MAGE MUSIC: knowledge

Showing posts with label knowledge. Show all posts

Thursday, September 11, 2014

It’s Your Life

Why don't you take a good look at yourself and describe what you see,
And Baby, Baby, Baby, do you like it?
~ Led Zeppelin, Misty Mountain Hop 1971

Mage Music 87

One thing that most teachers are pretty sure of is that it’s their way or the highway. You see that with Magick, of course, though it’s not just the Masters of Magick who expect the students to follow directions in lock step.

It’s true in music, too, and all the arts. It’s true on social media and it’s true in society and basically everywhere you look.

Just about everybody wants to be an expert, an artist, a creator -- yet few dare step out of the herd far enough to show what they can do because they will be challenged. The only way to avoid being challenged -- and derided, which seems to be how challenge works mostly -- would be if everyone was just like everyone else. And what a boring world it would be if we humans really could stand to live that way.

But we can’t. In fact, we are always looking at what we see in ourselves and – more often than not – deciding we don’t like it. We decide to change who we are but then we look outside, to teachers who supposedly know more.

That generally doesn’t work so well.

When the student is ready…

It’s one thing to learn a how to do something from someone who knows how to do whatever it is better than you do. The more expertise an instructor has, the more the student can learn. But learning how to play the guitar doesn’t mean you are learning how to create music. Learning how to read and write doesn’t mean you are learning how to create a novel or a poem. Learning how to do something isn’t the same as learning how to be who you were born to be.

They say you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Generally that’s understood to mean that you can’t force it to drink, which is true -- but the real meaning is that you can’t force the horse to choose to drink. Only the horse chooses.

Only you can create who you were born to be. If you choose, you can use many tools to do so. One of them is Magick.

But how do you do Magick? Who do you believe? What do you believe?

The uphill battle starts early

Problem is, it’s too easy to take someone else’s opinion on what you should do or how (or who) you should be. There’s a lot of pressure coming from everywhere to bend to authority and to peers. It starts early, with parents who want to protect their children by choosing for them. From the very first day of school kids are taught to follow directions, and teachers don’t have time to allow for kids to learn by seeing where the wrong path will take them. After that it’s teen years with the pressure to fit in, to belong. And after that, well, the habits of conforming are hard to break, and there's little outside encouragement to do so.

Trouble is, all your life probably all who have been your teachers have taught what you should do without ever teaching you how to be the person your born to be.

Magick in your life

They also say that when the student is ready, the teacher will come. The teacher is, of course, you -- but you have to choose to believe that.

Somewhere along the line most people do learn how to start making choices based on their own desires, but for most those choices are limited in scope. Most people live reactive lives most of the time, letting the circumstances they encounter dictate which paths they take. For some, though, the need to create original works – of art or knowledge or discovery, including becoming the self that you choose – overcomes the powerful outside pressures to conform. This means approaching life very differently.

The creative act requires opening from the inside, opening to the inside and then through to the other side to let the energy of the universe flow back up that pipeline to manifest in your personal reality.

If you don’t know who you are, you are creating blindly. If you are creating blindly, you can’t know if you are creating your own work or if you are in fact creating at all.

If you take someone else’s word for who you are, you aren't creating your own work -- you’re simply assembling someone else’s vision.

Creating art or creating a new personal reality – it’s all the same. It requires understanding that if it’s going to be your life, it has to be your choices that create it. That means taking a good look at yourself, acknowledging all that you are – the good and the bad, the attractive and the ugly - and accepting that it is there, that it is you, and that it is, in the end, all perfect.

This is the first and most important step. You can’t change what you don’t know about. And then you boldly go where you've never been before.

Know Thyself. Then Do What Thou Wilt. Other people's words, but they're true.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Devolution Device

Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est: And thus knowledge itself is power

Mage Music 42: What It Is jimmypagemusic.blogspot.com

~ Sir Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacrae (1597)

Mage Music 42

Back in Merlin's day Magick was still an accepted scientia, that is, a form of knowledge. Today scientia is understood to be a discipline with exclusionary rules rather than of direct and personal knowledge. Magick has been reduced to the sleight of hand of Las Vegas, which is no Magick at all.

Magick is scientia in the original meaning of the term. Knowledge of the true nature of Magick persists, though modern science can't explain it. These days if a thing isn't science then science says the thing is fiction, and that makes the scientia of Magick harder than it has to be. Of course, Magick never has been easy, truth be told - not even for a Merlin. After all, Magick taps into the foundational energy of the Universe, and if that isn't a challenge then what is?

Ironically, humans have an intuitive knowledge of how the Universe and its parts work because not only do humans live in this Universe - they are a microcosm of it. How could humans not understand Magick, then? We only have to look within.

Do Not Enter

Mage Music 42: Fiat Lux jimmypagemusic.blogspot.com

Science has made fiction of Magick in self-defense, even though Magick is an extraordinary and yet natural process of human manipulation of energy that works perfectly well. Magick has an impact on reality that can be directly known, if not exactly duplicated, measured and quantified. So what does it matter if science can't explain it?

It matters because what Sir Francis said is absolute truth: Knowledge itself is power. How could anyone have control over anyone else if everyone could have knowledge... and thus power? Ideas like that give entities that are in positions of control (governments, religions, science and other institutions) the willies - it's bad enough to them that there are artists loose out there.

We have no Merlin these days because people with true knowledge threaten the social, scientific and political status quo, and wielders of true scientia can't afford to be blatant about it. There isn't an Inquisition any more, but history warns us that there are plenty of ways of dealing with Mages that are darned effective besides inflicting physical pain, as traditional as that has been.

Still, there's no stopping scientia. Discretion may be the name of the game in these modern, so-called "enlightened" times, but there still is Magick and there still are Mages. Some of them just don't use the same tools of the trade as Merlin did.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Mage Music: Lucifer, Bringer of Light

Mage Music: Lucifer, Bringer of Light

There is no doubt that music is a form of communication, a kind of language that is meant to convey meaning without words. Music can convey mental images and states of emotion by learned association or, like magic, directly through the music itself.

Learned association: Rossini’s The William Tell Overture is so associated with the TV show, The Lone Ranger, that it is almost impossible not to imagine the Masked Man and his sidekick, Tonto, when hearing the music. Similarly, Wagner’s The Ride of the Vakyries brings forth the image of the helicopters of Apocalypse Now. Who, other than students of classical music, knows that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a symphonic poem written in 1896-97 by the French composer Paul Dukas, and not in the 20^th century by Walt Disney? The instruments of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf are so well-dedicated to specific characters and actions that they scarcely need the words of the children’s story to tell what is happening (the links provided here and below are to a version charmingly narrated by David Bowie). Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is a suite of ten movements that ushers the listener through an exhibition of paintings by the artist Viktor Hartmann. Even without having images to guide the listener, the music clearly describes passage through the exhibition as well as the artworks themselves.

Or like magic: The potential for communication through music is vast - yet sometimes what is offered cannot be expressed at all through words, and sometimes the emotions conveyed are not the common ones of everyday life - particularly when a mage offers something from the deepest mind and soul, reaching for the infinite, embedding concepts that no language can express, opening the path to knowledge and enlightenment to the listener.

“Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.” Thomas Carlyle

Like moths to the flame, mage music pulls in all but the most spiritually deaf to transcendent realms that they otherwise might never reach on their own. In this sense, the mage musician is a Lucifer, bringer of light, bringer of enlightenment.

Contrary to popular belief, however, Lucifer is not the devil.

Fallen angel

The association of the unfortunate Lucifer and ultimate evil comes from relatively modern Judaic and Christian religious writing. To the ancient Greeks, Eosphoros and Hesperus were the gods of the “star” Venus: Eosphoros was the morning star, Hesperus the evening. Eosphoros translates as “Dawn-Bringer”, or Bringer of Light; the ancient Roman name for that same god was Luciferus, or Lucifer, which translates as “light-bearer”.

Bringers of light have a long tradition of suffering for their efforts. In both Vedic and Greek mythology, the theft of fire from the gods - fire (knowledge, enlightenment) that was then given to humans who had none - was severely punished. The Greek Prometheus, a figure representing human striving for knowledge (particularly scientific knowledge), was bound to a rock for eternity; each day Zeus’ eagle fed on the immortal’s liver, which grew back and was eaten by the eagle again the next day. In the Garden of Eden, Eve was offered the forbidden apple from the Tree of Enlightenment by the snake, and when she took it and was then found out by God, the snake was condemned to slither on its belly for all eternity, forever the enemy of humankind.

Gustav Dore illustration for
Paradise Lost

Although the story of Lucifer’s demotion from archangel status says that he became the devil because he dared to elevate himself to the level of God (i.e. to have the knowledge of the infinite, thus enlightenment), in fact the connection of a fallen angel with evil did not come about until approximately the first century BC in Judaic writings - and even then not about Lucifer, but some other angelic being named Satan. Lucifer, good guy bringer of light, had existed long before the Judaic writings and was not associated with Satan until some time after the death of Christ. It was, simply, the new Christian religion's way to take care of pesky free-thinking angels: Combine them into one.

In human tradition, there always seems to be a steep price to be paid for the gift of knowledge and enlightenment, and it isn’t always paid by the bringer – sometimes the recipient is the one punished for daring to seek more. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, forever blocked from the Tree of Life, and burdened with sin for choosing enlightenment. It happens even in fairy tails: Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid yearns for knowledge of the world above the sea. A “strange child, quiet and thoughtful”, the youngest mermaid can only have an immortal soul like humans do if she chooses to give up immortal life, is willing to lose her tongue and accept that every step she takes will stab her with pain. Even Siddhartha must give up his wealth and position as prince of the realm and suffer unto death before becoming the enlightened Buddha.

The seeking of enlightenment is obviously not in itself evil, but it does threaten the status quo and it is that threat that is labeled evil by the powers that be. Beyond the fairy tales and mythology, many have died throughout human history, victims of religious, political and social persecution in reaction to the act of independent thinking - be it science, the arts, the quest for direct spiritual knowledge, or simply alternate lifestyle.

Bringing enlightenment and knowledge to humans is not for the faint of heart. Lucifer is not evil, but he pays the price for bringing light.

Pushing the musical envelope

Image from video of 1977 Page
solo with theramin & bow

The mage musician or any artist at the mage level, like Lucifer or Prometheus, risks being persecuted and thereby associated with evil - not just for seeking personal enlightenment but for offering it to others through their art. The best art may not be the most beautiful, but rather something that can be disturbing in ways that cannot even be pinned down. This can be a sign of the magical.

Jimmy Page has not hidden his interest in the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley. It would be easy - but not necessarily correct - to point to that interest as the reason that Mr. Page's work (including the music of Led Zeppelin) has been accused of being associated with the black arts and the devil. I believe, however, that such accusations have not been truly based on any connection with the occult - after all, the world is full of much darker stuff that is tolerated and not claimed to be the work of Satan - but because the music that Jimmy Page creates is so powerful, so full of other, that the magic cannot be hidden, and the enlightenment that it brings is feared by those who do not seek it or whose power would be threatened by it.

From Jimmy Page's website recently:

"Here is a section of my solo spot that features the theremin and the bow and the exploration of both. It's lengthy but gives an example of my avant garde journey with this sonic architecture." (July 17, 1977 Seattle Kingdome with Led Zeppelin)

Jimmy Page began experimenting with alternative sound early on: Multiple instruments, alternate tunings, manipulation and distortion of sound - above all with sheer outrageous pushing of the musical envelope. Some of the results are not traditionally melodic, but they sound surrealistically meaningful. What is being created can be so outside our experience that it is hard to resist hunting for something we can hang on to, an association that makes sense of what we are hearing. The reverberations of the bowed guitar and the theramin could be the voices of the lonely denizens of the depths, bits of captured alien communication between the stars, or perhaps fragments of restless dreams. We have no guide; the meaning is outside our intellectual grasp. We are forced to either allow ourselves to be enlightened or to turn away. If we risk it, the magic will speak to hearts and soul in some way that can be frightening or disturbing - or exciting - depending on the listener’s openness to what is being offered.

The Seattle solo provides nearly 15 minutes of sound outside the normal realm of expectation. It is in no way ordinary and it might not even be considered music at all. It is a kind of exploration of the unknown through alchemical ritual: A seeking, a summoning, and transformation. It brings a clear sense of there being much more being offered than what is heard - a sense of vastness and something that is not music but is borne through the music. Magic, bringing light.