I’ve been looking forward to Antero Alli’s new film for a while now. His last flick – The Invisble Forest – was an exploration of psychology, surrealism, and the theatric method, filmed on multiple types of camera to throw the viewer into altered states throughout it’s viewing.

Alli’s latest offering – To Dream of Falling Upwards – has a more linear narrative approach than it’s predecessor. Not that it doesn’t take the viewer through a surreal minefield of visuals and expositions, it just happens to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But enough of the comparisons, lets talk about the story.

A sex-magickian – Jack Mason – is the next in line to become the new head magus of  the Temple of Horus, a offshoot of its more official – OTO-like – sister the ‘Thelemic Temple of Anubis’. However, just as he is about to claim his leadership, the current Temple-Master’s son intervenes at his fathers death-bed, and claims the commercial rights to the order. Mason discovers that the son is planning to commercialise the order, and so begins a tale of murder, mysticism, sex, and comedy.

Along the way we meet some intriguing characters: A professor seeking mystical wisdom from a shamanic witch in the Californian desert, a Russian hit-man, lawyers with a fetish for S&M, and Mason’s Scarlet Lady (played by the Invisible Forest’s Clody Cates).

What is interesting about Alli’s approach to making a film about ‘occultists’ is, rather than dwelling too heavily on the ‘scandalous’ elements of the craft, he has instead chosen to highlight the more social aspects of being an occultist, drawing on the comparison of urban ritual, and rural. This is highlighted most clearly in his ‘Neophyte’ characters, two Thelamites of lower grades who are tasked with the ego-corrosive ritual of going into business together as clowns, and the professor seeking wisdom in the desert.

The film itself leaves you feeling somewhat transformed at the end. Ideas, normally communicated in text, are rendered visually to great effect. I don’t want to ruin any plot points, but Mason’s journey is particularly interesting, it’s final outcome both surprising, and impressively told.

Like The Invisible Forest, this film also has great music, provided by the fantastic Sylvia Alli. The compositions’ haunting and ethereal qualities help carry the viewer along the path of the film, whilst perfectly accompanying the narrative flow.

To Dream of Falling Upwards is Antero Alli’s most accessible film to date, both visually, and narratively. If you want to go on a mystical journey tinged with Crowleyana, humour, intrigue, and Carlos Castaneda, but don’t want the usual Kenneth Anger rip-offs, this film will serve you extremely well.

Ken Eakins

If you’re in the San Francisco area tomorrow – Antero Alli will be premiering the film at the A.T.A. – Details here

If you can’t make the screening, or the upcoming tour, then you can buy the DVD here

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kenneth Grant, one of the sole remaining links to occultist Aleister Crowley has died. Like his take on Thelema or not, you cannot deny the influence of the man’s work. From Starfire:

Kenneth Grant died on 15th January 2011 after a period of illness. Our condolences go first and foremost to his family, whose privacy is something which we all wish to respect at this difficult time.

Kenneth Grant had an extraordinary life, and his work has a remarkable depth and breadth of magical and mystical insight. In particular, his monumental series of Typhonian Trilogies is creative, innovatory and inspiring, extending across thirty years from the publication of the opening volume The Magical Revival in 1972, to the appearance of the final volume The Ninth Arch in 2002. This is a substantial body of work, constituting a solid foundation for further development, widening and deepening in the years to come; his work will continue.

Michael Staley,

SittingNow would like to extend our condolences to Grant’s friends and family.

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After the most month-shaped week in history, we return to game with a great new episode of SittingNowish delights. This weeks guest, the fantastic Rodney Orpheus, gives us a great interview about the infamous Aleister Crowley. Discussed: Magick, The Abbey of the Thelema, The Ordo Templi Orientis, The A∴A∴, why Crowley is still so revered, Doing thou will, and our plot for a strange Victorian porn film.

Hyde to Kim’s Jekyll, Daddytank, returns with a nostalgic, but great MySpace Heroes. This weeks Musikal weapons:

Twiggy and the K-Mesons : Preset Love
Yellow Then Blue : The Black Rose
Raleigh St Clair : Alphabet

Books recomended by Rodney:

Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley & The Eye in the Triangle: Interpretation of Aleister Crowley

Rodney’s own fantastic book:

Abrahadabra: Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic Magick

Don’t forget to give us a review on iTunes when you have a spare 2 minutes, we’d really appreciate it.

Enjoy!

Rodney Orpheus’ (impressive) Biography:

Rodney Orpheus was born in Northern Ireland, and in the past years has lived in Hamburg, Germany and Los Angeles, California. He currently lives in The Cotswolds in England.

For the past twenty years Rodney has been well-known as a musician, record producer, and author. He lectures frequently at colleges and music business events, where his ability to present highly technical matters in an entertaining, understandable style has made him very much in demand.

Rodney has acted as a consultant with many of the top companies in the music instrument industry in the past years, most notably with Steinberg and DTS, as well as writing a regular monthly column for Computer Music magazine and running the ground-breaking musicians community at mi7.com

After the release of his seminal band, The Cassandra Complex’s first records Orpheus spent several years touring Europe, originally basing himself in Aachen, Germany, where he joined Ordo Templi Orientis. Orpheus had been studying the works of Aleister Crowleyand other occult authors since his teenage years, and previously had been founder and editor of the UK occult newspaper Pagan News along with Phil Hine. While in Aachen he began work on the book Abrahadabra, published originally by Looking Glass Press in Sweden, later republished by Weiser Books. The book has been described as “a significant contribution to the field of thelemic, or Crowleyan if you will, magick.” and “one of the very few competent and readable introductory texts to Thelemic magick.”

He still also occasionally gets time to play with The Cassandra Complex on stage and in the studio. He is currently completing work on his second book.

Our guest this week, Lon Milo DuQuette, has authored numerous magical texts including The Magick of Aleister Crowley, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, and Gods of the New Millennium, but without question his most popular work is the story of his own life as a practicing ceremonial magician, My Life with the Spirits.

My Life with the Spirits has been optioned for a feature film and is a required text for classes at DePaul University, Chicago. He is often called upon to appear on radio and television to comment authoritatively on matters pertaining to the Western Mystery traditions and matters of the occult. He travels extensively worldwide and speaks on a broad range of esoteric topics including Qabalah and the Tarot. He is on the faculty of the OMEGA INSTITUTE in Rhinebeck, New York where he teaches ‘The Western Magical Tradition.’

Lon has just authored a new book entitled Enochian Vision Magick: An Introduction and practical guide to the Magick of Dr John Dee and Edward Kelley

Background music this week comes in the shape of Plaid.

Featured song is Assassins Blade by R. D. Burman