{"id":11670,"date":"2012-07-06T02:33:46","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T01:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=11670"},"modified":"2012-07-06T02:33:46","modified_gmt":"2012-07-06T01:33:46","slug":"the-occult-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/07\/06\/the-occult-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Occult Explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult01-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult01.jpg\" alt=\"occult01.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s a strange thing: having spent another working week sifting through scanned books at the Internet Archive what do I find but scans of album booklet art by Wilfried S\u00e4tty only a couple of days after writing about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/07\/03\/wilfried-satty-album-covers\/\">his album covers<\/a>. The album in question may be familiar to some readers but it was a new one to me. <em>The Occult Explosion<\/em> (1973) was a collection of recorded interviews with people such as Alan Watts and\u00a0Anton LaVey discussing subjects pertinent to the title, although the general tone is more in the direction of catch-all mysticism than occultism as such. Anton LaVey is there to pronounce about Satanism, of course, and the album also features two songs by British rock band Black Widow, one of which, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Wsr4nGdb1mg\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Come To The Sabbat<\/em><\/a>, has since achieved a kind of novelty notoriety. (There&#8217;s a nice video-feedback recording of them <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XMubbPb5Adk\" target=\"_blank\">playing the song live on Beat Club<\/a> in 1970.)<\/p>\n<p>Nat Freedland was the author of a book entitled <em>The Occult Explosion<\/em> for which the album acts as an audio appendix. This is all so typically 1970s: witchcraft, Satanism, rock music, yoga, Alan Watts, UFOs, ESP, and the whole thing packaged in S\u00e4tty&#8217;s post-psychedelia collages. The entire album is available at the Internet Archive: the recordings are <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.org\/details\/occult_explosion\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> while the badly-scanned insert pages are <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.org\/details\/occult_explosion_ocr\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. (There&#8217;s a better view of the cover art at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/bradley_loos\/4532015203\/\" target=\"_blank\">Flickr<\/a>.) Some of the more impressive pieces of S\u00e4tty&#8217;s art follow, work which has been buried for almost forty years. Just to add to the net of coincidences this week, the last of the pictures below borrows a demon from Gustave Dor\u00e9&#8217;s <em>Divine Comedy<\/em>, the same source as yesterday&#8217;s Rick Griffin poster.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult08.jpg\" alt=\"occult08.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult02-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult02.jpg\" alt=\"occult02.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult03-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult03.jpg\" alt=\"occult03.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult04-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult04.jpg\" alt=\"occult04.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult05-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult05.jpg\" alt=\"occult05.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult06-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult06.jpg\" alt=\"occult06.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult07-big.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/occult07.jpg\" alt=\"occult07.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/the-album-covers-archive\/\">The album covers archive<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/07\/03\/wilfried-satty-album-covers\/\">Wilfried S\u00e4tty album covers<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/07\/02\/nature-boy-jesper-ryom-and-wilfried-satty\/\">Nature Boy: Jesper Ryom and Wilfried S\u00e4tty<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2010\/11\/01\/wilfried-satty-artist-of-the-occult\/\">Wilfried S\u00e4tty: Artist of the occult<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2010\/10\/28\/illustrating-poe-4-wilfried-satty\/\">Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried S\u00e4tty<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So here&#8217;s a strange thing: having spent another working week sifting through scanned books at the Internet Archive what do I find but scans of album booklet art by Wilfried S\u00e4tty only a couple of days after writing about his album covers. The album in question may be familiar to some readers but it was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/07\/06\/the-occult-explosion\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Occult Explosion&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,1029,48,3,16],"tags":[3843,3844,3845,593,3836,3846,3839,102],"class_list":["post-11670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-collage","category-illustrators","category-music","category-occult","tag-alan-watts","tag-anton-lavey","tag-black-widow-group","tag-gustave-dore","tag-jesper-ryom","tag-nat-freedland","tag-rick-griffin","tag-wilfried-satty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-32e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}