In this series so far, I have written about Gnostics, Jungian alchemists, and mystical orgy and castration cults.
How did these fringe ideas become commonplace in Western societies today? I believe that the ‘British Invasion’ of popular music from the 1960’s onwards helped spread esoteric notions of sex and gender around the world.
Living at a time when male homosexuality was criminalised and racial segregation was still an everyday reality, American rock n’ roll artists were truly breaking the boundaries of social convention. However, musicians weren’t all great role models when it came to sexual politics.
[F]rom the mid 1960’s onwards, as the musicians’ drug of choice changed from speed to weed and LSD, pop took a darker turn. John Lennon confused young Americans with his infamous ‘butcher’ cover concept for the ‘Yesterday and Today’ album in 1966.
The following year, while the band promoted the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental cult, it opted to include Aleister Crowley’s face on the ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ artwork.
Jagger’s Crowleyesque phase lasted into the following year, when the track ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ was released, and filming began on his gender-swapped role in ‘Performance’. David Bowie conveyed his disturbed mental state via the song ‘Quicksand’ in 1971, managing to cram references to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, Holocaust architect Heinrich Himmler, Friedrich Nietzsche and Buddha into one short tune.
Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page purchased Aleister Crowley’s house overlooking Loch Ness in the Scottish highlands during the 1970’s. The property where Crowley attempted to create a portal to Hell has since burned down twice, in 2015 and 2019.
In 1973, Richard O’Brien created musical ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, which Mick Jagger reportedly tried to buy the rights to after its stage debut in the USA.
Former Beatle George Harrison, the most invested in Eastern religion of the group, funded 1979 Monty Python movie ‘The Life of Brian’ giving us the classic ‘Loretta’ scene, in which Stan changes his pronouns. “It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression…”, the comrades agree, for Stan to have the right to become a woman, even though he can’t.
But it wasn’t all sing-along fun. Ozzy Osbourne’s 1980 track ‘Mr. Crowley’ was cited as an evil influence on impressionable children during the ‘Satanic Panic’ therapeutic recovered memory episode. Ozzy claimed that he was not a competent Satanist, and just like his bat-eating stunt, the track referencing Crowley had been created for attention. British rock musicians were accused of ‘backwards masking’ subliminal messages into their recordings. Both Ozzy Osbourne and the band Judas Priest were sued by parents of American fans who had committed suicide. There have been countless copycat heavy metal devil worshippers to this day.
During the Satanic Panic, recovered memory therapists discredited victims of actual abuse, by encouraging accusations without evidence.
Some British musicians went beyond mere performativity to fully emulate Aleister Crowley’s methods. Founder of the band Psychic TV, Neil Megson, had renamed himself ‘Genesis P. Orridge’ in 1971. Ten years later he created ‘Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth’ cult, which posed in Charles Manson T-shirts.
In 1993, ‘Orridge’ embarked on a feminised gender transition with his dominatrix Jacqueline Breyer. ‘Trans widows’ who believe their partner is trying to become them in every respect will note that ‘Orridge’ explicitly stated this was his transition goal, copying Jacqueline’s appearance down to her eye make-up. While the pair were supposedly creating a singular ‘pandrogeny’, Breyer did not masculinise, but also underwent a series of cosmetic surgery revisions. The link between elective cosmetic surgery and masochism was never clearer.
Genesis was quoted in 2004 as saying “We both went and got breast implants on the same day, on our 10th anniversary, and we woke up in hospital holding hands. By chance, we have the same size shoes, but now we can also share lingerie as well!” While Genesis lived to be 70 years old, Jacqueline was dead at 38.
Canadian indie band and Bowie worshippers ‘Arcade Fire’ released the track ‘My Body Is A Cage’ on their 2007 album ‘Neon Bible’. With its blasting church organ part, this song is an anthem for neo-Gnostics everywhere. It is a regular live favourite for the band, and was used in the soundtrack of HBO’s queer teen drama series ‘Euphoria’ which debuted in 2019.
When the Beatles were awarded medals by the Queen in 1965, this was primarily for boosting the nation’s export revenue. But when musicians began to dabble in psychedelics, esoteric religion and dilettante Satanism, they became a vector for the export of fringe ideas about sex and gender which had previously been confined to syphilitic madmen and their female devotees in mystery cults.
A ton of pennies just dropped over here … 😉 …. thanks for this background.