From Hell, Magick Ritual, and the Persecution of "The Female"

On its face, the Hughes Bros. film (link) may seem like a simple "whodunnit". The source material on which the film is based presents something much more sinister. "...From Hell" was originally a serialized graphic novel, written by Alan Moore. Both plots concern the Jack the Ripper murders and make the claim that they were actually a part of a city-wide Masonic conspiracy to cover up an illegitimate Catholic child by the son of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert Victor. The film concerns itself mostly with this plot and is probably why it was seen as such a disappointment to the fans of Alan Moore's work. Although hinted at in the film, the graphic novel goes much deeper into the motivations behind the killings. The theme of the story is male fear, male society, in this case, represented by the Masons.

"Jack", as this story posits, is the real-life royal physician Sir William Gull. In this fictionalized account, Gull had a spiritual awakening during a stroke in which he saw the Masonic God Jahbulon. This event drastically changes Gull's world view. He takes on the Ripper murders because he believes he is performing an occult ritual with "Victorian London as its Altar" as Moore has stated. A scene in the graphic novel has Gull recite his politics to his stagecoach. Gull claims that women and the unconscious mind, what he calls the "Dionysian Age", once ruled over men and reason, what he calls the "Apollonian Age". In his Masonic visions he sees women's suffrage on the rise and believes that by performing these occult murders, he will be able to "deliver the 20th century" to male "reasoned" society. Gull's actions are ironic as he is performing a magic ritual to preserve reason.

Moore never really lets on as to whether he believes Gull to be simply insane or "enlightened". While Gull undertakes the murders, Moore references different events going on at the same time that would have a profound affect on the next hundred years: New scientific leaps that would lead to the atomic bomb, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and the conception of Adolf Hitler. Gull's Masonic brothers certainly think him insane by the end of the story, so much so that they lobotomize him. Through Gull's perspective, however, this allows him to transcend time and space itself, whereby performing the ritual, he is able to influence both past and future events. The final pages have a disembodied Gull going back in time to inspire William Blake's "The Ghost and the Flea" as well as traveling forward in time by influencing future serial killers like Peter Sutcliffe and Ian Brady (apparently to "deliver" the 21st century).

Professor Aloi's article on the rise of witchcraft among young women led me to believe that "From Hell" would be this "uprisings" antithesis; the male fear at what amounts to a new female empowerment movement.