Gnostic Saint Richard Wagner was one of the artistic giants of his age and a major celebrity throughout the Western world. Besides being adored by mainstream music lovers he was much admired by a significant portion of the occult sector. One could posit that Josephin Peladan’s famed Rose Croix Salons took inspiration from Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk or “total work of art” aka multi-media presentations and likewise Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis – either directly or via the Rose Croix Salons. A recent New Yorker article looks at the impact Wagner had and continues to have on American cinema, dating at least as far back as D.W. Griffiths’ notorious “The Birth of A Nation” – a technical masterwork that effectively revived the then flopped KKK.
it’s a good read! https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/how-wagner-shaped-hollywood.
