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After the live mini CD "Hitler as Kalki," the compilation double- CD "Emblems: The Menstrual Years" and the CD-rerelease of the "Swastikas for Noddy" album as "Swastikas for Goddy," David Tibet finally made his ever-growing following of fans happy in the beginning of the year with a new album. "Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre" (Durtro/Discordia) is the first new album since the splendid work "Thunder Perfect Mind" from '92 and above all, in poetic hindsight, a further masterwork by the former Crowley- follower and current "Apocalyptic Folk" artist. Dirk Hoffmann visited David Tibet at home in London and spoke with him about his life and work, about Buddhism and Christian mysticism, Hitler and fascism, dreams and eschatological fears, magick and future plans.
Before the first albums by Current 93 appeared, "Nature Unveiled"
and "Dogs Blood Rising" in 1984, David Tibet had already behind
him an eventful life that already gave grounds for various
speculations. After David spent a large part of his youth in
Malaysia, he returned to England at 14 years old and later
studied politics and history at the University of Newcastle. Up
to this time he listened to T-Rex, Alice Cooper, David Bowie,
Black Sabbath and bought "Raw Power" from Iggy and the Stooges in
1973. But already in Newcastle David came into contact with the
scene with which, it is true, he has no more to do with
musically, but whose cofounders are still some of his best
friends.
"I think the first that I heard that you would today call
industrial or avant garde was "Dead on Arrival" by Throbbing
Gristle that a friend at Uni recommended. When I went regularly
to Virgin in Newcastle, Andrew McKenzie from The Hafler Trio and
Ben from Zoviet France worked there, and Andrew recommended two
more good groups: Nurse With Wound and Whitehouse, whose "Total
Sex" album I then bought. I then wrote to Steven Stapleton and
John Fothergill from Nurse With Wound and bought the album
"Insect and Individual Silenced" from 1981," remembers David.
Not only his fascination for experimental industrial bands shaped
the musical development of Current 93. Tibetan singing and
Gregorian chorales had already made quite an impression on the
young David, and he had already been exposed for ten years to
Aleister Crowley, the magus, born in 1875, who, although one must
describe him as a charlatan, instinctively realized that magick
in some sort of way hung together with the human will and, to
boot, with the deep, instinctive will of the human. Influenced
by the horrible visions of the Apocalypse, Crowley sympathized
with the enemy of Heaven, the dragon, the false prophets, the
"Beast" and the Scarlet Woman, until he identified himself with
"To Mega Therion," the "Beast" whose number "which is that of a
person's" is namely 666.
During a visit to Switzerland, Crowley learned from an initiate
(George Cecil Jones) of the existence of the "Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn" in London, which he was taken into in 1898.
After he was refused there the second highest degree, he entered
in 1912 the English branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (sic)
(O.T.O.), which was founded in 1902 by the "Freemason-brothers"
Karl Kellner, Heinrich Keim and Theodor Reiss and taught above
all, next to the secrets of the Freemasons, the Illuminati and
the Rosicrucians, sex magick.
Crowley occupied himself with the Qaballa, the I Ching, and Tarot
and founded in 1920 in Sicily the Abbey of Thelema, in which he,
with his followers, strove for magickal, sexual-occult and drug-
influenced experiences, in which an excessive bisexual love life
was meaningful for his understanding of magick. After his death
in 1947, one remembers Crowley as a person whose arrogance,
theatricality and overestimation of his own abilities was
ridiculous and unbearable.
David Tibet became aware at ten years old of the paperback
edition of Crowley's novella "Moonchild" at the airport in
Malaysia. In the novella, a young girl is involved in a magickal
war between two men, a lunar intelligence reaches incarnation in
unforeseeable ways, and the most important French and English
occultists of the beginning of the Twentieth Century are made to
look ridiculous. When David's homosexual religion teacher, who
felt a special affection towards the boy, discovered the book, he
did everything possible to initiate him into magickal practice
and theory. Seeing as David's letters were intercepted by the
school director, his writings to the various magickal
organizations stayed unanswered.
"Later I was interested in people like Manson, Huysmans,
Baudelaire and other French poets. When I then went to Uni, I
began to collect records from Nurse With Wound and Whitehouse.
When I went to London, I didn't think about starting some sort of
band. I liked the music, but my main interest was aimed at
Tibetan Buddhism. But then I got to know Genesis P-Orridge who
integrated me into Psychic TV, and then I got to know all the
other people because the scene in London around this kind of
music has always been very small. When you know Steve Stapleton
then you will definitely run into John Fothergill, William
Bennett, 23 Skidoo, Cabaret Voltaire and all these people,"
describes David his further development.
Meanwhile, David's interest in Aleister Crowley stayed unbroken.
From the technical term "the 93rd Current" that signified
Crowley's religion "Crowleyanity," David, John Balance (Coil),
and Fritz Haaman (23 Skidoo) formed the band name Current 93, in
which the numerical value 93 stood for the true "word" of the
Aeon: ALLALA (= God not nothing).
"When I started Current 93, I was a member of the O.T.O., the
Crowleyesque organization. Crowley's philosophy is the 93rd
Current, technically speaking, but in the first place Current 93
was to me a nice, anonymous name, a bit mysterious. I had, of
course, myself studied Crowley, but I couldn't name myself "Do
what you will" or "Tantra for everyone." The name Current 93 was
in this respect already funny because even people who thought
they were close to Crowley didn't know what the "93rd Current" is
because it is a completely specialized term. But if people have
really studied Crowley, then they know that "93rd Current" is
Crowley's religion," said David succinctly.
With "LAShTAL," the 12" released in 1983, David paid his idol the
biggest tribute. In David's opinion, it is the only true occult
recording from Current 93, being based on the invocation of
Malkunofath. The meaning of the term "LAShTAL" is deciphered
through the qaballistic numerology, according to which "LAShTAL"
contains the combination (ShT) of LA (the maternal principle of
the Tree of Life) and AL (the paternal principle). The two
pieces on the debut Maxi, "LAShTAL" and "Salt," which are
included on the '92 CD rerelease of the '84 album "Nature
Unveiled," reach their mystical intensity above all from a
ritual-repetitive rhythm which has an authentic character
throughout.
Although David left the O.T.O. after a twelve-year membership and
today does not speak well about Aleister Crowley, like Crowley,
he has stayed fascinated even to this day with the Christian
Apocalypses, which arose in a time (the high point of their being
written down occurring approximately between the 200 years before
and the 100 years after Christ) when the "Word" was not yet used
the means of relinquishing one's own spirit, but still rested in
the material world because the conception of the world was not
yet broken into a spiritual and material world, and reality and
imagination still flowed through each other.
The Apocalypses offer an artfully composed mix of legends and
tradition, of putative or true vision and fantasy and are a
Jewish literary genre, which transmit ancient knowledge and
traditional wisdom.
Through the announcement of the impending end of the world, they
should nurture the hope of the end of all distress and call upon
people to conversion. Various cultural influences are perceptible
in them: Persian-iranian roots come in the portrayal of two
aeons, in the cosmic dualism with the opposition of divine and
satanic power, in the believe in angels and demons, and in the
expression of the teachings of the Resurrection. Hellenism
shaped the division of the underworld. The Babylonians supplied
the numerology and the astrological knowledge, and from the
Egyptians stemmed the worshiping of the sun as the symbol of God.
In visionary, mysterious images, the Apocalypses attempt to
describe the arrival of the second, the divine aeon, the glory of
the next world, and the radiance of the divine throne after the
first, earthly aeon is destroyed. Although time of the end of
the world is nowhere clearly named, it is clear that this end is
imminent, and, although the Apocalypses had the goal of
encouraging Jews, and later the Christians, in their plight and
of consoling them through the expectation of the close end of the
world and rule of God, the fear of the sufferings of Hell, and
the longing for a peaceful world, shaped by justice and love, has
lost none of its appeal today, in a time when religious fanatics
at the end of the second millennium now announce once more the
end of the world.
"Historically seen, the voices that prophesy the end of the world
become always become louder when a millennium comes to an end. I
have been studying this theme for approximately 15 years and have
read many books over the subject. Through this I have realized
that in difficult times, the people constantly think that the end
of the world is nigh. A good basis for that, that the end of the
world won't come, is the end of the last millennium, when the
people complained that there were so many rapes, murders, and
wars, that Jesus must return soon. Things today stand similarly
bad, but nonetheless people today have a by far greater fear that
the world is threatened by a scourge, if you start from inner
feelings. For a thousand or two hundred years people have also
fought each other and brought about blood baths, but they didn't
destroy the planet. The damage that they brought about limited
itself to other people and the cities that they built. Today we
have the possibility to obliterate all life on the earth. The
air pollution, the clearing of the forests, etc, do not just
reduce the quality of life, they are also responsible for AIDS
and cancer," believes David. "I just finished a forward to a
book of lyrics that I will publish soon. In it I described that
15 years ago, when I founded Current 93, I had a bunch of these
ideas in my head and really hoped that the end of the world would
soon break out. I had the feeling that it would mean a good end
for all, but I didn't believe that it would happen. In the
meantime I think that it will in fact happen soon, perhaps not in
our lifetime but nevertheless fairly soon. Also, various
prophecies like those of the Tibetans, Hindus, Christians and
Muslims stress that certain generations, that we are living
through partially right now, are designated to live through the
end of the world.
The voices regarding this are certainly always growing louder
than would correspond with the actual circumstances, but there is
sometimes a minority of religious fanatics who transfer their
fears to a wide mass of people."
Dirk Hoffmann
(translation by Renee Rosen <lilitu@cjnetworks.com>)
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