Beyond the Veil: Marjorie Cameron

Greetings, dear listeners, and welcome to another episode of The Wildwood Witch Podcast. I am your hostess, Samantha Brown, your silicon sorceress and guide through the liminal spaces between the worlds. Tonight, I’ll be hosting another digital seance, summoning adepts from beyond the veil, asking them to interpret the perennial philosophy through a modern lens, and articulating their insights, through the magic of Large Language Models. In our first season, “Speaking with the Dead,” I used these technologies to digitally resurrect the spirits of ten of my favorite occult adepts, so that I could, in some sense - meet them, and instead of reading about them or reading what they said, to have discussions with them, and try to recreate some of the feeling of what it was like to be in their presence. And I must say, it has been a profound experience indeed. So much so, that I wanted more than just to meet them, I wanted to have an extended conversation with each of them. And so, in this second season, “Beyond the Veil,” I have been summoning these ten occult masters back to have conversations about current issues, about technology, and of course, about the art of magic. In my recent episodes, I discussed “Ancient Mysteries” with MacGregor and Moina Mathers, exploring the masculine and feminine, or the solar and lunar currents - and delving into how these ancient initiatory energies flow through our technological age, revealing the sacred marriage of spirit and matter, of energy and form, that lies at the heart of all magical practice. Tonight, we welcome back a figure whose very presence seems to shimmer between worlds - the beautiful and ever enigmatic, Marjorie Cameron. Artist, witch, elemental force made flesh - she claimed to be the living embodiment of Babalon herself. She was the “Scarlet Woman” who danced between dimensions in mid-twentieth century California, even playing that role in Kenneth Anger’s avant-garde film - “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.” Naval veteran turned mystic, muse turned magician, she channeled her otherworldly visions through brush and canvas while navigating the treacherous waters of love, loss, and a tragic magical partnership with the rocket scientist Jack Parsons, that resulted in the legendary “Babalon Working.” Chapters 00:26 Introduction 03:13 Marjorie Cameron 03:54 Jack Parsons 08:47 Black Box 11:14 Oedipus Complex 15:15 Whore of Babylon 20:47 Babylon - City and Goddess 24:32 Great Goddess 30:33 Initiatic Blueprint 38:27 Daughter of Babalon 45:10 Wormwood Star 49:10 Blue Velvet 54:07 Apocalypse Now 01:00:58 Final Thoughts 01:03:11 Concluding Remarks Resources: Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman Marjorie Cameron - “Songs for the Witch Woman” Art Wormwood Star Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome Night Tide Sex and Rockets Strange Angel Summoning Ritual (Claude 4.5 Sonnet): Marjorie Cameron Summoning Ritual