Season of the Witch : How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll (9780698143722) (25 page)

While Fripp was taking his leave of absence from rock, punk
was setting depth charges under progressive rock's massive arena-motivated music. Not quite a return to the blues, punk wanted to strip rock of all its pretensions and return to the force of the three-chord-driven, three-minute (or less) song, powered by guitar and not by synthesizers. Whereas progressive rock gazed in awe at Europe's classical, and sometimes religious, musical heritage, punk had more in common with the Pentecostal Church's immediacy. Punk was the energy of the shout and gospel. Punk's more studious younger sibling, new wave, embraced punk's aesthetic as well as the synthesizer, but replaced safety pins with skinny ties. But neither punk nor new wave could level progressive rock completely. The synth-driven explorations of cosmic and supernal realms would flower in New Age music.

Along with elements of folk, jazz, classical, and Brian Eno's ambient albums, New Age music would become a huge industry led by the Windham Hill and Narada labels. Progressive rock (along with krautrock) is still accused as the primary culprits behind New Age's sterilized sound. Some of those albums that are the crossover moments, however, still merit consideration. Multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield's 1973 album,
Tubular Bells
, with its Dalí-like cover of a twisted metal bell, is often considered one of the first true New Age works. It's not nearly as sugary as New Age would become, and there's an argument to be made that what New Age borrowed from it is no fault of Oldfield's. In fact, the sinister flashes of the album inspired the director William Friedkin to use four minutes of
Tubular Bells
for the soundtrack to
The Exorcist
, still considered one of the most frightening movies of all time, and certainly not a film
one would associate with New Age philosophy. In a 1975 unpublished
Rolling Stone
interview, Oldfield explained that he wasn't aware that a piece had been turned into a single for the film and, despite how successful it made him, he felt
Tubular Bells
is meant to be heard in its entirety.

Eventually the undemanding sounds of synthesizers, acoustic guitars, and flutes captured an entire spiritual movement that would come to characterize American alternative religion. In the 1980s, except for in the underground, the occult imagination's hold on mainstream rock was becoming neutered, just like the occult itself.

The music writer Paul Stump is even less kind: “New Age is pop music that a superior intelligence from another planet might make, musically adept . . . but utterly missing the point,” which is to say that New Age music, like the New Age movement, is filled with potential, but continually softens the impact. Occultism and mysticism were no longer the means of spiritual rebellion; they were simply another choice on the vast menu of available religious symbols and practices.

But their job was already complete. In almost every aspect of rock and popular music, the occult's influence could be felt. Even as more Top 40 acts turned to electronics and the digital studio, the underlying agitation was the same as it had been when young people first tossed a guitar strap over their shoulders. If you make enough noise, no matter your instrument, you can keep the old gods alive
forever.

At a small independent bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Damien Echols gave a reading from his 2012 memoir,
Life After Death
, in which he recounts his torturous eighteen years being on death row for murders he didn't commit, and then constructing a new life for himself when he was released in 2011. It was a brutal and unthinkable crime. In 1993, three eight-year-old boys were killed and mutilated, their bodies found near a muddy drainage ditch. West Memphis, Arkansas—the city where the boys lived and died—is a small metropolis of over twenty-five thousand residents: a town compared with other American urban centers.

The three suspects were easy to come by. They were teenage outsiders, arrested for vandalism and other petty crimes, two of them high school dropouts, and were already pegged as troublemakers. But this was not what damned the suspects to a
controversial arrest, trial, and a death sentence for one of them. Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr., and Jason Baldwin (now known as the West Memphis Three) were called Satanists, and their love of heavy metal music had been said to have soured their minds and corrupted their souls. The district attorney believed the murders were committed as part of a ritual sacrifice to the devil. An article in the
Commercial Appeal
,
a daily newspaper of Memphis, Tennessee, reported on a possible explanation for the crime and included this from child psychologist Paul King, who was interviewed for the piece: “Heavy-metal music may sound like irritating noise, but its lyrics ‘glorify the power of evil' and the child who sits in his room brooding over the lyrics may display an unhealthy preoccupation.”

Much of the prosecution's case pointed to the fact that Echols listened to the band Metallica and copied lyrics from their songs into his journal. The hysteria surrounding the trial of the teenagers in West Memphis, Arkansas, was not merely a local phenomenon, not simply a case of kids who dressed in black and listened to heavy metal stereotyped as delinquents. Their prosecution was only the most dramatic of what had been this ongoing fear of the supposed satanic power of rock and roll.

Echols was thought to be the demonic ringleader of the West Memphis Three, convicted in 1994 for the murder of the three young boys. His interest in pagan religion and heavy metal was what led police to peg him as a suspect. Echols's book admits to an interest in Eastern religion and magic, claiming these ideas helped him get through the dehumanization of prison life and supported him during his subsequent recovery from the trauma of his incarceration.

Henry Rollins—onetime singer of the hardcore punk band Black Flag and counterculture icon—remarked, “I'd find myself up at 3:30 a.m. thinking about Damien. He could have been me. I had those records. I was sullen as a teenager.” Alas, the point at which the artist and the surrounding culture meet is often fraught. The necessary ingredients—mysterious and/or theatrical allusions to historically alternative spiritual paths, youth's drive to find its own way, and a good beat—lead to the development and continued growth of rock and roll along the spectrum of sound, signal, and meaning. Even pop music, rock's stepchild, carries the legacy, and continues to inspire exaggerated responses to its associations, intentional or not, to occultism.

The video for Jay Z's 2009 single “On to the Next One” is a masterpiece of symbolism. Jay Z stands in the center of the frame, haloed by a circle of dim lights behind him. Throughout the video, frame after frame of flashing images, is a well-dressed man in skull-like makeup reminiscent of the Joker; a white-gowned ninja battling the air with batons; a jewel-studded skull; smoke swirling into Rorschach test patterns; a crucifix; thick red lips dripping blood; and goat skulls with massive horns. Jay Z's raps are fairly standard as far as hip hop goes. It's a self-referential narrative of success, of moving forward, not looking back, embracing his riches, and a warning that his fame and creative output are only going to get greater.

But pay closer attention, as certain fans indicate in the YouTube community, and you might see that some of these
gestures and images that make up his persona point to the hidden secret of Jay Z's success. It can't be talent alone—no black man in America could make it as big as Jay Z without help from “the inside.” Underlying the truth is that Jay Z sold his soul to the devil—seen clearly in those horns that flash during the video. But this is not any devil. This is Baphomet, believed by some to be the hidden god of the Freemasons revealed during the 33rd degree ritual, who paves the way for the initiate to become part of an even greater fraternity known as the Illuminati. Jay Z raps that he is in control of his own destiny but, studied from another angle, he might be merely a pawn in a sinister game of control.

If you want to find common ground between the extreme far left and the extreme far right, conspiracy theories about the Illuminati will bring even the most hated enemies together. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as it were. While there may be disagreements over who controls what—and to what degree Jews are involved—there is a basic outline that is generally accepted. But first we have to highlight what conspiracy theorists might see as pesky facts.

A quick look back: In 1776, a Bavarian law professor by the name of Adam Weishaupt gathered together like-minded men to form a society that would attempt to liberalize the spirit of society. Weishaupt had been educated by Jesuits but grew distrustful of a church that constantly seemed to abandon reason for superstition. He called his group the Order of the Illuminati to highlight that they believed in enlightenment—albeit through reason—for humanity. Weishaupt's attack on religion was sure to run afoul of the royalty whose ties to the Catholic
Church were stronger than the abstract ideas of humanism and freedom. Weishaupt made matters worse for himself when he joined the Freemasons and tried to align his idea with theirs. Freemasonry was too heavily invested in its own spiritual symbolism and Rosicrucian-influenced rituals for Weishaupt to make much of an impact, though. His political views were seen as anarchic by the authorities, and he was ordered to disband his order or face the death penalty.

Weishaupt complied, the society dissolved in 1787, and the once-enlightened freethinker died in 1830 a devout Catholic. Weishaupt's criticism of the Church, coupled with his group's relationship to Freemasonry, led Freemasons' critics to contend that the fraternity was in league with the devil. They would declare that Freemasonry purports to believe in God, whom Freemasons call the Great Architect, but this was just for appearance's sake.

Over time, the Illuminati movement has become a blank slate, capable of representing whatever imagined nefarious, occult, or anti-Christian intrigue that needed a label to give it substance. More often, the Illuminati are believed to be the group that controls everything, using smaller organizations like the Freemasons, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Catholic Church, Scientology, and the entertainment industry—especially music—as tentacles of control, touching on every aspect of society.

In 2013, the rapper Professor Griff (best known for his stint with the group Public Enemy, whose 1989 single, “Fight the Power,” became the anthem that closed out the 1980s) was interviewed by
Coast to Coast AM
, a syndicated radio show known for its emphasis on topics relating to the paranormal,
pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories. Professor Griff (born Richard Griffin) explained how Jay Z, wittingly or unwittingly, is helping the Illuminati use hip hop as a way to infiltrate the black community. Hip hop's original intention, Griff said, was to raise up the dispossessed, but Jay Z and other entertainers are subverting its purpose by using it as a weapon of control. Moreover, the record industry is complicit, allowing the Illuminati to stage rituals as the music is being produced, instilling it with demonic energy.

In interviews, Jay Z is coy, unwilling to admit he is intentionally provocative by his use of symbols in his videos. He front-loads the associations with occultism and secret societies heavily, however. In one video, he wears a sweatshirt emblazoned with Crowley's missive “Do what thou wilt,” and at one time his clothing line offered a number of shirts with unambiguous Freemasonry symbols. He does admit, however, that his music is meant to be “provocative.” In a 2010 interview with the New York City hip-hop radio station WQHT (Hot 97), Jay Z consciously samples certain images in the same way he might sample a drumbeat: “Great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don't necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it. Instead it plants dissonance in your head.”

Jay Z's use of occult symbols and the public response to that use perfectly encapsulates the locus of the occult in popular culture. For Jay Z, the images work to ignite the imagination, as well as to create rumor and speculation, which can only help to sell albums and increase Internet-video page views. As author Mitch Horowitz explains, Jay Z is a sharp businessman and an
even craftier artist: “I think he's a keen observer of everything going on around him. He's a master at using subversive imagery.”

At the other end of the spectrum, and whose gaze meets Jay Z in the middle, are the conspiracy theorists for whom music is a potentially dangerous weapon in the arsenal used to control the minds of youth and adults alike. For those who are Christian, the architect behind the hip-hop Illuminati is Satan, who has been using pop music to subliminally convert the masses since Elvis first shimmied his hips. On Judgment Day, people will wake up and see that they have been duped. But it will be too late. They had unwittingly sold their souls during the 666th time they listened to one of Jay Z's songs. This was the kind of thinking that led to the building of a case against the West Memphis Three. The occult imagination had come too far, though. It was too much a part of rock and roll's essence to ever be quieted by fear and delusion. And if a musician is still accused of being in league with some secret occult cabal, all the better. The tools of the magician to mystify are the most powerful of all. If your musical spell has convinced your audience that you are more than you appear to be, you are simply continuing rock's legacy of glamour, of weaving an enchantment that rattles the habitual souls of the masses.

The 2012 Super Bowl was one of the most watched television events in U.S. history, with an estimated viewership of 111.3 million people. Three million more watched the halftime show.
Madonna, the headliner for the show, crafted a thirteen-minute-long medley of her songs, a lavish production costing millions. The result was a spectacularly staged performance. The show opens on a stage decorated with Egyptian motifs and similarly costumed dancers as Madonna enters, dressed as the hierophant of an ancient mystery cult, seated in a throne on a chariot being pulled by dozens of “slaves.”

The original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn would likely have been envious of the attention to detail. Other dancers dressed as armored angels and strange deities spin around Madonna as she sings “Vogue.” Tall banners are decorated with a symbol, an
M
cutting into a circle, the two sides of the letter forming what look like massive horns. Madonna's costume is simple, a Roman centurion's skirt, her head adorned by a winged helmet with two pointed appendages rising from the middle.

Madonna's interest in esoteric matters goes way back. Beginning with an awkward conversation with Kurt Loder of MTV in 1997, Madonna tried to explain finding her way to the Kabbalah Centre, where she was taught that, “If you want to have goodness in your life, you have to give it.” She also explained that the soul becomes firmly attached to the body at age thirteen (the age of a Bar Mitzvah). In a later 2005 interview with the
Guardian
, having become increasingly devoted to the Kabbalah Centre, Madonna again tries to explain what the teachings mean to her, and defending the controversial center from what the interviewer, Dina Rabinovitch, calls “charlatanism.”

The Kabbalah Centre was started in 1969 by the retired rabbi Philip Berg. Berg wanted to divorce the mystical teaching of the Kabbalah from its Jewish context, believing it to have
universal spiritual power. While the center uses the Bible and the Jewish Kabbalistic text called the
Zohar
in its teachings, the main thrust of the approach is in the practical application of what the center calls “the world's oldest body of spiritual wisdom.” The center contends that Judaism kept the five-thousand-year-old teachings secret until Berg believed that all people should have access. In Judaism, the
Zohar
is considered the primary source of Kabbalistic wisdom. The
Zohar
was written in Aramaic sometime in the thirteenth century, likely drawing from a variety of sources, some old and some contemporary to its own time, and serves as a mystical interpretation of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The center claims that the power of the
Zohar
is not in what it says, but what it is—an artifact of great power that can alter one's destiny:

To merely pick up the Zohar, to scan its Aramaic letters and allow in the energy that infuses them, is to experience what kabbalists have experienced for thousands of years: a powerful energy-giving instrument, a life-saving tool imbued with the ability to bring peace, protection, healing and fulfillment to those who possess it.

This occult approach to the Kabbalah has been part of the tradition for centuries, but Berg was the first to give it such wide appeal. He was not the first, however, to extract the occult nuggets.

Renaissance magicians had looked to Jewish Kabbalistic texts as sources of wisdom that could easily conform to their own mystical interpretations of Christianity. Later, occultists
followed their lead and found in the Kabbalah a rich mineral vein of esoteric wisdom they could apply to their own systems. For example, in the Golden Dawn, important tools of the student, such as astrology and tarot, had their corresponding Kabbalistic identifier, in particular the
sefirot
, the Kabbalistic tree of life, which became central to Western occultism. Simply put, the
sefirot
refers to the ten aspects of the divine that spring forth from the unknowable Godhead, or
ein sof
. The
sefirot
can be laid out like the geography of the universe. The
sefirot
are a beautifully realized, and in some sense, materialistic view of the universe. Each aspect of creation is delineated by a temperament (judgment, compassion, masculine, feminine), and not only is it easy to show how each individual
sefirah
has a corresponding numerological and astrological meaning, images of the
sefirotic
tree hearken back to the Renaissance alchemical emblems.