A magickal influence can be seen more and more in the world of pop culture and media and art. Mad Men shows us how poetry (the magick of Thoth) can influence people to spend money (time) for things they don't need. We are inundated with Television shows and Films about the fauna of the territory of magick; vampires, shape-shifters, demons, angels, gods, aliens, zombies, maybe even ourselves from the future. It's been going on in the world of rock for a while too. When you call an album Angels of Darkness/Demons of Light and title it's first track Sigil of Brass (a sigil is a stylized symbol used to contact a spirit) you're definitely speaking the language of magick. The aforementioned album is by a band called EARTH, helmed by guitar virtuoso Dylan Carlson, known in some circles to have been a close friend of Kurt Cobain, some say actually present when Kurt purchased his last shotgun...
EARTH is heavy rock. Literally heavy. Ponderous, and I mean that in the best way. As if the band is PONDERING every note. Planets grinding through space, hum and hiss, slow cello moans, even slower slow motion drum limbs bringing down mallets like Thor's hammer. Deep tube overdrive so those heavy liquid notes hang around like ghosts. Thoughts start to slow, feel the blood flow heavy. Let each note shine as itself, let each sound be the most itself it can be. Don't make a sound until you have to. Impel it, bring it into being, brought forth from within. "In all thy operations let the work be guided by nature according to the slow progression of metals in the EARTH." (as the hermetic fathers say) EARTH is the right music for a sunset or a sunrise. The morning light illuminating each leaf, bud, branch, blade of grass and blossom as you stand new and sticky in the morning's webs caught in the benediction of the sun. Caught up in your own unique ray. Like Phillip K. Dick says "For every person there is a different universe which is the result of a mutual participation between him and the macrocosm, a field that is a syzygy (fusion) between them." Phillip K. Dick also helped me to diagnosis a strange malady I suffered from as a child; Micropsia. "Feeling like a small pinpoint of consciousness lost inside your own vast body." The album Earth 2 by EARTH gives me this same feeling, lost inside vast sound, audio micropsia. He who has ears let him hear!
That sensation of being lost inside vastness bring us to the reason for the subtitle of this post; Cosmic Fear. A lot of these new Heavy Stoner Rock/ Doom style bands really fit in with ol' H.P. Lovecraft's Cosmic Fear. This is the horror that the vastnesses (space) and fastnesses (motion) of the universe impose on fragile eggshell minds. Let go and let the vastness of the universe flow through you and you have Cosmic Love. The Cosmos swamps the tiny ego as the sun's light absorbs a candle's flame. Absorbs, not snuffs! We will explore the idea of Cosmic Love later on in Part Two where we look at the origins of Occult Rock in the Post Rock movements of the 70's where you had bands like Can using Voudon rythms in their drum beats and Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and Eno pushing the limits of analog technology in a Cosmic Way. In the next installment on the New Occult Rock we will visit with the Black Mass Witchcult Drugula Zombies themselves:
Electric Wizard. Saturnine indeed!
Electric Wizard. Saturnine indeed!
P.S. I am not going to post any links to any clips on here, y'all need to experience these bands the right way, a three minute clip on You Tube can't do this kind of thing justice. I like to play it loud with incense and candles while doing yoga, I call it Shadow Yoga.
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