APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 11: Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969)

While you can say that this is but an 11-minute movie, this Kenneth Anger directed, edited and photographed work of art — complete with Moog soundtrack by Mick Jagger — is one of the films that started midnight movies.

Assembled from what remains of the first version of Lucifer Rising, this movie strobes your mind with an assemblage of Anton LaVey presiding over a public funeral for a cat, the cast smoking out of a human skull, Anger on stage leading a ritual, nude men, Vietnam footage, the Stones playing their ill-fated Altamount show and is itself a ritual that follows Crowley’s Holy Law of Thelema in that one must master this universe before achieving the mindset needed to become your own god.

You could also say that it’s a lot of noise over a collage of imagery. Or perhaps Anger’s theory of film as magickal weapon is true. If you follow the logic that this isn’t for everyone, then you believe in Crowley’s thought process and how he claimed the esoteric would become “that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct.”

Evolution will only come by shocking our senses and overloading them with tones, with colors, with images.

Obviously, Bobby Beausoleil is Lucifer and the connections between the occult and the loathsome Manson Family will always be cited.

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