12 - An Australian original: Rosaleen Norton and her magical cosmology

Summary

During the 1950s and 1960s the Australian trance occultist and visionary artist Rosaleen Norton was well known in Sydney as a colourful and “wicked” bohemian figure from the city's red-light district. Slight in build with flashing eyes, curly black hair and a smile that revealed irregular teeth, she had a magnetic presence that made her stand out in the crowd. Norton was invariably described as a pagan rebel and portrayed in such ungracious terms as “the notorious, Pan-worshipping Witch of Kings Cross … a person known to the police through two prosecutions for obscenity” (Salter 1999: 17). Most of her mainstream print-media coverage was generated by popular gossip-driven magazines like The Australasian Post, People, Truth and Squire that inclined towards sensationalist articles, and tabloid newspapers like The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mirror and Sun. But all of this salacious media interest in Norton has to be seen in an historical context. During the immediate post-Second World War period Australia was both socially and politically conservative, ruled by the highly traditional Sir Robert Menzies, an “ultraconservative prime minister, who reigned supreme in the 1950s with his anti-communist manifesto and harsh stance on censorship” (Johnson 2002). Norton was portrayed in the media as a Devil-worshipping harpy, ever eager to flaunt accepted social conventions at a time when the appropriate place for a woman was perceived to be within the home, focusing on domestic concerns and attending to the needs of husband and children.