[Excerpt] Rock Magic: Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, And a search for the elusive Stairway to Heaven
by William Burroughs, Crawdaddy Magazine, June 1975.
“I summarized my impressions after the concert in a few notes to serve as a basis for my talk with Jimmy Page.
“The essential ingredient for any successful rock group is energy–the ability to give out energy, to receive energy from the audience and to give it back to the audience. A rock concert is in fact a rite involving the evocation and transmutation of energy.”
The Led Zeppelin show depends heavily on volume, repetition and drums. It bears some resemblance to the trance music found in Morocco, which is magical in origin and purpose–that is, concerned with the evocation and control of spiritual forces. In Morocco, musicians are also magicians. Gnaoua music is used to drive out evil spirits. The music of Joujouka evokes the God Pan, Pan God of Panic, representing the real magical forces that sweep away the spurious. It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts–music, painting and writing–is magical and evocative; and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result. In the Led Zeppelin concert, the result aimed at would seem to be the creation of energy in the performers and in the audience. For such magic to succeed, it must tap the sources of magical energy, and this can be dangerous.”
Animism (from Latin anima, “breath, spirit, life”) is the worldview that non-human entities, such as animals, plants, and inanimate objects, possess a Spiritual Essence. In a future state this Soul or Spirit would exist as part of an Immaterial Soul. The Spirit, therefore, was thought to be Universal.
Animism is used in the anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of some indigenous tribal people, especially prior to the development of organized religion. Although each culture has its own different mythologies and rituals, “Animism” is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples’ “Spiritual” or “Supernatural” perspectives. The Animistic perspective is so fundamental, mundane, everyday and taken-for-granted that most Animistic indigenous people do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to it.
Animism encompasses the belief that there is no separation between the Spiritual and Physical (or Material) World, and Souls or Spirits exist, not only in humans, but also in some other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, including thunder, wind, and shadows. Animism thus rejects Cartesian Dualism. Animism may further attribute Souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names, or metaphors in Mythology.
Occult Aspects 