{"id":267,"date":"2004-09-20T03:57:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-20T03:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=267"},"modified":"2004-09-20T03:57:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-20T03:57:00","slug":"267","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=267","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

H\u00e4xan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Continuing our sporadic investigation of cinematic paganism, M. and I watched H\u00e4xan<\/em> (“Witches”), a 1922 silent Swedish film that is available subtitled in English as Witchcraft through the Ages<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n

Released just before Margaret Murray swayed English-speaking readers with her “survival of the Old Religion despite persecution” theory, this film reflects the “enlightened” outlook of the late 19th century: witchcraft was partly ecclesiastical prejudice and partly undiagnosed “hysteria.” <\/p>\n

In its own way, its pseudo-documentary approach commits a different set of blunders than did Murray, blaming the Catholic Church for witch persecutions, when, in fact, Church courts were milder (more likely to acquit, less likely to use torture) than were secular courts–and Protestants killed as many “witches” as did Catholics, maybe more. <\/p>\n

Parts are hilarious (the animal-demon costumes at the “sabbat”), while other parts are merely inexplicable (the two men dissecting a corpse–what was that all about?). <\/p>\n

One online critic writes<\/a>, “What makes H\u00e4xan memorable is [director\/actor Benjamin] Christensen’s remarkable quasi-documentary approach, which must have been awfully sophisticated stuff in 1922.”<\/p>\n

Maybe. Now, at best, it’s a Hallowe’en party movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H\u00e4xan Continuing our sporadic investigation of cinematic paganism, M. and I watched H\u00e4xan (“Witches”), a 1922 silent Swedish film that is available subtitled in English as Witchcraft through the Ages. Released just before Margaret Murray swayed English-speaking readers with her “survival of the Old Religion despite persecution” theory, this film reflects the “enlightened” outlook of […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-267","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":279,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=279","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":0},"title":"Snippets \u2022 Why am I\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 6, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Snippets \u2022 Why am I blogging about Pagan and magical themes in old movies (as I did here and here ) when Tanya Kryzwinska has the lot in her book A Skin for Dancing In: Possession, Witchcraft and Voodoo in Film? She characterizes H\u00e4xan, for instance, \"the first 'nunploitation' movie\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":586,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=586","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":1},"title":"1939 and All ThatJason Pitzl-Waters\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"1939 and All ThatJason Pitzl-Waters draws attention to a 2001 interview with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone recently re-published in the online zine The Wiccan-Pagan Times.Janet Farrar, who came to the Craft in the late 1960s, seems to dancing around a more skeptical position as regarding Gerald Gardner's finding a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9245,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9245","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":2},"title":"Our Salem Film Festival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Prompted by J. W. Ocker's A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts, M. and I held a little Salem film festival. (We skipped The Lords of Salem.) In order of creation, we watched these three movies:\u00a0 Three Sovereigns for Sarah (1985), Hocus Pocus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12980,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12980","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":3},"title":"How about Museum of Witchcraft Version 4.0?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"You can buy the former mill (built 1828) in Castletown, Isle of Man, that once housed housed Cecil Williamson and Gerald Gardner's \"Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft,\" whose name went through various permutations, even as its little restaurant went from being \"The Folklore Restaurant\" to \"The Witches' Kitchen.\" All\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Gerald Gardner\"","block_context":{"text":"Gerald Gardner","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=gerald-gardner"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tindle-web-prod.brightsites.co.uk\/tindle-static\/image\/2022\/06\/28\/11\/newFile.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tindle-web-prod.brightsites.co.uk\/tindle-static\/image\/2022\/06\/28\/11\/newFile.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tindle-web-prod.brightsites.co.uk\/tindle-static\/image\/2022\/06\/28\/11\/newFile.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7223,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7223","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":4},"title":"This is Not a Film for Your Wicca 101 Class","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"On 4 December 1969 a press party was held for a documentary film on Witchcraft, Legend of the Witches, directed by Malcolm Leigh. Among the media types attending was a magazine writer on assignment, a fifty-something man named Stewart Farrar, but that is another story. Legend of the Witches offers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1041,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1041","url_meta":{"origin":267,"position":5},"title":"Fooling the Cyber-Censors","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday I wrote a review of The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture, a collection of papers edited by Hannah Johnston and Peg Aloi, for the upcoming issue of The Pomegranate.Teen Witches, a fluid and constantly changing group, have been heavily dependent on the Internet, because they are\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","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=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}