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Cult Of Personality - Vol. 2
Here are a couple noteworthy celebrity religious items that sparked my interest.
Tori Amos
Tori Amos allegedly is interested in Gnosticism (by way of Elaine Paigels), and included themes and inspiration from it in her Beekeeper album. That’s the first oblique celebrity endorsement I’ve seen of it so far:
Beginning with Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels, Amos found herself wondering, “What if we’re all being led a merry dance away from the truth and sincere Christ consciousness” She was particularly intrigued by the notion that Jesus’ teachings had been edited down to favor the church fathers over the church mothers, diminishing the role of women and almost writing Mary Magdalene out of the story altogether. “The more I researched it, the more I realized that there were women prophets, women writing their own works. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was attributed to her, meaning her point of view, whoever the scribe was.
“But what fascinated me was that there were people of the time no different than we have today, like an FCC deciding what gospels we would hear and not hear. So the majority in America hasn’t been exposed to this information, because people 1700 years ago didn’t think that women should be talking. Jesus didn’t know these people.” She laughs. “It’s like somebody coming in and messing with Jimi Hendrix’s catalog — ‘Let’s take all the guitars off.’”
Freddie Mercury
It seems that Freddie Mercury of Queen was also born into Zoroastrianism, and included references to it in his music. This site has a couple items about it, but lacks really good information either about his religion or how it influenced his work. If anyone knows of a good information source on this, I’d like to see it. I’d also be interested in either seeing or doing a rundown of some of his songs from a Zoroastrian theological perspective. FYI: He’s usually called a “Parsi” rather than a Zoroastrian. The Parsis were Zoroastrians who fled Persia for India in the 8th century to escape religious persecution.
Wait, here’s a bit more solid info on Mercury’s Persian background:
His orginal name was Farok Bulsara. (Not Farookh or Farookah as is given in some biographies.) His mother was Jer Bulsara.
His family were Zoroastrian Parsees who were essentially Indian, although they were of Persian extraction if their ethnic origin were taken back to the nineth century. The name Bulsara was from the town of Bulsar in north Bombay.
His father was a government accountant.
He was born in the British colony of Zanzibar in Africa, but his family moved to Bombay where he attended school. At school he adopted the name Freddie. The family settled in England in 1959.
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Here’s another fun one that I actually knew about already: Sammy Davis, Jr. was for a while a member of the Church of Satan. There’s tons of information available about this online. Here’s something from an interview with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey:
Sammy Davis, Jr. was a dear friend who often put himself on the line when it was professionally hazardous to do so. He brought many influential persons into the CoS, and shared his own personal life with me. He was a sensitive, articulate, and very Satanic individual—head and shoulders above most white folks.
(Interesting that both the Church of Scientology and the Church of Satan use the abbreviation “CoS”.) Rigorous Intuition also did an excellent story on the Sammy Davis, Jr. connection to Satanism. Here’s another just general overview of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan if you don’t know anything about them.
June 15th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
If you haven’t done so already, look up sites that break down the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, particularly the famous “opera” section. Names like Mismillah and Beelzebub pop up there.
June 15th, 2005 at 7:48 pm
interestingly, sammy was also a spokesman for nixon’s bogus ‘war on drugs’
“President Nixon personally met with Sammy Davis, Jr., on July 1, 1971. According to the memorandum on the meeting, Davis said that he was “honored and thrilled to be with the President.” Nixon quickly came to the point and said, “As a celebrity the country would listen to [your] caution about drugs much quicker than they would to the cautions of politicians…. Kids would be turned on by [you].” He further assured Davis that the administration was for kids and it was not trying to repress them. […] Nixon said that “the elite of the United States are least capable of governing the United States,” and then paraphrased Tolstoy, saying, “Every individual is basically two people; he has creative and destructive instincts…. The secret in life is to sublimate the destructive instincts, for the same energies that can build can destroy.”"
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/agency/chap18.htm
pretty fucking bizarre, if you ask me.
June 15th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
yeah that is really bizarre. wasnt that why nixon used elvis too, or was that for the war on something else? just read about that the other day. have to go back and find it.
June 15th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
yeah, same deal. according to epstein, the nixon-elvis thing never went very far. his description of their infamous meeting is a bit short and i’m sure i’ve read better descriptions of it somewhere.
June 15th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
oh i know what i read and where i read it. ill post it later. it said that elvis came to nixon and said he would volunteer to snitch on other celebrities….
June 15th, 2005 at 9:24 pm
that’s pretty much what epstein says too. his stuff about elvis is in the same link i posted above - the book ‘agency of fear,’ which is pretty good (plus its all online). the thesis is that nixon’s ‘war on drugs’ was essentially a public relations stunt to mask nixon’s attempts to form his own private intelligence network. i guess you could say watergate was what happened when nixon’s spooks lost a turf war with some other spooks. probably an over-simplification but i think that’s the gist of it. all sorts of weird sex and drug and crime stuff swirling around there too.
so many rabbitholes, so little time…
June 15th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
veering way off-topic now, but this bit from epstein is pretty rich:
While Sammy Davis’s October trip to Vietnam was being planned, the White House attempted to arrange a television show for Davis, with presidential participation, on drugs. To sponsor this program, Jeffrey Donfeld approached Ira Englander, of the Hoffmann-La Roche pharmaceutical company (which manufactures Valium), and Perry Lieber, the president of the Hughes Sports Network (Hughes being a long-time supporter of President Nixon’s campaigns). Although both showed great interest in the Nixon-Sammy Davis program, they were unwilling to provide all the funds for production costs. Donfeld thus stated, in a rather pessimistic memorandum to Egil Krogh, on October 21, 1971, “Unless someone on Chuck Colson’s staff can come up with the production costs and arrange for network time, this project may never be launched.” Colson, however, showed little enthusiasm for raising money for the television spectacular especially since it would be to the credit of Egil Krogh rather than himself. All President Nixon eventually received from the Sammy Davis connection was a loving embrace on television at election time.
that has to be the greatest tv special that never was - a white house anti-drug program… starring sammy davis jr… sponsored by valium.
June 16th, 2005 at 12:52 am
I’m hesitant to post this, since it’s an unconfirmed verbal rumor, but I heard from someone who is into Crowley, that Sting was involved with the Ordo Templi Orientis, and that the “eo” chant in “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” was an OTO chant. The only evidence I can find on the internet is a mention of Sting reading Crowley while touring.
But check out this freaky synchronicity(?) I found while searching: “The *Sting* *EO* fire control radar and electro-optical tracking system plus the *Oto* Melara 76mm/62 super rapid naval gun.”
http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/qatar/qatar7.html
June 16th, 2005 at 9:00 am
Hubbard took an active part in OTO, ordained by the known satanist Aleister Crowley. Hubbard accepted many ideas from Crowley, how to build his pseudo-religious system. This is pretty well known stuff, that and some of the rocket scientist from Almagordos were also involved.
The Church of Scientology - which boasts Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Lisa Marie Presley, Hilary Swank, Juliette Lewis and Kirstie Alley among its members - was founded by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. According to an article by Camille Paglia in Boston University’s Arion journal, Hubbard got many of his ideas from infamous devil worshipper Alistair Crowley.
“Hubbard had met Crowley in the latter’s Los Angeles temple in 1945,” Paglia writes. “Hubbard’s son reveals that Hubbard claimed to be Crowley’s successor: Hubbard told him that Scientology was born on the day that Crowley died.”
According to the article, Scientologists perform some of the same rites that Crowley invented, all designed to free practitioners from human guilt.
“Drills used by Scientologists to cleanse and clarify the mind are evidently a reinterpretation of Crowley’s singular fusion of Asian meditation and Satanic ritualism, which sharpens the all-conquering will . . . Guilt and remorse, in the Crowley way, are mere baggage to be jettisoned,” Paglia says. Another source is of Hubbard’s Satanic involvement with Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley can be found in the book “Sex and Rockets: the Occult World of Jack Parsons” by John Carter.
June 16th, 2005 at 11:52 am
thanks gina, ive actually been looking into the crowley hubbard connection very deeply as well, and plan to post on it in more depth soon.
ran, thats really weird. ive not heard sting was in the OTO before, but i do remember him making a claim several years ago on a talk show that he was practicing tantric yoga and that he could have sex for like 12 hours straight or something. he later retracted that statement and said it was a joke. but listening to his lyrics all throughout his career indicates to me that hes obviously into all this stuff in a serious way.
June 16th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Hubbard accepted many ideas from Crowley**
I must take issue with the way this is worded. Crowley despised Hubbard.
Ran, that “IAO,” technically, but it’s found outside of the OTO, obviously. Sting isn’t a member, although there really are hundreds of people who cotton to the ideas without actually signing up. There are actually so many magick references in soings that I’ve been compiling them. There’s Van Morrison’s “Dweller,” Kate Bush has part of the pentagram ritual in a song, etc. Bowie makes a lot of references to kabbalah, thelema, et al. (and ten zillionj metal bands)
June 17th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
yep,and a woman wrote a beautiful mystical analysis of led zeppelin`s work.i wish i could find it again.nobody`s heard of it at the chapters book shop.i think a lot of seventies poets came to the rock music genre as a way to get the message out.i`m only now starting to read yes`s words on thier own.
certainly,robert plant was a mystic.he talks about the hammer of the gods frequently and made a big point of eating mushrooms in a sequence in “the song remains the same” ,something about the springtime of my knowing,the second season i am to know.terence would smile knowingly.