Name: Kenneth Anger’s INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME w/ Brian Butler
Start: 2026-10-16T19:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-10-16T21:00:00-07:00
Location: Philosophical Research Society

Details

Brian Butler returns to reveal the hidden mythic currents behind Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.
About this Event

Kenneth Anger’s INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME w/ Brian Butler

Come as Your Madness: A Special Pre-Halloween 16mm Screening & Presentation

For this special pre-Halloween presentation at PRS, Brian Butler — artist, occultist, and official representative of the Estate of Kenneth Anger — returns to reveal the hidden mythic currents behind Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Costumes, masks, and ritual personae are encouraged. Come as your madness.

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is more than a film. It is a cinematic ritual that merges Crowley’s Aeon with Hollywood’s occult underground. The film grew out of a “Come As Your Own Madness” masquerade attended by Anger; revelers from the party became members of his cast, wearing the same or similar costumes. Conceived in the early 1950s and reworked over decades, Pleasure Dome summoned the haunted glamour of Marjorie Cameron, Curtis Harrington, Renate Druks, and other lost avatars of the Babalon current.

Drawing on two decades of research and his first-hand experience collaborating with Kenneth Anger, Butler brings rare insights into the tangled legacy of this work: from writing one of the earliest major essays on Cameron (Disinformation’s Book of Lies), to a decade-long friendship with Curtis Harrington, to visiting the house where the film was shot and collaborating with Anger to restore his lost 1958 three-screen version, which Butler premiered to a sold-out crowd at the Max Linder Panorama in Paris in 2015.

Part screening, part ritual transmission, this presentation features a rare 16mm reversal print from the Estate of Kenneth Anger and invites you to step inside a magickal operation disguised as cinema — an initiatory vision that still flickers through underground culture today.

Co-presented by the Estate of Kenneth Anger.

Tickets: $24 (In person only event)

Please email [email protected] or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

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The views, opinions, and thoughts expressed by the presenters are solely those of the presenter and may not represent those of the Philosophical Research Society (PRS), its affiliates, or any individuals associated with PRS. Presentations are intended for informational and entertainment purposes.

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