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David Bowie Ceremonial Magick?

To:  alt.magick
From: "Fr. A.o.C." 
Subject: Re: Name the Three for Fun Prizes! David Bowie?
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 19:01:22 GMT

Speaking of Bowie... ever catch all the references to Magick in much of
his 1970-80s material?

In "Quicksand", he sings:

   I'm closer to the Golden Dawn, 
   Immersed in Crowley's uniform 
   Of imagery.

Pretty damn obvious. Then follows:

   I'm living in a silent film, 
   Portraying Himmler's sacred realm 
   Of dream reality.

This is a reference to the Order of Vril and The Thule Society, though
many detractors took it as evidence that Bowie was a Nazi sympathizer.

Or how about the lyrics of his song "Station to Station"?

   Here are we, one magical moment, such is the stuff
   From where dreams are woven.
   Bending sound, dredging the ocean, lost in my circle.
   Here am I, flashing no colour.
   Tall in this room overlooking the ocean.
   Here are we, one magical movement from Kether and Malkuth,
   There are you, drive like a demon from station to station.

The whole album is one of Bowie's best, perhaps his finest 1970s work. I
wonder how many of his fans knew what the references to "flashing
colour", "in my circle" and "station to station" meant, even with the
obvious clue of naming two Sephiroth?

The whole album is full of Western Mystery allegories, including "Golden
Years" and "TVC5", but especially "Word on a Wing", which hints at
K&C of the HGA and astral scrying, among other things.

To drive the point home, the picture on the back of the Rykodisc CD
version of the Station To Station album shows Bowie drawing the Tree of
Life on the floor (the circles are the Sephiroth, with Malkuth at the
bottom by Bowie's right hip).

An acquaintance of mine once told me he worked in a bookstore near where
Bowie was staying in L.A. (where he was recording the album), and he
sold Bowie several books on Magick and the Qabalah, including some of
Crowley's works. 

Rumor has it that Bowie kept his hair and fingernail clippings in the 
fridge of Michael Lippman's home where he was living then, so they  
could not fall into the hands of those he thought wished to put spells  
on him. Bowie constructed an altar in the living room and he graced the 
walls with various Magick symbols which he hand painted. Candles burned
around the clock, he regularly performed banishing rituals, and he  
protected his friends by drawing sigils on their hands. (Well, David 
*was* doing a *lot* of cocaine in those days...)

Bowie admitted in an interview (in 1995) that in 1976:
 
   "My overriding interest was in cabbala and Crowleyism. 
   That whole dark and rather fearsome never-world of the 
   wrong side of the brain. ... More recently, I've been 
   interested in the Gnostics".

And in New Musical Express in 1997:

   Q: "So were you involved in actual devil worship?"
   A: "Not devil worship, no, it was pure straighforward, 
      old-fashioned magic."
   Q: "The Aleister Crowley variety?"
   A: "No, I always thought Crowley was a charlatan. But there 
      was a guy called [Arthur] Edward Waite who was terribly 
      important to me at the time. And another called Dion Fortune 
      who wrote a book called 'Psychic Self Defense'. You had to 
      run around the room getting bits of string and old crayons 
      and draw funny things on the wall, and I took it all most
      seriously, ha ha ha ! I drew gateways into different dimensions, 
      and I'm quite sure that, for myself, I really walked into 
      other worlds. I drew things on walls and just walked trough 
      them, and saw what was on the other side!"

And today, there's the track "Sunday" on  his latest album,
"Heathen":
     
     for in truth, it's the beginning of an end... 
     and nothing has changed, everything has changed".

- Fr. A.o.C.

"Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
because they were liars.  The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
couldn't compete successfully with poets." -- Kurt Vonnegut

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