Never before put in ‘audiobook’ format, this release of Liber 418 from Seven Ravens comes on the 110th anniversary of the first Algerian skrying. Aleister Crowley’s The Vision & The Voice continues the Seven Ravens project of bringing the ‘Class A’ works of Crowley to a wider public. The text of all 30 aethyrs is set to an original synthesizer backing track, encompassing over 6 hours of words and music.
Sympathy for the Beast, the new album by Twink and the Technicolour Dream, is based on the wonderfully imaginative poetical works of Aleister Crowley, whose natural and intrinsic musical quality Twink and the Technicolour Dream have tried to intensify with their psychedelic musical drive, using sections of the original poems as lyrics for their songs or narrations for their musical backgrounds.
On November 29th, Jaz Coleman, founding member with the legendary Killing Joke, releases ‘Magna Invocatio – A Gnostic Mass For Choir And Orchestra Inspired By The Sublime Music Of Killing Joke’ through Spinefarm Records, the first release of the MASTERSCORE Series. As an artist of fierce intellect and purpose, Jaz Coleman – now celebrating 40 years as Killing Joke’s iconic front-man – has been driven by twin musical loves: experimental rock and classical music.
Under a dim, haunting red light, Tibet’s blocky black-and-white African fetishes look as if they’ve been doused in crimson, their faces remade by the artist into smiles and lop-sided triangle eyes. Another red-light section is dedicated to a woman in silhouette and haphazardly drawn barns with red roofs, both images inspired by an unsolved killing from the 1940s and a notorious murder and execution in 1827 England…
In 1981, P-Orridge reversed course in the gently trippy Psychic TV, whose danceable songs echoed the occult writings of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, and included a tribute to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones called “Godstar.” P-Orridge imagined the band as the center of a global consciousness raising, and recruited fans to join Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, a cross between a fan club and a cult, whose members donned paramilitary gear and submitted bodily fluids as part of their initiation.
Behemoth have unleashed another visually stunning music video. In their classic black-and-white style, Behemoth have debuted a clip for “Bartzabel,” which is filled with blasphemy and nudity. It’s a departure from their more recent material; “Bartzabel” isn’t a track filled with blast beats and gargling gutturals, acting more as a mood piece fairly mellow in execution.
UK tabloid, The Sun, presents a wander through the more controversial parts of Chris Salewicz’s new biography of Jimmy Page. Crowley features, of course, along with drugs and the rest.
There’s a serpent coiling round my neck… The adorning crescent moon in blazing night… The holy river Ganga flowing from my matted hair… Is a God to live in a dog? No! But the highest are of us! Elohim!
The Hermit invites us to discover wisdom and the progress that comes with study; the card also indicates that the Hermit is a person of integrity, but that he is scared to trust in others and completely express what he is feeling – very much as Jimmy Page was, polite to the point of sometimes being a little boring. The painting of the Hermit on the inner sleeve was by a supposed friend of Jimmy Page’s called Barrington Coleby. There is no record whatsoever of any such person, and there were those who believed the real painter was none other than Jimmy Page himself.
The occult was certainly one of Page’s fascinations. He was still a schoolboy when he discovered Crowley, once dubbed ‘the wickedest man in the world’ by the British press. At the peak of his interest, Page owned Crowley’s books, manuscripts, the robes in which he had conducted rituals, and his former abode, Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness.
The vast influence of occultist Aleister Crowley in heavy metal is undeniable. You can throw a stone and hit a band that heavily employs themes of the occult, Satanism, and Thelema, the spiritual philosophy founded by Mr. Crowley himself. In addition to being a renowned ceremonial magician and self-proclaimed prophet, “the wickedest man in the world” was also a revered writer and novelist who produced an abundance of poetry and literature throughout his lifetime. It wasn’t just his teachings or writings about alchemy and magick that made him metal AF, but he also had a rockstar mystique, shocking the masses while indulging in sex and drugs until his death at age 72.
