Intent and Execution Im sure youve all heard of the phrase art imitates life.

Indeed, this notion seems entirely reasonable. There are innumerable mimetic examples throughout the history of literature, art, film and song which serve to illustrate this point. It was Oscar Wilde however, who argued life imitates art far more than art imitates life. Wilde held that art sets the aesthetic principles by which people perceive life. What is found in life and nature is not what is really there, but is that which artists have taught people to find there, through art. Today I intend to examine this concept from a historic, magical and scientific perspective and latterly within the context of the horror genre. Artistic expression is a product of both the conscious and unconscious mind. Whilst artistic concepts are often formed by objective intellectual analysis, frequently, they are just as likely to be inspired by unconscious aesthetic attraction. Id like to start by looking at some of the earliest recorded examples of artistic expression and considering how artistic ideas have shaped civilization throughout history. The Mesopotamian civilization is the worlds oldest known civilization, and was based in the area known today as Iraq. All forms of Mesopotamian artistic expression served a unified purpose consistent with the theocratic culture of the Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian people. Whether that be sculpture such as clay figurines of Gods like Marduk or Tiamat and demons like Lilith or Pazuzu, poetry like the Epic of Gilgamesh, or even architecture like the Ziggurats they constructed as dwelling places for the Gods. In Mesopotamian society art, magic and religion were considered inseparable from one another. In the ancient city of Uruk, clay tablets were unearthed inscribed with magical incantations, spells used in daily religious ritual. The inscription on these tablets was in cuneiform, the language of the Mesopotamians, an allegoric system of pictographs. In ancient Egypt also, art had a religious, magical and symbolic purpose. The word magic is used to translate the Egyptian term Heka, which meant the ability to make things happen by indirect means. Heka was believed to be a natural phenomenon, the force used to create the universe which the Gods employed to work their will. Humans could also use it however, and magical practices were closely intertwined with religion. Language was closely linked with Heka, to such a degree that Thoth, the God of writing, was sometimes said to be the inventor of Heka. Therefore magic frequently involved written or spoken incantations, a tradition which continues to this day. As with the Mesopotamian language system, the Egyptian language, hieroglyphics, was a heavily symbolic, pictorial system. In fact, all written language, no matter how complex, has its roots in symbolism, a heritage it shares with magic. The same can also be said of mathematics, the language of science. But whilst language and math are seen to serve distinct purposes, the practical applications of magical symbolism are not widely acknowledged.

So why did the practice of magic grow to attract such bad press, whilst religion, art and storytelling continue to be a staple part of our everyday existence? Why is it considered heretical? If magic doesnt work then surely its practitioners should be considered, at worst, delusional but harmless cranks. And if it doesnt work, why do certain groups, such as the Freemasons, currently employ adaptations of the same magical rituals performed in Egypt and Mesopotamia all those millennia ago? There is a technique in magic known as Sigilisation. This technique involves the creation of a pictorial representation of a written desire, which is then absorbed into the subconscious mind by staring at the symbol in a meditative trance state (in a similar manner to how mandalas are used in some Eastern religions). By absorbing the sigil into the subconscious, the original desire becomes disconnected from the many paradoxical obstacles our conscious mind places in the way of the attainment of our will, where the lust of effect competes with the antithetical desire not to succeed in order to reduce our fear of failure. Once the sigil is lost to the mind, its effects are said to manifest. In this sense we begin to see that magic is both a conscious and subconscious expression of intent. Perhaps the numerous reported examples of success with this type of magic go some way towards providing an explanation for the institutional use of magical symbols by organizations whose agendas incorporate strategies of both overt and covert control. In many philosophies the conscious mind is seen as a separate entity, existing in a realm not described by physical law. Some people claim that this idea gains support from the description of the physical world provided by quantum mechanics. This interpretation largely stems from the surprising results of experiments which conclusively proved that conscious observation of an experiment when conducted at the quantum level, altered the physically verifiable results. It would be difficult to expand upon this point given the current time constraints, but for further information on this subject, look up Thomas Youngs double slit experiment and the quantum mind body problem. The results of Youngs experiment, when performed with electrons at the quantum level suggest a surprising connection between consciousness and matter, very different from the idea of an objective reality often portrayed by classical physics and materialist philosophy. So if art is a form of both conscious and unconscious expression and consciousness affects matter, and magic involves a conscious and subconscious expression of intent, and writing is a symbolic form much like magic, we begin to see that life can imitate art in a far more direct way perhaps than Wilde ever meant. So lets take a look at some compelling evidence for my theory, from within the context of the horror genre.

My first example is The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Blattys story of demonic possession caused quite a commotion when it was released upon an unsuspecting public in 1973. Amidst the fanfare of the theatrical release and the astonishing reactions of theatre goers, stories began to appear in the press about a curse which haunted the production of the film. Interestingly, the films opening scenes feature the priest Father Merrin on the site of an archaeological dig in Iraq. Merrin unearths a statuette of the demon Pazuzu mentioned in my earlier section on Mesopotamian mythology. A total of 9 deaths have been associated with this film, but perhaps most curious of all, Linda Blair was said to have predicted one of these deaths, in a scene in which her character Regan appears in a trance and informs an astronaut, one of the guests at her mothers party Youre going to die up there. Whilst this line was delivered in reference to the astronauts profession, disturbingly, Regans declaration proved to be prophetic as the actor playing the astronaut died whilst the movie was still in production. In the few reported cases of demonic possession, it is said that the victims only begin to manifest such symptoms after they develop an awareness of the religious ritual of exorcism. I would like to play you some footage from a real life exorcism, the exorcism of Anneliese Michel, a Catholic girl from Germany, whose plight was eventually turned into a movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Whilst there were undoubtedly other factors at play here, I feel this clip serves as a powerful demonstration of the power of suggestion. For those of you that havent seen the film, Anneliese died as a result of the demands placed upon her body by the sixty seven exorcisms carried out. Another interesting Hollywood curse is that of the Poltergeist trilogy. In the 6 years it took to create these movies, 4 of the principal actors died. Dominique Dunn was murdered by her boyfriend, whilst Julian Beck, Will Sampson and Heather ORourke died of various different illnesses. During filming of the first Poltergeist movie, author James Kahn was in the process of writing the novelisation. The story features a number of heavy storms, an atmospheric staple of the horror genre. Whilst describing one such scene, he typed the words thunder and lightning ripped the sky. At that precise moment a real bolt of lightning struck his apartment, causing his air conditioner to explode and sending debris flying across the room into his back. This leads nicely to my final example, Richard Donners film about the coming of the Antichrist, the Omen. In one scene Patrick Troughtons priest is menaced by an abrupt storm, after discovering the true identity of Damian Thorn. As he searches for sanctuary inside a local church a bolt of lightning strikes a pike atop the roof, which topples from its perch and impales the cleric to the ground. Once again life appears to have imitated art. Whilst on his way to London to begin filming, Gregory Pecks plane was struck by lightning high above the Atlantic. Whilst this fact might not be considered unusual in isolation, the old proverb proved itself unreliable when the exact same thing happened a couple of weeks later. Executive producer Mace Neufields plane was also hit, as it flew in from Los Angeles.

Even more concerning are the events surrounding an accident involving another member of the crew, designer John Richardson. Richardson was in Holland working on another film mere months after the Omens release when on Friday the 13th August 1976 he was involved in a fatal head on collision with another vehicle. The deceased, Richardsons assistant Liz Moore, cut in half when the cars front wheel sliced through the chassis and into the passenger seat. Her death bears striking similarities to the decapitation of a photographer in the film played by David Warner, a death that Richardson had been instrumental in designing. As he regained consciousness, Richardson looked up to see a signpost, marking the junction where they crashed. It bore directions to an otherwise insignificant Dutch town, Ommen. Of course, there are many potential explanations for these events which preclude the existence of a psychokinetic or supernatural force. All three of the films used as examples in my presentation certainly have an unusual and compelling energy, but an energy strong enough to direct the form of matter? Some would argue that magical practices atrophied due to the development of the scientific method and our intellectual evolution, from a state of fallacious superstition to a more enlightened position of rational skepticism. And in fairness, the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg drew criticism from Albert Einstein who believed that their interpretation of the role of consciousness within the context of quantum mechanics was mystical and anti-scientific. Anyway, magic is not concerned with the scientific explanation of a phenomenon, but rather the reduplication of effect. In other words, who cares how or why something happens, as long as I can do it and keep on doing it. Which leads hopefully, to a kind of conclusion and an experiment of my own. I am currently writing a story, its about a creative writing group. After a lesson in which the students conduct their presentations, each member of the class is followed home by someone or something and killed, one by one. But Im sure youve no reason to worry, after all, its just a story.