Meet Rosaleen Norton: Australia's Witch Queen

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. 

 

 

Meet the Lindsays

Norman Lindsay and Rose Soady photographed in his studio 

(Sydney, Australia, 1909)

 

  

I.

 

Someone from Down Under writes to say how pleased they were to see a reference to the Australian artist Norman Lindsay in a footnote to a recent post on D. H. Lawrence and Frieda Weekley [1]. 

 

The same correspondent goes on to persuasively make the case that, actually, Lindsay and his mistress and muse, Rose Soady - who went on to become his second wife and business mananger - deserve to have a post of their very own. 

 

And so, let's meet the Lindsays ... [2]  

 

 

II. 

 

Born in 1879, Norman Lindsay was one of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generation; a painter, sculptor, and cartoonist, he was also a novelist, children's writer, and art critic who - as an amateur boxer - knew how to use his fists if need be. 

 

I might be wrong, but I suspect that most readers will probably know of him and Rose thanks to the 1994 film Sirens, written and directed by John Duigan, starring Sam Neill as Lindsay and Pamela Rabe as Rose. 

 

Set during the interwar period and mostly filmed at what was the Lindsays' real life home in the Blue Mountains and is now the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, the movie gives a fictionalised insight into the kind of life led by Norman and Rose; one that might be described as pagan libertine (i.e., sexually liberated and at odds with conventional morality and societal norms) [3].  

 

 

III.

 

Despite his bohemian lifestyle and his battles with the forces of what Australians term wowserism (i.e., moral and social conservatism) [4], Lindsay was a vociferous Aussie nationalist and became a regular contributor to The Bulletin [5] at the height of its cultural influence, mixing his staunchly anti-modernist views as an art critic with reactionary and racist concerns to do with the red menace and yellow peril.

 

However, whilst Lindsay may have defended traditional art forms and white western culture on the one hand, he liked to cause controversy as an artist and author on the other. 

 

Thus, for example, his 1912 pen and ink drawing The Crucified Venus created a good deal of fuss when it was shown at the Society of Artists exhibition in Melbourne the following year [6]; just as his illustrated comic novel, Age of Consent (1938), which details the relationship between a middle-aged male painter and an adolescent girl was (briefly) banned in Australia [7].

 

For reasons probably best-known to himself, it amused Lindsay to adopt a larrikin [8] public persona and to produce work that to some was sexy, stylish, and subversive, but to others was salacious, sensational, and shocking. 

 

 

IV. 

 

But what about Rose? 

 

Born in 1885, she was first introduced to Lindsay in 1902, aged sixteen, and began modelling for him that same year, soon becoming his favourite siren (and lover). It was Rose who posed for The Crucified Venus in 1913. 

 

But Rose, with her fine pale skin, tousled black curls and curvaceous figure - as seen in the photo above - wasn't just a lovely-looker; she was also an intelligent, highly practical and efficient woman who eventually became Lindsay's business manager and oversaw the printing and sale of his etchings [9]. 

 

Rose and Lindsay were married in 1920 (two weeks before his divorce from his first wife, Katie, whom he married in 1900, became absolute) and this unconventional couple lived a long and happy life together: Rose died in 1978, aged 92; nine years after Lindsay, who died in 1969, aged 90.

 

Although a large body of his work is housed at the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum, many works are held in private and corporate collections and his art continues to climb in value. 

 

 

V. 

 

There are, I suppose, many things to admire about Norman Lindsay; hugely energetic and endlessly productive, he was a real monster of stamina whose etchings and drawings displayed great technical brilliance. 

 

I also like that this would-be Dionysian named Nietzsche as a key figure in his thinking, particularly when it came to the question of Christian moral values, which he believed constrained individual freedom unduly. In his early years, Lindsay undoubtedly exercised a liberating force within Australian culture. 

 

Unfortunately, there are many things to despise about Lindsay also; his virulent opposition to modernism for one thing; and the fact that he happily gave visual definition to the Bulletin's nationalism and racism is also something else that is not easy to overlook.        

 

The fact is, Lindsay was a bit of a shit and an extremely poor reader of Nietzsche; a fascist reactionary who attempted to construct a systematic philosophy of art that denied all social and political progress and asserted that the creative mind (masculine in character) was superior to the mass mind (essentially feminine) and had to be defended from attacks upon it which were orchestrated (wouldn't you know) by the Jews.

 

Frankly, I don't know how Rose put up with him! 

 

Fortunately, however, such tedious and pernicious stupidity - combining sexism, elitism, and antisemitism - was rejected by the majority of young Australian artists and writers, who found Lindsay's ideas as old-fashioned as his painting.  

 

 

Norman Lindsay: The Crucified Venus (pen and ink drawing, 1912) 

Norman Lindsay: Age of Consent (cover of the first American edition 1938)  

 

Notes

 

[1] See footnote [a] to the post 'All They Ever Wanted Was Everything' (9 June 2025): click here.  

 

[2] Obviously, I'm only able to provide the briefest of brief sketches here. For those who want to know more, I suggest they consult the shared entry on Lindsay and four of his siblings in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 10 (1986), which has been available to read on the Australian National University website since 2006: click here. 

       An entry on Rose Lindsay, by Ana Carden-Coyne, was published in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplement (2005) and has been online since 2006: click here. 

 

[3] Sirens had what might be described as a mixed critical reception. Hal Hinson, for example, writing in The Washington Post (11 March 1994) - click here - dismissed the vitalist philosophy concerning sex and art presented by the film as "somewhat dated and old hat, like warmed-over D. H. Lawrence".  

      To be fair, Hinson wasn't mistaken to make the connection between Lindsay and Lawrence. For like the latter, Lindsay attracted a mixture of acclaim and controversy for his work which was deemed by some to be not only obscene but  blasphemous. 

      Readers who would like a reminder (or first glimpse) of the movie, can click here to watch the official trailer. 

 

[4] Wowser is an Australian term that refers to someone who seeks to stop others from engaging in allegedly immoral behaviour, such as drinking, smoking, and gambling (i.e., having fun). Lindsay fought many battles with wowsers over the overtly erotic content of his work.

 

[5] Known as the 'bushman's bible', The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine based in Sydney and first published in 1880. It featured articles on politics, business, poetry, fiction and humour and exerted significant influence on Australian society and culture, promoting the idea of a national identity distinct from its British colonial origins. Lindsay and his brother Lionel joined the staff of the Bulletin in 1901 and his association with the publication - providing cartoons and illustrations for stories and editorial features - would last fifty years.

      D. H. Lawrence (and his fictional surrogate Richard Somers) was a regular reader during his short stay in Australia; see his novel Kangaroo (1923), or click here for a post from September of last year in which I mention the Bully. 

 

[6] The Crucified Venus is Lindsay's (less than subtle) attempt to expose Christianity as a sexually repressive force; a monk is shown nailing a naked woman to a tree, to the approval of a mob of exultant clerics and wowsers watching on. The drawing provoked such hostility from church figures and the press that it was removed from the exhibition, only to be reinstated a few days later after the president of the Society of Artists threatened to withdraw all the New South Wales paintings from the exhibition in protest at its removal.  

      Unfortunately, The Crucified Venus was later destroyed in a fire, although a preparatory pencil sketch is part of the collection at the Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum (NSW). 

 

[7] Age of Consent is one of the best known of Lindsay's novels, partly because it was made into a 1969 film of that title, directed by Michael Powell, and starring 60-year old James Mason as the painter and 22-year-old Helen Mirren (in her first credited screen role) as his teenaged model, muse, and mistress. Click here to watch the (profoundly pervy) trailer. 

      Age of Consent wasn't the first of Lindsay's books to attract the attention of the censors; Redheap (1930) was banned until 1958 and The Cautious Amorist (1933) was banned for twenty years. Readers who wish to know more, might care to see the blog post by Joan Bruce on the State Library of Queensland website (25 may 2017): click here.  

 

[8] Larrikin is an Australian term which in the 19th and early-20th centuries referred to a young urban hooligan or gang member, but which now refers to someone who may be a bit mischievous and fond of using foul-language, but essentially has a good heart; i.e., a bit of a rascal or scallyway who likes to lark about rather than cause serious mayhem. 

      It might be argued that the term punk, whilst not exactly synonymous, is closely related in meaning; larrikins and punks both, for example, like to defy convention and have a healthy disdain for the authorities.    

          

[9] In the 1960s, Rose compiled seven albums of hundreds of pencil sketches and proof etchings by Norman Lindsay; an almost complete record of his etchings from the early 1900s until the 1950s. 

      She also published two volumes of autobiography during this decade - Ma and Pa (1963) and Model Wife (1967) - which have since been republished as a single work entitled Rose Lindsay: A Model Life, ed. Lin Bloomfield (Odana Editions, 2001). 

 

 

All They Ever Wanted Was Everything: Notes on the Scandalous Affair of Mr Lawrence and Mrs Weekley

D. H. Lawrence and Frieda Weekley 

as imagined in 1912 [a] 

 

When in March 1912, Lawrence called upon Ernest Weekley, a professor of modern languages at Nottingham University College, in order to seek his help and advice with a proposed move to Germany, it was to prove a turning point in his life.

 

Not because of anything Weekley said or offered to do, but because he was introduced to Weekley's wife, Frieda; the woman he would marry two years later, having convinced her to leave her middle-aged husband and abandon her three young children and start a new life with him, a promising young writer. 

 

Not that she took much persuading, as this aristocratic German woman was bored out of her mind living a suburban middle-class lifestyle as wife and mother and had been having regular love affairs since 1905, including with Otto Gross, a drug-addicted psychoanalyst who was also fucking her sister, Else, at the time, and with Ernst Frick, an artist and anarchist.  

 

As John Worthen notes: "Frieda's affairs  appear to have satisfied her need for sex and self-determination" and they demonstrate how she was drawn to men "with lifestyles and purposes" very different from her husband's [b]. 

 

Thus, no suprise that she should immediately be attracted to Lawrence; a clever and unusual young man, seven years her junior. The story of them leaping into bed together within twenty minutes of first meeting whilst her husband busied himself in his study, her children played in the garden, and the servants looked the other way is, however, a myth [c].  

 

Probably, Frieda initially wanted Lawrence simply as another lover [d]. But, Lawrence being Lawrence, he wasn't going to be satisfied with that; like Pete Murphy, all he ever wanted was everything [e] and he regarded Mrs Weekley as "the most wonderful woman in all England" [f]. 

 

That is to say, the kind of woman his mother warned him against; one who was uninhibited and unconventional enough to let him fuck her whenever, wherever, and however he liked. Frieda had a punk indifference to bourgeois social norms and notions of right and wrong; she was carefree, spontaneous, and lived for the moment and if at times this shocked Lawrence, these were also qualities he admired and found deeply seductive.    

 

In May 1912, they travelled to Germany together; he was going to visit his cousin; she was going to join her father who was celebrating his 50th year in the army. They would be able to spend at least a week together and Lawrence believed that it was a make or break moment; that Frieda was going to inform Weekley of her affair. But this she didn't do - although she did tell her mother and sister Else about him at the first opportunity.  

 

Lawrence, meanwhile was kept out of the way of her father and put in a respectable family hotel, growing increasingly impatient and irritated with the entire situation: he wanted committment. 

 

But Mrs Weekly was far from ready to give such; "she loved Lawrence [...] and believed in him as an extraordinary person, but [...] he was in his way as unsuitable as Gross or Frick as a partner" [115], i.e., poor and probably a little insane - or, as Frieda's father described Lawrence when he did finally meet him, an ill-bred and penniless lout. 

 

However, things came to a head when Lawrence wrote to Weekley and declared his love for Frieda. Upon receiving Lawrence's letter - along with a telegram from his wife confirming the affair - he immediately wrote to declare the marriage over. To celebrate, Lawrence and Frieda went for a walk together and fucked in a dry ditch. Then he wrote a rather lovely poem for her: 'Bei Hennef', which can be read here.    

 

Of course, there was a lot of shit from all sides: Frieda's father threatened to "never see her again if she went off with Lawrence" [117]; Weekly became hysterical, threatening to kill himself and the children and calling her nasty names; and even Else "was convinced that her sister was behaving foolishly" [118].

 

But, eventually, after much struggling and painful conflict - I didn't know life was so hard - they come through and they are able to "transcend into some condition of blessedness" [g], leaving behind "the restraints of their old lives" [120], but not necessarily their old habits and there's kind of a sting in the tail of this illicit love story ... 

 

For just a few months later, whilst on a walking tour of southern Bavaria and the Austrian Tyrol, Frieda had sex with a 21-year-old Englishman called Harold Hobson - in a hay-hut - whilst Lawence was off searching for alpine plants. I'm not quite sure what I think of this and Lawrence bottled up any anger and hurt he may have experienced (later telling Frieda that it didn't matter). 

 

But Worthen offers the following analysis:

 

"She was asserting to Lawrence (and to herself) that she was not giving up her independence, despite making a new life with him [...] If Lawrence wanted her, then he had to accept that she would not always stay faithful; and she did not." [123]

  

 

Notes

 

[a] This (fake) image by Stephen Alexander uses a headshot of Lawrence from 1913, aged 27, and a much earlier headshot of Frieda, taken in 1901, aged 22. The bodies belong to the Australian artist Norman Lindsay (1879-1969) and the model Rose Soady (1885-1978), who was his principal muse and became Lindsay's second wife and business manager.   

      Like Lawrence, Lindsay attracted a mixture of acclaim and controversy for his work which often featured erotic pagan elements and was deemed by his critics to be not only obscene but anti-Christian. Adopting a larrikin public persona and affirming a libertine philosophy, Lindsay cheerfully fought against the strict moral conservativism of his times. Thus, I think this body swap is justified and appropriate (as well as amusing). 

      The lettering, of course, is taken from Jamie Reid's Fuck Forever design for the Sex Pistols and used to promote The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980), a silkscreen print of which can be viewed on artsy.net: click here. I have added this in order to reaffirm my idea of Lawrence as a punk.

 

[b] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 110. Future page references to this work will be give directly in the post.  

 

[c] According to Worthen, Lawrence "refused to have sex with Frieda in the Weekley's house" as that would have constituted "too gross a betrayal of Weekley, who had shown him nothing but kindness". See p. 111 of the work cited above. 

 

[d] Worthen writes that although Frieda was attracted to Lawrence - and eventually came to love him - "she had not the least intention of leaving her husband or children", ibid., p. 112.   

 

[e] Pete Murphy was the lead vocalist with the post-punk band Bauhaus and I'm referencing a song entitled 'All We Ever Wanted Was Everything', from the album The Sky's Gone Out (Beggars Banquet, 1982): click here.  

 

[f] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Vol, I, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 376. 

      In a letter written the following month to Edward Garnett (17 April 1912), Lawrence describes Mrs Weekley as ripping, splendid, and perfectly unconventional. See the above volume of letters, p. 384. 

 

[g] See 'The Argument' at the beginning of Look! We Have Come Though!, by D. H. Lawrence (Chatto & Windus, 1917). It can be found on p. 155 in volume I of the Cambridge Edition of The Poems (2013).

      Most of the poems in this collection were written during 1912-13 and tell the story of Lawrence's affair with Frieda during this period. It was not well received by the critics at the time, Lawrence claiming that the English press only spat on the work (and by implication his love for Frieda).

  

 

Scambled Eggs à la Deleuze & Guattari (A Reply to Simon Reynolds)

Deleuze and Guattari excitedly await their breakfast 

of œufs brouillés served on toast 

 

 

I. 

 

Scrambled eggs is a popular and easy to make dish in which the whites and yolks of eggs have been stirred, whisked, or beaten together in a bowl [1] - typically with butter or oil (sometimes water or milk) and various other ingredients and seasonings according to taste - and then heated until everything coagulates into a fluffy delight [2] which can, for example, be served on toast spread with Gentleman's Relish [3].  

 

There are, as one might imagine, many ways to prepare and serve scrambled eggs. 

 

But in his defence of things that extend nightmarishly along a straight line or progress logically from start to finish - there's a lot to be said for the linear - the LA-based English writer and cultural critic Simon Reynolds poses the $64,000 question: 

 

How would you go about making scrambled eggs in a rhizomatic way? [4]     

 

Here, with reference to the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I would like to address this question ...

 

 

II.  

I think what's important here is to remember that no matter how rhizomatically wacky Deleuze's thinking in collaboration with Guattari appears to be in Mille Plateaux (1980), he still accepts the principle of sufficient reason in some form or other; i.e., there's still a model of causation at work in his philosophy and even a plate of scrambled eggs prepared in a non-arborescent manner doesn't just randomly assemble itself. 

 

In other words, if something is true, there's something that makes it true; and if something is tasty, there's something that makes it tasty. Even if one abandons conventional recipes and classical cooking techniques, one still relies upon certain key ingredients that make a dish what it is (you can't make scrambled eggs without eggs - no matter what our vegan friends may choose to believe).  

 

For Deleuze and Guattari, the components of an egg - particularly the albumen and yolk - therefore remain crucial; they are the matter to be dramatically scrambled, just as the nucleus, cytoplasm, and numerous proteins constitute the differentiated content that is dynamically assembled in order to develop an egg as an egg in the first place.     

 

In brief: by developing a rhizomatic philosophy of difference and becoming, Deleuze and Guattari may not presuppose the identity of the thing that comes to be, nevertheless they do allow for the emergence of determinate identities and, indeed, finished dishes [5]. 

 

And so, it's perfectly possible to make scrambled eggs à la Deleuze and Guattari - provided you like your eggs served virtually and taken with a pinch of salt.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Some people prefer to crack the eggs directly into a hot pan and stir the whites and yolks as they cook, despite those who whip the eggs in a bowl first insisting that it produces a smooter texture. Personally, I'm as indifferent on this matter as on most other culinary disputes; so long as the result is tasty, then the Little Greek is free to use whichever method she likes (though not microwaving, obviously).  

 

[2] The French tend to value a creamier, silker, almost custard-like consistency to their œufs brouillés, but, as an Englishman, I go for a firmer, fluffier, slightly drier finish (but not to the point at which the scrambled eggs have lost their soft, fine texture and become rubbery).       

[3] This delicious savoury dish, much loved by those with a refined palate, is known as Scotch woodcock.    

 

[4] I'm quoting Reynold's from a comment added to a recent post on Torpedo the Ark to do with the fascism of the potato (7 June 2025): click here. 

      As well as authoring numerous essays and books, Reynold's is also a longtime (and brilliant) blogger and I would encourage readers to visit his blissblog by clicking here. 

 

[5] Deleuze and Guattari also famously develop Artaud's notion of the body without organs in this work, which, funnily enough, they also describe as an egg; albeit more in cosmic terms designating an intensive reality rather than something we might eat on toast.  

 

Better the Rhizomatic Fascism of the Potato Than the Arborescent Idealism of a Maoist

 

Smash the Fascism of the Potato! 

(SA/2025)

 

 

I. 

 

It took quite an effort on my part as a dendrophile to stop thinking (figuratively and politically) in a classical arborescent manner. That is to say, to stop thinking in what Deleuze and Guattari characterise as the "oldest, and weariest" [a] manner; deep-rooted and developing in accord with binary logic and a unitary principle of generation. 

 

For a long time, I resisted adopting a rhizomatic model of thought. That is to say, one which is absolutely different from the above and takes a wide diversity of forms; one which doesn't plot fixed points, but shoots lines of flight and ceaselessly establishes a multiplicity of connections; one which evolves at a subterranean level and never allows itself to be overcoded [b].  

 

Eventually, however, I came to understand that although many people "have a tree growing in their heads" [15] and pride themselves on their long-term memory, the brain itself is "much more a grass than a tree" [15] and that short-term memory - which "includes forgetting as a process" [16] - is the one that operates within Torpedo the Ark, producing a fragmented and discontinuous form of pop analysis and pink pantherism.  

 

Ultimately, as Deleuze and Guattari argue, arboresent systems with their hierarchical structures, centres of significance and subjectification, and organised long-term memories result in a sad form of writing and thinking, weighed down by the spirit of gravity - and who wants that, other than those idealists who continue to sit in the shade of Plato's tree.

 

 

II.

 

Someone who was never persuaded by Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatics, however, was Alain Badiou; a philosopher with a penchant for mathematics and Maoism, whose name is very rarely mentioned on this blog and who I essentially think of negatively, even if he was one of the founders of the faculty of philosophy at the Université de Paris VIII (Vincennes) [c]. 

 

Unlike his more postmodern colleagues, Badiou continued to believe in ideals of Universalism, Truth, and the revolutionary promise of Communism. Thus, no surprises that he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with his fellow professors whose philosophical works he considered decadent deviations from the pure model of scientific Marxism advanced by his mentor Louis Althusser.  

 

Badieu seemed to have a particular dislike for Gilles Deleuze [d] and his collaborator Félix Guattari, scornfully dismissing them as theoreticians of desire whose work on capitalism and schizophrenia was little more than anti-dialectical moralism. At best, said Badiou, their analysis in Anti-Oedipus (1972) merely affirms "the disaffected and self-serving politics of petit bourgeois youth; at worst, they are the 'hateful adversaries of all organized revolutionary politics'" [e].   

 

As for their thinking on the rhizome in a short text of this title published in 1976 which later served (in revised form) as the introduction to Mille Plateaux (1980) ... Well, that really triggered Badiou and in a review ludicrously entitled 'The Fascism of the Potato' [f] he describes Deleuze and Guattari as cunning monkeys and crooks who head a troupe of anti-Marxists and take their readers to be morons.    

  

Like Alan D. Schrift, I can't help wondering if Badiou was later embarrassed by the tone of his polemic:

 

"For there is at bottom a philosophical issue at work here, namely, whether one must follow the Marxist dialectical principle that 'One divides into two' or whether one should reject this dialectical binarism and offer in place of the One a multiplicity." [g]

 

Further, "revelations about Mao and Maoism in the years since this review was written make Badiou's unquestioning affirmation of Maoism and the Cultural Revolution problematic, to say the least" [h].

 

Push comes to shove: better the rhizomatic fascism of the potato than the arborescent idealism of a Maoist ...

 

Notes

 

[a] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, a Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (The Athlone Press, 1988), p. 5. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post. 

      It might be noted that an arborescent manner of thinking isn't just peculiar to dendrophiles; as Deleuze and Guattari point out, "the tree has dominated Western reality and all of Western thought, from botony to biology and anatomy, but also gnosiology, theology, ontology, all of philosophy ..." [18]. 

 

[b] I have attempted to summarise the principal characteristics of a rhizome, something which Deleuze and Guattari also do, insisting that, unlike trees or their roots, "the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature [...] The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple. [...] It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (mileau) from which it grows and which it overspills. [...] The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots" [21].  

      However, it's important to note that D&G are not attempting to establish opposing models that exist within a binary system. Thus, there are "knots of arborescence in rhizomes, and rhizomatic offshoots in roots" [20] and they strategically posit what appears to be a new dualism only in order to challenge all such thinking.  

 

[c] After the events of May '68, Paris VIII (Vincennes) was created to be a kind of bastion of countercultural thought. A committee, that included Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, set out to model Vincennes after MIT and Michel Foucault was appointed head of a philosophy department that included Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Judith Miller, and, later, Gilles Deleuze.  

 

[d] According to Eugene Wolters, Deleuze was constantly terrorised by Alain Badiou and his gang of Maoist supporters and labelled by them an enemy of the people. Not only did they monitor the political content of his lectures, but they sometimes actively disrupted his classes. 

      See the post entitled '13 Things You Didn’t Know About Deleuze and Guattari - Part III' (dated 2 July, 2013) on Wolters' Critical-Theory blog: click  here. Wolters has based his post on a study by François Dosse entitled Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives, trans. Deborah Glassman (Columbia University Press, 2010).

 

[e] Alan D. Schrift, review of Alain Badiou's The Adventure of French Philosophy, edited and trans. Bruno Bosteels (Verso, 2012), in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (8 January 2013): click here. 

 

[f] Badiou's 'The Fascism of the Potato' first appeared in French as 'Le fascisme de la pomme de terre' in La Situation actuelle sur le front de la philosophie (François Maspero, 1977), pp. 42-52. Badiou signed the text under the pseudonym Georges Peyrol. The Engish translation by Bruno Bosteels can be found in The Adventure of French Philosophy ... Part II, chapter 11 (pp. 191-201). 

      Whilst admitting that the frenzied polycentrism of Deleuze and Guattari is preferable to bourgeois liberalism, their refusal to acknowledge the importance of class struggle and the need for political unity and solidarity was not to his liking. Ultimately, he finds their thinking painfully false and too literary or aestheticised and he doesn't give a shit about the Pink Panther. 

[g] Alan D. Schrift, review of Alain Badiou's The Adventure of French Philosophy ... op. cit. 

 

[h] Ibid. 

 

On Board the Ship of Fools

 Fig. 1 Woodcut illustration by Albrecht Dürer for Sebastian Brandt's  

Das Narrenschiff (1494)  

 Fig. 2 Photo by Fabrizio Villa of Greta Thunberg with some of her crewmates 

 preparing to depart Italy for Gaza on a boat - the Madleen - organised by 

the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (June 2025)

 

 

Seeing "professional tantrum-thrower" [1] Greta Thunberg and her dysfunctional crew of activists aboard a sixty-foot sailboat heading across the rather lovely waters of the Mediterranean to Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade of this Palestinian enclave [2], I was reminded of Plato's ship of fools [3] ...  

  

For aboard the Madleen we encounter a group of entitled young people who, despite believing themselves to be politically clear-sighted and possessing an acute sense of hearing attuned to the cries of the oppressed, are actually cloth-eared and blind to reality; people whose knowledge and experience is limited, but who are certain that they are always in the right and therefore justified in shouting down anyone who disagrees with what they say.   

Now, to entrust moral leadership to those who shout the loudest and make the most extreme claims is, I would suggest, profoundly mistaken. 

 

And whilst Greta and her chums may not be wearing traditional jester's costume - having swapped multicoloured motley for the distinctly patterned black and white keffiyeh [4] - they are fools all the same - or useful idiots, as some might say - and theirs is less a humanitaran mission and more a game of larping for Palestine [5] (i.e., a game of role play, virtue signalling, and self-promotion that shamelessly exploits the very real suffering of the people of Gaza). 

 

Having said that, however, the voyage of fools carries great symbolic weight in the Western imagination and perhaps Foucault is right to suggest that the figure of the madman, or joker, or even an autistic and bipolar activist is not merely a ridiculous and marginal one, but one who "stands centre stage as the guardian of truth" [6].      

 

Perhaps, therefore, we should at times write in praise of folly ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A description provided by Julie Burchill in 'Greta Thunberg's pathetic Gaza voyage', The Spectator (4 June, 2025): click here. For those who would like to see Miss Thunberg speaking to the press prior to setting off on her voyage, click here.  

 

[2] The Madleen departed Catania, Sicily, on 1 June, 2025. The 1,250 mile journey is expected to take seven days. As well as the Swedish doom goblin, there are eleven other über-privileged activists on board and 64-year-old Irish actor Liam Cunningham. 

 

[3] See Book VI of Plato's Republic (c. 375 BC). 

      Without actually using the phrase 'ship of fools', Socrates speaks (allegorically) of a ship with a mutinous and foolhardy crew and readers are meant to take away the idea that sound governance always requires expert knowledge and strong leadership; that statecraft is essentially the same as seafaring. 

      The ship of fools analogy has been influential throughout history, appearing in various works of art and literature, often as a criticism of societal chaos and a lack of authority in difficult times. Sebastian Brandt's satirical work, Das Narrenschiff (1494), inspired by Plato's text, further extended the concept.

 

[4] Use of the keffiyeh as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and resistance dates back to the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine. Outside of the Middle East and North Africa, the keffiyeh has gained increasing popularity among activists and is widely considered to be a sign of solidarity with the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.  

 

[5] See the post of this title published on 8 may 2024: click here. 

 

[6] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, trans. Richard Howard (Tavistock Publications, 1967), p. 14. 

 

 

Weaving a Short Post on Textile Art (With Reference to the Work of Graham Hollick and Others)

Malcolm McLaren and Johnny Rotten as fabricated by Graham Hollick 

in the series Pop Formation (2025) [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Textile art includes a range of forms, including weaving, knitting, sewing, and embroidery. It has been practiced for many thousands of years and can be functional, decorative, or, indeed, functional and decorative. 

 

Historically, it's usually been seen as a form of folk art associated primarily with women and thus rather looked down upon by those within the (male-dominated) Academy; more craftwork than artwork; requiring skill, certainly, but lacking genius. 

 

I'm pleased to say that this crass distinction - a blatant form of both sexism and snobbery - has become increasingly untenable, thanks to contemporary artists such as Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin, who unapologetically adopt craft techniques and utilise textiles in their own practices [2].  

 

Today, then, we might say that textile art has undergone something of a renaissance. Not only is it now recognised by galleries and museums as worthy of exhibition space, but, by experimenting with new methods and materials, pioneering individuals have radically extended the boundaries of the medium [3].

 

Whether Graham Hollick might also be thought of as pioneering in the field of textile art is, however, debatable ... 

 

 

II.  

 

Hollick graduated from the Winchester School of Art with a degree in textiles and fashion, in 1988. 

 

He only took up rug hooking relatively recently, however, although has since made a name for himself with a traditional craft that essentially involves pulling loops of yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base with a crochet-type hook [4]. 

 

Drawing inspiration from various sources - including street art, found graphics, and the world of masks - Hollick had a solo exhibition entitled Pop Formation at The All Good Bookshop in March of this year, featuring portraits of several iconic figures from the world of music, including Bowie, Prince, Madonna, Boy George, and, as seen here, Messrs. McLaren & Rotten.

 

Now, whilst I'm pleased to see these latter two figures included in the exhibition - particularly Malcolm in his Duck Rock phase - I have to confess I'm a little taken aback by these meticulously rug-hooked renditions (roughly A4 in size and priced at £150).   

  

For without wishing to be ungenerous, it seems to me the works lack something, although I'm not sure what that is; perhaps it's the sex, style, and subversion that McLaren always insisted upon as vital to the punk aesthetic. 

 

Having said that, there is something of the make-do and can-do attitude to Hollick's work - as well as an element of almost humorous naïveté - that was crucial to the look (and politics) of punk. And so it just might be the case that Hollick has actually captured what matters most ...          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For more information on Graham Hollick and his work, visit his website - click here - or see his Instagram page: click here.

 

[2] Grayson Perry is celebrated for his large-scale tapestries which, whilst depicting scenes from contemporary life, draw on traditional techniques in their making. He has also created a series of embroidered works and sewn items with which he actively attempts to reclaim and elevate textile art. 

      Tracey Emin, meanwhile, is equally well-known for her quilts that often incorporate various personal items and form part of a larger self-narrative. 

      Looking back a bit further into art history, we can probably thank William Morris for being one of the first to challenge the distinction between art and craft in the mid-nineteenth century; for teaching us that the choice of paper we hang on our walls is just as important as our choice of pictures. 

 

[3] Such figures include the American artists Sheila Hicks and Nick Cave ... 

      The former is known for her innovative and experimental weavings and textile sculptures that incorporate distinctive colours, natural materials, and personal narratives. She is particularly fond of producing three-dimensional objects that entice viewers to reach out and touch them. Her pieces range in size from the miniscule to the monumental. 

    The latter, meanwhile, is best known for his Soundsuits; brightly-coloured sculptural costumes incorporating found objects and recycled materials, such as plastic buttons, twigs, feathers, and human hair. These outfits are sewn together and can either be worn, exhibited in a gallery, or even played like a musical instrument (thus the name).

      For more on both of the above - as well as eight other exciting textile artists - see Sarah Gottesman's essay 'Pioneering Textile Artists, from Sheila Hicks to Nick Cave', on artsy.net (31 October, 2016): click here. 

 

[4] Rug hooking is a form of textile art that is believed by some to have originated 200 years ago in the weaving mills of Yorkshire, England (others argue that it developed in the form we know today in North America). 

      Like many similar crafts, it has gained much greater respect in the art world today than in previous times and hookers, as they are known, have been encouraged to explore new materials, design patterns, and techniques. Perhaps the most famous practitioner is Canadian artist Nancy Edell, who introduced rug hooking into her work in the 1980s, using the medium to explore ideas of feminist utopia and the gendering of space.  

 

 

Post 2500: Let's Face the Music and Dance

 

 

This is published post number 2,500 [1]. 

 

And, according to those who like to engage in numerology (i.e., the pseudoscientific practice often associated with astrology that believes numbers to possess a mystical rather than merely mathematical significance), that's something I should be very excited by [2]. 

 

Not because it demonstrates a level of dedication and hard work over the last 13 years on my part, but because it's a powerful combination of the energies and vibrations of the numbers 2, 5, and 0 and so signifies that as an artiste d'assemblage - I don't like the term blogger - I have reached a stage of development that is nicely balanced, open to change, and on the path towards enlightenment.    

 

If only I focus on this angel number - which also happens to be a manifestation number (i.e., one holding infinite possibilities that will allow my dreams and desires to come true) - then all will be well and Torpedo the Ark can align with the higher power of the Universe (or what some term the Godforce).

 

Having said that - and here comes the catch - it's apparently up to me to make the most of this opportunity and if I fail to understand what the number 2,500 reveals or reject what it affords by wilfully seeking out discord rather than harmony, then there may be trouble ahead. 

 

I don't really care about that, however. As a punk provocateur, I'm a bit like Bobby Vinton and trouble is my middle name [3]. 

 

And so: 

 

While there's moonlight 

And music and love and romance, 

Let's face the music and dance [4]   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I stress the term published in order to indicate that there are in fact a number of unpublished posts currently in draft form, as well as posts that have been deleted by the Google censor-morons.

 

[2] See for example what Joanne Walmsley writes about the angel number 2,500 in a post dated 28 November 2015 on her Sacred Scribes website: click here. Ms. Walmsley is an astrologer, numerologist, psychic, and lightworker who guides people toward spiritual enlightenment and happiness by helping them connect to their higher selves.  

 

[3] 'Trouble Is My Middle Name' is a song written by Neval Nader and John Gluck Jr, and released by the Amercan teen idol Bobby Vinton, on the Epic label, in 1962. To listen on YouTube, click here.  

 

[4] Lyrics from the song 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' (1936), written by Irving Berlin for the film Follow the Fleet (1936), dir. Mark Sandrich, and starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and covered by numerous jazz artists ever since, including, perhaps most famously, Nat King Cole. 

      Click here to watch Astaire and Rogers do their thing and/or here to listen to Cole's rendition from the album Let's Face the Music! (Capitol Records, 1992). 

 

 

This post is for Gaelle with love on her birthday.   

 

 

Dancing a Sailor's Hornpipe with Legs & Co.

 

The girls of Legs & Co. on Blue Peter 

 (BBC Television, 14 Jan 1980) [1]

 

I.  

 

There are numerous variations of the hornpipe, both in terms of dance movements and musical composition. But, in one form or another, it has been performed in Great Britain and Ireland from at least the 16th century [2] until the present day, bringing great joy to one and all.  

 

Interestingly, however, although the hornpipe is today commonly associated with sailors, it didn't become firmly linked in the popular imagination with seamen and seafarers until after 1740, when a popular dancer famously performed a hornpipe dressed as a Jolly Jack Tar at Drury Lane Theatre. 

 

The fact that even members of the Royal Navy were soon copying this routine on board ship - with its famous movements mimicking nautical tasks such as hauling ropes, climbing the rigging, and looking out to sea - is yet another example of life imitating art [3]. 

 

Perhaps surprisingly, captain's would encourage - and sometimes even order - their men to dance the hornpipe, as the exercise kept them in good health when at sea and living in cramped conditions; just as a daily tot of rum kept their spirits up.  

 

 

II.  

'The Sailor's Hornpipe' is a traditional melody that some readers will know from the Last Night of the Proms, when it is played as part of Sir Henry Wood's Fantasia on British Sea Songs (1905). 

 

Others will recognise it from the Popeye cartoons, where it is usually played as the first part of the opening credits before then being segued into an instrumental version of Sammy Lerner's famous theme 'I'm Popeye the Sailor Man' (1933). 

 

And others will know it from the BBC children's show Blue Peter [4], whose famous signature tune is a hornpipe known by the title 'Barnacle Bill' and written by Herbert Ashworth-Hope, but which between 1979 and 1989 used Mike Oldfield's updated version entitled 'Blue Peter' [5].   

 

 

III. 

 

Now, as readers might probably guess: I don't much care for Mike Oldfield and his Tubular Bells (1973). Nor did I ever watch Blue Peter as a child, preferring the funkier ITV show Magpie [6]. 

 

However, I do like Legs & Co. ... 

 

And their interpretation of Oldfield's version of a sailor's hornpipe - seen first on Top of the Pops in December 1979 [click here] and then on Blue Peter in January 1980 [click here] - wearing extremely fetching sailor outfits that dispensed with trousers but included skimpy bright blue knickers to match with belts and neckerchiefs, ranks amongst their most memorable of performances. 

  

Notes

 

[1] The six girl dance troupe Legs & Co. is composed of Gill Clark, Lulu Cartwright, Patti Hammond, Pauline Peters, Rosie Hetherington, and Sue Menhenick. 

 

[2] The National Maritime Museum traces the hornpipe which, as we will see, hasn't always been associated with sailors and dancing on deck, all the way back to the late 14th century; there are references to the hornpie as instrument - from which the dance takes its name - in Chaucer, for example. See the museum's website: click here. 

 

[3] The idea of life imitating art is a philosophical position most famously put forward by Oscar Wilde in his essay 'The Decay of Lying (1891). It reverses Aristotle's notion of mimesis which argues that art is a representation of life. 

 

[4] Blue Peter is a long-running BBC children's television programme with a nautical title and theme. Due to its longevity, it has established itself as a significant part of British culture and heritage. 

 

[5] Mike Oldfield's version of the Blue Peter theme was the first time the original arrangement had changed since the programme began in 1958. Released as a single on Virgin Records in November 1979, it reached number 19 in the UK charts. For those who might be interested, the official video can be viewed here. 

 

[6] See the post entitled 'Reflections on Seeing a Magpie' (2 December 2024): click here. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on how watching girls dance makes happy (published 31 May 2015): click here.