“Sacred and profane are two modes of being in the world, two existential situations assumed by man in the course of his history.” - Mircea Eliade
Thracian Girl Carrying the Head of Orpheus (1864) - Gustave Moreau
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Tens of thousands of people expending resources to mobilize across great distances. They arrive dressed in costumes signaling their group association. The space is full of dancers writhing in time to enthralling rhythms. Some are simply there as a pilgrimage. But an esoteric elite partake in sacraments that induce altered states. They experience personal epiphanies and return to their homes transformed in some way.
Citizens of the modern world would classify a music concert as entertainment. Music’s become largely a commodity for the filling of silent spaces between social interactions. A soundtrack for grocery shopping. The modern mind refuses to see what music and its attendant activities really are: Religion.
If music was a technique for pouring concrete foundations, we’d scour the history of building techniques to write this book. But that’s not what music is. The Quest beckons us to descend into stranger recesses of the human endeavour.
Citizens of the modern world would classify a music concert as entertainment. Music’s become largely a commodity for the filling of silent spaces between social interactions. A soundtrack for grocery shopping. The modern mind refuses to see what music and its attendant activities really are: Religion.
If music was a technique for pouring concrete foundations, we’d scour the history of building techniques to write this book. But that’s not what music is. The Quest beckons us to descend into stranger recesses of the human endeavour.
Contrary to the implied assertions of keyboard atheists, history is not the story of men failing to discover science. The world shaped by revolutionaries such as Newton, Descartes, Bacon is comparatively nascent. The scientific endeavour as it currently manifests itself in culture concerns itself with descriptions of the world and its mechanisms. The human imagination concerns itself with experience, action, Being and troubling questions such as “what matters?”, “what is good?”, “what should I do?”. The displacement of the religious imagination in favour of dogged materialism (of the scientific kind) may have desacralized the world. But our profane activities inevitably take on a sacred form. Troubling questions still haunt the mansions of the mind.
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If anything will cause one to wonder the meaning of it all, it’s war. So troubling is the existence of the violence inherent to human nature that it took Jane Goodall several years to come to grips with the war like behaviour of the chimps she had come to see as almost human, but “rather nicer”. The existential questions arising from the experiences of suffering leading to death became a priority for our ancestors. The pressure of such concerns pushed the human imagination to the outer limit of ability.
The glorification of war and war death is a not uncommon motif in religious myth. Especially in traditional societies. The ancient germans’ handling of war in their religious questioning is particularly striking and exploring it will open up options of interpretation as to the meaning of poetry and music.
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The ancient germans integrated war into their religious framework to an arguably unparalleled depth. The ancient germanic god Odin-Woden is worth a close look[1].
As with many post-indo-european religious societal frameworks, the ancient germans had a separation between private and public religion. The rural population favoured gods from the pantheon springing forth from the vegetation mystery (appropriate for agriculturally oriented demographics). The military leaders and royalty worshipped a tripartite pantheon of gods orbiting the domains of war, law, and magic. In ancient german religious culture Odin was widespread and used in popular nomenclature. But the cult of Odin was practiced exclusively by the military and royal arms of the society. Not surprising considering it involved, among other things, human sacrifice by hanging and other such grisly rites. In his incarnation into the tripartite template Odin is both a martial and magical god. This is surprising until we inspect the myth of Odin-Woden and his cult. We look to Mircea Eliade’s exegesis of the works of 12th century poet Snorri for clues to this puzzle.
Odin-Woden is hung to the tree of life (Yggdrasil), for 9 days where he is wounded by the spear and he sacrifices an eye. He eventually receives revelations: Runes (ie. occult/magical knowledge), wisdom and poetry[2]. What we have here is an indication of the influence of an archaic form.
- Odin-Woden undergoes an initiatory ordeal. Very much like a shaman would as part of his descent to the underworld.
- Then Odin receives a shamanic/magical power set.
- Though Odin-Woden is not explicitly said to descend into the underworld for his initiation Snorri does specify that the roots of Yggdrasil descend into Hel, the land of the dead.
So what we are seeing here is the archaic motif imposing itself on the germanic religious imagination resulting in the initiation of a god whose domains are both magical and martial. The germanic insistence on the religious significance of war[3] is made elegantly clear in the Odin-Woden character. The careful reader will notice that the valorization of war death as a glorified ecstatic experience[4] is meant to elevate the warrior to the same status as that of other tribe members who participate in ecstatic states, ie. the shamans with their occult powers including the power of poetry.
The relationship between the arts and magical powers gained via ecstatic states generated by violent initiatory ordeal is made explicitly clear in the greek myth of Orpheus who also bears the archaic mark. Though the myth of the descent into the underworld is varied and well repeated in ancient Greece at the time of the Orphic mysteries, Orpheus’ descent in particular was the most popular in its time. His descent takes a familiar form. He is torn apart and his head is sent afloat on the river, singing as it is pulled by the current. The head is later recovered by some pious Orphics and used as an oracle.[5] Once again we have a God whose domain is music and poetry and gains magical powers after a descent to the underworld where violent ordeals with initiatory intent are inflicted upon him[6].
Considering that war death, violence and pain are equated to the sacred nature of poetry and music in order to elevate their status indicates just how high placed the arts are in the psyche of our ancestors and, I posit, the human psyche in general. To reduce the complexity further, we can say music and poetry (and by extension the arts) are a foundational pillar of the reality of Being, along with Pain/Suffering.
No one would put war death under the banner of entertainment. We all know war is a big deal to take seriously and no one denies their own pain as an ancillary concern. Our ancestors elevated war death to the level of the arts, not the other way around. In addition to this, they entangled pain ordeals with ecstatic states and underlined how the arts belong to a class of individuals acting as stewards of the products of ecstatic techniques (shamans, poets, musicians). This should suggest how deeply they valued the arts.
The relationship between the arts and magical powers gained via ecstatic states generated by violent initiatory ordeal is made explicitly clear in the greek myth of Orpheus who also bears the archaic mark. Though the myth of the descent into the underworld is varied and well repeated in ancient Greece at the time of the Orphic mysteries, Orpheus’ descent in particular was the most popular in its time. His descent takes a familiar form. He is torn apart and his head is sent afloat on the river, singing as it is pulled by the current. The head is later recovered by some pious Orphics and used as an oracle.[5] Once again we have a God whose domain is music and poetry and gains magical powers after a descent to the underworld where violent ordeals with initiatory intent are inflicted upon him[6].
Considering that war death, violence and pain are equated to the sacred nature of poetry and music in order to elevate their status indicates just how high placed the arts are in the psyche of our ancestors and, I posit, the human psyche in general. To reduce the complexity further, we can say music and poetry (and by extension the arts) are a foundational pillar of the reality of Being, along with Pain/Suffering.
No one would put war death under the banner of entertainment. We all know war is a big deal to take seriously and no one denies their own pain as an ancillary concern. Our ancestors elevated war death to the level of the arts, not the other way around. In addition to this, they entangled pain ordeals with ecstatic states and underlined how the arts belong to a class of individuals acting as stewards of the products of ecstatic techniques (shamans, poets, musicians). This should suggest how deeply they valued the arts.
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When I first started hitting the zone as a beginner musician, I was still ensconced in the world of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I would get asked to play at parties (in so much as Jehovah’s Witnesses do party). I would inevitably never feel comfortable about playing. I did know my skill was novice level but it’s not like incompetence was stopping my teenage self from doing anything else. No, I felt uncomfortable because I knew I was doing something with music other than what I could see others do. I just wasn’t the bard they were looking for. Here’s the secret to the way I made music at that time and a technique I used throughout my musical career.
I start by incessantly repeating chord patterns until I enter an altered state that induces visual and/or auditory visions. I then write lyrics describing these visions. The result is incoherent poetry. Then as best I can I rewrite the lyrics in such a way as to border them to coherence. In short, I use music as a tool for the generation of ecstatic states. Jehovah’s Witnesses consider even the most accessible and conventional of altered state techniques (meditation) as demonic in nature. I no doubt knew on some level that the way I made music, though completely natural to me, would be suspect to my peers should I make it available to them.
[1]Much of the mythology of the ancient germans comes to use from the 12th century poet Snorri who very likely constructed his myths from elements of the oral tradition. Here I use Mircea Eliade’s exegesis of ancient germanic religion as the source for discussion.
[2]He also gains the ability to drink of the well of Mimir, a drink hidden “in the other world”. Again we have a symbol equating altered states and communion with the underworld.
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[1]Much of the mythology of the ancient germans comes to use from the 12th century poet Snorri who very likely constructed his myths from elements of the oral tradition. Here I use Mircea Eliade’s exegesis of ancient germanic religion as the source for discussion.
[2]He also gains the ability to drink of the well of Mimir, a drink hidden “in the other world”. Again we have a symbol equating altered states and communion with the underworld.
[3]War in traditional societies is commonly seen as a rite wherein both the perpetrator and the victim are sacrificing blood to the gods.
[4] The modern reader’s squeamishness at the glorification of war in traditional societies should take a moment to enter the following term in an internet image search engine: “war memorial monument name of your hometown”
[5] Headlessness is also an archaic motif and is found in the Odin-Woden myth where Odin is sent the head of a giant which he uses as an oracle for the gaining of occult knowledge. Note that the Yukaghir shamans consult the heads of their shaman ancestors. As for Odin losing an eye, this is an archaic form very similar to headlessness. Compare against the myth of Horu (Osiris - Horus - Set, which also involves dismemberment and an underworld descent). In both cases, a god loses an eye but gains insight into a deeper structure of the world, ie. wisdom or attention. This is sometimes called “inner” vision or “second sight”. These types of sight are equatable to the oracular powers associated with headlessness.
[6] Odin and Orpheus possess other powers that have an obvious shamanic bent. Such as: mastery over animals / changing shape into animals, communication with the dead. The connection of these myths to archaism and shamanism is far from tenuous.
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