Monday, June 13, 2011

Marked Hit Points in Act I, Investigating Occult Markings

After getting some repairs rolling on equipment I use in my other research assistantship, I was able to work on marking up hit points and major transitions in Act I of Nosferatu.  In the process, I started looking for fuel for composition.  My approach to composition frequently involves puzzles from the very beginning as a way to prompt a musical response.  Though the main prompt for my musical response is the event structure of the film itself, it is handy to have other sources of Otherness to respond to.  Knock and Count Orlok both read notes, presumably sent to each other, that supposedly detail the impending real estate transaction they are going through.  However, the notes filled with arcane, occult markings.  I took stills from the film and enhanced them a bit:

 The front of Knock's note from Count Orlok.

The back of Knock's note from Count Orlok.

Count Orlok reading Knock's reply.

These are really quite striking and fairly complex.  Of great interest to me are the magic squares, the boxes with number like symbols in them.  There are also some pictograms (snakes, crosses, a skull) as well as traditional Zodiac signs, but most are probably gibberish.  But what if they aren't...

...

Well, I just spent about an hour wandering around the Internet to see if people had already figured this out.  Apparently, the set designer for Nosferatu, Albin Grau, was an occultist and friend of Aleister Crowley.  The Wikipedia article notes that the symbols on these letters resemble Enochian, the language invented/discovered by 16th century English occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley.   So there may indeed be "real magic" in the letters between Knock and Count Orlok.  The investigation will continue, later, as well as solutions to the real problem - if these are spells, how do they sound?

No comments:

Post a Comment