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SPENCER KANSA&MARJORIE CAMERON |
Publication date tba
WORMWOOD
STAR
THE MAGICKAL LIFE AND ART
OF MARJORIE
CAMERON
In the first ever biography written about her, Wormwood Star traces the extraordinary life of the enigmatic artist Marjorie Cameron, one of the most fascinating figures to emerge from the American Underground art world and film scene.
Born in Belle Plain Iowa in 1922, Cameron’s uniqueness and talent as a natural born artist was evident to those around her early on in life. During World War 2 she served in the Women’s Navy and worked in Washington as an aide to the Joint Chiefs Of Staff. But it was after the War that her life really took off, when she met her husband Jack Parsons. By day Parsons was a brilliant rocket scientist, but by night he was Master of the Agape Lodge, a fraternal magical order, whose head was the most famous magician of the 20th century Aleister Crowley.
Gradually over the course of their marriage Parsons initiated Cameron into the occult sciences, and the biography offers a fresh perspective on her role in the infamous ‘Babalon Working’ magick rituals Parsons conducted with the future founder of Scientology L Ron Hubbard. Following Parsons death in 1952 from a chemical explosion, Cameron inherited her husband's magical mantle and embarked on a lifelong spiritual quest to fulfil his magical vision.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Cameron became a celebrated personality in California’s underground art world and film scene. In 1954 she starred in Kenneth Anger’s visual masterwork, 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome', stealing the show from her co-star Anais Nin. The budding filmmaker Curtis Harrington was so taken with Cameron, he made a film study dedicated to her artwork entitled, 'The Wormwood Star'. He then brought Cameron’s powerful and mysterious presence to bear on his evocative noir thriller, 'Night Tide', casting her alongside a young Dennis Hopper.
Cameron was an inspirational figure to the many artists and poets that congregated around Wallace Berman’s Semina scene, and in 1957 Berman’s show at the Ferus Gallery was shut down by LA’s vice squad due to the sexually charged nature of one of her drawings. Undaunted she continued to carve a unique and brilliant path as an artist, with many of her works depicting figures drawn from the elemental kingdom and astral plane.
A retrospective of Cameron’s work, entitled 'The Pearl Of Reprisal', was held at LA’s Barnsdall Art Park in 1989, and after her death some of her most admired pieces were included in the Reflections Of An New Aeon Exhibition at the Eleven Seven Gallery in Long Beach California. Cameron’s famous Peyote Vision drawing made its way into the Beat Culture And The New America retrospective held at the Whitney Museum in 1995. And in 2006, a profile of her work was featured in the critically lauded Semina Culture Exhibition. The following year an exhibition of her sketches and drawings was held at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York.
With so much of her life and work shrouded in mystery, Wormwood
Star sheds
new light on this most remarkable artist and elusive occult icon.
Author’s Biography:
Spencer Kansa has written for a wide variety of publications including Hustler UK, Mojo Magazine, Headpress, Vox, The NME and Hip Hop Connection. His interviews with Beat luminaries William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles and Herbert Huncke feature in Joe Ambrose book Chelsea Hotel Manhattan (Headpress). His photographs of William Burroughs adorn the cover and booklet of the Burroughs tribute Album File 10% Under Burroughs (Sub-Rosa Records) and also feature in David Buckley's David Bowie biography Strange Fascination (Virgin Books)
All Material on this page copyright © Spencer Kansa
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