your little fingers

John Waters: Now the cursed air, UNTITLED (A CURSE). I think Hudson told me that when you ship it, you have to leave a space for the air, is that true?

Tom Friedman: Yeah.

JW: I love that. Was it a good witch or a bad witch?

TF: I found her through an occult bookstore, which was a very bizarre experience. One person that I called to ask to do this said, “If you affect, you will burn your little fingers.” I said, “What?” and she said, “If you affect, you will burn your little fingers.”

JW : What does that mean?

TF : I don’t know. I asked her what that meant and she said it again. So I figured I better hang up the phone.

Witchery - Witch Krieg

The Dunwich Horror

Crystallus - Phase Two: Nucleation

From the Shiny Sorceress belly blood crystals have fallen to Earth They are now lost within Earths cold crust. Matter is multiplying itself. The air is becoming saturated. The thickness of minerals that mingle under the Earth are starting to be sucked away. The saturation is becoming thicker and thicker. The process of crystallization has started to take place. It is starting to take over matter. Everything is undergoing crystallization. It is beautiful but it is suffocating. It will trap her within an infinite reflection of herself. Wandering in the landscape she looks for the shard broken off from The Shiny Sorceresses' belly.

Crystallus video piece by Katherine Anne Bauer. Currently on display at NYU Deutsches Haus.

http://katherineannebauer.blogspot.com/

miu miu - the woman dress

In this promotional film for Miu Miu, the female pop trio Au Revoir Simone play witches who transform Italian actress Maya Sansa into the object of her desire, a fantastic red dress. While becoming your own object of desire is perhaps the ultimate capitalistic fantasy, it's the impossibility of this transformation that aids the life cycle of consumer goods.

"The Woman Dress" is an example of how advertising promises exactly what the product can never deliver, it is the fantastic supplement to the consumer economy. In real life, you buy a dress you love, your desire is temporarily fulfilled, but then you desire something else, another new dress, and so on. If only you could, by way of a magical process, become what you want. "The Woman Dress" stages then a kind of supernatural end to the fashion industry.

skate witches

hand of glory

"The Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged, often specified as being the left (Latin: sinister) hand, or else, if the man were hanged for murder, the hand that "did the deed." According to old European beliefs, a candle made of the fat from a malefactor who died on the gallows, virgin wax, and Lapland sesame oil - lighted and placed (as if in a candlestick) in the Hand of Glory, which comes from the same man as the fat in the candle - would have rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented. The candle could only be put out with milk. (In another version the hair of the dead man is used as a wick, also the candle is said to give light only to the holder.) The Hand of Glory also purportedly had the power to unlock any door it came across." 

witches on film

legend of the witches

Slides taken by Stewart Ferrar for use on the cover of the LP Legend of the Witches. The photos include, from beginning to end, photos of Alex and Maxine Sanders, Ritual Tools, the First Degree Inititation, Cakes and Ale and Cord Magic.