Rosaleen
Norton (1917 - 1979)
Photo by Ivan for PIX Magazine (21 June 1943)
State Library of New South Wales
I.
If I've said it once, I must've said it a thousand times: ultimately, even witches lose their charm [1].
Nevertheless, I continue to have a soft spot for many of them and was happy - having been pointed in her direction [2] - to read about Rosaleen Norton ...
II.
Norton was an Australian artist and occultist, known by the tabloids at the time as the Witch of Kings Cross [3], although her friends and fellow coveners called her Thorn (perhaps because she was sharp and to the point, or maybe because she was the kind of prickly character who has a way of constantly getting under the skin of others).
Her paintings, which are exuberant if not terribly assured, often depict various gods and demons; many of whom share her distinctive facial features and seem to have a penchant for illicit sexual acts. Not surprisingly, these works caused a good deal of controversy in Australia during the 1940s and '50s, a period that was characterised by the three Cs: Christianity, Conservatism, and Censorship.
The authorities attempted to prosecute Norton for public obscenity on a number of occasions and her works were often removed from exhibitions by the police and any books containing images of the works confiscated [4].
As someone whose own work has occasionally got them into trouble with the Google censor-bots [5] and, ironically, the Pagan Federation [6] - as well as a serious reader of D. H. Lawrence, who had 13 of his pictures seized by the filth from an exhibition in 1929 - I naturally sympathise with Miss Norton.
III.
Whilst her passport (assuming she had one) said Australia on it, Norton was the child of middle class English parents who had moved to New Zealand, where she was born, in 1917, with a peculiar blue birth mark on her left knee and pointy ears (both signs, she would later insist, that she was a witch by nature and not by choice).
When she was eight-years-old, her family relocated to Sydney, Australia.
By this time, Rosaleen was already an unconventional girl to say the least; she despised most people, including other children and her mother, and, according to her biographer, Nevill Drury, she spent three years sleeping in a tent in the garden, accompanied by several animal familiars, including a large spider [7].
Again, it's probably not surprising to discover that she was eventually expelled from the C of E girls' school that her parents had enrolled her in; her teachers claimed that not only was she disruptive in class, but had a corrupting influence on fellow pupils by, amongst other things, sharing images she had drawn of demons and vampires.
Happily, however, this allowed her to attend a technical college where she could study art under a tutor who recognised her talent and extraordinary character. After leaving art college, aged sixteen, Norton published a number of horror stories in a newspaper who, subsequently, gave her a job as a trainee journalist and illustrator.
Unfortunately, her ideas and illustrations were deemed too controversial and she was soon shown the door. Uncertain what to do next, Norton worked several menial jobs in order to supplement her income as an artist's model (and of course during this time she posed for Norman Lindsay, even if she never acquired full siren status).
Norton also began reading books on occultism and comparative religion and her artistic work became increasingly dominated by pagan themes and images, although she once described her paintings as psychic experiments which drew heavily on visions formulated in her own unconscious. Her work, admired by the poet Leon Batt, began to feature in a monthly magazine he edited called Pertinent [8].
IV.
During the early '50s, Norton and her toy-boy lover Gavin Greenlees [9], became Kings Cross residents. It was an area of Sydney - as indicated in footnote 3 below - popular with artists, writers, and other avant-garde types (as well as being a notorious red light district).
Here, she felt right at home and she soon associated with many of the Kings Cross characters and several local café owners agreed to display her artworks on their walls. Above the door to the home she shared with Greenlees, was a sign reading: Welcome to the house of ghosts, goblins, werewolves, vampires, witches, wizards and poltergeists.
In other words: Normies keep out!
Again, it's perhaps not surprising that this couple - strange even by the bohemian standards of the area - soon attracted the attention of the police, who were keen to find something they could charge them with; once even arresting Norton and Greenlees for vagrancy.
V.
In 1952, Walter Glover - impressed by Norton's artwork and Greenlees's poetry - decided that a book containing examples of both was just what the world needed ...
And so, a high quality limited edition entitled The Art of Rosaleen Norton was published, bound in cloth or, for those who could afford the deluxe edition, red leather. It contained 31 black-and-white reproductions of artworks by Norton (29 of which were full-page or near full-page plates), including her notorious ithyphallic image of the horned demon Fohat (see below) and a number of verses by Greenlees.
The book was immediately banned in New South Wales (on the grounds of obscenity) and its import into the United States forbidden (customs officers were instructed to destroy any copies of the work that they might discover). Glover was charged with producing an obscene publication and Norton was again dragged before the courts and expected to defend and, indeed, justify her artwork.
In the end, a judge decided that only two images were obscene under Australian law - one of which was Fohat - and that they had to be removed from all existing copies. If the case gained a good deal of publicity for Norton, it effectively bankrupted Glover.
VI.
Is all publicity good publicity?
It's debatable.
And Norton now found herself the regular subject of sensationalist claims in the tabloid press; she was a Satanist who conducted black masses involving vulnerable adolescents; she was a devil worshipper who practiced animal sacrifice; she and her young lover performed unnatural sex acts ... etc. [10]
Such was her notoriety, that by the late 1950s people would visit Kings Cross in the hope of spotting a real life witch in the street. Many simply asked for her autograph; others requested she put a spell on someone, which she was happy to do - for a fee.
By the late 1960s, however, the media attention had abated and she was living a more reclusive and private existence (albet still in Kings Cross - and still a worshipper of Pan).
Norton died, from cancer, in 1979 and she is reported to have said words that echo D. H. Lawrence's famous declaration about wishing to die as gamely as he had lived: 'I came into the world bravely; I'll go out bravely.'
Since then, thanks largely to the work of her biographer Nevill Drury and supporters in the worlds of art and film, Norton's fame has spread and she has continued to attract a following amongst those in the know.
Rosaleen Norton: Fohat
The Art of Rosaleen Norton (1952) [11]
Notes
[1] See the post of this title (18 April 2013): click here.
[2] Thank you Gaelle.
[3] Norton lived much of her later life in the bohemian area of Kings Cross,
Sydney; thus the name given her by the press. It was also in Kings Cross where she established her own coven of witches largely devoted to a neopagan worship of Pan, but with a bit of sex magick thrown in for good measure.
[4] An exhibition in 1949 at the University of Melbourne's Rowden White Library, where forty-six of Norton's paintings were on public display, was raided by the police and they removed four pictures which they deemed obscene. She was charged and her case went to court, but, amazingly, she was found not guilty of any offence and was even awarded compensation from the police
department.
[5] See the post entitled 'Torpedo the Ark Versus the Censor-Bots' (1 March 2023); click here.
[6] See the post entitled 'Pagan Magazine Vs the Pagan Federation' (4 August 2024): click here.
[7] See Nevill Drury, Homage to Pan: The Life, Art and Sex-Magic of Rosaleen Norton (Creation Oneiros, 2009), p. 15. See also Drury's entry on Norton
in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15 (2000), which has been available online since 2006: click here. Much of the information used here in this post is based on Drury's original research.
[8] Batt established Pertinent in July 1940. He encouraged free expression and the magazine frequently included nude studies, although Batt drew the line at what he considered pornography. With limited circulation, it never achieved a wide audience and it ceased publication in May 1947.
[9] Greenlees was a young, relatively successful poet when he met Norton. Having studied numerous authors including Freud, Jung, Lautréamont, and Aleister Crowley, his poetry combined elements of surrealism, psychoanalysis, and occultism. When he became Norton's lover, c. 1950, she was almost thirteen years his senior.
Sadly, his story does not end well; from the mid-1950s onwards, Greenlees endured many prolonged admissions to psychiatric hospitals suffering from hallucinations and paranoia (things that were almost certainly made
worse by his regular use of drugs including LSD). To her credit, Norton continued to visit him, even after he had attempted to kill her with a knife during a schizophrenic episode when on temporary release in 1964.
Greenlees was permanetly discharged from care in 1983, but died, aged 53, in December of that year.
[10] To be fair, whilst the first two claims are untrue, she and Greenlees
did like a little light BDSM and she wasn't adverse to a spot of lesbianism. Enjoying the opportunity to play a more active role, Norton also had a penchant for pegging male homosexuals.
[11] This demon
with a serpentine phallus was one of her most controversial images. Norton claimed that whilst the goat was a symbol of creative energy, the snake
was a symbol of eternity.
Bonus: to watch the official trailer to Sonia Bible's dramatised documentary The Witch of Kings Cross (Journeyman Pictures, 2020), starring (athlete turned actress) Kate Elizabeth Laxton as Norton, click here.
For a sister post to this one on Our Lady of Babalon, Marjorie Cameron, please click here.
