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Episode 85: Female Occultist pt. 3
479 Plays2 years ago
Welcome back Witches! Who's ready to learn about a couple of bad ass Female Occultist?? We're going to take a deep dive into the lives of Pamela Colman Smith and Rosaleen Norton. So get in losers, and let's talk about some Female Occultists.
We would be forever thankful if you left our podcast a 5-Star review. If you really loved the show and want more Get in Loser content, check out our Supercast & Buy Me a Coffee links below. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @GetinWitches, on TikTok @weredoingwitchcraft, or email us at weredoingwitchcraft@gmail.com. You can support our show through our links below.
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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio- The Witch
References:
- White, Katie. Pamela Coleman Smith Rider Waite Tarot. (2022) Artnet News. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pamela-colman-smith-rider-waite-tarot-2163627
- Palumbo, Jacqui. The Woman Behind the World’s Most Famous Tarot Deck was Nearly Lost in History. (2022). CNN. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/pamela-colman-smith-tarot-art-whitney/index.html
- Johnson, Marguerite. (2021). Friday Essay: why Rosaleen Norton, ‘the witch of Kings Cross,’ was a groundbreaking bohemian. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-why-rosaleen-norton-the-witch-of-kings-cross-was-a-groundbreaking-bohemian-154184
- Drury, Nevill (2007). Homage to Pan: Rosaleen Norton- The Witch of King’s Cross. New Dawn. https://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/homage-to-pan-rosaleen-norton-the-witch-of-kings-cross
- https://www.weiserantiquarian.com/pages/books/70076/rosaleen-norton-gavin-greenlees-keith-richmond/the-art-of-rosaleen-norton-with-poems-by-gavin-greenlees
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you feel drawn to learn more about witchcraft and the occult but feel lost on where to start? Then welcome to Get In, Loser. We're doing Witchcraft, a podcast all about what it means to be a witch and where to get started on your journey. Join us as we navigate through various witchy topics and share what we've learned about the craft. So get in, witches, as we learn all about two badass female occultists, Pamela Coleman Smith and Rosalene Norton.
Tiffany's Herbalist Journey
00:00:44
Speaker
Guess what I did? What did you do? I finished my advanced herbal class. Yay! That's awesome!
00:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's my third certificate. Yeah. Wow. Look at you, Tiffany, the herbalist. Yeah, I've done. I did intro.
00:01:10
Speaker
intermediate and advanced. And I still have I bought a few courses when they had a sale like they did a summer sale. So I have like a herbalist self care course that I'm going to take that comes with a little journal that you work through with it.
00:01:29
Speaker
I took the tea blending one already because it was just a three day intensive. So I was like, No, I'll just knock this out. So I have that certificate too. But I also bought one for Anthony and I to take together. And it's an herbal like wild fermentation class. So like beers and wines and kombucha and stuff. So that'd be cool. And I'm
00:01:52
Speaker
like when you're an herbalist, you just keep taking classes to learn. So I'm sure I'll add more to that later. But yeah, I was really excited because that course was really fucking hard. It was a medical course. So it was a lot of like anatomy and physiology and like all the body systems and like why certain herbs are used for them. It was hard, like really hard. I had to retake a couple of the quizzes for it. So
00:02:19
Speaker
But it's done. It's done. And that's really cool. My little certificate popped up in my course yesterday after they graded my final project. So all done. Yay. Well, I'm proud of you. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, that's really cool.
Content Disclaimer
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:46
Speaker
So just as a really quick little disclaimer, I mean, if you're listening to this podcast, there's a good chance you've seen that little e that pops up on the show. And if you didn't know what that meant, that meant that it's explicit. And although like,
00:03:03
Speaker
You know, we do cuss a lot on the show. We've talked about some kind of risque things here and there. This episode is definitely going to have, at least for my portion and when I cover Rosalind Norton, I am going to be mentioning some things related to sex. So if there are little ears around, kick them out. Go tell them to go play outside. I don't know, because it's not going to be kid friendly or appropriate.
00:03:32
Speaker
This is now a sex podcast. It is. Yeah. In case you didn't know, now you do. I will not have any sex in mine. Mine is just really cool and then really sad. I was going to say boring, but then also no, I'm not going to say that because we love Pamela Coleman Smith.
Pamela Coleman Smith: Life and Art
00:03:54
Speaker
I know. She was so fun to research. She was very like, there's a lot of like mystique and mystery surrounding her.
00:04:02
Speaker
She was an amazing artist. She had like
00:04:08
Speaker
all kinds of like accolades and she had like an interesting like circle of friends and then you know obviously the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck which is like iconic like even if you aren't a practicing witch or um like if you don't like read tarot you've at least seen some of the art from this tarot deck because it's like it's used in a lot of things like it'll be in movies or
00:04:35
Speaker
There's stickers of the artwork for hers. Everybody has at least seen it at one point in time. If you've seen anything where you're like, oh, that's a tarot card, there's a 97 point, or maybe even 99.9% chance of it's hers. Yeah. She's a pretty cool lady. I had fun reading all about her.
00:05:04
Speaker
Pamela Coleman-Smith is considered the world's most famous occult artist whose name is almost unknown, and she lived her life as an early 20th century artist, writer, and mystic who created dreamy, symbolist-inspired watercolors.
00:05:21
Speaker
She was born in London to upper-class American parents in 1878, and she and her family were all part of what was considered a sophisticated and cultured circle. And this part got a little murky, right? Like,
00:05:37
Speaker
Some sources just talk about her parents being just, you know, they're American, whatever. Other sources speculate that her father was an English American and that her mother was either Jamaican or like East Asian. But again, it's just speculation. I don't know, like, you know, normally it's like you can be like, oh, here was pictures of her parents. But like, I couldn't find anything that like,
00:06:05
Speaker
showed her and her parents as a child because I feel like an English American person is not going to look like a Jamaican person so I feel like you would you would know right so I don't know why there's this like mystery about this but apparently there is. It's important because there's a lot of mystery surrounding Pamela's ethnicity like throughout the years
00:06:28
Speaker
And some sources state that she was biracial, though the majority of the resources out there state that she was like a white English-American woman who adopted other cultures because of her upbringing. She often wore like a style of clothing that was attributed to like West Endy's fashion, and this is what created a lot of buzz around her ethnicity.
00:06:50
Speaker
She's often referred to as a cult queer icon as well, because there's a lot of speculation around her sexual orientation. So she was just this very mysterious woman. And while there's no concrete evidence to a romantic relationship, there was a period of time where Pamela lived with Nora Lake, who was often referred to as her companion turned business partner. So again, like, they give her the title of like,
00:07:17
Speaker
cult queer icon but there's no like concrete evidence that she was bisexual or a lesbian or like that there was actual real romantic relationships happening they just like live together.
00:07:31
Speaker
no one knows what happened behind closed doors at the house. So again, it's one of those things that's like that mystery and mystique, but they do give her that title. So I don't know there. But she spent the majority of her childhood in New York and then Jamaica, where she spent time learning their folkloric history that later influenced her art.
00:07:53
Speaker
In 1893, she returned to New York to enroll in the Pratt Institute, where she stayed for just two years. She left the Pratt Institute in 1895 to pursue her own interest. She was considered an intimate friend to Bram Stoker, which I feel like everybody knows who they are, but they wrote Dracula, okay?
00:08:12
Speaker
only like the greatest literary work of like all time. So I'm just saying. I do. I love Dracula. I do. They were like very, very close friends. She was also very close to the poet William Butler Yates and the actress Ellen Terry. And she designed like illustrations and stage sets for her. Ellen. That's really cool. Yeah.
00:08:35
Speaker
Ellen nicknamed her Pixie because she had an impish spirit and was often known to wear flowing robes, feathers, and colorful ribbons in her hair. And sometimes she even wore pants, which was like not the usual attire for a woman of her time. You know, like wear dresses or you can't wear pants. And she's like, yeah, I'm wearing pants.
00:08:55
Speaker
But so Ellen gives her this nickname Pixie and that basically just becomes her name forever. Pamela was regarded as like quote unquote other by those around her and this regard was what really inspired how she approached her art. So in her artistic years like she had a lot of work she did a lot of like
00:09:13
Speaker
watercolors and illustrations. And then she was like the go to for their area for set and stage design for like movies and plays. And like I said earlier, chances are like most of our listeners have probably seen Pamela Coleman Smith's artwork at some point, and specifically her work from the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck. And that's been used in all forms of media, like we were saying earlier, it's highly considered the standard in terms of tarot artwork.
00:09:40
Speaker
but we're not there yet. So some of her earliest accomplishments included the illustrations for a volume of verses by William Butler Yeats in 1898, and she was considered to be deeply involved in the literary world. She published and illustrated Anansi stories, and this was a collection of Jamaican folk tales and Whiticum fair. This was a popular English folk melody like the Whiticum fair. It's from this that she earned notoriety and she gained a following.
00:10:10
Speaker
In the Anansi stories, Pamela toyed with gender conventions, and she would give women characters more agency within the stories. She also often kept the gender of the characters ambiguous, which was considered a highly unconventional decision for her time. By 1901, she established a weekly salon held at her London apartment, her own journal called The Green Sheaf.
00:10:32
Speaker
and dabbled in miniature theater where she constructed what was described as dazzling and diminutive stage sets that were used in toy performances, which I found this hilarious. It was like theater with little tiny characters. It wasn't cute.
00:10:48
Speaker
And then for anyone that might not know, because I had to look it up, I thought I knew what it was, but I wasn't 100% sure. A salon was essentially like a gathering of patrons that would circulate critique and edit unpublished works for aspiring writers. As part of the Green Sheaf, Pamela would contribute her own poems and illustrations along with other works.
00:11:09
Speaker
Her very first art exhibit happened in 1907 at 291, which was an internationally famous art gallery in Midtown Manhattan from 1905 to 1917. And it featured 72 watercolor paintings. She was the first non-photographic artist to have an exhibit here, and she would go on to host three successful exhibitions at 291. So prior to this,
00:11:35
Speaker
They basically only had photographers work here, but because her art was so what, like good, they had her come in and do an exhibition and then it like went so well that they just had her keep coming back. She organized her art in the first exhibit by musical references that inspired her art in overture sonatas and concertos because she experienced visual sensations that occurred during auditory impulses. And these were what helped her artistically.
00:12:02
Speaker
It's known as synesthesia and it's defined as when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously. So she would like listen to a piece of music.
00:12:17
Speaker
and her brain would give her a visual of what that music was in art, and she would paint it. And then, obviously, we're talking about her because she was in the occult. So in her occult years, Smith held spiritual beliefs that were based on esoteric and the arcane from a very early age. She was raised in, which I have never heard of this, and I'm curious if you have, it's called Swedenborgian? No, I've never heard that.
00:12:45
Speaker
She was raised a Swedenborgian, and as early as 1901, she engaged with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which we've discussed in episode 69 when we covered Moyna Mathers. But Swedenborgian is basically like, it's also known as the New Church, and it was a Christian denomination that was highly influenced by writings of a scientist and mystic, Emmanuel Swedenborg.
00:13:10
Speaker
And it was considered a highly mystic denomination of Christianity. I've never heard of this, but they were like eccentric Christians, essentially. I've never heard of that either. While Pamela had several works of art that were highly appreciated, her most lasting artistic contribution was her designs for the Rider Waite tarot deck that was made in collaboration with mystic and scholar A.E. Waite. It was released in 1909. And as most of us know, this deck is considered the standard tarot deck.
00:13:39
Speaker
It had more than 100 million copies in circulation and her art for this deck has since become synonymous with tarot. But what's like really terrible and sad here is that for over a century Pamela went completely uncredited for her art
00:13:55
Speaker
and contributions to the deck. The only element that even showed it was hers was a monogram that she created as a signature that was printed on her art. So like at the bottom right corner of each card is like this little squiggly like
00:14:10
Speaker
snake-looking signature and that's the only thing that even gave away that it was hers. As many artists, especially of her time, she struggled financially and she did not receive copyright or credit for her contribution and her art for the deck. She was paid basically a very nominal commission for her work, like not enough
00:14:32
Speaker
for what she did. While it may have taken until 2009, U.S. Game Systems published a commemorative deck that they titled the Smith Waite Centennial Deck as part of the Pamela Coleman Smith commemorative set, and it celebrated the 100th anniversary of the deck. And they notably placed Smith's name first and omitted writer, who was just the publisher, to help give proper credit to Pamela's contribution.
00:14:58
Speaker
In creating the deck, Smith used some of her friends as models for the cards for the art to include Ellentery's daughter Edith Craig, who was used for the Queen of Wands, and actor William Terrace, who modeled for the Fool.
00:15:11
Speaker
After the publication of the deck, Pamela felt drawn to Irish mythology. And I'm not sure what the connection was here, but basically she got into Irish
Smith's Posthumous Recognition
00:15:20
Speaker
mythology, which somehow led her to illustrate Bram Stoker's final book. And that was Lair of the White Worm in 1911. And this is speculated to be her last known work, because shortly after its completion, she withdrew from the world of art.
00:15:35
Speaker
Pamela used a very small inheritance that she was given to purchase a home in Bood, England, which is in Cornwall, where she then converted to Catholicism and devoted herself to causes that involved women's suffrages and the Red Cross. She passed away at the age of 73 in her home in Bood and was noted to be all but penniless at the time of her passing.
00:16:00
Speaker
And I found this article where the author interviewed a couple of art curators. And so art curator Barbara Haskell said of Pamela that she represented a strain of artists in the early American modernism who were disaffected with materialism and rationalism, but who were also unsatisfied with organized religion and so turned toward more occult pursuits.
00:16:23
Speaker
Haskell went on to say that theosophy was so influential at the turn of the century, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was similar in that it was a secret society that looked at ancient texts, the Kabbalah, and tarot cards, and this was predominant among women.
00:16:40
Speaker
And like she goes on to like Haskell specifically out of all of the art curators that were interviewed. She actually did a Pamela Coleman Smith exhibit that was held in I can't remember what state but in a museum, art museum. And they had an original print of the tarot deck that she did the art for in it. That's really cool.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, so like it's really cool that this has happened now But it's really sad that it didn't happen during her lifetime and it's really that she was not like given her due and that she lived like a penniless life when this is something that like it's you know these this deck is the Standard when you talk about tarot like most people start off at least with this deck before they go buy something different But yeah, that is true. It is like yeah, absolutely the standard That is sad
00:17:35
Speaker
really sad. But she lived a pretty fun life. She had really popular, famous friends and she was in these social circles with these people. But I feel like when we, especially when we do these occultist episodes, I feel like we see that a lot where it's like this person is in high standing with all of these other
00:17:57
Speaker
well to do people and then they're just like struggling on the side. It's really sad. It is really sad and it's weird how they all kind of seem to follow that same trajectory, but it's interesting.
Rosalene Norton: Bohemian Witch
00:18:09
Speaker
Let's move on now to talking about Rosalene Norton, a badass bohemian. I'm just kidding, but she's pretty cool.
00:18:16
Speaker
So to start it off, I have a little quote here and this is just something that I pulled from one of the articles in our show notes and I just love this description of her and so it says that she was known to the public as an eccentric bohemian witch lady and artist. She wore flamboyant brightly colored blouses and vivid bandanas, puffed
00:18:39
Speaker
an exotic engraved cigarette holder and plucked her eyebrows so that they arched in a somewhat sinister curve. So when I read that, it kind of reminded me of Cruella de Vil, but like less evil. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:56
Speaker
Those cigarette holders seem so classy. Smoking is gross to me. I don't like it. But it just seemed so cool to have that little cigarette holder. If I was a smoker, I'm telling you right now, I would be a cigarette holder kind of girl.
00:19:13
Speaker
I want to get one with like candy cigarettes. Yeah, you should do that. We should do that. That's perfect. So Rosalene Norton was born in 1917 in Dunedin, New Zealand. Her family immigrated to Sydney, Australia, however, when she was around seven or eight.
00:19:33
Speaker
I'm not sure of the time here. I was just given the date 1925. So I just like, you know, had to do that math. So she was either seven or eight whenever her family immigrated to Australia from New Zealand. She was known as the Witch of King's Cross throughout her life. And we're going to get into that here soon because at first when I was reading this, I was like, oh, did she make it across the pond? Did she go to England? No, she stayed her whole life in Australia. So just FY.
00:20:01
Speaker
Ross and Lean experienced visions as a child from the age of five, which I thought was pretty interesting. And some of the visions that she talked about seeing was a lady in a gray dress and also a dragon. And she would also recall instances of trance states when she was a child, so like floating as if she was in a dream. And she also recalls having what she refers to as witches marks on her left knee. And these consisted of two small blue dots.
00:20:31
Speaker
at which, you know, honestly, I don't prescribe too much to like, witches marks, like, you know, I just feel like it was a way to kind of persecute women for being different. But also, you know, interesting that she, you know, believed in that. And I just think
00:20:47
Speaker
maybe different times, right? Yeah, for sure.
Norton's Early Life and Career
00:20:51
Speaker
So as a kid, she was drawn to the night, to nature, and to drawing and recording the preternatural world. She was also expelled from high school when she was a teenager because of her depraved nature. I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but according to her headmistress, she was afraid that Rosalene would corrupt the innocence of the other girls. Oh my god. Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
So, you know, wow, way to talk like, you know, you can't go to school anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. You draw a pencil in your eyebrows, you can't go to school. That's probably exactly what it was.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yes. Rosalene left home at 17 for inner city Sydney, and she started working as a model and as an artist, a pavement artist, which I meant to look this up when I forgot, but I'm not sure exactly what that is. Maybe- Like chalk? Yeah, I think so maybe.
00:21:54
Speaker
Oh, wow. I mean, people do that still. Yeah, because I know Pavement in England, that's what they call the sidewalk. So it probably is like a sidewalk chalk artist type of thing. Huh. I don't know. And she also worked as a contributor for the publication, The Pertinent. History knows her as a witch and an artist, and she eventually settled in King's Cross in Australia.
00:22:20
Speaker
where she was able to practice freely. Something just a little bit about her personality. She was known as having this very magnetic presence and it always made her stand out in a crowd. So kind of moving on to her magic and just why we'd want to cover her because she's one of our female occultists.
Trance and Sex Magic
00:22:40
Speaker
She began practicing around the age of 23 to include trance magic and sex magic. And for Rosalene, trance magic included meditating and raising her consciousness and vibrational frequency so that she could transcend her physical body and conscious mind to experience higher forms of existence. And this was often done with the use of ingesting or inhaling certain things. I couldn't figure out exactly
00:23:06
Speaker
what items she would ingest or inhale but we've talked about this previously on the podcast of like some things that people usually would use around this time so you could just kind of fill in the blank on what you think she could have been using because chances are it probably was something like that.
00:23:25
Speaker
So, and then also for the sex magic, we have also discussed this on the podcast, but that was developed by Alistair Crowley and her sexual rituals were designed for
00:23:40
Speaker
a variety of perceived needs and spiritual awakening and we're going to talk about that a little bit more as I get into more about her and her life. So one of the big things or one of the biggest things that she used within her magic was also artwork. So she would paint her beliefs and they heavily featured the deities she believed in and revered and I loved this about her and I actually really really really like her artwork
00:24:07
Speaker
and so it just really intrigues me. But some of the deities that she really focused on were Hecate, which obviously the Greek goddess that presided over witches, Lilith, the ancient female demon originating in Mesopotamia, Isis, which was an Egyptian goddess, and Pan, which was a Greek god, he was a god of nature,
00:24:29
Speaker
He was half man, half goat. He had a high sexual drive. And Rosalie Norton said that she was the high priestess at the altar of Pan. So she would perform rituals in his honor. And he was, I guess, Pan was a deity that she mainly worked with a lot, like really devoted a lot of time to.
00:24:48
Speaker
and a lot of her artwork was used within her own ritual spaces and I mean outside of just being in the ritual space she would also have her art used in exhibitions and in publications. So throughout her life she became close with the poet Gavin Greenless and they would also practice a lot of magic together along with trance magic and sex magic.
00:25:10
Speaker
And I've seen it reference that they were lovers. I don't know if it was mainly just to perform like the sex magic and they were just really good friends. But I guess it's just up for interpretation, I feel like because I don't want to just say like, Oh, yeah, and they were lovers. Like, yeah, I feel like that's the same thing with like, Pamela in the sense that like, they're like, Oh, she's this queer cult icon. But there's like, no concrete evidence that she actually was in a relationship with this person.
00:25:38
Speaker
Right, yeah. There's a lot of mystery and mystique that surrounds these occultists that we cover. I love it. There really is, yeah. I think that's how it should be. So Gavin and Rosaline would also combine different traditions like Kundalini, the feminine creative force of infinite wisdom that
00:25:57
Speaker
quote-unquote lives inside us and is usually represented by a snake as well as Tantra which is from Hindu and Buddhist traditions. She said that she used these particular practices for inspiration and empowerment and to talk with other entities on various different planes.
00:26:14
Speaker
She would also use transes and self-hypnosis as a continuation of what she would experience as a child.
Media Attention and Animal Rights
00:26:22
Speaker
Going back to Pan, I think it's important to mention a little bit more about this. As I mentioned earlier, she referenced herself as the high priestess of the altar of Pan. She was very serious about her worship of Pan and it reflected her love of animals and nature,
00:26:38
Speaker
She was also a forerunner of animal rights movements and would get really pissed off if anyone in the media ever asked her if she performed animal sacrifices. And this is something that I'm going to get into here in a little bit. But I thought it was interesting because with a lot of the occultists we've covered thus far on the podcast, they haven't really been super known in the media at the time whenever they were practicing and were really big. Yeah. But it's always later. Yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
after they've died then it's like oh my gosh this person right and look at all these cool things they did and like but really like the australian media were relentless with her and you know i think really affected her life just
00:27:25
Speaker
craziness but anyway so there's also you know going back on topic going back to pan um there's a really famous picture of her and she's depicted holding a cat in front of her altar and there's a giant mural of pan that she painted on the wall behind her and i think it is so cool and i just i think when i was looking at the pictures and i was reading more about her it made me start thinking like how amazing would that be like
00:27:54
Speaker
If you really, really, really wanted to work with this particular deity and you wanted to honor them, having a mural of them that you painted behind your altar, I think is really cool. And, you know, I read this and as much as like, you know, I just said, she's like a forerunner in animal rights. I, when I read this, I was like, I don't know if I would do this if I was like a forerunner of animal rights, but it's, they say that when she would conduct her magical ceremonies,
00:28:24
Speaker
in Pan's honor, she would wear a tiger skinned robe to honor his presence. And I just, I don't know exactly how I feel about that. If you're like a super animal lover, maybe she got it for free. I don't know. Maybe she's like a thrift queen. You know, I don't know. But yeah, so apparently she did that as well. And she said that
00:28:43
Speaker
This is like a quote, like her actual quote. She said that Pan's pipes are a symbol of magic and mystery, and his horns and hooves stand for natural energies and fleet-footed freedom. She was ahead of her time for many reasons, which we have discussed kind of just a little bit, but to get more into that, she was also openly bisexual and didn't conform to societal norms of the time at all.
00:29:11
Speaker
And she was also a huge challenger in Australia to like the predominantly Christian narrative and society there, which I thought was really cool.
Obscenity Charges and Pan Worship
00:29:23
Speaker
And she because of this, though, she faced a lot of pushback and attacks by the media because of her art, her beliefs, her lifestyle and her appearance. They would just really judged her harshly to the point that I'm not to judge others. Right.
00:29:39
Speaker
try to tell that to a Christian, you know what I mean? Honestly, honestly, it's just crazy. But they would, you know, harass her to the point that she would have obscenity charges brought on her for her artwork. And she was monitored closely by the police, like basically harassed by the police. You're going to be a criminal for drawing. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
And there were many different court cases for obscenity and her artwork that were brought on throughout her life. And a lot of her artwork was actually seized in an exhibition at the Rowden White Library at the University of Melbourne. And this was in 1949. And because they said that her art was, quote unquote, profane, which is... Have they read the Bible? Right.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's also a little profane. Yeah. And then also just a quick side note, because I feel like the more I continue talking, the less, or I guess the more stuffy I get. Of course, I am. I don't think I'm sick. I think it's just allergies, but of course I am again, because this island is trying to kill me. So if I'm like super stuffed up, that is why I'm trying my best. But this weather is terrible.
00:30:59
Speaker
We should have made you go first. I think it's just it's just it's gonna happen regardless and unfortunately I think. Okay so she also published a limited edition art book called The Art of Rosalyn Norton in 1952 which featured poems by Gavin Greenless and the books were confiscated and burned which is awful. Oh my god.
00:31:23
Speaker
I will say though, in case anyone is interested in this book, I did find it online. I've linked it in the show notes. There is a store in Maine that they have it on their website and it's like $32.50. It's really pretty cheap.
00:31:41
Speaker
a copy of the original print from 1952 because I guess they tried to release it at a later date I think it was in the 80s but then some shit was taken out and it wasn't her exact work but then they were able to find like the original and like make copies of it and so they have a copy of that and they can print the book for you I believe so if you're interested in that book
00:32:04
Speaker
check out our show notes because I have the shop listed. So moving on to more terrible shit and I really hated this. I hated this so much because I'm just like of course this would happen. So a lot of her private rituals involved things like oral sex, anal sex, and sadomasochism.
00:32:22
Speaker
And one of her devotees, as they were known, was an English composer and conductor named Sir Eugene Goossens. And he is a total douchebag, in my opinion. So he, obviously from England, he was already very much into the world of occult and the metaphysical before he even came to Australia.
00:32:44
Speaker
And when he found out about Rosalene and Gavin Greenless, he sought them out and wanted to join them in all of their occult practices. However, as I mentioned, like she was being harassed by the police and like her and Gavin were both being like followed and like harassed every so often.
00:33:02
Speaker
Eugene also unintentionally became a target of police surveillance and he ended up getting arrested and charged with importing prohibited items into the country after a trip abroad and he was basically charged with
00:33:17
Speaker
indecent works like bringing in indecent works and articles and you know after this obviously because he got into trouble his life and his career were ruined and he ended up returning to England and he spent the rest of his life blaming Rosalene for contaminating him by quote inducting him into her unholy cult of sex magic and it's like dude you are already interested in these things to begin with you saw her out to do this
00:33:46
Speaker
also like I'm very confused at this. Like, what makes the art so like, Oh, God, we can't have this. Have you looked at like medieval art? There's like exactly. Yeah, literally going on in all of these. So what is it about her work specifically? Or was it just
00:34:04
Speaker
her. Like, I think it's just her gonna use against just her, even though all this other stuff exists already. Because I've looked at her art and I mean, she does have some like, you know, half animal half creature half human, which again, you see this in medieval art all the time, you see tits out.
00:34:25
Speaker
The art that I looked at, I never saw any straight up sexual acts. It could be perceived, but it's not the P and the V situation. I don't understand why there was such a huge backlash over the art because it really is not that bad. I honestly think it's
00:34:49
Speaker
her they didn't like her they had a problem with her and so they were going to do whatever they could to kind of squash her but they couldn't like she's persevered which i love but yeah it's just it's crazy crazy crazy crazy but
00:35:08
Speaker
A lot of the backlash stemmed from her worship of the deity Pan because Pan is a great god who is depicted as half man half goat like I mentioned earlier and is very closely tied to the Christian images of Satan.
00:35:25
Speaker
And therefore many close-minded people assumed that she was a Satanist and they would vilify her for it. And not to say like there's anything wrong with being part of the satanic temple or identifying as a Satanist because obviously like that's not the case at all. But back then in the early 1900s, like you were Christian or you were going to hell. Like those were the only options. So yeah, so they just,
00:35:52
Speaker
They were terrible to her and she would often appear in newspapers in Australia where she was referred to as a Satanist and in one article in particular read quote like this is the actual news article self-confessed Satanists this week celebrated black mass in the heart of King's Cross and
00:36:12
Speaker
Two Sunday Telegraph reporters watched a shocking mockery of the Christian mass celebrated before an altar of a human skull and bones. So like they were would write these articles about her and release them in like the Cindy newspapers where it just like
00:36:29
Speaker
would just completely vilify her or make it sound like whatever she was doing was just so evil and it really wasn't. Yeah, nothing's changed with our news and media today. Literally. Yeah, it's still the same.
00:36:44
Speaker
Yeah and I think too because of the fact that she didn't prescribe to any of the stereotypes of what a woman should be they just they really hated her at the time because they couldn't break her and you know they would make fun of her appearance and and you know treat her like shit because of that too because she often dressed in male attire.
Norton's Rejection of Traditional Roles
00:37:08
Speaker
She loved to be photographed wearing all black I mean she loved the flamboyant clothing but she loved to like
00:37:14
Speaker
just I don't know just like not necessarily make a scene but like make a statement with how she looked how she was photographed and she would like I said draw her eyebrows with a distinctive arch in them that was like an unnatural arch and yeah I just loved it but she rejected the idea of being a wife and mother saying quote I would go mad and I just
00:37:41
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Like, and I just could you imagine though, somebody in the 40s saying that like, no, no, like, shit, you're supposed to grow up, get married, have children have the white picket fence, your husband's supposed to argue, you're just supposed to do whatever, like, the fact that she's just like, absolutely not. I love it.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, I do too. Throughout her life, she led a very interesting life. Even though she was vilified throughout her entire 20s, 30s, 40s, she still never lost sight of who she was and never broke her or broke her practice.
00:38:24
Speaker
Yeah, I will say that she retired from public view in the 1970s and she lived out her years in a flat where she continued to still practice her rituals and she painted until she was diagnosed with colon cancer and she passed away sadly in December of 1979 and I just hope that the end of her life was just comfortable and
00:38:49
Speaker
full of happiness because it's just sad.
Norton's Artistic Legacy
00:38:54
Speaker
But yeah, and like I said, we have a link to her book if you're interested in it. And I would definitely recommend if you are interested in learning more about her, because there's still more that I could have put in here, but I didn't because I already had four pages of notes. But I would definitely recommend
00:39:12
Speaker
even just Googling her, looking at how she dresses, looking at some of her art, like and the a couple of the poems that Gavin put in her book are actually like you can see pictures of them online. And I just I don't know. It just I really like it. And there's pictures of them online and they just look so cute together. And yeah, she's honestly like both of these, even
00:39:40
Speaker
Pamela, like she was very eccentric too, like with the feathers in her hair and like she also wore pants just because she could kind of thing. So definitely look them both up. And if we can remember, we'll try to post some pictures of them this week on our socials. I would suggest also looking up some of Pamela's other art like her watercolors because some of them are really cute. Really? Oh, I'm gonna throw them up.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, obviously, we've all seen the tarot deck. And if you haven't, go look at it. Like that entire deck is her art. So yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, these were fun. I love how we picked because I remember whenever we were trying to decide who we're going to be picking.
00:40:26
Speaker
You know, obviously we knew a lot. I mean, we didn't know everything about Pamela Coleman Smith, but we knew more than we, I mean, I didn't really know anything about Rosalind Norton. So like, I think it's just really cool that we both picked like, you know, kind of eccentric artist type women who are very powerful. And I just love that.
00:40:47
Speaker
You know, we've been doing that a lot when we cover the female occultist, we end up, because, you know, for our listeners, obviously, you don't know our process, but we just have a list. And so we'll just randomly be like, I'll do this one, you do this one. And they always are like somehow they always end up being like similar in certain ways, like paired perfectly.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like her female occultist episode and three times so far we have picked two people that compliment each other. So it's crazy. I love it. Yeah. But that's it.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:41:25
Speaker
Peace out Girl Scout.
00:41:39
Speaker
That's it for this episode of Get In Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft. You can find our source material for this episode linked in the show notes. If you love this episode, we would be forever thankful if you leave us a five-star review on wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you really love the show and want more Get In Loser content, check out our Supercast link provided in the show notes or search the Supercast website for Get In Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft.
00:42:03
Speaker
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