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.

Interlude: Fiction

For something different today, here is a short story for your enjoyment.

Small Stuff

By Lif Strand (c) 2013

It had been raining all afternoon and evening, raining for so long that I didn't notice when the hammering on my metal roof finally stopped. Now all I could hear were the drops plinking from the broken gutter into a bucket just outside, a bit of a breeze soughing through the crack where the door sat crooked in its frame, and the snores of my dogs and cats.

It wasn't long after midnight. I wanted to call it a day, but couldn't, not yet. There was a nervous energy keeping me awake. I was way too restless to sit still much longer, way too jumpy to sleep.

I stared at the words on the page of the book in my hands. They didn't make any more sense now than they had an hour ago. I set it carefully on top of the precariously balanced stack of reading material that had already been rejected tonight.

I was seated at what was supposed to be my dinner table, but there wasn't enough room on the painted black surface for a soup bowl, much less a dinner plate.  I often ate just standing up at the kitchen counter.  I’m unrepentantly uncivilized that way.

Before me, instead of china and crystal and linen, were the tools of my trade and the debris of my life - maybe one and the same. An empty juice glass, safer for me to use for wine than stemware was. A crumpled foil wrapper with one piece of luscious dark chocolate left. A brass pipe-to-hose connector that I needed for a project, but that I couldn't remove from the 2” length of pipe it was attached to no matter how much I wrestled with it. An eBook reader. Three – no, four – crooked stacks of library and second-hand store books with bookmarks and post-its bristling from their pages. And my spiral-bound notebooks. With the words. The fiction I was compelled to write that was actually thinly disguised… well, let’s face it. Spells.

The notebooks were grimoires, okay? My spell-books. But hidden, like I was, by being right in the open.

You know why – don’t deny it. This is not a world where true magic is welcome any more, if it ever really has been. Ironic though, isn't it, since pretend magic is everywhere. Robed masters wield powerful forces on movie screens. Fae and demons and elementals splash the covers of new releases on the bookshelves. Vampires and zombies and werewolves populate video games. Rock bands with their painted faces and light shows out-flash Las Vegas magicians. Websites channel the wisdom of angels and disembodied spirits. The world is full of all that. But no one really thinks any of it is really real, right?

I’m all too aware, though, that these days are no different from the days when they burned witches at the stake – just not so messy. Magic stuff is okay as long as it is fantasy. Really real magic is not something to fool around with – not in the open, not now, not ever.

Inconveniently for my peace of mind, I have magic in me. I’m too afraid to ever let even a hint of it seep out where anyone else could figure out what I am doing. Not even my family knows. Consequently I don’t know a thing about it - which makes me wonder if I’m not just insane and delusional instead. Though they say if you think you might be crazy you probably aren't.

Can I trust that?

Here’s the problem: One day I found out that I could do magic. It freaked me out then and I’m still freaked out for all kinds of reasons. It’s not so much that I’m afraid of being stoned or burned at the stake like in the olden days – that doesn't happen where I live, though it’s never a good idea to discount the possibility. It’s more likely, though, that I’d be locked away somewhere with the other whackos. Or worse. I didn't really know what worse was, but I feared it.

♦

The lead-up to my discovery started out so innocently. I mean, come on – I was a good Catholic girl for years, and sure I fell off the wagon, but I’d passed through the drugs and sex and booze stages of rebellion and had settled down to more or less responsible adulthood. More or less because I was still not normal of course. Back then I still wanted to grow up to be a writer, and writers are never considered normal. But that’s another story.

Then after all I’d been through, when I finally thought I was settling down, there was this… thing, this albatross on my back. Demon? Nightmare horror? Devil?

Okay, she was my business partner. Pamela and I were – oh hell, I don’t even understand it. We were going to make lots of money through the junk business. That would be junk as in other people’s discarded treasures, not as in drugs.

I've been in business with partners before. Sometimes actually made money. Pamela wasn't even my first female partner. The last partnership hadn't gone well but I had higher expectations this time. I always did. The problem was that I hadn't learned from the last time. I was… oh… not the weak link, but the gullible one. The one who wanted to play it straight with a con-man (or woman) partner.

But unlike my other partners, good or bad, Pamela scared me – I don’t know how else to put it. Although she was physically bigger than me that wasn't the scary thing. I’m tallish for a woman with average build, but I do have a few muscles. Pamela was only a few inches taller. Well, and she was broader, too. And rougher.  Not that any of that mattered, since quite honestly I’m just not into violence, physical or otherwise.

Okay, I just now lied - I can be plenty violent if pushed to it. The problem is that I can’t control it and then someone gets hurt. While it’s no biggie for me to be hurt, I feel bad when I calm down after I've done that to someone else. So my preference is to control myself – not the other person – in situations where I get pissed off. It’s just safer for everybody. Sometimes, though, I get pushed too far and then all I know how to do is strike out – and whatever I hit, I hurt bad. I don’t hit with my fists, you understand – I hit with my mind.

Not magic. I mean, I didn't think it was that then, or maybe I did but I didn't care because it worked. And that was dangerous – not because it bothered me so much to hurt others (come on, they deserved it) but because that let people see me. And that could bring a world of hurt on me, or so I’d believed ever since I could remember. I don’t really know why, I just have always known it was that way.

On the other hand, it was a fact that my business partner scared me, badly enough that I was getting even more scared of myself. And so I had to stop her.

I know - you want to know what she was doing. But I can’t really describe it. It wasn't the poor business practices (well, that was part of it but not an important or insurmountable obstacle). It wasn't that she didn't listen – unfortunately that seemed to be normal business practice for the partners I got involved with. It was something that she was doing to my head. It was a control thing. It was a weight on my soul, an unrelenting pressure that... heck I can only say it felt like I was constantly fighting being turned into not-me.

Talking it out was the mature thing to do, but it didn't achieve a thing. Pamela was offended and wounded, she said. I was mistaken, she said. I was a hurtful person, she said. Don't sweat the small stuff, she said.

Yelling at her didn't work either. The mature talking it out always devolved into horrible fights. Each time I’d win the arguments but somehow she won the battles. The atmosphere afterwards was oppressive – the miasma just got thicker and darker. She unrelentingly dragged at me when we fought, sucking my energy. I’d go home afterwards totally exhausted, feeling filthy and violated and confused - yet I was unable to stay away from her. She would call me up and demand I show up to work and even though I didn't want to go back there with all my heart, I did go.

I tried to avoid her each time, but that was hard – I mean, we were in the same small rooms, going through the same stuff, having to discuss what we’d do with each item. She kept a lot of it. I can’t explain how that worked – we were supposed to be selling it all, right? But somehow the good stuff wound up as her personal property. And me? I got to where I didn't want to touch any of it because it represented her and the foulness that was working into my flesh.

I got all defensive. I tried to block her out but I couldn't. And I was dreading what was coming – I could feel it, that being backed into a corner feeling, the one that I knew – I knew – would end up badly because this time there was the added element of her specifically, of Pamela and the thing she was doing to me – the thing she was. I didn't want to name it, but I knew. Deep inside something in me recognized it, all right. Laugh if you want, but she was dark and ugly, and whatever she was, she wanted something from me that I didn't want to give up.

I’m not calling what she was doing evil, because as scary as it was to experience, it still felt like the actions of any living thing that needs to eat. No one wants to be the thing being eaten, but that doesn't make the thing taking a bite out of you evil.

I didn't call what she wanted to take from me magic, either – I didn't admit to magic then. Heck, I can’t even call it magic now - I can barely talk about it at all. I mean, I am unable to tell you any more than what I have already of what Pamela was doing. I literally cannot describe to you what I did to stop her, either, and I did stop her. It’s really weird, but when I try to force it out – well, those words just will not come out of me. A bummer isn't it, given that I’m a writer these days.

Believe me, it isn't writer’s block.

I can talk around it, though. I can say what I came up with in a general way. I can say I just got pushed to the point of such desperation that I did a small magic.

It was like discovering fire, the wonder of it that the first humans must have felt. It was the first time I’d consciously done magic and the first magic I’d ever done that wasn't reflexive fear-biting. Imagine that. Just like those first people with fire, I found this thing all by myself and just like that, it changed my world.

It wasn't hard but it was the most frightening thing I've ever done – because irrefutably, absolutely, incontrovertibly I had used magic on purpose. And that’s the most I can tell you. All those grimoires I've written since? They don’t really tell how to do magic – they are words that dance all around the subject, just like I’m doing now. They’re like recipes from famous chefs that only contain the main ingredients and no real instructions, so that the dishes are still theirs alone.

But back then, when I did magic for the first time I couldn't have told you about it anyway. That’s because I didn't really know what the heck I was doing.

And then I did. And that freaked the hell out of me.

The on-purpose magic thing I did was not meant to hurt Pamela, amazingly enough. I wore out a lot of brain cells trying to figure out my situation while I was stupidly still involving myself in the ugliness every day. The drive to and from work took me an hour and a half each way, plenty of time for thinking – on the way there building myself up and quelling the sick feeling in my stomach, on the way home recovering and quelling the sick feeling in my stomach. But I did finally realize that I had to know what I wanted, as opposed to what I didn't want. That’s a lot harder than you’d imagine, especially when there are bad things happening that you want to stop right away.

You see, magic works on what you want - not what you don’t want. It’s obvious, really – but most people just don’t get it. Suppose someone asks me what I want for dessert, and I say, oh anything but fruitcake. Well, I’m a chocolate lover. I almost always want something chocolate for dessert, unless it’s a cinnamon roll. So if I say anything but fruitcake I might be spared from that nastiness but it doesn’t mean I’ll get chocolate. I mean, I might get mincemeat pie (oh yuck) or lime Jell-O with fruit cocktail mixed in. When it comes to magic, what you have to do is be specific about what you want. I say I want German chocolate cake, I get German chocolate cake. See how that works?

So I wanted Pamela to do… what? Go away? How would I go about making that happen even if I could do it? And besides, what about my investment in the business? How would that get dealt with? And did I really want to hurt her? Yes. No. Not at the expense of my own soul. Fear-biting was one thing, but on-purpose, premeditated harm was a bit much.

Too many questions, no resolutions. I kept coming back to a niggling idea that it wasn't about her, it was about me. It took days of driving back and forth before I had my duh moment.

Oh man, this is hard to write – you have no idea. It’s so… slippery. But here it is: I didn't really give a shit about Pamela. I didn't care what happened to her.  I didn't want to change the world, I didn't even want to change her.  All I wanted was personal peace of mind. What I wanted was mental silence and still waters where there had been roiling lava mud pits of icky emotion. Such a small thing, really, but wow.

I got it finally.  I had to do magic on myself, not on Pamela. And why not? It’s my own life I wanted to change – I didn't give two hoots about hers. I didn't need for her to just go away because that might not get me what I wanted. I needed me to be happy again, or as close as I could get to that elusive state.

So I found myself suddenly clear that doing an act of magic would fix things. Me, the one who had never dared think that way before. And then I did it.

And how did I do it? Good try – but I can’t tell you. It involved ordinary things found in any kitchen, just a few little things for a short and sweet ritual, and the clear intent and… hell. I just used magic to shut myself of her. I slammed a door, not on myself, but between us – a door she didn't even have to know about. And then I put the key – the thing I made from the kitchen stuff – away somewhere safe, a place I could forget about it even as I knew it was secure. And there was the magic, right there. The putting it away from me with a knowing: What I had done would do exactly what I wanted. It was extraordinary, it was real and powerful. It was mine, a thing that I had done. And I knew it was done.

From that day on Pamela was gone from my life. Oh, she lived in town still, but she and I didn't say a word to each other for several years after that moment of magic in my kitchen. I didn't avoid her, she just wasn't there. Where did she go, what did she think? I have no clue and I don’t care. What happened to the business? I don’t know. Maybe she’s still doing it. No one talks about her to me, and I don’t ask. Every so often we see each other at community functions and she nods her head pleasantly and her eyes slide right off of me.

♦

That was ten years ago. Since then, I've become a writer, though what I write about for money is a lot more boring than magic. Since then I've thought a lot about magic.  I write about magic a lot – notebook after notebook of what I have figured out, and not a bit of it useful to anyone else because none of it will ever see the light of day.

Since then, I've done it again. It's such a small thing, that magic.  A small thing - like an atom that you split apart and the world changes.   

Zoso

A lot of people mistook it for a word…
~Robert Godwin, as quoted in George Case’s Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man: An Unauthorized Biography (2007, p114)

Mage Music 74  

Symbols are remarkable.  Without them, you couldn't read this post.  Without them, you couldn't communicate on more than the most basic of levels.  

Without symbols, there would be very little Magick.

Symbols can convey meaning above and beyond “what you see is what you get” (that is, the denotation or literal, dictionary meaning of a word or term).  The capacity of symbols to carry richness and depth of additional meaning (connotation, or overlaid meanings that convey emotions, values, associations and nuances beyond the literal) makes symbols possibly the most valuable of all the treasures that a human might possess.  For a Mage, symbols are the secret heart of ritual.

In Magick, symbols are most potent when they are maximally realized and intensely embody the desire that fuels the ritual. At their most potent, symbols are so rich that their power carries over to others.  Thus a Mage whose ritual is meant to be shared with an audience - a painter or a musician, for example - can use personal symbols within that ritual that have such extremely powerful meaning that the symbols pack a punch for the audience too.  

The most potent symbols must remain personal to the Mage, though.  To reveal the meaning – if a Mage could even bring himself to do so – would bleed off the pressure of that power, reduce its intensity and thereby weaken the ritual.  

The Eagle and the Horse

Let's use the example of the eagle and the horse to talk about denotation and connotation:  An eagle is a bird, but its deeper meaning is that of wild power used as weapon.  Long a symbol of power, the eagle was the Egyptian symbol for the god Horus, it was the standard of a Roman legion, and today eagle is the US emblem.  Although there are much larger birds in the world, the eagle has long been held as the King of the Birds in mythology by many cultures.  A predator, eagle carries a depth of meaning that includes the danger of a focused and yet unlimited power.  

A horse is a mammal, but its deeper meaning is that of power shaped by human will.  Horses symbolize grace, beauty, nobility, strength, speed and freedom.  These meanings can transcend the normal world when the horse has wings or horns as Pegasus or unicorn.  As a powerful and dangerous animal that is not a predator, horse’s power is broader focused and symbolically horse is a helper.  There is great power with both horse and eagle, but horse carries a feeling of less danger in its symbolism. 

Or not.

Maybe you come from a place like Alaska where there are so many eagles that they’re like pigeons and you have little respect for them.  Maybe you come from a culture that eats horses, or maybe from a culture that has never even heard of either.  Maybe you're scared to death of both of them.

The power of a symbol isn't in the object itself and certainly not in its name or its history, but rather what it means personally to the one who uses it. 

In the right hands, a symbol can carry meaning so powerful, so potent, so filled with possibility that the symbol is the fissionable material of Magick. Such things have no names that you or I could - or should - know.

Solitude

"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
~ Aristotle

Mage Music 73

I'm writing this post on my laptop while sitting on a porch of an isolated lodge overlooking an alpine meadow in the wilds of the White Mountains in Arizona. I'm on vacation and I'm at a quilting retreat.

The occasional bald eagle flies overhead. Horses graze in the distance. A pair of pigs (ultimately intended for bacon and chops) trot by. Wind soughs through the pine trees. It's peaceful out here. 

Inside the lodge - not so much.

Inside there are wall-to-wall tables set up in the main room for nearly two dozen women who bend over sewing machines. Some of these women have quilted for decades, for half a century, maybe longer. Some, like me, have come to it more recently. Everyone knows everyone - whether from before the retreat or because of it. And everyone has a lot to say. Twenty-some women, all talking about sewing techniques, fabric, family, food and life in general - all at once. The retreat is an opportunity to gather to share knowledge, to complete projects and to be inspired to new creativity. For me, it's an internal battle between opportunities not usually available to people who live a solitary life - as I do - and the desire to run, screaming, from the clamor of so many minds and voices.

Magick, and creativity in general, benefit from solitude. In some cases, they require it. The solitude doesn't have to be physical, but being alone makes it easier to find the psychic and spiritual quietude from whence Magick and creativity arise. This is the inner silence that is the equivalent of a blank canvas or sheet of paper, the silence of a room before the first chord.

Creativity in art and Magick starts with the identification of the spark of a new thing that has not existed before in this world, a spark deep inside the self. Less than a spark, actually - creativity begins with the discovery of the idea of a new thing, an intangible potential so fragile and elusive that almost anything can become a distraction that leads to its destruction.

The psychic noise of everyday life, while providing comfort and stimulation for most purposes, can destroy all but the most demanding and insistent creative thought. The most delicate nuances may be stillborn, unable to compete with the loud and insistent noise of tribal interaction.

This is not to say that an artist or Mage must dwell in isolation, but only that he (or she, of course) needs to reserve an inner space for the Work, and to hold that space inviolate for the creative process. For some this can be achieved by withholding the inner self from the public eye while yet living in the spotlight. For others, it means hiding out far from the maddening crowd.

For me, it means I have to take frequent time-outs so that I my soul can uncurl itself and breathe freely.  The women here may sense I'm some kind of wild beastie compared to themselves, but if so, they're very understanding.

Mind Meld

“I gave everything I had. I wasn't holding back…”
~Jimmy Page

Mage Music 72

The best music isn't always the most beautiful or melodic.  It isn't always the catchiest tune or the most easily hummed or whistled while you work. Sometimes it's so unlike anything that’s come before it that it’s hard to grasp. 

Sometimes the best music is raw and ugly, jagged and hard to bear.  Sometimes it is sloppy. It can be sweaty and dirty and offensive. And sometimes it’s so starkly beautiful you have a hard time breathing because of it.

Sometimes, without you ever being able to figure out why, the best music is so good it hurts to hear it and it makes you cry.

The best music is the music that the musician falls into and pulls meaning from, and that the listener falls into and receives from the Universe through the music. It doesn't matter who the musician is - what matters is what he can do.

The best music is all the above and more, because the best music has Magick in it. The Magick grabs the soul and shoves the Universe right in. Mage music is life itself and we recognize it. That’s what makes it the best.

It’s dangerous. It’s risky. But you still have to let it in. You still have to open up. You have to still give it everything you have. That is the price of Magick.

[Opinion alert!  What follows is personal opinion of the author!*]

Blending, merging, becoming something new

Ironically, Jimmy Page’s full immersion in Led Zeppelin, with the extraordinary results that came from his doing so, has been a major obstacle to his continuing forward musically. Robert Plant has moved on by taking a different musical path. But Jimmy Page, who I believe has unfinished business with the path he started out on, is held back by the public’s refusal to let go of Led Zeppelin.

How can new music stand on its own merits if it is always faulted for not being something else? How can Jimmy Page’s musical vision be appreciated if instead of hearing the message of his guitar people are listening for a singer’s voice that isn't there?

But it works both ways. Listening well to Mage music can be an act of Magick just as a Mage’s making the music is. It takes desire and will on the listener's part: desire to fully hear, will to not allow outside influences to deter the listener from the path. The ritual: The music itself, the point where it all comes together.

Coverdale - Page

I highly recommend that you decide to listen well to Coverdale/Page. This means listening with the desire to fully hear what is there in that music, not what is missing from it.  There is power in this music, music that - like almost everything Jimmy Page has done post-Led Zeppelin - has never received as much acclaim as is deserved.  Here are two mature and accomplished musicians, each with their own power, who attempted a two-way musical mind meld in order to create something new, and yet so many people have missed what was going on entirely.    

Look at the album cover: a merge sign.  It's the first hint.

Look at the titles.  There is a story being told.  

Then open yourself to the bigger message. This music is dangerous. It is full of brutality and anguish, hope and forgiveness – and it is an invitation. If there is not so much light in it, the dark is so dark as to make the slightest gleam a blinding laser. Follow the light where it leads.

Can I say for sure that Jimmy Page meant what I believe is going on? Of course not. But what I can say is this: Jimmy Page is not known for creating music by accident. Pay attention.

*The usual caveat applies: My opinion does not have to become your opinion. I merely offer these ideas as food for thought.

What May Not Be Ever Again

“Everybody I know seems to know me well but they're never gonna know…”
~ What Is And What Should Never Be, Led Zeppelin II (1969)

Mage Music 71

The desire for another reunion of Led Zeppelin is a big topic of conversation for music lovers, and if it's not that, then the talk is about when Jimmy Page might come out with new music of his own. What follows is my personal opinion based on my own observations and conclusions and from the point of view of Magick. You may not agree, as is your right, and you are welcome to contribute your own opinions - but please keep them limited to the music and Magick aspects.  Also note that this is part one of a two-part post.  If you comment, I may steal your idea and use it to inspire thoughts for part two.  If I see farther it is by "standing on ye sholders of Giants"*.

The "just play with another band" theory

Jimmy Page has dropped in on many great bands over the past decades. He's worked with some pretty good musicians in his own groups, too, and people wonder why Mr. Page doesn't do an album with them. I say, how could he?

Sure, a musician of the caliber of Jimmy Page has got to have some highly talented people to work with. But as I see it, a major obstacle for Jimmy Page playing with other big-name musicians is that those guys are big-name musicians. They've got their own well established style, their own approach to music, their own feeling for what to say and how to say it musically. So does Jimmy Page.

So the real question would have to be who's going to yield the musical direction to the other?

Whose Magick is it anyway?

Jimmy Page basically started out his professional career as a session musician.  That means he was freelance, not with a regular band but hired to play individual studio recording sessions.  More importantly, this meant he had to match the needs of the music of the sessions and there was very little wiggle room to bring in his own musical vision.  Jimmy Page was very, very good at it, but playing other people's music wasn't where he wanted to do.  What he really wanted was to express what he had in him and that's why when the opportunity rose he set forth with that triumphant musical colossus, Led Zeppelin.

The beauty of Led Zeppelin was that Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham were basically at the same place at the same time in terms of music.  They were all very, very good - but the potential for greatness hadn't yet been expressed in any of them. Once they were together much of Led Zeppelin's music - not the lyrics, but the music - was driven by Jimmy Page, and the others in a sense yielded to Mr. Page's muse. Led Zeppelin wasn't all Jimmy Page, of course - the chemistry came from all of them, after all - but they were at the same place musically.  They created the Magick together, as indivisible components of one ritual.

Today that's not so.

Now things are very different. Robert Plant is following his own muse and has gone off to explore new musical territory for himself. I believe that for him to come back to a situation of being subsumed in a creative project over which he no longer had his own full musical expression, as he now does, would be very hard - and who could blame him?  This would be true for any other vocalists or guitarists who were of the equivalent level of experience and musical genius as Jimmy Page, and I think that this is a key point.

The best of the best musicians have all worked hard to get where they are, and why would they want their individuality, their unique musical vision and all they've achieved with it to be cast aside for something new, something in which they would not be the star?

And even if they would do it, could they do it?  Could they give up who they are to become something else?

Old dogs can learn new tricks

It is hard to do, but highly talented people can strike out in new directions. The problem with the music industry, though, is that audiences aren't always open to newness, and critics have not been bashful about expressing how they feel each time Jimmy Page has stepped off the beaten path.  From the very beginning with Led Zeppelin, to Lucifer Rising and carrying through to surprises such as Come With Me (with Puff Daddy), critics have been fast to complain although thank goodness, that hasn't stopped Mr. Page.

But finding musicians who could work with Jimmy Page to create new work today - that is a different story. This week's playlist was chosen partly because the title suited the subject here, but also because the versions provide examples of Jimmy Pages most exquisite techniques of fingering and timing. He squeezes some of the notes for so long that your heart wants to stop from the sweet torture of it.

This level of musicianship and creative artistry - this Magick that has been sustained for half a century - this is not something that anyone wants to see diluted by collaboration with lesser musicians, I think.  Only the best musicians.  But who are they that are that good yet willing to give themselves up for the Magick of the Master?

If there is to be any new music from Jimmy Page, I think he would have to find extraordinary new musicians who could joyfully bend to the Master's will while still being powerful in their own right. That's what Led Zeppelin was, after all. But is it even possible? We can dream, but I'm not holding my breath.


Thanks to Denise Smith for inspiring this post in one of her comments in a Jimmy Page group on Facebook.  This post has been part one of a two part thought, which I probably will continue next week.  

* Quote is attributed to Sir Isaac Newton but he wasn't the one who originated the thought.  He understood that he, too, "stood on ye sholders of Giants."

---

What Is And What Should Never Be  (♫ YouTube playlist ♫)

1969 (studio) Led Zeppelin BBC Sessions
1970 (live) Led Zeppelin
1994 (studio) Unledded
1998 (live) Page & Plant, Colorado
1999 (live) Live At The Greek