Magical Adversary: Rosaleen Norton’s Art of Resistance

by

Lyndon Blue

Supervised by
Tanya Dalziell & Darren Jorgensen

Dissertation submitted to English and Cultural Studies in the School of Humanities

(cognate with History of Art in the School of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts)
at the University of Western Australia in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of
Bachelor of Arts with Honours

2015
2

I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research, written in the full knowledge of
what constitutes plagiarism and documented accordingly, and contains as its main content
work that has not previously been submitted for a degree at any university. I consent to the
publication of this document on the Internet via a UWA site.
 3

Abstract

Rosaleen Norton was an Australian artist, poet and Neopagan occultist who attracted outrage
and acclaim in the 1940s and 1950s for her unorthodox creative practice and radical
lifestyle. Eventually, she became known as “The Witch of King’s Cross” and is widely
remembered as a scandalous bohemian figure. This dissertation will argue that Norton’s
work can be considered a politically charged art of resistance, which challenged the
dominant paradigms and political hegemonies of the time. This can be understood, in part,
through Jacques Rancière’s notion of “dissensus” whereby a political subject intervenes in
accepted distributions of sensible materials. In engaging with certain creative traditions,
Norton embraced and reimagined existing art forms to political effect. Her interpretation of
the gothic horror genre became a vehicle to redeem the image of the occult artist, while her
use of Surrealist art tactics posed a challenge to a presiding rationalistic worldview.
Norton’s artwork can also be seen to challenge the primacy of Christian and patriarchal
social norms in mid-century Australia. Finally, Norton’s negotiation of her own public
representation (through the media and social engagement) can be read as a radical political
and aesthetic statement. Through this medium, the artist posed a resistance to cultural
expectations and reclaimed the image of the “Witch” to assert her agency and equality in
society. Ultimately, Norton’s practice espouses the values of knowledge and freedom,
resisting repression both passively and actively, through modes of literature, visual art and
lifestyle suffused with the occult.
4

Table of Contents

Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 3
Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... 4
List of Illustrations ......................................................................................................................... 5
Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 6
Chapter One: Rosaleen Norton and Creative Traditions ............................................................... 10
Chapter Two: Resistance to Hegemony in the work of Rosaleen Norton ..................................... 22
Chapter Three: Negotiating Public Image as an Art of Resistance ............................................... 40
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 50
Works Cited ................................................................................................................................... 54
 5

List of Illustrations

Figure 1: Rosaleen Norton in 19491 ............................................................................................... 6

Figures 2.1: Norman Lindsay’s Revel2 and 2.2: Norton’s Bacchanal 3......................................... 15
Figure 3.1: Aubrey Beardsley, The Dancer’s Reward4 and
Figure 3.2: Rosaleen Norton, The Borgias5 .................................................................................. 16
Figures 4.1: The Initiate6 and 4.2: The Rite of Baron Samedi7 ..................................................... 17
Figure 5: Rosaleen Norton, The Adversary8.................................................................................. 22
Figures 6.1: Witches’ Sabbath9 and 6.2: Black Magic10 ................................................................ 26
Figure 7: Lilith11 ............................................................................................................................ 34
Figure 8: Hecate12 ......................................................................................................................... 35
Figures 9.1: Esoteric Study (detail)13 and 9.2: Individuation14 ..................................................... 36
Figure 10: Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet15 .......................................................................................... 37
Figure 11: "Girl Artist Gets Themes When Hypnotised," Sydney Truth 1943 (Detail)16 ............ 43
Figures 12.1, 12.2 & 12.3: Scenes captured in 1955 for Australasian Post.17 ............................. 48
Figure 13: Lucifer18 ....................................................................................................................... 53

1
Source: "Kings Cross Witch […] Could Be Made in to a Film." Daily Telegraph. Web. Oct 10 2015.
2
Source: "Revel." Norman Lindsay Gallery and Museum. Web. Oct 10 2015.
3
Source: As at cit. 1.
4
Source: "The Dancer's Reward by Aubrey Beardsley." Paintings, Art in the Picture. Web. Oct 10 2015.
5
Source: Drury, Nevill, and School Of Humanities Social Sciences University Of Newcastle. "Rosaleen
Norton's Contribution to the Western Esoteric Tradition." 2008: U of Newcastle Research Higher
Degree Thesis. Web. Oct 10 2015.
6
Source: Johnson, Marguerite. "The Witch of King's Cross: Rosaleen Norton and the Australian
Media." Cultural Collections, UON Library. 12 Apr. 2010. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.
7
Source: "Rosaleen Norton's Kings Cross Coven." Nevill Drury. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
8
Source: Scan from The Art of Rosaleen Norton. 2nd ed. Sydney: Walter Glover, 1982. 47. Print.
9
Source: "Rosaleen Norton." Demonic Media. Web. 6 Sep. 2015.
10
Source: ibid.
11
Source: ibid.
12
Source: "Windows to the Sacred | Exhibition Listing." Buratti Fine Art. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
13
Source: "Rosaleen Norton." Deoxy Wiki. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.
14
Source: ibid.
15
Source: "Levi's Baphomet." Hermetic.com. Web. 10 Oct. 2015.
16
Source: "Girt Artist Gets Themes When Hypnotised." Truth [Sydney] 30 May 1943: 15. Web. 10 Oct 2015
<http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article168978306>.
17
Source: As at 5.
18
Source: "Rosaleen Norton, Artist." Visionaryart.net.au. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
6

Introduction

Figure 1: Rosaleen Norton in 1949.

Rosaleen Miriam Norton (1917-1979) was an Australian artist, poet and Neopagan
occultist. In esoteric circles, she was sometimes known as Thorn. Her friends knew her as
“Roie.” Today, Norton is largely remembered by her dramatic epithet, “The Witch of King’s
Cross,” a phrase which developed in the tabloid media in the mid-1950s and has preceded
her since. Her work emphasized supernatural themes, graphic sexuality and pagan
decadence, attracting public outrage and international bans at the time of its dissemination.
In addition, Norton’s own occult practices and bohemian lifestyle secured her reputation as
one of King Cross’ most notorious figures, an uncompromising, singular artist. The
construction of her image played out through a discursive engagement with the media;
 7

Norton alternately refuted and encouraged her public representation as an antisocial figure, a
threat to the status quo. This culminated in Norton’s construction as a Witch, which for a
time blighted her life and career. Eventually Norton would emphatically reclaim this
construction, choosing to embody the trope of the witch through the media, and thus orient
herself in radical opposition to dominant social paradigms.
On an unknown date in the 1940s, Rosaleen Norton wrote a poem-essay called “A
Vision.” Here, she describes serpent-like, radiant forms emerging from the cosmos and
infiltrating the foundations of the world. These forms are said to represent progressive
knowledge - recalling the serpent in Genesis’ tree of knowledge, and indeed, Norton equates
them with Lucifer, the “Light Bringer.”19 They act in opposition to close-mindedness, stale
tradition and repressive conservatism. The forms announce themselves in the text: “We are
the ranks of Adversary.”20
It is revealing that Norton chose to call this work “A Vision”: the double entendre is
powerful, presenting the imagery as both a supernatural apparition (as seen in a trance or
dream) and as a mental construction of one’s goals and ideals. The force Norton calls
“Adversary” takes on a portentous, emblematic quality – registering as a kind of mission
statement. Norton may not have been a political idealist in the sense of advocating a utopian
state or system. But if Norton had a vision, it was surely this: a politics of sustained
adversary, a resistance to the stagnation of ideas and society. It is significant that Norton
called herself “Thorn,” and at once point resolved to write an autobiography entitled Thorn
in the Flesh.21 This, she surely was – a sharply troubling intrusion in the flesh of society. For
Norton, this was more than impertinence. It was a political imperative.
Contemporary accounts of Norton’s career invariably allude to the controversy that
her work attracted; many go on to note that it overshadowed a nuanced practice, rooted in
eclectic mythology, psychoanalytic theory, trance ritual and occult metaphysics. Within this
context, several writers have contended that Norton’s provocative tendencies may have been
more than mere shock tactics, instead bearing political weight. Dr. Nevill Drury, Norton’s
most ardent chronicler, has written that “Rosaleen believed that magic had a political

19
Norton, Rosaleen. "A Vision." Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton (1982 Edition). Ed. Walter Glover.
Bondi Beach: Walter Glover, 1984. V-viii. Print. This edition is used throughout and abbreviated hereafter
to Norton, Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton.
20
ibid.
21
As noted in the non-fiction collection of the same name. Richmond, Keith. "Introduction." Norton,
Rosaleen. Thorn in the Flesh: A Grim-memoire. Teitan, 2009. Print. This edition is used throughout and
abbreviated hereafter to Norton, Thorn in the Flesh.
8

consequence.”22 Filmmaker Sonia Bible described Norton as being “at the vanguard of
feminism and the counter-culture revolution,” observing that “there are comments about
society in some of her major works, about censorship … She was certainly provocative and
communicating through her art. She held a mirror up to society and they didn’t like it.”23
These statements evince a general acknowledgement of Norton’s political potency, but little
academic attention has been paid to the manifest politics of Rosaleen Norton’s practice.
Certainly to date there has been no sustained attempt to systematically examine and analyse
the content of Norton’s work with a view to tracing the political stances articulated. This,
however, is precisely the project I propose to undertake over the coming pages.
I wish to consider the extent to which Norton’s practice – long since acknowledged
as “controversial” – can also be understood as a politically charged art of resistance; not
merely shocking or unorthodox, but underpinned by a coherent dissenting philosophy
regarding Norton’s local and global milieu. To do this is I will discuss the close details, and
overarching gestures, of Norton’s works. Attention must be paid to the context of their
production, as well as the lineages (aesthetic, spiritual and historical) from which they
descend. Meanwhile, there is value in considering Norton’s output from a range of
theoretical perspectives – including those proposed by Norton in her non-fiction writing, and
others expounded in the arena of critical discourse.
One can look to Jacques Rancière’s notion of dissensus as a means of thinking
through Norton’s work. For Rancière, politics and art share an investment in the distribution
of sensible materials.24 Within the modernist regime of aesthetics, a radical equality is
established because any political subject can have a stake in making or appreciating art.
Aesthetics creates opportunities to challenge dominant ‘distributions of the sensible’ by
producing work that defies acceptable modes of representation; this, in turn constitutes a
political act. The distribution of the sensible in Norton’s time was established according to
Christian and patriarchal priorities, whereby images of explicit sexuality, the supernatural,
altered consciousness and aberrant representations of gender were actively excluded from
the sensible landscape of the mainstream.

22
Drury, Nevill. "Rosaleen Norton in Context: Modern Magic and Women's Mysteries." Pan's Daughter: The
Strange World of Rosaleen Norton. Sydney, Australia: Collins Australia, 1988. 142. Print. This edition is
used throughout and abbreviated hereafter to Drury, Pan’s Daughter.
23
Burden, Zora. "Guest Post: Conversations with Sonia Bible about the Witch of Kings Cross (Part II). “The
Wild Hunt. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.
24
i.e. that which is perceptible by the senses and mind. See: Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics: The
Distribution of the Sensible. Trans. Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum, 2004. Print.
 9

One point may be made at the outset: if Rosaleen Norton was radical, she was not
formalistically radical. Unlike certain upheavals within modernism - for example free verse,
Dada and pure abstraction - Norton’s work does not mark a fundamental departure from the
formal approaches that preceded it. Rather, Norton engages elements of once-radical
traditions (such as gothic horror and surrealism) and innovates beyond their established
tendencies. In doing so, Norton performs a kind of metaphorical political gesture
(renouncing total conformity, even to avant-garde traditions), meanwhile investing existing
conventions with fresh political import. This will form the focus of my first chapter.
My second chapter will concentrate on ideas of power in society, and resistance
through art. Here, I will closely examine a range of Norton’s exemplary works, tracing
details through which Norton articulates certain political postures of resistance. These
postures are many and varied, but can nevertheless be constellated under several broad
headings. First I will discuss Rosaleen Norton’s work in relation to the Christian hegemony
within which it was produced; secondly, in relation to the gender politics of its time; thirdly,
I will consider Norton’s work in relation to post-Enlightenment scientific thought.
My final chapter will tackle a key observation: that Norton’s personal lifestyle,
spiritual beliefs and manifest art practice were fundamentally merged. While in some
general sense this is true of all artists, I will contend that for Norton the conventional
partitions between these domains were especially dissolved. This situation invites a reading
of a ‘life as performance’ – not in the sense of being uncommonly artificial, but rather in the
sense of being defined by art, aesthetically unified. Hereby one can consider the overarching
political gestures constituted in Norton many-faceted practice. Crucially this incorporates
Norton’s self-construction through the media, through art and non-fiction writing. This
section will explore how – through public and private constructions – Norton reclaimed the
identity of ‘Witch,’ in order to resist the oppressive tendencies she saw around her.
There is more at stake in discussing Rosaleen Norton’s politics than merely
augmenting an understanding of one relatively obscure Australian artist. In exploring the
political resistance at play in Norton’s work, one can appreciate more vividly the
intersections of power structures and alternative modes of artistic response in mid-century
Australia. More than a curious footnote in Sydney’s cultural history, Rosaleen Norton offers
a window onto the political import of occultism, and the radical power of art.
10

Chapter One: Rosaleen Norton and Creative Traditions

Rosaleen Norton’s body of work represents a dynamic relationship with tradition. On one
hand, the artist was drawn to the potency of long-standing folklore, esoteric iconography and
established modernist styles. On the other, she was an outspoken critic of tradition, which
she likened to a “jealous god” begetting “the bliss of ignorance,” and suppressing the
“infinite promise” of new possibilities.25 To argue for Norton’s work as a political art of
resistance by situating it within traditions may seem counterintuitive. Yet, as Simon J.
Bronner contends, “interaction with tradition [is] integral to the development of new artistic
expression,”26 and Norton’s mode of resistance relies on the synthesis of existing forms and
a non-conformist approach producing new, bold articulations. Norton’s relationship to
tradition engenders “resistance” in two capacities: firstly, in resisting the confines of
aesthetic traditions, pushing beyond their conventional bounds; secondly, by investing
traditions with fresh import, orienting them towards her own politics of dissent.
This chapter examines Norton’s relationship to tradition in terms of literary and
graphic exploits. The first section will focus on three stories published in Smith's Weekly in
1934 when Norton was sixteen. The second section will address Norton's visual works
featured in the 1952 publication The Art of Rosaleen Norton. This separation of media
provides an opportunity to investigate the distinct lineages of two modes of expression;
furthermore, it suggests the progression of Norton's relationship to tradition, by comparing
three very early works to a collection produced at the peak of her powers.

Three Macabre Stories within Literary tradition

The 1996 publication Three Macabre Stories compiles Norton’s early short fiction published
in Smith’s Weekly: “The Story of The Waxworks,” “The Painted Horror” and “Moon
Madness.” These stories introduce a vocabulary of imagery, themes, preoccupations and
influences that come to characterise Norton’s broader practice. At the heart of each is a
central artist-cum-occultist figure that descends into obsession and insanity; this narrative
conceit, I will argue, is in keeping with the gothic horror tradition. However, the narrative
resolutions in Norton’s stories mark a deviation from her literary inheritance, suggesting that
they are not merely studies in genre but also statements on occultism, creativity and morality

25
Norton, "A Vision." Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton. V-viii.
26
Bronner, Simon J. "Tradition." International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. Ed. William A. Darity, Jr.
Vol. 8. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2008. 420-422. Print.
 11

at large.
“The Story of The Waxworks” chronicles composer Carl Feldman and his two great
obsessions: writing a musical masterpiece, and admiring waxworks (he finds them grotesque
and compelling). Trapped in a phantasmic suburban museum one night, he is ensnared in a
“hellish saturnalia” of waxworks come to life; driven to insanity, he finally picks up a violin
and plays his wild, discordant masterpiece, before falling dead on his face. Upon reading the
story, Smith’s editor Frank Marien reportedly “congratulated himself upon having
‘discovered’ the next Edgar Allen Poe,”27 and indeed on the surface it appears to be classic
gothic horror. The mysterious, decrepit waxworks museum neatly substitutes the isolated
haunted mansion or dark chamber of gothic convention, transplanting its mood and character
to Norton’s own suburban Sydney context. There is a claustrophobic quality, and a sense of
impending doom, recalling Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” But more memorable is
Norton’s excited treatment of Feldman’s character, the celebration of his yearning for
creative innovation, and his unconscious recourse to the occult as a means of realizing his
creative potential. This quality constitutes a two-fold resistance to tradition. Firstly, it
elevates the significance of creating groundbreaking art by presenting Feldman as a martyr
of creative innovation. Secondly, this narrative emphasis itself marks an innovation: Norton
foregrounds a theme that, while compatible with the gothic mode, had never been central to
its character.
“The Painted Horror” further emphasizes this theme. Here, a young but suddenly
wizened painter named Peter Raynham asks his acquaintance Dr Stowell to assess whether
he is “mad.”28 Raynham explains how in recent months he had resolved to create a
remarkable exhibition that would be “entirely new” and “arouse interest.”29 He describes his
strange, all-consuming compulsion to paint a “life-sized ghoul or demon” and tells Stowell
how that night he will finish the painting, and fears for what might happen. Just as the doctor
dismisses Raynham’s concerns, we skip to a scene in which a friend of Stowell’s gossips
about the recently reported murder of the artist (he had been “torn to pieces, and chewed.”)
Stowell shrieks out guiltily – “I’ll never forgive myself for letting him go that night! I know

27
To quote Keith Richmond in Norton, Rosaleen, and Keith Richmond. "Introduction." Three Macabre
Stories. Francestown, N.H.: Typographeum, 1996. 12. Print.
28
Norton, Rosaleen. "The Painted Horror." Three Macabre Stories. Ed. Keith Richmond. Francestown, N.H.:
Typographeum, 1996. Print.
29
ibid.
12

what killed him!”30 Norton’s story patently recalls Oscar Wilde’s gothic classic The Picture
of Dorian Gray with its animistic and portentous portrait. But while Wilde attributes the
painting’s growing threat to Gray’s vanity and moral indiscretions, Norton frames
Raynham’s demise as a tragic consequence of a noble esoteric pursuit. Raynham’s creative
potency, manifested in the titular demon, overwhelms and destroys him. Yet it is the
sceptical doctor, the voice of science and reason, who is ultimately held to account for
Raynham’s death - not the intrepid esoteric artist himself.
“Moon Madness,” finally, tells of two sisters in their early twenties, Vivien and
Corrine Hagon, holidaying in an overgrown mansion. There is a lifelike marble sculpture of
a satyr-like flutist31 in its orchard, which frightens Corrine, but Vivien is transfixed. After
several nights of suspicious activity, Corinne dreams that Vivien is naked in the orchard with
the statue, a “great green stone” flaming in her hair.32 Awaking, she bolts down to the
clearing and indeed finds her sister there. Vivien beckons Corrine, then unexpectedly grabs
her wrists and pulls her close. She announces that it is “the night of the full moon – the night
of sacrifice”33 and bites into Corrine’s jugular. Corrine’s brief shriek is stifled, and her warm
blood flows over the statue’s feet.
Though Norton does not describe Vivien as a practitioner of the plastic arts, we see
the familiar image of the artist-occultist emerging through the character: Vivien fixates upon
an art object (the sculpture), with which she conducts an occult ritual – itself a vivid,
theatrical performance. While the text does not condone Vivien’s sororicide, nor does it
condemn her occult fixation. Vivien’s culpability is problematized by the suggestion she
may have lost all agency, with the pagan effigy instead possessing her: “for a moment it
seemed that the statue lived, and the living girl was a statue.”34 In any case the young
woman receives no diegetic retribution, and a mood of ambivalence prevails.
Here we might contrast Norton with Poe who, “in his female protagonist stories,
such as “Berenice,” “Morella,” and “Ligeia,” […] attributes brilliant minds to female
characters and then kills them, as if to emphasize the superior position of the narrator.”35

30
ibid.
31
Possibly an early reference to Norton’s favoured deity, Pan, who is typically depicted as a half-goat, half-
man holding a (thusly-named) pan-flute.
32
Norton, Rosaleen. "Moon Madness." Three Macabre Stories. Ed. Keith Richmond. Francestown, N.H.:
Typographeum, 1996. Print.
33
ibid.
34
ibid, 38.
35
Miller, Leanne, and Richard Spilman. "Edgar Allan Poe and the Politics of Perception." Abstract: ProQuest
 13

Vivien, whose mind is “brilliant” by being so attuned to supernatural forces, conversely

becomes powerful - as the instrument of death.
Perhaps “Moon Madness” compares more readily to H.P. Lovecraft’s style of gothic
horror, wherein “human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in
the vast cosmos-at-large,”36 and in which “forbidden knowledge” and the inner horrors of
the self, become key themes.37 Keith Richmond (who oversaw the publication of Three
Macabre Stories) has noted the Lovecraftian flavour of Norton’s fiction,38 while Kirsti
Sarmiala-Berger pins Lovecraft as a key influence on Norton, claiming “The Painted
Horror” was adapted from Lovecraft’s “The Picture” (1907) and that Norton’s illustration
Down There is a “visual interpretation of one of Lovecraft's most popular stories, 'The
Outsider' (1921).”39 Peter Levenda writes, “the dimensions explored by Lovecraft’s fevered
imagination continue to haunt and resonate in popular culture […] the brilliant Australian
artist Rosaleen Norton […] was another adept of the Darkly Splendid Worlds.”40 They may
all be right, yet “Moon Madness” also eschews many of Lovecraft’s favourite
preoccupations: oozing viscerate substances, protagonists haunted by guilt, extra-terrestrial
forces. There are no traces of Lovecraft’s “antiquarian writing style,” or his central interests
in “unwholesome survival” and “oneiric objectivism.”41 If the influence is discernible,
Norton is hardly embracing the Lovecraftian tradition wholesale.
Throughout Three Macabre Stories one can trace an important deviation from the
works of Poe and other antecedents: Norton’s treatment of doomed protagonists, whom she
portrays as innocent esoteric explorers turned victims of circumstance. Through this
deviation Norton begins to redeem the figure of the occultist and to question the presumed

Dissertations, 2007. N. pag. Print.

36
Lovecraft, H.P. “Letter to Farnsworth Wrigth (July 27, 1927).” Selected Letters 1925–1929. Sauk City,
Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1968. 150. Print.
37
Burleson, Donald R. "On Lovecraft's Themes: Touching the Glass." An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial
Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft. Ed. David E. Schulz. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP,
1991. Print.
38
Monash University Library, Richard Overell, and Keith Richmond. The Occult: An Exhibition of Material
From the Monash University Library Rare Book Collection 4 June -24 July 1998. Clayton: Monash
University Library, 1998. Print.
39
Sarmiala-Berger, Kirsti. "Rosaleen Norton: A Painter of Occult and Mystical Pictures." Overland. 2001: 59-
63. Print.
40
Levenda, Peter. The Dark Lord: H.P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic. Lake
Worth: Ibis, 2013. 8. Print.
41
The last point refers to the questioning of the dream/reality dichotomy. Burleson, Donald R. "On Lovecraft's
Themes: Touching the Glass." An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of
H.P. Lovecraft. Ed. David E. Schulz. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1991. Print.
14

immorality of occult and demonic forces. This early creative trend marks an embryonic non-
conformist stance, which resists the anti-occultist moralizing of Christianity and western
society at a large. It signals a posture of resistance that would re-emerge with audacious
clarity in Norton’s later work.

The Art of Rosaleen Norton within Visual Traditions

In her anonymous introduction to The Art of Rosaleen Norton,42 the artist thoughtfully
discusses reference points for her own graphic work. Norton considers her style against
specific artists to whom she had been publicly compared, and continues by considering
whether her approach might be representative of Cubism, Vorticism and Surrealism. The
passage both obfuscates and reveals parallels between Norton’s work and existing,
influential forms; ultimately it offers an entry point for considering Norton’s engagement
with the art that preceded her, and how she may have mobilised certain influences towards
her own art of resistance.
Norton notes that “critics and commentators”43 had likened her work to that of
William Blake, Aubrey Beardsley and Norman Lindsay. Immediately she derides these
comparisons as “laziness,” saying “technically they are totally dissimilar.”44 Norton denies
she is “any artist's ‘disciple,’”45 which may be fair - nevertheless, the comparisons are not
unfounded. In Norton’s work one recognizes Blake’s tendency to visualize an eclectic
personal mythology, and both artists favour certain imagery: airborne human figures
radiating divine light; supernatural beasts and ancient deities; warping, lyrical compositions.
Norton complains that Blake’s work contains “too many of the Christian forms”46 which are
“not valuable to her on an emotional level,”47 but concedes that she shares Blake's approach
in depicting a “cosmic totality” whereby “everything that lives is holy.”48 Similarly Norton
acknowledges a Pantheistic worldview that she shares with Norman Lindsay.49 While she

42
Norton, Rosaleen. "Introduction to the First Edition." The Art of Rosaleen Norton. 2nd ed. Sydney: Walter
Glover, 1982. 11-17. Print.
43
ibid, 12.
44
ibid, 13.
45
ibid, 12.
46
ibid.
47
ibid.
48
ibid.
49
ibid.
 15

dismisses any artistic likeness (“there is no similarity of style”50), certain Norton works do
resemble Lindsay’s depictions of pagan revelry and supernatural forces. Norton’s Bacchanal
almost appears as a direct response to Lindsay’s Revel (they roughly share a subject matter
and composition) though Bacchanal outdoes Revel’s graphic sexuality. Similarly, Sarmiala-
Berger suggests that Norton’s The Rites of Baron Samedi “is a darker version of the
Bacchanalian revelries Norton had appropriated from the example of Norman Lindsay.”51

Figure 2.1: Norman Lindsay’s Revel. Figure 2.2: Norton’ Bacchanal.

The influence of Beardsley manifests less clearly in Norton’s compositions – however, the
artists do share a tendency towards dark, emphatic line work, overt erotic imagery and so-
called grotesque preoccupations. An early Norton drawing entitled The Borgias, published in
the magazine Pertinent, betrays a distinct similarity with its negative space and lavish black
arcs.

50
ibid.
51
Sarmiala-Berger, Kirsti. "Rosaleen Norton: A Painter of Occult and Mystical Pictures." Overland (2001): 59-
63. Print.
16

Left, Figure 3.1: Aubrey Beardsley, The Dancer’s Reward (1894).

Right, Figure 3.2: Rosaleen Norton, The Borgias (1941).

In attempting to dismiss the stylistic influences of Blake, Lindsay and Beardsley, Norton
incidentally reveals her affinities with them, praising the conceptual underpinnings of their
work. These foundational shared interests – including pantheism, neo-paganism, liberal
sexual expression and depictions of the grotesque – all sit in opposition to the mainstream
values of Norton’s milieu, and will be seen to form the substance of her politics.
Norton’s 1952 introduction also considers the ways in which her work might align
with several modernist traditions. She begins by proposing:

“Technically, [my] formula is often that of abstract composition with a superimposed

content of classic form, together with the combined variation of two contrary styles –
cubism and vorticism, the first tending to stylistic integration (by imposing an
outward formula on a diversity of inward contents), the second to the impression of a
dance or process involving the time dimension.”52

Thus Norton explains her adoption of the styles’ syntheses of abstraction and
figuration, as well as their respective capacities for depicting form, space and time. Certainly
one can observe the Cubist approach of fragmenting and reassembling form and perspective
in works like The Initiate; as for Vorticism, Norton borrows what she sees as the

52
Norton, Rosaleen. "Introduction to the First Edition." The Art of Rosaleen Norton. 2nd ed. Sydney: Walter
Glover, 1982. 13. Print.
 17

movement’s central motif – “the spiral”53 - and applies it to evoke the dynamism of esoteric
scenes rather than the burgeoning intensity of the modern world.

Figure 4.1: The Initiate¸ recalling a cubist fragmentation of form and 4.2: The Rite of
Baron Samedi, one of many works to feature a “spiral” motif which Norton claims to
have borrowed from vorticism.

However, these comparisons are not wholly convincing. The jagged block colour
compositions typical of vorticism, for example, are nowhere to be seen. It is almost as if
Norton intends to distract the reader from a more revealing prospect: her relationship to
Surrealism. Butler and Donaldson cite Norton as one of a group of artists who “would
constitute a possible Australian […] contribution to a show of world Surrealism,”54 while
Drury has noted that “there is no doubting […] the influence of Surrealism on her painting
and drawing.”55 Norton herself professed an interest in the Surrealist artists Yves Tanguy and
Roberto Matta Echaurron,56 but “downplayed the influence of Surrealism”57 in the catalogue

53
ibid.
54
Butler, Rex, and A.D.S. Donaldson. "Surrealism and Australia: Towards a World History of Surrealism.”
Journal of Art Historiography 9 (2013). Web. 17 May 2015.
55
Drury. "Trance Art and Surrealism." Pan's Daughter. 112.
56
Ibid, 111.
57
Drury, Nevill, and School Of Humanities Social Sciences University Of Newcastle. Faculty Of Education
18

text to her 1949 Melbourne exhibition and “consistently denied that she should be labelled
[a Surrealist].”58 Norton’s reluctance to embrace the label, however, need not be the final
word on a possible confluence of approaches. Visually, there are parallels to Matta: emphatic
linear forms jut and intersect into irregular lattices, within which figurative elements emerge.
There is less direct likeness to Tanguy’s sparse, amorphous dreamscapes. But importantly,
Norton, Matta and Tanguy all shared an interest in visualizing the world by engaging the
unconscious, the unknown and the irrational. Like the Surrealists, Norton was an avid reader
of psychoanalytic theory – namely, Jung and Freud. She referenced the former’s Psychology
of the Unconscious in the unpublished notes accompanying The Art of Rosaleen Norton,59
and appealed to the credibility of psychoanalytic ideas when defending the book against
obscenity charges in November 1952.60 Norton conceived of her graphic work as a means of
engaging with the unconscious and with immaterial planes of existence variously referred to
as archetypal, astral and divine.61 In this way, her process of illustration is complementary –
if not ancillary – to a process of psychic exploration:

Norton began […] restricting her normal consciousness in an effort to induce

automatic drawing and allowing what she called an ‘abnormal mode of
consciousness’ to take over. According to Norton this produced “a number of
peculiar and unexpected results and some drawings which were later exhibited.62

If Breton’s definition of Surrealism as “pure psychic automatism”63 is to be taken seriously,

then Norton’s generative use of automatic drawing during self-hypnosis is surely Surrealist
by nature.

Arts. "Rosaleen Norton's Contribution to the Western Esoteric Tradition." 2008: University of Newcastle
Research Higher Degree Thesis. Web.
58
Drury, Nevill. "Some Final Thoughts." Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton and Austin Osman
Spare. Ed. Paul Hardarce. Bracken Ridge, Qld.: Salamander and Sons, 2012. 179. Print.
59
Drury, Nevill. "Trance art and Surrealism." Pan's Daughter. 118.
60
Drury, Nevill. "Chapter One: Rosaleen Norton – A Magical Life." Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen
Norton and Austin Osman Spare. Ed. Paul Hardacre. 1st ed. Chiang Mai: Salamander and Sons, 2012. 36.
Print.
61
Norton, Rosaleen. "Introduction to the First Edition." The Art of Rosaleen Norton. 2nd ed. Sydney: Walter
Glover, 1982. 14-15. Print.
62
Drury, Nevill. "Rosaleen Norton’s Magical Cosmology." Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton
and Austin Osman Spare. Ed. Paul Hardacre. 1st ed. Chiang Mai: Salamander and Sons, 2012. 64. Print.
63
Breton writes: “SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express,
either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control
exerted by reason...” Waldberg, Patrick. Surrealism. New York: McGraw-Hill Book, 1971. 66-75. Print.
 19

Norton’s ambivalent engagement with modernist traditions carries a political charge.

While borrowing from Cubism and Vorticism, Norton discards those movements’ emphases
on formalistic revolution, instead repurposing selected techniques to vividly depict her
idiosyncratic occult mythology. Here, Norton celebrates a spiritual individualism, rather than
adhering to the philosophical projects of the movements she channels. This emphasis on
radical spirituality is expanded by her use of Surrealist tactics: like Matta, Tanguy, Breton
and so many others, Norton displays an earnest belief in occultism as a form of metaphysical
enquiry, and embraces automatism and trance as an alternative epistemology. Norton and
these Surrealists (though all stylistically diverse) assert the “primacy of the unconscious”64
and advocate, in Breton’s words, “the dream applied to the solution of the fundamental
problems of life.”65 Like Breton, Norton felt that a post-Enlightenment devotion to logic
and rationalism had proved “hostile to all intellectual and moral advances,”66 and consisted
in “mediocrity, hate and dull conceit.”67 In fact, Breton’s words of protest in his 1924
Surrealist Manifesto are strongly echoed in Norton’s own take on the avant-garde manifesto
model - a poem called Litany which features in her posthumous collection Thorn in the
Flesh:

FROM THE EVIL OF “COMMONSENSE”

From taking thought from the morrow
From the perils of “ought” and “should”
LORD PAN DELIVER US!!!!

FROM THE FALSE GOD “FACT”

[…]
LORD PAN DELIVER US!!!!
FROM THE LIE THEY CALL “REALITY”
[…]
FROM THE PERIL OF “PROGRESS”
FROM THE “SANE AND HEALTHY OUTLOOK”
FROM MEDIOCRITY
LORD PAN DELIVER US!!!!

64
Lewis, Helena. "The Negation of Negation: Surrealist Revolt, 1920-1925." The Politics of Surrealism. New
York: Paragon House, 1988. 22. Print.
65
Breton, André. “1924 Surrealist Manifesto.” Manifestoes of Surrealism. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 1969.
Print.
66
ibid.
67
ibid.
20

NOW AND FOREVER MORE.

AMEN-RA.68

There are numerous critiques at play in this poem – some of which are here omitted for
brevity – though we might note the reciprocal critique of rationalism and religious
dogmatism. “Fact” is described as a “false god,” while the last line is an irreverent twisting
of the Christian “Amen” into a name from Ancient Egyptian polytheism.69 Norton implicates
rationalism in a critique of monotheism, questioning modern society’s singular appeal to
“commonsense,” “fact” and “sanity.” Like Breton, she suggests that rationalism entails not
only a set of epistemological tools, but indeed an ethical and political agenda: the “perils” of
“ought” and “should,” and “progress.” If the logic of rationalistic science had led to Nazi
eugenics and the atomic bomb, then Norton’s most productive period (the late 1940s and
early 1950s) was a crucial time to be questioning the natural authority of the Enlightenment
project.70
The techniques and tendencies of surrealism presented a natural mode through which
Norton could, in part, articulate her politics of resistance. There are specific critiques of this
kind in Norton’s graphic work. One sees dreamlike compositions such as The Jester, which
groups social authority figures into a unified composition and renders them as marionettes,
controlled by an archetypal fool, surrounded by demons. Among these authority figures is a
scientist, depicted with a white lab coat, round spectacles and holding a laboratory retort. In
the absurdist and surrealistic piece of short prose The Parable of a Call to Alms, Norton
champions a “nonsensical” witch figure in a dispute with a Sage who arrogantly promotes
“logic”, “the scientific attitude” and “the God Electronics.”71 These works mark somewhat
literal subversions of rationalistic signifiers. But far from being isolated examples, they
underscore how Norton’s broader use of Surrealist techniques constituted a radical politics
of resistance, challenging the authority of rationalistic science as the foundational paradigm
for society. From the nascent sympathies for occultism evident in Norton’s early short

68
Norton, Rosaleen. "Poetry." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach: Teitan, 2009. 29. Print.
69
“Amun-Ra” is the merged identity of Amun and Ra, two of ancient Egypt’s pre-eminent deities. See: Budge,
E. A. Wallis. An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Literature. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1997. 214.
Print.
70
Norton had indeed commented on these topics. She decries Nazism specifically in a spoken word piece
called “Political Memories: Two Versions of a Creed Summing Up the WWII Epoch” (date unknown); Roie
Speaks [audio recording] York Beach: Teitan, 2009.
71
Norton, Rosaleen. "Hold All Things Lightly." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine:
Teitan, 2009. 142. Print.
 21

stories, an all-encompassing worldview congruent with Surrealism emerged. This worldview

was soon to challenge society in many other ways.
22

Chapter Two: Resistance to Hegemony in the work of Rosaleen Norton

Figure 5: Rosaleen Norton, The Adversary (c.1952)

Pitiless perfect lips that opened and spoke forth the rays of power. And the trees
radiated outwards, flowing slowly, slowly, irresistibly, with silent terrible precision;
moving always under the surface of things. Undermining...
Everywhere, they coiled pouring beneath the surface of all Creation, and where they
passed the old order died and created forms were overthrown by power of the Spirits
whom men have called evil.
“We are the ranks of the adversary”72

- Rosaleen Norton, “A Vision,” 194-

Like the radiating trees and mysterious forces in her poem-essay “A Vision,” Rosaleen
Norton's art practice prior to 1949 was moving mostly “under the surface of things.” Despite
being published in Smith’s and Pertinent, and having exhibited paintings at the bohemian
Pakie's Club in Sydney, Norton had remained “very much a figure of the artistic

72
Norton, Rosaleen. "A Vision." Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton (1982 Edition). Ed. Walter Glover.
Bondi Beach: Walter Glover, 1984. V-viii. Print.
 23

underground.”73 This suddenly changed in the winter of 1949, when Norton, her cat
Geoffrey and lover Gavin Greenlees hitchhiked south and secured a booking at the
University of Melbourne's Rowden-White Library gallery. Norton’s ensuing self-titled
exhibition formed a pivotal moment in her career: a moment in which her art exploded into
the public consciousness and became a site of political contention.
The show was opened on deceptively peaceful terms, with an opening speech from
celebrated humanities professor Alan R. Chisholm.74 But two days later the vice squad
arrived at the scene, immediately seizing four of the works on display75 and charging Norton
with offences under Public Obscenity laws. This was not merely a police force initiative – it
also reflected hostility from the wider public; the officers76 who confiscated the four most
contentious works (Witches' Sabbath, Lucifer, Triumph and Individuation) reportedly did so
in light of public complaints. Visitors had described Norton's work as “lewd and
disgusting,”77 while the university’s Students' Representative Council president - one I. J.
Greenwood - said the show “offended good taste” and “should be stopped immediately.”78 In
light of this moral dispute, one might ask if were these works merely contrived to shock the
masses – to épater la bourgeoisie79 - or if, instead, they contained a complex political
posture that confronted mainstream sensibilities.
Here it is prudent to pause and remember that ‘politics’ extends beyond the word’s
generic usage in referring to the “formal politics”80 of law and governance. Certainly it
includes the “informal politics”81 of daily life, the broader “activity through which people
make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live.”82 Yet common to all
definitions of politics is a concern with distributions - of power, influence, and resources –
an idea that encompasses knowledge, images, objects and texts. On this matter, critical

73
Drury, Nevill. "Figleaf Morality." Pan's Daughter. 38.
74
As noted in: Drury. "Figleaf Morality." Pan's Daughter. 40.
75
ibid.
76
i.e. Detective John Olsen and Inspector Tannahill.
77
Drury, ibid.
78
"Police Check up on 'trance' artist's nudes." News [Adelaide, SA] 3 Aug 1949: 1. Web. 8 Oct 2015.
79
The Decadent poets' so-called “battle cry” in late 19th century France, meaning to “shock the bourgeois,” or
as Christine Roth puts it, to “dazzle the dull and mettled middle class.” Roth, Christine. "Decadents and
Aesthetes." Decadence. Web. 13 Sept. 2015.
80
Painter, Joe, and Alex Jeffrey. Political Geography: An Introduction to Space and Power. 2nd ed. Los
Angeles: SAGE, 2009. Print.
81
ibid.
82
Heywood, Andrew. Key Concepts in Politics. New York: St. Martin's, 2000. Print.
24

theorist Jacques Rancière refers to “the distribution of the sensible,” the inclusion and
exclusion of sensible materials in society. And it is here, Rancière observes, that politics and
art fundamentally overlap: “Aesthetics83 is not a discipline dealing with art and artworks, but
a kind of, what I call, distribution of the sensible. I mean a way of mapping the visible, a
cartography of the visible, the intelligible and also of the possible.”84
This is the theoretical foundation from which I intend to explore the work of
Rosaleen Norton. My inquiry does not aim to measure Norton’s role in specific political
movements or landmark historical developments. Indeed, Rancière has criticized models of
political art that propose a system of direct causality, insisting that within modernism,
“political effect occurs under the condition of […] the suspension of any direct relationship
between cause and effect.”85 Instead, Norton's work coincides with Rancière's notion of
dissensus, constituting “a dispute over what is given and about the frame within which we
sense something is given.”86 In mid-century Australia, Norton's work disputed what was
“given” (or distributed) by proffering so-called obscene art; likewise it disputed the frame of
that contest, challenging mainstream paradigms to propose alternative moralities and
epistemologies. The idea of dissensus is useful in that it allows for a political analysis that
does not rely upon being alerted to stock “political” signifiers. Instead we can trace how
Norton’s work challenged what Rancière calls the “police order” – society’s networks of
power that determine accepted distributions of the sensible, according to “the underlying
norms that define what is allowed or not allowed, available or unavailable in a given
situation.”87
In this chapter I will explore Norton’s work in relation to two aspects of this police
order; firstly, the religious hegemony and secondly, the dominant paradigms surrounding
gender. The title of this thesis suggests political postures according to what is challenged,
what is being resisted. While I wish to avoid straightforward political binaries - which were
never Norton’s domain - it is nevertheless this sense of resistance that I will attempt to trace
throughout her work. Given that Norton equates her notion of “The Adversary” in “A

83
Here it is worth noting that Ranciere uses the term “aesthetics” to denote a paradigmatic feature of
modernity, as described in my Introduction.
84
Rancière, Jacques and Truls Lie. "Our Police Order: What Can Be Said, Seen, and Done." Eurozine. 11 Aug.
2006. Web. 17 June. 2015.
85
Rancière, Jacques. 2009 The Emancipated Spectator, Verso Books, London and New York, pp.72-73.
86
Rancière, Jacques, and Steve Corcoran. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum, 2010.
69. Print.
87
Jacques, Rancière, and Truls Lie. "Our Police Order: What Can Be Said, Seen, and Done." Eurozine. 11 Aug.
2006. Web. 17 June. 2015.
 25

Vision” to Lucifer,88 Norton’s resistance to Christian hegemony presents a natural departure

point.

Rosaleen Norton and Christian Hegemony

There shall not be found among you any one [...] that useth
divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or
a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a
necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto
the Lord. - Deuteronomy, 18: 10-12

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” - Exodus 22:18

“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” - 1 Samuel 15:23

Rosaleen Norton was a polytheistic Neopagan occultist. Eventually, she came to call herself
a witch. Norton’s spirituality comprised an inherent challenge to Christian values; in turn,
her art was a sustained articulation of her aberrant beliefs, a dissensus within a visual
landscape that had been configured on Christian terms. One should note that between 1947
and 196689 Australia's religious affiliation was at least 85% Christian,90 with the remainder
mostly recorded as “not stated/insufficiently described.” Only around 1% of Australians
during this period identified themselves as subscribing to Other (Non-Christian) religions, or
“no religion.” As such, it would be inaccurate to attribute the 1950s notoriety of Norton's
practice to a trend away from Christianity in Australia. This cultural shift would come later,
as Roger Thompson notes: “not until the 1960s did Australia start to become a post-Christian
society, where religion no longer has the same degree of power it once enjoyed to influence
political events.”91 Precisely how Norton’s art responded to these circumstances bears
consideration, and I will argue in this section that her work both explicitly and implicitly
critiqued the established Christian hegemony.92 Meanwhile, I will contend that this critique

88
See: Norton, Rosaleen. “A Vision.” Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton. Sydney: Walter Glover.
1984. V. Print.
89
These census dates frame a period that roughly corresponds to Norton's public presence, encompassing her
1949 solo debut and her last major media interactions in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
90
Around 35-40% Anglican, 20% Catholic and 30% “other Christian.” From: "Religious Affiliation:
Australian Bureau of Statistics." ABS Website. ABS, 24 Jan. 2007. Web. 12 Sept. 2015.
91
Thompson, Roger C. "Conclusion." Religion in Australia: A History. Melbourne: New York, 1994. Print.
92
By “hegemony” I refer to an ideological domination within Australian society, not by overt force, but by
26

was levelled more as a fierce assertion of equality, as a liberative impulse, than as a

condemnation of Christianity's tenets per se. In this way, media portrayals of Norton as a
straightforward antagonist of the belief system – an “antichrist” figure – are ultimately
misrepresentations, and belie a more nuanced form of resistance.
Let us return to Norton's 1949 solo exhibition and in turn her most definitive
published collection, 1952’s The Art of Rosaleen Norton. In the former we find a work
entitled Witches' Sabbath, one of the four confiscated works. In the latter, the image is
revived, redrafted and renamed to Black Magic. These images mark a radical departure from
acceptable depictions in the context of mid-century Australia. By the same token they
exemplify Norton's capacity to consciously position her imagery against, not merely in
contrast, to Christian norms.

Figure 6.1: Witches Sabbath (c.1949) and, 6.2: the reworked version, Black
Magic (c.1952).

At the top of the frame we find two nuns: symbols of singular Christian devotion, visible
conformity and - notably - celibacy, an extinguishment of female sexuality in the name of

cultural pressures including the omission of competing beliefs from the public sphere. Del Gandio, Jason.
"Hegemony." Encyclopedia of Gender in Media. Ed. Mary Kosut. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications,
2012. 159-161. Print. See also: Gramsci, Antonio. Selections From the Prison Notebooks of Antonio
Gramsci. Ed. Quintin Hoare. Trans. Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
Print.
 27

God. Here, that symbolism is aggressively subverted. The emblematic habits are torn
asunder to reveal the nuns' breasts and, in the case of the right-hand figure, a suggestively
winking face. Norton places the left-hand nun on a crucifix, implicating Christ in the
depraved arrangement and so committing the ultimate sacrilege. This is doubly present in
Black Magic, where the central nude woman’s foot rests atop an inverted cross, commonly
associated with Satanism or anti-Christian sentiment.93 The focal point of the image is, of
course, the interspecies fornication between woman and panther; and if there was any doubt
as to the carnal nature of their embrace, one need only consult Norton's poem that sits
alongside Black Magic in The Art Of: “Panther of the night... enfold me. / Take me, dark
Shining One; mingle my being with you, / Prowl in my spirit with deep purring joy / Live in
me, giver of terror and ecstasy / Touch me with tongues of black fire.” Certainly this
unorthodox romance could be read as a metaphor; Norton's poem suggests that the panther is
a symbol of the titular “black magic” and in an obscenity trial following the publication of
The Art of, expressed that the panther represented “secret forces of the night.”94 In broader
psychoanalytic terms, she also said the embrace signified a “fusion of the conscious and
subconscious mind.”95 While this may enrich a reading of the image, the bestiality depicted
retains its primary impact, flouting a biblical taboo: “Whosoever lieth with a beast shall
surely be put to death96 […] and if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto,
thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast.”97
Through the subverted images of nuns and crucifixes, and the emphatic depiction of
bestiality alongside, Norton creates a visual dialectic that poses a pointed resistance to
Christian codes of sexuality. Meanwhile, menacing horned figures in both iterations of the
image - closely resembling established depictions of the devil - make a more general
statement against Christian hegemony. This feature is emphasized in Black Magic, where a
second “devil” glares at a microcosmic city. His satisfied grin and dominant framing
alongside the trapped civilization seems to propose an alternative power dynamic in which
demonic influence reigns over the polis. His fingers clasp a serpent, or rather, a Biblical

93
Ogechukwu, Nwaocha Mind. The Secret Behind the Cross and Crucifix. Cork: Publish on Demand Global
LLC, 2009. Print.
94
Details of this trial recorded in Daily Telegraph 5 Feb 1953 and Sun [Sydney, NSW] Feb 1953.
95
ibid.
96
Exodus 22:19, KJV. Bible Gateway. Web. 4 Aug.
97
Leviticus 20:15-16, KJV. Bible Gateway. Web. 4 Aug.
28

Satan98 - his arm, too, appears to be a snake's body. The image is ultimately oriented towards
a subversion and complication of Christianity’s primacy, through the presence of Christian
iconography and the intrusion of its impermissible opposites. The gesture recalls Rancière’s
description of politics,99 understood as a dispute between a subject and the police order:
“Politics is when you create a stage where you include your enemy, even if your enemy
doesn't want to be included.”100 As if to articulate this convergence, Norton's poem
announces: “Hatred and heaven are blending within me.”101

Black Magic, although a pronounced example, is not unusual within Norton's oeuvre
in its confrontation of Christianity. Nevill Drury reminds us, more broadly, that “during the
1950s Norton’s controversial paintings and drawings embodied a deep-seated pagan impulse
that ran counter to orthodox religious sensibilities.”102 By the same token, however, Drury's
discussions surrounding Norton and Christianity routinely emphasize that Norton was
neither an avowed “antichrist” figure, nor did she worship one; rather, she worshipped Pan
and was unfairly painted as a Satanist or devil-worshipper by the media.103 Marguerite
Johnson has gone on to further theorise this portrayal of Norton, arguing that “Rosaleen was
presented as society’s scapegoat, the witch on the outskirts of the community, a demon
required to reinforce family values and Christian morality.”104 According to Johnson, then,
Norton's anti-Christian image was borne not of her own deeds, but rather contrived by the
Christian hegemony as a form of propaganda by which to assert itself.
This may seem a ridiculous assertion in light of the imagery and disposition we have
just explored, whereby Norton was clearly working with a view to challenging Christian
morality in some capacity. Even so, these incongruous viewpoints can be reconciled, and to
do so highlights one of the key nuances of Rosaleen Norton's politics.

98
See: Gen 3, and Rev 20.
99
Which is related, though not equivalent to, dissensus: the latter addresses a more fundamental concern, the
preconditions of a dispute – “a conflict about who speaks and who does not speak” (Rancière). See:
Bowman, Paul, and Jacques Rancière. "The Thinking of Dissensus: Politics and Aesthetics." Reading
Rancière. London: Continuum, 2011. Print.
100
Rancière, Jacques and Truls Lie. "Our Police Order: What Can Be Said, Seen, and Done." Eurozine. 11
Aug. 2006. Web. 17 June. 2015.
101
Norton, Rosaleen, and Gavin Greenlees. The Art of Rosaleen Norton. 2nd ed. Sydney: Walter Glover, 1982.
48. Print.
102
Drury, Nevill. "An Australian Original: Rosaleen Norton and Her Magical Cosmology." Occultism in a
Global Perspective. Ed. Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic. Durham: Acumen Pub, 2013. 232 Print.
103
Drury. "The Witch of Kings Cross." Pan's Daughter. 142.
104
Johnson, Marguerite. "The Witch of King's Cross: Rosaleen Norton and the Australian Media." Cultural
Collections, UON Library. 12 Apr. 2010. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.
 29

In exploring this we might return to “A Vision.” The piece lays itself out with a
distinctly (though not satirically) Biblical tone, beginning with “There was darkness; the
living darkness of the Void”105 and flowing into what appears to be a creation myth. Snake-
like metaphysical beings emerge from the void; their pronouns are capitalized; They are
imbued with “godlike aloofness” and “infinite untellable knowledge.”106 These serpentine
spirits, with their infinite knowledge, bury themselves beneath the surface of Creation,
announcing themselves as “the ranks of the Adversary.” Norton writes that she “realised why
men always fear Knowledge for knowledge brings with it destruction.”107 Attesting to a
cultural ignorance that recurs “throughout the ages,” Norton writes that “each man and each
group flee in terror from the serpent forces beneath the surface; from the living roots of the
Tree of Knowledge […] for to each man, as to the group, the death of the beliefs that he
lives by is the death of his world.”108 Evidently, what Norton is privileging here is
knowledge, not of a given type, but knowledge as a value in itself. Norton maintains that
individuals and societies suppress the pursuit of knowledge because it may harbour
uncomfortable truths, or by the same token, disrupt comfortable belief structures. Norton
describes those who fearlessly seek knowledge as being hated:

…Hated for they dared to deny humanity's most powerful god; its holy trinity which
is Safety and Comfort united in one – Tradition. This god has many other names such
as Orthodoxy and Public Opinion. It is called Society and Convention, and by many
different creeds it is called the Only True Faith. But it is still the one god – the Tribal
God; and he is a jealous god who casts rebels out of his domain, saying “thou shalt
have no other gods but me.109

Here we see perhaps the clearest articulation of Norton's attitude towards religion. Not once
is Christianity, the Bible, or any other specific religious icon mentioned in the scathing
polemic. Instead Norton targets broad tendencies (towards tradition, orthodoxy, convention,
ignorance and anti-intellectualism). Through “A Vision,” Norton advocates for adversary,
but not against Christianity in any specific sense, instead critiquing the dogmatism and
conservatism common in religion. Similarly, she critiques the masses’ blinkered subscription

105
Norton, Rosaleen. "A Vision." Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton (1982 Edition). Ed. Walter
Glover. Bondi Beach: Walter Glover, 1984. V-viii. Print.
106
ibid.
107
ibid.
108
ibid.
109
ibid.
30

to religious doctrines (described as monotheistic), arguing that to do so is to adopt a wilful

ignorance, a so-called “comfortable bliss, [a] fool's Paradise.”110 It follows that specific
attacks on Christianity within her art are expressions of this same broader frustration; attacks
on the particular - and in the event, emphatically Christian - religious hegemony surrounding
her.

Rosaleen Norton and Gender

Rosaleen Norton was at the vanguard of feminism and the counter-culture

revolution. She was doing it, living it, decades before the second wave of feminism...
In the fifties, Rosaleen was divorced, living in sin with a man 13 years her junior,
had no children, was living as an artist and was a self-proclaimed witch. I certainly
consider her a feminist icon.111 - Sonia Bible, director, The Witch of Kings Cross
documentary (forthcoming)

10. Therefore did the Sage gird him with self-righteousness and don his armour of
ironclad male […] And he spake of smiting hip and thigh (and divers other places):
for is it not written, “thou shalt not suffer a bitch to live?” 11. And the Witch of
Zend'or spake, saying “Cut the cackle, and answer me yea or nea!112 - Rosaleen
Norton, The Parable of a Call to Alms

Given the focus of this section, one could be forgiven for presuming the above excerpt from
The Parable of a Call to Alms was included to offer a sketch of Rosaleen Norton's attitude
towards gender relations. In truth, the artist’s politics regarding gender are not distilled in
any single quotation. Norton rarely wrote or made art about gender explicitly. There is no
value in exploiting details from Norton's oeuvre (such as the excerpt above) to caricature her
as a prototypical feminist artist, self-defined by a gendered campaign against the patriarchy.
Nevertheless it will be shown that Norton’s work evinces characteristics that align with a
feminist mode of resistance; as Drury puts it, “one can argue that she arrived at much the
same viewpoint as present-day feminist practitioners of witchcraft and goddess worship.”113
Though Norton’s work may not be expressly feminist art, it manifestly troubles the
dominant gender paradigms of its time, challenging not only gender roles – but also the
presumed nature of gender itself.

110
ibid.
111
Burden, Zora. "Guest Post: Conversations with Sonia Bible about the Witch of Kings Cross (Part II).” The
Wild Hunt. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.
112
Norton, Rosaleen. "Hold All Things Lightly." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine:
Teitan, 2009. 142. Print.
113
Drury. "Modern Magic and Women's Mysteries." Pan's Daughter. 136.
 31

The excerpt from The Parable of a Call to Alms provides a segue rather than a
distillation. It underscores key intersections between the last section's focus, and the
concerns of the current one. Certainly, the Parable satirises a distinctly gendered exchange,
belittling the male Sage and celebrating the female Witch. But more interestingly, it does so
in a manner that apes Bible verse, and – through its dark-humoured Exodus 22:18 parody
(“thou shalt not suffer a bitch to live”) – implicates male hubris with the perceived arrogance
of the Christian hegemony. This is a politically loaded representation. As Austin Cline
recalls, “the persecution of witches reached its zenith at a time when Christianity's attitudes
against sex had long since turned into full-blown misogyny,”114 and I will contend that one
of Norton's most crucial political undertakings lies in artistically resisting the intersection of
patriarchal and monotheistic ideologies.
In this section I will chart disruptions of hegemonic gender assumptions evident in
Norton’s work. This pursuit can be divided into three steps: firstly, by considering the anti-
patriarchal connotations and histories of witchcraft and polytheistic paganism which Norton
thusly harnesses. Secondly, by tracing specific subversions of repressive gender relations in
Norton's work. And thirdly, by considering the ways in which Norton's fundamentally
disrupts the very concepts and constructs of gender that pervaded her time.
That Norton found herself within a patriarchal culture in mid 20th-century Sydney
should hardly require much verification. Still, it is worth remembering the extraordinary
extent to which power in Norton's Australia was geared towards masculinity. When Norton
was born, the suffragettes’ movement was only one generation past and New South Wales
women were not yet entitled to stand for parliament.115 Norton’s public career116 ran
roughly in parallel to the incumbency of Robert Menzies,117 “the ultraconservative prime
minister who reigned supreme in the 1950s with his anti-communist manifesto and harsh
stance on censorship.”118 These formal politics underscore the era’s broader attitudes and
systematically enshrined power relationships. Despite a surge in non-traditional employment

114
Cline, Austin. "Witches, Misogyny, and Patriarchy: How Misogynistic Attitudes Fed the Fear of
Witches." About Religion. Web. 24 Sept. 2015.
115
"Women in Parliament." Parliament of NSW. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.
116
This is term is used loosely, to mark the time from her first solo exhibition (Melbourne, August 1949) to her
final interactions with the media (mid to late 1960s).
117
Spanning 1949-1966.
118
Johnson, Marguerite. "The Witch of King's Cross: Rosaleen Norton and the Australian Media." Cultural
Collections, UON Library. 12 Apr. 2010. Web. 18 Sept. 2015.
32

during WWII,119 Australian women in the late 40's and 50s were still expected to be
housewives and child-rearers, and to largely eschew professional careers. The arts industry
of the time reflected a broader gender imbalance in professional spheres. A 1949 article in
Melbourne’s The Argus, mentioning Norton, notes that “it is unusual to have three art shows
by women opened in the one week in this city, and a one-woman show at the Athenaeum this
year will be almost a novelty.”120 In Rancière’s terms, the police order worked to exclude
women’s agency, creativity and potential from the arena of the visible - and in turn, the
perceived-possible.
This situation of inequity may well have influenced Norton’s gravitation towards
witchcraft and the occult. But notwithstanding conscious motivations, we can observe the
anti-patriarchal capacities of these traditions at play in her work. By the time of the modern
era, Witchcraft's historical representation as a persecuted practice under patriarchal
hegemonies transformed its “alternative religiosity”121 into an active symbol of resistance.
To quote Austin Cline, “the oppression of witches was somehow symbolic of the oppression
of women in general, of women's sexuality, and of sexuality in general.”122 By adopting the
tradition of witchcraft into her aesthetic practice – and ultimately by adopting the identity of
the witch - Norton was able to occupy a symbolic position of disobedience, declaring her
allegiance in a long-standing struggle between empowered, deviant femininity and
repressive patriarchal force. Norton embraces the historical tradition of witchcraft, but
reconstructs the topoi of the witch according to her own idiosyncratic cosmology,
philosophy and aesthetic. Her art generally eschews pointed hats, broomsticks, potions,
cauldrons and malevolent spell-casting – instead repurposing iconography from Greek
Mythology (Pan, Hecate), Jewish folklore (Lilith), Christianity (Lucifer, the Pentagram), and
countless other sources – including her own imagination – to construct a new and revitalized
image of the witch.
Feminist re-appropriation of the witch figure is now so commonplace as to seem
unremarkable. Indeed, the image of the witch has arguably been emptied of its long-standing
negative connotation, replaced with neutral and positive pop culture representations evident
in the likes of Bewitched, Sabrina the Teenage Witch Buffy, Charmed and the Harry Potter

119
"Paid Labour and Taking on 'men's Work': Women in Wartime." Australian Government. Web. 18 Oct.
2015.
120
"Art and Artists: Women To The Fore." The Argus. [Melbourne, Vic] 30 Jul 1949: 12. Web. 18 Sept. 2015
121
Cline, Austin. "Sex & Interrogation of Witches: Did Witches Symbolize Female Sexuality and Power to a
Patriarchal Church?" About Religion. Web. 24 Sept. 2015.
122
ibid.
 33

franchise. But it is important to note that Norton's practice prefigured this widespread re-
appropriation, which emerged as Norton's own career was declining; Qinna Shen reminds us
that “feminist self-fashioning as witches is part of the international second-wave women’s
movement that started in the late 1960s”123 - that is to say, almost twenty years after Norton's
heyday. This certainly attests to Norton's innovative, non-conformist streak - but more
importantly, it reminds us that her gestures of re-appropriation would have borne far more
political force in its time than we can readily appreciate today.
Poring over The Art of Rosaleen Norton, one is confronted with images that mark an
insurrection into any society where, as Mary McIntosh describes, “women’s sexuality is
suppressed by men or in the interests of patriarchy,” and whereby women “are prevented
from realizing their full potential.”124 In Bacchanal, women of all descriptions revel among
men, demons, beasts and skeletons in a wild orgy. It is one of Norton's most visceral
depictions of unbridled sexuality, abounding in taboo, and literally foregrounding female
erotic pleasure in the form of two ecstatic, nude, red-haired figures. Fearless depictions of
female sexuality abound in Norton’s illustration - notably in the The Initiate (p. 58 of The
Art of), which exalts an esoteric lesbian tryst, and in the previously discussed Black Magic.
Lilith (p. 23), meanwhile, is a more sedate and stately nude, and aside from the
suggestive inclusion of a black panther (recalling the notorious Witches Sabbath/Black
Magic images) it might seem relatively benign. However, those familiar with the medieval
Jewish story of the titular character will immediately recognize the work as a bold
glorification of one of mythology's most maligned feminists.

123
Shen, Qinna. "Shedding, Witchcraft, and the Romantic Subject: Feminist Appropriation of the Witch in
Sarah Kirsch’s Zaubersprüche (1973)." Neophilologus 93.4. 2009: 676. Web.

124
McIntosh, Mary "Who Needs Prostitutes? The Ideology of Male Sexual Needs." Women, Sexuality, and
Social Control. Ed. Carol Smart and Barry Smart. London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1978. 53-64. Print.
34

Figure 7: Rosaleen Norton, Lilith (c.1952).

Lilith, according to the Alphabet of ben Sirach (c. 700-1000 AD) was Adam's first wife in
the Garden of Eden. Unlike her successor Eve, Lilith would not accept that she had been
created as a subservient companion: “She said to [Adam], ‘The two of us are equal, since we
are both from the earth.’ […] Since Lilith saw [how it was], she uttered God's ineffable
name and flew away into the air.”125 Lilith would soon be wrestled into the Red Sea by three
angels, and choosing to stay there rather than acquiesce to God's demands, she “indulged
herself in unbridled promiscuity giving rise to more than a hundred demonic offspring each
day.”126 Contemporary Jewish Feminist scholar Diana Carvahlo argues that in modern
readings of the Lilith/Eve juxtaposition, “Eve's creation and her actions in Genesis are
interpreted as a product of patriarchy”127 while “Lilith, the independent, ‘demon’ and ‘first
wife’ of Adam is praised as a symbol of female sexuality.”128 Gavin Greenlees' verse, placed
alongside Norton’s image of Lilith, emphatically confirms the image’s feminist leanings:
“[Lilith] is the queen of night and sympathy […] She holds the swimmer, man, a devoted

125
Ben Sira. "Alphabet of Ben Sira 78: Lilith." Jewish Women's Archive. 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 24 Sept. 2015.
126
Nevill Drury, “An Australian Original: Rosaleen Norton and her magical cosmology.” Ed. Bogdan, Henrik;
Djurdjevic, Gordan, Sep 11, 2014, Occultism in a Global Perspective. Taylor and Francis, Hoboken. 236.
Print.
127
Carvalho, Diana. Woman Has Two Faces: Re-examining Eve and Lilith in Jewish Feminist Thought.
Denver: U of Denver, 2009. Print.
128
ibid.
 35

servant of her image.”129 Norton embodies the “swimmer, man” in two subservient fish,
controlled by Lilith’s line. Greenlees continues: “And this is justice, for brute history / The
tyrant who is no more,” suggesting Lilith’s rightful triumph over patriarchal tyranny. He
adds: “Now female art holds meaning, free of purpose” – as if to suggest that by inverting
patriarchal power relations, women’s art would also be freed from political imperatives,
producing meaning purely on its own terms.
Norton invoked Lilith repeatedly, but Hecate - the Greek goddess of “magic,
witchcraft, the night, moon, ghosts and necromancy”130 - was perhaps a more central figure
in the artist’s cosmology. She appears in Norton's psychedelic oil painting Untitled (Hecate)
as an ominous, glaring blue figure sitting atop an inverted triangle, against a fierce backdrop
of red and blue-green fire.

Figure 8: Rosaleen Norton, Hecate.

The inverted (point-down) triangle is a common reference for “maiden, mother, crone” in
pagan symbolism,131 condensing a three-fold notion of womanhood which would reappear

129
Norton, Rosaleen, and Gavin Greenlees. The Art of Rosaleen Norton. 2nd ed. Sydney: Walter Glover, 1982.
22. Print.
130
"Hecate: Greek Goddess of Witchcraft, Ghosts & Magic." Theoi Greek Mythology. Web. 25 Sept. 2015.
131
Conway, D. J. Maiden, Mother, Crone: The Myth and Reality of the Triple Goddess. St. Paul: Llewellyn
Publications, 1994. 188. Print.
36

in feminist Triple Goddess worship. But if Hecate was, in part, a maternal figure for Norton,
she was meanwhile a fearsome witch; Norton claimed that Hecate both “frightened and
protected”132 her, thus channeling the goddess' historical double valence as a menacing
spell-caster133 and as a “benign life force.”134 Norton’s multivalent use of the Hecate figure
exemplifies how Norton's work resists straightforward tropes of femininity. Norton’s female
icons embody a spectrum of womanhood, with each carrying diverse connotations both
historically and aesthetically endowed.
My final point on the question of Norton's relationship to gender is a more
fundamental one. It relates to a questioning of gender binaries per se. Throughout Norton's
work, we see a commingling of characteristics traditionally ascribed to “male” and “female,”
“masculine” and “feminine.” Bacchanal does emphasize women's sexuality - this much is
true - but the general impact of the work constitutes a blurring of gender distinctions.
Several figures in the frame possess both breasts and so-called male genitalia; moreover, the
seething wave of faces, limbs and body parts hinders they eye's attempt to identify
individuals, or the nature of their sexual encounters. Instead we see a landscape in which
gender is confused, and sexuality is multifaceted and fluid. In other works, like Esoteric
Study (p. 39), Individuation (p. 27) we re-encounter bodies that resist interpretation as either
male or female. More than just androgynous, these are intersex figures, inscribed with the
presumed bodily characteristics of both man and woman.

Figure 9.1: Esoteric Study (detail) and Figure 9.2: Individuation

(both c.1952).

132
Johnson, Marguerite. "Drawing Down the Goddess: The Ancient {Female} Deities of Modern
Paganism." Handbook of Contemporary Paganism. Ed. Murphy Pizza. Leiden: Brill, 2009. 315. Print.
133
Hecate was represented as such after the 5th century AD; See Johnson, ibid.
134
Johnson, ibid.
 37

Such depictions recall the “hermaphrodite” representation of Baphomet, a major

occult icon associated with both Satan and Norton’s pre-eminent deity, Pan. Baphomet
features prominently in the work of occultist Eliphas Levi, which Norton had studied
avidly.135

Figure 10: Eliphas Levi's

Baphomet, with beard and breasts.

In Satanic Feminism, Per Faxneld argues that Levi's Baphomet is a “symbol of

synthesis and transcendence of polarities”136 - an idea which is prevalent in Norton’s
approach to gender representation. Pan, for example, is traditionally understood as male137 –
and so one might suppose that a patriarchal order is implied in Norton’s cosmology.
However, in her “Occult Notes” Norton insists: “the concept that Pan represents Man or men
or the exclusively male factor in things is erroneous […] Pan isn’t men nor man nor boys
nor girls nor any other category peculiar to the human race.”138 In the short prose piece
“Sudden Intervention of the Other,” Norton suggests the term “Femina Victrix,” i.e.
victorious woman, as a correction for the term “Homo Superior,” or higher man, but quickly
she abandons this binary contention, stating: “I prefer triplicity to duplicity, as has been said

135
See: Norton, Rosaleen, and Gavin Greenlees. "Bibliography." The Art of Rosaleen Norton. 2nd ed. Sydney:
Walter Glover, 1982. Print.
136
Faxneld, Per. "Woman and the Devil: Some Recurring Motifs; Breasts and Beard: Baphomet,
Hermaphrodite Icon of Transcending Duality." Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in
Nineteenth-century Culture. Stockholm: Molin & Sorgenfrei, 2014. 82-86. Print.
137
"Pan (mythology)." New World Encyclopedia. 29 May 2013. Web. 18 Aug. 2015.
138
Norton, Rosaleen. "Occult Notes." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan,
2009. 41. Print.
38

all along, implicitly.”139

There is nothing implicit about many of the other gender-questioning moments in
Thorn in The Flesh. Norton openly explores her own sense of gender, frequently rejecting
the assumption that gender is binary or fixed. In “Sunday Night,” she describes an encounter
on the astral plane. An astral being asks Norton, “Are you a man or a woman?” to which she
replies “Neither and both.” She goes on to state: “Physical form is female. Sometimes Astral
is male (or female or both). Mental is male and neither. Spirit is both and neither (M).”
Similarly, in the poem “Full Circle,” Norton writes: “Male and female, neither, both - in
many different times and places / Wheels within the wheel of Me, carven in a thousand
faces. / Which was I? I know and do not know.”140 Her matter-of-fact “Essay on Sexual
Response as Noted In Herself” is a reflection on her own desires, claiming she is attracted to
“feminine men” as well as homosexual men, women, and various other categories of sexual
partner. This detail might seem more personal than political if not for Norton's observation
that she is unpicking the “standardized norm of both sexes.”141 Sonia Bible has noted this
trend in Norton’s practice, contending: “I don’t think that gender discrimination was her
issue. I think that she was more interested in redefining gender.”142
As mentioned earlier, Norton’s resistance to gender assumptions is tied up in
challenging the norms of a society at once patriarchal and Christian. Yet her disdain for
reductive gender binaries carries over to less obvious targets, such as the Neopagan religion
Wicca. In an untitled Occult Note, Norton asserts that “...the Wiccan Gods – as presented by
[Gerald] Gardner and to a lesser extent [Margaret] Murray, they seem to be mainly a kind of
summing of, respectively, All Men (The God) and All Women (The Goddess) instead of
Beings in themselves having correspondences.”143 Gardner’s Wicca, a modern polytheism
with feminist overtones, was invested in reclaiming witchcraft as a celebration of
womanhood, but here Norton is skeptical. She seems to suggest that Wicca reinforces
reductive gender binaries – thus playing into the existing rhetoric of the hegemony rather
than allowing for a radical re-evaluation.

139
Norton, Rosaleen. "Hold All Things Lightly." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine:
Teitan, 2009. 152. Print..
140
Norton, Rosaleen. "Poetry." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan, 2009. 5.
Print.
141
Norton, Rosaleen. "Occult Notes." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan,
2009. 70. Print.
142
Bible, Sonia. "Interview with Sonia Bible on Rosaleen Norton." E-mail interview. 7 Oct. 2015.
143
Norton, Rosaleen. "Occult Notes." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan,
2009. 63. Print.
 39

Norton’s resistance to gender norms constitutes a key dissensus, challenging

dominant representations and frames of understanding gender within mid-century Australia.
Norton proposed a fluid, pluralistic view of gender and sexuality that was well ahead of its
time. Despite the influential work of thinkers like Judith Butler in deconstructing gender in
decades since, Norton’s resistance to traditional conceptions maintains the utmost relevance
today.
40

Chapter Three: Negotiating Public Image as an Art of Resistance

The artful life is one wherein acts of resistance and affirmation, negativity and
positivity, are concretized through the various modalities of lived existence.144
- Zachary Simpson, Life as Art from Nietzsche to Foucault: Life, Aesthetics, and the
Task of Thinking

“In the spiral horns of the Ram;

In the deep scent of Midnight;
In the secret Colour above and beneath the spectrum;
Is Life […]

I live in the green blooded Forest,

I live in the white fire of Powers
I live in the scarlet blossom of Magic,
I live in Infinity,
I live.” - Rosaleen Norton, “A Chant”145 (1962)

Hitherto I have focused on details of Norton's written and graphic work, and their
relationship to traditions, power relations and political postures of resistance. In this final
chapter, I would like address gestures that may not constitute texts in the usual sense, but
which form vital elements of Norton's artistic project - signifying both the inner foundation
and the aesthetic frame of her practice. These include the qualities of Norton’s personal
lifestyle, her engagement with the public sphere, and notably her self-construction as a witch
through the tabloid media. In short, I wish to examine Norton’s negotiation of her public
image. It is important to note that our access to this negotiation is mediated: through the
selectivity and subjectivity of biography, journalism and scholarship. Thus when considering
the self-construction of Norton’s image, it is necessary to also consider the secondary
reconstructions through which we receive it.
Can lifestyle constitute an art of resistance? The question firstly demands whether
lifestyle can be understood as art; after all, it is common to speak of an “art practice” as a
sealed or discontinuous pursuit, an occupation or pastime. For Rosaleen Norton, it seems,
this was never the case. Drury stresses that Norton's art was her “main passion, her main
reason for living. She had no ‘career’ ambitions other than to reflect on the forces within her

144
Simpson, Zachary. Life as Art from Nietzsche to Foucault: Life, Aesthetics, and the Task of Thinking.
Claremont: Claremont Graduate U, 2009. 19. Print.
145
Norton, Rosaleen. "Poetry.” Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan, 2009. 26.
Print.
 41

being […] as her sister Cecily told me, art was the centre of her life.”146 This could be a
romantic assessment, or hagiographic exaggeration. However, given that Norton's art
conveyed her spiritual, metaphysical and political beliefs - her fundamental relationship to
the world - we have little reason to doubt that it is essentially true. Keith Richmond affirms
this inseparability of Norton’s esoteric art and lifestyle, stating: “throughout her life [she]
remained largely focussed on two things, her art and occultism, although – as apparent to
anyone familiar with her artwork – these were really one and the same thing.”147
There is a political potency in the way Norton conflated art and life within her
milieu. Sonia Bible stresses that Norton’s day-to-day existence was as significant as specific
creative works (if not more so) in challenging dominant paradigms: “Although Rosaleen
Norton was charged with obscenity after producing art works, it was her lifestyle that caused
the most controversy.”148 This, she notes, was bound up in gender expectations: “It was not
acceptable for a woman to be single, living in sin, working as an artist and calling herself a
witch.”149 While other artists in Norton’s circles had explored the occult - for example,
Rayner Hoff and Norman Lindsay - none had their reputations “so thoroughly
besmirched”150 as Norton. This too would suggest a political undercurrent; Bible contends
“it was just so much more scandalous because she was a woman.”151
We need not ascertain that Norton conceived of her public image as a “work of art,”
or contrived her lifestyle as a kind of all-encompassing performance. But there is no doubt
that Norton lived aesthetically. From a young age Norton seemed to find her expression
through esoteric artistic imaginings; in 1957 she wrote that “my first drawings, at about 3
and a half, we mainly creatures called 'Nothing Beasts' and 'Flippers,' which I knew very
well as presences.” […] various psychic manifestations, both subjective and objective, have
always been an integral part of my life.”152
Norton began experimenting with trance art – her first forays into self-hypnosis
rituals occurring in 1940, when she was 23. This, perhaps, signals the serious beginning of

146
Drury. "Introduction." Pan's Daughter. xii.
147
Richmond, Keith. "Introduction." Thorn in the Flesh: A Grim-memoire. By Rosaleen Norton. York Beach,
Maine: Teitan, 2009. xv. Print.
148
Bible, Sonia. "Interview with Sonia Bible on Rosaleen Norton." E-mail interview. 7 Oct. 2015.
149
ibid.
150
Richmond, Keith. "Introduction." Thorn in the Flesh: A Grim-memoire. York Beach, Maine: Teitan, 2009.
xvi. Print.
151
Bible, Sonia. "Interview with Sonia Bible on Rosaleen Norton." E-mail interview. 7 Oct. 2015.
152
Australasian Post, January 1957.
42

Norton's occult practice in daily life. Norton documents her early self-induced trance rituals,
recalling:

I collected together a variety of things such as aromatic leaves, wine, a lighted fire, a
mummified hoof, etc... all potent stimuli to the part of the unconscious that I wished
to invoke. I darkened the room, and focusing my eyes upon the hoof I crushed the
pungent leaves and tried to clear my mind of all conscious thought…153

While such a ritual may be understood as a means to certain ends – psychic exploration,
automatic drawing and so on - it boasts a theatrical aesthetic of its own. Furthermore, the
Surrealistic co-dependence of trance ritual and graphic work characterises Norton’s
interdisciplinary art practice, and underscores a relationship to prototypical models of
magic-making. Carl Einstein explains that “myth and ritual have a performative mimetic
function,” articulating through carefully structured enactments a relationship to nature and to
others in a community. Norton's long-term commitment to these rituals, which later became
devotionals to Pan and Hecate, further collapses any life/art distinction. Norton’s lifestyle –
comprised in a conflation of art and occult enquiry - represents a political resistance in a
society geared towards efficiency rather than expression, prescribed roles rather than
exploration. To orient one's life not only towards art, but towards a dissensual artistic mode,
suggests a consummate aesthetico-political resistance. In “Life as Art From Nietzsche to
Foucault,” Zachary Simpson theorises how “life as art is consistently formulated as a
rejection of, and form of resistance to, dominant or administered realities.” This was
precisely Norton’s formula.

Rosaleen Norton and the Media

Notwithstanding the enduring interest of Norton's work and practices, critics’ imaginations
remain captured by Norton's media representation. This discursive construction represents
an ambivalent project that has been largely responsible for determining the nature of Norton
legacy. In retrospect it is possible to analyse Norton's interactions with the media, to expose
their significance and political charge.
Aside from a handful of innocuous newspaper mentions in her youth,154 and the

153
Drury, Nevill. "Rosaleen Norton’s Magical Cosmology." Dark Spirits: The Magical Art of Rosaleen Norton
and Austin Osman Spare. Ed. Paul Hardacre. 1st ed. Chiang Mai: Salamander and Sons, 2012. 66. Print.
154
Detailing school awards, youth art prizes and Norton joining the “New Zealand Women Association
Younger Set.” See: "Trove." National Library of Australia. Web. 10 Sep. 2015.
 43

publication of her Smith’s stories in 1935, Norton does not feature in any public media until
1941. Here we find her art practice discussed in Pertinent, alongside several “visionary
drawings.”155 These early articles describe Norton as if her reputation preceded her: “few, if
any, other Australian artists have aroused as much astonishment, as well as technical
controversy, as Miss Rosaleen Norton.”156 Meanwhile the stories lavish praise, suggesting
Norton is “worthy of comparison with some of the best Continental, American and English
contemporaries.”157 It appears that Norton’s appetite for media recognition had been whet;
according to Drury, “Norton was encouraged by the coverage in Pertinent; for her it
represented a breakthrough to receive such recognition.”158 By 1943 we encounter Norton in
a more active dialogue with the press, in this instance with the Sydney newspaper Truth.
Nestled amid soap advertisements and bleak news from World War 2 ran an article entitled
“Girl Gets Themes When Hypnotised.” It appeared on the 30th of May – one day ahead of
her first public exhibition at Pakie's Club.

Figure 11: "Girl Artist Gets Themes When Hypnotised," Sydney Truth 1943 (Detail)

Here we can already see the visual hallmarks of Norton’s media depiction – suggesting
these were largely pre-meditated tropes arising from the artist herself. She appears in a

155
Batt, Leon, ed. Pertinent. Sydney. Oct, Nov & Dec. 1941. Print.
156
ibid (December).
157
ibid.
158
Drury, Nevill, and School Of Humanities Social Sciences University Of Newcastle. Faculty Of Education
Arts. "Rosaleen Norton's Contribution to the Western Esoteric Tradition." 2008: University of Newcastle
Research Higher Degree Thesis. Web.
44

velveteen dress adorned with a silhouetted sphinx, and boasts her distinctive make-up; the
journalist notes that “Miss Norton, dark and slim, herself affects the long, uplifted eyebrows
familiar in satanic stage impersonations.”159 Nine years before Norton pronounced herself a
witch, she already attracts the term “Satanic”; she is described as a “student of the occult”
who has “delved deeply into the mysteries of witchcraft, as practiced in the middle ages.”160
Adding to this mystique, Norton tells the reporter that she has enjoyed “remarkable results in
the field of psychic phenomena,” claiming that many of her drawings were made under “her
own hypnotic influence.” She adds that a nude woman she has drawn beneath a leering satyr
“is symbolical of herself”161 – undoubtedly a scandalous intimation. In the photograph,
Norton smiles while drawing Nightmare, which the writer describes as “worse than the most
terrible nightmare experienced by any normal person.” One might recognize a sensationalist
streak in the journalism here, but evidently there is no holding back from Norton either.
Artist and reporter appear united in a desire to provoke. Norton even goes so far as to
announce that “vampires” exist on the Astral Plane – something she never claimed before or
after. Thus it appears that from the early stages of Norton's engagement with the media, she
actively courted controversy. With her media engagement, as with her illustration, one can
observe a measured and deliberate provocative tendency. The attention this provocation
garnered would soon aid Norton in disseminating a range of more sophisticated, more
politically loaded ideas.
Norton’s busiest period of media engagement came alongside her 1949 solo
exhibition in Melbourne. Amid the uproar of police intervention and an ensuing court trial,
Norton used the platform of nation-wide media coverage to broadcast her ideas surrounding
censorship and the occult. An obscenity charge had been levelled at Norton, due to her
“three studies of human hermaphrodites” and her sexually charged, Church-goading
Witches’ Sabbath.162 In the papers, Norton decried the charge as “ridiculous”163 and
maintained that her exhibition “would not close until forced to do so.”164 In the Sydney
Morning Herald she suggested that her critics should “study closely Aristotle's theory of the

159
"Girl Artist Gets Themes When Hypnotised." Truth [Sydney, NSW] 30 May 1943: 15. Web. 4 Oct 2015.
160
ibid.
161
ibid.
162
"Vic. Police Claim Pictures Obscene." Truth. [Sydney, NSW] 7 Aug 1949: 40. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
163
"Four pictures moved." News. [Adelaide, SA] 4 Aug 1949: 2. Web. 4 Oct 2015.
164
"Storm Over Paintings." Examiner. [Launceston, Tas] 4 Aug 1949: 11. Web. 4 Oct.
 45

function of tragic art,”165 offering a fresh theoretical frame in which to consider the images.
In Sydney’s Truth, Norton derided the law enforcement’s intrusion into art matters, saying
“was amused that cultural standards of Victorian policemen were greater than those of

Professor A. R. Chisholm”166 before adding, in Adelaide’s The News: “artistic standards are

always different from accepted standards.”167 In the Daily Telegraph, Norton elaborated:
“Obscenity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.” She used the opportunity to denounce
a broader social tendency towards censorship, saying “this figleaf morality expresses a very

unhealthy attitude.”168
Two weeks later The News also ran a story in which Norton clarified the role of her

self-hypnotism and explained the symbolism of her most contentious works.169 Here she
discussed demonology, witchcraft, religion, Freudian psychoanalysis and her esoteric

cosmology.170 At least 93 articles mentioning Rosaleen Norton were published in Australia

in 1949.171 Most quote or paraphrase her public statements, and it is unsurprising that

Hobart’s The Mercury noted Norton’s “neat flair for publicity.”172 While many of the 1949
articles did reference the shocking nature of her art, most gave credence (or at least column
space) to Norton’s defences.
Norton had thus fostered a strategic situation in which she could intensify
controversy, and therefore public attention, through the media – while using the same
platform to defend her work in a sophisticated manner. However, this was not a stable
arrangement. Perth’s Sunday Times soon criticized the magnitude of Norton’s publicity,
stating that it served only to “draw attention to works which may otherwise have passed,
more or less, unnoticed […] forms of expression […] that outrage average decency don’t

165
"Police Remove Paintings After Complaint." Sydney Morning Herald. 4 Aug 1949: 3. Web. 4 Oct 2015.
166
"Vic. Police Claim Pictures Obscene." Truth. [Sydney, NSW] 7 Aug 1949: 40. Web. 4 Oct 2015.
167
"Police Check up on 'trance' artist's nudes." News. [Adelaide, SA] 3 Aug 1949: 1. Web. 4 Oct 2015
168
Daily Telegraph 4 Aug. 1949. Print.
169
"Court visits 'obscene' art." News [Adelaide, SA] 19 Aug 1949: 1. Web. 4 Oct 2015, and "Paintings "not
exciting"." News [Adelaide, SA] 19 Aug 1949: 16. Web. 4 Oct 2015.
170
"Paintings "not exciting"." News [Adelaide, SA] 19 Aug 1949: 16. Web. 4 Oct 2015.
171
This many appear on the National Library of Australia’s online database Trove.
172
"Melbourne Topics: "Secret" Lunch First Step In Games Organisation." Mercury [Hobart, Tas] 8 Aug
1949: 3. Web. 4 Oct 2015.
46

usually get very far.”173 Other outlets began to fixate on Norton’s physical attributes and
bohemian lifestyle, rather than her artistic and political ideas. Perth’s Daily News described
her eccentric apartment in intimate detail and called her a chain-smoking “feminine fantasy”

with a “good figure” who engaged in “hair-raising” trance sessions.174 A sarcastic note by
the journalist - “see?”- follows the only quotation from Norton, which concerns
“ectoplasm,” astral bodies and manifest Being.
Norton’s coverage died off after the 1949 affair. When publicity returned in 1951, it
carried a different tone. Now articles barely mentioned Norton’s practice and instead
reported on the “minor earthquake” of outrage caused by her stay in a mens-only hostel in

Fitzroy,175 or the vagrancy charges laid against Norton and Gavin Greenlees.176 Attention
returned to Norton’s work in 1952 following the publication of The Art of Rosaleen Norton,
but this reportage was less sympathetic to Norton’s imagery - Perth’s Mirror relayed
descriptions of the book as “pornographic,” “shockingly depraved” and “maligning

womanhood,”177 despite burying praise deep in the column. Another report in the Mirror,
one week later, was all the more damning, calling the book “plain prostitution of what might

have been art” and, ironically, denouncing the attention it had received.178 Meanwhile in
Truth, Ian Stapleton (who had helped Norton secure the Rowden-White gallery three years
prior) defended her, saying: “Miss Norton's motives were found to be absolutely pure […]
moral idiocy and fraud grip about 90 per -cent of the community [which is] a legacy of a

savage and despicable moral attitude, called Puritanism.”179 The significant development in
the early fifties is the lack of Norton’s voice: less and less is she quoted or interviewed
within media representations. Norton’s most notable press appearance of 1952 is a
tantalizing interview in the tabloid Australasian Post. Here, she entertains a controversial

173
"As I See It." Sunday Times [Perth, WA] 28 Aug 1949: 19. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
174
"It's all fantastic—but it's art." Daily News. [Perth, WA] 23 Aug 1949: 5. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
175
"Girl Painter Spent a Week at Male Hostel." Mirror [Perth, WA] 17 Mar 1951: 12. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
176
"Poet, Artist Charged." Sydney Morning Herald. 30 Aug 1951: 5. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
177
"Panther Embraces Nude Girl In Weird Sex Book Nude Book." Mirror [Perth, WA] 13 Sep 1952: 6. Web. 5
Oct 2015.
178
"They Call This Art." Mirror [Perth, WA] 20 Sep 1952: 1. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
179
"Letters To Truth." Truth. [Sydney, NSW] 28 Sep 1952: 34. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
 47

notion - “maybe I am a witch”180 – but in this instance, controversy would work against her.
The article, combined with the banning of The Art Of Rosaleen Norton and its scathing
press coverage, contributed to a general sullying of Norton’s public image. In 1955, she was
accused of conducting depraved Black Mass rituals, involving orgies and animal sacrifice,

in her flat.181 Later that year the police raided Norton and Greenlees’ home, discovering a
photo of Greenlees in ritual garb flagellating Norton’s buttocks, for which the couple was

“remanded on indecency charges.”182 Her romantic and occult involvement with the famous
composer and conductor Sir Eugene Goossens, who was arrested for possessing

pornography and ritual masks, further tarnished her reputation.183

Seemingly in response to this bad publicity, Norton began to strategically reclaim the
“wicked witch” image that was plaguing her. She did so by once again engaging The
Australasian Post. Here it is vital to remember that witchcraft was not only taboo, but in
fact still illegal in New South Wales: the British Witchcraft Act of 1735 would not be

repealed there until 1969.184 In 1956, Norton reappeared in the Post, audaciously confirming

“I Am a Witch!”185 A few weeks later she returned again, pronouncing “I Was Born a

Witch!”186 Accompanying photographs featured Norton’s usual occult inventory, such as her
altar to Pan, but also more clichéd witchcraft iconography such as a pointed hat that looked

“like a prop from a Disney movie.”187

180
Barnes, David and Rosaleen Norton. “Rosaleen Says She Could Be A Witch.” Australasian Post. 9 Oct.
1952. Print.
181
Drury. "The Witch of Kings Cross." Pan's Daughter. 82.
182
"Kings Cross Artists Remanded On Indecency Charges." Canberra Times 5 Oct. 1955: 5. Web. 5 Oct 2015.
183
Drury. "The Witch of Kings Cross." Pan's Daughter. 86.
184
Hume, Lynne. Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia. Carlton South: Melbourne UP, 1997. Print.
185
Barnes, David and Rosaleen Norton. “I am a Witch!” Australasian Post. 20 Dec. 1956. Print.
186
Barnes, David and Rosaleen Norton. “I was born a Witch!” Australasian Post. 3 Jan. 1957. Print.
187
Drury. "The Witch of Kings Cross." Pan's Daughter. 89.
48

Left to Right: Figure 12.1: Norton in the Disney-like witches’ hat; Figure 12.2: Norton devoting a
flamboyant rite to Pan; Figure 12.3: Norton demonstrating ritual masks from her coven. Scenes capture in
1955 for Australasian Post.

Within this context she also professed to be a “devil worshipper,” albeit with the caveat, “if

Pan is the devil.”188 This overt embrace of a familiar and maligned witch image was a
radical enough gesture to direct attention back to Norton’s own articulations, and to secure
her an ongoing public mouthpiece through Australasian Post. The articles grew into
extended treatises by Norton, and allowed her to resume her public discourse regarding

psychoanalysis,189 eclectic occultism and even religion. Norton stated in “I am a Witch!”

that she believed in “lots of gods, Buddha, and even the Christian God.” Drury argues that
this betrays her insincere self-construction as a witch, calling it a “revealing statement,

which no witch would have made.”190 Elsewhere, he proposes that Norton’s claim to have

been born a witch “was simply the development of her mystique.”191 Still, if adopting the
persona of a stereotypical witch was a concession, Drury affirms that “Roie was enjoying

the forum offered to her to explain her beliefs.”192

Norton’s engagement with the media worked both for and against her, in ultimately
unquantifiable ways. Typically, however, Norton’s more direct engagements proved far
more beneficial to her practice, offering her opportunities to explain the nuances of her

188
Barnes, David and Rosaleen Norton. “Witches want no recruits.” Australasian Post. 10 Jan 1957. Sydney.
Print.
189
Drury. "The Witch of Kings Cross." Pan's Daughter. 89.
190
ibid.
191
Drury. "Introduction." Pan's Daughter. x.
192
Drury. "The Witch of Kings Cross." Pan's Daughter. 90.
 49

work. In 1949, Norton exploited this to great effect, articulating a politics of resistance
against censorship and staging a defense of taboo occult imagery. Undoubtedly this media
interaction constitutes part of Norton’s broader practice, influencing the scope and context
in which her visual and written work could be appreciated. Furthermore, her personal
reclamation of the witch image in the mid-to-late 1950s constituted a radical gesture which,
while perhaps distorting the transmission of Norton’s genuine interests, afforded her a
platform to once again articulate and disseminate her beliefs - reasserting her agency and
voice in the public sphere.
50

Conclusion

“And yet where all beginnings are, and endings, in the Now
That Sphinxwise holds the answers to our ceaseless “Why” and “How”?
Where limits bound the limitless. Where part contains the whole:
Where paradox is truth, where man can reach the changeless goal
Named Knowledge – Thousand-eyed one, whose kaleidoscopic face
Reflects, in part, the huge design of universal space.”

– Rosaleen Norton, Meditation on Beethoven and Einstein193

Over the past three chapters, I have argued that Rosaleen Norton’s practice can be
understood as a politically charged art of resistance. From a young age, Norton resisted
society’s distaste for the unknown and the macabre; this resistance became central to her
rendition of gothic horror fiction, whereby she began to champion the figure of the artist-
occultist. By the late 1940s, this youthful defiance had grown into a rigorous embrace of
occultism and polytheism. Norton explored these esoteric interests using techniques endemic
in Surrealism (trance, automatism, psychoanalytic symbolism), which posed a fierce
challenge to the rationalistic, conservative mentality of her milieu. The works of Norton’s
1949 exhibition, and the closely linked collection in 1952’s The Art of Rosaleen Norton,
formed an elaborate visualization of Norton’s personal cosmology and dreamlike
imaginings. But they also constituted a radical dissensus, presenting images that defied
acceptable standards in representation. They resisted the moral codes of a Christian and
patriarchal hegemony, reconfiguring its distribution of the sensible. Finally, and perhaps
most broadly, Norton’s own lifestyle, and her mediation of her public image, served as a
politico-aesthetic resistance to the society around her. As a divorced bisexual woman
practicing occult art, Norton rejected the social mores of mid-century Sydney. More
remarkably, by eventually embracing the identity of ‘Witch,’ Norton harnessed the media to
revalorize a slur against her, and reasserted her agency within the public arena.
Rosaleen Norton has long been understood as a freethinking, bohemian artist who
challenged convention. But a thorough and sustained consideration of Norton’s creative
gestures in political terms has offered an opportunity to understand their inner machinations,
as well as their specific resulting postures. This now allows us to grapple with a fundamental

193
Norton, Rosaleen. "Poetry." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan, 2009. 10.
Print.
 51

question: to what end did Norton’s politics of resistance work? Despite her emphasis on
persistent adversary, it would be unsatisfactory to assume that Norton resisted for resisting’s
sake.
We might conclude that Rosaleen Norton worked towards knowledge, and towards
freedom. Knowledge – the kaleidoscopic “changeless goal” of man, mentioned in the above
excerpt – was always central to Norton’s practice. The paramount form of knowledge
therein was experiential knowledge; in the occult note194 Magic and Witchcraft Norton
wrote “this reality which is mine must and will be fully regained […] to me, Knowledge
means personal experience.”195 Norton’s attitude recalls the words of Aleister Crowley (an
avowed influence on Norton) who held experience as preeminent: “I want everything that
the world holds […] This is the keynote of my life, the untrammelled delight in every
possibility of existence, potential or actual.”196 On the matter of potential existence one
should remember that Norton’s ideal of knowledge included spiritual and metaphysical
understanding. This too was an empirical and dynamic pursuit, sought through the occult
modes of astral projection, magic and mythology, and explicated through the very process of
creating esoteric art.
The ideal of freedom, meanwhile, implies a more socially oriented goal; by way of
definition, freedom tacitly suggests external forces of control and restriction. In this context,
for Norton, the fundamental freedom is self-determination. Her reflective essay Credo
advocates a form of “pride” that eschews “herd values,” saying: “I am as I am and not as
they would try and make me.”197 This is, in turn, the essence of Rancière’s dissensus: the
assertion of one’s agency and equality against a policing order, a delimiting distribution of
the sensible.
Given Norton’s strident individualism, one may wonder if Norton’s politics were
solely self-interested. Beyond her “vision” of sustained adversary, did Norton have a vision
for wider society? The answer is perhaps both no and yes. In an untitled occult note, Norton
states:

194
Thorn in the Flesh comprises a number of Norton’s non-fiction notes on occult and philosophical matters.
195
Norton, Rosaleen. "Occult Notes." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan,
2009. 142. Print.
196
Crowley, Aleister. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley; an Autohagiography. New York: Hill and Wang,
1970. Print.
197
Norton, Rosaleen. "Occult Notes." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan,
2009. 38. Print.
52

“I do not wish to propagate any cult (even the Witch-cult), change society, establish a
“better world” for others etc […] I have what I prefer to describe as a function rather
than a “message” or a “mission” (which words I detest). The function is that of focus
and catalyst in relation to certain forces, situations and people – and this function is
best served by performing my own personal will.”198

Once again, it is evident that Norton’s political interests lie in self-expression against
established orders. Norton acknowledges that this libertarian outlook could influence the
world: “If my own activities have any effect for or agin such movements [of cultural
change], so much the better.”199 Still, ultimately, Norton does not seek disciples or adherents
to her beliefs, but advocates for fellow-travellers in individualism: “I do not really like or
want inferiors, but equals.” She reminds us, “I am not a “ruler” or a “lawgiver” but an
explorer,” implying that to promulgate her own standards would risk becoming the sort of
prescriptive force she is adamant in resisting. On one hand, Norton’s individualistic stance is
confluent with the quasi-anarchistic politics of Crowley’s Thelema religion, which promoted
the universal tenet, “Do what thou wilt, and that shall be the whole of the law.”200 But unlike
Crowley, Norton resists the urge to enshrine her ideas in a fixed ideology or religion: “I do
not wish to found any school or order such as those founded by G [George Gurdjieff,
founder of “The Fourth Way”] or C [Aleister Crowley].” She hereby professes to “disagree
utterly with Crowley over a very fundamental point […] the will to proclaim the “Rule” of
Man.”201
This dissertation has addressed a specific quality that pervades Norton’s work and
her posture within culture: resistance. But any beholder of Norton’s work should remember
that resistance, characterized by negativity and struggle, is not the singular defining
narrative therein. Norton’s practice would not have ceased to exist if society had simply
welcomed it. Likewise - and despite the forces working against Norton - knowledge and
freedom were not merely, perpetually forthcoming in her view. The paradox alongside
Norton’s ‘resistance’ is that her art also signifies the immanence of these ideals. For just as
mid-century Sydney was the site of Norton’s practice, so too was the esoteric world; the

198
ibid, 61.
199
ibid.
200
Crowley, Aleister, and Rose Edith Crowley. The Book of the Law, Liber Al Vel Legis, with a Facsimile of
the Manuscript as Received by Aleister and Rose Edith Crowley on April 8, 9,10, 1904. York Beach, Maine:
Red Wheel/Weiser, 2004. Print.
201
Norton, Rosaleen. "Occult Notes." Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan,
2009. 98. Print.
 53

world of the astral plane, of the coven, of imagination and the unconscious; the world of Pan
and the world of the boundless. In “A Vision,” Norton proposes a world defined by
adversary, in which resistance is the imperative of occultism and art. In “A Chant,” for
Norton, the world of knowledge and freedom has already won out: “I live in the scarlet
blossom of Magic, I live in Infinity, I live.”202

Figure 13: Rosaleen Norton, Lucifer

202
Norton, Rosaleen. "Poetry.” Thorn in the Flesh. Ed. Keith Richmond. York Beach, Maine: Teitan, 2009. 26.
Print.
54

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