From cat@luckymojo.com Tue Nov 5 14:28:40 2002 Return-Path: cat@luckymojo.com Received: from server19.option.net (server19.option.net [206.246.226.71]) by turbo.sonic.net (8.11.6/8.8.5) with ESMTP id gA5MSeR17724 for ; Tue, 5 Nov 2002 14:28:40 -0800 Received: from a.smtp-out.sonic.net (a.smtp-out.sonic.net [208.201.224.38]) by server19.option.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id RAA93003 for ; Tue, 5 Nov 2002 17:28:38 -0500 (EST) Received: (qmail 30566 invoked from network); 5 Nov 2002 22:28:38 -0000 Received: from turbo.sonic.net (208.201.224.26) by a.smtp-out.sonic.net with SMTP; 5 Nov 2002 22:28:38 -0000 Received: from 192.168.0.69 ([209.204.150.188]) by turbo.sonic.net (8.11.6/8.8.5) with SMTP id gA5MSbR17631 for ; Tue, 5 Nov 2002 14:28:37 -0800 X-envelope-info: Message-ID: <3DC847FC.2263@luckymojo.com> Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 14:42:09 -0800 From: catherine yronwode Reply-To: info@luckymojo.com Organization: Lucky Mojo Curio Co. X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01-C-MACOS8 (Macintosh; I; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: nagasiva@luckymojo.com Subject: Archive David Bowie Ceremonial Magick? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.7 required=5.0 tests=AWL,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NOSPAM_INC,SPAM_PHRASE_00_01 version=2.43 X-Spam-Level: Status: RO From: "Fr. A.o.C." Newsgroups: alt.magick Subject: Re: Name the Three for Fun Prizes! David Bowie? Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 19:01:22 GMT Speaking of Bowie... ever catch all the references to Magick in much of his 1970-80s material? In "Quicksand", he sings: I'm closer to the Golden Dawn, Immersed in Crowley's uniform Of imagery. Pretty damn obvious. Then follows: I'm living in a silent film, Portraying Himmler's sacred realm Of dream reality. This is a reference to the Order of Vril and The Thule Society, though many detractors took it as evidence that Bowie was a Nazi sympathizer. Or how about the lyrics of his song "Station to Station"? Here are we, one magical moment, such is the stuff From where dreams are woven. Bending sound, dredging the ocean, lost in my circle. Here am I, flashing no colour. Tall in this room overlooking the ocean. Here are we, one magical movement from Kether and Malkuth, There are you, drive like a demon from station to station. The whole album is one of Bowie's best, perhaps his finest 1970s work. I wonder how many of his fans knew what the references to "flashing colour", "in my circle" and "station to station" meant, even with the obvious clue of naming two Sephiroth? The whole album is full of Western Mystery allegories, including "Golden Years" and "TVC5", but especially "Word on a Wing", which hints at K&C of the HGA and astral scrying, among other things. To drive the point home, the picture on the back of the Rykodisc CD version of the Station To Station album shows Bowie drawing the Tree of Life on the floor (the circles are the Sephiroth, with Malkuth at the bottom by Bowie's right hip). An acquaintance of mine once told me he worked in a bookstore near where Bowie was staying in L.A. (where he was recording the album), and he sold Bowie several books on Magick and the Qabalah, including some of Crowley's works. Rumor has it that Bowie kept his hair and fingernail clippings in the fridge of Michael Lippman's home where he was living then, so they could not fall into the hands of those he thought wished to put spells on him. Bowie constructed an altar in the living room and he graced the walls with various Magick symbols which he hand painted. Candles burned around the clock, he regularly performed banishing rituals, and he protected his friends by drawing sigils on their hands. (Well, David *was* doing a *lot* of cocaine in those days...) Bowie admitted in an interview (in 1995) that in 1976: "My overriding interest was in cabbala and Crowleyism. That whole dark and rather fearsome never-world of the wrong side of the brain. ... More recently, I've been interested in the Gnostics". And in New Musical Express in 1997: Q: "So were you involved in actual devil worship?" A: "Not devil worship, no, it was pure straighforward, old-fashioned magic." Q: "The Aleister Crowley variety?" A: "No, I always thought Crowley was a charlatan. But there was a guy called [Arthur] Edward Waite who was terribly important to me at the time. And another called Dion Fortune who wrote a book called 'Psychic Self Defense'. You had to run around the room getting bits of string and old crayons and draw funny things on the wall, and I took it all most seriously, ha ha ha ! I drew gateways into different dimensions, and I'm quite sure that, for myself, I really walked into other worlds. I drew things on walls and just walked trough them, and saw what was on the other side!" And today, there's the track "Sunday" on his latest album, "Heathen": for in truth, it's the beginning of an end... and nothing has changed, everything has changed". - Fr. A.o.C. "Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets." -- Kurt Vonnegut