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).