Album: AIWASS
Artist: Stigmate
Label: Self-released
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. L’abbazia
di Thèlema
2. Aiwass
3. The
Book of Thoth
4. Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn
5. Processing
of a Mourning
6. Madness
7. Equinox
8. New
Order
9. Ordo
Templi Orientis
10. REPTILE
Astute readers and those
in the know will already have worked out that this album is about The Great
Beast 666 aka Aleister Crowley, infamous occultist, writer, and mountaineer.
However one sees the man, either as charlatan or visionary, there’s absolutely
no denying his enormous influence on late 19th and 20th
century occultism, as a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the
Ordo Templi Orientis, and the formulator of Thelema. There’s also no doubting
that he relished the notoriety he inspired, often thumbing his nose up at
established religion and society, and generally creating waves of delight and
revulsion in equal measure.
Stigmate is Italian
musician Nicola Locci, and this is his way of paying tribute to this particular
magician. Aiwass, the album’s title,
refers to the discarnate entity of that name, who dictated The Book of the Law (also known as Liber al vel Legis) through Rose Edith Crowley (his wife) while they
sojourned in Egypt in 1904. The book is the foundation stone of Thelema and is
the central sacred text of that belief system. “Do What thou Wilt Shall be the
Whole of the Law” is the central
tenet of the new religion of the Era of Horus.
The opening track
‘L’abbazia di Thèlema’ (The Abbey of Thelema) refers to the building (a small
house in actuality) that Crowley and Leah Hirsig established in Cefalu, Sicily,
in 1920. It served as both a magical school as well as the base for a commune.
The track opens with a sonorous loop of a saxophone figure, a brilliant device
that plants the narrative of the album squarely in the early part of the
twentieth century, and which helps to contextualise the background to the
unfolding story. However, gradually making its presence heard is a whine that
grows in the telling, along with a screechy, burbling blast of static, redolent
perhaps of the stories and sensationalist tidbits that emerged in later years
about what went on at the ‘Abbey’.
‘Aiwass’ is introduced in
the short second track, a series of disembodied noises presaging a howling
whine and a glitchy background beat before the piece explodes into a grainy
bass drone. It’s entirely appropriate in many ways, considering that this
important discarnate entity, through the agency of the Crowleys, changed the
landscape of occultism in the half-century that followed (and still does,
whether you believe in the existence of the spirit or not). ‘The Book of Thoth’
follows on, continuing the Egyptian theme, it being the title of Crowley’s book
on the Egyptian Tarot. There’s a double pun here, as Thoth was the God of
Writing and Scribes while Crowley was himself an author and transcriber. It’s
suitably abstract, sawed and bowed strings delineating an otherworldly
atmosphere, an attempt at describing numinous concepts garnered from a deep
well of occult knowledge that only initiates are able to gain access to.
Perhaps the most famous
magical order in the world, the name of which has even entered popular culture,
‘The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’, still manages to fascinate even 130
years or so after its founding. It numbered not just Crowley as a member but
also the occult luminary Arthur Edward Waite (who wrote dozens of books
pertaining to occultism and Hermeticism), and more famous names like Algernon
Blackwood, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sax Rohmer, Bram Stoker, and WB Yeats
(although, to be fair, some of these people may only be alleged members – the nature of secret societies is that they and
their membership are, by definition, secret). The track begins with a ritual
chant (perhaps by Crowley himself – I had a CD containing recordings of him
intoning rituals chants at one time, but it’s so long ago I can’t remember what
his voice sounded like), that metamorphoses into a pulsing drone reminiscent of
the building power that ritual conjures up. There’s certainly a vast amount of
energy being manifested here, tinged with a certain menace too. It sent shivers
up my spine.
‘Processing of a
Mourning’ begins with bowl-like resonances set against a background of
horn-like phrasings, followed by treated and processed guitar tones. It’s a
strange abstract ritual, perhaps meant to accompany a soul’s transition from
one life to the next. Its abstraction is slippery and ungraspable, a metaphor
itself for the mysteries surrounding death and its ultimate meaning. ‘Madness’
is often the friend of the occultist, or so it would seem – a kind of divine
madness, a chaotic condition that inspires creativity and knowledge. Strikingly
both chaos and order reside in this track, looping snatches of a musical figure
endlessly repeating, its accumulative effect quite maddening in itself. It
could signify obsession, something which figures in all creative magicians.
‘Equinox’ (aka The Equinox: The Review of Scientific Illuminism)
was the title of Crowley’s official journal of the magical order known as
A:.A:. (or ‘Astrum Argentum’ – The Silver Star). The track itself begins with
the kind of whistling static associated with old shortwave radios (yes, I AM
that old) before transforming into a semi-ambient abstraction, utilising found
sounds, noise blasts , and spoken word samples as contextualisation and
grounding. I can’t help but think of disembodied spirits, alternate states of
awareness, and the channelling of hidden secrets. ‘New Order’ wafts in on a
reverbed cello-like figure, around which whistles and drones weave a story of
high ideals suffused with spiritual overtones. This is probably my particular
favourite, mainly because it went straight to those centres in my brain that
sparked off delicious thrills and shivers. The ‘Ordo Templi Orientis’, although
it included Crowley as an influential member, wasn’t actually founded by him
(that was done by Carl Kellner and Theodor Reus sometime in the years between
1895 and 1905). It’s a thoroughly otherworldly piece, floating somewhere in the
ether, a bridge between this world and the higher realms. Originally conceived
along Masonic lines, Crowley rearranged its structure to reflect Thelemic
principles and ideas. It is both grounded in communication with the inhabitants
of those higher realms and the human plane. Again, Locci on this one opts for
the abstract strategy, pinning down highly complex philosophical ideas by using
ephemeral echoes and figures.
The final track,
‘REPTILE’, is perhaps a reference to the character of the man himself, or more
accurately the character as portrayed by his reputation. He was larger than
life in life, but since his death
that aspect has been enlarged multifold. What we have here are small explosions
of grainy noise, echoing and building upon each other, with other noises being
introduced at intervals to build up the layers of exaggeration that have
accrued in the years since he left this plane of existence. Such accumulations
of legends, rumours, and half-truths eventually obscure the actual truth, so
that he’s almost become a parody. Some would say that’s what he deserves, but
others would just as vehemently say otherwise. It is not for me to say which
portrait is the more accurate – I leave that to the individual.
Make no mistake, even
with a casual glance at the titles of the pieces on here, it should be apparent
that whatever one thinks of Crowley one cannot deny that he’s had an enormous
influence, both in the occult world and in popular culture. In some respects
Stigmate’s AIWASS goes some way to
redressing the balance somewhat, a sound-painting executed by someone who
perhaps has already invested a considerable amount of time in Crowley and his
works. It’s an amalgam of ideas and concepts gleaned from an array of sources,
a syncretic conglomeration of impressions about a complex man, created in such
a way as to reflect the way that Crowley himself worked. Much of his occult
knowledge was garnered through a whole host of disparate sources, but that is
his achievement: the integration of numerous strands of belief and sources into
one concrete system of practise. Whilst we may never get to the truth of
Crowley the man, we can at least
acknowledge Crowley the master compiler of occult knowledge.
Available via Bandcamp
here:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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