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.â€
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.â€
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.
III
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.â€
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.â€
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.
For occultists through the ages, Judaism represented the authoritative ancient tradition with enough of its own mystical and legendary
magical practice that it offered the perfect complement to an already complex configuration of ideas and practices.
Madonna likely saw her very public interest in an esoteric philosophy as also having artistic potential. The halftime show presents her as a priestess, imbued with divine wisdom, ready and willing to initiate anyone who wishes to enter into her mysteries. Conspiracy theorists had a field day with it. The very next day, the website The Vigilant Citizen offered a breakdown of Madonna’s show, a paranoid exegesis making note of every element of the performance: Madonna’s costume resembles Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess of love, war, and sex; Madonna’s throne flanked by sphinxes is a perfect rendition of the chariot in the tarot deck; the first song, “Vogue,†ends with a winged sun disc illuminating the stage, a symbol one blogger claims is used by all the major secret societies. Most damning of all, however, is at the end of the show when Madonna disappears in a flash of smoke and the words “World Peace†light the stage, “a PR-friendly slogan used by those pushing for a New World Order lead [sic] by a one world government,†concluded one blogger.
Given the occult imagination’s influence on popular music (and on Madonna herself), it’s not a stretch to suggest that Madonna consciously drew from mythology, occultism, and even the symbols of secret societies for her show. On the face of it, it was pure pop spectacle, full of color and drama, signifying Madonna’s ego and little more.
This spectacle, whatever its meaning, was only possible because of what came before it. The theater of rock began long ago: in the smoky UFO Club when Arthur Brown wore his flaming helmet, when Hawkwind hypnotized their fans with lights, when Bowie came onstage not as himself but as a crash-landed Ziggy. Madonna’s show is simply a later encounter with rock’s Dionysian roots, ones that can’t be severed. Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right. We are being mesmerized by popular music, and it’s an inside job. There is no all-seeing eye in a pyramid scheming with the music industry. It’s just who we have always been, a civilization that demands that music shake our spirits.
IV
The first decade of the new millennium proved to be a tumultuous time. The 9/11 attacks, two major wars, economic instability, and an unpredictable future have people scrambling for meaning and stability. What had once been a line in the sand has become a deep gorge between atheists and believers. But many were looking to strike a balance between literalism and symbolism, and art has always provided a perfect vehicle for this kind of exploration.
On July 11, 2012, at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, England, the pop opera Dr Dee opened to critical praise. The opera tells the story of the sixteenth-century astrologer, mathematician, and occultist John Dee, a polymath whom Queen Elizabeth I consulted and who created the Enochian alphabet, the supposed grammar of the angels that is still used by occultists today. Dee was the gentleman magician, a lover of wisdom who believed that science and magic were part of the same rational process. But Dee was also a tragic figure. Dee had spent long hours—without much success—staring into his “shew stone,†a piece of crystal he believed would reveal to him the secrets of angels and the true nature of the universe. In 1582, Dee was introduced to a man named Edward Kelley, who convinced Dee he was the key that would unlock the puzzle that had consumed the counselor to Elizabeth. Kelley would appear to go into trances and prolifically dictated the words of the angels. How much Kelley himself believed or if he was merely using Dee is unclear. At one point he was able to convince the prudish Dee that God wanted them to share their wives. Eventually Dee’s interest in the supernatural made enemies in the religious hierarchy and support for him and his work began to dry up. Dee died in poverty.
The creation of Dr Dee was the result of a collaboration between the British theater director Rufus Norris and Damon Albarn, known for his two influential bands, Blur and Gorillaz. Albarn had become friendly with the comic book writer Alan Moore, a self-proclaimed magician who says he worships—in somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion—a Roman snake god. But what Moore is very serious about is his belief that magic and the creative act are inseparable and that each is a way of conjuring fictions and making them very real. Moore and Albarn wanted to work together, and Moore suggested the magical life of Dee. The two agreed to cowrite the opera, but the huge personalities of both Albarn and Moore came to blows when Moore suddenly dropped out of the project, blaming Albarn for not fulfilling a promise to write for Moore’s literary magazine, Dodgem Logic. Albarn went ahead alone with the writing.
Albarn believed the opera was an opportunity to bring his occult interests out of the closet. He told the Telegraph in 2011, “Doing the research has been the most amazing experience. Everything I’ve read has led to something else—Christianity to Judaism, Paganism to Nordic mythology, astronomy to Hermetic philosophy—and it just seems to go on and on without end.†The opera is an evocative and melancholy narrative of Dr. Dee, with Albarn’s vocals skating across music that is part European music, part pop. Other vocalists lend a more classically operatic feel, but the opera is still a rock and roll moment. Dr Dee is not rock opera, per se, but it certainly gives a nod to how rock can be used as an operatic form. Albarn’s interest in the life of Dr. Dee came at a time when there was what could be called an Occult Revival in rock music and the popular culture. Like the revival of the nineteenth century, this movement is also dominated by musicians and artists who see the occult as full of phenomena ripe for creative speculation and output.
Within the underground music scene there is a permeable sense of pagan ritual, of a serious intent to make magic out of art. The revival of this commingling of hermetic secrets with art led to the formation of two music events in 2009, the Equinox Festival in England and the Musicka Mystica Maxima Festival in New York City, curated by the Ordo Templi Orientis. Both were gatherings of artists and musicians, many of whom also consider themselves occult practitioners.
For the Equinox Festival, the video and graffiti artist Raymond Salvatore Harmon wanted to see if it was possible to construct a literal conference of artists, authors, and esoteric practitioners and to create a platform for people to come together. “It would also be a starting point for future collaborations and projects,†Harmon says. “It was an attempt to break down the barriers between different esoteric and creative practices and give them a common ground with which they could push into new territories together.†The result was the Equinox Festival, “three days of illumination,†that took place in June of 2009. Harmon curated the event—a series of lectures, ritual performances, films, and live music—with a magical intention in an effort to, as he says, “invoke a particular energy.†The musical lineup was a who’s who of experimental artists, including the saxophonist and avant-garde composer John Zorn; the ambient/drone metal band Aethenor; the industrial electronic outfit Burial Hex; the 1970s progressive folk band Comus; and Peter Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle and Coil, performing one of his last shows before his untimely death in 2010. Gareth Branwyn, writing for the webzine Boing Boing, called the event a mixed success, noting that the highlight was the band Comus, who were able to capture the delightful moment in the 1970s when progressive rock and mysticism came together in an alchemical bath to produce a musical approximation of the philosopher’s stone, the key to immortality for rock and roll.
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They had the coffin made to fit Scott Conner’s size. In his own work as black-metal musician Malefic, Conner would appear to worship darkness, so being nailed into a coffin shouldn’t be much of a problem. Stephen O’Malley was putting together Black One, the 2005 album for his duo with Greg Anderson that goes by the name Sunn, rendered always as “Sunn O))).†Sunn O))) became infamous as the slowest and loudest of the doom/drone metal subgenre. Their live shows consist of O’Malley and And
erson dressed in black hooded robes, playing sustained chest-vibrating chords at full volume. They offer nothing specific when asked in interviews about their own beliefs except to say they believe music has the power to be transcendent and induce actual physical and mental changes in the audience.
Their presentation, both in the titles of their mostly instrumental songs—such as “A Shaving of the Horn That Speared You†and “Candlewolf of the Golden Chaliceâ€â€”and their mysterious stage shows, has invited speculation of all sorts regarding their supposed occult proclivities, and they have even been accused of staging a Black Mass on orders from the Church of Satan. O’Malley admits he both loves and hates this kind of publicity, but there is a truth to his interest in esoteric lore and legend. So when his friend Scott Conner asked to sing on their record Black One, O’Malley thought, “Let’s put him to the test.†If in his persona as Malefic he embraces death and isolation, how would he do actually having to sing inside a coffin? The results were better than O’Malley and Anderson could have hoped. Inside the casket Conner felt claustrophobic and anxious, and this came through in the haunted, tortured vocals that the liner notes of the album list as “calls from beyond the grave.â€
In the 1990s and early 2000s, down-tuned guitars and Cookie Monster vocals would herald in a new heavy metal culture. Doom and death metal, as they are now known, turned up the volume once again on the satanic imagery. A new generation of fans would hear and embrace the siren call of this sinister metal, one embracing decay and darkness as an essential part of the human condition. Sometimes it all went too far. In Sweden during the mid-1990s death metal fans torched churches. Some musicians were quick to distance themselves, but others would embrace the arsons while they touted their own brand of Satanism calling for violence. By the end of the 1990s, heavy metal, in all its permutations—death, dark, doom, to name a few—had dug a direct route to the underworld. It became the soundtrack to our deepest fears, a symphony of horrors for musicians to explore and cultivate.
Season of the Witch : How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll (9780698143722) Page 22