 |
| The greatest combination since peanut butter and jelly. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "Sorcery and Sex." Originally published in Wild Couples (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 1, no. 2, February/March 1970. No author credited. Also known as "Sex and Sorcery."
Excerpt: "During the Communion, we partake symbolically of the Master's flesh and blood. The transubstantiation bit, you know? The liquid is prepared according to rigid specifications. Seven parts semen, one part blood, one part urine. And the donor has to be a practicing warlock. Our donor tonight had to shoot his load five times to fill the chalice. It left him looking a bit peaked, too."
Reflections: I think Eddie would have very much enjoyed Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), had he lived to see it. Hell, he'd probably have wanted to make the low-budget knockoff version for the home video market. The centerpiece of that film is a mysterious ritual—held in a mansion and attended by the wealthy and powerful—that combines sex with elements of Catholicism and various pagan religions. Although carried out with a great deal of pomp and ceremony, this ritual is essentially an orgy.
At first, I thought "Sorcery and Sex" was a short story about just such a sex ritual and wondered what this piece was doing in When the Topic is Sex alongside Ed Wood's supposed nonfiction articles. As I read further, however, I realized that this article was being presented as a bit of investigative journalism. The premise is that Ed, apparently acting on behalf of Wild Couples magazine, has been allowed to attend a black mass and later interview the high priestess, Cybele, about what it all means. (It turns out she's really a housewife named Melissa, by the way.) There's a lot of history behind this so-called "Black Mass," and the priestess mentions the Druids, Stonehenge, Zoroastrianism, and Faust during her interview.
Ed's naturally a bit squeamish about the strange ritual—especially the parts where the celebrants spit on a cross and drink semen from a chalice—but he's simply allowed to observe. "I learned later that visitors are exempted from the dark rituals," he explains. Whew! That's a relief, huh? In a weird way, this article also reminded me of the Universal horror film Cult of the Cobra (1955) in which a group of thrill-seeking American servicemen sneak into a meeting of a strange, snake-worshipping cult and witness much more than they bargained for. While that film is nowhere near as explicit as Eyes Wide Shut, the cult ritual does have an element of sex, particularly an erotic, snake-themed dance routine. For 1955, it's pretty hot stuff.
 |
| An erotic dance routine from Cult of the Cobra (1955). |
Pagan sex rituals are fairly common in the Ed Wood canon. Again, we need only look to films like Orgy of the Dead (1965) and Necromania (1971) for similar scenes. The 1972 short story "The Witches of Amau Ra" is another variation on this theme. Ed really gets into the pageantry of it all, the chanting and the props, like inverted crosses. Who knows? Maybe the ritual described in this article—Cybele balks at the term "orgy"—would have been a typical Tuesday night at Anton LaVey's house circa 1970.
For me, the point at which this article makes the great leap into absurdity is when our intrepid reporter starts interviewing the high priestess. He lets us know that Cybele's robe is hanging open, giving him a good look at her anatomy. Then, after reciting a couple of incantations (written at about the intellectual level of dirty limericks), Cybele causes the reporter to have what he calls "the most incredible, mind-bending orgasm I have ever had in my life." At this point, "Sorcery and Sex" has essentially become a ghoulish Penthouse letter.
By the way, this is at least the second article in When the Topic is Sex to mention tooth loss. In "Use That Four Letter Word," Ed writes that the wrong choice of vocabulary might result in getting your teeth knocked out. And in this story, Cybele brags, "People learned not to annoy me or they might find their teeth falling out the next day." Obviously, Ed Wood was missing many of his own teeth by the time he wrote this story. If you want to know how he lost those teeth, read The Unknown War of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2017) by James Pontolillo.
Next: "A Thought on Fetish Love Objects" (1972)