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TV Show, The Eleventh Hour with Robert Lipsyte
1991 Interview with Margot Adler, Pagan Priestess
Interview with Terry Jones of Monty Python
1991 Interview with Margot Adler, Pagan Priestess
Interview with Terry Jones of Monty Python
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| 01:01:03 63.6 |
Eleventh Hour #249 Halloween Slate
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| 01:01:20 80 |
Robert Lipsyte
Trick or treat. That's our story tonight. Announcer Funding for the 11th hour is made possible by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Jr Charitable Trust, the Commonwealth Fund, the Carl C. Icahn Foundation, the Geraldine R dodge Foundation, the Jacob burns Foundation and the members of 13. Robert Lipsyte Welcome to the 11th hour I'm Robert Lipsyte and I will be roaming this dark and stormy night of restless souls to bring you three Halloween treats. Back in the studio a priest look at our fascination with make believe horror and Monty Python's Terry Jones will help us celebrate the Flying Circus's 20th anniversary. But first, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Margot Adler, a writer who calls herself a pagan priestess. |
| 01:02:33 154 |
Lipsyte: For a pagan priestess or a witch, Halloween is a serious holiday, isn't it?
Speaker 1 Margot Adler it's not only a serious holiday, it's one of the two most sacred holidays for witches. And it really goes back to the ancient Celts in Northern Europe. And the belief that this was their New Year's Day, it was the beginning of winter. It was a great harvest festival. But it was also believed by the ancient Celts that this was a day that was sort of between the worlds that was not part of one year or another. And because of that the walls between the world of form and any kind of other realm are thinner. And because these walls were thinner, you could contact your dead ancestors, and it became a celebration of ancestor reverence. And so I think from that, as years went on, and Christianity became dominant instead of paganism, those kinds of beliefs deteriorated and what you got were the remains. And what are the remains goblins, ghosts, all the things that we sort of celebrate today as the fun kind of stuff that's Halloween. But for witches, it's still a very sacred day where you think about the new year you think about what you want to give out, what you want to cast off, what you want to take in, what your own relationship with is with the other side or with ancestry, or with perhaps loved ones who have gone and it is actually a very serious holiday. |
| 01:03:52 232.95 |
Robert Lipsyte
Do you find that this trivializes a trick or treat? And witches you know, looking like skinny crazy people on broomsticks. Speaker 1 Yeah it does. It does. On the other hand, it's it's so much fun for kids that I sort of I have ambivalent feelings about it. Robert Lipsyte What happened to the rest of us some moment that you weren't a trick or treating kid, you begin to think of yourself as a witch, how old were you? Speaker 1 I was well, what really happened to me was when I was 12, I got involved in the Greek Gods and I got very, it was like the late 50s. There weren't a lot of powerful images for women in the society at large. And Artemis and Athena, were a lot better than what was going on in the society around me. And I think way down deep, I didn't want to worship these beings. I wanted to be them. And so I got very involved in the idea of the old pagan religions and didn't realize that anybody could do that. I mean, later, I realized that as you grow up, you know, that's crazy. No one worships the Greek gods or, you know, thinks they can be them or something like that. But later I found out to my shock much later, I mean, maybe in my 20s in the 70s in the very early 70s that in fact, there was an entire movement of people who were looking to ancient pre Christian nature traditions really that's and that's essentially what witchcraft is one of it is a religion that basically celebrates nature. It celebrates the cycles of the seasons, the old holidays, the Solstices, the equinoxes. It celebrates harvest, spring, summer, fall, and tries to attune I think the people who are involved in it try to look at themselves and look at life as very much as part of sacred reality. |
| 01:05:28 328.08 |
Robert Lipsyte
What does it mean in 1989 to be a witch, you belong to a colony? Speaker 1 Well, actually, I don't, but I have I have run groups I have I have been a member of groups in the past. I do not belong to one now. And you can be you can be a witch alone. I mean, it's not it's, it's essentially a way of life. It's really a religion. And what does it mean in 1989? Well, I think I would have to first say that most of the people that have come to it in modern times, do so because they are feeling bereft, that their own religious traditions didn't have a lot of juice in mystery. They may have had a lot of unacceptable dogma, but they didn't have a lot of ritual juice. You know, I was one of those kinds of people who love Catholicism as long as it was in Latin, you know, and I wanted a sense, I think ritual allows us to tie ourselves into eternal feelings and to bond in a certain way, that sitting and just being lectured in a church doesn't really allow. And I also was someone who was very much involved in the ecology movement and thought that the old biblical injunction you know, thou shalt subdue the earth and multiply and have dominion over the earth was not an appropriate ecological ethic and that the older pagan animistic traditions, were ones that basically said everything is sacred. Life is sacred, the body is sacred. Sexuality is sacred, the mind is sacred, and human beings are on a part with the divine. So that was my entry into it. And I think that people who are getting involved in witchcraft and paganism today are very much people who want to reanimate the world of nature and see it as sacred. |
| 01:07:06 426.55 |
Robert Lipsyte
This sounds pretty harmless. Why has it been a tradition of fearfulness of witches? And at some point, the burning of witches? What is it about witches that gets mainstream culture nervous? Speaker 1 Margot Adler Well, I think that the minute you deal with the forces of life and death and rebirth and start thinking about that stuff, and particularly because many people who were involved in those traditions were the ancient that were women, were involved in healing traditions, midwifery. the stuff that's really concerned with, you know, life. I think that stuff is scary for a lot of people. And so there's been a history of the life force being seen as fearful, and therefore women as the bringers of life being seen as fearful. And I think that much of what happened in the 16th and 17th century and during the witch burnings that when millions of people died, most of the people that died. were not witches, I mean, in many cases, it was an excuse to root out heresy. You know, in Protestant countries, Catholics died in Catholic countries, Protestants died, women died, when people accuse people, you know, who had property. I mean, all kinds of this was basically a huge excuse. But I think at root, the archetype of the witch is scary, because it says that people can change their reality. And that's very scary psychologically, I think. |
| 01:08:31 511.59 |
Robert Lipsyte
What about the next step? Magic, black magic casting spells? The power to cloudminds, does this exist? In your reality? And you're thinking? Speaker Margot Adler Well, I mean, I'm very not I'm totally against manipulating someone against their will. So my whole attitude toward negative workings of any kind, um would be, you know, I'd be totally against such but the question is, do they? Is there such a thing? I mean, that's really a deeper question. I tend to think of magic as very much um you may laugh at this as as very much like psychology. that we have within ourselves, within our own minds, enormous possibilities, that there are parts of ourselves that we can access when we are creative, when we paint when we dream. And that very often we don't, we are not able to access those things in our normal life. And that what ritual can do and altered states of consciousness and using drumming and dancing and incense and candles and all the things that all of the religions, including witchcraft, have used throughout centuries, is they can allow you to access those deeper parts of yourself. And therefore you can be I guess, a larger, a person who can affect the world and yourself in a larger way Robert Lipsyte It sounds strangely like releasing human potential. |
| 01:09:52 592.25 |
Speaker 1
Yeah i think that's what it is. I think exactly what and that's in that's my definition of magic. But do I think that I can compel someone against their will. Um I mean, i don't Robert Lipsyte You can't make me fall in love with the next person I see Speaker 1 no. And I would also think it would be unethical to do so. Because I think that, first of all, why limit the universe? You might not I, if I was to work for a love relationship or something like that. How would I really know, you know the old saying, be careful what you wish for you might get it, you know, you have to be careful, even if could you do such, you might not be doing what you really want. Robert Lipsyte But is there a dark side? Is there a dark side? Are there people who would use this in a manipulative sort of way I mean, is that the black magic because that's the thing to fear. Speaker 1 Margot Adler I think that there are arrogant, selfish, manipulative human beings in every single religion. And actually, I think the modern pagan religions have had a lot less of that manipulation than let's say, Jim Jones, who considered himself a Christian. I think that there are clearly people who are going to use the trappings of um. Well, I think we can talk about Satanism, which is a totally different phenomena. It's a Christian perversion. That's really what it is. It takes Christian symbols, it reverses them. And anybody who would, let's say, do a black mass or recite the Lord's Prayer backwards would have to in their heart, believe that the Lord's Prayer forward meant something. So it comes out of an anti Christian idea. It's not from a pagan or prior ideas. Absolutely not. |
| 01:11:30 690.5 |
Robert Lipsyte
Margot Adler, a very good witch. Thank you very, very much. And now I must fly. The movie Nightmare on Elm Street 3 features Gsa Gsa Gabor which makes us wonder what's truly horrifying and what's merely a slap in the face. But beneath the plastic pain, there are some real fears |
| 01:11:52 712.74 |
Speaker 2
Halloween has been around a long time. The church in its earliest days, way back and decided that it wanted to celebrate the feast of All Saints. Robert Lipsyte Father Gary Schubert writes drama criticism for the Washington Baltimore theater guide Speaker 2 Father Gary Schubert Halloween comes from the corruption of the words All Hallows Eve, that is to say the night before All Hallows are All Saints Day. All Hallows Day was celebrated in honor of the martyrs of the Christian religion. Robert Lipsyte Since the Middle Ages, Halloween has been the night for the dead who had not yet reached heaven or hell. They were in Purgatory, and they haunted the living for past misdeeds. All Saints Day was created by the Catholic Church to keep its flock from fixating on demons and ghosts. It didn't work. |
| 01:12:51 771.08 |
Speaker 2 Father Schubert
It didn't work as you see by if you go to see Nightmare 13, Halloween part 5, 6, 7. The human race has always been fascinated by what happens after we die. Because there's one thing that we all share in common and it's the one thing we know nothing about. In order to conquer our fear, we have dressed it up we have we have made it into an imaginative experience. |
| 01:13:26 806.43 |
Speaker 3 Michael O'Brian
it's the imagination you can't really put a finger on what that would look like. How it really is, so you get to play with that a lot. Robert Lipsyte 18 year old Michael O'Brien of Whitestone Queens sits in a yard of ghouls that he made in his basement. He wants to be a makeup artist for Hollywood fright films. Halloween are his audition Speaker 3 Michael O'Brian Well, this is the third year that I've put it up. And I've been working on it all year pretty much. Robert Lipsyte Michael was fascinated by the special effects of Halloween part five, but it was Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy Krueger, who inspired him. Speaker 3 Michael O'Brian He had an eerie screen presence. He was always in the shadows. He was spooky, you know, he was scary. Speaker 2 Father Schubert It's a very odd that we Americans would on the one hand, be so practical, you know, give us an American or we'll fix your tractors or trailers. We don't believe in God. We don't believe in any of this preternatural supernatural stuff. And then you turn the kids loose and what do they do? They go to nightmare 75 |
| 01:14:39 879.94 |
Father Schubert
This fascination almost a fetish with the McCobb the ghoulish the nightmarish that is shown, especially in our films, to me means that we Americans, we human beings, not just Americans, and we're all trying to fill a vacuum in ourselves that the 20th century Godless society creates. Speaker 3 Michael O'Brien nobody really ever told me why they like to be scared at a movie. I just guess they get a thrill out of it. I would imagine this probably deep down fear of actually encountering something like that. Speaker 2 Father Schubert Millions of people go to these movies where the dead arise and they take on the living their old relatives or old enemies. Because death is fascinating to all of us all the time. And death, what it does is interrupt conversations, it interrupts business deals, it interrupts everything. Our imaginations then concoct the worst possible scenarios, our worst possible fears, and we enact them in our minds. The movies just reflect what's going on inside our souls. There's nothing in the movies that we haven't had inside of ourselves. |
| 01:16:00 960.49 |
Speaker 3 Michael O'Brien
If I ran into one of these guys on the street at night and probably I'd turn around and run the other way, after I asked him what he did to look like that. Robert Lipsyte The Jack a lanturn tradition dates back to Celtic Britain 2000 years ago. The Celts hollowed out beets, potatoes and turnips, and lit flame in them to ward off the spirits of death. The tradition began in America 200 years ago, we decided a pumpkin was a better vegetable for the job. A sophisticated modern version of that silly Celtic is being celebrated these days at the Museum of Broadcasting in Manhattan. They're running a retrospective of Monty Python's Flying Circus through March. Our retrospective of those chaps will run for the next six minutes. |
| 01:17:01 1021.7 |
Speaker 4
World of history is proud to present the premier of the Battery Towns Women's Guild reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor. Robert Lipsyte The world's most famous British comedy, at least in America, was born on October 5 1969. It gave itself a name that meant nothing at all. At a point in time when the planet was being nudged nudge nudge by Beatles, peaceniks, hippies, Tricky Dick, Dylan, LSD, a funny thing happened at the BBC. Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, John Cleese, animator Terry Gilliam, and Graham Chapman, who died October 5 on the Pythons 20th anniversary, earned even greater fame on American Public Television. Scholars Craig Gilliam, the one American pipeline was inspiring the stream of consciousness format, which appeared partly from the traditional sitcoms and posted comedy. Speaker 5 Clips from Python national interviews in pursuit of the impossible dream problem with wicker Island isn't Robert Lipsyte The Flying Circuse mix of satire, psychedelia, surrealism and schoolboy silliness led to a new comic adjective, Pythonettes. Robert Lipsyte Sketches as the twit Olympics, were broadcast on 45 original half hour shows through 1974 when the group quit TV and began producing movies. Clips from The Flying Circus Robert Lipsyte Each has produced separate films, TV drama, and book projects, sometimes in twos and threes. Terry Jones was in New York last week to promote his new movie, Eric the Viking. Speaker 4 Terry Jones It's a fairy tale for kids and grown ups. It's sort of it's a bit experimental in a way but it's not like a Pythion film where everything is fun, everything has to be funny. Robert Lipsyte He wrote and directed it and appeared in draft and hired his Python pal John Clease Clips from the film - Just cut his hand off . Oh Thank you my love Lipsyte: dragon's mouth, midtown Manhattan is all the same to Terry Jones. |
| 01:19:46 1186.05 |
Speaker 4 Terry Jones
This is the this is the only place in New York I've ever been mugged in. And I was mugged by a horse. So here I mean, the people know Flying Circus much better here than they do in England. And that's probably because, you know, the shows are still playing in England, they're only played once or twice. Or maybe because it's so unAmerican, everybody goes around thinking that people are gonna like, something that's the same as what they know, you know, so American vote your life something unless it's American, but maybe, you know, we all like to see a different, different perspective on the world. And I mean, I guess everybody likes stupid things and Python's basically pretty stupid. Speaker 5 They think it's really cool. But then any bit mental Speaker 4 Terry Jones October the fifth, that was the 20 years ago, it was the first TV shows when British TV. There was no reaction for about sort of five shows. And then we started getting reviews and started getting people writing it and gradually, a sort of a groundswell sort of built up an undercurrent. Generally, we'd uh, six of us would meet at my house, sit around the dining room table and read out the material we'd all been writing, and then laugh and fall over and then go and have a curry.I'm sort of the worrier of the group, I think it's sort of I was the sort of the person who was constantly editing the shows I was always there editing the shows and trying to get them shorter and compress them and trying to keep the thing rolling and keep things together, I guess. I'm sure we're all going off in our own directions at the moment and doing different things. I mean, myself I'm sort of writing books and things and making more films. Well, Graham Chapman died on the actual anniversary of Python on our 20th anniversary. With Graham's death, I think the the spark has finally gone out of Monty Python. There was something essential about Graham that he was the most quirky, the most off the wall of the Pythons you didn't know where he was coming from at all. I mean, I can't really believe he's dead, because he was always sort of sitting back there would suddenly say, Oh, I'm so sorry. I was I was miles away. Like it feels like he's going to reappear and say, oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't there at all. I was just miles away. But, Graham, you'd come up with these suggestions. Like for instance, when we were trying to think of names for the show. It was Graham's suggestions that was stuck in my mind. I think one of them was, we tried to think we eventually came up with Monty Python's Flying Circus. But before that Graham had come up with Owl Stretching Time. Another of his sketches which my favorite, was the toad elevating moment, the toad elevating moment. |
| 01:22:47 1367.32 |
Robert Lipsyte
Chapman and his mates are on view at the Museum of Broadcasting. On this night of spirits and metaphors, it's perhaps fitting to vote all of our talkback, our weekly forum for your letters, to your commentary on our program about the controversies over Bill Moyers PBS series, Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. Robert Lipsyte The controversy began with Brendon Gil's accusation in the New York Review of Books that Campbell was a bigoted scholar. We brought Gil and Bill Moyers together and the result was heated. So as your response, viewers criticized Gil, Moyers ,Campbell and me. one of Gil's main charges was that Joseph Campbell was anti semitic. Robert Lipsyte Is this something that surprises you or that you knew about? Bill Moyers Brenda's describing a man I didn't know. I spent hours obviously with Joe Campbell and I got no trace of the anti semitism that you talked about. And you know, there's the book where's the anti semitism in it? Robert Lipsyte A Hewitt, New Jersey viewer wrote this of Gil, how can a person who has no inkling of the spiritual in man presumed to participate remotely in the world of arts, and much worse? How can you dismiss any inspired reference to the part of God within as self help he seems an existentialist type holdover from the middle years of the century. Is anyone really interested in this God is dead position anymor? We are on the brink of the 21st century, as Bill Moyers can tell you. A Brooklyn viewer thanked us for the debate but objected to Campbell's theological views. Joseph Campbell Every mythology every religion is true in this sense, it is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery. But when it gets stuck to the metaphor, then you're in trouble. Robert Lipsyte Elizabeth Dowling wrote, few people in today's religion taboo, understand the problems Campbell's theories cause. Campbell was an atheist, not the best Jew Christian Buddhist. Campbell defined as a atheism is symbolic hero worship without any belief in historical persons or their reality. I am a real person. And while honoring religious symbolism, which opens my understanding, find it very important that God is also real and not just symbol. Christ was incarnate in the flesh in reality, not just a comic book hero. A new city viewer thought I was a rude host. |
| 01:25:28 1528.93 |
Brendan Gill
Now where there's not a shred of evidence that anybody is prepared to follow a spiritual Robert Lipsyte Let me stop let me stop you for just just a moment because r Gilll: But remember where I am Robert Lipsyte we've we've we've all watched all these hours and not everybody has. Milton Heller wrote, My wife and I were deeply disturbed on the way your program of last night was conducted, specially your conduct since youre most responsible as the host. You permitted Mr. Moyers to attack Mr. Gill and even joined in the attack without in any way permitting Mr. Gill any chance to explain or elaborate on his thesis. We haven't seen such an unfairly held discussion since Morton Downey Jr. was retired. I'm puzzled by the comparison with Morton Downey, Jr. Mr. Heller who, like one of Joseph Campbell's hero metaphors has returned to haunt you. Mr. Downey is unretired he is back on television. Well, you might have some belated tricks or treats for us, letters with your comments about the programs and the issues we raise. It's right to talk back the 11th hour 356 West 58th Street New York New York 10019 That's the 11th hour I'm Robert Lipsyte |
| 01:27:36 1656.63 |
Announcer
Funding for the Eleventh hour is made possible by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Jr Charitable Trust, the Commonwealth Fund, the Carl C. Icahn Foundation, the Geraldine R dodge Foundation, the Jacob burns Foundation and the members of 13. |
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