Gothphrodite - - Gothphrodite -

Vanitas (Detail) - Edwaert Collier

The Coffeyville Weekly Journal, Kansas, May 11, 1894

high treason and traitorous sentiments are allowed on my page but please try to keep it classy, sexy, you know how it is

Herman Hesse, Demian (tr. Damion Searls)

“Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.”

— May Sarton. “Journal of a Solitude: The Journals of Mary Sarton”. 

“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.”

— Julien Smith, The Flinch (via wnq-anonymous)

I became very inspired by photographs of real-life witches in the 1960s, such as Anton LaVey and Alex and Maxine Sanders. I also tried to find films about witches from that time, but they were nearly all exploitation and didn’t really interest me. Bell, Book and Candle was the closest to the feeling I wanted, but it was too modernist. I honestly never found any movies to draw from that were close to what I wanted, so I created a color palette from Tarot cards, and I made and commissioned the original paintings that appear in the film to look like what I thought a witch would paint.

The costume ideas came from her personality, the way I envisioned her as someone with intense princess fantasies who would embody her fantasies in her dress. I found some vintage Gunne Sax dresses and made a few more really romantic long dresses with a Renaissance or Victorian flair that also seemed witchy to me. A lot of choices were made symbolically or to reinforce character and theme. The décor was the same—it came from Tarot cards and from the desire to combine Victorian and hippie elements together, to go with her personality.

Anna Biller’s Pleasure Principles