{"id":240,"date":"2004-08-03T23:19:00","date_gmt":"2004-08-03T23:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=240"},"modified":"2014-02-28T20:09:43","modified_gmt":"2014-03-01T03:09:43","slug":"240","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=240","title":{"rendered":"The Rehabilitation of Rosaleen Norton"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>Back in the 1950s, the artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton<\/a> was<\/em> the witchcraft scene in Australia, at least according to some of the older books I have read. Her relationship<\/a> with Sir Eugene Goosens, conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, was a scandal, as were her paintings, some of which were confiscated as indecent.<\/p>\n

Now that scandal has achieved folkloric status<\/a>, and Norton’s memory is a local tourist attraction, as you may read here<\/a> (scroll to the bottom).<\/p>\n

Things have changed a little.<\/p>\n

Goosens, incidentally, worked hard for a new classical-music venue in Sydney; now the Sydney Opera House with its white “sails” is the tourism-poster icon of Australia. I think that it will be a while before there is a Rosaleen Norton retrospective exhibit in the lobby, but think of the connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the 1950s, the artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton was the witchcraft scene in Australia, at least according to some of the older books I have read. Her relationship with Sir Eugene Goosens, conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, was a scandal, as were her paintings, some of which were confiscated as indecent. Now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,19,29],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-australia","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-240","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11724,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11724","url_meta":{"origin":240,"position":0},"title":"Rosaleen Norton Documentary Film about to Release","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The Witch of Kings Cross, a documentary on the life of Australian artist and witch Rosaleen Norton (1917\u20131979), directed by Sonia Bible, is being premiered in Paris as part of L'Estrange Festival. Often described as Australia's \"most persecuted artist,\" Norton blended art and magic in a way often called \"demonic,\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/rosaleen-norton-pie.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4555,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4555","url_meta":{"origin":240,"position":1},"title":"The Bushranger and the Witches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A quirky story has been filtering out of Australia in bits and pieces. First came the discovery of the headless skeleton of Ned Kelly (1854\u20131880), the country's most infamous bushranger (outlaw) of the 19th century, which involved DNA matching and other modern techniques. Then his descendents appealed for whoever had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6017","url_meta":{"origin":240,"position":2},"title":"Nevil Drury 1947\u20132013","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 15, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Nevil Drury, well-known Australian writer and teacher on magical and esoteric topics, died yesterday at home of cancer and liver failure. I had the experience of working with not long ago when he did an article for The Pomegranate: the International Journal of Pagan Studies on \"The Magical Cosmology of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"drury","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/drury.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":928,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=928","url_meta":{"origin":240,"position":3},"title":"The Occult Experience","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In my office with the fast Ethernet connection, I downloaded the 1987 documentary The Occult Experience. It is available on various bittorent servers, such as here. (There was tie-in with Nevil Drury's 1987 book of the same name, I believe.)Lots of the film is actually older. Some footage goes back\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2741,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2741","url_meta":{"origin":240,"position":4},"title":"Ronald Hutton Responds to His Critics","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Even before his interview with Australian scholar\/blogger Caroline Tully, Ronald Hutton had written a lengthy article for The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies titled \"Writing the History of Witchcraft: A Personal View.\" It is now available as a free download from Equinox Publishing. In it, Professor Hutton discusses\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4038,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4038","url_meta":{"origin":240,"position":5},"title":"“The Occult Experience” of 1985","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A friend pointed me to the Vimeo page where you can see The Occult Experience (95 min.), an Australian television documentary from 1985, researched and co-produced by Nevill Drury, on witchcraftandprimitivepeopleandsatanismandexorcismandallkindsofspookystuff. Watching it was hard, because I kept turning away after encountering such portentous statements as \"The search for supernatural\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6310,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/6310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}