1980, color, 29 minutes
Concept, direction and editing by Kenneth Anger. Camera: Michael Cooper. Music: Bobby Beausoleil and the Freedom Orechestra. Filmed in Luxor, Karnak, Gizeh, Externsteine, London, Avebury. Cast: Miriam Girbil (Isis), Donald Cammell (Osiris), Haydn Couts (Adept), Kenneth Anger (Magus), Sir Francis Rose (Chaos), Marianne Faithfull (Lilith), Leslie Huggins (Lucifer). A presentation of Anita Pallenberg.
The ascension of Lucifer (Horus), Bringer of Light, invoked by Isis, Osiris, Lucifer's Adept, Lilith and the Magus.
Lucifer Rising has been beset with problems: cast changes (Leslie Huggins, the present Lucifer, is also the fifth to play the role) have been complicated by stolen footage and financial woes. Over the past ten years, several incarnations of the film have appeared. Kenneth Anger reedited this "revised edition" in 1980, adding amusic track from his original Lucifer, Bobby Beausoleil and the Freedom Orchestra, a group of prisoners serving life sentences, recorded in Dueul Prison in Tracy, California.
Although Christian theology views Lucifer as a personification of evil and a rebellious fallen angel, anger sees him as a beautiful bringer of light and a cosmic trickster. Anger's Lucifer is linked to the illuminating gods of pagan religions, most notably Horus, the Egyptian falcon-headed sun god. Lucifer Rising is an invocation of Lucifer by Isis (Goddess of Life and Nature) and Osiris (God of Death and Resurrection), Lucifer's Adept (the link between the gods and man, in a many-colored coat), Lilith (the Destroyer) and the Magus (played by Anger himself). The gods and their human "receivers" appear at magical sites such as Karnak, Luxor, Avebury and Stonehenge to call forth the explosive, chaotic, dramatic, but also tender forces of nature: storms, fires, volcanic eruptions, a solar eclipse, the birth of a crocodile, the labor of a beetle, the grazing of a goat. They summon Lucifer, who arrives in a variety of trickster guises to amuse, confuse and enlighten e viewer. In a grand finale to the film - Anger has called it "visual music" - a glowing pink flying saucer floats over the Sphinx, signifying that humanity can embrace the ancient gods of its past as well as its future: past, present and future are shown to be one and the same. Lucifer Rising constitutes Kenneth Anger's glorious vision of the dawning of the Aquarian Age, the Aeon of Horus.
