Word: witchcrafts
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...There have been movies like The Devils before, but only a very few: the Swedish silent Witchcraft Through the Ages, Pasolini's Teorema, Kenneth Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother. The Devils, however, is rendered on a far grander scale than any of these. It is like a lunatic opera, an attempt to make a furious poem out of frenzy. Russell's flamboyant theatricality and his interest in the perverse have been too much imposed on his other films; but here, style and subject are perfectly matched. The film does not work as drama...
...ingestion of rhubarb and precious stones. The opening sequences of Louis XIV possess all the touches of realism that we have come to expect of contemporary, slice-of-life realism, but it is a realism rendered bizarre by its historical setting. Realism reified, alienated. If the characters believe the witchcraft of the doctors, can we be sure at any moment that we know what they are thinking? Chaos creeps in from the edges of the frame...
...psychedelic movement is discredited because of drug abuse, but the renewed interest in intensely personal religious experience accelerated by the drug culture is undiminished. Many churches are deeply and understandably suspicious of mystical experience, partly because they associate it with magic and witchcraft. But Drs. Masters and Houston believe that this attitude seriously impairs the survival of institutional religion: "The clergyman who dismisses all of this as primitive and regressive is seriously lacking in vision. He has not understood that profound mystical experience can open up energy sources to sustain a contemporary religion, and that the clergyman himself should...
...written a tale of witchcraft, then set it in the least likely locale in the world for witches' sabbaths: a Midwestern suburb. Twelve Ravens is that most difficult of storytellers' tricks, on-again, off-again realism. Night falls, and the mamas and papas of the bored middle class race to the town's hill like nude nymphs and satyrs to worship their resident Mephistopheles, Gypsy, the neighborhood handyman...
Although Alex adheres to orthodox laws of witchcraft as set down in the ancient Book of Shadows, with income from lectures, public appearances and broadcasts he hopes to establish an international witch center as an alternative to traditional religions. "The simple worship of love and fertility," writes Miss Johns, "can be immensely appealing in a materialistic age overshadowed by the achievements-and horrors-of science." The declaration could hardly come during a more appropriate season. The most important fertility rites in all Wiccadom occur in spring. It is the time to worship fervently in the coven...