IN ANTERO ALLI’S new film, To Dream of Falling Upwards, the elder magus of the Thelemic Temple of Horus dies of old age, intending to pass the torch to a younger adept, Jack Mason, a power-seeker whom the Magus has cultivated and trained to carry on the lineage of the temple.
Unfortunately, the elder magus’ biological son, Michael Mallard, intrudes and inherits the temple instead. As a result, Mason employs an assassin/dominatrix who kills Mallard while making it look like autoerotic asphyxiation. And that’s only the beginning.
Mallard soon reappears as a psychological demon with a straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt, plaguing Mason from then on. As a result, Mason heads to the desert, enlisting the help of two brujas, female mestizo witches, similar to characters straight out of Carlos Castaneda.
In the film, the Thelemic Temple of Horus, a secret initiatic order, takes its name from Thelema, a religion and/or philosophical system established by the notorious chrome-domed troublemaker Aleister Crowley more than 100 years ago. The goal is to find your own “True Will” through gradual “Knowledge and Conversation” with the Holy Guardian Angel, a slippery term resembling the underlying metaphysical self.
When it comes to this particular zone of “the occult,” there are two roads. The path of the magus is anchored in the will to control and achieve power over others. The path of the heart, says Alli, is followed by one who serves and yields to mysterious forces rather than engaging those forces for his own power and control. Reflecting that concept, in the film, Mason must choose either the path of the magus or the path of the heart.
Alli says his own Holy Guardian Angel emerges as the Muse of Creativity. He writes: “Whereas the occult magickian strives to achieve knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel to increase power, my aim as a filmmaker is to use similar methods to open up the playing fields of Creation and stimulate the Poetic Imagination.”
I laughed throughout the flick, because over the last century-and-a-half, we’ve seen a glut of occult lodges, esoteric temples and secret orders, all with their respective warring spinoffs and branches, usually with everyone arguing over who has the proper authority to carry on the lineage of whomever. As myth and parody, the film lampoons all of the above.
And there ought to be clowns, as the song goes, so a backstory in the film also emerges, with two of Jack Mason’s apprentices performing as clowns in a version of Jack and the Beanstalk. In order to deliberately quash their own egos, Mason orders them to become professional clowns as part of their initiation into the next temple degree.
Campbell native and Campbell Express writer Duncan Cook plays both the human and demon forms of Michael Mallard. He says it was a challenge going from who the character was at the beginning to what he was at the end.
“Working with Antero, I knew he wasn’t going to leave in a mediocre performance,” said Cook. “I knew that whatever became of it would be top-notch. He didn’t need to explain what he wanted; he just guided me through it. He wasn’t puppeteering, he was sort of like guiding me toward a performance that would serve the movie. It was organic. He was like the sun guiding a growing plant, or something.”
Alli himself claims never to have joined any occult orders but says he was privy to a wealth of insider scoops while hanging out with the late Dr. Christopher S. Hyatt, a self-made magus and author of many books on postmodern psychology, sex, tantra, kundalini, mysticism and brain exploration. In the closing credits, the following stipulation emerges: “Any similarities or likenesses with actual events, persons or organizations in this film are purely coincidental and not to be confused for synchronicity or any type of ill will towards any real life person, company or magickal order.”
To Dream of Falling Upwards premieres Feb. 25 at 8pm at the Humanist Hall in Oakland, with an April San Jose showing at Anno Domini currently being planned.
To Dream of Falling Upwards
