All language subtitles for The.Witch.of.Kings.Cross.2021.

Provided by explosiveskull
https://twitter.com/kaboomskull

Once upon a time,
there was a little girl

who wasn't afraid of the dark.

When she grew up,
she became an artist,

and people called her a witch.

She made them afraid,

and they were always watching
to see what she would do.

So she put on a hat,
and told them her story,

and gave them
something to watch.

Her name was Rosaleen Norton.

She was the Witch
of Kings Cross.

For the
first time in centuries,

a witch has written
a full confession,

a revelation of her
weird inhuman power.

Artist Rosaleen Norton
charged by police

for exhibiting
obscene paintings.

They were arrested,

they were thrown
in jail overnight.

They all have
a twist of the grotesque

or the bizarre.

It was provocative stuff.

I wouldn't call her
a surrealist by any stretch.

Although some of her practises

could certainly
be linked to that.

She's drawing on
the depths of her unconscious.

Accessed through trance.

Artist and lover
arrested after photographs

of bizarre sex acts.

One of the most
dramatic things

was the involvement
of Eugene Goossens,

who was knighted by the Queen.

World famous conductor

disgraced in
pornography scandal.

Roie lived
expressing herself sexually,

however she wanted.

Satanists
at Cross in weird ritual.

The witches sing,

"Satan is the lord
of the hunting horn,

and king of the Coven tree."

Well, she was an artist.

She was a performer.

And... she created herself,
she invented herself.

It's kind of a cliché to
describe her as an eccentric,

but I mean there's the
gold plaque in Kings Cross

where it says "genius or crank".

She was a
harmless sort of witch.

Especially as her
spells didn't work.

There's things
real and imaginary,

but I know in her environment

I felt like I was in a
sort of powerhouse.

Everybody wants to look and
find out a little bit more.

It is such a romantic
and threatening...

image,

the image of the witch.

"And so begins
my journal of E-Goetry.

In this journal I
shall write my secret

and real thoughts about myself.

It will be an orgy of dwelling
upon my own peculiarities,

which will be a mighty relief."

It's hard to know
whether she was a witch,

or if that was the thing that
she, as an artist, created.

"When Gavin Greenlees and I

hitchhiked from
Sydney to Melbourne,

it was with the purpose
of finding a gallery

to exhibit my work."

They hitchhiked
down there with a cat

called Geoffrey
stuffed in a bag.

Roie's artwork was exhibited

at the Rowden White Gallery
in 1949 in Melbourne.

It was actually
part of the library

at Melbourne University,

and it was quite a
prestigious little gallery.

That was her
first big exhibition.

They thought they'll just
have a show of her drawings;

they're a bit pagan,
they're a bit outrageous.

But they're not going to
cause any great drama.

This exhibition of her work,

which promised Roie
all of the attention

a young artist would be seeking,

in fact, backfired very badly.

Some of the viewers came in

and said this was stark
sensuality running riot

and things like that.

And then the penny
fell, the police came.

She was charged with
exhibiting indecent images.

And there was a
court case that ensued.

The Crown Prosecutor alleges

that work of this sort

could deprave and corrupt the
morals of those who saw them.

It also was extremely unusual;

it was the first prosecution

ever carried out
against a female artist.

It was the first prosecution
of that type in recent times.

"Miss Norton
said that she would leave it

to the public to judge her art."

There was a lot of sympathy,

but there was also a real danger

that she could be in
quite serious trouble.

And she took a public stand.

"Obscenity, like beauty,

is in the eye of the beholder."

Roie never,
ever apologised for herself.

She got up there and
she defended that art.

And she later
explained to the magistrates

that the panther is a
symbol of the dark night,

the unmanifest night,

the unmanifest potential
that everybody has.

So she didn't see it as a
rude or over sexual picture,

but it looked like a naked
woman having sex with an animal,

a raging animal.

And then in the
background there was a nun

on a crucifix giving
a bit of a wink.

So it was provocative stuff.

She also talked about
the fact that, yes,

these artworks
show people naked,

yes, these artworks
show occult practises.

And to top it all off she
opened her mouth and said,

"I participate in
this sort of activity,

and these are the
beings who visit me."

Roie was just
hitting every button

in terms of attracting negative
media attention to herself.

And what happened in 1949
showed the Australian press

that Rosaleen Norton
was really good fodder

to sell newspapers.

And it was the beginning of
the Witch of Kings Cross.

"Perhaps I'd
better begin at the beginning.

I was born at Dunedin,
New Zealand at 4 a.m.

during a violent thunderstorm."

"I have loved night
and storms all my life."

"Storms arouse in me an elated,
almost drunken sensation."

"Night is for me the time when
all my perceptions are alert,

when I feel most awake
and function best."

She said she was born
as a witch, I think.

That she was born on the
night of a thunderstorm.

She had pointed ears, she said.

And she had a kind of
blue birthmark somewhere.

So she took all this as a
sign that she was different.

"At seven years old,

two small blue marks
appeared on my left knee

and they are still there.

I have since learned

that they are among the
traditional witch marks.

I remember noticing them the
year we arrived in Australia."

Roie was born
into a very comfortable

middle class family.

Fairly conventional
upbringing.

Her two sisters were
conventional as well.

"My mother was
a highly emotional woman.

Any attempt at a
pleasant relationship

between us was doomed to fail."

Her dad was a really senior
figure in merchant shipping.

"I saw comparatively
little of my father

who was away at sea
for most of the time.

Incidentally, he was a
cousin of Vaughan Williams,

the composer, to whom he bore
a strong family resemblance.

In 1924, my family settled
in Australia at Lindfield,

a Sydney suburb where I lived
for the next ten years."

As a kid, for about
three years or four years,

she refused to
live in the house.

And she lived in a
tent in the backyard.

"As a child my chief aim

was to be left to
my own devices."

She liked being
outside in the dark

and she liked to have an
orb spider in the tent.

And she kept all sorts of

little critters in the tent

that obviously were
designed to keep people out,

because they were a bit scary.

You can see the rebel in her,

rebelling against Christianity,

rebelling against the mores of
society at such a young age.

"The onset of adolescence

often awakens the religious

as well as the sexual urge,

and this was so with me.

For some time,
I had been constantly aware

of a world of vast
mysterious powers."

"If the kingdom of Pan
had always been with me,

it had been mostly in the
background overlaid by reality."

"Now it had begun to emerge."

"My awareness grew
stronger and stronger,

that the tedious world of
childhood didn't really matter.

Because this held
the essence of all

that called to my inmost being."

Once Rosaleen Norton had
adopted this pagan outlook

as a teenager of 13,

living at Lindfield in a
very respectable house,

she made a commitment that
she was going to follow

these pagan forces
right through her life.

And as soon as
she could get out,

she wrote a note
and left it in the house,

and she headed for the city.

She studied at
East Sydney Tech,

where she was
encouraged by Rayner Hoff,

the famous sculptor.

Rayner Hoff, by all
accounts was, what's the term,

they called him a raging pagan.

And he was an odd influence
obviously over his students,

but he was adored by them.

She was a naughty student.

She didn't listen,

and she wasn't interested in
executing the perfect body.

What she was interested in
was interpreting the body.

"Hoff allowed
me to depart from routine

and spend my time at figure
drawing and composition."

Rayner Hoff had a grandness
that he gave the figure.

At the forefront was the
way of depicting the figure

almost god-like, and idealised,
and the spirit within.

"Hoff had been
in trouble with the church

over two sculptures he designed
for the Anzac War Memorial.

They were beautiful pieces,

and it was sad that
they were never made.

Apparently,
the image of a naked woman

on a public building was
far too controversial!"

The Catholic archbishop

has condemned the sculpture,

saying it is insulting to God.

It's a wonderful example
of how the smallest things

at that point in time could
anger the authorities,

but particularly the
use of any religious

or spiritual element within art.

"Assorted painters, poets,

writers of various sexes,

broke, talented, ambiguously
wedded to the arts and plonk,

came and went.

All our time seemed to be
spent working and drinking,

as well as begging,
borrowing, stealing,

and occasionally buying food."

I never saw Roie
cook anything.

I don't know what they ate.

I think they lived on cups
of tea out of tin mugs.

She would always
say "Have a cuppa?"

She would say, "Oh Christ
Eileen, I am something."

So that's how she spoke.

"Various rooms
and studies had elastic limits.

Strange drawings,
luggage, bottles or bodies

scattered about the floor.

Vignettes stand out in memory."

She did a bit of modelling.

"I posed for Norman Lindsay

as the figure on the bull."

She was influenced
by Norman Lindsay,

but not her subject matter.

Some people have
compared Rosaleen Norton

with Norman Lindsay.

But she always said
that Norman Lindsay

was an artist of the daytime.

They're fairly mainstream
figures of light.

And she said,
"I'm not like that.

I'm definitely an artist
from the dark side."

She was a creature of the night,

and she referred to
herself as a dark spirit.

Shall I tell you
the scandalous part?

Yes.

Roie told me that she lost
her virginity in Pakie's,

but she did it because
she was curious.

She was tired of being a virgin.

"I had a
boyfriend, Beresford.

World War Two had
started so we got married

before Beresford enlisted
and was sent to New Guinea."

He was away for
perhaps two years,

and it would have been an
extraordinary experience.

"Only one
thing ever makes me afraid."

"The vibrations
of human beings."

Peace is wonderful.

He came back from New Guinea

and they seem to have parted
company almost immediately.

"Eventually I decided

to experiment with
self-induced trance.

The idea being to induce an
abnormal state of consciousness.

I decided to apply psychic
stimulus to the sub-conscious.

I collected together a variety
of things, aromatic leaves,

wine, a lighted fire,
a mummified hoof.

I darkened the room and
tried to clear my mind

of all conscious thought.

My eyes would shut,
and I was merely aware

that I was drawing on a blank
sheet of paper in front of me.

I knew that somewhere in the
depths of the unconscious,

the individual would
contain in essence,

the accumulated
knowledge of mankind."

She believed that
the gods lived there,

in an inner world.

If she went into the inner
plains in trance state,

she could meet them halfway.

They would come
down from their heights

and she would rise up in trance,

and they would have dialogue.

And she could also base
some of her pictures

on those gods and goddesses.

So that's where she got
some of her imagery from.

"All through my trances,

as a recurrent motif is the
being that I know as the other.

It is familiar and as
near to me, as myself.

In fact, it seems to be a
complementary part of my self,

separate yet united with me."

She comes from
a very unique space

in the context
of Australian art.

She's most easily
placed into the genre

which is now being
called esoteric art,

which is artwork
which is concerned

with spiritual journey.

There have been
relatively few visionary artists

in Australia, and Roie
Norton would definitely be

the most prominent figure
of that style of art.

Some of the earliest
works of Roie Norton

are published in a little
magazine called Pertinent.

"Pertinent feels
that in Miss Rosaleen Norton,

there is an artist
worthy of comparison

with some of the
best Continental,

American and English
contemporaries."

Roie met Gavin Greenlees

at some point quite early on
when she moved to the Cross.

And he was a young
up and coming poet

who was publishing in magazines.

They both finished up writing

and creating for Pertinent.

He was a young man

who was regarded
as a brilliant child.

He was very talented too,

and interested in surrealism
and the inner world.

So they were a
natural combination.

Originally,
she was just a protector,

but later on they became lovers,

but there was a big age
difference between them.

He was a very slim person.

I would call him a spare
man - S-P-A-R, S-P-E-R,

not a spare man but a
thin man, spare in, mm.

Loose-limbed, flexible,
floating with the breeze,

he was like a dream
coming through.

Gavin was also homosexual,

and homosexuality was
illegal in Australia,

as was practising magic.

So they were, in a lot of ways,

social and legal refugees
who came together.

"My work was slowly

starting to get recognition.

I'd been showing in nightclubs
and cafes in Sydney.

I was part of a group
show in Adelaide

where art critics
praised my paintings.

It was time for
a solo exhibition

and Gavin had a connection
at Melbourne University."

Read all about it.

Up to that stage,
they'd been getting

some quite wonderful publicity.

She'd told the newspapers that
she did some of the paintings

while she was in a trance.

For whatever reason,
the media just loved it.

They absolutely lapped it up.

So what you
have in 1949 in Melbourne

is a media scandal.

Woman producing obscene
art, woman upsetting people.

Art taken out of galleries.

She won her case but
she didn't have much money

to go back to Sydney.

They got back eventually,

but she and Gavin had
great trouble getting back.

"Here I am
with a thousand pounds

worth of publicity,

and I can't sell a painting."

And it was at that phase they

then moved into
their Kings Cross life.

It was filled with coffee
shops that had different themes.

They were all a
little bit teeny tiny.

Poets doing poetry and it would
always be against society.

And it had a history,
Dobell and Drysdale,

all these great Australian
artists had lived there.

There was lots of
characters around the place.

Well, I suppose you'd
call them bohemian.

The mavericks,
the outcasts of society.

Artists, dancers, homosexuals,

transvestites, transsexuals.

Where jazz was happening,

where there was nightclubs,

where there was strippers
and sex stuff happening.

Obviously,
there was crime there as well.

The cafes were open all night,

and you could discuss,

you could play chess, you
could smoke, you could engage.

And that was the intellectual
environment that she craved.

It was an entire
neighbourhood of night people.

The night is a
world of possibilities,

and the night is a
world of opportunities.

And if you think of how harsh
the Australian sunlight is,

and how it kind of
bleaches everything out.

The darkness of
night is actually a time

when difference and
depth and perception

suddenly becomes more important.

On misty nights....
in Woolloomooloo,

it had this sort of
strange atmosphere.

Roie wrote a poem about it.

"Lights black
majesty, midnight sun,

lord of the wild
and living stars.

Soul of magic and
master of death,

panther of night, enfold me.

Take me dark shining one,

mingle my being with you.

Prowl in my spirit
with deep purring joy,

live in me,
giver of terror and ecstasy.

Touch me with
tongues of black fire.

Night, freakish night,

sets me free."

She's not scared of things,

she's not scared of the dark.

The dark is somewhere
where you can be safe.

Maybe when you think about
it, that's why people were,

the dominant culture was
so shocked by her work,

because she was quite
happy in a darkness.

Rosaleen and Gavin moved

into this decrepit three
storey terrace house,

cream and brown,
in Brougham Street.

It was an old house,
and in the front

were two beautiful big
palm trees leaping up.

There was always a cup of tea
and something that she had

and she was often
without food herself,

but she would
share what she had.

There was a cellar
underneath, a sort of an annex

at the back where Roie
and Gavin used to live.

And it was altogether
a rather nice place.

We loved it.

And it was definitely
a house of ill repute

as far as the police
were concerned.

There was an SP bookmaker there,

sly grog was sold
by the landlord.

"Overnight
party, Gavin was mad,

seeing the second
coming of Jesus Christ.

Hall covered in
blood one morning,

razor slashing from
upstairs ménage.

Tough bodgie type pulled gun,
shot hallstand to pieces."

"I never did
like that hallstand anyway."

It was actually
the habit of the police

to raid it on occasion,

and the preferred charge
of choice was vagrancy,

which was basically the crime

of not having enough
money to support yourself.

So they were
arrested for vagrancy.

"Wally read
the newspaper account

about our arrest,
and to get out of jail

we needed employment
within a fortnight."

Walter Glover had
quite good connections

with the printing industry.

He knew people
that could typeset,

he knew people who could bind.

He was a lovely man, but
a little bit of a spiv.

He always had an idea,
something new, something fresh,

something that was going to
make a quid here or there.

Walter Glover
put to them a proposition

that they should
produce a book together,

which he would publish.

It would showcase
Rosaleen's beautiful artwork

and Gavin's
transcendental poetry.

"For the
first time we had money.

We obtained enough
booze and drugs

to freely escape into
the world of the book."

Rosaleen had a
figure called Janicot,

who was her magical
ally and familiar.

And there's a wonderful
picture showing Janicot

peering over her shoulder,

where they're considering
how to go up and reach Pan.

"The Goat-God laughs:

Immortal joy is golden
lightning from his eyes.

Primal, ageless, wild and wise."

There's a figure
here called the Master,

which people could
easily construe

as a demonic or satanic picture.

If we look closer at this image,

it's really a figure of Pan.

He was her guardian spirit.

She's really implying
that he is the foundation

of the whole universe, the
foundation of all knowledge.

Pan is the god of life.

He is the god of reproduction.

Lilith comes from a
different tradition to Pan.

Lilith comes from
a Hebrew tradition.

It's a fantastic drawing

and it's absolutely
rich with symbolism.

We see Lilith has a little
horn along the top of her head,

so she's the horned goddess.

There's also the moon there
in the centre of the horn.

And of course, her hair's
writhing with snakes.

The Snake Goddess was
crucial to the Great Goddess.

The snake sloughed its skin,

and the snake is a symbol
of the circle of rebirth.

"Where Lilith is,

there is night and the
regions of darkness.

Eternity lives there,

and fathomless voids
are their secrets."

Lilith is
also highly sexualized.

Lilith loves flying in at
night, getting on top of men,

riding them, taking their energy

and their essence and
then flying off again.

So for Roie, Lilith
represented the sex drive

and the pleasures
of female freedom.

I think that was very
important for Roie,

because she was a
very sexualized woman.

The representations
of sexuality

and of the male figure with
an incredibly long penis.

Now, in earlier Neolithic
religions the penis

is a symbol of fertility.

Quite often the public
would have seen her drawings

of these figures
as pornographic,

not understanding anything
of the history of the body

and the way in which
sexual areas of the body

were once seen
to signify fertility,

and the continuation
of the group.

When we look at
Rosaleen's influences

I think we can say that the
main ones were the Kabbalah,

which the Jewish
mystical tradition.

And that has the
Tree of Life symbol,

and you ascend through the
spheres on the Tree of Life,

and that's your path of progress
as a spiritual initiate.

"Geburah, meaning strength.

Binah is understanding."

"Individuation" is a
really interesting picture,

because it refers
specifically to Carl Jung,

who coined the term.

What we see is the
ouroboros which is the snake

which is actually
devouring its own tail.

We have to devour one's
self to birth one's self

as a whole being.

The figure has
breasts as well as a penis,

so it's a composite figure.

And it was very obviously
heavily based then

on being female and male.

But when we actually work
in that archetypal space,

we talk about the feminine
and the masculine.

And both male and female have

all of these characteristics
within themselves.

Norton's work,
you could almost argue,

is a visual manifestation
of a lot of Jung's ideas.

"What do I mean
there by Archetypal self?

Do I mean my archetypal
self or the abstraction?"

She has the ability to move

from the literal
to the symbolic.

And like Jung would always say,

in the tension of the two
opposites is that numinous

or that mysterious third.

And I really feel all
her archetypes of self

are drawing the viewer

into what is this other
third self that is there.

There's one work
in particular which I love,

called "Lucifer and
the Goat of Mendes".

She said she would come across
Lucifer every now and again

but he would only appear
when he was good and ready,

she couldn't conjure
him or invoke him.

This particular experience
she had was quite visceral

and quite present,

and she embodied
it in that painting,

and she just got all of the
heat and the love and the danger

and everything just
right in that painting.

She just really caught it all.

And that's coming from an
experiential knowledge.

"Where Lucifer is,

the light that is
being in its essence.

And light that is different,
yet equal in clarity.

Light that is
absolute knowledge,

and light beyond name."

The book caused a controversy,

and of course,
the book was seized

and it led to a court case.

On August 27th, 1952

Walter Glover was
officially charged

with producing an
obscene publication.

The final ruling from
the obscenity case

was that the book
could be released

if two of the artworks in
the book were blacked out.

It was a tough
time to be an artist.

It was an even tougher
time to be a female artist.

It was an even tougher time

to be a female artist
painting spiritual themes.

"A life in my view,

makes an abstract
pattern in the round,

rather like a musical symphony,

wherein are themes
and variations,

counterpoint and harmony.

And sometimes
deliberate dissonance."

The book also
attracted the attention

of one Sir Eugene Goossens

who had come to Australia

to be the first
permanent conductor

of the Sydney
Symphony Orchestra.

She loved classical music,

especially Beethoven,
and Hector Berlioz.

Her favourite thing

was Hector Berlioz'
"Symphonie Fantastique".

Now, Sir Eugene Goossens

was the crème de la crème.

He was a giant of the art world.

He was a giant
of the music world.

And Sir Eugene Goossens
was courted by everyone

who was anyone
in Australian society.

Welcome, Sir Eugene!

Officially, he is the conductor

of the Sydney
Symphony Orchestra,

run by the Australian
Broadcasting Commission.

What people didn't
know about Sir Eugene Goossens

was that he was very much
interested in the occult.

Goossens was
really a pagan at heart.

He'd been really
interested in black magic

and mediaeval Goetia when
he was still in England.

He was English by birth,

although he was of
Belgian extraction.

Goossens finds the book,
probably at the end of 1952,

in a gallery bookshop
or an art bookshop,

we're not quite sure,

and he determines to
get in touch with her.

"I received
a letter from Goossens

praising the book.
Correspondence."

He wants a bit
more colour in his life.

Roie lives just down the
road in Brougham Street,

she loves drinking cups of tea.

"Eugene
Goossens' tentative suggestion

of an opera libretto by
Gavin and backdrops by me."

"Meeting. Second meeting."

And before you know it,

he's getting involved in
her sex magic rituals.

These were practises

that were not unique
to Rosaleen Norton.

Practitioners and magicians
like Aleister Crowley,

particularly, experienced
various forms of trance magic

where he would transcend

different states
of consciousness.

Crowley was a
very influential figure,

and sex magic was
central to his thinking.

The most
important contribution

that he made was
as a philosopher,

and as an occultist.

His maxim was "Do what thou wilt

shall be the whole of the law."

Which effectively
doesn't mean go off

and do whatever you want to do.

It's actually discovering what
your will is in the world.

And that one purpose that
you're here to achieve.

And then focus all one's
energy on doing that will.

"I do not
wish to propagate any cult,

even the witch cult,

change society, establish
a better world for others.

These things leave me
entirely indifferent.

I have what I prefer to
describe as a function.

The function is that
of focus and catalyst.

And this function is best served

by my performing
my own personal will.

And not caring a damn
about effects good or bad

on other people."

The idea of sex magic

is that one can
harness one's will

to effect change in the universe

through sacred sexuality,
essentially.

Roie and Gavin and
Goossens were all bisexual.

"I love
the erotic sense,

especially when it forms a
kind of undertone to life.

It is a continuous
voluptuous response

of all the senses to stimulate,

a kind of sexual awareness."

This is a strong
woman advocating

a form of women's liberation.

In the early 1950s in
a conservative country,

you can imagine how much that
must have horrified people,

especially as the population

was like 80% Christian,
or whatever.

So Christian
conservative culture

versus a strong sexually
active artistic woman

who identifies as a witch.

Roie lived
expressing herself sexually

however she wanted.

"The fallacy that
men are naturally polygamous

and women monogamous,

is belied by physiological
facts and ecology.

Nature intended women
to be polyandrous,

as evinced by the ability
of any normally sexed woman

to have several orgasms,

to any normally sexed man's one.

Satanists
at Cross in weird ritual.

A blonde
girl exposed a rotten core

of perversion in Kings Cross.

She spoke of black masses,

witches, sex orgies,
drugs and weird people.

The Witch
of Kings Cross, revealed.

It was the eve of
the 2nd of October

at Rosaleen Norton's birthday
party, and I was there.

And we had Cinzano Rossi,

and we had her favourite,
green ginger wine.

And mine, too.

I loved them both.

And we also stayed
awake all night.

The party began about 4
o'clock in the afternoon.

It continued on and on and on
until midnight, past midnight,

into the small
hours of the morning.

And then right down into 2
o'clock in the afternoon,

when there's a tramp,
tramp, tramp on stairs.

The coppers are coming.

So the coppers come in and
they make accusations

of a criminal offence.

They were charged with the
abominable crime of buggery.

And do you know, that's the
only crime in the whole book,

the law book, that has an
adjective describing it.

"A roll
of film had been stolen

from my house by
two foolish lads."

They started hawking
them around the newspapers.

"The Sun
newspaper called the vice squad

and Detective Trevenar
was on our case."

Detective Sergeant Trevenar,
oh, one word about him,

this was a man of bad will,
very bad will.

He was an agent for
the Roman church.

He wanted to burn her.

Now, Roie and Gavin
were hated by journalists

and they were
hated by the police.

Once the party had broken up,

Norton and Greenlees
has gone away.

The Sun reporter, Joe
Morrison, actually went in

and searched Norton's apartment,

which was obviously
completely illegal

and quite an
extraordinary action,

but took place nonetheless.

And in the course of doing that,

he found a small
cache of letters.

"My personal
letters from Goossens

were stolen from their
secret hiding place."

Unfortunately for
Goossens and Norton,

the letters were very
explicit in their content.

There was a lot of
sexual references

and a lot of occult references.

And it was immediately clear
that they were involved

in the practise of what's
known as sex magic.

The letters that
haven't been released

in any great detail, talk
about the magical relationship

between Goossens,
Norton and Gavin.

And the essence of it is that
they were very interested

in the idea of meeting

on what you could
call the astral plane.

Roie Norton could be
in touch with Goossens

when he was over in Europe.

They could all be
together performing

what you might
call an astral ritual.

"Consciousness changed

and I passed the
barriers of plane.

There I was in a different
part of the realm

performing functions impossible
to describe in human terms."

"I flitted and swooped
among great shapes.

They appeared to be
engrossed in something,

and I saw other shapes and
designs emanate from the realm,

into the dark void below,

where they blended
into new patterns

with those already there.

One of them shouted in a
great ringing golden voice."

"And the sound was visual."

So Goossens was always
going over to Europe.

So he would go to occult
bookshops in London,

he would go to rather
seedy places in Soho,

he would go to
dodgy art galleries.

And he'd come
back with all this stuff.

He came back with things

that were deemed
to be pornographic.

Goossens comes
back in to the country

and immediately his
bags are searched.

What Customs discover...

is, allegedly,
pornographic material.

There were
things that you'd call,

well,
lightweight pornography perhaps,

but I mean they
were not that dramatic.

There are ritual masks in there

and there are a few
dodgy photographs,

but nothing really,
really extreme.

And Goossens was
arrested at Sydney airport

by Customs for bringing
in prohibited goods.

The media had a field day,

because the media could allude
to whatever they wanted.

The mind of the Australian
reader can run riot.

"Trevenar was
obsessed with Gavin and I.

Unfortunately, Eugene was
caught in the crossfire."

Don't forget that
Goossens was knighted

by the Queen in 1955
for services to music.

He was a major figure in the
Sydney art and music world.

He was really a major icon.

His career
was ended immediately.

He very quickly
resigned from the ABC

and got on a plane
under a pseudonym

and went back to England.

He didn't live
very long after that.

She was very, very upset.

Very upset indeed.

And
did she talk about it?

Only to say to me that:

"Goossens does
not blame me for it.

Regardless of the rumours,

Goossens does
not blame me for it."

Roie, in a way,
was left by herself.

And it also further alienated
Norton from polite society.

She was well and truly
personae non grata now.

She was dangerous.

"I remember, but
time turned back upon itself

and curved another way."

"And I was lost, a phantom
from the future in the past.

The past, or was it the future?

I was wandering astray,
amid the maze of time

where there was
neither first nor last."

Witch hunt on artists.

Opening his address to the
jury, Norton's counsel said,

"In the olden days they
used to burn witches.

But there are still witch hunts

by the authorities
and by newspapers."

"Trevenar didn't give up.

He persisted with
the buggery charges

from the stolen photographs
from more than a year ago."

"Gavin and I
were taken to jail."

"I packed my bag for an
overnight stay in Long Bay Jail,

containing three prohibited
drugs and a banned book,

mercifully intercepted
later by my sister Cecily.

During a previous
aborted hearing,

I had been told to remove
all costume jewellery.

So I decided to overcome
this by wearing a dress

patterned with tigers,
one of my totems."

I got onto the stand,
and the lawyer says

"What did you see?

Would you have seen an
offence had it occurred?"

Of course I would have, yes,
I was all over the place.

It was a party, man.

And we were all drunk
and dexo-ed and so on.

That's how I was able to
stay awake all that time.

You know what dexos are?

Amphetamines.

Previous to that,
Detective Sergeant Trevenar

had made a fool of himself
in the witness box.

"When
Detective Trevenar was asked

to describe the
contents of the room,

he couldn't describe
anything else

but the altars at
each end of the room

and a painting of the God Pan.

He had to be asked, 'Was
there a bed? If so, where?'"

And the judge had said,

"Detective Trevenar, I'll
not have you carrying on

like a cheeky
bikie in my court."

"I smuggled in enough smokes,

eighteen, but forgot matches.

The second night I
made sure of matches,

but only three smokes."

Gavin, well he was
really unfit to plead.

He was halfway round the bend,

he was crazy on Dexedrine
most of the time.

A barrister told
a Quarter Sessions jury today

that a young man charged
with an unnatural offence

had been a youth of
promise, even of brilliance.

He stands in this dock today

as a man who carries the
taint of declared insanity.

Gavin Greenlees
had earlier been committed

to a psychiatric institution.

He was schizophrenic, he had
epileptic attacks as well.

If the
jury released Greenlees,

he would go back to Callan
Park as an insane person.

And the jury retired,
they came back and said

"Not guilty. Not guilty.
Not guilty. Not guilty."

All 12 of them.

And the judge said,

"Mr Greenlees and Miss Norton,

you are discharged without
stain on character."

Girl
artist, lover beat charge.

She smiled broadly

when the not guilty
verdict was announced.

Told she could leave,
she turned on her heel,

but turned back to touch
Greenlees affectionately

on the arm.

Gavin Greenlees
is one of the true victims

of Australian conservatism.

And what we find
with Gavin is that Roie

was the one force of
stability in his life,

and without her he didn't seem

to be able to function very
effectively in society.

Art works to be destroyed.

After an exhibition
at the Kashmir café

was raided by vice
squad detectives,

a court has ordered
that two paintings

by Rosaleen Norton
be burnt by police.

This was a truly
extraordinary occurrence.

I couldn't find any reference

to the judicially
sanctioned destruction

of art in Australia
prior to this.

Her exhibitions
were shut down,

her artwork was taken

and effectively destroyed
by the government.

The worst thing about
it was the art industry

did nothing about it.

No one seems
to have stood up for her.

She was really left
alone at that point in time,

which I think was pretty bad.

"I had noticed
about people's reactions

to my drawings.

They are inclined to
see themselves in them,

in the sense of
their own inner ideas

and preoccupations upon them."

We often scapegoat
and marginalise

those that bring our shadow
to the light to be integrated.

So something that is denied
or repressed within us,

that when we see
it in an artwork,

it's easier to
demonise that artist

and say that is
not reflective of us.

That is something that is
only to the individual.

But what we can see

is that we both have a
collective shadow as well,

and in those images what
we're seeing is images

that are of the other.

Of the us.

She is actually
painting something

that is within the collective
that the individual

has not yet had the
strength to look at

and to integrate
within themselves.

She was a totally
unique individual;

an artist, a radical,
an outsider.

And she was uncompromising.

She wasn't going
to give up her art

and what she believed in,

simply because the
police raided her shows

and tried to censor her
works and thoughts and so on.

So in that sense she
would have been a kind of,

what I call,
a monstrous feminine.

A larger than life
mythical female character

who struck fear, to some extent,

in the hearts of the average.

But people also
clamour for this,

because she crosses boundaries,

she's so interesting.

She had her own career
and she was an artist

and she lived according
to her own philosophy,

and she had relationships
with different men.

She threatened everything

that the sanctity of
the home stood for,

and I imagine there was
a strong element of that

in her demonization.

There was no doubt she
was made a scapegoat.

I think she was
so badly treated

and sensationalised
that by the late 1950's

she waged her own war
with the Australian media.

And she took the media
on, on her own terms.

And she fought back to all
the misrepresentations,

and she did it in
the most ironic way.

She embraced the stereotypical
image of the witch,

right down to the fact that
she posed for photographers

wearing a pointy hat.

Once she took them on,

the media didn't have any
more control over her,

she controlled the media.

What would
be the state of the world

if evil ruled?

Exactly what it is.

What is your
answer to the old Bible saying

that the devil is
a great deceiver?

That man created
the devil in his own image.

I am a witch.

I was born a witch.

The witchcraft aspects
that she gave to the media

were almost caricature.

She was a player, you know.

She was out to get
attention and she got it.

A big aspect of what Rosaleen
did was create herself.

And that's very,
very contemporary art.

Her real art was her.

In the name of the horned god,

above and below,

within and without, around
and about, here and there.

She brought a world of magic

and the occult with her,

and it was in her presence.

The spirits of the gods,
that they be with me,

and with that, which we are,

there and here,

and I drink, and you drink,
as you drink.

It takes a lot of courage
just to be Rosaleen Norton

and open the door and
walk out onto the street.

So when she was
going through the Cross,

she's used to
people attacking her.

And that would have hurt.

So she would have built
up all these defences

from a lifetime of
hurt and misunderstanding.

And that's why in some ways
she was probably scary.

This is Pied Percy.

Come on then, don't be nervous.

Hello.

Hello, sweetie.

He's a fine young up and
coming familiar because

some animals are,

I love nearly all animals,
actually,

some of them are
natural familiars

and others aren't.

This bloke is.

In these images
that were taken

at her sister's house,

without actually the
witch's personae there,

what I see is a woman
that is self-possessed.

There's no need
for the eyebrows,

there's no need for the fringe,

there's no need for the dress.

This is the example of someone

being a sovereign
unto one's self.

I rule myself.

Her work is best described

as a magical diary
of her experiences.

She is painting and drawing
with her own aesthetics

and her own language.

I mean the way that
she arranged figures

and the way that she
composed her colours

and everything
was something that

none of the artists of
her age even attempted.

Her art was her
journey, it was her religion,

it was how she got to
where she was going,

and how she
reflected her visions.

From my point of view,

the most interesting
art is the art

that makes people
stop and think,

that perhaps threatens us
to some extent in our views,

but certainly makes
us think differently.

And I'm sure that's
what her works did.

It is jarring art and it's
meant to be jarring art.

It's meant to be challenging.

That's the whole idea of it.

That's what the surrealists
were trying to do.

They were trying to rattle you;

they were trying to
challenge the viewer.

They, from the outset,

Breton said, "This is
not an artistic movement,

this is a revolution.

I want to actually start
a cultural revolution

through art."

And esoteric artists like Norton

were doing a similar revolution.

There's huge cultural shifts
in the mid-20th century.

There was an
opening up of culture.

Her work has been
seized and destroyed,

and within ten years you've got
all of this stuff happening.

That was a time when everyone
was looking at the occult.

"The true Fallen Angel

is the spirit of mankind."

As mankind becomes
more civilised

it increasingly assails nature,

who has no choice but to set
herself up as its adversary."

"Worship nature,
not the dollar."

She didn't ever
get the respect in her life

that she really deserved.

She started something
really important,

artistically, culturally.

She was a part of the
counterculture itself.

She was a key
part of that in a way

that maybe we haven't
really considered.

And the fact that people
don't really know who she was,

that's really sad, because
her work is so important.

Rosaleen
Norton would probably be

one of the most exciting
artists in Australia

that came from that period.

I think she was really
doing something exceptional

and something that could
have stood on a world stage

if it was really just given
the right kind of support

and education and context.

Not just in her age,
but in today's age.

Why I think we
should be taking

the importance of this now,

it's the rise of the
divine feminine.

I think it's not just
about saying well,

patriarchy has had its time
it's now back to matriarchy,

but definitely a
matrifocal society.

And I think her work is really
the uprising of the feminine

at an archetypal level,

and also the feminine as the
anima mundi, the world soul.

Can you hear me?

In the
deep scent of midnight.

In the secret colour,

above and beneath the spectrum,
is life.

Can you see me?

In the
wild laughter of chaos.

In the moonlit houses
and night lit streets

In the seed of secrets, the
still core of silence, is life.

Roie was a recluse
right through the '70s,

but in November 1978,
she became sick

and she went for
various medical tests.

Roie was
diagnosed with colon cancer

when she was in
her very early 60s.

And she had to be admitted
to St. Vincent's Hospital

in the hospice there,

where she was treated
by Roman Catholic nuns,

which was a great irony.

Here she was, the great
witch of Kings Cross

with crucifixes on the wall,

but I think she thought
it was a great hoot.

I came back to Sydney once

and I heard that Roie was
dying in the hospital.

And I wanted to go and see her,

but I didn't know
where that hospital was,

and I just didn't go.

And I regret it,

because I can imagine her lying
in a hospital bed and saying

"Oh Christ, Eileen,
lovely to see you."

Well,
she was a colourful character

and I'm glad I knew her.

Rosaleen
Norton's last words were,

"I came into this world bravely,

and I will leave
this world bravely".

Can you hear me?

I live in the green
blooded forest.

I live in the white
fire of powers.

I live in the scarlet
blossom of magic.

I live in infinity.

I live.

I live.

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