Two for the price of one

“We went in there with such a will....”

     ~ Jimmy Page, BBC interview 2007

Mage Music 40

There are a couple of things I want to talk about very briefly today.  They really should be two separate posts but oh well. This week you get two for the price of one.

Leveraging
There are two ways for a person to move a very heavy object:  Work at it really, really hard or use leverage.  Smart people don’t sweat it if they don’t have to, and Mages don’t get very far without being smart.

A Mage would have to be very, very powerful to generate all the energy required from his own person to manifest most of the monumental works of Magick.  Even if he was very, very powerful, the continued effort to fuel Magick that way sooner or later would consume him. We've seen more than one Mage musician flame out that way.  Thank the gods (or name your deity of choice) that a smart Mage can leverage power by tapping into the energy of the infinite.

Giving up the need to control, giving up specificity of process in favor of letting the Universe provide answers while still using desire and will to focus the energy through ritual is not as easy as it sounds.  It requires a master-level juggling act of Magick to pull it off.  I think we all agree that Jimmy Page is capable of that.

Most musicians would make playing at the highest level possible the primary goal for a one-off performance like the O2 Concert.  It would be a “have to do” thing - yet ironically, having to put forth a best performance makes it harder to reach.  That kind of pressure can lead to performance anxiety, to fatal doubt that undermines Magick by weakening the will.

They - Jimmy Page et al - didn't do that, though. Instead,  they went onstage with the desire to live in the musical moment, using their will to follow their hearts the way they always had.  Rather than attempting to force the manifestation, they felt their way to their desired end by following the sound and letting it lead them to the Magick.  In letting the music be their master, they opened to the infinite and let the energy pour in.  And we heard it as Mage music.

But was it really Magick?

What if Magick was just a fiction, only existing in novels about kids with lightning bolts on their foreheads, or TV shows featuring professional wizards who consult with skulls named Bob?

What if there was no such thing as Mage music?

Nah.

We know Magick exists because we hear it for ourselves when we listen to the music of Jimmy Page. We recognize it personally when the Mage himself creates it right in front of our eyes (or ears). We know Mage music because we experience it.  We live in it and because it becomes part of ourselves we don't need anyone else to tell us when it's there. We know Magick is real because we feel it.

When the music sings in our own souls and we resonate with it and are brought out of ourselves to something more than these physical bodies because of it - that is Magick.

That is Mage music.  Thank you, Mr. Page.