan gives a heart felt performance as the cheated daughter. And Screen is correct to give her brilliant acting considerable attention in his fine chapter on <i>What Big Eyes.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Baby </i>is about a young married couple who move to the countryside. Jo (Jayne Wymark) is pregnant with her second child and still feeling an almost Freudian sense of guilt over the loss of her first. Her husband Peter (Simon MacCorkindale) is a vet and a very controlling husband. As their cottage undergoes alterations they discover an urn containing the disturbing foetal remains of an unknown creature. Its presence traumatises Jo who, after much foreboding, witnesses a horrid witch-like thing / mother suckling the creature. As in <i>Murrain,</i> Kneale creates an atmosphere of tension and ambiguity. Does Jo imagine she sees a supernatural progenitor or really encounter a monster, a loathsome entity – an ancient beast?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Baby</i> is still highly regarded as the scariest episode of <i>Beasts</i>. I personally would now rank <i>During Barty’s Party </i>as first with <i>Baby</i> a close second. Both have a disturbing soundscape design and play with the stresses and strain of a marriage. <i>Baby</i>’s couple are played out in fraught counterpoint against Dick (T.P. McKenna) and Dorothy (Shelagh Fraser) as Peter’s grossly assertive vet colleague and his bossy wife. This couple exude their own verbal bestiality in Baby and manage to appear differently repulsive than the monster.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like the other episodes of <i>Beasts, Baby</i> serves to subvert the series aim of presenting our bestial side in relation to animals. Kneale’s writing is subtly complex and cunningly indirect as it packs in so many ideas, some work, others fail, into a very human narrative about frailty and power. Andrew Screen admirably sums up the achievement of Beasts: "I would argue that the very essence of the popularity, influence, and longevity of Beasts is down to the stories wrongfooting the viewers and telling unexpected tales."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I began this review by saying that Screen’s book is irritating. By that I mean its great length flaws his commendable treatment of Beasts. Did I really want a potted history of witchcraft in the <i>Murrain</i> chapter? Or say three pages on werewolf films and a werewolf history? Was it really necessary to give so precise a comparison between scripts and films? Did we require all that background history on actors and directors? So much of this information could have been removed from the book’s chapters and placed as succinct footnotes at the back. Or the least relevant edited out.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For me <i>The Book of Beasts</i> should have been a third shorter and therefore more readable. But finally Screen’s labour of love is to be highly praised for its intelligence and insight into the achievements of the remarkable Nigel Kneale. No one else would have attempted <i>The Book of Beasts</i> and all ardent Kneale fans will certainly want to buy a copy.</div><br /><hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIla7wh-RW1Aebywoiioq31UFH0nxIsFzbPfvsgJc9IDTQWAVjck8fx4mt1_zo_XlNGlNMjuCHJf4sDdee_yx_zs-0MOxWNnIroEvXBhriHVKFXzO-EMU7et4UEWsvtVgMJCmMA0gKiArriQ7pp6vrKrp6nVekj_BaAsL4khOTNc6Jai50vFU9Az70jLU" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-oG-mcHQJ2s2Xn95pz2I5sF75crNzgSkGG3MRnALCrY1y1GpXjYUg89H3ZsoF25lc1-rM1a2NA0_g4_GCe7_hsM5b2oyVA96kJuospjFk-nxUBEsZJNOANWGlrNmb45RMsD6NUBbGJ3XBi9rN8d233DsWGa-dk2_RzCwnZ_xZri_Chv82fwImxBKfhzs/s1388/age%20of.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="468" data-original-width="1388" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-oG-mcHQJ2s2Xn95pz2I5sF75crNzgSkGG3MRnALCrY1y1GpXjYUg89H3ZsoF25lc1-rM1a2NA0_g4_GCe7_hsM5b2oyVA96kJuospjFk-nxUBEsZJNOANWGlrNmb45RMsD6NUBbGJ3XBi9rN8d233DsWGa-dk2_RzCwnZ_xZri_Chv82fwImxBKfhzs/w640-h216/age%20of.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIla7wh-RW1Aebywoiioq31UFH0nxIsFzbPfvsgJc9IDTQWAVjck8fx4mt1_zo_XlNGlNMjuCHJf4sDdee_yx_zs-0MOxWNnIroEvXBhriHVKFXzO-EMU7et4UEWsvtVgMJCmMA0gKiArriQ7pp6vrKrp6nVekj_BaAsL4khOTNc6Jai50vFU9Az70jLU" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="907" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIla7wh-RW1Aebywoiioq31UFH0nxIsFzbPfvsgJc9IDTQWAVjck8fx4mt1_zo_XlNGlNMjuCHJf4sDdee_yx_zs-0MOxWNnIroEvXBhriHVKFXzO-EMU7et4UEWsvtVgMJCmMA0gKiArriQ7pp6vrKrp6nVekj_BaAsL4khOTNc6Jai50vFU9Az70jLU=w214-h320" width="214" /></a></div>If you don’t already have a copy of <i style="text-align: justify;">Into </i><span style="font-style: italic; text-align: justify;">the Unknown, The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale </span><span style="text-align: justify;">by Andy Murray, then I urge you to acquire one. It’s by far the best piece of writing I’ve read on Kneale’s life and career. Not only does it sensitively discuss and analyse Kneale’s landmark <i>Quatermass serials, 1984</i></span><span style="text-align: justify;"><i>, </i></span><i>The Stone Tape </i>(for me his masterpiece), <i>The Year of the Sex Olympics, Beasts, The Woman in Black</i> (maybe the scariest TV ghost film ever produced) but the adaptations (non-genre) of <i>Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer </i>and others – I was particularly pleased at the attention Murray gave to Kneale’s last produced work <i>Ancient History,</i> a script for the tv series <i>Kavanagh QC.</i> It’s an emotionally searing drama about a doctor being tried as a Nazi war criminal.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Murray’s research is excellent. We learn a great deal about how controlling BBC TV was in the 1950s and how much Kneale is always complaining about the little money, or none at all, that he was paid. Accompanying this fascinating social history of the TV and film industries, is the disappointing fact that the highly prolific Kneale wrote so many scripts that were finally never filmed – I’d love to see his scripts of <i>Lord of the Flies </i>or <i>Brave New World </i>being turned into feature films!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Murray adeptly traces how influential Kneale’s ideas have been for other writers (e.g. Ramsey Campbell) and directors (especially John Carpenter). His chapter on Kneale’s childhood days on the Isle of Man (a place more responsive to superstition and myths than Christianity) reveal how formative that was in shaping Kneale’s imagination. Kneale’s love of H.G.Wells is stressed and we are constantly reminded that Kneale never considered himself as a single track genre writer of either SF or horror. He hated those labels.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It’s a fierce intelligence, and a particular sensibility for the uncanny, for want of a word. It’s those two things combined. It’s realising that you link one to the other and you’ve got something powerful. He’s one of those few writers who’s ideas-driven, and yet still is engaging. Because he can do character as well, although you wouldn’t think of him primarily as someone who writes characters. His characters are always strong. And yet, it’s always the ideas that are at the heart of what he does.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That’s Andy Murray using a quote about Kneale by Jeremy Dyson of <i>The League of Gentleman.</i> A shrewd observation of the craftsmanship and vision of a writer who is still to be properly recognised by the BBC as the godfather of TV scriptwriting. Murray says that Kneale and producer Rudolph Cartier made serious, original writing possible for the small screen. I agree.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nigel Kneale alongside Dennis Potter, early Ken Loach, David Mercer, Trevor Griffiths and a few others made TV an art form for great drama. And Kneale’s 'ideas-driven' <i>Quatermass</i> and <i>The Stone Tape</i> have an ambition and power that brilliantly wed science with ghosts, the devil, aliens and our constant anxieties about what it is to be human: speculating that we may be only partially human and still evolving this stuff we call human matter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Alan Price.</li></ul></div><div><p></p></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-83939352060949682342023-11-08T10:54:00.005+00:002023-11-14T13:57:59.375+00:00SEEING US SEEING THEM<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBlWBXMmmlBg7eMUMdoCHAPSuu576_UJy0qkL8F7pS0aOWxT4gvDAnJkckB3DuoK221b0ZT9jRV1AwOAmh5vmTbDudTSOOddb2VxgKIkijveqNR0JnkNNXci2IVKl-a3tUInZWIK8h5foZPRXDmX8Oketxzv079BtHpd9sdhWa-y0pMevIwbO4BqW0Lpk/s1000/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="650" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBlWBXMmmlBg7eMUMdoCHAPSuu576_UJy0qkL8F7pS0aOWxT4gvDAnJkckB3DuoK221b0ZT9jRV1AwOAmh5vmTbDudTSOOddb2VxgKIkijveqNR0JnkNNXci2IVKl-a3tUInZWIK8h5foZPRXDmX8Oketxzv079BtHpd9sdhWa-y0pMevIwbO4BqW0Lpk/w130-h200/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><b><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Avi Loeb. Interstellar, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth. John Murray Books, 2023.</b></div></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This book is potentially a trailblazer and may be one of the first in a new genre. A book about aliens visiting Earth that is not written by a UFO enthusiast trying to investigate close encounters, but is very much a consideration of that subject through the actual evidence uncovered by astronomers and cosmologists.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>The author is exceptionally well placed to consider such a profound topic. as he is the longest serving chair of the Harvard Astronomy department and of the advisory committee at the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, as well as holding many such prestigious titles, including being a member of the White House President’s council on science.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So you can be reasonably sure that if there was evidence of alien life out there found soon, and it was perhaps interested in surveying the earth, and the 'Above Top Secret' eyes of the USA detected this, then the author would be in the loop of people taking part in the crucial debate. Notably over what action humanity should take in potentially the most pivotal moment in our planet’s history. Indeed Loeb says we are "at the dawn of humanity’s interstellar future" with both our efforts to find potential technologically advanced cultures in the cosmos but the profound decisions we then need to take as they likely know we are here too. And potentially see us as a threat.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We are used to seeing this played out through the eyes of science fiction such as Star Trek where adventure stories with both good and bad aliens are inevitably based on our own history. This is a feature that has leaked culturally into the UFO abduction meme that has emerged from the past 75 years or so. Here alien interaction with UFO witnesses and ‘abductees’ has left a legacy that often looks more like an episode of Doctor Who than the reality we might expect to face. As - given the diversity of life on Earth - such visitations from an alien world would surely be expected - if real - to be rather more beyond our ken than what we see. Which tends to be more similar to a visit by our uncle Ken in a spacesuit.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Loeb says we stand on the threshold of a new age where advances in science have reached a point where we can look actively for alien life or intelligence in our own solar system and - with ever marching technology - the systems we now know exist around many of the almost limitless stars in the cosmos.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> The author devotes many pages to the science and the consequences of that search, reminding that now we are looking for them, inevitably that has alerted them to notice us. Or at least the stars and planets within modest light years of Earth where it is possible our ‘intelligent’ communications have had the time to be detected after travel at the speed of light toward any advanced technology. Which may perhaps have reacted to that discovery by sending probes our way.</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The main purpose of this book is to tell the story of this quest from our side, with the growth of space based missions and vastly improved technology that can image other planetary systems which turn out not to be rare thus making the existence of alien life much more probable. However, in ways not usually common he considers the UFO perspective too. Not by looking at 'encounters' or the efforts made to investigate them. No - this is covered in two small (in context of the book) but rather interesting ways.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBePz4wHNRRQ4Ed0L5yLGi2yMvs22TzgCrryGDoHtr5wBFq3rfpCC7hvgaL8kUSp90mdInMZFUfEB2U9MN00ttjXW5ZDqLt08eQZY6yFfhYS2aN9-3qbEOwJGZq7O-5Q-9aMb6kkRCy0FU9xrHORmBw9OS7zhpxZgxgMaka-9KI6s8Wzvto5yvDq_2d3s/s1261/Oumuamua.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="1261" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBePz4wHNRRQ4Ed0L5yLGi2yMvs22TzgCrryGDoHtr5wBFq3rfpCC7hvgaL8kUSp90mdInMZFUfEB2U9MN00ttjXW5ZDqLt08eQZY6yFfhYS2aN9-3qbEOwJGZq7O-5Q-9aMb6kkRCy0FU9xrHORmBw9OS7zhpxZgxgMaka-9KI6s8Wzvto5yvDq_2d3s/w640-h280/Oumuamua.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Firstly Loeb considers the possibility of any evidence that space based probes might have been heading here from elsewhere. Probes just like the Voyager missions we sent in the 1970s into deep space beyond our solar system on a very slow journey announcing our presence in thousands of years time to any possibly curious local interceptors.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In this regard he takes an intriguing stance over the unusual nature of an object called Oumuamua that was passing through our solar system in 2017. It was at first assumed to be a typical asteroid on a lengthy trajectory around our Sun. But the more we looked as it arrived and then moved on, the more it seemed regrettable we had not been prepared to intercept and investigate before it was on its way again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The object was detected by an observatory on Hawaii and given that language’s word for ‘scout’ which shows how soon some scientists suspected this might be more than just an unusually elongated, flat rock. Oumuamua's odd appearance and behaviour hinted to several space scientists, this author included, that it might have been a long range probe sent to explore the cosmos by a distant civilisation looking as we are via Voyager to find out if we are or are not alone. It also appeared to be moving very slowly as it passed through our system as you might expect if designed to take a good look at any potentially interesting planetary system it found.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Humanity was unready so had no plan to take images or send a probe to investigate before it had gathered its data and moved on - or just flew by on its way as it was nothing but a space rock. But chances are if we are looking for aliens, then some of them are looking for us in ways that might seem both familiar but also different to how humans would do it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk3EpDzAFI22EB8_AB274-zrTIUOETKhjXQ7ibVOp3RN5IF8mgxzEZ4jV08iC4uo4xUCA8fSuYX_huH_zrEBThaOZBMf7njQNZotbD_3hx0d_vxz0H45w_aZa7ijqm-g-5f8B_Tvs2coEQAX8WVFUF4CHAdTEHH8YY-wbsvS5x6voGRrAOHE35g9UkAuc/s1059/age%20of.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="203" data-original-width="1059" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk3EpDzAFI22EB8_AB274-zrTIUOETKhjXQ7ibVOp3RN5IF8mgxzEZ4jV08iC4uo4xUCA8fSuYX_huH_zrEBThaOZBMf7njQNZotbD_3hx0d_vxz0H45w_aZa7ijqm-g-5f8B_Tvs2coEQAX8WVFUF4CHAdTEHH8YY-wbsvS5x6voGRrAOHE35g9UkAuc/w640-h122/age%20of.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Which takes us to the topic of UAP, which whilst like Oumuamua is not the main premise of the book, the author certainly does not regard as an impossibility that these seemingly-real things just might be probes in the Earth’s atmosphere of a different kind too.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is telling that Peter Warrington and I in our very first chapter of our first book (UFOs: A British Viewpoint) argued over 40 years ago for the use of the term UAP as a more appropriate one than the even by then loaded 'UFO'. We did this to make the investigation the focus not an assumption up front that UFOs must be extraterrestrial craft. So to see renowned scientists and NASA investigations now exploring things being seen and irrefutably filmed by military aircraft in a not dissimilar objective way is most heartening.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It feels rather vindicating of serious UFO research that it saw need for and pre-empted this kind of sober thinking. Which of course has to be the right approach today as echoed by Avi Loeb. This is a richly rewarding book about humanity now tip-toeing into a bold new age. Even if it means the age of the ufologist is coming to an end and the age of UAP investigation by science has begun.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That is how it always should have been.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Jenny Randles</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-31186346743373380582023-11-01T10:14:00.008+00:002023-11-08T10:56:04.110+00:00THE FORTEAN POWELL AND PRESSBURGER<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrpniIYMAgV8oO4uHCud1UdtHsS8fT0wtFdcE73B8ijaxVASBOYaygRXtTErqdlClH0awf9P2blz02OVKmjf9eHmI3oem3nBDnWm30NOiJGEYvwppqQFc89Idy2yvBxaBuqaJjArNw43QbHN9UGFG3xCSQBskDZZnhE2t1HKUh7aSSgaSHbgVR-nQCBhE/s1000/61UTHgp0MlL._SL1000_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="750" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrpniIYMAgV8oO4uHCud1UdtHsS8fT0wtFdcE73B8ijaxVASBOYaygRXtTErqdlClH0awf9P2blz02OVKmjf9eHmI3oem3nBDnWm30NOiJGEYvwppqQFc89Idy2yvBxaBuqaJjArNw43QbHN9UGFG3xCSQBskDZZnhE2t1HKUh7aSSgaSHbgVR-nQCBhE/w150-h200/61UTHgp0MlL._SL1000_.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>Nathalie Morris and Claire Smith (Editors) The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger. (BFI Bloomsbury, 2023</b><div><b>Pamela Hutchinson. </b><b>The Red Shoes. (</b><b>BFI Bloomsbury 2023)</b></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Readers of <i>Magonia</i> have a marvellous opportunity to enjoy the current celebrations of the work of scriptwriter Emeric Pressburger and director Michael Powell. We have a new book about them and a season of their films. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>The formation of Michael Powell’s artistry really begins as far back as 1926 and Rex Ingram’s film <i>The Magician </i>– a fantasy horror film loosely based on Aleister Crowley. Powell was assistant director on that film and was included in one scene. He was only twenty one and Ingram’s sense of film construction influenced Powell’s much later work as a director. The 1950 <i>Gone to Earth</i> has a deep pantheistic energy that we can attribute not only to Ingram’s visual compositions but the Canterbury country boyhood of Powell.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Powell was never an out and out fantasist (Pressburger’s scripts reigned him in) but an anarchic romantic. The serial killer horror of <i>Peeping Tom </i>(1959); the fantasy frissons of their version of the opera <i>Tales of Hoffman</i>; the stairway to heaven sequence in <i>A Matter of Life and Death</i> (1946); a fairy tale expressionism for <i>The Red Shoes </i>(1948) - his adaptation of the famous Hans Christian Anderson story; the Scottish mythmaking in <i>I Know Where I’m Going</i> (1945) and the profound sense of the pilgrims journey in <i>A Canterbury Tale </i>(1944) haunted by a controlling Magus figure, who’s been pouring glue on women’s’ hair, all make for some of the most memorable moments in British cinema.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger </i>is a beautifully illustrated hardcover – and I do mean colour and black and white photographs of the highest quality. It’s judiciously edited by Nathalie Morris and Claire Smith but not simply to celebrate P & P but also their inspired helpers and assistants. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">P & P are indisputably auteurs in their own right. Yet behind their unique, audacious and visionary contribution to British cinema are many collaborators who made it all possible. And Bloomsbury’s book is a superb acknowledgement of the powerfully collaborative nature of filmmaking.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Collaboration, backed up by the BFI’s rich P & P archive, is one of the key ideas of this book. Morris and Smith provide a succinct introduction to those Archer Film productions (Every time an arrow hit the bulls eye, on the board of the logo, I felt an anticipatory excitement) that for them possessed such intensely magical cinematic verve.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo1HA05cdcNzeWpzQtUtAj54RB07IJFPhYKWYPo6fSCfYRMCcuJkj8BFHtcKUijgaIGrszLRqTOLp5bq5z4fKgW-QYjEK5z_Nx6dXO0uTnD65CJsYhCGj-28f_vibk7OANPlB8Jl350-dTI7JhnwTOCZiKCgA9txd7lhlOH6NQkyPLtgYFqhwpEl4Jma4/s1135/cinema%20quote.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="1135" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo1HA05cdcNzeWpzQtUtAj54RB07IJFPhYKWYPo6fSCfYRMCcuJkj8BFHtcKUijgaIGrszLRqTOLp5bq5z4fKgW-QYjEK5z_Nx6dXO0uTnD65CJsYhCGj-28f_vibk7OANPlB8Jl350-dTI7JhnwTOCZiKCgA9txd7lhlOH6NQkyPLtgYFqhwpEl4Jma4/w640-h162/cinema%20quote.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">After the introduction we have six chapters that tackle the films. For me the stand out chapters are ‘Pilgrims’ by Alexandra Harris (An excellent assessment of<i> A Canterbury Tale </i>and its weird Bunyan and Chaucer influences); ‘Black Narcissus’ by Mahesh Rao (Rao’s fascinating love / hate relationship with the film; its troubling imperialist assumptions, the complex identity of man / boy actor Sabu and the intoxicating visual beauty of Narcissus); Sarah Street’s piece ‘Starved for Technicolor (Powell & Pressburger’s films were central for the development of Technicolor in British Cinema) and ‘Metaphors of Vision’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">‘These are images and moments that remind us we are watching a mediated form of seeing, which is cinema itself’’ One of many, finely researched and perceptive observations from Ian Christie discussing the voyeuristic moments of<i> A Matter of Life and Death</i> and <i>Peeping Tom.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg01QcLtNrMcfaLbVQ9-3zq3VtCHNTFx0kCYsINBQ5NGCMgpQCrLkzhUR7MlqVR57HeMKY1VzFIo1QAsx7yeT_7_OZvuOMG1z46ra4vnwg2kH3LXL1lEYNigFA3l2eazyWZct9QjhhV12XY7gVKche2GXi5WuYkBFFsRBySAW9ESJC-_SOaCvOGnbsTfHU/s1500/81Ka16CYlEL._SL1500_.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1065" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg01QcLtNrMcfaLbVQ9-3zq3VtCHNTFx0kCYsINBQ5NGCMgpQCrLkzhUR7MlqVR57HeMKY1VzFIo1QAsx7yeT_7_OZvuOMG1z46ra4vnwg2kH3LXL1lEYNigFA3l2eazyWZct9QjhhV12XY7gVKche2GXi5WuYkBFFsRBySAW9ESJC-_SOaCvOGnbsTfHU/w142-h200/81Ka16CYlEL._SL1500_.jpg" width="142" /></a></div>I found Marina Warner’s contribution ‘The Red Shoes’ to be informative but a bit verbose. Much sharper and persuasive is Pamela Hutchinson in her BFI Film Classics book, <i>The Red Shoes.</i> This is an excellent close reading: a model text on how to write a stimulating book on the fate of a ‘suffering’ ballerina; the representation of dance in film; the intensity of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale and a powerful mythic story of female sacrifice as played out by Moira Shearer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger</i> and <i>The Red Shoes</i> are books about the realisation of this amazing body of work and what can be achieved in the cinema through dedicated group effort. They are an indispensable read for all P & P fans. A record of remarkable artistic freedom made possible for a prolifically imaginative director and writer to cast their spells, enthusiasm and love.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>Alan Price</li></ul></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><hr /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><i style="text-align: left;">The BFI Southbank film season </i><span style="text-align: left;">Cinema Unbound: the Creative Worlds of Powell and Pressburger</span><i style="text-align: left;"> will run throughout October and November 2023, and in the gallery is a special free exhibition devoted to </i><span style="text-align: left;">The Red Shoes.</span></b></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li><i>An extended version of this review was first published in <a href="https://londongrip.co.uk/" target="_blank">London Grip</a></i></li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-65126768650791237442023-10-28T18:11:00.013+01:002023-11-18T20:10:01.177+00:00THE HOW-ANCIENT ENGLISH MORRIS DANCE?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-E-73AQd0E300u-c2LwclXIOXN5Z1L3Ma3mdKdI5gCwcFj2ieU97t-ExlAh1c_9b5qttzQnOMrJmJwzMn8FTc8sBWMjVLCnN3wCzaL_ogUJZxVHlAdVe9ZvutlN6wo1_VipAZV0Wnz7_d7W4A7qqPxbHwQJlr1mLSRBL7WVTtm5KOQoO92V_patGYL4/s1500/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1065" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-E-73AQd0E300u-c2LwclXIOXN5Z1L3Ma3mdKdI5gCwcFj2ieU97t-ExlAh1c_9b5qttzQnOMrJmJwzMn8FTc8sBWMjVLCnN3wCzaL_ogUJZxVHlAdVe9ZvutlN6wo1_VipAZV0Wnz7_d7W4A7qqPxbHwQJlr1mLSRBL7WVTtm5KOQoO92V_patGYL4/w142-h200/00%20AA%20BOOK.jpg" width="142" /></a></div><b>Michael Heaney. The Ancient English Morris Dance, Archaeopress, 2023. </b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The title raises a question straight away, doesn't it? Just how ancient is the 'ancient' morris dance? It was certainly the view of many people that morris dancing was very ancient indeed, with roots stretching back to pre-Christian times. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>One writer in 1935 claimed “In the Morris . . . one may see the survival of a primitive festival of the spring, which may at various times in its career, have included both human and animal sacrifice”. As late as 1978 a writer to a morris dancing magazine opposed including women in morris teams on the grounds that it was “an integral part of a pre-Christian region” and allowing women to take part would somehow be disrespectful.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Michael Heaney makes it clear from the start that this idea is itself virtually an ancient myth, dating all the way back to, well, about 1890, when Cecil Sharp started visiting the southern counties of England, collecting details of surviving folk songs and dances.</div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;">Rather than having pre-Christian origins, the earliest recorded date to which morris dancing can be traced in England, is remarkably precise: 19th May, 1448. On that day the City of London's Worshipful Company of Goldsmith paid a team of 'Moryssh Dauncers' the sum of 17 shillings (85p) to perform at their annual St Dunstan's Day feast. The patrons of the dance in this instance were fairly typical of the elite status of the practice at the time, it was seen as an entertainment for the wealthy, the aristocratic and even for royalty. Costumes were lavish and the dancers themselves were oftenof the same rank as the audience.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">But the practice was not confined to the upper echelons of society for very long; in fact they soon began to drop it for masques and more sophisticated and theatrical forms of entertainment. The dance was now more often seen at local municipal events and trade guild celebrations or at May Day and Midsummer events. It became associated with 'Whitson-ales', church fund-raising events and feasts for saints' days.</div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggP9hpORurxHA9W6cbNjzO5nKLrgaceHDpxrM01rzGCgUK3fi4v_nrV3yA_pQo9BJCUkdvqFwC-QL8K1WjPXZ1qnboiDUXv8oss53Ha6dzh7qA6JBAh3d3d0a7HuAkJ8AS7szaf7_asBMVzkNVboQoVtMYDB8FzsV2BTBNyBzP6xZpngl_7fM71nz2NZU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="506" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggP9hpORurxHA9W6cbNjzO5nKLrgaceHDpxrM01rzGCgUK3fi4v_nrV3yA_pQo9BJCUkdvqFwC-QL8K1WjPXZ1qnboiDUXv8oss53Ha6dzh7qA6JBAh3d3d0a7HuAkJ8AS7szaf7_asBMVzkNVboQoVtMYDB8FzsV2BTBNyBzP6xZpngl_7fM71nz2NZU=w640-h192" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">These became an area of contention, with complaints of dancers interrupting church services and behaving in a rowdy manner, claiming they 'abused and profaned' church premises. By the end of Elizabeth I's reign parish officers were being prosecuted for allowing dances to take place on church property, and attitudes to the morris were dividing between those who saw it as an innocent entertainment and evocation of 'Merry England', and the growing puritan attacks on the practice as a source of rowdiness and debauchery, and even as a remnant of 'Papist' practices. This came to a climax with the outbreak of the English Civil War, when being pro- or anti-Morris was virtually a badge of your allegiance to King or Parliament. By the end of the Cromwellian era the dance was close to disappearing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Restoration brought a revival in morris dancing and other public entertainments, King Charles was greeted by morris dancers at Blackheath, on his triumphal return to London in 1660. The Duke of Newcastle, William Cavendish explicitly advised him to encourage the dance as “the devertisments will amuse the people's thoughts & keepe them in harmles action which will free your Majesty from faction & rebellion”. But as with many such reactions to oppression some observers noted that the initial enthusiasm soon died away. An writer in Oxford noting “But no opposition appearing afterwards, the rabble flagged in their zeal”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the seventeenth century morris dancing began to move away from being part of an organized festive celebration to being a public entertainment. It began to appear on the stage, and as entertainment at pleasure gardens, or even featuring in the action of a play. Its links to a locality were being loosened, dancers were traveling long distances around the country to perform and were being judged by the quality of the entertainment they provided. But as Heaney notes “there could be a distinct odour of low life intruding into the more refined sensitivities of the upper and middle classes”.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ar the same time scholars and antiquarians were beginning to take an interest, looking at the origins of the dance, and stripping away some of the polemical attitudes which saw it as a savage survival or an element of Papist revival. The dance was now more likely to be performed as an event consciously representing 'Merrie England', although this itself drew criticism. A reporter commenting on a performance in 1757 remarked that it was “a highly exciting reminiscence of the 'days that are no more'. Thank heaven!”</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> As the dance became more of a 'performance' rather than a folk celebration, the Morris as danced in the villages of the Midlands and Eastern England was in decline throughout the nineteenth century. The one exception was in the north-western counties, where the tradition of 'rush-bearing', which had long been connected with Morris, survived longer. 'Rush bearing' originated at a time when rushes were used to cover bare-earth church floors, and were renewed annually. The process became part of a celebration which often included morris dancing, and a decorated rush-cart.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUmyloZmA4C-Kmb_oU47sHpYIP4jrRYckOBq5UU2A9Nj4-fKeIWs-SekzSjjCHp3tCGD_wV6pthQmmgYfWj9Ek8zTeRi_1CMwjjAqwyD_b58Ej9DdQDkarH2q8CDclc2nyJNb2q5DuKi4Ffa9xDAiDBi0iOmJU3UJa0lSugd7ALeHy-vZIza8M08d2Ak/s500/Rushbearing_at_Long_Millgate_Manchester%20(2).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="500" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGUmyloZmA4C-Kmb_oU47sHpYIP4jrRYckOBq5UU2A9Nj4-fKeIWs-SekzSjjCHp3tCGD_wV6pthQmmgYfWj9Ek8zTeRi_1CMwjjAqwyD_b58Ej9DdQDkarH2q8CDclc2nyJNb2q5DuKi4Ffa9xDAiDBi0iOmJU3UJa0lSugd7ALeHy-vZIza8M08d2Ak/w640-h474/Rushbearing_at_Long_Millgate_Manchester%20(2).jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Lilita One;">RUSHBEARING IN MANCHESTER, 1821</span></p><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">It was largely the villages and small town to the north and east of Manchester, which were beginning to become more urbanised and industrialized that the traditional rush-cart, whose original purpose was now almost totally redundant, faded from the scene and the celebrations were now almost entirely devoted to the parade and the morris dancing. Morris teams – or 'sides' – began to form part of a wider recreational and entertainment scene, and rivalry between towns was intense, often falling over into rowdiness, much to the disgust of local newspaper reporters, whose often amusing comments are quoited at length, showing a great deal of genteel outrage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">By the end of the nineteenth century North West morris dancers were “players in a fluid, vibrant and popular suite of customs and festivals” alongside civic pageants and theatrical performances. Unlike the morris in other areas, the North West version had managed to adapt to the changing social conditions, finding a new base in an increasingly industrialized and urban society. It was now almost a semi-professional branch of the entertainment industry, and women and children were increasingly involved.</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, elsewhere in England, with a few exceptions morris dancing seemed to be continuing its decline, and it was more likely to be seen in the theatres than in the streets. The ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica claimed that morris dancing was “now wholly discontinued”, but at the time that was written in 1891 a revival was already underway, led by figures such as Cecil Sharp and Mary Neal. Sharp was a music teacher and collector of folk song and dance; Neal worked at an educational charity for working-class girls in London's East-End.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Together they published a series of books and pamphlets encouraging the promotion of morris in schools and through festivals, and recording the music and dance steps. But their association soon faltered as their views on how to proceed with the 'revival' diverged. Dance historian Matt Simons, writing in 2019 described their different approaches: “[Sharp] assumed morris was an artifact of English culture, which required careful and exacting arbitration. By contrast Neal's morris was an intuitive dance, transmitted through imitative learning.” This split defined morris dancing throughout the twentieth century, with controversies over women's morris, and the creation of separate societies and 'rings' of dancers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The North-Western morris continued on its own path largely ignored by the revivalists, becoming more professional, and moving decisively into the field of public entertainment The teams, or 'sides' became major features at civic events, galas and May Day processions, where they would often be accompanied by accordion bands, 'jazz' bands and comical 'mock morris' troupes. Mixed, women's and girls' morris were more of a feature, to the extent that by the late 1930s male involvement in the dance had almost disappeared from the North-West morris.</div><p></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimU1JnSeu15RBfFB8CaSUgBEegp6Ip8Bg6-I63IvB9i0g9tFQDLuTwbZhDbQoiJjCfoJykfSUX-2puMo6BypcQJsFR4z5uBD9sxNvtKRneAViv3mTZ0ytr-dDohFg4RqifIKsBbS5StWdZ33dqLYzn3KR8ZokZ8-aGe7Qc6u-0pd_LqdmtOXRk3auNsZc/s902/stalybridge%201902.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="623" data-original-width="902" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimU1JnSeu15RBfFB8CaSUgBEegp6Ip8Bg6-I63IvB9i0g9tFQDLuTwbZhDbQoiJjCfoJykfSUX-2puMo6BypcQJsFR4z5uBD9sxNvtKRneAViv3mTZ0ytr-dDohFg4RqifIKsBbS5StWdZ33dqLYzn3KR8ZokZ8-aGe7Qc6u-0pd_LqdmtOXRk3auNsZc/w640-h442/stalybridge%201902.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Lilita One;">NORTH-WESTERN MORRIS SIDE, STALYBRIDGE 1902</span></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">One development of this was the growth of 'carnival-morris' almost exclusively performed by women and girls. This is now a very lively and very competitive scene, mostly in Lancashire and North Wales. It was often dismissed as 'fluffy morris' by those who felt that the principle of morris dancing was to protect and preserve the traditional dances of, predominantly, the South Midlands, which were the dances recorded in Cecil Sharp's series of <i>Morris Books</i> and their later updates which specifically excluded all “newly composed dances and variants”.</div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;">The legacy of the split between Cecil Sharp and Mary Neal continued through the inter-war years and into the second half of the twentieth century, but with what Heaney describes as the 'second revival' in the 1970s, which saw a popular folk dance and song revival around popular groups such as the Albion Band and Fairport Convention. This eventually led to a more inclusive and open-minded approach to morris dancing, taking it closer to May Neal's view of the dance as a means of personal expression and development.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There was still opposition to women's involvement in morris even into the 1970s, but with the example of North West morris and changing social attitudes this began to fall away. Dancers were still referring to the books of Sharp and other to perform the traditional dances, but were no longer seeing them as the only form of 'authentic' morris, and were rediscovering the dance as a living tradition. By the 1980s even 'fluffy-morris' was being recognized as a “worthy descendant” of North-Western Morris, although whether the dancers saw themselves as such is unlikely.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In recent years the morris dancing world has to come to terms with issues such as 'cultural appropriation, and the practice of 'black-face' in some teams, with heated debate about whether it was adopted from nineteenth century minstrel acts, or was part of an older indigenous tradition.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is a massive book, over 500 pages including a 50 page bibliography, and it is probably not a book for the mythical 'general reader', but it is clearly and accessibly written, and does not assume any specialist knowledge on the part of the reader. It presents a lively, at times humorous and very entertaining account of an often misunderstood activity, rooted in the deep history of England, but which has always developed and evolved in response to the changes in the society in which it is practiced. The book is well illustrated with prints and photographs, many in colour, and I am sure will be the authoritative history of morris-dancing for the foreseeable future.</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Richard Samuels</li></ul><p></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-77589532710505655122023-10-18T19:49:00.004+01:002023-10-28T18:12:27.285+01:00UFOLOGY'S GREATEST HITS -- AGAIN<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMPI_0VD_Lyu-Vu3pzJi1LFn6USgSPme5Q1mvcoEKT3-ITSTSaHqXm4YOSxk4F1QYJ5Oi3-EZUa-YJT7Jj8hBEG_Hk1ki-zS9tZM91giVbbX5rM57TbddFqcKRQ9Au5DZVUheZ1IpFwsV85Q2D1vJz7SiNyPO-AobbmdtyI7YxrIjI9iytx-fI7_HYoFQ/s1254/BOOK.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1254" data-original-width="827" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMPI_0VD_Lyu-Vu3pzJi1LFn6USgSPme5Q1mvcoEKT3-ITSTSaHqXm4YOSxk4F1QYJ5Oi3-EZUa-YJT7Jj8hBEG_Hk1ki-zS9tZM91giVbbX5rM57TbddFqcKRQ9Au5DZVUheZ1IpFwsV85Q2D1vJz7SiNyPO-AobbmdtyI7YxrIjI9iytx-fI7_HYoFQ/w132-h200/BOOK.jpg" width="132" /></a></div><b>Karl Svozil. UFOs: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Observations, Explanations and Speculations, Springer, 2023.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Part One provides a chronological summary of some of the most famous and ‘unexplainable’ UFO cases including foo fighter sightings in WWII, Roswell, 1947, Arnold’s flying saucer sighting of 1947, the Lubbock Lights, 1951, Washington, 1952, Exercise Mainbrace, 1952, Rapid City, 1963, Socorro, 1964, Valensole, France, 1965, the Tehran Incident, 1976, Frederick Valentich’s disappearance, Rendlesham Forest, 1980. Well you get the picture, basically a greatest hits of ufology.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Most of the cases are simply described without much criticism but Svozil raises eyebrows with the inclusion of the Aurora crash and the mystery airship Calf-napping cases of 1897 that have been well-known hoaxes for decades. He makes only a short mention of the US 1909 phantom airship scare, and ignores many other worldwide scares by skipping to the Orson Welles, War of the Worlds radio broadcast ‘panic’ of 1938. He concedes that the so-called Battle of Los Angeles in 1942 could have been caused by war nerves rather than by a ‘genuine UFO encounter’, but blots his copybook by including the Trinity crash story of 1945 without any comment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After taking us up to the present, Svozil reviews visual photographs of UFOs that have not been identified, starting with two pictures of a silver disc at McMinnville in 1950, the Calvine photos of 1990 gets a mention and he ends with a 2022 picture of a metallic orb in the Middle East.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Part Two examines ‘UFO Compliance-and-Management: Handling Strange Matters’ where it is considered that the US intelligence and government agencies have a two-tier approach to the subject. The first is that they cover-up any attempts to discover the truth about UFOs and allied research. The second approach he notes; ‘It is possible that a select few insiders, with ties to influential think tanks and military-industrial complexes, may have access to crashed UFOs and their occupants,’adding ‘if indeed there are any.’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Project Sign, Project Grudge, Project Bluebook, the Robertson Panel and the UK’s Flying Saucer Working Party and Condign Report are reviewed, followed by a look at UFO investigation studies conducted worldwide.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other chapters look at the flight characteristics of UAPs, followed by a chapter on abductions and encounters which Svozil warns ‘are speculative and may be purely fictional.’ That viewpoint can be applied to all aspects of ufology. He does look at the best known abduction cases and reviews the influence of sleep paralysis, psychosis, Fort’s ‘we are property’ hypothesis, demonology and Freudian psychoanalysis. In the last chapter of this section crash retrievals and UFO material is considered including the claims of Corso, the research by Canadian Wilbert Smith, a long look at the Wilson memo that he says is consistent with David Grusch’s recent claims, and speculates whether we could hack into a computer from a recovered craft to discover an encyclopaedia galactica. He even looks at the dubious claims that Einstein was invited to look at the remains of the Roswell craft.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Part Three titled ‘UFO Apprehension-and-Challenge: Some Speculations’ has chapters on cargo cults, the possibility of ET life visiting us and the potential consequences of contact. In Part Four ‘Executive Summary’ Svozil wonders if UFO sightings are just delusions and tricks of the mind, or they are reverse-engineered downed craft, or alien craft, perhaps controlled by Satanic entities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Appendix A, consists of a very detailed look at ‘US Categories of Secrecy’ and serves as a very useful guide for anyone following the twists and turns of the latest stories from US government whistleblowers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Appendix B, dives into how UFOs might operate with the warning that; ‘The understanding of the motion and propulsion of UFOs may remain elusive due to the limitations of our current means and concepts.’ There follows a lengthy theoretical discussion about inertia, anti-gravity, electromagnetic interactions and quantum mechanics.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Svozil relies on a wide variety of UFO books and online sources that blindside him to better and more sceptical viewpoints, plus the chapters jump around from topic to topic in a disorderly fashion. There are better guides to Ufology and as an Austrian theoretical physicist at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria, Svozil who specialises in quantum theory and the logical foundations of chaotic systems, seems on firmest ground writing Appendix B.</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Nigel Watson </li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-15927821946549947782023-10-11T19:41:00.011+01:002023-11-01T10:51:24.028+00:00THE DIFFICULT THIRD ALBUM<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7HXXk3anO-WTY-w3SqDE3-8eauGCjpLChqHoSUlzG6As66eeiUH7OJEWpwqqJt7x06A_z7HSRFsDyj-NKJPdeAksvwAGsSQNcyxv17o_a1JWSr-Gozf6pTxWKfVbLA9SafSwEVK7fQ0QtzQis9Z1xtDAwIJ3d8OfDNVnqGKozqfxoabpTsGebfF2NLE/s600/BOOK.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="483" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7HXXk3anO-WTY-w3SqDE3-8eauGCjpLChqHoSUlzG6As66eeiUH7OJEWpwqqJt7x06A_z7HSRFsDyj-NKJPdeAksvwAGsSQNcyxv17o_a1JWSr-Gozf6pTxWKfVbLA9SafSwEVK7fQ0QtzQis9Z1xtDAwIJ3d8OfDNVnqGKozqfxoabpTsGebfF2NLE/w162-h200/BOOK.JPG" width="162" /></a></div><b>Short Sharp Shocks: Volume 3 (Flipside 47) (2-Disc Blu-ray Set) BFI. 2023.</b><div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And so we reach Volume 3 of BFI Flipside <i>Short Sharp Shocks.</i> Volumes 1 and Vol 2 were hugely successful. If you have them you’ll certainly want this set. However perhaps your purchase will rest on the basis of being a series-completist because content-wise Volume 3 is probably the weakest. It’s not that it’s bad but more surprising than shocking.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Dealing first with the effective shocks I found <i>Skinflicker </i>(Tony Bicat, 1973) and <i>Wings of Death</i> (Nicola Bruce and Michael Coulson, 1985) disturbing on the grounds of ‘harrowing’ realism and ‘harrowing’ fantasy: harrowing having been given single inverted commas because I was forced to do a time travel double-take. In the 70’s and 80’s their content would have been harder to take and a lot more viscerally shocking. In 2023 are we now more predictably immune even blasé?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Skinflicker </i>was once controversial enough to have a question raised in Parliament about its political violence. An angry nihilistic group, with a half-baked, poetically written (William Blake is invoked as an inspiration) manifesto, kidnap and murder a high profile MP. This is all shot in the manner of a hand-held camera film record which after the event is cleverly framed as a police training film about terrorism. The influence here is the drama doc style of Peter Watkins’s nuclear attack TV film <i>The War Game</i> and more interestingly a first try-out of ideas, shot on 8 and 16 m, to be later realised in found footage genre films like <i>The Blair Witch Project</i> (1999). </div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cinema verité and mockumentary are also thrown in with much hysterical screaming and shouting about the kidnappers’ intentions and motives - the feverish screenplay is by playwright Howard Brenton. However the film’s most disturbing image is of a man’s hovering boot about to stamp on the MP’s false teeth lying on a garage floor. The shot is held for a long time and for me had a queasy barbarity. <i>Skinflicker</i> still has a dramatic edge but, unlike the genuine horror of <i>The War Game</i>, isn’t a provocative edge I’d chose to fall over again by giving it a second viewing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Wings of Death, </i>coming in at 21 minutes, packs a lot of paranoid fantasy and sordid realism into a cyclic account of a young heroin addict who books himself into a grotty room for the night. Its visual explosions have a real beauty that reminds you of Kenneth Anger and David Lynch and anticipates the toilet drama moments of <i>Trainspotting.</i> The young naked self-harmed body of the addict, posed in a gay and angular fashion like the poet of Jean Cocteau’s fantasy short, The Blood of the Poet, begins and ends the film. Although it’s a downer <i>Wings of Death</i>’s repellent but striking imagery and expressive use of colour would pull me back to watch it again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I enjoyed <i>Strange Stories </i>(John Guillerman / Don Chaffey, 1953) and especially their adaptation of Melville’s Bartleby – John Laurie - whose repeated “I think not” is highly effective almost as a straight precursor to his later <i>Dad’s Army </i>declaration “Were all doomed!” </div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Return to Glennascul </i>(Hilton Edwards, 1951) is an effective spooky Irish tale recounted by Orson Welles. <i>Maze</i> (Bob Bentley, 1969) was so enigmatic about the 60’s London social scene to have me say what was that all about? Very odd. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivqAjg3XMqX3KqRKTuD6hzBwJ5ZEz9cnEqDzQHokyT2QlTXTHR168bYMEYs3Mbaqu3nO01v9gAYQDkTV7bU08_3hMaJsKWtK3zv4yNzS1yJSevzDByB_lxGQgqACJPH9FIVXzohTU6BeYBEOijwFpiyZyomUJbPcJKVmRoGS8e7RVoRi7L5cHKeOjMdW0/s1425/oldfashioned%20tv.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="1425" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivqAjg3XMqX3KqRKTuD6hzBwJ5ZEz9cnEqDzQHokyT2QlTXTHR168bYMEYs3Mbaqu3nO01v9gAYQDkTV7bU08_3hMaJsKWtK3zv4yNzS1yJSevzDByB_lxGQgqACJPH9FIVXzohTU6BeYBEOijwFpiyZyomUJbPcJKVmRoGS8e7RVoRi7L5cHKeOjMdW0/w640-h182/oldfashioned%20tv.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>S<i>trange Experiences: Grandpa’s Portrait</i> and <i>Old Silas</i> are episodes from a long forgotten TV show. I felt they should still be forgotten. <i>Broken Bottle</i> and <i>Don’t Fool Around with Fireworks </i>are public information films aimed at the safety of children that have a tough minimalist power<span style="text-align: justify;">.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And finally <i>The Terminal Game</i> (Geoff Lowe, 1982) is about AI and corporate power control that’s moderately effective. It borrows some ideas from <i>The Parallax View </i>(1974) but doesn’t employ them as well. <i>The Terminal Game</i>’s violence and controlling menace feels muted, on a single track and lacking in development. But it’s a brave attempt to tackle conspiracy material, especially for the UK in 1982.</div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This two-disc set comes with many special features for you to watch and help you make up your mind on what’s more a surprise than a shock: recommended “Flipside” oddities but this time round with reservations.</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Alan Price</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-51742419211312430132023-10-06T18:43:00.003+01:002023-11-01T10:52:12.955+00:00MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjKjcjXuzoU_1dI0EkBYZ79j57fs01urjdNMEVIv8wlutA-O68Cjw95u7sGgl_W9NV_hAxM4d_GKT78NitiVcNEtdlnhZPlV4qx3ojAaU3g0Sr-41VL7SzVA5-APuPpqKyi6IcG9f7fUG_vouYjqW6gxuFNduHIavIoDywOC4Qagxk6YkZqrHEEXXE-vU/s1500/BOOK.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjKjcjXuzoU_1dI0EkBYZ79j57fs01urjdNMEVIv8wlutA-O68Cjw95u7sGgl_W9NV_hAxM4d_GKT78NitiVcNEtdlnhZPlV4qx3ojAaU3g0Sr-41VL7SzVA5-APuPpqKyi6IcG9f7fUG_vouYjqW6gxuFNduHIavIoDywOC4Qagxk6YkZqrHEEXXE-vU/w133-h200/BOOK.JPG" width="133" /></a></div><b>Trevor Hamilton, Arthur Balfour’s Ghosts: An Edwardian Elite and the Riddle of the Cross-Correspondence Automatic Writings. Imprint Academic. </b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Over the years, I’ve rather gloated over my standard reply to the sceptics’ usual line: ‘There’s not a shred of evidence for an afterlife’. Not being remotely a sceptic myself – because of some personal experiences that aren’t strictly relevant here – I’d reply, ‘Oh, so you dismiss the Cross-Correspondences, do you?’ </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Every time, I’d be greeted with an embarrassed silence and blank looks, before the subject was hastily changed. To me, the Cross-Correspondences were <i>the</i> proof of an afterlife. And, after reading this important book, I still think they are – although now I have some questions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So this is the overview: the august Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in 1882 by several Cambridge scholars, including classicists such as Frederic Myers (who, incidentally, gave the world terms such as telepathy and subliminal), Edmund Gurney and Henry Sidgwick – all co- founders of the SPR. This was no flakey organisation full of wishful thinkers and charlatans. It was dedicated to meticulous research of – for example – crisis visions, and achieved a great archive-full of impressive data, often based on highly intelligent analysis of the results of widespread surveys. (These gentlemen had no problem with anecdotal evidence, unlike the researchers of today.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over the subsequent years, these men began to die, one by one. But that did not mean disappearing from the record – far from it. Gradually, one by one, they – or whatever form of their consciousness continued, somewhere or another – began to contact different mediums with complex messages, often containing Greek or Latin phrases and classical allusions. Mostly upper-class women, these mediums usually had no knowledge of each other, and indeed, were scattered throughout the world. Yet the messages, delivered via automatic writing (the medium allows her pen or pencil to be controlled by the invisible communicator), put each one of them in touch with at least some of the others. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Most significantly, the standard of the scripts, with their quirky and highly erudite phrases and quotations, #only made complete sense when taken with the others#. Each script was merely part of a complex and apparently pre-arranged plan – pre-arranged by the spirits of these men, that is – which the mediums could have had no knowledge, or indeed, proper understanding of.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Known therefore as the Cross-Correspondences, the building of this paranormal jigsaw <i>lasted for 35 years,</i> until the last of these articulate and educated men had not only died, but said his final piece via the mediums’ automatic writing. Yes, impressive to say the least. I’d go further, as I said, and suggest these Correspondences are if not <i>the </i>proof of an afterlife, then certainly <i>the</i> evidence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So why aren’t they more well known outside of psychical researchers’ circles? Surely they deserve their place in the spotlight, in great worthy debates, in schools and universities?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Well, all I can say is, oh dear…</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Oh dear, because they’re dreadfully, appallingly tedious, with their Latin and Greek in-jokes, redolent of the worst kind of intellectual snobbery and educational elitism (especially to the non-classicists of today). Even without a classical education, it doesn’t take much more than a relatively quick look at a couple of pages of these scripts to realise that these guys were, as we would say, totally up themselves. They seem intoxicated by their cleverness, weaving unbelievably complex codes, puzzles and allusions into the scripts they poured out through their usually uncomprehending mediums.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These included Helen and Margaret Verall, the famous Leonora Piper; Rosalie Thompson; Winifred Coombe-Tennant and Trix Fleming (Alice MacDonald Fleming, sister of novelist Rudyard Kipling), an Anglo-Indian. While none of them bore titles themselves, they could hardly have been called salt-of-the-earth ordinary women. Indeed, it seemed a point of honour among the communicators that the mediums were from ‘good’ families, as if that in itself bestowed integrity and honesty. Actually, though, very largely their faith was not misplaced: the mediums’ output and their occasional doubts and sense of failure to capture all the dead men’s nuances – and that’s not a phrase you often come across! – do come across as strikingly straightforward.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSrcEGkFpilvuZgaLWFmIwqSNYDB4perg9HSviDzZEYRzldIk5Bb4c9zibtcyIDtYjdWrboy22ikeONLX8oGCIspL8J5Y-vvH4cYOnDHBLi_uZI1Cb2gEJFm1-P269Ty-EA1w9t8eSot9ylBr1C5QT3jef_8xKLfbz04fXbABppHpFzRThn-d3ZKxMGJc/s1268/QUOTE.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="348" data-original-width="1268" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSrcEGkFpilvuZgaLWFmIwqSNYDB4perg9HSviDzZEYRzldIk5Bb4c9zibtcyIDtYjdWrboy22ikeONLX8oGCIspL8J5Y-vvH4cYOnDHBLi_uZI1Cb2gEJFm1-P269Ty-EA1w9t8eSot9ylBr1C5QT3jef_8xKLfbz04fXbABppHpFzRThn-d3ZKxMGJc/w640-h176/QUOTE.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The picture, overall, indeed, is one not only of intellectual elitism, but also simply elitism. They all came from ‘good’ families and seemed intent on reminding us of that, even from the great beyond. And yes, and yet… (You get used to going round in circles with the Cross-Correspondences.) All that Latin and Greek knowingness, all those boring and typically upper-class in-jokes and all those incidences of Edwardian superiority that come over loud and clear, are, surely, in their own way, highly convincing evidence that these scripts were really from who they claimed to be – Myers and his peers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">No one would, or could, fake such scripts, especially over such an incredible length of time. What would be the point? Yet with every smug aside, every line of Greek poetry, lies evidence that real classicists organised this phenomenon – and presumably carried it out, as claimed. Of course, at the other extreme from sceptics are those who see diabolism in any form of Spiritualism or apparent spirit contact. But what kind of evil spirit would have the knowledge, the organisational skills or the sheer, grinding, dogged patience, to pull this off over three decades?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Again, why would they bother?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Technically, of course, if the Cross-Correspondences prove anything, it is that these men – and only these men – somehow survived bodily death. Their minds and personalities lived on, certainly for as long as the scripts kept coming. Anything else, any greater – if welcome – extrapolations must remain speculation. Yet if these gentlemen triumphed over death, it is not unreasonable to deduce that others did, and do.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamilton’s book provides us with enormous detail of the background to the scripts. The title, <i>Arthur Balfour’s Ghosts,</i> for example, refers to the Victorian notable, Arthur James Balfour, Prime Minister of the UK (1902-1905). His chaste passion for May Lyttelton did not end with her untimely death – indeed, his desperate search to commune with her spirit involved an impressive apparent contact through a medium. (We will try to overlook his typically grim Victorian act of putting a ring on her finger as she lay in her coffin.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This seemed to open the door to other, greater communications, revolving around the same elite circle, including the Cross-Correspondences.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUZfSVM3980DYksJiJeVK6dRQCwhShajzoi1iGurRFkFSwPOgN6IuVV2yAlFYCDzMlxRPiFfNKhwAj6LKjvCWGfyturjPwosGUaGPP4m_DSHLeskJrc8trCqo-u2PnVMb_OqL9E4lb09CJL_TwJ6Qvg7AXrnbGanisImxy3cS57_3zX-SGTgr36jyW_6U/s1268/QUOTE.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="348" data-original-width="1268" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUZfSVM3980DYksJiJeVK6dRQCwhShajzoi1iGurRFkFSwPOgN6IuVV2yAlFYCDzMlxRPiFfNKhwAj6LKjvCWGfyturjPwosGUaGPP4m_DSHLeskJrc8trCqo-u2PnVMb_OqL9E4lb09CJL_TwJ6Qvg7AXrnbGanisImxy3cS57_3zX-SGTgr36jyW_6U/w640-h176/QUOTE.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamilton’s book is packed with detail – enough, certainly, to do justice to the incredibly detailed Correspondences themselves. If you have the patience, it is very worthwhile poring over them – and perhaps even chasing up some of the quotations for yourself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The author, too, is honest in that he does not shy away from certain problems that rear their ugly heads in some of the later Correspondences, such as that concerning medium Winifred Coombe-Tennant, a suffragette, philanthropist and Justice of the Peace. Certain of the scripts that came through her veer off into talk about the ‘Messianic Child’ (also known as ‘Augustus, Wise One’) and the great Plan concerning his future role. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This was Henry Coombe-Tennant, a child at the time of the first scripts about him. Apart from sounding rather crazy in itself, his mother, the medium Winifred, actually claimed that her young daughter Daphne’s death had been meant so that she could develop her automatic writing skills. There is much that is distasteful about the whole Messianic Child episode, which does seem, at least superficially, to be born largely out of the medium’s own mind and her emotional turmoil about her beloved child’s death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">(The concept of a Messianic Child in the 1920s was not so weird as it would be today, as the then highly influential Theosophical Society was presenting the young Krishnamurti as a great holy man for a new age.) Indeed, no doubt modern psychologists would have no difficulty in pinpointing Winifred’s emotional devotion to the idea of Henry being the Messianic Child. It could easily have been over-compensation for the fact – a great secret – that he was illegitimate. In fact, he was the result of Winifred’s affair with Gerald Balfour, brother of Arthur. Yet the scripts themselves backed up the idea of Henry’s future glory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Did they perhaps, at least partly, emanate from Winfred’s own mind? Or do they simply reflect the power of personal choice, of freewill? For although the scripts promised great things for Henry on the international stage, his career veered off into MI6 and then even a monastery – as far from the international stage as one could get, although he always remained a believer in the Correspondences.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And Winifred herself also returned two years after her death in 1957 with her own highly impressive series of scripts published in 1965 as <i>Swan on a Black Sea</i>, by medium Geraldine Cummins. (I recall reading them years ago and being particularly impressed by her honest admission that problems with her weight tended to dent her confidence! A curiously personal point, and one that struck me as being quite genuine.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, yes, Hamilton has pulled off a major work – scholarly, astute, meticulous, honest. The Cross-Correspondencers would no doubt have been proud. Or, perhaps I should say, no doubt they <i>are</i> proud! His book is of immense significance – one might even say historic in its way, for it concerns the one #huge# breakthrough in humanity’s great quest to know if there’s something after death. In his careful, non-sensational way, he’s very largely celebrating these scripts, though not without criticism and the odd element of doubt. Masterly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So next time you’re inclined to sneer at the lack of evidence for an afterlife, or encounter someone who does, remember Hamilton’s book and the extraordinary paranormal marathon it describes. Better still, get it and read it. Like the scripts themselves, it can be a hard read – reflecting their intensity and immense intellectualism – but you will be left shaken. And very possibly a believer. Why wouldn’t you be?</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Lynn Picknett</li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-54283643293508414292023-09-18T14:23:00.004+01:002023-10-30T12:43:09.438+00:00A RATHER FISHY BUSINESS<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKgDJ63WCfQTgs5Ttse-K0zhfWNWEkQ1pApgeHJTwtL9eMbtgpo1KGEUXpkEMasOuyWGb9wvgpDjKsIr_Prd2y-9M-a7PnzEZSPdY-KfpjolKqndQzRSahp9hiAz1aSBi-f6rrRbOyf6bnln30arzIDh8tHiME-B-ce8Ohom4lIQaphXAAwmDPsyf5lB8/s1500/BOOK.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKgDJ63WCfQTgs5Ttse-K0zhfWNWEkQ1pApgeHJTwtL9eMbtgpo1KGEUXpkEMasOuyWGb9wvgpDjKsIr_Prd2y-9M-a7PnzEZSPdY-KfpjolKqndQzRSahp9hiAz1aSBi-f6rrRbOyf6bnln30arzIDh8tHiME-B-ce8Ohom4lIQaphXAAwmDPsyf5lB8/w132-h200/BOOK.JPG" width="132" /></a></div>Mark A. Hall, Loren Coleman, David Goudsward. Merbeings: The True Story of Mermaids, Merman and Lizardfolk. Anomalist Books, 2023. </b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This is a very strange book. The 'True Story' of the varied crypto-creatures covered in this book is - largely I think in Mark Hall's view rather than the two other contributors - that they are scale-and-tail, fully evolved real animals. And not just animals, but primates, in fact our sea-going cousins.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">🔽</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Hall's candidate for the origin of this hitherto-unknown extension of the Order 'Primates' is the <i>Oreopithecus bambolii,</i> most fossil remnants of which have been found in the Tuscan region of Italy. What makes Hall suggest that <i>Oreopithecus </i>is the ancestor of an entire universe of semi-human sea creatures is the curious formation of its feet, with a big-toe at right angles to the other four. In one great leap of palaeozoological derring-do, he hypothesises that “the tripod like foot of this primate may have developed into the four-toed foot of the North American freshwater apeman.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hall takes every every folktale, legend, campfire story or traveller's tale and spooky encounter in the swamps and presents it as a first-hand account of 'scale and tail' aquatic hominids. They seem to come in a great variety shapes and sizes to cover any possible alleged contact account, a bit like UFO aliens, until they all got whittled down to the standard Streiber format.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sometimes the reported creatures do not fit into even the broadest depiction of an aquatic primate. Hall quotes case from Spain in 1739 when a creature with a tapered head, hairy back and short arms but with very elongated fingers was caught in a fishing-net. Its heels had fins “resembling the winged feet with which the painters represent Mercury”, and a twelve inch dorsal fin. Very un-apelike. But Hall has an answer, the merman is wearing a hydro-dynamically designed suit for speed and manoeuvrability - “this suggests that <i>Homo sapiens </i>were not the only primates learning how to use tools.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1565 a traveller in the Holy Land discovered a 'mermaids skin' in a local market. It consisted of a torso with a fish tail, from the navel up the creature was human, but the head and arms were missing. A part decomposed dugong or other <i>sirenia</i>? No, to Hall the missing head and arms suggest that it was “a water ape's discarded protective gear.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Almost any report can be shoehorned into an explanation involving aquatic apes. In Australia, Aboriginal people have accounts of merpeople, who sometimes appear to have a fish-like tail and on other occasions are able to walk on dry land. The answer: “These accounts tell us something we have suspected all along in our research. The fish-tail is detachable”. Perhaps, Hall suggests “the fishtail has become less essential for survival and may be more of an aesthetic choice.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is remarkable the range of creatures that Hall has corralled into his merfolk menagerie, from the Lizardmen of the Carolinas, to the man-monkey of the Shropshire Union Canal. Any mysterious or folkloric figure vaguely associated with a water feature – and even some from desert regions - can be explained as an aquatic ape. West Virginia's 'Mothman' even gets recruited to the ranks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But of course there is not the slightest trace of any actual physical evidence, as we former ufologists like to call it. This huge, world-wide population of sea-going primates, and quite a few inland ones, seems to have lived alongside us for millennia without anyone coming across a body or even a discarded 'aesthetic' tail, other than a vague story about a Levantine market five hundred years ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So is this a crank book espousing a crank theory? Well I have to say yes. It reminds me more than anything of the 'crypto-terrestrials' promoted by Mac Tonnies, a ufologist who believed in the existence of a race of intelligent quasi-human 'ultraterrestrials' which also had lived on earth alongside us for millennia. Just like the merfolk, the race who were allegedly responsible for the entire UFO phenomenon seemed to manage this without leaving any tangible trace of their existence. [1]</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Unlike Tonnies' very vague account of the nature of the cryptoterrestrials, Mark Hall presents us with a wealth of detail, and the greater part of the text is re-telling and transcriptions of hundreds of accounts of strange sightings as 'memorates'. They come from ancient texts, early modern chronicles, nineteenth century accounts of explorers and anthropologists, from modern newspapers, and of course from the stories collected by folklorists, and they are all meticulously referenced after each chapter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If you can ignore its blindness to the entire world of folklore studies displayed here, there is a lot of interest in the raw data of the individual stories. But it is frustrating being bogged down by the speculative commentary on the accounts, and i am trying hard not to shout things like “but that's what boggarts do as well” (jumping on passing vehicles), “there are no aquatic giant ape-men in Shropshire”, or asking why the Kelly-Hopkinsville 'goblins' are drafted into the theory, but not the much more mer-creature like Pascagoula aliens.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With a wider perspective this could have been a worthwhile book, but it is ruined by the obsessive focus on an evidence-free theory which refuses to accept that the true realm of merpeople, ultraterrestrials and the hundred other cryptids that haunt our planets is the human imagination.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li>John Rimmer</li></ul></div>[1] <i><a href="https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2010/06/aliens-among-us.html">https://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2010/06/aliens-among-us.html</a></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-37149992992227954072023-09-06T15:05:00.008+01:002023-11-01T10:52:32.086+00:00REASONABLE DOUBT, UNREASONABLE BELIEF<p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaPfGGYH6h8MVfXqsyIg8WwZ06h1jYgh-qOA2-XrFhuYJp-tp06leI8SDkFAB7J-pmzJ-EbHdb5P_pkhpk2bNJg-OJs8ApOX-iJKRlWhRcFyW_aX2tX9-mN7bs97qSAvcQNEcW_-36POf0yfxniDM3BQsbrSLjNG70_qEMmgrpxuKGuWxEuOcQASn3MHE/s500/BOOK.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaPfGGYH6h8MVfXqsyIg8WwZ06h1jYgh-qOA2-XrFhuYJp-tp06leI8SDkFAB7J-pmzJ-EbHdb5P_pkhpk2bNJg-OJs8ApOX-iJKRlWhRcFyW_aX2tX9-mN7bs97qSAvcQNEcW_-36POf0yfxniDM3BQsbrSLjNG70_qEMmgrpxuKGuWxEuOcQASn3MHE/w132-h200/BOOK.JPG" width="132" /></a></div><b><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Philip Mantle and Irena McCammon Scott. Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Pascagoula Alien Abduction, Flying Disk Press, 2023.</b></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another year, another book from the Flying Disk Press about the Pascagoula alien abduction of 11 October 1973, experienced by Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of this event, this book repeats the accounts of the two prime witnesses and the sightings across the river on the same night by a Mr and Mrs Blair. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Regression hypnosis is used to tease out more information from Mrs Blair, and from Calvin Parker. Plus, we get further eyewitness reports of UFOs in and around the area on the night in question.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What lets down the book is that there is little critical analysis of these sightings, for instance one sighting by passengers in a car of a light following them sounds like the misidentification of the moon. There is no attempt to correlate the different sightings, and some are many miles from the location of the abduction. And, we all know the dangers and pitfalls of using hypnotic regression. The only firm evidence are photographs of puncture marks on Charles Hickson’s arm and Calvin Parker’s foot, that are used to bolster their testimony that they felt being pricked or scratched by the humanoids.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like many UFO books, no other explanations are given for these stories. As an example, there is no mention of Dr. Joe Nickell’s theory that Hickson entered a hypnagogic state accompanied by sleep paralysis, or even that the aliens were Russian secret agents who emerged from a mini-submarine to spy on US naval vessels put forward at: <a href="http://laststandonzombieisland.com/2022/06/16/goula-sub-sighting-of-sorts/">laststandonzombieisland.com/2022/06/16/goula-sub-sighting-of-sorts/</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since there is no attempt to provide alternative theories or explanations, however outlandish or mundane, it is disingenuous of the authors to say they have provided enough material for ‘the reader to draw their own conclusion’ when only the pro-alien abduction narrative is given.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">To sum up, this book does as the publisher’s publicity claims, provide evidence that if taken to court it would prove beyond reasonable doubt ‘that something truly extraordinary took place that October night in 1973' What caused that extraordinary event/story is something else entirely. It’s a bit like proving a murder was witnessed but there is no body and no sign of the murderer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In his Foreword, Calvin Parker admits: "Exactly what took place is still open to debate, but I can tell you that it was no weather balloon or swamp gas (smiles). All I can hope for is that I can find the answers to the questions I have been asking myself and others since that night in 1973. What or who was it that abducted Charlie and me that night? What was the object witnessed by all the good people in this book and where did it come from?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Calvin passed away on 24 August 2023 without getting any definitive answer to his questions, and this book acts as a fitting tribute to his story. Furthermore, this volume is not riddled with typographical errors as in other Flying Disk Press books and is illustrated with a good range of photographs, documents and newspaper cuttings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nigel Watson</div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-14338738641809208232023-08-20T23:34:00.012+01:002023-11-01T10:52:41.775+00:00PHONECALLS FROM SPACE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-f5lOpBo_kHx1en5ot3-DbeA2fhgQjRhEj--VbT8v-VQrR2zDyDDebeMCdjbFxlhsXjsVcIUmB0dCmtiO-vl9YFDkr3jLEeIBbW0vz7TdKmJPvnx6uQL97RQXiEV7LDoiGsEYHJQbweHswfvIf4Ide-J9YSTurFbzur6JspqXTxZ5WatJv2tzJ3fBPrg/s2550/BOOK.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2550" data-original-width="1650" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-f5lOpBo_kHx1en5ot3-DbeA2fhgQjRhEj--VbT8v-VQrR2zDyDDebeMCdjbFxlhsXjsVcIUmB0dCmtiO-vl9YFDkr3jLEeIBbW0vz7TdKmJPvnx6uQL97RQXiEV7LDoiGsEYHJQbweHswfvIf4Ide-J9YSTurFbzur6JspqXTxZ5WatJv2tzJ3fBPrg/w132-h200/BOOK.JPG" width="132" /></a></div><b>Joshua Winn. The Little Book of Exoplanets. Princeton University Press 2023.</b><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1971 I took astronomy classes at Manchester University and one of my lecturers was Professor Zdenek Kopal. He was one of the first scientists in the then new age of space exploration trying to find ways to discover if any of the trillions of stars we know to exist had solar systems like our own and if any of those other suns had planets capable of supporting life like the Earth.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>Whilst he was an expert in the mathematical ways in which the impact of planets on the movement of its parent star allowed us to surmise those planets existed, he had a bit of a downer on the consequences of alerting any out there capable of harbouring life like our sun does for Earth. Indeed he delighted in smiling wickedly at us sitting there agog saying - ‘If we hear that space phone ringing - don’t answer’.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The thought that unlike on <i>Star Trek </i>- then new on TV - you would not wish to say hello to other intelligent beings capable of looking for companions in the vastness of space - came over as rather odd to me at 19. Until he cogently explained what happened on Earth over the past 1000 years when a more advanced civilisation sailed oceans to discover remote island races or new continents packed with wonder.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It never ended well, Kopal reminded us - for the less advanced people. They either got conquered by better weapons they had never seen before or made slaves to benefit a distant empire. Rarely did it turn into a mutually beneficial relationship. So why would advanced aliens saying hello surveying us with technology we can only dream about be a good thing? We might be better off pretending to metaphorically hide behind the cosmic sofa.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But of course, as Kopal also reminded me, it was too late anyway. Our radio signals had been beaming out their version of all human life for 50 years and TV images had time to travel at the speed of light to many possible planets around countless stars. So staying quiet was even in 1971 an impossibility. If they were searching then they already knew we were here. Indeed it was a widespread view that the highly popular UFO mystery was the result of aliens from one of those worlds coming to say hello but perhaps wisely keeping distance as they noticed how violent we seem to be.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">In the decades since I heard his memorable views science has moved on at quite a pace. Especially in the last two decades as we have put even better ‘eyes on the skies’ - including telescopes in orbit away from our thick atmosphere that severely restricts the picture we can see from under that blanket of gases. Even so stars are a very long way from Earth.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Technology is improving all the time and whilst the vast distances involved are why we are as yet some way from taking real photographs of such planets outside our solar system we have found ingenious ways to plot where planets exist and learn the conditions on their surface so we can draw images based on the type of star that is their sun.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The author of this thrilling exploration of humanity’s real life Star Trek knows his stuff as a Princeton astrophysicist and member of NASAs transiting exoplanet survey. Exoplanets being the name of planets detected around stars beyond our sun. The exciting fiction of Star Trek turns out surprisingly right. There are ‘strange new worlds’ around most stars. Solar systems are normal not an exception. And some would probably make Mr Spock’s eyebrows raise a little too.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJUrR6MqoJTdhnG5L1B9wxee18y7tDdPwqOG1MQFolAOWalSs4IATpGtHcqj3gHHFu2Rjk8_ZWeIGZxWspzSf-N3j6t4qbqVUutUrlSWqicoMyPmPFeXN8BSCtm6ksz9ILQyTCSGQZTCutf19S1hyVqZxjtn0uk1dKxUhcCF9-pm3S8xwO_k_zSAQIxSA/s1202/zendec.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="334" data-original-width="1202" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJUrR6MqoJTdhnG5L1B9wxee18y7tDdPwqOG1MQFolAOWalSs4IATpGtHcqj3gHHFu2Rjk8_ZWeIGZxWspzSf-N3j6t4qbqVUutUrlSWqicoMyPmPFeXN8BSCtm6ksz9ILQyTCSGQZTCutf19S1hyVqZxjtn0uk1dKxUhcCF9-pm3S8xwO_k_zSAQIxSA/w640-h178/zendec.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One circling the star Aldeberan is six times larger than Jupiter - the huge gas giant in our solar system. Others are so far from their sunS that their orbit - which in the Earth’s case is, of course, a year - can only be measured in centuries.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gradually as we have found more and more the numbers have expanded and the diversity of their characteristics became extraordinary. Including seas of molten rock and ones on the point of being imminently destroyed by their sun.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Astounding stats pepper this fascinating book. For instance that 99.99999999% of planets known to exist within our Milky Way galaxy are circling other stars NOT our sun - which has just 8 since we discounted Pluto as a true planet.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">The author carefully charts the ways in which we have learned to ‘discover’ something impossible to see directly with our eyes even using the largest telescope, as the laws of physics are a tough boundary to cross. It is like trying to view a fly on a car headlight miles away. It is only in the last two decades a real search has been made possible, many years after I saw Kopal talk of why he felt they would be out there by the billions and some almost certainly would have life.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kopal’s only methods in 1971 were mathematics and guesswork. We have in a short blink in the eternity of space-time come a very long way that would have astonished my old university professor. Indeed in the late 90s we knew only of enough definite exoplanets to count on both fingers across millions of suns visible in our night sky. Today that number is in the thousands and we know not only that they exist but hard scientific facts about the conditions on these worlds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed alongside the normal book index in this fascinating guide to the story of that search is a two page index to planets discussed in the book - with names that are rather less Star Trek - so not Vulcan but forged from the vast numbers of stars to catalogue. So each star has a number assigned and to it and letters added for discovered planets.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For example the not exactly catchy name of planet HD 209458B orbits a distant Sun like star but is a large Jupiter-like gas giant located close enough to the star that its size relative to its Sun causes an eclipse akin to about 1% of a total solar one on Earth by our moon. It passes in front of its sun regularly so as we get eclipses when our moon crosses the path of our Sun this 1% eclipse - called a ‘transit’ - causes light from the star to dim as a measurable part is blocked when this gas giant crosses its solar surface in line to us. Meaning we can reliably not just judge the size and orbit of the planet causing this ‘dimming’ but by tracking the transits measure the elements within the planet’s atmosphere as it makes these tracks past what is to us just a distant star.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This book is full of the thrill of this modern journey of exploration and like the story of our first space voyages - not yet via the Starship Enterprise but remotely bringing the stars and their solar systems into our earthly remit.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We stand on the final frontier of a whole new map of the universe closer than ever to discovering if <i>Star Trek </i>got the other things right and beings like Vulcans and Klingons are actually out there. They may be just a measurement of twinkling light and transits of a star away from discovery.</div></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;">Jenny Randles</li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-83039167681368136762023-08-06T22:30:00.005+01:002023-11-01T10:52:59.582+00:00THE RISE AND FALL OF WITCHCRAFT SCIENCE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxfobtHDg0BPLN6tEVqj3u3AAW4B39eMUqHw6CJzWOi4YaDEV0tkeCCAxV_JOrRr1KqcLg70OLKgQzNQCRIYq3VPbVRfTWCcpQitkyFRuWEk7pA518SH8kIPbBlG32MEJ5pCdRmN6wB2Ug4SgVKGb2zpaOwsGf-EkkzVpGcwbRJ-dBvfks7igSJk4kNj0/s1000/BOOK.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="674" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxfobtHDg0BPLN6tEVqj3u3AAW4B39eMUqHw6CJzWOi4YaDEV0tkeCCAxV_JOrRr1KqcLg70OLKgQzNQCRIYq3VPbVRfTWCcpQitkyFRuWEk7pA518SH8kIPbBlG32MEJ5pCdRmN6wB2Ug4SgVKGb2zpaOwsGf-EkkzVpGcwbRJ-dBvfks7igSJk4kNj0/w132-h200/BOOK.JPG" width="132" /></a></div><b>Tony McAleavey, The Last Witch Craze: John Aubrey, the Royal Society and the Witches, Amberley Publishing, 2022.</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Navigating the foreign country that is the past can be tricky. The way our forebears thought is part-familiar, part-strange, and so often appears contradictory. In <i>The Last Witch Craze,</i> Tony McAleavey explores one such apparent anomaly: some of Britain’s most respected pioneering scientists, who were involved in the founding years of the Royal Society, were also ardent believers in the reality of witchcraft. </div><div style="text-align: justify;">🔽</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><a name='more'></a></span>As McAleavey puts it, they ‘combined their convictions about witchcraft with a wholehearted commitment to the new experimental science’. This set included Robert Boyle, Elias Ashmole, Henry More and John Aubrey – best remembered an antiquarian but with a wide range of interests and who, as the subtitle indicates, McAleavey singles out for attention - as well as a number of less well-known individuals. All applied the new scientific method to witchcraft, aiming to amass empirical data to prove that it was real.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Paradoxical though ‘witchcraft science’, as McAleavey terms it, might seem to us today, in a historical context it’s not so surprising. After all, scientists in the way we understand them now – hard-headed sceptics in all things supernatural – were hardly going to emerge fully-formed overnight. And much of the apparent incongruity comes from the way history has been written: ‘During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a narrative developed that the birth of the Royal Society signalled a new rationality and modernity, which swept away the superstition of the past. This orthodoxy prevailed for much of the twentieth century. However, this view does not stand up to scrutiny.’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So <i>The Last Witch Craze</i> adds to the trend of challenging the old image of the Enlightenment as stemming from the split between science and magic, although McAleavey doesn’t go as far as the likes of John V. Fleming and John Henry whose work emphasises the positive impact the magical tradition had on Enlightenment science.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Another common misconception is that witch hunts were a medieval thing, whereas their heyday was in the early modern period, basically the Renaissance and early Enlightenment. While past their peak in the British Isles in the period McAleavey’s concerned with – the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and, particularly, the Restoration - he shows that witch trials continued throughout. In the majority of cases the accused – mostly but not exclusively women – were acquitted (which perhaps makes the ‘craze’ in the title a bit of an overstatement), but those who were found guilty were sentenced to death, the last execution in England being in 1682 and 1727 in Scotland.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The proponents of witchcraft science not only aided investigations into alleged witches but had no problem with those found guilty being put to death. Indeed, some seemed to regard the spectacle as entertainment: Ashmole, for example, made a special trip to Kent in 1652 to watch the hangings of six ‘witches’. As McAleavey points out, ‘Within the scientific literature of witchcraft there is a consistent lack of interest in the lives of those accused of being witches. The writers either ignored the suspects as individuals or were openly contemptuous of them and their social background.’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">McAleavey presents detailed accounts of investigations and trials of alleged witches, such as Joan Peterson, the ‘Witch of Wapping’, a cunning woman investigated by Aubrey and hanged in 1652. He also devotes a chapter to showing how the witchcraft science literature coming out of England had a big influence on America’s infamous Salem trials of 1692, which resulted in the execution of twenty people, via the works of father and son Increase and Cotton Mather: ‘Like the English authors they admired, they believed that the principles of experimental science were entirely in keeping with the reality of witchcraft.’</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwztIZkjlO3ZiWLULcG7QfdFxuOs4CsMKSaX2okyiBs91tuPu_fWWvyKBpa_U8HLnn6A2qUmrj7TtIDxowLrHY-KGFbRNtRdSSg-gr5eQqrSOZqST5twhHNSwWsbLaEaq54fQFU11ixOjk0mhfhnJQFdcUDwbFEzsePTgbk_YoJc_P_tY_LJFhHYqeTbg/s1538/Cotton-Mather.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="487" data-original-width="1538" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwztIZkjlO3ZiWLULcG7QfdFxuOs4CsMKSaX2okyiBs91tuPu_fWWvyKBpa_U8HLnn6A2qUmrj7TtIDxowLrHY-KGFbRNtRdSSg-gr5eQqrSOZqST5twhHNSwWsbLaEaq54fQFU11ixOjk0mhfhnJQFdcUDwbFEzsePTgbk_YoJc_P_tY_LJFhHYqeTbg/w640-h203/Cotton-Mather.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">McAleavey shows that there was more to all this than just proving witches were a real and present danger: it was ‘part of a much bigger argument concerning the relevance of the spiritual dimension to explanations of physical phenomena.’ There were other big names, such as John Webster and Thomas Hobbes, who were just as fervent in their opposition to witchcraft and the supernatural having any basis in reality, and it became the subject of heated debate within the new Royal Society.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Advocates of the reality of witchcraft were predominantly Christians – several being clergymen – who regarded proving the reality of witches, and therefore of the Devil, as an important way of countering the increasingly trendy atheism. The polymath Sir Thomas Browne even declared that disbelief in witches was being spread by the Devil as part of, in McAleavey’s words, his ‘wicked master plan to destroy all faith in the truth of Christianity’.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As well as the folk beliefs associated with witchcraft, McAleavey goes into the era’s wider debate over astrology and forms of ‘elite’ magic. Some thought they were just as evil (or delusional) as witchcraft, others that they were distinct and acceptable practices.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Much space is devoted to John Aubrey, who emerges as a hypocritical and thoroughly unpleasant character, especially where women were concerned. McAleavey shows from Aubrey's magical notebook, now in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, that he ‘promoted and undertook ritual angel magic, and appears to have gone even further and dabbled in black magic activities that involved using the power of demons’ – then a crime, like witchcraft punishable by death, as had been the case with Joan Peterson who Aubrey’s investigation had helped to the gallows.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What’s striking from McAleavey’s account is that the evidence for witchcraft put forward by the likes of Boyle rarely consisted of what we’d expect from a scientific investigation, for example examining a witch casting a spell under controlled conditions. It was primarily cases of apparent possession – which today would be seen as a mental health issue – or what would now be labelled parapsychological phenomena, particularly poltergeists.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Outbreaks of poltergeistery were popularly attributed to spirits or devils conjured up by witches, and when these were investigated and the evidence found to stand up, it was taken as proof of witchcraft on the grounds that a witch <i>must </i>have been involved – a bit of a leap. Such cases included the ‘Devil of Mâcon’ in Burgundy, which Boyle, who organised the translation of a French book on the haunting, argued ‘met the highest standards of proof and credibility’. McAleavey also cites the Phantom Drummer of Tedworth, publicised by Joseph Glanvill, a leading advocate of the scientific method, and the Devil of Glenluce, discussed by Scottish scientist and mathematician George Sinclair in a study of atmospheric pressure.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Others, such as Increase Mathers, included as the work of witches bizarre happenings that seem to go against the laws of nature – what we’d call Fortean phenomena. McAleavey doesn’t consider that there might be something non-witchy to any of this, or to magic, but it’s not that kind of book.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There’s a lot of fascinating material in <i>The Last Witch Trial</i>, not on just its central theme but related subjects, covering the history of magic and of science, as well as folklore and social and cultural history. It’s deeply researched, drawing almost entirely on contemporary sources - books and pamphlets written by those on all sides of the witchcraft debate, as well their personal writings now in archives - and engagingly written. Well worth a read!</div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Clive Prince</li></ul><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1