It isn't often that a single figure makes as pivotal a contribution to as many seemingly disparate areas as did Harry Smith. And perhaps it's even less often that such a figure sinks into such relative obscurity as had Smith until recently. As an experimental filmmaker, his work inspired, among others, Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, and laid the foundations of the psychedelic lightshow (the original Grateful Dead lightshow used Harry's old equipment). He was a talented and original painter, although much of his work is lost (an unpaid landlord consigned a huge quantity to landfill). As a collector, his archive of paper aeroplanes was so definitive the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum sent a special courier for it when he donated it in the 1980s. As a folklorist, his ethnographic recordings, begun in his early teens, broke new ground in the study of Native American traditions - and as a music anthologist he could be said to have changed the face of modern music. His legendary six-LP Anthology of American Folk Music, collecting obscure pre-war American folk, blues and gospel recordings and released in 19S3, proved to be a major catalyst for the American folk revival, inspiring the likes of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and many more, as well as allowing later musicological magpies like Garcia and the Grateful Dead to incorporate the full range of these American musical traditions into the remit of rock 'n' roll.

More recently the reissue of these collections on CD and the release of the missing fourth volume have helped fuel the alt.country boom and provided the impetus for the 0 Brother Where Art Thou?soundtrack. In this area, at least, Smith's reputation has enjoyed something of a revival. Diverse and scattered though his interests seem to be, what united them was Smith's life-long dedication to the occult. He saw all the facets of his activity as aspects of his magical quest.

Born into a Theosophist family in Portland, Oregon, he would later assert that Aleister Crowley was, in fact, his real father, claiming his mother had been seduced by the Great Beast on a Pacific beach. What does appear to be true is that on Harry's 12lh birthday his father presented him with a complete blacksmith's shop, exhorting him to use it to complete the alchemical quest of transmuting lead into gold. He seems to have taken the challenge seriously, and from then on his quest for gnosis governed everything he did. Shortly afterwards he began his folklorist career, recording unique rituals, immersing himself in the shamanic traditions of Native American tribes and later becoming an associate of Voodoo initiate and film maker Maya Deren. He was still deeply involved up to his death in 1991, aged 68 - his final job was as was shaman-in-residence at the Naropa Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

Much of Smith's occult inspiration, though, came to him through his path as a Crowleyan initiate. He became involved with Crowleyan magic in New York in 1950 as one of the last initiates of the influential New York adept Charles Stansfield Jones. He eventually became a Gnostic bishop in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica of the OrdoTempli Orientis, producing a set of Crowleyan Tarot cards and an in-depth study of Enochian, Dr John Dee's angelic language, for which he compiled the only known concordance. He also studied highland tartans, correlating them with his Enochian working and producing artwork integrating both.

He viewed his film work as another aspect of his quest, in the tradition of Robert Fludd and Athanasius Kirchner, who used primitive animation techniques for magical purposes.There was even a shamanic dimension to his celluloid experiments. When asked why he made films he replied: "Because an old woman with a bullroarer that had a snake drawn on it, swung it and I heard it." Even his musical anthologising was guided by his magical understanding. Early editions of the discs came in a sleeve decorated with Smith's Crowleyan paintings and he was fully conscious of the shamanic potential of music and its power for transformation.

In the sleevenotes he quoted: "Civilised man thinks his way out of his dif f iculties, primitive man dances out of his difficulties" and followed this with Crowley's maxim "Do as Thy Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law".

In later years he developed a propensity for truly heroic levels of substance abuse, taking heroin, alcohol, speed, acid, crack, and solvents in massive quantities and various unwise combinations. This, along with the associated financial difficulties and his ability to drive everyone, including his most ardent supporters, spare (something he excelled at even in his drug-free prime) probably contributed considerably to the eclipse of his reputation in later years. But he always retained a core of devotees who revered his achievements, helping to preserve his surviving works and rehabilitate his standing.

Harry Smith was a startlingly talented polymath driven by magickal imperatives, an astonishing and unique individual whose achievements and influence have yet to be fully appreciated. And I haven't even got on to The Fugs, String Figures,Thelonious Monk, Billie Holliday, Jackie Gleason's library of the occult, Ukrainian Easter Eggs and much, much more...