The Magick Lantern Cycle is one of the essential bodies of work of the American avant-garde, made by one of its most eccentric characters. Raised in Hollywood, Kenneth Anger (born 1927) has spent his entire life both enthralled and appalled by the film industry. And while Hollywood is an important influence on Anger’s filmmaking, the philosophy of Magick, practiced by British occult master Aleister Crowley, is equally influential. Anger embraces Crowley’s interests, most notably the themes of transfiguration and transformation, and the films in The Magick Lantern Cycle are laden with occult symbolism: images of fire, water, and light. Anger’s flare for pageantry—the graceful, often trancelike movements of his actors on set—and his use of vivid colors and campy art direction are trademarks of his visual style. His editing is masterful and belies a debt to his cinematic hero Sergei Eisenstein. Scorpio Rising, which was named to the National Film Registry in 2022, is filled with counterculture iconography and mass media heroes, sharply exposing the death wish of American males. Anger described Scorpio Rising as “a death mirror held up to American society.