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1/ Paranoia: The portrayal of the occult comes in two flavours; First the cheesy stink of Hammer Horror with notes of rotting meat. This horror taps into old images, old even when the Romans wrote them down. Lucan's Erictho seen in the darkness of Rec.
This mind set of someone who believes this form of the occult is to perceive malevolent forces and destruction as an enemy always waiting to be let in. The forces will trick someone to inadvertently let them in. There are portals...everywhere, but especially in rock and roll!.
2/ Enlightenment: The other occult, the one I was brought up with, was written into modern existence by Eliphas Levi. This occult is secrets hidden from all but those who chose to see.
Eliphas Levi paints a picture of the Magus as a seeker after a truth that must be revealed, and defines magic as the ability to act in accord with what is.
"Magic is the divinity of man achieved in union with faith...".Often poetry and classical music are spoken of as magic in the Levi sense, whilst Rock and Roll belongs to that other kind of magic- the kind represented by Hammer and Rec.
History.
Robert Johnson was described by Eric Clapton as "the most important Blues musician who ever lived". His skill as a musician influenced many song writers such as Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan, but even while he was alive there were rumors that this skill wasn't something he had been born with.
Johnson, it was said, had sold his soul to the devil.
The titles of his songs didn't do anything to deny this rumor, rather they added to it; titles such as: "Hellhound on my Trail", "Me and the Devil Blues", and the narrative of "Crossroad Blues" -"Went down to the crossroads, bent down on my knees".
The idea had probably begun with Clara Smith's 1924 track "Done Sold My Soul To The Devil- And My Heart’s Done Turned To Stone".
It was said that Robert Johnson had taken his guitar down to a crossroad near Dockery’s plantation at midnight. There he met a large man who took the guitar and tuned it, and gave it back. From then on Johnson was a master of the guitar...but in return for this, he had sold his soul, followed the example of Faust and signed. Within a year of this Johnson was recognised as one of the greatest Delta Blues musicians…but within two more years, he was dead and his soul had gone to Satan.
Scandinavian folk stories tell of a creature called a Nakk with whom one can barter for such skills, Tibetan folk tales tell of the serpent-like Naga, who know all there is to know. Nagajuna for instance, an alchemist learnt all he needed to know to become immortal from the Naga.
But Robert Johnson's story borrows from the traditions of Voodoo. Blues music contains voodoo imagery and allusions…such as 'Mojo' and 'John the Conqueror which is a plant talisman used by the 'root doctor'’, a voodoo priest or shaman who became known as the 'hoochie-coochie man'…(Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh The Elixir and the Stone)
1950s
"If black music is the father of rock, voodoo is its grandfather." Baigent and Leigh.
The language of the Blues carried over into a later type of music, often seen – like the Blues – as an outlet of rebellion against the powers that be: Rock and Roll.
Rock and Roll was seen as white music gone black, from the first moment that Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips shocked 1950s America, the 'new music' was denounced by puritanical Christians as the Devil's music.
Rock and roll music.drew to it the metaphor of a portal; semi seen, shimmering in multicoloured sound. Rock music was the devil's music. It made young people dance as if possessed. It made boys dress in strange clothes and rip up cinema seats. It was spiritual darkness- songs with few words, songs of lust and envy. Rock, from the primal land of Africa was degenerate; a portal to a ladder leading inexorably down the evolutionary tree, away from the stars and light, down into the animal and beyond.
In the 1960s the Zen Buddhism that had inspired the Beat poets added another dimension to music. The young seemed to reject violence and killing and thought that poetry could be free form, and that sex was no longer a sin, oh my (the collapse of social order is at hand). Music was regarded as a vector, or carrier of Satan's message.
It was stealing the souls of 'our children' .
Music was a magic as performed by the Wizard of Oz; an hypnotic spell, an illusion designed to appeal to the young.
This magic smelt of patchouli oil and it represented future adults vanishing from the economy, dropping out and tuning in to a sleep inducing- narcotic hot air that smelt of marijuana...
The Rolling Stones evoked the other fear, Hammer and Rec. Their Blues influenced music automatically linked them to Voodoo and the Stones did nothing to deny any rumors of Satanic influence. In December 1967, The Rolling Stones released the album Their Satanic Majesties Request, which made the Top 5 on both the US and UK music charts. A year latter the Stones were singing "Sympathy for the Devil". Their involvement with drugs and arrests, the death of their guitarist Brian Jones, and their involvement in the Altamont Free Festival – where the Hells Angels gang murdered a fan – meant that by the beginning of 1970, the band was seen by many as the closest thing to Satan in music.
1970s
In the early 1970s Led Zeppelin released their untitled fourth album known as Led Zeppelin IV ( Stairway to Heaven- The Led Zeppelin song, Stairway to Heaven was said to contain lyrics played backwards designed to place a key to the door of Satan in a listener's mind, Black Dog, Going to California, etc!). It is sometimes also called ZoSo, after the sigil found on the album jacket; one of a group of four symbols, each said to represent a member of the band, with 'ZoSo' being Jimmy Page's. A similar symbol can be found in a 1557 book on alchemy, the Ars Magica Arteficii, where it represents the planet Saturn. To compound the references, there is an image from the tarot on the cover and various pressings of other Led Zeppelin releases were inscribed with the words made famous by Alistair Crowley (The Great Beast)- "Do What Thou Wilt".
Jimmy Page, in popular imagination anyway, reeked of Hammer and Rec. But in Page's own words, his use of the occult was in the tradition of Eliphas Levi and had nothing to do with chaos and destruction. When asked why he used the image of the hermit on the album sleeve and in his section of the film: The Song Remains The Same, Page answered:
(The hermit)...has it’s origins in a painting of Christ called The Light of the World by the pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. The imagery was later transferred to the Waite tarot deck [the most popular tarot deck in use in the English-speaking world]. My segment was supposed to be the aspirant going to the beacon of truth, which is represented by the hermit and his journey toward it. What I was trying to say through the transformation was that enlightenment can be achieved at any point in time; it just depends on when you want to access it. In other words you can always see the truth, but do you recognize it when you see it or do you have to reflect back on it later?
http://www.zimbio.com/Aleister+Crowley/articles/11/Jimmy+Page+Aleister+Crowley+deciphering+mage
The occult wasn't the main cause of concern as the 1970s came to an end. David Bowie's reference to the occult in the song "Quicksand " I’m closer to the Golden Dawn, Immersed in Crowley’s uniform, of imagery" was too obscure for most people. Punk with its need for speed had very little interest in satanic content. Punk lyrics were about everyday life and rebellion. Hell had already arrived and looked like rubbish piling up on the street, queues for petrol and the dead left un buried. For the young, demons looked like politicians or Prog bands or members of the NF. For ordinary people the demonic looked like John Lydon. People- a very few people - still tried to play Stairway backwards, but only to laugh. Christianity with it's belief in damnation and hell was a minority cult and remained so until Billy Graham arrived in the 1980s.
The 1980s brought satanic panic back out of mothballs and back onto tv and newspaper. Real children were traumatised and probably damaged for life by well meaning social workers and a couple of consultants who diagnosed satanic abuse in almost every child they saw.
The satanic panics of the 1980s were a shameful error made by people who should have known better.
After the 1980s some bands made a concerted effort to appear more satanic than they actually are. Norwegian Black Metal for instance is properly Hammer and Rec. The Christian missionaries, and their history of persecuting people who didn't agree with their particular brand of beliefs would be, if Satan existed, the devil's best recruiting tool.
The Goths were pure Hammer Horror chanelling long dead French poets, and fascinated by death and decay, whilst for some bands, Tool in particular, appearing Satanic was an act of sarcasm.
In the words of Blair MacKenzie Blake Tool have been known to…
…employ genuine occult principles in their artistic output, in both recordings, art design, and with their live performances. However, rather than embracing certain occult clichés to shock the general populace, or to establish a dark mystique, this more esoteric arcana is rendered useful for personal and artistic purposes in an attempt to gain unconventional perspectives on the multiverse.
Danny Carey, Tool's drummer did have a large, modified representation of Dr John Dee's Sigillum Dei Aemeth suspended behind his drum kit on stage during performances (but as it contains the secret names of god and of the angels, it is hardly Satanic).
"Faaip de Oiad" is the last track on the Lateralus, which is Enochian for "The Voice of God". Enochian is the language given to John Dee by the angels, again hardly Satanic. "Faaip de Oiad" is an instrumental track which includes the sound of a ‘defective’ machine, said to be "attuned to a particular ‘wavelength’ of occult significance having to do with the concept of idiotheosis."
Danny Carey's drumheads contained examples of perfect geometric shapes including pentagrams, tesseracts (hyper cube), unicursal hexagrams, heptagrams, enneagrams and interpenetrating variations of each. There is a story that in an attempt to 'charge' the drum kit, Danny had an artifact once belonging to the Knight’s Templar, brought back from the South of France and melted down with his cymbals to be recast as a new kit.
From Voodoo through the Cabala and back to Pythagoras (perfect forms).
This brings me to now.
The Illuminati in pop.
The concept of the Illuminati- lets pretend that they exist ok -and their attempt to brainwash 'youth' using Rhiannon and Eminem doesn't make any kind of sense unless you actually believe in god and advertising.
Granted, advertising does at least exist.
If you believe in god and revelations and in all that oddly nasty modification of Mesopotamian myth called the bible, then you can get your thrills from experiencing the newest addition of music paranoia; cheap thrills are now to be had when you see checkered floors, pyramid eyes and Rain men everywhere; excited to be reassured that you are living in end-times..hastened by pop.
There doesn't that feel good, your boring life has been transformed, something bad may happen- you knew it would - and the faceless enemy now has a name- Illuminati.
Before it was the Illuminati it was your low grades in school, or your sense of injustice, or outrageous bad luck and instead of dealing with it, you just knew that you had stepped into a cosmic game. One in which you mattered....how can this just be a big ball of rock rolling through meaningless space?
There must be more...the Illuminati for instance.
Illuminati spotting, is a new form of satanic panic. People who think exposure to Illuminati symbols increases the effectiveness of the Illuminati believe that advertising works.Advertisers act as if they believe that repetitions of a message increases the effectiveness of the message. They probably know better, and just trade in selling images.
Why do people need to see devils?
Good question!
The concept of the Illuminati combines, like Jimmy Page in one delicious small package, both kinds of magic. The reek and stink of malevolent chaos, and the Golden light of a New Dawn, or rather knowledge...the reality is more Wizard of Oz, cynical self interest, and Derek Crowism: panic sells, eschatology sells.
Ultimately we are back to the Arian heresy, and you know where that got the Cathars..
Well I was kind of interested in satanic panics because they seemed funny.
A bit like the way zombies in films and games are funny...at first.
But then I watched The Devils and remembered that witch hunts have happened, are happening and will happen again..
Oh the Tool lyrics- Die Eire Von Satan- eggs of Satan?
Half a cup of powdered sugar
One quarter teaspoon salt
One knifetip Turkish hash
Half pound of butter
One teaspoon of Vanilla-sugar
Half pound flour
150g ground nuts
A little extra powdered sugar
.......and no eggs
Place in a bowl
Add butter
Add the ground nuts and
Knead the dough
Form eyeball sized pieces from the dough
Roll in the powdered sugar
and say the magic words:
" Sim Sala Bim Bamba Sala Do Saladim"
Place on a baking pan and
bake at 200 degrees for 15 minutes
.......AND NO EGGS
Bake at 200 degrees for 15 minutes
......and no eggs
