{"id":7040,"date":"2018-04-26T07:30:27","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T11:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=7040"},"modified":"2018-04-26T07:35:37","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T11:35:37","slug":"rock-occult-bebergal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/04\/26\/rock-occult-bebergal\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Historian Explores How The Occult And Underground Spirituality Energized The \u2018Devil\u2019s Music\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the beginning, there was Elvis Presley shimmying as he sang the new rock \u2018n\u2019 roll for 1956 white America. The young things in the audience were entranced, but the elders were troubled by the signature way Mr. Presley shook his hips as he danced. Concerned by sex and animated by racism, they accused the music\u2019s sensuality and black rhythms of being too\u2026exciting. It would surely lure the young into temptation. Some called it the Devil\u2019s music.<\/p>\n<p>But, Cambridge author <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/authors\/242413\/peter-bebergal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Peter Bebergal<\/a> recounts, one time Elvis \u201cwas asked: Where did you learn to dance like that? He answered: I learned it within my [Pentecostal] church. This is how we worshipped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MMmljYkdr-w\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Bebergal\u2014the writer of the book \u201cSeason of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll,&#8221; which was published in 2014, and \u201cStrange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural,\u201d which is due out this October\u2014argues that the history of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll that we\u2019ve been handed down is incomplete.<\/p>\n<p>In a talk entitled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/events\/603270840035822\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cDionysus Stardust: Theater, Masks, and the Spectacle of Rock and Roll\u201d<\/a> that he gave to the Harvard Theosophical Society at the Cambridge university\u2019s Center for the Study of World Religions on Monday afternoon, he said that usual accounts leave out rock\u2019s roots in pagan faiths and the occult, in spirituality outside the white Western religious mainline of Christianity and Judaism. And this underground spiritual influence, he says, is an overlooked part of what why the music so grabs people\u2019s souls.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lRy5MoWPyS0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The sensual dancing, the costumes and mask-like makeup, the ecstatic and ritualistic performances of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll (in his talk he focused primarily on white male rockers) are part of a tradition that Bebergal says traces back to secret societies of the Western occult as well as African faiths forced underground by the violence of American slavery. He points to African American ring shouts based in Christian music and faith while at the same time being \u201cdrawn from African pre-Christian spiritual practices.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He sees connections to the rituals of Free Masonry, the visionary art and poetry of William Butler Yeats, the Jewish mysticisim of the Kabbalah, tarot, \u201cceremonial magic,\u201d and late 19th century spiritualism.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7044\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7044\" style=\"width: 204px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/picBebergalSeasonWitchw.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7044\" src=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/picBebergalSeasonWitchw-204x300.jpg\" alt=\"Peter Bebergal's 2014 book \u201cSeason of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll.&quot;\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/picBebergalSeasonWitchw-204x300.jpg 204w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/picBebergalSeasonWitchw-768x1127.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/picBebergalSeasonWitchw-698x1024.jpg 698w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/picBebergalSeasonWitchw-370x543.jpg 370w, https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/picBebergalSeasonWitchw.jpg 1170w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 204px) 100vw, 204px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7044\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Peter Bebergal&#8217;s 2014 book \u201cSeason of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll.&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThere was a huge movement that felt rationalism was coming to strip us of a kind of spirituality,\u201d Bebergal says of the late 19th century. \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 roll is really just a symptom of these elements. \u2026 It saw itself as pushing up against conventions. When you see yourself on the margins and pushing up against convention, it\u2019s only natural that you would turn to these forms that were heterodox.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, Bebergal believes, rock \u2018n\u2019 roll\u2019s \u201cenergy is Dionysian and it\u2019s much more Dionysian than it is demonic or devilish.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Greek god of fertility (sex) and wine and theater is a model for rock\u2019s challenge of authority, its embrace of dance and sex and gender bending, it pursuit of ecstatic experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe worship of Dionysus originally happened in performance. It happened in theater,\u201d Bebergal says, in reenactments of the deity\u2019s biography. \u201cThat happened through the mask. \u2026 This is how the god is made manifest. The mask isn\u2019t a costume so much as the way the god enters the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Mizo55muY2I\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, Bebergal finds examples of these spiritual influences and trappings in Elvis and the spectacles of Pink Floyd\u2019s 1960s trance-inducing performances with dancers and flickering films. \u201cIt was an expression of the psychedelic experience, to heighten the psychedelic experience,\u201d Bebergal says. \u201cIt was to charge the audience with this ecstatic sensibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Anther example is Arthur Brown, who sang \u201cI am the god of hellfire\u201d in the 1960s with his painted face with skull-like makeup and wearing a crown that was actually ablaze with fire. \u201cIn some ways, he saw himself as a shaman,\u201d Bebergal says. \u201cHe wanted there to be this transformative experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe start to see the way our consciousness works inside these kinds of experiences,\u201d Bebergal says. If we see a stage magic show, \u201cwe allow ourselves to be fooled. We want to be tricked. \u2026 We want to inhabit a place where we\u2019re not quite sure what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6Fqozggi-44\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>From Brown, Bebergal looks to Alice Cooper and Led Zeppelin. He sees Zeppelin singer Robert Plant in the 1970s as pinnacle of this sort of ecstatic rock \u2018n\u2019 roll performance, a Dionysian figure who teased usual gender binaries. It helped that Plant telegraphed his interest in the English occultist Aleister Crowley as well as rumors that the band was cursed.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fq8gG3pzMrU\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bebergal points to the Egypian inspired costumes and Afrofuturist jazz of Sun Ra. He highlights how David Bowie also adopted personas\u2014Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Thin White Duke\u2014\u201cinhabiting these deific entities. \u2026 They are these kind of cracked deities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bowie \u201calso had a little bit of nuzzling a little too closely to the fascistic idea of how performance can manipulate and act as an element of control,\u201d Bebergal\u00a0says. \u201cThere are a few interviews where he\u2019s talking very nicely about the Nazis\u201d as genius manipulators. \u201cHe later would say that it was poor judgment to not acknowledge the historical truth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bebergal\u00a0says, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of tension in the occult-esoteric communities because the alt-right has recently started to own a lot of esoteric symbols.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W795W63n7mA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After Bowie, Bebergal points to the costumes of Kiss, to the spectacles of Ozzy Osbourne, to Madonna\u2019s faux Egyptian rite during the 2012 National Football League Super Bowl halftime show, to the ominous droning music of the Seattle doom metal band Sunn O))), which formed in 1998, and performed with hooded robes and smoke machines.<\/p>\n<p>Bebergal says, \u201cYou go into a trance state when you\u2019re in one of their shows. And then to feed that state with smoke and cloaks, there is a transformation that takes place. And it is a very ancient way of doing religious business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cParticular kinds of performative and audio things can transform us,\u201d Bebergal says. \u201cWhat\u2019s real is what happens during the performance and being able to take in these gestures acts as a super-charged arrow\u201d to our unconscious, to the \u201coccult imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vtnG6EHh1N4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the beginning, there was Elvis Presley shimmying as he sang the new rock \u2018n\u2019 roll for 1956 white America. The young things in the audience were entranced, but the elders were troubled by the signature way Mr. Presley shook his hips as he danced. Concerned by sex and animated by racism, they accused the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7043,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,101],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7040"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7053,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7040\/revisions\/7053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}