The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

Dad-- Our phone conversation was interrupted, and I wanted to finish explaining that video you asked me about, because I think it's important. The ceremony I've developed is in three parts: a rite of transformation, a rite of purification, and a rite of atonement. Each prepares you for the rigors of the next. Working with the song "Oh Comely" is the first and hardest part of that atonement rite. What you're witnessing in that video is me paying penance. Penance for what? For the godawful genocides of the last five centuries. Why am I doing that? Because my visions indicate that it's our failure to come to grips with the evils we've collectively committed that has brought us to the brink of civilizational destruction and perhaps human extinction.  It's more complicated than that, of course, but that'll do for now. And so, to face up to what's been done and try to make things right, to buy us a future, I've devised what you ...

This isn't perfect, but hopefully it will get better with time and thought. Imagine you are watching a movie on your tablet. Pa, the masculine aspect of the Godhead, is the information of which the movie is composed, the all-the-sand-grains-on-all-the-beaches-in-the-world number of 1's and 0's, and all the abstruse patterns and operations that organize and control the qualities and position of every pixel on the screen. Ma, the feminine aspect of the Godhead, is the story conveyed in the images and sounds constituted from Pa. She's also the psychology of the characters, the situational tension, the subtext of the dialogue, all the aesthetic decisions involved in creating the movie's costuming, set dressing, lighting, editing, etc., etc., etc. Kid A, the Self, is the node on the Divine Network where Pa and Ma combine to create an experience of meaning and aesthetic emotion. Yeah, it needs some work. But I do love labeling the Self "Kid A"! Why? ...

Essential reading for the aspiring phonomancer. Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock 'n Roll.

Note: I maintain that one of the things that makes phonomancy remarkable is that it trains you to remain completely lucid while under the psychic load of superheroic doses of substantia . To gather evidence for this claim, I've long had a practice of shooting video during ceremonies. Lately my approach has been to do my visionary work in the dark, then turn on a bright light--a photographer's lightbox--so I can speak directly into the camera and explain what's going on in my head. What follows is a transcript of the comments I made between songs during last Saturday's ceremony. It's a useful document of my evolving method and visionary mythos. It's also eyewitness testimony to how effing weird it is to be seized by the Unconscious in this way, to be made a prophetic mouthpiece for the archetype of the Self in its aspect as the Herald. Recorded at 37:45, after the song "Moonage Daydream": I learned a really useful lesson. You can ask to see what...

The visions that come to me in ceremony are essentially dreams that I experience while wide awake. Like dreams, they evanesce quickly--if you don't record them immediately upon returning to "normal" consciousness (using that term advisedly, obvs), the details become blurry, or maybe you'll forget the experience altogether. That's where shooting video of ceremonies comes in handy. In between every song I work with, I pause to explain to the camera what just happened, how I'm feeling about it, and what's coming up next. That way I have a detailed record of events. The next day--or five days later--I can review the footage to refresh my memory about something, and sometimes even discover that I'd talked about an experience I didn't remember until that moment. The problem is this results in a lot of material. Imagine if you could wake up to write down a complete narrative for every dream you had in the course of an evening. Not only would you be...