Mage Music 18: Fetching the Magick

Ritual is the glue that holds the Magickal process together...

Mage Music 18

Black Dog
artwork based on NASA image
click on image to enlarge

Like everything else associated with Magick, Ritual is simple, but it’s not easy. Just for openers, there is more than one flavor of Magick. There is no one Magical path that is the sole truth of things. There is no good or bad Magick, either – Magick is what the Mage chooses to make it, since Magick is a process and tool of the Mage, not an independent thing in itself. The Power that the Mage accesses using Magick is the infinite energy of the Universe, which is not owned by Magick, the Mage, a demon, an angel or any being.

Even within one flavor of Magick there are many possible rituals that can be used by a Mage to achieve the desired outcomes. The ritual can be from any number of possible sources or it can be created by the Mage. The same ritual can be used over and over again or can be changed from time to time. Always, however, the risk exists for putting too much emphasis on the ritual’s form rather than its function. More on this in a bit.


Ritual: The Abracadabra Part

Ritual is the visible, external part of Magick. It’s what people see in the movies and read about in books and, if they are uneducated about Magick, it's what they think Magick is all about. Not so.

Ritual is the action that is used to bind the desire and will of the Mage and provides a focus for long enough for the Mage to access and open to the energy of the Universe. It’s the unlimited and infinite energy of the Universe that makes changes in the reality of the Mage... if all the component parts of Magick come together just right.

There is no Power in Magick itself, since Magick is a process not a thing. There is no Magick in a magic wand or in a secret word or symbol – if any of those things seem to contain Magick, it is only an illusion, a seeming that comes from the Mage at the time of use in ritual. Don't believe it? Well, a non-Mage can go to a magic store and buy the most arcane, most talismanic object - but outside of Magickal process by a Mage, the object will be just an inert thing. Think about this: Jimmy Page told Brad Tolinski in 2010 that the iconic outfits that our favorite Mage Musician wore on the 1977 tour were “more than just stage clothes; they were talismanic”, yet I doubt anyone who put one of those dragon suits would suddenly gain the Mage Music abilities of Jimmy Page. That's because....

Magick isn't in the objects or the ritual; Magick is a process that provides a framework for a flow-through of purposeful and directed energy of the Universe. It isn't easy to do this - and it's not an immediate cause-effect, either, which is a good thing when you think about it. One moment of inattention and a demon pops through!  No, it is fortunate for reality as we know it that immediate cause-effect - a wave of a wand and an Abracadabra - is not how Magick works.

Focus 

I mentioned in discussion of the use of a Mage's will how hard it is to sustain powerful desire and a conscious awareness of purpose for any meaningful length of time. For most of us, a moment or two is pretty good. For a Mage, minutes - many of them - may be needed to bring about the desired changes in Reality. There probably have been humans who could sustain the desire and awareness for long enough solely through their own will, but for most Mages, ritual is the tool that allows them to do the job.

Good ritual, through the use of stylized, formal actions performed sequentially, focuses the mind and emotions so that distractions are prevented and the primary desire and purpose can be maintained. Good ritual draws in and binds the senses and ensnares conscious awareness in order to align the mind, body and soul with the desired outcome. It is the loss of awareness and surrender to the desired new state - existing in the changed reality before the change exists in reality - that is the key to the ritual of Magick. Shamans dance and chant or dream, priests use prayer, Mages use Magickal ritual - all do so to surrender to the process, to step out of themselves and into the new state and to sustain that altered existence until it becomes the new reality. For some Mages, the form of ritual - and the surrender - is to music:  Mage Music.


Form vs. Function

The form of ritual provides a framework for the Magickal process that creates a familiar pattern.  [Note that if the pattern is achieved, then the ritual isn't improved by increasing technical expertise of performance, since it is the familiar patterns themselves that tell the receiver what kind of information to expect.  Jimmy Page has often been criticized for sloppy technique, but technique is secondary to content for a Mage Musician.]

The formula for ritual is pretty standardized:  There's a beginning, middle and end.  Each kind of ritual has its own pattern-within-pattern.  With Magick (and Mage Music) the ritual pattern looks approximately like this:

• Preparation - Sets the desire and will, repeated so that the body/mind/soul are prepared (theme, riff) 
• Invocation - Losing self in order to put the desire and intention of the Mage out into the Universe and to thereby become aligned with the change that is desired (solo) 
• Close - Gratitude and creating the path to return to end of ritual (return to theme)

The function of ritual is essentially that of prayer (in the sense of spiritual communion), the object of which is to transform the Mage and thereby transform the Mage’s reality.

Ritual in itself is a catalyst, meaning that it brings about change while itself not being changed. Ritual is simply a component in a process that brings about/transmutes the Mage's reality, via desire and will, into a new reality. The need for the Mage to be able to surrender while maintaining the highest and most powerful levels of desire in full purpose and awareness means that during the sequential moments of ritual, what it looks (or sounds) like is secondary to the change it brings about in the Mage's reality.

No quality of musical performance, however skilled, will bring Magick to the music without the Mage’s purposeful immersion in the ritual.  The technical skill of a Mage Musician is less important than the strength of emotion, the purity of desire and the power of will used to perform the musical ritual.It can’t be faked and it can’t be emulated – Magick in music can only be created and recreated each individual time and only through the efforts of a Mage.

Fortunately for Mage Musician, audience has a function in the ritual.  We provide energy.  When we recognize the the ritual pattern and the quality of the music that carries Magick, when we feel the Magick we are transmuted along with the Mage and our feedback helps power the Mage.  It is the Mage Musician, however, who always does the fetching for us.

  

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Future post: Magickal Mystery

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YouTube Playlist -  Black Dog

Individual songs

1971 Led Zeppelin  Black Dog (live) Osaka (pre-album performance)
1971 Led Zeppelin  Black Dog (studio) Album: Led Zeppelin IV 

1971 Led Zeppelin  Black Dog (live) Knebworth
1973 Led Zeppelin  Black Dog (live) Madison Square Garden
1975 Led Zeppelin  Black Dog (live) Earls Court
1979 Led Zeppelin  Black Dog (live) Knebworth
1993 Page Coverdale  Black Dog (live) Osaka
1995 Page Plant   Black Dog (live) New Orleans
2007 Led Zeppelin/Jason Bonham  Black Dog (live) O2

Whole Lotta Love Notes

"Music is magic. Magic is life. "
                                             ~ Jimi Hendrix

Mage Music 16

Before you read any further, watch the first video the playlist below, the1997 Warner Music Group Mothership promo video of Whole Lotta Love.  Yes I said "watch".  Although the other songs in the playlist are in order of when they were performed and this one isn’t, and even though I generally recommend that you listen only - not watch - the music videos I suggest, this time I’m saying … watch this one. It’s meant to prime you for understanding what this post is about.

Oooh Baby
Sex: Ask some people (advertising agents, botanists, behaviorists, psychiatrists, religious zealots, lyricists and students of Magick just to name a few) and they’ll probably tell you that sex is the motivator for everything in life (maybe some would say the bane of everything in life, but that’s another discussion someone else can pick up someplace else).

Sex? The motivator for life? That isn’t really true. It’s desire that is the motivator for life.

Sex is only one way of satisfying desire. There’s a whole lotta desire out there, much more than there is for merely love. Without desire no living thing would do anything at all, not even bother to initiate sex. That’s because desire is required to initiate action of any kind – even the most inconsequential, meaningless action.

Desire is wanting something other than what exists: A different situation, a different experience. True desire is kind of like an itch or a sneeze – it starts out little and the next thing you know, it’s irresistible. You gotta have it. Now. And by the time you act on it there’s no question of what it is you’re going to do.


Desire: Deep Down Inside
There is the desire and there is the desired: The want and the thing wanted. The desire to reproduce and the pleasure from it is a primitive, lizard brain thing – but then so is music. It’s no wonder that sex and music are so closely linked.

Like good sex, music begins with wooing, igniting the flame. It can be hard or gentle, depending on what suits the mood. Either way, the heat builds to a climax (when it's good, sometimes more than one climax!) but once you're there, climax is the end of the desire:  That's what it is for. Satisfaction is the sating of desire or, put another way, the desired outcome of any act is not the scratching of the itch but the cessation of the itch – the fulfillment of desire is to no longer have desire.

Magick works the same. It begins with a wooing, it builds to a climax that results in the manifestation of the change the Mage desires - and therefore the end of the desire itself.

Sex and Magick come from the same source. Their root is desire. Their end goal is fulfillment: satisfaction and completion. They are parallel in many ways, but they are only parallel, not the same.  Most people don't have any pattern recognition for Magick, so the brain substitutes the nearest explanation. You experience desire of any sort deep down inside, but that doesn't make it about sex. You don’t need sex for Magick, you need desire, but most people can’t really tell the difference.


Hungry for Power
When you recognize Magick in the music, what you are sensing - beyond what your ear captures - is Power, the life energy of the Universe. Power is so very sexy, though it isn’t actually sexual. It is the Real Thing:  A link to the Force, to the energy of life and because it is so Big, so Much, because it’s the highest high, the brightest Light, the best of the best, we compare it to things that we can experience that are similar (pattern recognition again). Good sex that takes us out of ourselves is what we know, and so we compare Power to sex and we believe that sex itself is a property of Magick when it isn’t, really.

So.  Music that is not only about sex but also carries Magick is a double whammy. Mage Music doesn’t have to even be sexy to be Sexy. It’s all about desire: We taste a bit of that Power and we want more. We're hungry for it - we desire it.

Mage Music is sound sex. It is what the essence of the sexual experience is without the sex. Magick connects desire to Power and culminates in a change in the world. And what a powerful tool desire is for Magick - a good thing since desire is one of the main components of Magick. Imagine what it must feel like for the Mage.


Does it Quack for You?
When the infinite part of you – your soul – is connected to the Infinite that is the Universe and resonates with it during the experience of music, then you’re feeling the Magick. That's the good news.  The bad news is that while souls can resonate with the Infinite, ordinary humans can’t fully participate in the experience of the Infinite and still remain in finite bodies (the result is insanity… or death. We’re just mere humans, we listeners to music – we aren’t Mages, and even Mages court insanity and death as I'm sure you've observed).

The Magick in Mage Music isn’t for us or about us – the Magick is the Mage’s, not ours. The Mage's role is the connection to the Infinite.  Our role is that of the witness. Still, we can’t help but notice – and react to – the powerful desire that the Mage uses in the Magickal process. We are pulled to Mage Music, and we especially love sexy Mage Music. Heck, any Mage Music is sexy, when you come down to it. We can't help ourselves.

If it feels like a duck and it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Mage Music feels sexy, so it is sexy.  The music in the playlist below is in no way the only sexy music Jimmy Page created.  Just because the songs happen to be (mostly) about ordinary sexy stuff isn’t why they are on the list – they’re there in spite of the ordinary sexy stuff. They are there because they are Mage Music, not because they’re sexy music - and these songs are Mage Music because of the Power manifested by the desire of the Mage creating the music.

Obviously a Mage who chooses music to perform publically intends for us to perceive the Magick – we get to be voyeurs in a very personal process but at least we've been invited. A Mage Musician uses the feedback of the audience’s resonation with the Magick as part of the Mage’s Magickal process - but even so, we still are each just witnesses, not the one creating the Magick, and we are not who the Magick is for.  The Mage doesn't need us for Magick, he just desires us.


Hot/Cold Desire
You ever play the game of hot/cold or charades where your the others guide you by telling you if you’re aiming in the right direction or the wrong one? That is feedback, and a Mage Musician uses audience feedback just like any ordinary musician or artist does. Music reflects a search - for desire and for climax. In the kids' game, “hot” is getting closer, “cold” is going away from the goal. In Magick and Mage Music – and sex - getting closer feels good, going away from the goal feels bad… or at least neutral (which is actually bad because you aren't getting where you want to be). It’s all about feeling your way to the emotion of desire: You may not know what you want - quite - but you recognize it when you feel it.

Artists in the act of creating are driven by desire. Whatever their medium - paint, words, music, dance, stone or pixels – artists in the act of creating feel the pull of desire.  Recognizing it, they act, they feel the hot/cold of results, they adjust and act again, sometime with lightening speed, sometime with a snail's pace of deliberation. They play us for the feedback only to serve their own desire.

The Mage works with the un-physical medium of Magickal process. At once both freer and requiring the highest discipline, desire is still the driving force, and the fulfillment of desire is still the end goal. No matter to the Mage Musician that the audience is witness and feedback mechanism, only tangential to the Magickal outcome - the Mage will do what the Mage will do whether there's an audience or not.  But you know, so what?

We hear it, we feel it.  We get a whole lotta deep down, too.  

Future post: First there is desire, but intention makes it all happen.

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YouTube Playlist

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Individual Songs

Whole Lotta Love Led Zeppelin Warner promo video for Mothership (while I normally advise listening only - this promo video is worth looking at as support for the Sunday MAGE MUSIC post)
Baby Come On Home Led Zeppelin (studio) 1968  Album: Coda
You Shook Me Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions 1969
Since I've been Loving You  Led Zeppelin  (live) LA 1972 Album: How The West Was Won
In The Light Led Zeppelin (studio) 1975  Album: Physical Graffiti
I'm Gonna Crawl  Led Zeppelin (studio) 1979 Album: In Through The Out Door
Emerald Eyes  Jimmy Page (live) 1988 Outrider Tour
Whole Lotta Love A few seconds from It Might Get Loud 2008