The True Story Behind ‘Hereditary’s Occult Themes

The Big Picture

• Hereditary
  is a fictional horror movie that explores fears about motherhood, mental health, and the impact of grief through supernatural elements.
• The cult and demon featured in the movie, Paimon, are based on a controversial grimoire called
  The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King
  .
• The movie’s themes connect to the occult, drawing inspiration from the philosophy of The Order of the Golden Dawn and its infamous acolyte, Aleister Crowley.

Ari Aster’s 2018 Hereditary is a powerful and affecting horror movie with a solid, albeit terrifying foundation in supernatural realism, demonology, and the occult. In this film, Aster uses horror tropes as a tool to examine fears about motherhood, mental health, and the impact of grief. Many horror movies have drawn on real-life cases to scare viewers like The Amityville Horror, The Uninvited, and Blumhouse’s Conjuring franchise. To be clear: Hereditary is entirely fictional, but Aster has been vocal about how he conveys his own fears about death and existential horror via his storytelling.

The movie concerns a family who comes apart after the death of their mysterious matriarch and explores her connections to forces beyond her family’s comprehension and control. Aster’s film is chock-full of powerful imagery, and intense foreshadowing, and the director focuses on trauma as a guiding theme, telling Vox “But for me, the metaphor is operating all the way through. In the end, without spoiling anything, the movie is still about how trauma can utterly transform a person, and not necessarily for the better.” He wanted the horror to stay as metaphorical and grounded as possible with the supernatural elements blending into the background.

Where Does ‘Hereditary’s Paimon Come From?

The cult and demon featured in Hereditary, Paimon, are lifted from a controversial grimoire (The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, archaic A-Z of demonology and conjurations). The movie is an affecting and powerful portrait of the dissolution of a family whose lineage has been tainted by a supernatural force with evil intentions. Following the death of her reclusive mother, members of Annie’s (Toni Collette) family succumb to the curse placed on their household, including troubled daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro), when a peanut allergy and a speeding car result in her grisly demise. Paimon’s presence in Hereditary remains strictly referential and never explicit over the course of the movie, which is an effective tactic.

The Seal of Paimon is shown a number of times throughout the film and, unless you had a familiarity with the occult, you’d have no idea of its actual relevance. Paimon is the ninth spirit in the first order and is very obedient to Lucifer. He takes on the appearance of a man and is a master of arts, the sciences, and all secret things. Like most demons, he demands a sacrifice when summoned, and must be treated with dignity. He also has 200 lesser spirits under his control and is partially on the side of the angels. Aster took some creative license in his screenwriting for Hereditary; there is no mention of taking a male host body in The Goetia. However, the physical description offered in the movie’s bleak conclusion is similar to the one that exists in the text.

How Do ‘Hereditary’s Themes Connect To the Occult?

The focus of Hereditary is the supernatural fall-out and its devastating impact on the Graham family following the death of the family matriarch. It transpires she was in cahoots with a demon-worshipping cult with Ann Dowd‘s Joan as their figurehead. In Hereditary, Annie is unwittingly indoctrinated into Paimon’s cult by Joan, who manipulates her into conducting a séance by exploiting her grief. Viewers might have assumed that occultists like Joan were a product of Aster’s feverish imagination — not so. Paimon is rooted in the philosophy of The Order of the Golden Dawn, and to a certain extent, Joan mirrors their most infamous acolyte: Aleister Crowley.

Crowley was born in 1875 in Warwickshire, England. The man would one day self-identify as The Beast: 666 grew up in a devout and wealthy family. As a young man, he was a vast reader of occult texts. At a point in his life, his search for magical societies yielded no results, and he grew frustrated, craving spiritual evil, or liberation via the black arts, and his obsession with the occult escalated. He was a student in Cambridge and when he dropped out, he started to hear whispers of secret magical societies, operating in the shadows and this information galvanized him: he had to find the groups and inveigle himself into their circles.

Rumors of secret societies persisted and further intrigued the young man until he finally found one. His search led him to The Order of the Golden Dawn (other members included W.B Yeats, who would become a rival to Crowley and Bram Stoker). The order had an immediate distrust of Crowley as a result of deception on his part during his first attempt to join – he went in disguise. Similar to Joan’s wolf in sheep’s clothing demeanor and how her methods and underhanded tactics mirror Crowley’s manipulations within The Order. The behavior would anger the group, leading to his exile. Throughout his life, Crowley was a Machiavellian personality operating in secrecy and possessed of arrogance and a need to control from behind the scenes, much like the puppet masters in Hereditary. This is reflected in Annie’s occupation as a diorama miniaturist and how it overlaps with the larger story.

‘Hereditary’s Occult Inspirations Make the Horror Movie More Terrifying

The construction of different “realities” for the purpose of display and observation takes on an even more sinister context when you examine Crowley’s occult leanings and preoccupation with control. Once admitted to the order, Crowley quickly rose through the ranks, but his personal behavior unsettled other members and his fixation on dark magic was a concern. The acolytes in the movie have wholeheartedly embraced dark magic and Annie’s family are pawns in a much bigger scheme. Like Crowley, their efforts require discipline and sacrifice, with innocent people destroyed in the process. Crowley’s power-hungry nature would eventually lead to his expulsion from the group and isolation. This makes the horror in the movie more credible. What is scarier than evil hiding in plain sight, constantly observing you and pulling your strings?

Following his exile, he still retained enough wealth to further his esoteric studies and landed in America during World War I, where he contributed to several periodicals including one known as The Fatherland. During the conclusion of Hereditary, the savagery and primitivism of Crowley are represented by Paimon’s acolytes when they come after Peter (Alex Wolff). Following his banishment from Italy after his practices became more devolved and barbaric, he lapsed into a sordid, criminal lifestyle when he returned to England, where he was dubbed “The Wickedest Man Alive” by the press and died in squalor.

Hereditary is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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