That old black magic: A Dark Song

Catherine Walker.

Among the Halloween viewing this year was A Dark Song (2016), a debut feature written and directed by Liam Gavin. I’d known about this one for some time thanks to recommendations from friends but for various reasons hadn’t seen it until now. Part of the interest was nakedly egotistical: one of the lead characters wears a T-shirt bearing a design based on the Epigenesis album cover that I created for Melechesh in 2010. The cover art—a variation on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life—suits the occult theme of the film, while Steve Oram’s character is also the kind of person who might be a metal-head.

Steve Oram in that shirt.

Ego matters aside, it’s the occult business that really sets this film apart. Had I known earlier that the story concerns an enactment of the famously arduous Abra-Melin ritual I’d have sought it out much sooner. Catherine Walker plays Sophia, a woman looking for supernatural vengeance following the murder of her young son. Her ritual guide, Oram’s Joseph Solomon, is evidently her last resort after attempts to hire other occultists have failed. Her determination forces her to engage the man despite his obvious unsuitability as a mentor for the Abra-Melin’s psychic assault course. Solomon is a surly recovering alcoholic; once the ritual begins he turns into a belligerent bully. With the pair locked into a remote house that neither of them can leave for fear of the occult consequences, the ensuing battle of wills makes an already hazardous ritual all the more dangerous.

The traditional form of Western occultism, ritual magic, has been treated poorly by the cinema. Rituals on film are usually presented in a shorthand manner derived from Dennis Wheatley, where it’s enough to don a robe and read a couple of lines from a grimoire to have demons manifesting in clouds of smoke. Even when things don’t go the Wheatley route the magical process is seldom allowed much screen time. Doctor Strange announces to the librarian at Kamar-Taj that he’s read a genuine grimoire, The Key of Solomon, together with several other volumes, but we see little evidence of his learning beyond Harry Potter-style fireworks. Magic in the Marvel universe is merely a thaumaturgic martial art, something to add variety to the interminable fight scenes that are the core of all superhero stories. Rosemary’s Baby doesn’t go into much detail about its Satanic working but it does at least give a sense of an operation that involves careful planning and months of effort; it also shows magic at work in a very recognisable and mundane world, something shared with the months-long ritual of A Dark Song. The Abra-Melin is notorious for the physical and mental demands it places on the practitioner. It also incorporates the provision of being something that once begun can’t be backed out of…or so we’re told. Aleister Crowley attempted to perform the ritual in 1903 but abandoned the attempt in order to marry Rose Kelly. John Symonds’ biography of Crowley, The Great Beast (1971), contains a useful description of the operation:

In magic, there have always been two schools, the one invoking the forces of good, the other evoking the forces of evil, or white and black magic. Now, Abra-Melin teaches that the good, or angelic, forces are superior in power to the bad, or satanic forces; and that the latter, as a punishment, have to serve the former. All material effects, all phenomena are the result of the actions of evil spirits working under the directions of good ones. And sometimes the other way round, for bad spirits occasionally manage to escape and, revengefully, do what harm they can. These satanic forces conclude pacts with men and hold them in their power as Mephistopheles held Dr Faustus; for man is the middle nature between angels and demons, and has attendant upon him a Holy Guardian Angel and a Malevolent Demon. The practising magician has therefore to lead a strictly pure life. By prayer and contemplation in a suitable place (an oratory) he can call forth his Holy Guardian Angel, who will instruct him in the right use of the Powers of Darkness. On the other hand, if he fails to steer clear of temptation he will speedily become a prey to the Malevolent Demon and his career will be a series of misfortunes, ending at his death with rapid descent to hell.

There is no general ritual in the magic of Abra-Melin, only lists of angels and demons to be evoked, and of talismans to be consecrated for such purposes as bringing the dead back to life, flying in the air, exciting or quelling tempests, getting gold, or inflaming lust between persons of the magician’s choosing. The snag is that nothing can be done until the Holy Guardian Angel appears “in unequalled beauty” after six months active preparation and tells the aspirant what method to follow for this or that purpose.

Crowley’s boss in the Golden Dawn, SL MacGregor-Mathers, was the first translator of the Abra-Melin ritual into English. Mathers later claimed that when Crowley abandoned the working he gave himself over to the demons that Crowley had unleashed; Crowley disagreed (and, in typical fashion, accused Mathers of having fallen prey to a Malevolent Demon of his own) but it was around this time that Crowley began his experiments with opiates that led to a lifelong heroin addiction. Demons manifest in many forms.

Yes, I happen to have a copy of the Abra-Melin ritual to hand. Doesn’t everyone?

Aleister Crowley’s autobiography is a poor guide to his experience with this ritual, much better is The Sacred Magician (1976), an account in diary form of an enactment of the Abra-Melin in 1973 undertaken by the pseudonymous “Georges Chevalier”. I don’t know of any other accounts as detailed as this one, and given the many difficulties of the ritual it may still be one of the few to be found. What impressed me about A Dark Song was the way the film approached its subject with the same degree of seriousness that Chevalier does; the script is refreshingly free of nods to the audience and wisecracks. The narrative has a familiar shape—a noviciate education at the hands of a browbeating taskmaster—which is complicated by the relationship dynamics. When magic isn’t to the fore, Sophia and Solomon’s war of nerves might be scenes from a deteriorating marriage. Once the ritual begins to work, the peril of their situation escalates accordingly. At the outset of the operation Solomon informs Sophia that magic is important for the knowledge it delivers about the things in the world that science can’t explain. But the names of the two characters are signifiers of wisdom, and the getting of wisdom is the real heart of this story. Liam Gavin’s drama shows how occult cinema can be more than esoteric wrapping on another box of special effects. His film casts a spell, and the chills it summons are authentic ones.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Llewellyn occult magazine and book catalogue, 1971
• The Art of the Occult
• Calendrier Magique
• Typefaces of the occult revival
• MMM in IT
• The Book of the Lost
• The Occult Explosion
• Rex Ingram’s The Magician
• Forbidden volumes
• The Sapphire Museum of Magic and Occultism
• Occultism for kids