So Sue Me

"Humans are the killers of magic"
~Patrick Carman, The Land of Elyon: Into the Mist

Mage Music 84 

Oh please - let's not go into the legal arguments associated with the lawsuit. You know -- the one that the estate of Spirit guitarist Randy California has brought against Led Zeppelin 40 some years after the “crime”. Let the people with expertise in things like copyright law, finances and such have their fun beating each other up over an issue they can’t resolve in any meaningful way. All that will happen is that the attorneys will make a lot of money and some ruffled feathers may be soothed (probably also with money) until the next time the issue comes up. And there will be a next time as long as it is business as usual – which is to say this lawsuit is about business and money and not the music at all.

Don't show me the money

This may come as a shock to some folks, but life is not money-based. It's not even work-based. Money is merely a marker, a symbol of value that humans agree on.  The marker is used to make the exchange of things of value easier, including the expenditure of energy in the form of labor. In and of itself, money has strictly limited value. You disagree? When you're hungry, try eating money.

When they say money can't buy happiness, that's a hint. What we're ultimately after is not about money or even about what money is able to buy - not cars or food or fame or fortune.  What it's all about is happiness. All the money and all the stuff in the world is useless unless it satisfies desire.  Satisfying the desire is what makes us happy. And that means that money and what it can buy sometimes has no value at all.

Money can't buy Magick, either - so don't bother showing me your money.  Show me your Magick.

What's law got to do with it?

If a person can't bring about changes in his own reality that make him happy, then that's a  person not doing Magick. (Satisfied desire -> manifestation of change in the world = happiness). So here's another hint: A person who is using the law to force change is not only unhappy but most likely not able to bring Magick into what he does.*

Why does that matter?

We humans, like most living beings, feel more comfortable with predictable patterns all around us. Human laws are the patterns that attempt to control life so that it feels safe. Limitations mean fewer surprises that could bring about pain and suffering. That allows everyone to keep on keeping on without having to look over shoulders constantly for the lions and tigers and bears of the unknown and unpatterned. Everything black and white, cut and dried and safe.  So safe.

Except that safe doesn't satisfy the human soul. That’s why we humans have art, and art isn't very good at following laws. Art pushes the boundaries of the rules that make us feel safe and spills out all over the place in unpredictable ways. The best art is edgy and smacks of risk and danger because these works of creativity connect us with the energy of All That Is.

You can try squashing art with laws, but life is growth and growth is a creative act. The human need for music and painting and drama and all the arts - tools for expression of the full span of emotions and the depth and mystery of the unknown - just can’t be confined by law.  Art is the messy, unruly, ungovernable leading edge of life itself.  Law is exclusive, art is inclusive.  Law is about apples or oranges, art is about apples and oranges, about anything and everything.  The best art is Magick and is an act of manifesting desire. The law can try to regulate a work of art with about as much success as it can regulate the natural desire to create in the first place, that is, not very well.

And the law shouldn't try. When it does, though, we know why. It's just business.

Not all that glitters is gold

Copying isn't an act of creation. Passing a work of art off as being one's own could and maybe should be subject to the scrutiny of the law because there is money involved. Business is business, after all.  

But don't let that confuse you.  It's quite simple to differentiate between "copied from" and "inspired by". If there's Magick to the music, then an act of creation was involved and the music has moved outside the scope of human law.  In the case of Spirit v Led Zeppelin, if you listen very hard the truth will come to you. From there you just follow the Magick.

And aren't the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven the ultimate in irony?

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.
Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven.

...
And it's whispered that soon, if we all call the tune,
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long,
And the forests will echo with laughter.

 *Reminder:  I use the masculine pronoun but that never excludes women from things Magickal or anything else.  It's just a quirk of the English language.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Postscript 06/10/14 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More thoughts on the lawsuit:

One of the big problems with mixing business and the arts (and music is obviously one of the arts) is that throughout human history making copies of a work has been not only accepted, but encouraged. It's only been in the last hundred years or so (as opposed to thousands of years of humans creating works of art) that this has been a problem.

Today's copyright laws have failed to even acknowledge that there are two completely different, and apparently opposing, approaches to art: the creative act that generates the work of art on the one hand, and the making money off of the work through copies (including musical recordings) on the other. The law can say what it wants but artists still work from the same inner space, which is influenced by and yes, even takes from other artists' work. It wasn't all that long ago that incorporating direct inspiration in a work of art was an act of tribute, not theft. It isn't even illegal to create exact copies of works of art, you know.  If it is sold it simply has to be sold as a copy, these days as a licensed copy (otherwise you couldn't buy Led Zeppelin music, posters or photos, could you?)

History has clearly shown that laws cannot suppress human nature very successfully. Regulations can't get rid of the human need to create art. This creative drive is part of human nature - a basic need like the need to socialize and communicate.  It is not an optional artifice of modern civilization. As long as copyright law ignores this point, there will be needless legal problems, particularly when there are opportunistic bloodsucker attorneys out there who want to take advantage of the situation.

Magick 102

"...the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
~Roald Dahl

Mage Music 76

Scientists and other logically-based thinkers like to put down Magick as nonsense because Magick can't be readily perceived. The reasoning is that if something can't be perceived (with the physical senses on their own or enhanced with technology), it can't be measured, quantified, and duplicated in a laboratory.  If it can't be identified by science then it isn't real.

Science, of course, would be that area of human knowledge that changes all the time. New technology enables things to be perceived that couldn't be perceived before, and surprise! Science changes its tune about the nature of reality and we all pretend scientists aren't contradicting what they just said.

No scientist should say that anything is impossible or can't exist. In an infinite universe, by definition all things are possible and do exist. That's why even "laws" of nature are still referred to as theories. In spite of what some would have us believe, in fact humans don't know everything that can be known about reality.

Working with the impossible

Mages and artists, however, know that just because something doesn't yet exists doesn't mean it isn't possible. In fact, that very point may be the most significant difference between Magick and the rest of everyday human reality.

That is, just because you can't perceive something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  It just might be hidden from human perception.

Creation is the act of changing reality, that is, manifesting something new in the world. It isn't duplication of something that has existed before. Creation is an act shared with the gods, and it is something that every human could do but few will. That means that for all intents and purposes, to the non-creative world the new thing that has been made manifest came from a secret place, and how it came to be manifest in the real world is a secret as well.

For truly, if the Work of a Mage or artist (a Mage musician for example!) was perceived and examined minutely, was measured, quantified, and duplicated over and over - where it came from and how it came to be manifest in this reality would still remain a complete mystery.

That's because Magick and art are hidden in the most hidden place of all - the duality of the infinite Universe manifest in the human soul ("as above, so below"), and of course that means Magick will never be found unless the seeker suspends the need for outside verification of the inner truth.

"Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? In another 50 years, it’ll all be topsy-turvy anyway. It’s just the way people view a collective consciousness at any given time.”
- Jimmy Page, Guitar World 2006 

♫

Message to my readers:  Mage Music posts for the month of November will be briefer than usual and probably have no images. That's because I'm focusing on fiction writing for the month. I won't forsake you, but I am going to neglect you.

Magick 101

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin - music, sculpture, writing, painting - and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results.
~ William Burroughs, Essay in Contemporary Artists Magazine

Mage Music 75  

Here it is, everything you need to know, the whole of Magick in one list.

• Understand what Magick is and can do
• Identify your desires
• Engage your will
• Prepare and execute the perfect ritual
• Step into the new reality
• Cement the new reality

What it is

Bare bones: Magick is purposeful use of the raw energy of the Universe. No, not raw as in bare-skin naked. Raw as in not pre-processed, pre-digested or pre-packaged.  Raw as not things, but the stuff things are made of.

Bare as in without covering, without disguise. Unvarnished, without the trappings of mumbo-jumbo that cause confusion. The stark core of power and nothing else.

Magick at its most fundamental: That's where you start.

Honestly?  Anything else is unnecessary. You might think all the people and organizations that speak of What Magick Is and say they know How Magick Works are going to tell you what you need to know, but they aren't. They're only going to tell you their version of things, their niche. And in doing so, they steal potential from you - they steal your power.

This is not to say that there is nothing offered by such groups, but of course the moment you take someone else's truth for your own, you have replaced your own pure truth with something less pure. A cracked, imperfect version, one that serves others as much as yourself. Or maybe serves them more.

Magick is an art, not a religion. Magick can be art.  Knowing truth and expressing it doesn't require a guide. The truth is inside of you. You have direct access to truth and power, all you have to do is take it for yourself.

It's not easy walking that path, though. Everyone is eager to tell you where you're wrong and wants you to do what you're doing a different way. Everyone else is the expert, except for you - but it's your Magick and others can't make your choices for you any more than you can do so for them.

It's lonely walking that path. It’s easier to lean on others, even if their truth isn't yours. But the creation comes from inside you, not outside.  If you are paying more attention to the outside than the inside, you won't be able to find, much less fan, the flame of your own muse.

So you start with the fact that you already know everything you need to know, that you have all the tools you need to have, that you can develop what you need by yourself by doing.  You simply need to locate the path inside you and use it.

The more a person develops the skill set needed for Magick, the greater the Work can be.

Magick is purposeful use of the raw energy of the Universe

Magick works the same for all living beings that have the ability to consciously make choices in this Universe. Where there is purposeful creativity, there is the potential for Magick. The law of Magick is the law of deliberate creation. This is different from the laws of other physical objects in the Universe, even of other living beings, because the law of Magick is one of conscious creation.

The law of Magick opens the physical self to the infinite energy of the Universe.  Theoretically, there are no limits to what Magick can manifest, but in practice what is actually possible to manifest is limited by what a finite being can express of the infinite. Obviously the one can only contain a minuscule fraction of the other, just as cupped hands can only hold a minuscule fraction of the contents of the oceans. 

But... a Mage pushes the envelope of what is possible.

The law is this: As above, so below; as below, so above.  Think on that for a bit while you listen to the music of a Mage.

Burning Up

The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

~Alexander Graham Bell.

Mage Music 64

Magick requires that the Mage maintain a deep-set knowing that a desire will manifest in reality.  This knowing is beyond belief and beyond thought. It is a surrender, a giving of self to the idea that the process of Magick absolutely will result in the desire made manifest.  

Not so easy when the Magick involves something the Mage has never done before, or perhaps something that has never existed before. Or even something the Mage has tried before and failed at.

 
It’s no sweat to manifest when the path is well-worn. In fact, it is so easy that Magick doesn't need to be involved at all. Almost anyone can make a meal out of raw ingredients using a tried and proven process – why bother with Magick to cook those ribs when the BBQ will work?

Dedication of time and energy and fully giving of self to an end that has never existed before is a whole other kettle of fish, particularly when the events out there in the world seem so out of control. 

 
Yet the biggest Works are those that seem the most impossible, the ones that manifest in the midst of apparent chaos. These are the Works of a Mage that exude such an excess of energy that the rest of us can bask in the glow of the Magick.

Boldly going where…

Imagine being blindfolded, earplugs cutting off all sound, wearing boxing gloves so you can’t feel anything - and then stepping off a platform trusting that the guy on the trapeze will grab your hands before you plunge to the hard ground below. Imagine believing so powerfully that you are able to walk across a bed of hot coals without burning your feet. A Mage uses the energy of the Universe itself to change reality, which is a kind of miracle, actually, since manifesting the smallest atom of anything that did not exist in this time/space before makes messing with trapezes and hot coals easy in comparison - although they do have a lot in common. Trapeze artist, fire walker and Mage all must hold an unwavering belief and trust, a steady desire and will that admit to no hint of failure, no moment of doubt of the outcome.  

Imagine, however, that you have tried and failed before. How much harder, then, to hold the necessary state of pure and intense trust that will result in manifestation, to know success in spite of the past? 

 
The past can't, of course, be unknown. A Mage must rather dwell in a state where the past has never existed.

No foolin’

A Mage can’t fake the level of belief and trust needed for Magick. It isn't a matter of logic or words - it is a matter of creating a change at the seat of emotion in the brain, such that the body and guts and mind already know the new state of reality.  A Mage creates within himself a new state that exists in the Universe already - so that which will be manifested in the outer world is already manifest in the Mage.

Impeccable preparation, the patience that allows time to stand still, and performance of the perfect ritual provide a means for the Mage to focus on the desired manifestation and keeps pressure, doubt and memory of failure out of the process. The Mage steps outside of the current state of reality into a transitional space where the new conditions can replace the old.  Magick then burns a new path in this world.

♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪

Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Albert Lee Burn Up 1967
Page/Plant Burning Up  1998 

A Year of Music and Magick

"We had been taken somewhere and brought back and we were different people..."
~ Terry Pratchett, Snuff (Discworld)


Mage Music 52

A little over a year ago I posted my first article to this Mage Music blog.  I really didn't know what I was going to write about, but I knew that there were questions I had that needed answering.  I was pulled towards the music of Jimmy Page.  There was a depth to it that spoke to me in a language that was beyond words.  It was... vaster, more meaningful.  It was the essence of emotion... primitive, essential and powerful.  I wanted to connect with that, but first I had to know it.

I confess that part of the reason I wanted to write was because I couldn't seem to find anything about what I wanted to learn anywhere else.  There is so much to say about Jimmy Page's work, but I wasn't finding anyone writing about what I was interested in reading about, which wasn't the drugs, sex or excesses, the outfits, his facial expressions or his hair (sorry if that offends or disappoints, but there it is).

And of course, people like to natter on about Mr. Page's connection with the occult, specifically the work of Aleister Crowley. To me that wasn't the right direction.  Yes, there was Magick in the music but it was so obviously Jimmy Page's own Magick - not someone else's - that I didn't see the point of looking to anyone or anywhere else for answers.

So I have spent a year exploring the concepts, delving into understanding the basis of Magick across disciplines and focusing on music as an expression of Magick.  I used Mr. Page's work as inspiration for the words I wrote.  I came to understand that I was translating from not only another language but another reality, and the result could only ever approximate the depth, the beauty and the mystery of what I sought. Still, the music compelled me to keep trying.  Or maybe it's been the Magick doing so.

It took me somewhere and made me grow

Over the course of the year I listened to so much of Jimmy Page's music that I began to hear it in an entirely different way.  The beauty and mystery that had always called to me now was speaking to me with a meaning that I could almost comprehend, but that remained elusive.  I knew I would understand if only I listened just a little more closely, a little more carefully, so I really listened, focusing on what I was hearing at the root rather than at the surface.

What I was hearing was the Magick that was speaking through Mr. Page's guitar, of course.  I came to understand that I was never going to understand it with my thinking brain, because Magick is meant for a deeper part of a human than that.

I'm no musician, I'm a listener and I'm a writer, so I finally just let the mystery of the music flow past my brain and into my heart and soul to inspire me and push my own creative process.  I found myself writing much more than I ever had before, and about things that that I didn't know I knew.  The music of Jimmy Page has taken me to times and places I'd never been before in my own work - a process so exciting and so inspiring that I plan to keep going there.

♫

The job of the artist is to recognize the truth of All That Is and to fairly represent it to the best of his ability. The tragedy of the artist's lot is knowing that, no matter how skilled he is, the artist's creation can only ever be an infinitesimal aspect of All That Is.  And the triumph of the artist is that he keeps doing it anyway.

Here is a Kashmir playlist - because the Magick is right there.

♫

I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I've enjoyed writing them this past year.  I hope you won't mind if I keep on writing them, too.  I've got another big project in the works that I'll be talking about in upcoming months, but you can count on Mage Music posts every week as long as the music has Magick. I guess that'll be for a while.

As always, thank you Jimmy Page

Accidental Mage

“The fact that [certain mages] were famous in mainstream circles was just a strike against them. By the standards of magical society they'd fallen at the first hurdle: they hadn't had the basic good sense to keep their shit to themselves.”
~ Lev Grossman, The Magicians: A Novel

Mage Music 51

Not everyone who seems to be a Mage is really a Mage.

 
These things do not mean a person is a Mage:

1. Other people think that person is a Mage.
2. A person follows a particular philosophy that focuses on or embraces Magick or the occult (e.g. Thelema, Wicca, Kabbalah).
3. A person engages in practices associated with Magick or the occult (e.g. augury, fortune telling, scrying, tarot reading, rituals).
4. A person can actually use Magick to change reality.

Not Mage

Not everyone who is popularly thought of as being a Mage is really a Mage. Being a Mage is a whole person thing, not a job or hobby. "Mage" is a description of a person's state of a being, not his skill set.

A Mage is merged with Magick, and in his mind the difference between the inner world of Magick and outer world of reality is necessarily rather fuzzy. Just because a person studies Magickal theory or performs the practices doesn't mean that Magick has infused his very soul, any more than just having an MD makes a person a healer.

A person isn't necessarily a Mage even if clear acts of altering reality are witnessed. What would have been seen is one instance of Magick, not necessarily the act of a Mage.  After all, ordinary people are able to do Magick, too - Mages don't have a monopoly on Magick.

You can't just ask the person in question, because if he's real he probably won't want to tell you.  And of course, even if he was willing to admit it he might not understand that he is a Mage, particularly if the Magick comes through the act of creation known as art.

Accidental Mages

The principles of Magick hold true across all disciplines and rituals that are used to change reality, but nowhere is Magick so unconsciously and accidentally evoked as within the area of creative arts, particularly music.

Music that carries Magick is produced by a very few musicians. Even fewer of those who do so are aware they are doing it - or care. Any artists' purpose is art, not the practice or the study of Magick. However, when an artist sufficiently merges himself with the music (or painting or whatever medium) and his desire and will are powerful enough, the act of creation is ultimately no different than any formal ritual of Magick.

Intense desire and will applied to any ritual submerges the performer into the ritual so that nothing else exists but the now of the Work. This is what it takes to change reality, whether it's the alchemy of chemicals or of musical notes.

The beauty of Magick is that anyone can do it, but like with a great musical performance, not everyone can do it so consistently and so well that they live it in their bones, their cells, their soul. The difference between the person who can perform discrete acts of Magick and a Mage is the difference between oh, you and me and Jimmy Page.

Mr. Page has always maintained that his music says everything there needs to be said about him.  If he is a Mage, he has the good sense to keep that to himself and let the music be the Magick.

Can you hear the Magick?  Case closed.

♫

Nattering on:

I listened to Led Zeppelin's Madison Square Garden show of Wednesday Feb 12, 1975 while working on this post. That made writing the post a very slow process, indeed, since I kept stopping to listen closely to the music.

That show was just prior to the release of  Physical Graffiti and when Mr. Plant introduces Kashmir, the audience doesn't go wild because they didn't really know what it was.  That seems so strange now!

"We came four blocks in the snow to get here, do you realize that?" says Robert Plant.  Funny guy.

By the way - Amazon.com gives free MP3 downloads when you buy CDs. A good deal - 2 for the price of one with no copyright guilt.

Secrets

"I prefer to be weighed up purely by the communicative aspect of the music.”
    ~Jimmy Page, 2010 interview by Tony Barrell, The Sunday Times

Mage Music 39

Mages have a reputation for being secretive and private.  Is this a behavior that is put on like black robes and a pointy hat, is it a requirement for becoming a Mage, or is it something that Magick does to a person?

Over the years of interviews, Jimmy Page has directed people to his music when they ask personal questions.  It is clear that what he feels anyone needs to know about him is to be found there, in his work. This has garnered Mr. Page a reputation for being a private, reclusive, even evasive person, implying somehow that this is a behavior he has purposefully adopted.

Perhaps, instead, the secretiveness of the Mage is not so much a matter of choice as of necessity.

Some things are not meant for words
Generally, for any artist the method of creation chosen is the only way of relieving the pressure of the Muse.  If what needs to be expressed could be expressed in any other way, it would be. The medium is the message (Marshall McLuhan), or at least an integral part of it. Thus the art created is all the communication there needs to be - or perhaps even can be - because what you see (or hear or experience) is everything that the artist has to say in the exact way it can be most perfectly (or even possibly) said.

Hide or seek
Not only is the medium the message:  The messenger is also the message.  What is being said is an exposure.  It may be called music, fiction, dance, or art, but all art is a baring of emotional guts and raw nerve endings, of desire and need, of the innermost person that would otherwise never be made public.

Magick is a creative process.  It is an art that mirrors a Mage's soul.  In manifesting the Mage's inner reality as change in the Mage's outer reality, a bit of  the Mage's soul is brought forth along with it, visible and apparent for anyone who cares to see it.

Why would anyone wish to explain something vital and crucial with less than optimal use of communication? Why would anyone have anything more to say with words after Magick has been put forth containing as true and complete and perfect a communication as can be created by a mortal human being?

Magick is not about secrecy, it is about understanding.  Let the music be your master and you will know all there is to know about the Mage, for if you can perceive the Magick you have perceived the Mage.