The Magick Muscle

"...improvisation onstage...where the real magic takes place".
                               ~Jimmy Page [1]

Mage Music 32

Improvisation is creating something new on the spot, seemingly without preparation, practice - or even thought. If there is one thing that Jimmy Page is known for, it is his incredible improvised solos.

Improvisation is composition, two sides of the same coin. One takes place over time, the other in the moment. Composition is the creative act of making up something new that has not existed before. If creating something that wasn't there before isn't Magick, it would be hard to understand what could be.

Emphasis on “seemingly”
Just playing any random combination of new notes won’t do it, of course. A musician comes up with great improvisation based on music that has been played before and what is known to work. A first time guitarist is not likely to come up with much more than noise because practice and more practice is needed until the instrument is a seamless part of the creative process rather than another obstacle to it. Thus although the inspiration may pour out from the soul (or, according to Mr. Page – out of the ether [2]) it helps if the musician can perform so well that conscious thought is not involved and the mind is free to create. For this, muscle memory is required.

Muscle memory is a very cool thing. It's what lets you tie your shoe and what totally screws things up if you think about tying your shoe. It’s what allows you to get the forkful of spaghetti in your mouth instead of in your eye. It is what allows an artist to not have to think about the how of creation and instead allows the creation to flow freely.

Automatic behavior
Ouija boards, automatic writing, improvisation, Magickal ritual: They all work best when there is no conscious control of the tools involved. We say that practice “teaches” muscles to perform without conscious control, but what is really happening is that repeated behaviors, ones that are corrected each time in aiming for ideal results, are cemented into different neural pathways than the ones used when learning to perfect them. As the repetition occurs, the brain’s direction of these performance tasks are moved from working (conscious) memory to parts of the brain that handle other automatic tasks, such as breathing, walking, and feeding yourself with silverware (or chopsticks or any other tool), and in doing so free the mind from the need to pay attention to the physical processes involved.  By relegating these tasks to automatic behavior systems, the conscious mind can be involved with other things.

Interestingly – or perhaps unsurprisingly - some of the areas of the brain involved with muscle memory are the same as those involved with ear worms and other behaviors that we have no control over. That limbic system comes into play again, the more primitive part of the brain involved with emotions and emotional behavior. Scientists think that the limbic system plus the other adjacent parts of the brain involved with muscle memory evolved to free us for thinking so that we could use tools for survival purposes such as building shelter and hunting – and the creative processes.


Magick Muscle

A Mage must perform ritual without allowing the ritual to become an obstacle to the desired results. A musician, too, must perform solos without allowing the musical instrument to become an obstacle. Muscle memory frees the Mage Musician to perform the creative arts that result in Magick.

It is muscle memory, too, that allows the musician’s signature sound to remain consistent over time, so that we recognize who it is that is wielding the guitar. It is muscle memory that allows the guitarist to recognize when he is playing outside his identity, outside the ideal that inspires him and that he strives to bring to the light.

"Well, I'm not trying to be flippant here, but I just play the guitar, don't I?", says Jimmy Page in an interview in Guitar World magazine, October 1988. Indeed.

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Suggested listening: Outrider (studio album) as well as the Outrider tour.  Forget the vocals, forget the rhythm section.  Just listen to that guitar.

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* Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page by Brad Tolinski  

*“The whole improvisational aspect, the riffs coming out of the ether ... it was a magical vehicle collectively soaring into the stratosphere.” Jimmy Page, as quoted by Cameron Crowe in the notes for 

The Song Remains The Same (Remastered / Expanded) (2CD) reissued version, 2007.

Thank you Sue C for the muscle memory suggestion.

Magick Begins – and Ends – Here

“Cogito ergo sum”   
~ René Descartes

Mage Music 30

Everything is possible in the infinite scheme of things, but from the very finite human viewpoint, there are limitations:  Beginnings and endings, and sideways constraints, too.  Magick is a way of tapping into the infinite but it isn’t infinite itself – possibilities may be endless, but human restrictions still apply.

Magick begins here – or not
The Magick equation always begins with desire.  Desire provides the fuel of emotion, which can either cause a conflagration that lights the world or go pfft – not even a spark.  Without powerful desire there is no Magick… but not just any desire will do.

Hope (wishing) is nothing. It doesn't bring enough power to fuel the Magickal process. Hope is just a statement of preference. On the scale of desire and will, hope carries little weight. The most painstakingly performed ritual will be empty and without impact if hope is used to power it.

Belief (faith) can be a powerful thing, but it isn't good enough for most Magick. That's because belief falls well short of knowing. Disagree? You may believe someone is in a room because you saw him enter and haven't seen him exit, but you don't know unless you open the door and look inside. The person you just saw go into the room might have walked right out a back door. Belief carries more weight than hope on the scale of desire, but nowhere as much as knowing.

Knowing leaves no room for uncertainty - it is about reality for the one who knows. Knowing is about personal identity and relationship to reality. Knowing carries 100% weight on the scale of desire. Knowing is what enables Magick to change reality.

To know is to manifest
To do Magick is to replace one reality with another.  To do Magick a Mage must know the desired to be the actual reality – not believe it, not hope it.  In a sense, this means that the undesired reality that exists and is known must be made "unknown" in order for the new reality to manifest.

This means that during the Magical process, a Mage cannot think about the existing reality, for part of unknowing something is to not focus on it. You know about "don't think about pink elephants"?  That’s what it takes, and to not think about something, to not even thing about not thinking about something, to not even acknowledge the possibility of the old reality is a tough job.

But it can be done and it is done. Anyone with sufficient desire and will and attention to ritual can do Magick. If it was easy, of course, there wouldn't be a special term for those who can do it. "Mage" is a title about ability and success, not a description of those who try.

Magick ends here
The killer of Magick is doubt. When doubt enters into the equation, balance is destroyed and Magick cannot manifest anything.  The most powerful will and the most painstakingly performed ritual will be undermined by the smallest doubt. To doubt is to not know.

Unfortunately, doubt is insidious and lives in us all somewhere, in some form.

Ritual:  Doubt destroyer
The thinking mind is the Mage’s albatross, since thoughts can lead to doubt.  Strong emotion displaces thought by engaging a primitive, survival-oriented part of the brain that literally shuts down the critical thinking facility of the human mind.  It's an On/Off switch:  Powerful desire, guided by a Mage’s will, provides strong emotion that bypasses thought.  Without thought there is no possibility of doubt.

Ritual is the key to Magick – it is the catalyst that transmutes desire and will into the new reality.   Music is the language of emotion - not thought - and as such it is one of the most powerful and accessible forms of Magickal ritual there is.  It uses the seduction of sound to focus the power of a Mage’s desire and will.

There is no room for doubt:  The human mind is hard-wired for emotion and for music.  And, of course, this means that it is wired, also, for Magick.

♪

Future post: Ear worms

  

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YouTube Playlist:  For Your Life

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

Dazed But Not Confused

It takes determination, stubbornness and powerful Will to pursue a vision decade after decade - there's no confusion about it. 

Mage Music 17  

The Magickal process is a simple formula (simple, of course, not being the same as easy):  Desire + Will + Ritual => Manifested Change. The process is not a sequential one; in fact all of the input must occur not only at the same time but be sustained over time in order to achieve success. A Mage Musician must master all of the input in the Magickal process mindfully while at the same time being free to disappear into the music and let the music be the master. It's no wonder that there aren't a lot of Mage Musicians around. It's no wonder that, even though music is a highly suitable carrier for Magick, there just isn't a lot of Mage Music around either.

Desire is something we all experience to some degree or another all the time, though the quality of desire in Magick is not quite the same as, say, for rocky road ice cream or even for sex. On the other hand, Will is something we non-Mages experience way too infrequently - we tend to go through life on automatic pilot for one thing, and for another engaging our will is just not as much fun as fulfilling our desire. Without Will, though, desire easily slides into wishing and hoping. For the process of Magick, purposeful and directed Will is a bridge between desire and ritual; wishing and hoping alone aren't powerful enough to change Reality.


Willy-nilly

When you do something in a willy-nilly way, it can mean that you've done it in a disorganized or sloppy manner or, contrarily, that you were forced to do it whether you wanted to or not. Willy-nilly comes from "will ye, nill ye", and "will", too, seems to have two contradictory meanings: Your will can be merely your desire or it can be your deliberate focus.

Will or willy-nilly: All meanings apply very well to the music of Jimmy Page, which for so long has seemed to be nothing less than the product of the application of a Mage's Will to his soul's desire.

Creation is the transmuting of inner reality into something that can be experienced in the world; music does it using sound to express meaning that words don't or can't convey. Magick is a Mage's process for creation, the transformation of a desire into changed reality.

If music is the evidence, then for at least one extraordinary musician we can believe in the existence of a ferocious and persistent Will that has sustained an ongoing drive to express the perfect sound - the one note after the next that exposes the naked, pure heart and soul of Reality. This level of Will involves maintaining sustained attention and consciousness of process over time so that the perfect sound can be not only created, but the unending possibilities sifted, rejected, transformed, added to and pared back. It involves never accepting the music as "good enough".


True Grit

Reality isn't so easy to change. Manifestation must overcome the powerful forces of inertia (resistance to change) and entropy (the tendency towards disorder and ultimately dissolution) within the Universe. Just wanting something to be different won't make it happen - a fact I think most of us are very familiar with. Creation and growth do not happen without a price: Directed, focused energy - that is, Will - is the currency for purposeful change, regardless of what the end result is to be.

It takes strength and determination, stubbornness and true grit to stay the path of Magick. It takes mental and emotional discipline to imagine what does not exist and what has never existed while keeping the mind clear of old paradigms and expectations. It takes sustained effort and being so controlled that the only thoughts, emotions and actions that are presented to the Universe during the process are the ones that lead to the goal.

If you think this is easy, try this experiment:  Hold one thought - of anything you would like to see manifest in your reality, anything that does not already exist - without another thought entering into your mind for a mere 17 seconds (I have read this is the shortest amount of sustained time needed for a human being to effect even a small, insignificant change in Reality - but even if that isn't so, I still challenge you to try it). Seventeen seconds. Be sure to create a powerful desire for that thing you want to manifest, and keep that powerful level of desire burning at the same time as you sustain constant and focused awareness of your goal.  This is not simply meditation:  The goal of Magick is to create a change in Reality.

Most people can't even begin to generate a clear concept of something that doesn't exist, much less maintain a powerful desire for it for longer than a few milliseconds. Magickal Workings can take not just a short 17 seconds, but minutes and more. And then there are the Works of Mages....


The Mage is the Work

As above, so below: macrocosm/microcosm. The need for extraordinary desire and will plus the need to sustain the process over time means becoming the Work, not merely directing it. As an artist or musician is a person who has so merged with the work that he/she cannot meaningfully be talked about separately from the art or the music, so too a Mage cannot be meaningfully considered separately from the Work.

Unlike with artists or musicians, however, a Mage can never not be a Mage. Once become a Mage, a person has crossed a line:  Enlightenment brings the understanding that humans alone are responsible for the outcomes of their choices - and that understanding cannot become unknown or unlearned or even forgotten. In order to manifest in the world, the Mage must literally change his/her own Reality.  Enlightenment means that a Mage must be the change he wishes to manifest.

Thus enlightenment is like losing virginity - there is no undoing about it. An artist can stop painting, a musician can stop playing music and eventually each will no longer be an artist or musician - but no amount of celibacy will get a person's virginity back.  "Mage" is not a title but a description of a state of being. Magick is a process used to change the reality of the Mage, whose state then becomes a microcosm of change in the greater Reality of the Universe.


Never Confused

We can only imagine how it must have been for Jimmy Page, back in the late 1960s, to be feeling his way through music in order to express what must have been a powerful inner vision that stirred within him. We know that he tried and discarded visual expression (painting) as a means to satisfy what was in him that wanted to come out.  From the beginning Mr. Page experimented with different musical instruments, pushing musical barriers to try to capture the perfect sound that was his inner vision.

How extraordinary it must have been to one day hear a song performed by Jake Holmes (ironically, the originator of the slogan "Be All That You Can Be") that carried a hint, some echo of essence, some sound that was perhaps almost there, almost right, almost what Jimmy Page's heart and soul could feel so strongly. How that music must have called to Mr. Page, and how joyfully he must have responded! Did he know, even then, that Dazed and Confused would be one of the most powerful vehicles for his musical genius for the next half century?

Willy-nilly, Jimmy Page has changed Reality - his own and the world's - with that song. Each time he performs it, it is a Work in progress, never a repetition. Each time it is a restatement of his desire, an expression of his will, a ritual of exploration and manifestation that changes Reality. Each time has gone on since 1968.  Can there be any more evidence of Will than that?

Mage Music is dazzling, it dazes and amazes us - but the Mage Musician that is Jimmy Page is never confused. We know this because if he plays the same song, he nevertheless doesn't play the same music!  Mr. Page still explores, still searches for the perfect combination of components, still performs the ritual of Mage Music. The desire and Will that has driven him for so long is why he is a Master.  Absolutely no confusion about that.

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Future post: Ritual (probably next week, but maybe not!)

YouTube full playlist


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Dazed and Confused - individual songs


1967 Jake Holmes - Dazed and Confused (album) The Above Ground Sound
1968 Yardbirds - I'm Confused (live) Yardbirds Album: Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page
1969 Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused (studio) Album: Led Zeppelin
1973 Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused (live)Madison Square Garden. Soundtrack from the movie, The Song Remains The Same
1988 Jimmy Page - Dazed and Confused (live) solo Arizona Sept 17 1988
1999 Jimmy Page - Dazed and Confused (live) New York
2002 Jimmy Page with Paul Weller band - Dazed and Confused (live) Feb 09, 2002 Royal Albert Hall, Children's Cancer Trust Benefit
2007 Led Zeppelin/Jason Bonham - Dazed & Confused Dazed and Confused O2 Arena

Mage Music: Ritual is not Magick

A black robe with a black cat looking on, a few candles and props, a chanted spell and a pass with the wand:  Magic?  No way!  On stage, maybe - but that's not real magick at all.

The truth:  Even when they use tools, today’s occult magicians and most other reality transforming professionals don't perform rituals like they did in the olden days.  In spite of what you may have learned from Harry Potter, real magic doesn’t require wands, spells, magic potions and powders, pentangles, crystals or any other prop to make the connections with the energy that will do the heavy lifting.  Still, all those things and more can be used to create magic - even if they are just tools that make the job easier.

The need to use specific tools of magic is indirectly proportionate to the skill of the mage. What this means is that a powerful mage can use anything – or nothing at all – to bring about transformations in the world, whereas a lesser magician can become dependent upon ritual, on the use of tools in a formulaic way to focus the mind and keep the will of the magician on task.

The reason rituals and magical props are not intrinsically necessary is because rituals are not the magic itself.  The fact is, anyone can use the recommended magical tools and perform the prescribed rituals with them, but only some will get the desired magical results.  Even the most highly skilled practice of ritual can never achieve the same level of results as a gifted mage who isn’t even half trying, because magical success resides not in the ritual but in the person performing the magic.

Lascaux, France paleolithicave painting

A little history
One theory of art history is that cave paintings, petrographs and petroglyphs were not art so much as summonings, blessings, and/or entreaties to the spirit world for success in the hunt.  The Lascaux cave paintings are around 17,300 years old and petroglyphs sites in Australia have been dated at 27,000 to 40,000 years old.  Undoubtedly the first human music consisted of humming, whistling, and singing; rhythm-keeping in the form of clapping or drumming must have occurred early on as well.

Music is powerful.  We don’t need science to tell us that music can evoke strong emotions and changed states of awareness (although science can, in fact, tell us how that works).  Shamanic drumming has its modern-day counterpart in trance music; a young child can tell the difference between happy and sad music; words that are used to describe music also are used to describe spiritual experience.  There has always been something magical about the application of paint to canvas or stringing one word or one musical note after another and having the end result be something that has meaning above and beyond the physical object.  For some practitioners of the various arts, the result is also magick.

Performance vs. creation

Jimmy Page is often referred to as “The Master” or “Mage”.   Magick or music - the honorifics acknowledge the quality and quantity his gift and his expression of it.  Yet performance itself, no matter how dazzling and technically excellent, does not a Master make.

Jimmy Page is definitely a master musician.  The YouTube playlist provided here includes selections of original music of Mr. Page's over a 15 year period from 1983-1998.  These songs were chosen to provide a powerful example of the skill of a musician at the level of mage.  Please note that some songs have solos that I have identified for particular consideration (also scroll down for individual links).

While any search of YouTube will yield numerous young guitarists (and some not-so-young or unknown) who have performed Jimmy Page’s tracks from various songs, none carry the magic of Mr. Page’s own work as he performs it.  Many can play the works of Jimmy Page's with technical excellence that may surpass his own technical skills, but none of it is magic.

“Music is an outburst of the soul.”  Frederick Delius

Jimmy Page, as has often been noted by his detractors, can be a sloppy guitarist and even off-pitch, yet somehow the magic is still there.  This is because ritual – musical technique – is not the magic.  You can listen to far more technically accomplished guitarists and be left cold.  Magic comes about as a result of the desire and will of the mage, not technique.  Jimmy Page plays music and makes it his own - he is always creating, not simply performing.  The music he produces is the result of focus of his desire and will; he is not merely producing a sequence of notes on his guitar that he has produced before, that anyone can produce – he is creating a new state in the world that matches his inner vision.

Each of the songs in the playlist is different, but each at its core expresses a certain Truth.  The expression of that Truth is magic.

It is highly recommended that you do not watch the videos while listening to the selections below. Concentrate on the sound for there lies the magic.


1983  Midnight Moonlight Live, ARMS concert with Paul Rogers [note particularly 3:23 – 5:15]

1988  Emerald Eyes Studio version, Outrider

1988  Writes of Winter Studio version, Outrider 

1993  Saccharin Unreleased, Coverdale/Page  [note particularly 2:50 – 3:16]

1998  Walking Into Clarksdale Live,  La Cigale Paris March 30 [note particularly 4:22 – end]