Gnostic Implications of “Blackstar”

I recently had an email exchange with a future guest on my YouTube show who will be joining me to discuss Gnosticism. He asked for an example of a Bowie song that reflected Gnostic influences, and I offered “Blackstar.” After sending him an explanation, it occurred to me that this part of our exchange could be adapted into a blog post. It is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis, but I think you’ll get the idea…

—-
I think a good Bowie song that shows early Christian—and specifically Johannine and Gnostic—influences is “Blackstar,” from his final album of the same name. Bowie’s style is typically impressionistic and indirect. He doesn’t have any songs in which he says, “Now I’m going to sing about Gnosticism.” He did talk about Gnosticism and, at various points, indicated that he had read books on the topic, so, with that in mind, I think the lyrics and video essentially speak for themselves.

That said, to point out a few elements that stand out to me, both the video and the song itself have an ecstatic, visionary feel to them, unmediated by any orthodoxy. There is no reference to a church, community or priest, all of which sometimes get denigrated in other Bowie songs. Bowie appears in the video both as a blind prophet (Button Eyes) and as what might be a false prophet (holding up the book with the black star). There are multiple references to vision, seeing and eyes.

Bowie’s cryptic imagery and allusions, together with Blackstar’s packaging—which conceals visual elements that reveal themselves only under particular conditions—make discovery part of the work itself, formally echoing the Gnostic emphasis on knowledge hidden beneath visible appearances and available only to those who learn how to see.

The reference to “in the center of it all” might be an allusion to Crowley’s Star Sapphire ritual, in which the phrase also appears, and a return to an interest Bowie had expressed more overtly when he was younger. This would fit a broader pattern across the Blackstar album and its videos, in which Bowie revives seemingly abandoned languages, images and references from much earlier in his work. Those references are not all Gnostic, but their reappearance contributes to the sense that meanings are concealed beneath the album’s surface and become available only to those who recognize the codes. Bowie had previously referred overtly to Crowley, as well as to Buddhism and Kabbalah. I suspect that he came to regard those traditions as similar to Gnosticism and eventually found in Gnosticism a more satisfying framework for some of the spiritual questions he had explored through them.

There are several biblical references in the “Blackstar” lyrics—and even more obviously in the video. The middle section of the song is itself in a different state from the first and last parts. It refers to a post-death rising spirit, falling angels and repeated identification as a type of star. I think this section is more Johannine than related to a specific Gnostic gospel, and it also echoes Job: “I can’t answer why / Just go with me / I’mma take you home” and “You’re the flash in the pan / I’m the Great I Am.” That last line is unmistakable, but I think this sequence is the first time the voice of God appears in a Bowie song; his songs more often contain unanswered prayers. Here, I think God is saying that he’s not going to explain everything—indeed, who are you to question me?—but to “just go with me” because “I’mma take you home,” which assumes that the person on the other end of the message does not belong in this realm to begin with.