by Rob Brezsny
When they’re done, I slip off my shoes, socks, and pants, gleeful at the casual unisex atmosphere backstage which makes it no big deal for the men to change clothes in front of women or vice versa. Then I pull on the furry greyish-brown leggings and slippers Marijka has fashioned for me out of real goatskins.
“How do I look?” I ask Marijka.
“I’m reminded of a passage from Plutarch,” she muses.
“You are?” I reply, surprised. “I had no idea you were a classical scholar.”
“Actually, this is the only passage from Plutarch I know. I heard it from my ex-boyfriend, the Christ-phobic professor of ancient religions. Plutarch tells a story about a sailor on a boat in the Aegean Sea. It’s during the time Tiberius is Roman emperor. The sailor hears a spooky disembodied voice say three times, ‘When you reach Palodes, proclaim that the Great God Pan is dead.’ It just so happens this is the precise moment Christianity is hatching in Judea.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here to offer a bozo-ish cure for that tragic schism in the spiritual yearning of humanity.”
“You’re halfway there, big guy. Ready to materialize the fullness of the archetype on stage?”
“Let me go have a conference with myself first.”
I lock myself in the bathroom. Closing the lid of the toilet, I sit down, bury my face in my hands, and begin my peptalk. Three years ago I would have been horrified to hear the blasphemous words I feel obligated to tell myself now. But after more than a year and a half of silly exile in the limbo of corporate hackdom, I have to ritually remind myself of what the hell I’m here for.
I AM NOT A ROCKSTAR. I HAVE NEVER BEEN A ROCKSTAR. I WILL NEVER BE A ROCKSTAR.
I affirm this aloud now in front of myself and the Goddess. I broadcast it from every synapse, driving it deep into my subconscious mind, as well as into the subconscious minds of any fans, music critics, record executives, radio programmers, or evil demons that might be working, advertently or inadvertently, to subvert my intention. I will never ever again place myself in danger of diverging from the One Righteous Path of My Destiny.
Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Am not a rockstar. Thus has it always been and thus shall it always be.
I’m not an inarticulate, barely educated elitist pretending to be a cultural hero disguised as a nihilistic outlaw.
I’m not a narcissistic vampire of mob energy who delights in staging onanistic, ear-numbing spectacles for eager-to-be-hypnotized voyeurs.
I’m not a smarmy opportunist sucking up to jaded cynics whose newspaper reviews might possibly pump up my stardom another octave.
I am not a sulking megalomaniacal celebrity squandering millions of dollars on high-tech hocus-pocus in order to record for posterity a handful of cliché-crammed four-minute songs that’ll earn me enough money to buy my own private jet.
I am not a sexist dickhead bent on exploiting and relishing the misogynist traditions of rock and roll.
I am not the patriarchy’s crowning achievement: the goddamn fucking hero; the all-conquering, greedy-for-glory, kill-everything-that-doesn’t-adore-me and fuck-everything-that-adores-me, eternally adolescent ego.
I am not a rockstar. I have never been a rockstar. I will never be a rockstar.
But I am a singer. I love to feel the sweet, fierce, loud, moist sounds coalescing in my body and then rushing out of my throat in a wild but disciplined stream of loving voodoo. I love to move people to intelligent tears and gritty ecstasy with the power of my melodic words.
I am a dancer. I love stumbling around the stage like a slinky fool, whipping up the exalted emotions of a writhing, intoxicated crowd.
I am a pagan priest. I love to throw wild parties that are also sacred rituals, spiritual orgies disguised as rock and roll shows.
I am a dionysian bard and shamanic clown and guerrilla therapist. I love to channel coyote angel jokes from some higher part of my brain that I don’t normally have access to—all in the sacred service of bringing the true goofy religion to my tribe.
I am a lover. I don’t live to be worshiped, but to worship.
I AM NOT A ROCKSTAR. I HAVE NEVER BEEN A ROCKSTAR. I WILL NEVER BE A ROCKSTAR.
Amen.
Which leads logically to the question: Then how the hell did I end up signing contracts with two huge corporations that rank among the world’s most ambitious perpetrators of the rockstar fantasy? Through what inconceivable sequence of events did I become a puppet for one of the most cartoony of all archetypes?
Yes, I owe myself an explanation. If I hate being a rockstar so frigging much, why did I marry my fortunes to: 1) the entertainment conglomerate CBS, and 2) WBM, the management company founded by rock demi-god Will Boehm? Am I a liar? A hypocrite? A self-deluded poseur?
You’re tuned to the Televisionary Oracle
a pseudonym for a multinational corporation
composed of psychics, psychologists, and private detectives
who know more about you than you know about yourself
FAKE OUT
You’re tuned to the Televisionary Oracle
a cover story for
time-travelers from the future
who are impersonating
the still small voice of your guardian angel
FAKE OUT
You’re tuned to the Televisionary Oracle
entirely a creation of your imagination
and a repository for all your projections
about the caretaker
you’ve always wanted
FAKE OUT
You’re tuned to the Televisionary Oracle
et cetera
For our first discussion on the history of spiritual pranks, beauty and truth fans, we turn to a performance by the renowned sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus.
First a little background on the man. Like Johannes Kepler, who was both astronomer and astrologer, Paracelsus was one of those rare scientists capable of living in the Drivetime. On the one hand he was a full-on, no-apologies alchemist who loved to commune with the spirits. On the other, he was an influential medical reformer who articulated a new model for disease. Previously it was thought to result from imbalances in the body’s humors. Paracelsus replaced it with the theory that external agents attacked the body and could be driven out with chemicals.
He was named to the chair of medicine at the University of Basel in 1524. Soon after, he made a most astounding promise. He said he had discovered the Elixir of Life, the true Philosopher’s Stone, and would reveal it to the students and faculty in a public demonstration.
On the appointed day, the hall of learning filled with curious but skeptical scholars. Before him on a table, Paracelsus set a large jar covered with black cloth. For three long hours he lectured on the First Matter, the raw material of the Elixir of Life. He quoted from Philalethes, who said that the First Matter is “a virgin who meets her wooers in foul garments.” The Qabalists, Paracelsus noted, advised the seeker after truth to find the First Matter in “the stone that the Builders rejected.” Even Pythagoras himself claimed the Philosopher’s Stone could be made from a substance that the rabble look upon as being the vilest thing on Earth.
As the learned men grew impatient, shifting restlessly in their seats, Paracelsus finally circled to his climax. “Discarded daily as worthless refuse,” he boomed, “eternally scorned and devalued, it is now ready, through my sponsorship, to receive its well-deserved due. In the bowels of the Earth have I found it. In the sewers and the gutters and the wasted places. And now, behold. The mystery is unveiled.” Whereupon Paracelsus lifted the black cloth with a flourish and revealed … a pile of shit.
Instantly there was a storm of howling and stamping. Outraged, his colleagues denounced him as a fraud and exhibitionist. “If you knew how misguided you are,” he shouted back, “you would make the sign of the cross on yourselves with a fox’s tail.”
Four centuries later, Carl Jung used dry, scholarly language to drive home the same point that an earli
er performance artist, Paracelsus, had so amusingly made in Basel. The process of individuation and the awakening of the Self, Jung said, must begin by addressing the shadow—the disowned and ugly aspects of the personality.
This sneak preview
of the music of the spheres
is brought to you by
VULTURE CULTURE,
the fan club
for those specialists
that eat the rot
and transform it into fuel.
Like the ancient Egyptians,
we regard vultures as compassionate purifiers
sacred to the Goddess
because they process the rotting flesh of the corpse,
thereby expediting the soul’s transition to heaven.
Define your problem crisply and bluntly, my mothers have always taught me. Meditate on the truth that the universe is a problem-solving machine, and that you always stir up hidden forces to work in your behalf when you provide the universe with a beautiful problem to solve. Then relax with perfect confidence and make yourself available for the solution to find you.
Using this artful technique, I tracked down the collector of antiquities within a week. First I composed a precise description of the person I wanted, the nature of our interaction, and the money that would come my way. Next I incubated a dream about how to bring this person into my life. In two of my dreams that night I was hanging out in a certain cafe in Santa Cruz, Caffé Pergolesi.
My third step was to go do in waking life what I had done in my dreams. Stealing all the time away from the Sanctuary I could, I parked myself at Pergolesi and waited. During my third watch I met a forty-year-old antiques dealer who became obsessed with my ability to tell her what she was thinking and to prognosticate her future. In return for me providing these unofficial services (which ultimately led to her making three lucrative finds she would never have stumbled across without me), she connected me with an associate from Carmel who was seriously interested in the artifact I had to sell.
It all happened so easily, I couldn’t help but interpret it as a sign to proceed with my plan. This helped quell the doubts that had begun to creep in about whether I was doing the right thing.
It wasn’t the annihilation of the splotch I felt queasy about. Not in the least. That was a righteous quest I regarded as my birthright. But I was having trouble rationalizing the theft and sale of the Grail. I knew that for my mothers, it was precious beyond imagining. They believed it possessed a magical mojo that could dramatically enhance the link between Goddess and anyone who touched it. And though I was bent on waging a secret holy war with them, I also loved them with all of my surgically repaired heart.
My forehead belonged to me, which gave me the inalienable right to do with it as I saw fit; the Grail did not.
Unless. Unless I really had been Mary Magdalen in a previous incarnation. In which case the cup of destiny was mine.
So was I or was I not Mary Magdalen? Was I or was I not the long-prophesied avatar of the Pomegranate Grail? As was true of every other aspect of my life, I had always been of two minds about those questions.
My mothers never expressed the slightest doubt that I was the Chosen One. I’d studied all the hoary texts, and indeed it seemed that my story fulfilled every detail of the ancient oracle. And through the years I had found myself, in countless dreams and meditative visions (more than a few in Melted Popsicle Land and the Televisionarium), vividly acting out scenes from the life of a girl and woman I thought of as Mary Magdalen. Some of these scenes, it’s true, I had read or heard about before my mystical extrapolation of them. But many others were unrecorded in the herstories of the Pomegranate Grail. No one, for example, could confirm or deny my assertion that I sometimes wore the foreskin of Jesus as a ring on the middle finger of my left hand.
On the other hand, my mothers had pounded home to me the dangers of hubris with the same relentlessness with which they’d programmed me to believe I was the exalted messenger of Persephone. My ministry would not thrive, they assured me, if I recapitulated the sins of the patriarchy—that is, if as a charismatic leader I felt I was better than everyone and thought I was immune to the laws of karma. They’d trained me, furthermore, to have a healthy (not knee-jerk) skepticism towards all claims of transcendent glory and authority. Mine was not a blind faith. While I loved sacred magic, I always made damn sure it was the real thing before I gave myself to it.
Under the guidance of my mothers—and maybe because that’s the way Goddess made me—I became and still am a raging contradiction: a logical mystic, a faithful doubter, a scientific pragmatist powered by myth and poetry.
Was I Mary Magdalen? Was I the female messiah? The answer was yes and no. Not yes when I was in an inflated, thaumaturgic mood and no when I was in a hard-ass, realistic frame. The answer was always yes and no, emphasis on and. In other words, both yes and no were true at the same time. Yes being true didn’t make no untrue, and vice versa.
Reincarnation was an objective fact; the exact same “spirit” that inhabited the form of Mary Magdalen was now animating my body; the Pomegranate Grail was an ancient mystery school that had secretly preserved the occult feminine mysteries during the dark ages of patriarchy; I was now preparing to finish the mission that was foiled two thousand years ago …
AND
Reincarnation was an unprovable theory; Mary Magdalen was a great teacher with whom I had tremendous resonance if not shared consciousness; the Pomegranate Grail was a source of healing inspiration even if it suffered from delusions of grandeur; and I was perhaps nothing more than a bright young girl being pumped full of projections by smart but frustrated idealists.
I had no choice but to apply this method to every self-inquiry. Was I a blessed exception with a special gift? Or just another narcissistic nobody in a world full of narcissistic nobodies? Was it my job to spread love and healing to everyone I encountered? Or else to ruthlessly destroy every illusion and prejudice? Should I strive to transcend or avoid every experience that brought me pain? Or should I embrace pain as my teacher and express gratitude for its power to motivate me? Yes and no.
As I contemplated the prospect of stealing and selling the Grail, I arrived at an exhilarating new edge. Though I had long felt a sneaky respect for my double-mindedness, this new application of the principle, in a situation that would have dramatic practical consequences, seemed to have ripened it into a new maturity. All these years I had borne the subliminal expectation that one day my contradictions would drop away and I would see with a unified eye and heart. Now I was finally ready to dispense with that infantile delusion.
I considered the probability that my double-mindedness was not a wounded state needing to be healed. It was a profoundly accurate reflection of the blessed nature of life on Earth.
Crucifixion. I understood that term in a fresh way. To be authentically and fully alive is to be symbolically crucified. No. More than that. To be fully and authentically alive is to be crucified without feeling tortured. Or else to be crucified and feel tortured, but exult that you have fully awakened to and accepted the heroic assignment of every single person who incarnates on this planet, which is to be eternally torn between heaven and earth, between spirit and body, between light and shadow.
Only the inbetween is real.
I saw that the doctrine of the crucifixion as transmogrified by the Christian church was half-baked. It lacked Magdalen’s—my?—contribution. As usual, the patriarchy crippled the feminine element of the archetype, then overliteralized what was left, leaving a garish cartoon. “Jesus died for our sins”—what tired old redundant bullshit! Sun gods had already been getting sacrificially slaughtered for eons by the time my consort and I showed up.
You’d never know it by asking Peter or Paul, but Jesus and I actually had the intention of unveiling a fresh, new show. “Get this, friends,” we intimated. “We’re here to abolish the one-dimensional myth of the solo hero and replace it with the template of the divine collaborators. T
wo crafty souls together, male and female as equals, aiding and abetting each other’s gutsy quest to live gracefully in heaven and earth at the same time.”
The further implication of this innovation was that if there was indeed more than one god-inflamed avatar, why couldn’t there be many more? We refuted the tradition of there being just one towering messiah who alone, among multitudes of plain old ordinary humans, possessed the key to the kingdom of heaven. Jesus and I were, in other words, the Great Examples, not the Great Exceptions. Anyone could master the art of being both god and human. Indeed, that was the divine plan.
I became drunk on this insight. It was by no means the first time I’d generated a unique philosophical eruption that fell outside the dogma of the Pomegranate Grail. But it felt bigger than any of my previous apostasies. It wasn’t the result, as had usually been the case, of my polemical intellect straining to sharpen its claws. It was a creative distillation and apotheosis of my visceral life experience.
What if? I began to ruminate. What if there’s more where this came from? What if there’s a flood of new wrinkles primed to pour out of me? And what if these novelties, rather than being sour and irrelevant departures from the Pomegranate Grail party line, hail the emergence of a new covenant that will reinvigorate our ancient order? Maybe it was my job not merely to disseminate the neglected teachings, but to shatter the mold: to mutate and expand them.
If that were the case, I could think of no better symbolic act than to lose the Grail. Maybe it really was infused with mojo that could literally charge up anyone who touched it. But might it not also have the dubious power to keep believers locked into outworn ways of linking up to the Goddess?
I headed straight into the ironic hypocrisy at the heart of the Pomegranate Grail. The form of Goddess that its members worshiped above all others was Persephone, She who demands ceaseless change as the price of eternal life. And yet they had clung to the old principles, the old texts, the old prophecies for millennia. It was understandable, utterly forgivable: to be conservative and preservative in the face of the repressive horrors of the patriarchy. The sacred secrets could not have survived any other way.