Carmelite prayer

The mechanics of evil

An old photo: a hypnotist is pendulum-ing his shiny watch before the eyes of a person-to-be-hypnotized.

An advertisement kitsch in a local newspaper: a witch is staring into a crystal ball.

A work of modern art: a stuffed corpse covered by hundreds of glass beads.

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The only one thing which bothered me after writing two articles about Bowie was “how his stuff works” i.e. how his songs really get under one’s skin. It was beyond my understanding how a committed Christian while knowing very well, for example, about the references to Crowley in ‘Station to station’ still partakes that triumphant sadistic joy the song conveys? What is there that so much violates a human will, and in such a way that the very rape of a will induces a pleasure? Those questions are not just about Bowie – it just happened that “his stuff” is probably the most brilliant of its kind in our time. They are about “how the ultimate staff works”.

As it was already stated in ‘Death as a work of art’ “the real stuff” in general and its particular manifestation, the Bowie’s work, can be adequately addressed only from the position of Christian mysticism. Consider the examples below.


‘The Next Day’, video

A night/sex-club for Catholic clergy. One of them is lashing his own naked back; much blood. The decadent whores, among them one, almost albino, dressed in “bridal”, extremely transparent, attire. One of the whores, together with a priest, brings in a silver plate with two freshly plucked out human eyes. Another one who looks somewhat more humane then others, reluctantly begins dancing with a priest. An old cardinal distributes banknotes in exchange to a kiss of his hand, a sign of submission. A singer, Bowie himself, dressed in “ancient” tunic but with a scarf around his neck, sings and dramatically points at “the most humane whore”; that jester causes the stigmata to appear on her palms. Blood is gashing from them; the white clothes of “the bride” become stained and then soaked in blood. The priest who danced with her and is now standing between her and “the bride” somehow entirely avoids being stained. Everybody is now looking in a trance at the singer; “the bride” has no bloody stains now. Bowie finishes his song and thanks the actors, “Gary” and “Mary” by their names, and then “everybody”.

An interpretation #1: evangelical.

Bowie sings about the “grand whore”, the Catholic Church. A cardinal is Satan = the Catholic Pope. Bowie also mocks stigmata, the typical Catholic case of delusion/ demonic possession. However, he also says something about someone “stuck in a hollow tree” for three days. Could it be Christ? The place is perverse: there they use prostitutes and serve human eyes.

An interpretation #2: Catholic. 

Bowie is mocking the Catholic Church representing it as ran by money, bribes and the lies structure. A lashing himself priest represents the supposed Catholic hypocrisy (“discipline” in a brothel). He mocks Christ and Christianity visa various references (stigmata; allusion to St Mary Magdalene, Bowie himself represents “Christ” etc). Also, the lyrics have multiple hints to the Gospels story.


An interpretation #3: Catholic mystical tradition.

A lashing himself priest is a mockery of Catholic practice of “discipline” but the close-up of his naked back can be also a reference to Christ being lashed as well. Two eyes on the plate are the direct quote of the Western iconography of St Luci (“Light”), commonly depicted holding the plate with two eyes, a virgin and martyr whose eyes were plucked out as a result of her refusal to renounce Christ. The perverse “bride” soaked by blood gashing from stigmata represents the birth of the Church = the Bride of Christ which, according to the Christian teaching, was born from the wound of Christ on the Cross, as a result of His death. The real Church = the Bride of Christ is pure, here she is the worst of perverse whores. It is not even pseudo-Christ (Bowie) who bleeds for the Church there but another female, “St Mary Magdalene”. This can be a hint to the Gnostic texts about “the female principal = “St Mary Magdalene” as the spouse of Christ; “the female principal giving a life to a society of initiated”; it can be just a simple mockery; whatever it is it pollutes the mystical understanding of the Church as the Bride of Christ. Next, the brothel or sex club which “represents” the Church can be seen as the official Church against the will of which right now, from a female, not from Christ, the new Church is born – from the whore and as a whore-bride. In authentic Christianity the Virgin Mary (Virgin, Bride, Mother) is one of the symbols of the Church; there are gnostic stories about her as a whore who conceived from the Roman solder – so it is another blasphemous gnostic reference. The video is stuffed with multitude of symbols but the most visually stunning among them are two eyes on the plate (can be interpreted also as the symbol of “the Church blinds the believers”/ destruction of light “God is light” etc), stigmata and the blood poured onto “the bride”. This is a very sophisticated and dense perversion of the heart of the Catholic, Christian, and even, to some extent, the Old Testament mysticism. However, all the above is rendered “not real = nothing” by Bowie thanking actors for the roles played. It is nothing – “not serious”. It is also “uninitiated can see nothing” statement of gnosis. It is also the return to the chaotic unconscious where the symbols are popping up and sink without any rationale – the religious irrational. Finally, it means that it was “nothing” that created it, for the purpose of rendering all to nothing, and this latter is actually the only true here. Hence, this gnostic game is beyond a simple stage of making something new and twisted with borrowed from Christianity symbols, it is making everything senseless, apart from “I AM” which Bowie represents. It is the gnosis of only One Adept who pulls the strings of puppets (the rest of humanity or the humanity as such).

PS ‘Death as a work of art’: the triumph of the impersonal

It seems to me that Bowie really overdone them all, I mean the artists (musicians, poets, writers) of a similar vein. Not only did he manage to make his death into “a work of art”, he also managed to use it to rip himself off (or to purify as he would probably say) from any remaining traces of humanity. This is truly stunning because death usually brings the humanity of an individual into the unbearable light. The humanity in its nakedness, being placed against death, usually can be seen clearer than ever, by the dying person and those around him. A dying or deceased person is unique and precious to the extreme: he is free from generalisations and categories. And, because we are all mortal we can easily relate to dying or dead human being with compassion. A dying or dead person is also extremely vulnerable and defenceless. This is why it is often said that Jesus Christ was the most human in His Passion and death. All the earthly life of the Son of God was a continuing self-reduction, self-squeezing into that needle point of humanity so we could relate to Him on the Cross – dying – dead – just as a human being, not some impersonal deity on the cross but the Man with his unique personality, as He was well-known to others. Hence His human death on the cross is, for humans, the gate into personal communion with God.

Jesus Christ, being the ideal Man, is the ultimate model of what a human being is supposed to be. This sentence of course is “nothing” or even a subject of mockery for many. Still, one can attempt to imitate Christ as his ideal; one can simply do nothing with Him via removing Him as a point of reference; or one can do everything possible to be not like Him. While the middle case, indifference, does nothing as the reflection of Christ, the first and the last work like positive and negative images which cannot exist without reference to the original. I wonder if Bowie’s fans notice that he acknowledges that despised ideal by his works, his life, and his death. He does it via his progressive embodiment of all that ideal is not. And, while it is usually not so impressive when an artist does it in his art only (there is plenty of such art) or even when an artist styles himself as “the Beast” (again, there is no lack of them around) it is very impressive if one does so with his own death. And not just does so, but does it perfectly, with meticulous attention to detail, without “screwing it up” like Mishima for example who had glorified the aesthetics of death in his writings and yet screwed up his harakiri (that immediately rendered Mishima human).

I find it absolutely astonishing that the man, just a few hours before his own death, issued his last message to the world saying in effect “God is the last thing I want to hear about”. It is stunning not so much because of its content but because of its “artistic form”. Truly, if someone is dying simply cursing God, literally, with own words, it is nothing compared with the postmodernist subtleties as it was done by Bowie. To swear at God is humane because it can be an expression of rage, despair, whatever but it is the personal expression, from a man to God, even in curses. God the Person would “easier” bear personal curses than an impersonal message, not because He is “proud” but because for Him to get a human being to address Him directly, even via curses, is the only way to save him. 

Death as a work of art: Bowie

Unfortunately, I am unable to find two really good, matching stills from Bowie ‘Absolute beginners’ and ‘Blackstar’ to illustrate that what I saw in my mind. I wonder if anyone else noticed the evolution of the “woman with a tail” that happened between 1985 and 2015.

‘Absolute beginners’ was made some time after ‘the Berlin period’ 1977-79 – that was, to me, the only period of mature Bowie when I could not perceive anyone else in his albums, apart from the author himself. For those three years, another person, perceptible to the extreme in the ‘Station to station’ (1976), stepped back.

Perhaps I should say a few words about what the work of the recently deceased artist has been for me. I have been in love with the work of Bowie for many reasons including the excellent stimulus it provided for my own work: his songs and compositions seemed to “loosen” my mind – apart from their other qualities they are very synesthetic. The major reason for my love for his art, as I see it now, was that his work and he himself together were so perfectly blended and embodied what can be very inadequately defined as “the [seeming] omnipotence and freedom of a creator”, the extremely seductive Luciferic aspect of the unreferenced creativity. “I can do anything!” – “I am great” – “I am” – “I AM”.

It is, actually, quiet boring when it is expressed by anyone else who is not – not in that state or does not subscribe to that philosophy, and this inevitable boredom makes the pronouncement of any moral judgement so problematic. A person who creates worlds out of nothing indeed feels omnipotent, free and entitled to do anything if it helps to create more. Any arguments against those notions, that there is dirt and purity, good and bad, and God and evil cannot withstand, the glorious sight of the man “who is all and in whom everything comes together”; male and female both irresistibly decadent and charming, “visionary”, “alien”, “great Arian beast”, “simple dude”, etc, etc, etc and his work, supernaturally varied and potent. Anyone can find anything there, try a persona on himself, borrow the omnipotence and “jump”.

When the “fundamentalist” evangelicals write their angry articles about the satanic nature of rock’n’roll they seem to miss the important point: the songs and compositions which concern them are truly brilliant and the musicians are extremely talented. To fail to acknowledge that is to shoot oneself in the foot; perhaps evangelicals fail to see the brilliance because they lack aesthetic sense?

This is what happened with me. When I listen to the Bowie’s ‘The Next Day’ it was brilliant, very powerful, very stimulating and yet completely infernal, channelling the voice of inferno via the person of Bowie. As I mentioned in my review of ‘The Next Day’ the music caused me to paint the “visual comments” for each song. The process was effortless, felt very rewarding but somewhat impersonal. It was my own creative response to Bowie’s album that made me carefully analyse what was there, and then I had to make a choice, not the simplistic choice which some evangelicals seem to make, between “simply satanic words” and God but between the brilliance, being drunk with my own creativity, feeling that I was a wire through the powerful force was rushing, very original images effortlessly coming to life under my fingers, and my God. I am not going to pretend that it was an easy choice because nothing, nothing can be compared with being drunk with one’s own creative abilities, with putting visons into the palpable art – nothing but God, personal God, being in personal relationship with God. Hence I understand why for those who do not know/ do not want to know God the Person the choice is pretty obvious or even non-existent. This is why I cannot highlight it too much: Bowie is a brilliant artist and he is totally Luciferic and empty at the same time.