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To: alt.occult.methods,alt.magick From: glass@panix.com (Robert Scott Martin) Subject: Re: Music and the Occult Date: 25 Mar 2002 22:16:39 -0500 In article, Robert Scott Martin wrote: I've been told that the following post could benefit from a few footnotes. Part of the problem is that this field of occult history has barely been scratched by English-language scholars, and my eagerness to see something on the topic pushed me to new depths of gnomic inscrutability (and a few typographical errors). I apologize for my exuberance. ERIK SATIE >He's a funny character. It's relatively common knowledge [A] that he was in a blue-ribbon Rosicrucian lodge [B] in the 1890s that included such luminaries as Stanislas de Guita [C]; however, he left the group after a few years to become something of a freelancer -- as founder, leader and sole member of the Eglise Metropolitaine d'Art de Jesus Conducteur [D], he amused himself with absurdist games that the surrealists would later look back at and laugh [E]. [A] Capsule biographies of Satie usually mention the Rosicrucian connection largely as a curiosity, without elaboration. Likewise, he is often cited as a "famous Rosicrucian" in the marketing materials of groups like AMORC -- but again without much consideration for the details of his association with that sometimes nebulous movement. [B] The Catholic (and Aesthetic) Order of the Rose-Croix (CRC). Descendants of the group reportedly survive in various configurations. See http://www.levity.com/alchemy/rosi_grp.html [C] This is somewhat misleading, since evidence that Satie and de Guaita (note spelling) belonged to the same Rosicrucian order is lacking. In the absence of such evidence, it would be more accurate to call the two men fraternal "cousins" because the CRC was (and is) a splinter from the Cabalistic Order of the Rose Croix (OKRC), which de Guaita founded. Who is Stanislas de Guaita (1861-1897), you ask? A bona fide marquis from Lombardy, a poet and child prodigy of the esoteric who founded the OKRC before he was out of his 20s. See http://www.rosicrucian-order.com/artsani.htm [D] After quitting the CRC, Satie anticipated Monty Python by forming "the Metropolitan Aesthetic Church of Jesus the Maestro" as a one-man esoteric splinter group. In this group, he literally wore all the hats, filling a large number of lodge offices singlehandedly. Musicologists tend to consider this "organization" a joke, but was it a "serious joke?" Only the historians of the future can say. [E] Satie's influence on the early surrealist movement is well-discussed -- I seem to recall him being represented in a few of the surrealist "family portraits" by Max Ernst (one of the few composers so pictured, the surrealists weren't big music fans), and Andre Breton appears especially impressed. Nonetheless, Satie was really a man of an earlier generation, and reportedly had little time for his youthful admirers. >Unless musicology has pulled a fast one on me since I stopped running with the chordspotters (quite possible given my advanced age and the resourcefulness of youth), the literature fails to reconcile the split between the early "liturgical" phase of his career [F] and the dada [G] experimentation that followed [H]. Instead, the boilerplate bio tends to focus either on the "serious Rosicrucian" (making "Esot"erik [I] into something of a proto-Messiaen [J]) or the "original surrealist" who wore all those funny hats [K]. [F] http://www.novasociedade.com.br/cordelia/cding02.html [G] Many class the "naughty" Satie (see note H below) with the dadas, but this is more a convenience of lumping him in with other "unclassifiable" figures of the time than a sign of actual influence. The self-proclaimed dada figures do not appear to have run in the same crowd as Satie (understandable, since most had come from Germany or Switzerland, and only really made it to Paris after Satie's heyday), and reportedly does not appear often in their memoirs. [H] http://www.wfmu.org/~kennyg/popular/articles/satie.html [I] When in "Rosicrucian" mode, Satie would call himself "Esoterik Satie", an obvious pun on his name and occult interests. The fact that here he identifies himself with an esoteric persona -- but in a whimsical or even satiric fashion -- may be the key to bridging the gap between the "sacred" and the "profane" sides of Satie. [J] Those concentrating on the "liturgical" works tend to remind me of Messiaen scholars. I haven't yet put my finger on why exactly. [K] We joked around as boys that Satie's private cult must have involved a stack of hats that, as part of his lodge regalia, he would put on or take off according to which role in lodge proceedings he was playing at the time. Sadly, this may be a fantasy of slightly demented schoolboys with too much time on their hands. He was quite a dapper gent, however, given to wearing grey velvet suits. >One white magician, one Rabelaisian joker. One comes to heal, the >other to tear down. And the man himself slips back into the shadows... [This paragraph is entirely rhetorical with the exception of the "rabelaisian" comment -- see below under "pantagruelian".] >It's a shame, because there's a very interesting synthesis lurking in that seemingly unbridgeable life. He was an associate of Debussy [L], for example, and hung around at the notorious Black Cat Club [M] in Montmartre of which Fulcanelli speaks so fondly [N] as a hub of "occult" bohemia. He was active in the earliest phases of the French film industry [O], and so likely knew Irene Hillel-Erlanger [P]and her alchemicodada associates. [L] Claude Debussy needs no introduction. The two men were longtime friends, cohorts in the CRC, and habitues of the Black Cat Club [see below]. Debussy is also notorious in contemporary occult circles as a potential "grand master of the priory" [see below under "Saint Sulpice"]. [M] http://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/article7.html is the best overview of this wrinkle in Satie's life (and the occult history of Paris) I have found so far. [N] Fulcanelli is of course the infamous "master alchemist" who wrote a couple of books and, they say, lives forever. He is also the subject of at least one Frank Zappa solo, but is unrelated to the spicy sauce of the same name. A full citation of Fulcanelli's discussion of the Black Cat Club or Le Chat Noir is forthcoming. [O] Satie composed music for Rene Clair's early fusion of cinema with ballet, "Entr'acte" (1924) [http://us.imdb.com/Title?0014872], a truly unique production in which Francis Picabia and Pablo Picasso were also involved. [P] Irene Hillel-Erlanger: one of the first female screenwriters (usually in collaboration with equally pioneering Germaine Dulac, see http://www.women.it/info/circola/Gdulac.htm) and something of an alchemical devotee. She is traditionally considered to be the patron of the strange little book "Voyages en Kaleidoscope" (now back in print -- check amazon.fr for details) and is nowadays credited as the author of that text. Very little is known about her, apparently even in French. I'll transcribe the editorial material in my copy of "Kaleidoscope" if there is interest. She ran with the dadas, reported. Fulcanelli was also a fan. >Through Debussy and Cocteau [Q], he may have been acquainted with those sinister Saint Sulpice people [R], which would go with his later burlesque ("pantagruelian" [S]) tone. [Q] Cocteau was the literary saint of the Black Cat crowd and Satie set at least one Cocteau text to music. In this context, it is relevant to note that both Debussy and Cocteau are often cited as grand masters of the Priory of Sion [see next note] by contemporary conspiracists. [R] This is a somewhat flippant reference to that strange Abbe Sauniere and his cul-de-sac of French occult history. If one is not familiar with "the grail bloodline," "the Priory of Sion", "Rennes le Chateau" and so forth, http://www.rennes-le-chateau.com/ should contain more than enough information. Whether we buy into the Rennes le Chateau mythology or not, it is definitely one of the most robust currents to emerge out of the esoteric underground at the end of the last century, and should be monitored phenomenologically, if not for its own value and/or import. [S] This is actually a reference to Alfred Jarry's UBU ROI, for which I have a vague boyhood recollection of reading that Satie did the music. While documentation is pending, Jarry and Satie definitely knew one another's work and shared a common interest in Rabelaisian heroes -- big talking dicks and other lunatic marionettes. >And that's just the biographical side of things -- who knows what an >illuminated researcher could turn up in his work. [Again, this paragraph is largely rhetorical] And then there's Scriabin.
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