Last Writes with… @CaraLHamilton

The premise of LAST WRITES is simple. Our guests face their final rest, but before Death claims them they are granted a few parting earthly pleasures, the memories of which will travel with them into the great unknown. What makes these questions appealing and insightful for me is that these are not necessarily our guests favorite things, but those they most want to experience one last time before they shuffle off this mortal coil.

TODAY’S DEPARTING:

CARA HAMILTON

I was introduced to Cara via my friend Shawn Hebert who published a terrific interview with her on his LVX Files podcast and I knew this was a person I needed to be friends with. Cara is a “paranormal entertainer” who has performed all over the world, demonstrating acts of mesmerism, mind-reading, spiritualism, and more. She writes for a number of UK publications as an astrologer, psychic, and paranormal consultant… and recently she has published a well received book of poetry, Oil Slick Arcana: Poetic Words for the Damned.

As we draw Cara Hamilton into the Occult Detective Mortuary, she enters with the confidence of one who has spent much time with the deceased and navigated the waters of the other side. With eagerness, we help to preform her Last Writes…

LAST MEAL:

There are several cuisines I adore. Good food matters to me more than convenience. Italian, Persian and Russian dishes have a special place in my heart and I regularly make them at home and eat them at restaurants. However my favourites are French and Cajun. There is a dish I make at least once a week. I like food to be warming, tasty and invoke pleasant memories. The recollection of Ethan Krusemark offering it to Harry Angel in the Alan Parker movie “Angel Heart” before being drowned in the boiling soup, makes Gumbo the perfect sustenance for my sailing into Hades, if savoured with a quality claret of course.

LAST BOOK:

In my bag, which is a black leather school satchel, due to its cavernous depth, I often carry two books. Both I am obsessional about. One of my stage presentations is “The Nightmare of Dr Jekyll” which is the Occult heritage behind Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic. I find reading Stevenson’s work it a real scalpel to the psychology of the monsters we all carry within us. The other is the poetry collection Les Fleurs du Mal by the most beautifully decadent Parisian Charles Baudelaire. I adore the ephemeral adoration of the artistic French cityscape. Most will think Les Litanies de Satan when they think of it, as it still holds shock value today but even that piece actually requires delicacy and longing in the reading. I have a few editions of the book; but a few years ago I obtained my favourite, and it is dear to me, by German esoterica publisher Black Letter Press. However in 1885 when RLS penned The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde after a particularly vivid fever dream, his family and friends wished it had not been written. They carefully curated his image which even today leaves his reputation disgustingly sickly sweet. In truth his heart was deeply dark and as his masterpiece was most likely the inspiration for Jack the Ripper a fact explored in my presentation, of course this piece of literary starshine is my choice.

LAST MOVIE:

There are a few movies I watch regularly and class highly and as such this one is very difficult. My taste is in general is Hammer, Amicus and Jean Rollin vampire and horror with a few exceptions such as Angel Heart and Only lovers left alive. Whilst I adore perhaps a dozen movies I will tentatively select The Ninth Gate. This movie is essentially a New York book dealer’s romp across Europe searching for The Ninth Gate of the Kingdom of Shadows, a work co-written by Lucifer. The movie is the most beautiful escapism. Besides I simply adore the style of Devil-Worshiper in chief Lena Olin.

LAST SONG:

I cannot say my choice would be a song. Whilst I completely love some the work of Peter Heppner, Led Zeppelin, Ute Lemper and some early Christian Death I would not choose a song, but rather a piece of music. At home in my reading room (which is entirely filled with Victorian and Edwardian furniture, paintings and artefacts) I often listen to music on my 1923 gramophone. The single piece of music that brings me peace by candlelight is Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, a symphonic poem for Orchestra by Claude Debussy.

FIRST PERSON YOU’D LIKE TO MEET ON THE OTHER SIDE:

It has to be Moina Mathers from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The famous Occultist Dion Fortune was most unkind about her and that alone predisposes me to approve of Moina. When you read Occult History it is full of Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, and W.B Yeats (whose work I adore) and Moina is seen as a minor player. In fact she was the Order’s prominent clairvoyant and what she saw was developed into the rituals, her art added much to the ritual setting and tools and without her there would have been no Golden Dawn. It was such a vibrant time of Celtic Twilight and Ritual Magic vogue, there must be many stories unwritten. Meeting her, it would be most pleasant to have the otherworld version of a cup of tea and let the conversation simply develop.

Cara Hamilton delivered a spectacular array of responses. I cannot thank her enough for sharing with us. Be sure to visit her online at carahamilton.co.uk and follow her on her various social media manifestations. I also highly recommend Oil Slick Arcana.

Please remember to tune in each Wednesday as we raise up another departed guest on our hypothetical funeral pyre so that they might express their Last Writes. See you next week as we bid farewell to Tarot Reader and Paranormal Adventurer Katie Webb.