Chapter Five ROSALEEN NORTON’S MAGICAL PRACTICE Details of Norton’s approach to ritual magic can be gleaned from a range of magazine articles published, for the most part, during the 1950s and 1960s, several of them autobiographical, others written by journalists fascinated by Norton’s persona as ‘the Witch of Kings Cross’.1 There is also data from court hearings and police interviews associated with controversial photographs seized by NSW Vice Squad police in 1955 which showed Norton and Greenlees engaged in what were claimed to be ceremonial rites dedicated to Pan. In addition, there is a small amount of television documentary material2 and photographic documentation (both published and unpublished) to supplement the data provided by Norton herself, both in interviews and autobiographical articles.3 Finally, and not insignificantly, copies of extant unpublished letters written by the distinguished musician Eugene Goossens to Rosaleen Norton describe their shared interest in sex magic and paganism and provide important insights into the activities of Norton’s inner magical circle. The various aspects of Norton’s magical practice can be summarised as follows: a) Individual trance-magic episodes during which Norton sought to venture forth on the ‘astral planes’ in a state of mental dissociation induced by self- hypnosis. It was while on these trance journeys that Norton claimed to encounter the ‘god-forms’ of the principal deities in her magical pantheon. b) Sex magic activities with members of her magical coven, based substantially on practices derived from the magical writings of Aleister Crowley. c) Ritual magic invocations and other ceremonial activities which included improvised elements from Kundalini Yoga, Left-Hand Path Tantra and voodoo. These ritual activities were undertaken by Norton in her role as ‘High Priestess at the Altar of Pan’, together with members of her inner magical circle. 248 d) Miscellaneous magical activities, including attempted ‘magical flights’ seeking to simulate the ‘aerial’ journeys allegedly undertaken by medieval witches when they ‘rode’ to the Witches’ Sabbath, and also magical hexings and improvised ritual magical workings using various drugs and mind-altering stimulants. Trance journeys As noted in the previous chapter, magical trance journeys became a central feature of Norton’s magical practice after she began exploring self-hypnosis when she was 23 years old.4 Norton’s exploration of trance states was also central to her creative process as an artist, and this aspect of her work will be described in Chapter Six. However it is pertinent to note here that several of Norton’s artworks from the 1940s, including such drawings as Astral Scene 5 and The Sphinx 6, specifically show her naked body in a comatose horizontal position with magical ‘thought-forms’ issuing from her head.7 In Astral Scene a stream of white energy zig-zags into space from Norton’s mouth, culminating in a magical sigil which seems to split into two magical ‘horns’ and apparently results in the successful invocation of a horned deity. This deity is described in the accompanying caption as the ‘cryptic-faced Aegypan [who] represents Being’ [Norton’s capitals]. The caption beneath Plate 54: Astral Scene – a pencil drawing from the early 1940s showing ectoplasm issuing from Norton’s mouth as she projects a magical sigil 249 this image, published in Pix magazine in July 1943 and evidently written with Norton’s input,8 identifies the zig-zag energy as ‘ectoplasm issuing from [Norton’s] mouth’ and states that this is the ‘astral body’– a clear indication that Norton had been influenced by modern spiritualism as well as other aspects of the western esoteric tradition.9 Ectoplasm is an ethereal substance which is said to emanate from the bodies of spirit mediums while they are in a state of trance, thereby allowing deceased spirits to manifest themselves visually to the audience assembled in the seance.10 However, the fact that the mythic figure of the ‘cryptic-faced Aegypan’ appeared to Norton during this trance journey rather than the spirit-form of an actual, deceased person (which would be the normal expectation during a spiritualistic seance) indicates that Norton was using trance states to ‘project her astral body’11 with magical intent, rather than taking the passive role of a spiritualistic trance medium. In Sphinx and Her Secrets the magical intent associated with the act of astral projection is even clearer. The picture is dominated by a central female head adorned with ancient Egyptian head-gear: this figure clearly embodies Norton’s conception of a ‘female’ Sphinx.12 Two other mythic beings are shown rising up behind her. One is a naked male figure with circular horns – possibly a depiction of Pan; the other is a bare-breasted ancient Goddess wearing a ceremonial robe. The head-gear worn by the central female Sphinx- figure is surmounted by a serpent rising up from a coil – a likely reference to the Kundalini serpent – while immediately behind this serpent a solar orb radiates wispy filaments of energy, an allusion to the serpent’s ‘fiery’ nature.13 In his 1948 critique of Norton’s art-works, ‘The Art of Rosaleen Norton’, published in Arna, Owen M. Broughton writes that the figure of the Sphinx ‘has become synonymous with Mystery and is the Guardian of Secrets’.14 Broughton also draws attention to the fact that the naked figure of Norton, who is shown horizontal in a state of trance, is depicted as lying within the form of a yoni, or vulva – a symbol not only of Norton’s ‘Receptivity to Forces from other planes and Dimensions of Being’, as Broughton puts it, but also an indication of Norton’s interest in Tantra and Kundalini Yoga.15 Broughton also notes that ‘The central face is the Spirit of the Sphinx which embodies the mystery of Being – which can be applied both to Being in general and to the Self. The two figures behind and merging into the Sphinx represent the ... active and passive principles in Nature and the Male and Female Principles in the Self.’16 250 Plate 55: Sphinx and her Secrets (Plate 11 in the Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton). Norton’s comatose body is clearly visible – a visual reference to her magical trance technique If Norton believed that she was able to contact the ‘active and passive principles in Nature’ as god-forms on the astral planes – an ability she emphasised in her statements to psychologist L.J. Murphy 17 – she also believed that she had encountered the entity she referred to as the Adversary (Lucifer / Satan) as an embodied, tangible presence. In an interview I conducted with Norton in her Roslyn Gardens, Kings Cross, apartment in 1977 she told me that she regarded Lucifer not as ‘evil’, but as humanity’s natural adversary. In Norton’s words: He binds and limits man when it appears that he is growing too big for his boots. He tries to trick man, not with malicious intent, so much as exposing the limitations of the ego and man’s pride in his own existence.18 Norton’s concept of Lucifer is also referred to in Broughton’s 1948 article, mentioned above. Here Broughton writes that Norton’s portrait, The Adversary, ‘represents the “Opposition Principle” operating throughout Nature – the large figure being the personification of this principle and the small figure depicting Man attempting to challenge an indestructible power.’19 251 Norton told me during the 1977 interview that she invoked the gods ‘inwardly’ and ‘intuitively’. When I asked Norton whether the ‘gods’ and the magical universe generally could be regarded as a projection of humanity’s own existential reality Norton rejected this approach emphatically. Norton made it clear to me that, for her, the gods existed in their own right and not simply as projections of the psyche, and she believed that it was a ‘very egotistical and self-centred approach which places man on a pedestal in creation’.20 Norton also emphasized that she knew such magical entities as Hecate, Lucifer and Pan ‘not as extensions of her own consciousness, but as beings who [would] grace her with their presence if it pleased them [Norton’s emphasis] and not subject to her will’.21 My notes from the 1977 interview with Norton read as follows: She says that she has discovered certain of the qualities of these gods in her own temperament and this is a natural catalyst which makes their invocation much easier and more effective. But she does not contain them in the manner of the occult practice of ‘assuming the god form’,22 for example. She goes to be with them on the astral planes, and on different occasions it may be that they show different aspects, or facets, of their own magical potency.23 Norton’s magical trance journeys invariably took place in a secure location. According to Norton’s older sister, Cecily Boothman, Norton used to come across from Kings Cross to Kirribilli on the lower North Shore near the Sydney Harbour Bridge, to undertake some of these trance journeys. Boothman lived in an old block of flats in Kirribilli Avenue with large windows overlooking the harbour. According to Boothman, Norton regarded this apartment as her second home and would often spend time there.24 There was a special tree in a park nearby and ‘Roie used to meditate near it, go into trance, and communicate with the spirit of the tree’.25 According to my notes from an interview conducted in August 1986, Boothman was well aware that her sister had a natural ability to enter trance states and other dissociated forms of consciousness, and was willing to assist her in this process.