Hi there Steemers!
Today I'm bringing one of the most mysterious legends of the history of rock and roll.
It is not clear and almost impossible to track the origins of Jimmy Page's fondness for the occult. But if someone is risponsible for Jimmy's relationship with the esoteric, it is Aleister Crowley.
Aleister Crowley
He was a powerful occultist, writer, poet, painter and English ceremonial magician, akaFrater Perdurabo and, his own mother favorite pseudonym, The Great Beast 666.
It is said that Aleister, at age eight, gave arsenic and chloroform to a cat, put it in an oven, burned it and skinned it alive.
According to Crowley himself, his wife Rose, went into a trance and was possessed by the devil, who dictated the book "Liber Al Vel Legis" or "Book of the Law", whose basic idea is "Do what you want", which would give rise to the religion Thelema, a philosophy of life based on the maxims "do your will: it will be the whole law", and "love is the law, love under will". Later he founded the Abbey of Thelema in the town of Cefalu in Sicily.
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The Thelemic counterculture anticipated what would later be the hippie movement, similar in its mix of sexual freedom, experimentation with drugs, meditation, mixture of Eastern and Western cults, etc., although, given Crowley's advance, he was criticized due to his bisexuality and experimentation with drugs. Note that the principle of the movement (very small) occurred in Britain during the time of Queen Victoria.
The Beatles included it on the cover of their album "Sgt Pepper". The Rolling Stones' song "Simpahy for the Devil" was inspired by him. David Bowie talks about him on his album "Hunky Dory", and many other artists have given him immortality.
The Immigrant Song
The main legend that hovered over Led Zeppellin was that Jimmy Page had convinced the band to sell their soul to the devil.
The first clear reference of the group towards Crowley, we find it in his disc "Led Zeppelin III" in the song "The Immigrant Song", where it can be heard the supreme law of Crowley "Do What You Wilt".
The Boleskine Mansion
In August 1889, Aleister Crowley bought the Boleskine House; an old church of the 17th century on the shores of Loch Ness, consumed by a fire, with the parish priest and the parishioners inside, howling with terror. Crowley lived there for a few years and practiced various rituals, including sacrifices.
In 1971, Jimmy Page, in his madness to follow the sorcerer, bought this mansion, where the legend says that multiple black rituals and sacrifices were made.
The first night Jimmy spent in this house, he closed the door, turned off the lights, and when he first walked into his bedroom, he heard something pounding, bouncing off the floor. In the morning he spoke with the housekeepers, who dodged his questions and changed the subject. As he walked away, he heard them mutter: "Damn. Another one who hears the head roll."
Zoso & Runes
According to the legend, Page convinced the others to sign a "blood pact" that would attract fame, wealth and unlimited talent, and that the only one who refused to sign was the bassist John Paul Jones.
When the recordings of "Led Zeppelin IV" finished, Jimmy Page showed the rest of the group The Book of Signs, and asked each member to choose a symbol to represent them individually. John Bonham chose a symbol that reminded him of the inverted logo of his favorite beer brand, the Ballantine. The pen inside the circle of Robert Plant represented Ma'at, the Egyptian goddess of truth. __John Paul Jones'__symbol was used to exorcise evil spirits. In the end, it is said that Page ordered to design his own badge, a symbol that included the word "Zoso".
According to some research, this symbol was originally drawn in 1557 by the occultist J. Cardan. In the same way, in the section "Planetary Symbols" of the 1982 book "Dictionary of Occult, Hermetic and Alchemical Sigils", we find that the planet Saturn is identified with a symbol almost identical to the one used by Cardan in its book. Coincidentally, Jimmy's astrological sign is Capricorn, which is dominated by Saturn.
Stairway to Heaven
Its most famous song, was composed at first in an abandoned cabin in Wales, conditioned by the group to record the album "Led Zeppelin III". The song was finished in Headley Grange, Hampshire, and mixed in Island Studios in London, in December of 1970.
The lyrics, according to researchers, is the initiation to a black mass (it's ironic that the one who wrote it was the lead singer Robert Plant). There were also complaints about the "hidden messages" that could be heard when the song was reproduced backwards, supposedly including alleged diabolical adoration.
Several theories claim that this is due only to a psychological effect called "pareidolia", a psychological phenomenon where a vague and random stimulus is mistakenly perceived as a recognizable form.
Although "Stairway to Heaven" was never released as a single format, it quickly achieved a resounding success inside and outside the UK, and the album "Led Zeppelin IV" managed to rank as the fourth best-selling album in the world. story with more than 23 million copies in the United States alone.
Lucifer rising
In '72, Jimmy Page, met Kenneth Anger, a director with a great reputation in independent, surrealist and occult films; who was also a fan of Aleister Crowley and a member of the * Thelema * religion. Anger wanted Jimmy's money to keep producing his nonsense and he did know how to tell Page what he wanted to hear. When he told him that in the mid-1950s, he had been in Sicily, where Crowley had a famous abbey in the 1920s for his satanic sacrifices, he persuaded Jimmy to put money into his next project: a homage movie to Crowley: __ 'Lucifer rising' __. Jimmy Page would be responsible, of course, for the soundtrack.
The Equinox Library
Jimmy Page was dedicated to continue looking for books about occultism, his secret passion, while dangerously entering the world of heroin. He complained because in London it was very difficult to find bookstores with good books on occultism. So, in October of 1973, he opened a store of magical and secret books, calling it Equinox. The bookstore was filled with exquisite books about occultism from all over the world. Oriental philosophy, kabbala, tarot, etc. Jimmy closed the bookstore in 1978, just the year when, absolutely overwhelmed by drugs, his interest in witchcraft and occult decayed.
The End
What really oversized the black legend of Led Zeppellin were the misfortunes that occurred between 1975 and 1980.
The end began to be forged in 1975, when both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were on vacation in Rhodes with their respective families. Jimmy escaped to Sicily to visit an old Crowley residence, the Abbey of Thelema, the one that director Kenneth Anger had told him about.
The next day, the Plant family suffered a car accident in which Robert was seriously injured and almost cost the life of his wife, Maureen.
The fatal coincidence did not end here: on July 26, 1977, Karac Plant, the youngest son of Robert and Maureen, died of a mysterious and fulminating stomach infection. This was a terrible blow for Plant, which plunged him into a terrible depression. But it was also for Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones did not attend the boy's funeral, only John Bonham did.
After the failed attempt to return in an astonishing way in Knebworth in 1979, came the final stab that would end the legendary band: the death of John Bonham, at Page's home in Windsor, drowned in his own vomit after eating forty glasses of vodka.
Jimmy was always obsessed with a Crowley poem:
'I have dreamed many times that I was imprisoned because of a deadly fight against myself. God and Lucifer were killed for my soul for three long hours. God, finally, won. But, constantly, I have a big question: which of the two was God? '.
Sources:
• https://www.taringa.net/posts/info/8992470/Los-20-misterios-del-rock.html
• https://www.taringa.net/posts/offtopic/16862166/Aleister-Crowley-el-Rock-y-el-Ocultismo.html
• https://www.ranker.com/list/crazy-led-zeppelin-stories/harrison-tenpas
• http://elfanzine.tv/jimmy-page/
• http://fasenlinea.tripod.com/el_esoterismo_y.htm