Bowie and the occult: Peter Bebergal Preview

My guest for the weekly interview tomorrow will be Peter Bebergal, author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll. Bowie is featured prominently in the book (he, along with Ozzy Osbourne and Jimmy Page make the cover). I wanted to speak with Peter because one of the ongoing themes of my Bowie interviews has been his spiritual journey, and one stop along the way as he traveled from station to station was occultism.

Actually, stories of demon-possessed swimming pools to the side, I think it would be more accurate to say that the young Bowie had an interest in Western esotericism. Western esotericism is a broad collection of spiritual, philosophical, and mystical beliefs that emphasize hidden knowledge, symbolic interpretation, and the idea that deeper truths about reality can be uncovered through personal insight, initiation, or specialized techniques. Spokes of this wheel took Bowie to Kabbalah, Aleister Crowley, and, to some extent Nazism. Yeah, on that last point, the whole, “Himmler’s sacred realm of dream reality” seems to be referring to Himmler’s rumored practice of “visioning,” which basically means thinking really hard to will something into existence.

All three rockers on the cover of Peter’s book expressed an interest in Crowley, an occultist who made a virtue out of sex and drugs. He was associated with the saying, “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which, as a guiding ethic seems especially well suited for rock stars in their 20s (but, as Peter points out, has often been taken somewhat out of context).

Peter made an interesting observation about Bowie in his book:

“In the history of rock, there is no truer magician than Bowie, as he comes to personify how magic works…in stage magic those in the audience allow themselves to be tricked…just as in ritual and ceremonial magic, where [a] similar phenomenon is at play and is an important effect in conducting rituals within the context of a group…Bowie used glamour– both in fashion and magical senses– to convert rock audiences into accepting a bisexual and binary sense of self…” (p.140-141)

And later…

“What made Bowie a great magician is that, even as his psyche fractured…he was able to cause ‘change to occur in conformity with the will…” (p. 153)

In other words, Bowie didn’t show up on stage like Ozzy, dressed as a wizard, but he actually performed a kind of transformative magic. This is similar to a concept I call “immersive false reality,” in which Bowie demanded of his audience that they essentially get in on his act. This was probably most evident during the Ziggy period, when he didn’t cease being Ziggy after the show. (Or so I’ve read— I was too young at the time to experience Ziggy myself). I actually think Bowie never stopped conjuring up this type of immersive false reality. Even the late-90s/early 2000s seemingly accessible, “real” David Bowie was a character that we were all supposed to pretend was genuine. In that this manifestation of Bowie was seldom recognized as a character, it might have been his greatest magic trick.

That said, Bowie was not necessarily evoking the occult during all his different manifestations. Though he would occasionally dress like a demon in the 1990s, or hold up a mysterious black star-adorned book in the “Blackstar” video, he seemed to distance himself from occultism after the mid-70s. By this I mean, in the early 70s, it wouldn’t be too surprising to learn that Bowie had actually become a follower of Crowley, whereas that would have seemed more far-fetched even a decade later. The early and mid-70s is also when Bowie was conflating the adulatory, nearly worshipful attention he received as a rock star with that of religious and political figures. His ability to ritualistically manipulate an audience must have seemed magical. Then, again Crowley and such added a patina of genuine spirituality to sex and drug fueled ecstasy. The occult might have served not to advance Bowie’s ambitions at the time but to justify them.

In any case, this was a fun discussion to have. Forgive the hokey fake backdrop I came up with, but be sure to come back tomorrow for the interview…