LISTENER QUESTION #1:
Re: NICE 006 - "What Is The Moon But A Mirror? w/ Poolhouse"
FROM THE HEART AND HAND OF ONE BANJER JACK:
“I’m listening to the newest episode y’all have of NICE with Brother Poolhouse talking about Patti Smith, and I was thinking about how none of us are making Faustian bargains with the devil, none of us are doing ritual magic to gain influence (not fame necessarily, very important). What has this generation of influential musicians become?
For the record I am a Christian, if it wasn't obvious from how I talk about these things, but that doesn't prevent me wondering. Our grandparents devil music was REAL. The kids now, do they even have devil music? Or is everything just permitted?
I'm not advocating for it at all. I was just kind of wondering about a world lost. A bulwark since broken. That kind of thing.”
FROM A ROLL TOP DESK IN SOME PLACE BEYOND THE POLES:
NICE listener Banjer Jack wrote to us in response to my recent appearance on the show, and I would like to take a moment to reply.
Firstly, Jack makes a great distinction in his post between FAME and INFLUENCE. Very poolhousepilled. Fame is far easier to quantify than Influence. I would argue Influence can be a righteous pursuit, while Fame is less so.
As I stated on the program, I do not feel ‘ritual magic’ is inherently dark-sided, because in theory such practices may be in alignment with Nature & Creation. In fact, a heretical Gnostic™ like myself might interpret the Mission of Christ as a type of theurgic ritual (magic as embodied performance), as well as an influence operation, one that was perhaps thwarted when the Church was formed to elevate the Medium over the Message.
Fame, a form of Idolatry, IS rather dark-sided. I do not believe Jesus of Nazareth sought infamia, but Patti Smith sure as hell did. Her ambitions are clearly stated on the song, “Piss Factory:”
I'm gonna go on that train and go to New York City
I'm gonna be somebody, I'm gonna get on that train, go to New York City,
I'm gonna be so bad I'm gonna be a big star and I will never return,
It is for this reason that “Fame” is the jurisdiction of the Deceiver, the darkly Prince of the World.
Jack observes that perhaps the sincerity, the bite, of today’s music has waned. “Our grandparent’s devil music was REAL,” he writes. Indeed, going back to the great blues prodigy and grandaddy of Rock n Roll, Robert Johnson, the electric sound of rock music has long been associated with the devil’s trident. It is said that Johnson traded his soul to the Devil at the crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, receiving the blueprints for the next century of popular music in exchange for his immortal spirit.
Perhaps this is a deal which needs only to be renewed periodically? Is it possible that individual bargains are not required at all, that instead each generation finds its own tribute to be paid to the Principalities? Were Buddy, Richie, and Bopper offered up as tribute, a part of the periodic re-consecrating of Johnson’s original bargain? Was Patti Smith’s alchemical treatise HORSES yet another a renewal of rock’s lease, a guarantee that its influence as the dominant cultural religion would extend into the waning decades of the 20th century?
If so, it would (at first) seem no one was up to the task of renewing this contract for the 21st century. To Jack’s point, rock is dead, and the (electric)shock value has lost its edge. Musicians listlessly appropriate satanic imagery hoping for controversy, only to be largely laughed at.
But perhaps the lack of shock is indicative of the ascendancy of cultural satanism in our world today. Surely, today’s savvy artists know that “satanic panic” is not going to pay the same dividends it did prior to the 1980s. Why still go through the trouble? Could it be that the Devil himself presides over all of the music produced today - not just the (nonexistent) rock music, but the pop and rap and EDM etc etc markets as well? Could the inclusion of satanic motifs in popular music be less about shock value, and seen instead as a literal tribute to the embodiment of their industry’s religion?
In other words, did Patti Smith do such a good job at consecrating rock music as the religion of the new age, that such Faustian bargains are no longer needed on an individual basis? Did Patti not simply sell her own soul, but the soul of the World as well?
At the very least, it would seem that the young rising talents of today need not go through the directorate of Hades himself. Dark sided ritual magic seems to take place more openly and more frequently than ever before: I am thinking here of the mysterious tragedy of Astro (Astral) World. Would Travis Scott actually need to sell his soul to the devil directly? Or did the devil outsource Kris Jenner as his proxy for such contracts?
It would seem that the world has plunged only deeper into the spectacles of desire, pleasure, and sin in the decades since HORSES.
There is one other possible reading I will leave you with. Perhaps Patti Smith, herself a one time disciple of Christ, sought not to sell the world out, but to purify it. To stop the slow bleed out of beauty and nature. For the world was on its descent into Hell long before she was alive. Perhaps HORSES was not an act of tribute to the dark prince, but an act of FORGIVENESS. An attempt at redeeming the devil’s tritone and the darkly tantalizing products which rock music had wrought. A poetic act meant to synthesize the two formative influences of her young life: Scripture and rock n roll.
As Jack mentions, it can be difficult for the pure-hearted to even listen to such devilish music that reeks of “the stench of money.” However, I offer that it is possible for us to FORGIVE the sweet songs of the trespasses of their creators. This does not mean to ignore the treachery that is baked into every product of the music industry, but to ACCEPT it, to offer it love REGARDLESS of its forebears, in order to restore the SACRED VALUE which is the true basis of all art.
Such an act might be akin to Christ’s response to the Biblical woman taken in by adultery. Perhaps I should be ignored here, as again I am a known heretic. But I do wonder as I contemplate this - can rock n roll be saved? Does the path to the kingdom of heaven exist OUTSIDE OF SOCIETY, and its trapping, or is its access to be found THROUGH the trappings of the World?
It has always fascinated me, this moment in John 8:8 when, after chastising his disciples for criticizing the adulterous woman, Christ kneels down beside her and writes something on the ground. What WAS it that he inscribed there? Is it possible that it was his review of Patti Smith’s HORSES?
TLDR:
Pursuing influence - GOOD (if pure + true)
Striving for fame - BAD
Ritual magic - NEUTRAL
Faustian bargain - BAD
the products of Faustian bargains - POTENTIALLY REDEEMABLE
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