Typefaces of the occult revival

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Man, Myth & Magic #1, January 1970; McCall’s, March 1970.

The announcement last week of the death of British character actor Geoffrey Bayldon prompted some discussion here about the typeface used for the titles of Bayldon’s TV series from the early 1970s, Catweazle. This was a humorous drama in which the actor portrayed a warlock transplanted by a time portal from the Norman era to the present day, a comic counterpart to another occult-themed series, Ace of Wands (1970–72). Being aimed at children, both Catweazle and Ace of Wands are at the lighter end of the great flourishing of occult-related media that runs in parallel with the rise and fall of psychedelic culture, a period roughly spanning the years 1965 to 1975. The two trends reflected and fed off each other; the hippie movement stimulated interest in the occult (Aleister Crowley is on the cover of Sgt Pepper) while giving to the commercial propagators of the supernatural a range of aesthetics lifted from the 19th century.

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Muller, 1972; TIME, June 1972.

Among the graphic signifiers is a small collection of typefaces from the Victorian or Edwardian eras, designs which vanished from sight after 1920 only to surface 50 years later in very different settings to their previous deployment. I’m always fascinated by the way context changes the perception of a typeface; the repurposing of Art Nouveau fonts—which hadn’t previously been associated with diabolism—to signify witchcraft or sorcery is a good example of this. In the case of the occult revival this was partly opportunism: the commercial application of post-psychedelic style made the previously untouchable trendy again, decoration and elaborate stylisation was no longer taboo. But it was also a solution to the problem of signifying the sorcerous with typography when there were no off-the-peg solutions as there were for, say, Westerns or stories about the Space Race. As well as carrying with them a flavour of old books, some of the more curious letterforms were reminiscent of the glyphs of magical alphabets which no doubt explains their popularity.

What follows is a chronological selection of the more striking examples (or my favourites…) which conveniently begins with Ringlet, the Catweazle font. With the trend being towards Art Nouveau you find popular Nouveau styles such as Arnold Bocklin also being used in the 1970s but I’ve avoided these in favour of the less common choices.


Ringlet (1882) by Hermann Ihlenburg

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Pall Mall, 1971.

Jullian’s landmark study of the Symbolist movement isn’t an occult text but it is a great favourite of mine whose original title—Esthètes et Magiciens—puts it in the right sphere. Inside, the author touches on the spiritual concerns of many of the artists which included Theosophy and fashionable Satanism.

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Duckworth, 1973.

Aleister Crowley is represented here with the first reprinting of his erotic poetry, produced in a limited run by the venerable London house of Duckworth.

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Rise Above Records, 2016.

Blood Ceremony are Canadians devoted to the occult rock of previous decades. Their presentation matches songs with titles like The Great God Pan and Morning Of The Magicians.


Rubens (1884) by John K. Rogers

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Rubens has long been a favourite of mine even though it gets used a great deal on horror novels and the like. Many Americans also regard it as “the Haunted Mansion font” owing to its use in Disney theme parks.

Peter Haining’s collection combined supernatural fiction with short non-fiction accounts of magical operations. The cover art is the full version of the drawing by Austin Osman Spare—The Elemental aka The Vampires are Coming—seen in detail on the cover of the first issue of Man, Myth & Magic.

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Coronet Books, 1972.


Eckmann (1900) by Otto Eckmann

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Pan Books, 1969.

Many of the examples in this post tend towards the exploitational (see below…) but Cavendish’s overview of occult theory and history is a serious study, even if the cover does beckon to the Dennis Wheatley readership. My mother was among the latter which no doubt explains why she had a copy of this paperback; in due course it found its way into my hands. Richard Cavendish was enough of an authority to be hired by Purnell as editor-in-chief of Man, Myth & Magic.


Siegfried (c. 1900) by Wilhelm Woellmer

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And speaking of which…Purnell offered their readership a sidereal start to 1971.

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Man, Myth and Magic, 1970.

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Heinemann, 1977.


Pretorian (c. 1900) by PM Shanks & Sons

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NEL, 1971.

This is where things shift from anthropology, history and children’s television to Satanic exploitation and hardcore porn. “Black magic” ceremonies in previous centuries were often a kind of orgiastic cosplay so it’s no surprise to find the same thing happening in the 20th century. New English Library dominated the British book world of the 1970s with a wide range of genre novels, as well as salaciously-packaged reprints of serious occult studies by Francis King and this volume by June Johns.

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Undated.

Sexual Witchcraft and The Devil Made Me Do It are two works whose pornographic nature means their origin remains obscure; nobody seems to have any information about the latter title.

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Undated.

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Penguin, 1975.

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Symbiosis by Demdike Stare. Modern Love, 2009.

Mancunian duo Demdike Stare hark back to the heyday of Ouija boards and witchcraft with sinister electronics and the monochrome art and design of Andy Votel. Pretorian is used on all their early releases.


De Vinne Ornamental (1900) by Nicholas J. Werner

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Dell, 1978.

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Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984.


Marschall (1905) by Wilhelm Woellmer

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Witchcraft magazine was a UK publication (dates unknown) whose revelatory stories ran alongside many photographs of naked ladies. There was a brief fad for this kind of thing, a diabolic counterpart to all those beefcake mags pretending to be devoted to body-building. Witchcraft did at least manage more than a single issue.

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Roberta (1962) by Robert Trogman

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Trogman’s type was based on a Belgian restaurant sign so this may be another Art Nouveau derivation. Not so the use to which it was put, however. Flaubert’s novel doesn’t feature any overt occultism (although there is a whole chapter of human sacrifice) but the cover is one of the first to establish Roberta as a signifier of the exotic/erotic .

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Berkley Medallion, 1966.

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The film equivalent of Witchcraft magazine from 1970. According to this review, Sex Rituals of the Occult also features some gay sex from the male performers, a rare thing in these boob-fests.

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Amicus Productions, 1971.


Davida (1965) by Louis Minott

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Davida is one of those typefaces from the 60s that was very popular in the following decade so it’s no surprise to find one or two occult titles using it. I’ve included it here for the way its style refers back to Ringlet, and for Abragail and Valaria’s book of recipes.

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Mattel, 1969.

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Coronet Communications, 1971.

Previously on { feuilleton }
MMM in IT
The Book of the Lost
The Occult Explosion
Forbidden volumes
The Sapphire Museum of Magic and Occultism
Occultism for kids

Occultism for kids

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My battered 1973 Gollancz hardback. Cover illustration by David Smee.

It may be all Harry Potter starter homes crowding the imaginative landscape these days but the lush fields of the early Seventies bred a peculiar brand of wizardry and wild romance, something I was reminded of recently by reviews of a new compilation of psychedelic singles (yes, another one), Real Life—Permanent Dreams on the Castle Communication label. Mention of a curio from the heady days of 1970, Tarot by Andrew Bown, summoned vague memories of a childrens’ television series, Ace of Wands, for which Tarot was the theme song. You can see the title sequence here and this clip compilation features the whole song plus trippy lyrics (“Velvet roofs, tattooed skies, patterns made from words…”). The wonderfully facetious TV Cream describes the series thus:

ACE OF WANDS (1970–72), THAMES TELEVISION. Jim-Morrison-alike boy magician Tarot (MICHAEL MACKENZIE) has adventures through history, for which read cheap studio set representing pyramid, cheap studio set representing Stonehenge and so on. DR WHO-style menace on a budget. Fought enemies such as Madame Midnight, Mr Stabs and Mama Doc, aided by an owl called Ozymandias (played by FRED THE OWL). Tarot cards and tarot phenomena abounded, much worthy roustabouts ensued. Prog-heavy title theme babbling – “Jet white dove/Snow black snake/Time has turned his face/From the edge of mystery” – singularly failed to assault the charts.

ace_of_wands.jpgI’ve mentioned before how magic and occultism were more popular at this time than they’ve probably ever been, and this flush of popularity, much of it coming from underground culture, managed to work its way into children’s television in a diluted form. Ace of Wands is easily the most baroque example of this, mixing the bell-bottom trendiness of Jason King with pulp plots given a psychedelic twist (hallucinogenic gases anyone?). Also from 1970 and far more down-to-earth (and, it should be said, more fun for kids) was Catweazle, written by Richard Carpenter and starring Geoffrey Bayldon. TV Cream has the details again:

CATWEAZLE (1970–71), LWT. Hairy tinker who can’t speak but who’s really an 11th Century magician (and who’s really GEOFFREY BAYLDON) tries to escape from some pissed off Norman soliders, jumps in a pond to hide and finds himself transported to Children’s Film Foundation-era Britain. Luckily there’s a posh (as always) boy on hand to explain all our modern day shit to him.

catweazle.jpgCatweazle quickly became the most popular kids’ progamme of its day and part of its attraction was the way in which Bayldon’s Norman time-traveller mistranslated modern technology as magic. So the telephone became a device called the “telling bone”, electricity was “electrickery” and so on. I had the first Catweazle annual which was an odd mixture of comic strips, text stories and articles about stage magicians with a smattering of genuine occult history.

Best of all for this Seventies kid was my favourite reading on the frequently dull Jackanory (“Ramshackle reading-is-fun relic wherein a Famous Person would sit on a chair with a pretend book and ponderously recount the contents of your local mobile library” says TV Cream) which one week had Ursula K Le Guin‘s A Wizard of Earthsea as its featured book. Try as I might, I’ve been unable to find the name of the actor who read this (black clothes, medieval chair) but I was knocked out by it. Years later the Earthsea cycle is still the only work of Le Guin’s I’ve been able to read, her science fiction seemed boring by comparison.

The inflated success of Harry Potter has had people casting about for JK Rowling’s influences over the past few years. A Wizard of Earthsea was first published in 1968 and also concerns a school of wizards, as do several other pre-HP novels. Rowling has acknowledged this although that acknowledgement hasn’t been loud or regular enough to appease a grouchy Le Guin. The Earthsea books are a lot shorter than the Potter door-stops and the first book at least is rather more sophisticated, reading equally well as a fantasy adventure for children and as a Jungian fable for adults with hints of Buddhist or Taoist philosophy. The characters are also notable for not being the Caucasians that most fantasy characters usually are, one of many details a recent TV adaptation (which Le Guin condemned) managed to ignore. It’s worth noting that JK Rowling is part of my generation (I’m 45, she’s 42) so she would have watched all this Seventies stuff herself. One of the reasons fantasy readers and writers (as opposed to snooty broadsheet critics) are often disappointed by the Potter juggernaut is that it could have been so much more considering the wealth of precedent that it draws upon. But then books rarely achieve this scale of popularity without being conservative and undemanding, Rowling’s work is merely the most recent example of this.

Le Guin spoiled the impact of her excellent first Earthsea book with several sequels of diminishing interest. A new animated film from Japan, Gedo Senki or Tales from Earthsea, based on the later works is released in the UK this month. The great British director Michael Powell had plans for an Earthsea adaptation scripted by Le Guin when he was director in residence at Francis Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios in 1980. Powell was great with fantasy (watch his Thief of Bagdad) so it’s a shame that nothing came of this. Ace of Wands is on DVD now and so is Catweazle. I can’t vouch for the former having much value beyond pure nostalgia but there’s plenty of clips from the latter at YouTube. Proceed with caution.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The art of Bob Pepper
Of Moons and Serpents
Austin Osman Spare