NMR ISSUE 15

Astrological Forecast 15
Creating Your Own Emotions
Editorial 15
Letters 15
Lizard
Magick and Love
New Age Causalities
On the Will
The Horned One Manifest
The Life and Work of Aleister Crowley
The Oldest Magick
The Wiccan Spirit

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The Horned One Manifest

White Wolf Dancing

Once of the central tenets (such as there are) of Pagan, Earth-centered religions is the idea that the Deities can become manifest in the real world. Whether we raise the athame or the ankh, speak of Valhalla or the dreamtime, dance to the drums of Africa or ancient America, I think we would all agree that, given the right circumstances and abilities, anyone can make connection with the Divine. But what happens when a soul makes that connection? How likely are we to recognize it for what it is, and how do we treat the one undergoing the experience? The recently released film, The Doors is an examination of one such incarnation.

Writer J. Randal Johnson and director Oliver Stone have created a fine portrait of the 60's; all aspects of the film's design come together in a rich evocation of the time. The performances are uniformly excellent, and the use of The Doors' music has both power and grace. But it is Val Kilmer's seamless portrayal of Jim Morrison, the Lizard King, which truly impresses. He slips the character on like a glove, displaying a fine sensitivity and compassion for the romanticism, inner pain and dark self-absorption which marked this strange man.

Jim Morrison, poet, singer, tester of limits, was a wonderful and disturbing mystery. A self-styled shaman decades before the idea became trendy, he spent his short life enacting the role of tribal sacrifice and psychopomp—a role he may have played many times in many lives. With the Serpent (symbol of death and transformation) as his ally he exhibited a startling, if thoroughly unreliable talent for molding and manipulating power states. The film explores this talent in gorgeously crafted concert segments.

Although the focus here is on the flashier aspects of the story, at the movie's heart is Morrison's mythological journey from shy young visionary to the new Dionysos—all fire and excess. The darkness, decline and tragic ending only serve to underscore a fact that I as a Pagan find heartbreaking: our culture doesn't know what to do with divine madness. Nothing is so threatening to the Old Order as the Young God.

The film also deals with Morrison's passion in the figure of Death and for the Goddess in the women he loved. Morrison is not overt (he wouldn't have used the term Goddess, but that is one of the reasons I found this piece so seductive. A well-made Pagan film that doesn't know it's a Pagan film can be mighty hard to resist.

I felt that Stone's handling of Morrison's marriage to Wiccan priestess Patricia Kennealy was very sympathetic. Through the couple's first impromptu ritual, the handfasting itself and their relationship, the treatment is respectful of the old ways. Since I didn't have a problem with the blood element (this was the late Sixties, after all, and the use of blood in rituals is an ancient tradition), I found the tone of the segments satisfying.

But the best thing about this film I think is that no one here tries to explain Jim Morrison. There are no pat psychological answers or attempts to pigeonhole or brush away his extraordinary vision. He remains whatever it is that he was, focused on the private path he followed despite attempts to divert him. Such commitment certainly deserves respect, regardless of his reasons.

I cannot recommend highly enough this fine invocation of a soul who, in another time, might have been revered as a holy man and teacher. The theater began as a temple, the stage as an altar. In this day of Milli Vanilli, Bon Jovi and 2Live Crew, it is empowering to remember that this sacredness can be regained, if only briefly. We just have to be willing to recognize its presence and try not to tear the God to pieces.