The following text is a transcription of a lecture I held at Club Rotunda, Krakow University, April 4th, 1992. It was first published in the third issue of "The Fenris Wolf" in 1993.

I have for some reason chosen to call this lecture "The demonic glamour of cinema", and before we proceed, I think it's best if we define the terms "demonic" and "glamour" first.

In the history of mythology, a demon, as opposed to an angel, is a malevolent force that can only act when commanded by a human or divine will. There are many demons in all cultures, and most of them seem, just as angels, merely to reflect characteristics and traits within the human psyche. Call greed Mammon, call poisonous betrayal Samael, call the enjoyment of decay Beelzebub, and you'll know what I mean.

All demons reflect the so called darker side of Man's nature, and whether one wants to accept this fact or not is just basically a matter of intellectual maturity in the individual.

"Glamour", or to glamourize, means originally to fascinate, to bewitch, to attract subconsciously. A person with a lot of glamour can make people do things without actually expressing this in words. It has to do with looks, reputation, that person's aura, and many other things. To glamourize someone is then to catch someone's attention without that person really knowing what exactly is going on. To use techniques other than language or gesture, to use unseen or unfelt forces. Occult forces.

Cinema is a fine example of the most demonic artform to this day, and the cinema-theatre is like a pagan temple where believers get together and receive messages from other realms, other planes of consciousness, complete with idols, a set morality, satisfaction (or at least titillation) of religious, sexual and other personal needs.

We are completely alone in the dark. There are no impressions except for the ones that stream from the screen and from the speakers straight down into our selves. The size of the screen, the colours, the movement, the action, the soundtrack all interact to create a vision of wonder and illusion that is unsurpassed, with the exception of true religious or mystical visions.

It is undoubtedly an extremely powerful medium, and can naturally be used for both good or bad. Effective propaganda films brainwashed millions of people during the communist and national socialist regimes, and helped to create those evil empires.

But film as such, we mustn't forget, is just a medium, and it can naturally just as well be used for creating visions, and thereby results, of love and life and strength and art and magnificence. This is true of all techniques in magick. The technique itself is just a technique, and how one should look upon a magical operation must have to do with the magician and the aim of that magician.

It is a misconception to think that film as such is a medium for visionairies. This is untrue. Film is a 100% technical medium, and if one doesn't master the technical aspects, nothing can be achieved. Just like in magick. A film becomes a work of art at the moment a visionary will, the will of the director, takes charge and masters all of these skills. Just like in magick.

The works of Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Riefenstahl shine as prime examples. They were master magicians who just happened to work for these specific ideologies at a certain point in time. I seriously believe they could easily have traded places and acheieved just as glorious cinematic results.

Just as in magick, cinema is all about capturing the light, wherever it's possible. In magick, the adept seeks illumination and guidance through an inner light, the Holy Guardian Angel. In cinema, the process is similar one, one of filtering the light through a mechanical machine and caprturing this willed filtering on a piece of receptive plastic - the divine celluloid.

Each conception of the two examples is extremely individual. No two illuminations or exposed strips of celluloid could ever be the same. And although the commercial market dictates a feeling of conformity in both film-form and film-contents, cinema is perhaps the ultimate medium for personal, individual, subjective, creative self-expression. Because of the fact that there are so many technical things to master, the director has to push him- or herself to the extreme limits of knowing exactly what he or she wants. It doesn't matter whether it's consciously (as in a big commercial production where there is a big team and lots of money involved) or subconsciously (as in an independent experimental film). Mastery is the thing to strive for. Just like in magick.

In many ways, the screen is a spirit world created by material forces. If the result affects the viewer in some way, then we have a perfect alchemical marriage of heaven and earth, the mystical and the magical - a divine ecstasy designed to tell, to instruct, to invoke, to evoke whatever feelings in the viewer the director wants.

As in life, there is no real conflict between darkness and light, but rather a dualistic need of each other. If the hall weren't pitch dark, then the force of the flickering light emanating from the silver screen wouldn't be as potent. To put it in another way: If Satan and God didn't have each other, none would have any power at all.

There can be no reality on the screen. There simply isn't any way that reality can be portrayed objectively on film. Because even if it's just a matter of putting the camera in a shooting mode and then leaving, someone has still chosen the position of the tripod, the aperture setting for the light, and so on. A choice that is creative whether that person realises it or not.

As always, humans need terms and categories to be able to grasp and communicate, and in cinema we find "social-realism", "super-realism", "sur-realism", and even "neo-realism" as classifications of the works of many diverse artists. The same in magick: There are ceremonial magicians, witches, chaos magicians, satanists, catholic priests, rabbis, and many other "fractions" disguising themselves behind convenient terms for reasons of commerciality, power or self-justification. But they all use basically the same techniques to achieve whatever it it they want to achieve... Magick.

The word "occult" means "hidden" in Latin. The occult forces in nature are the forces one can use only if one awakens them from within one's own deep, dark areas.Today, when people are so used to seeing moving pictures, the directors and producers need new occult tricks, new special effects to keep the audiences spellbound, to keep them in the desperately desired audiovisual trance. Millions and millions of dollars and of other currencies (mostly Indian and Chinese capital) are spent to research and design new trickery. Even though the stories in commercial cinema are the same as they have always been, new ways of telling them are constantly needed.

This should mean that the illusion, the spell of the screen, the magical enchantment, can only be extremely temporary. In most cases, the emotional trance disappears as soon as the lights are turned on. That was that, yet another film seen... But in the cases of artistic masterworks, the impression remains. An impression of having been shaken in the very foundation of the soul, yet not being aware of exactly how it was done. Just like magick. The magician can impress people at face level and just trick them into supplying what he or she wants, or he can use other, completely hidden planes, to plant the seeds of future fruits. Here, we also find a parallel comparison between photography and cinema. It's the same medium, but the photo only has just two dimensions and can be thoroughly studied and analysed. The moving picture has a much greater opportunity to trick the viewer's mind, because all of the used photographs aren't perceived separately. And we mustn't forget the soundtrack on top of that, especially constructed and used to lure the open-minded viewer into a seduction of the rational intellect together with his 25 frames-a-second demon brother - the image.

Experimental cinema has always led the way to new developments in the medium, technically as well as generally on all levels. The experimental filmmaker is most often someone who loves the medium so much that he or she isn't content with just telling a story or conveying a feeling, but rather wants to explore for the sake of exploring, to find new worlds and new ways of showing these discoveries. Like all true magicians, in other words.

Non-, or rather, anti-narrative film tends to provoke the viewer to a point where he/she either opens or closes the mind to the confusing impressions. If one chooses to open the mind, there is suddenly an extremely clear picture, an exposé, revealing what techniques are used in, for instance, commercial cinema to seduce the viewer. Why is this part cut to that one? Why is there such strange music here, but not there? Why was this scene shot from this angle, and not that one?

And, as I've mentioned before... It's the same thing in magick: If one chooses to let go of rational ways of thinking and analysing the processes and goings-on around oneself, and opens up the mind to see with a subconscious or inner vision, everything appears in more or less perfect clarity. If one chooses to accept one's dark nature with all its aspects and qualities, then one can go on in the work of improving oneself.

If I say simply: "This film stinks, because I can't understand it", whose is the fault? The filmmaker's or mine? If I, without even having the desire to see beyond the most narrow limits of human existence, discard magick and occultism as being nonsense and child's play, am I trustworthy or a coward?

The magician can always work alone. In fact, he or she has to. But the dilemma of the filmmaker is that the finished work must also be able to attract others. Otherwise he or she might just as well indulge in masturbation with the cameras and the strips of celluloid. The experimental filmmaker has the freedom to try new tricks, and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. But one never knows until one tries it - Same as in magick. And if a new trick or a new spell should prove to work efficiently, you can be sure that the so called film industry will be there to knock on your door. Or perhaps they'll just steal it without any credits whatsoever.

Much of the work and the finished films of classic experimental filmmakers, as for instance the American Kenneth Anger (who, by the way, is also a prominent occultist), can today be seen in many so called rock videos. And also, of course, any technique that can immobilise the resistence of the human mind extremely rapidly (juxtapositions, rapid cuts, certain colour schemes etc.) will quickly be sucked into the void of commercial advertising, on film as well as on TV.

I haven't touched television at all so far, because that in itself is such an ultrademonic world of complete make-believe and sinister illusion. The biggest difference is naturally that we're not talking about capturing and transmitting light emanating from the sun, but rather more complex systems not just of images in themselves, but of electronical images, electronical sound and electronical and magnetical frequencies.

The medium, as well as the world in general, progresses through the work of geniuses. There are many geniuses working in television, of course, both good and evil ones. Perhaps TV is becoming even more demonic than cinema. It certainly doesn't require the viewer's full attention, and it can affect better because of this fact rather than in spite of it. In a moment of concentration upon something else in the room, who can tell what happens with the TV-images, the TV-sound and the TV-frequencies in your subconscious mind and in the organism? There is no evidence yet that TV makes you more intelligent, so why should you bother to watch it?

And another thing is certain: As sure as there are demons, angels and gods co-existing in the magician's mind, just as sure is the fact that noone can really seriously deny that although cinema uses the demonic forces to attract the attention, the overall experience could easily be termed "divine". And perhaps this is why we love cinema so much... Even though we know it's all an illusion, we feel a deep-rooted need of this type of spiritual experience...