The Laughing Gnostic: David Bowie and the Occult

The Cut-Up method: "Inspirations have I none"

The cut-up technique was originally devised by the Surrealists who called it automatic writing or cadavre exquis, and later reassembled by Brion Gysin and most famously used in literature by William S. Burroughs: you take a text, cut it into pieces, reassemble these pieces haphazardly, and thus create something new.

Because Bowie used the cut-up technique to 'write' many of his lyrics there is not much sense in trying to analyse them as a whole or each lyric individually word by word: instead one has to focus on the recurring images and codes that appear in the entire "David Bowie" 'opus', which connote his kind of gnosticism. Bowie defined his use of the cut-up method as his way of discovering his own past and future. He himself became a cut-up himself too - at least for those who followed his career closely throug the years - these followers were (and still are) confronted by reflections of themselves in the splintered facettes that make up Bowie's often odd-sounding lyrics; in Bowie's ever-changing styles of fashion images; in Bowie's constant name-dropping of keywords of books whenever a micro or a pencil of a journalist was and is at hand. It's probably also worth pointing out that he talks in fractals.

“I don’t necessarily know what I’m talking about in my writing,” he told Charles Shaar Murray. “All I do is assemble points that interest me and puzzle through it. That becomes a song, and people who listen to that song must take what they can from it and see if information they’ve assembled fits in with anything I’ve assembled.”
Does Bowie simply hide that he has nothing to say as Nico opined in 1969?: “I was not jealous of his intelligence — he is entirely superficial, which is why he never knows what to look like. Or what music to make. Or whether to be a boy or a girl.”

From the Dick Cavett Show, December 4, 1974:
Cavett: "Do you want to be understood? You know what I mean... like Ziggy Stardust was...
Bowie: "There’s absolutely nothing to understand. I mean..."

The cut-up method makes it largely irrelevant whether or not Bowie is conscious of himself as a Gnostic; that is, whether he knowingly expresses himself in Gnostic terms - or whether he is hiding it ("in an all time low").

The Cabbala combines several factors: the analytical and linguistic aspects of it have certainly proved of interest to the erudite side of Bowie's character, while another part of him has been drawn to the meditative Cabbala, where one immerses oneself in the Divine attributes of words and numbers to ascend spiritually. There is also a physical way of Cabbalistic working, the 'Ecstatic Cabbala', which involves exercises in breathing and movement, as well as chanting and singing.

Cabbala became "the new religion of Hollywood" in the 1990's, as stars like Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall and Roseanne Barr took up what had previously been a highly recondite subject.

Bowie turned into a Gnostic who gave out Gnosis, a theme which constantly recurs in his live performances, lyrics, and music; for instance in his rôle as the messianic alien Ziggy Stardust (1971-1973), or as the 'Hanged Man' from the Tarot in his 1987 shows - or else in the photographs where he appeared with stigmata and a halo (1998).

One word about sources

As the regular, commercial Bowie recordings mainly mirror the marketing strategies of his producers and record-companies, I have based this article mostly on bootleg recordings of his live concerts, or on studio recordings which were never released commercially. I feel that artists tend to express themselves more freely on stage (even though stage performances are the main source of income for many musicians), as opposed to when the artist is being supervised in a recording-studio by a producer with an eye on the market-place. So for legal reasons, I obviously cannot reproduce the exact sources for most of the material used herein. My advice to the interested reader is to buy as many Bowie records as possible!

"The Laughing Gnome"

Without his all-consuming depressions ("hitting an all time low") Bowie's personæ would be a lot harder to understand, and ultimately be of little interest to any researcher, however dedicated. In fact, Bowie is more of a Gnostic than an artist - much, obviously, to his chagrin, as he wants to be known as an artist first and foremost. At the early age of 16, in about 1963 [? some say this song dates from 1971], Bowie penned the lyrics to his song 'I'm tired of my life', in which he sketched out his future career: "I'm trying to decide which game is best for me, which can I bear ... You don't perceive so I'm leading you away". The pattern was the idea of changing identity or thinking up your own identity.

Deciding which game to play is plainly Bowie's habit of changing personæ, or re-inventing his personality. Thus the idea of 'finding himself' showed up in Bowie's stage 'fragments' of such personæ like the Mod and the Bob Dylan phase (1964-1968), Major Tom (1969-1970), Ziggy Stardust (1971-72), Aladdin Sane (72-73), Halloween Jack (Diamond Dog) (1974), The Man Who Fell To Earth (1975), The Thin White Duke (1976), The Svelte Lounge Lizard (1978), Ashes To Ashes (1980), The Elephant Man (1980-81), Serious Moonlight (1983 when he once again claimed to be the real David Robert Jones), Screamin' Lord Byron (Tonight, 1984), Tin Machine (1989), Nathan Adler (1995), Earthling (1997), on the Internet alias Mr Plod (1997) and as Boz in the PC-game Omikron in 1999.

To some degree all these personæ are re-creations of the Pierrot figure, a disguised Gnosis in the form of parody. Bowie has repeatedly appeared on stage (and still stages) as the 'Pierrot in Turquoise', a sort of a Threepenny Pierrot (the colour turquoise connoting "the British symbol of everlastingness" as one of his early teachers gnomically recollected). This figure originated in 1967, when Bowie was a member of Lindsey Kemp's mime company - an environment where everything was apparently tragic, dramatic and theatrical, that is just an extension of his own life. At the same time (circa 1968) he performed in the mime-drama 'The Mask' playing the part of a youth who becomes fatally identified with his painful mask, a rôle which Bowie would later repeat as "Ziggy Stardust" who is stifled by his Mask while "making love with his ego" on stage (this is remeniscent of Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Gray' which was later the plot in Bowie's video for the song 'Look Back In Anger').
The 1979 track 'Look Back In Anger' was used as the opening song for many of Bowie's stage performances between 1983 and 1997.

The voiceover of the 1968 pantomime concludes, as the lights dim on the lifeless body: "The papers made a big thing out of it. Funny though - they didn't mention anything about a mask."

The Mask was a concept that Bob Dylan had toyed with in 1964, when he appeared onstage with the words: "I got my Bob Dylan mask on", to which he added "I'm glad I'm not me" in 1966. This was making a plain distinction between searching for an identity, and actually producing it. The reference to the Mask signified a knowledge of how artificial it was as a myth, and how it was a sort of excessive satire. Bowie had outlined his projected career in his 1967 'The Laughing Gnome', where he sang about how he saw himself and Mick Jagger growing new personæ in the future:

'I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me'
'Haven't you got an 'ome to go to?' (No, we're gnomads) ...
And we're living on caviar and honey (hooray!)
Cause they're earning me lots of money

In the German versions of his songs from 1967 as well, the time-table had been arranged, for example in the track 'Mit mir in Deinen Traum' (which translates as 'With me in your dream', which rather contradicts the English original 'When I Live My Dream'. Here he extolled the dreamland where a certain "you" is going to meet Bowie in that "you's" dream.

"He is a symbol of a new age / He glides above the realms of you and me"

Feeling "that the human complex is such an inadequate form of existence", Bowie said that he experienced "an incredible loneliness". He has always styled himself as a creature dwelling in the "human zoo", tattooed with Tarot cards (like Ray Bradbury's 1951 'Illustrated Man'); a 'Karma-Man' (which dates from 1967, and was on the live set list until 1970, talking about Zen-Buddhism while he joined the Tibet Society in 1967 with his then producer Tony Visconti) sitting "on my karma, dame meditation" ('Little Wonder', 1997) and being a 'Silly Boy Blue' (1966, "Child of Tibet", "Mountains of Lhasa") who never leaves his body now and so has "got to wait to die". -- (On the live set list in 2001)
'Dame meditation' most probably refers to the Kundalini, the yogic fire-snake that resides in the genital region, waiting to rise to the yogi's head to enable illumination symbolised by a lotus flower.

Buddhism is a tool to combine diet, drugs (or rather the absence of drugs, as stimulants are not considered to be appropriate indulgences), yoga and sexual techniques.
The Buddha's main objection to alcohol - and indeed to all recreational drugs, was that it befuddles consciousness, thus making mental development difficult. He also often warned against alcohol's negative social effects. Consequently abstaining from all recreational drugs including alcohol is one of the precepts that all Buddhists are expected to practice. But one wonders whether psychedelics would be useful in the practice of Buddhism?
Yoga is one of the preliminary conditions to master the body before using it as a temple. By westerners, Yoga is mistakenly thought to be simply a system of physical exercises to keep the body supple and the mind calm. But the meaning of the word yoga is union and the system was developed by eastern adepts to assist them in attaining union with the source of all being.

Regarding Yoga: I watched a barefoot Bowie sitting in a very difficult Yoga position during his live performance of 'The Man Who Sold The World' (1970) at Zurich on 14th February 1996.

Between 1967 and 1969, it was reported that Bowie slept upright in an antique wooden box, ate only two modest meals a day, and underwent periods of intense silence.
But Zen and Mahayana Buddhism weren't his only tool to expand consciousness and perception.
The hippie era was already over when he parodied it on his album 'Space Oddity'; by 1970 he was smiling "sadly for a love I could not obey" for he was not to become one of those stars with a mundane message who devote their lives "to save a slogan". At a time where he suffered from 11 flop singles, 2 flop albums and has stalked through seven Record Firms (in 1969, his father who was closely involved in his son's career, had died), he was looking for a "new love" and "new words". In his song 'The Cygnet Commitee', Ziggy Stardust again was prefigured: "I gave Them life / I gave Them all ... / I opened doors that would have blocked Their way." Impotence when confronting reality gave birth to fantasies of omnipotence.

"The flaming Dove"

Having already described himself ironically as "the Cream / Of the Great Utopia Dream" and as "a phallus in pigtails" in 1969, by 1971 Bowie was saying "I want to be a Superman"; he expressed these feelings more precisely in his song 'Quicksand': "I'm closer to the Golden Dawn / immersed in Crowley's uniform ... / I'm not a prophet or a stone age man / Just a mortal with potential of a superman."

In the live versions during 1973 the keywords "Golden Dawn" and "Crowley" were left out. It was only in 1997, when Bowie was in the process of floating himself on the stock market, that he started to re-use fragments of his worn-out and discarded personæ again, and 'celebrated' Crowley's 'uniform' as the opener to his live gigs that summer.

Sexmagick was hinted at in 'Holy Holy', 1970:

Listen Lady, let me lie low, lie low with you
To be lie-high-high-high-high-high, my! Oh my!
Slowly, we get too good and too holy
Helping one another, just a righteous brother

["righteous brother" is a term used in masonry and also in the Golden Dawn]

At the same time, he blessed gay culture with lyrics like "He swallowed his pride and puckered his lips / And showed me the leather belt round his hips ... / The snake and I, a venom high." ('The Width of a Circle', 1970).

Homosexuality was also hinted at in songs like 'Lady Stardust' (= Marc Bolan in 1970), 'Queen Bitch' (= Lou Reed in 1971), 'Looking for a friend' (Freddi Burretti, Bowie's costume designer), 'Scream like a Baby' (1979, where 'Sam' was like a gun), 'Hallo Spaceboy' (which in 1995, the date of the song, was the name of a S&M club in Amsterdam) and many others.

"Boys Keep Swinging"

In 1971, Bowie stated that he wanted music to be "tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. ... It should be the clown, the Pierrot medium" and so he introduced his androgynous gender-bender persona, as his lovers Romy Haag, Amanda Lear, as well as his wife Angie Bowie were able to observe at first hand - and to the admiration of his audiences.
While spending his time gazing into crystal balls and communicating with the spirit-world through a Ouija board, Bowie developed the persona of an androgynous messiah-figure who would blueprint the music scene of the 1970s and who would question accepted notions of truth and authenticity - especially where sexuality and pop/rock music running counter to everything deemed 'natural' was concerned. This undoubtedly fed Bowie's desires for 'folie de grandeur' and an aesthetic of excess, both of which might be used to re-create the self as a manufactured object - and which would mean the replacement of God as the creator.
But what about the occult world view, where sex is sometimes viewed as neither male nor female, but as a state of mind?
And eventually, for the audience 'Bowie' became like LSD in the water supply.

Ziggy Stardust - our fine, feathered friend
Who he?

In Bowie's visionary performance, the story went that civilization was going to collapse and the 'Infinites' would arrive. Ziggy Stardust (a sort of a Golem, "your face, your race, the way that you talk / I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk") was advised to announce the coming of these 'starmen' bringing hope. Ziggy is their prophet, the messiah who takes himself to incredible spiritual heights, and is kept alive by the devotion of his disciples. When the Starmen finally arrive, they take bits and pieces of Ziggy so that they can manifest themselves as real physical beings. Eventually they tear him to pieces on stage during the performance of the song 'Rock'n'Roll Suicide'. At the moment of Ziggy's death, the Starmen take on his essence, and become visible.

In his book 'Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy' (Bollingen Foundation, published by Princeton University Press, 1964), Mircea Eliade recorded a Yakut shaman stating that as a rule the prospective shaman 'dies' and lies in their yurt for three days without eating or drinking as part of their initiation. The shaman recounted that in former times the candidate went through the ceremony thrice, during which he was cut to pieces. The candidate's limbs were removed and disjointed with an iron hook; the bones were cleaned, the flesh scraped, the body-fluids thrown away, and the eyes torn from their sockets. After this operation, all the bones were gathered up and fastened together with iron. It was also believed that the limbs were distributed among the evil spirits of disease and death. Each spirit devoured the part of the body that was its share; this gave the candidate shaman the power to cure the corresponding diseases. After devouring the whole body the evil spirits departed.
The myth of renewal by fire, cooking or dismemberment has continued to haunt mankind even beyond the spiritual horizon of shamanism. Posing together with Damien Hirst, in 1994 and 1995 Bowie was going to play with the idea of torn apart bodies as Art.

Manicheism was also an important part in Aleister Crowley's "philosophy". Did his slogan "Every Man and Woman is a Star" lead to Bowie's Starman, Ziggy Stardust, the Rock'n Roll Star of the 1971-73 Ziggy-Incarnation?

"I was very aware of the idea of androgyny or an unknown gender being attached to most priesthoods in the East... Those original shamans have mutated into the entertainer ... that's where I was at in the early '70s," Bowie recalled in 'Interview' September 1995.

"I've had my share so I'll help you with the pain"

"It's the process that matters, isn't it? Rather than getting your information - or redemption - easily and directly you must go through this long stubborn painful trek. As with alchemy, the end result isn't as important as the long process whereby all the inessential aspects of "you" have been stripped away ..." [1995]

While Bowie had sexual intercourse with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, his closest friend Marc Bolan (originally one of Ziggy's rôle-models for 'Lady Stardust' already in 1970 where Bowie sang "songs of darkness and dismay") celebrated libertine Gnose: "I got a Rolls-Royce 'cause it's good for my voice".
It's plain that Bowie and his coevals either neglected or ignored the ascetic aspect of Manichean practice (who avoided activities tending to disperse the Light/Divine Sparks) and sought their salvation/health/cure of souls via Optimum through Maximum. Or, as Bowie sang later in Bertolt Brecht's 'Baal' in 1981: "He will have his sky down there below"

When the stage shows in 1972 and 1973 opened with Beethoven's 'Freude Schöner Götterfunken' [Ode to Joy], it seemed that the musicians in his band, The Spiders from Mars, had found 'God' as well; but through the medium of Scientology. [Beethoven also was used in 1990 as the opener].

Scientology and Crowleyanity have more in common than at first appears, as readers of Michael Staley's article The Babalon Working can learn.

In the end Ziggy Stardust had to die for real, as Bowie dropped Ziggy and sought out a new persona in his search for a mainstream audience; for a time he appeared to be 'going straight', but this was when the human being called David Bowie encountered cocaine. Bowie has always been described as a hyperactive personality with a very low attention-span. Maybe Gnosticism has a physical parallelism in people whose brains are under-stimulated by a lack of dopamine, a condition which impairs the 'censoring' or controlling functions of the fore-brain. People suffering from such lapses in concentration compensate for the lack of internal mental stimuli with apparently purposeless activities, while remaining hyperactive, restless and scatter-brained. Similarly, there are cocaine addicts who suffer from a hyperkinetic disorder, and need the drug to compensate for their feelings of 'emptiness'. Like music, drugs may serve as providers of creativity and productiveness, by inducing changed constants of perception and behaviour - which in turn leads to changes in expressions of creativity. Too much Dopamin (Levipoda, L-Dopa) also can be seen in the context of schizophrenia and the believe in the 'paranormal', that is seeing meanings between things as in Cabbala.

"And in the death ..."

In the biggest stage show ever mounted in rock history (the show stage was based on the expressionist designs of "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari"), in 1974 Bowie presented himself as 'Halloween Jack' with his own face as a Japanese Kabuki-Mask, on which yet another persona was painted: Aladdin Sane (A Lad Insane).
An unreleased track from this time is called 'A Lad In Vain'.

Everything became a mirror. In 1993, Bowie took up to spray Aladdin Sane's red-blue zig-zag lightning-flash directly onto his face for portraits on the cover of lifestyle magazines, e.g. for "Q".

The song 'Cracked Actor' appeared on the live set again in 1999 and 2000.

Reported to be heavily addicted to cocaine by the end of 1974, Bowie had his band introduce him with a 1969 song's lyrics: "The Sun machine is coming down" and underlaying now new songs like 'Who Can I be Now' ("can I be real?") and 'It's Gonna Be Me' ("be holy again") with dancemusic ("For you're dancing where the dogs decay, defecating ecstasy") in the most surging 'party/disco' style - which worked surprisingly well - unlike Bowie's attempts at dancing, which were stiff and jerky.
Lester Bangs reviewed this performance as a "parody of a parody".

In 1975, he was undoubtedly talking to himself while duetting with the sex icon Cher in 'Can you hear me?' In February that year Bowie insisted "that Hitler was a terrible military strategist but his overall objective was very good." It was clear that he was living in other realms.

In May 1993 he professed in "Q": "I honestly have no idea what I thought between 1975 and 1977."

Bowie was reading Madame Blavatsky and Gurdjieff, he met the Crowleyite Kenneth Anger, and soon would develop a new alter ego: the emotionless Aryan superhuman called The Thin White Duke - or maybe the god Set?

“I had this more-than-passing interest in Egyptology, mysticism and the cabala. At the time it seemed transparently obvious what the answer to life was. My whole life would be transformed into this bizarre nihilistic fantasy world of impending doom, mythological characters and imminent totalitarianism.” (Musician, May 1983.)

Angie Bowie recalled a good deal of occult activity during the subsequent LA period in 1975-76; it was also clear that Bowie was vulnerable to the influence of sycophants and hangers-on while he was heavily into cocaine. It has been alleged that at this time he scribbled frantic cabbalistic calculations on his own correspondence, stored his own urine in a fridge, and was obsessed about preventing anyone else getting hold of his nail-clippings and hair-trimmings - as Marianne Faithfull saw. This sort of voodoo superstition - a fear that bodily waste could be used for evil purposes by occult enemies - may also be found in Crowley's more secret teachings.

Rumor has it that Bowie kept his hair and fingernail clippings in the fridge of Michael Lippman’s home where he was living then, so they could not fall into the hands of those he thought wished to put spells on him. Bowie constructed an altar in the living room and he graced the walls with various magick symbols which he hand-painted. Candles burned around the clock, he regularly performed banishing rituals, and he protected his friends by drawing sigils on their hands.
The seventeen-year-old Cameron Crowe allegedly found a stirred-up Bowie burning black candles against an aborted magical ritual during the LA period. Eventually Crowe published several narratives in Rolling Stone and Playboy of Bowie drawing black magick symbols, seeing disembodied beings, thinking he was the Messiah, keeping bottles of his urine in the fridge, etc., etc.
Angie Bowie witnessed her husband exorcising the swimming pool: “When he did the exorcism he cited from one of the books I got for him from the magick store in Hollywood. Some exorcism spell, who knows? I offered to bring in the Greek Orthodox Bishop from Santa Sophia’s Cathedral in Los Angeles. I though I might humilate him into behaving himself, stop doing so much cocaine and have to receive a house visitor; but that didn’t work. David performed the ‘Swimming Pool Exorcism’ himself... in fact, when I found a house in California in Los Angeles, an old Hollywood house with a second-foor solarium with a pentagram painted on the foor, he nearly had a heart attack and said we couldn’t live there! David loves to play weird. He just can’t stand not to be the head Ho Ho.”
Bowie asked someone for a mezuzah, a talisman against demons used by Qabalists. In April 1974, while in London, Angie Bowie received a phone call from her husband in LA, who claimed that he was kidnapped by a magician and two witches who wanted to steal his sperm. Allegedly, they intended him to befather a Baby for Rosemary.
Angie Bowie reacted reluctantly: “Believing he was held captive by a warlock and [***] and he was to inseminate the whatever by All Hallows’ Eve. I told him, I said, w hy did they bother to hold you captive, they just needed to ask. I’m sure you’d have been delighted to [*** ***] AGAIN... I never bought his stories. NEVER. Flying all the way to Los Angeles for him to invent some hallucination, drug-induced, about witches and warlocks... Please!”

There's another anecdote about Bowie's fear of other people magickally using things he touched.

In 1983 and 1984, the late Derek Jarman wanted to do a film called 'Neutron'. Prospects looked really good financially as he had lined up an impressive cast-list and who else than Bowie wanted to play the lead. The two had a meeting in Derek's apartment and everything seemed hunky-dory. But then Bowie suddenly started chain-smoking and Jarman noticed that his guest was getting more and more nervous and was shooting furtive glances at one of his bookshelves plus some drawings on the wall. Then suddenly in the middle of a conversation Bowie stood up, made a lame excuse and left. Twenty minutes later Bowie's driver and bodyguard came back to the flat and said that the master had forgotten something and then proceeded to remove the cigarette-stubs from the trash... Needless to say Bowie backed out of the project which then collapsed. Jarman never did have the time to explain that his John Dee books and the Enochian squares on the wall were souvenirs from the time when he made 'Jubilee', a film in which Dr. John Dee, Elizabeth the First's astrologer, had been one of the main characters.
Dee's 'Enochian' system of magic, with its complex magical diagrams, was an important part of Golden Dawn teachings.

There is a postscript to this story. The producer of 'Twin Peaks' for sentimental reasons bought the rights to 'Neutron'. The project was revived recently. And guess who wants to play the lead?

Here is one of Aleister Crowley's 'secret teachings': "All bodily excrements, such as cut nails, and hair, should be burnt; spittle should be destroyed or exposed to the Sun; the urine and faeces should be so disposed of that it is unlikely that any other person should obtain possession of them." Yet still in March 1987 Bowie was insisting: "I never was in the occult". But for all these years he sang about the 'Jean Genie' who "keeps all your dead hair for making up [witchy] underwear".

"I'll be your king volcano right for you again and again"

The 1976 track 'Station to Station' is a fine example of Bowie's use of occult symbolism. Not only does he refer to Aleister Crowley's book of pornographic poems when he sings of "making sure White Stains", the 'stations' of the title refer to the ten stations of a cabalistic diagram called the 'Tree of Life', where the transcendent aspect of God becomes manifest through ten emanations or spheres (called 'Sefiroth' in Hebrew) from the highest 'Kether' (the crown), to the lowest 'Malkuth' (the kingdom).

Anyone who has the RyKo CD version of 'Station to Station' finds Bowie's photo on the back cover where he's sitting on the floor drawing this so-called Tree of Life with the 10 Sefirots. "Don't look at the carpet / I drew something awful on it", he sang in 'Breaking Glass' in 1977. Some years later, in March 2001 he admitted that this lyric "refers to both the cabbalistic drawings of the tree of life and the conjuring of spirits."

You need magical circles in order to manifest Angels or Demons. The magician stands in one circle and the Angel has to appear in the other.

Also in 'Station to Station' he was "flashing no colour" which hints at his experimentation with the hindu Tattva system which advocates 'colour-flashing' in order to enter the several astral planes contributed to the 5 elements.

This song reappeared in the live set list in 1999, 'Station to Station' he sang again in 1990 and in the Summer 2000.

There is another less serious insight in Bowie's songs that involve a dialogue between Bowie and an 'Angel' (perhaps a sort of Mephistopheles?); there is a strong implication of some kind of Faustian pact, though this isn't immediately obvious.* In 1999 Bowie's posed as 'Mephistopheles' on photographs.

In 1976's 'Golden Years', Bowie sang "I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years, nothin's gonna touch you in these golden years" to an "Angel"; this could be interpreted as the angel and Bowie assuring one another of their thousand year pact... though Angie Bowie remembers this track as a much more conventional love-song, written for her when Bowie was trying to save their failing relationship.
Then there is 'Cat People' from 1981: "See these eyes so green, I can stare for a thousand years; these tears can never dry. Judgement made can never bend." Maybe this is Bowie and his angel telling each other about their millenial pact as mentioned in the Bible, and the hurtful burden of God's condemnation.
You might find this association intriguing: in 'Let's Dance' (1983) the lyric runs "Under the moonlight / the serious moonlight", which bears a resemblance to Aleister Crowley's 'Lyric of Love to Leah' from his diary for 1923: "Come, my darling, let us dance / To the moon that beckons us / Come, my love, let us dance / To the moon & Sirius!" A product of a 'cut-up'? A deliberate play on words? There are semantic connections between the two - as in "If you should fall into my arms / If you say hide we'll hide ..." and Crowley's "To dissolve our soul in trance / Heedless of the hideous / Heat & hate of Sirius." Also compare:
[Demon Dog] Diamond Dogs = Dog Star = Sirius = Serious Moonlight

In 'Station to Station' there is the line "throwing darts in lovers' eyes". In Crowley's system, the dart or arrow is a symbol of direction, and shows the dynamic of True Will - which is not being but going, not individual but universal. The arrow pierces all points simultaneously in a perpetual orgasm; it is tipped with poison, an alkahest capable of dissolving the illusion of separateness.

In Crowley's 'Thoth' Tarot cards, the complementary card to 'The Lovers' is called 'Art', which depicts the flight of this arrow beyond its disintegrative stage. The two figures in 'The Lovers' are now resolved into their synthesis, which is Perfection. The arrow is soaring Beyond, piercing the rainbow. There is no goal, only the dynamic of the flight. The flight is towards Perfection. The House of God is smitten by the Lightning Flash of Illumination, the impact of the Holy Guardian Angel and the Flaming Sword of the Energy that proceeds from Kether to Malkuth. Thence are cast forth two figures representing by their attitude the Hebrew letter Ayin: these are the twins (Horus and Harpocrates) born at the breaking open of the Womb of the Mother (the second aspect of the House of God (or Tarot card 'Tower': symbolic of the ego in its phallic aspect) as "a spring shut up, a fountain sealed").

So perhaps that's why in 1987 the figure of the 'Glass Spider' sings of Bowie's empty river of universal consciousness "Gone, gone, the water's all gone, Mummy come back 'cause the water's all gone". Here 'Mummy' is Ishtar, Aphrodite, Maryam, Arianrhod, Pallas Athene, Venus... and Bowie's future wife Iman.

Since the late 70s Bowie performed his little trademark gesture of reaching above him and then touching the ground while delivering the 'magickal movement from Kether to Malkuth' line, a move that seemed to crop up a whole lot in later videos in all sorts of contexts - even to the point of getting an (apparently) bemused Jagger to follow suit in the clip for 'Dancing in the Streets'.

The Cut Up method and the Occultist's State of Trance

Achieving richly-detailed concretised 'visibility' from trance-images is an experimental procedure; the possibilities of what will be observed coalesce, the vision jumps all over the place, and blends fragments together. Neither the occult nor the cut-up technique would seem to furnish the basis of a secure or well-integrated identity. The instantaneous 'moment' quickly induces a new use for the ears and eyes: 'Sound and Vision' that extend to all that is known, until the perception becomes infinitely complex. This may engender a lack of precise definition of relevant experiences (such as a lack of emphasis on a bearer of a symbol), which enables new comparisons to be made between signs and symbols; and perhaps new laws, and new rhetoric, as the aim of new frameworks. Sounds and visions become the projection of a human being into a state of Gnosis. Through this altered interpretation, there is an increase in reflection, which becomes a metaphor for the continuing stratagems of illumination.

Techniques like these have become popularised through the writings of Aleister Crowley who was once a member of the Golden Dawn, and later of the Ordo Templi Orientis, which was (and still is) deeply involved with sex-magic. In public perception, both the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis are pseudo-masonic organisations where the aspirant (or member) goes through stages of ceremonial initiation wearing semi-Egyptian costumes - like the one Bowie wore for a photo session with Brian Ward in 1969. (See, for example, "David Bowie Black Book" by Miles, London 1980, p. 40, where Bowie is shown giving the occult sign of "as above so below" - otherwise the symbol of 'Baphomet', the old Knight Templar's idol. Or in the photo on the inner sleeve of the CD version of 'Space Oddity' Bowie portrays the Sphinx, an important occult symbol; also on the cover of the bootleg CD 'The Shadow Man').

    

Angie Bowie doesn’t see any occult intentions behind this: “He ran out of photo shoot ideas. We did that one in London in the early 1970s. Natasha Korniloff and Lindsay Kemp’s brains were plundered for every image and every possible costume.” It is rumored that Bowie began developing a Tutankhamun stage project in the early 1970s, but it never got beyond the planning stage.

Let's take a closer look at the line "one magical movement" from 'Station to Station'. To travel from "Kether to Malkuth" in "one magical movement" would mean leaving out three sefiroth that lie between Kether (the Crown) and Malkuth (the Kingdom): Tifereth signifying 'love' or 'beauty', Yesod meaning 'base through union' or 'foundation' - and a hidden sefira: Da'ath which means 'words through the throat' or 'knowledge', a tunnel to the reverse of the Tree of Life, ruled by demons.

Here are we, one magical movement from Kether to Malkuth
There are you, you drive like a demon from station to station

I shall not discuss here the skipping of Tifereth and Yesod (his relationship with Angie Bowie was nearing its end); but the omission of Da'ath, or 'words through the throat' was certainly manifest in the next few years of Bowie's life, when he recorded several albums containing tracks with no lyrics.

Without losing one drop of sweat

Bowie was spouting occult keywords far and wide without any apparent fear of being publicly condemned. "That whole dark and rather fearsome never-world of the wrong side of the brain" as he later called Aleister Crowley's field, was - and is - expressed in complicated wording, as we've seen in the previous analysis of the lyrics in 'Station to Station'.

So were you involved in actual devil worship?
"Not devil worship, no, it was pure straighforward, old-fashioned magic."
The Aleister Crowley variety?
"No, I always thought Crowley was a charlatan. But there was a guy called Edward Waite who was terribly important to me at the time. And another called Dion Fortune who wrote a book called " Psychic self defence". You had to run around the room getting bits of string and old crayons and draw funny things on the wall, and I took it all most seriously, ha ha ha ! I drew gateways into different dimensions, and I'm quite sure that , for myself, I really walked into other worlds. I drew things on walls and just walked trough them, and saw what was on the other side!"
DRUM'N'BASS ODDITY, New Musical Express, February 1997, By Jay Mathews

In circa 1987 he uttered this: "I don't think I ever was particularly in the Occult"

Bowie consistantly denied his occult interests, until the biographies of Angie Bowie, Marianne Faithfull and Amanda Lear were published, and proved that he was interested in the subject. But the public took little or no notice of this in the 1970's, even though Bowie's friends Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull had both been involved in the notorious underground film projects of Kenneth Anger, a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, who had met Bowie in 1975.

Anger's membership is easily demonstrated by the way he signs his private letters with the abbreviation "O.T.O.", and the fact that he is a known associate of the chief of a modern-day American version of the O.T.O., called the 'Caliphate'. In fact, Anger was listed as a member of the 'Caliphate' O.T.O's IXth degree in the group's membership list for 1999 (see details of Crowley's sex-magical system above). A member of Charles Manson's infamous 'Family', Robert Beausoleil, lived together with Anger for some time. Before he took up murdering Hollywood celebrities, Beausoleil had acted the part of Lucifer in Anger's movie 'Lucifer Rising'; when he was sent to prison, he composed the music for the same movie. Kenneth Anger was also instrumental in the founding of Anton LaVey's 'Church of Satan' - and allegedly it was LaVey who played the role of Satan in Roman Polanski's movie 'Rosemary's Baby' (this is in fact not true). Sharon Tate, one of the Family's murder victims, was Polanski's wife.

By now living as a tax-exile in Switzerland, Bowie had scaled down his elaborate and expensive concerts to a minimalist show without a set, instead using white light against a black background; he himself adopted a 1920's look. His friend Iggy Pop, an icon of public self-consummation and consumption (with razors), was seen dancing in the background at these performances. Linked up to a new management and record-company, both Bowie (now rich, but still maintaining an 'arty' profile) and Pop moved to Berlin for a time; there in a seven-roomed flat they numbed their depression with beer and cocaine, and produced voiceless textures of electronic sounds whose style was to influence many rock musicians in the future. Far removed from the public's gaze, Bowie started painting, mostly rather amateurish portraits in the expressionist manner of the 1920's, or else versions of the Cabalistic Tree of Life with its ten spheres/stations and twenty-two paths (corresponding to the Tarot trumps). As mentioned before, one of these occult paintings is shown on the back cover of EMI's 1991 CD re-release of 'Station to Station'.

Bowie recorded 'Low' with Brian Eno; together with Iggy Pop, they "fabricated" the album 'The Idiot', Bowie became "Heroes" (also the song title in between inverted commas), Pop ironically caught sight of the 'Lust for Life' but both remained 'Passengers', headed by Bowie as 'Lodger'. Aimless.
When Bowie sang a duet with Bing Crosby about the 'Peace On Earth', shortly before the latter's death, as a Christmas record in 1976, it was hard to tell their voices apart: suddenly, unaccountably, Bowie had become mainstream.

Breaking Magical Glass

Short outline from the forthcoming book

Davor Zadnek is a practising Thelemite:
If we assume that breaking glass is a mirror or a crystal ball, than I would say that this lyric is most probably about evocation. "Your room" would than hint that it is not usual evocation but the one that uses sex, which is a more powerful and advanced technique. The inclusion of the Tree of Life would probably mean that Bowie is using this "tree" as a basis for his magickal work, perhaps evoking some beings that are closely related to the Tree of Life.
But 'carpet' is usually associated with astral travel (flying carpet in Arab stories). So, this could mean that the practice is not only evocation but also Raising on the Planes (astral travel) used to investigate the Tree of Life. So, this could hint that he is using a combination of both techniques – and many occultists indeed find the combination of both techniques much more effective. Usually they first use Raising on the Planes and than use the connection gained in this way for evocation but there is t he possibility to first use a magickal mirror to get a glimpse of one sphere of the Tree of Life and than use the vision in the mirror to enter that sphere with astral travel. As the second interpretation is in accordance with the succession in the lyric, this would mean that the first part is not about evocation of some particular 'being' but of 'scrying' [explain] certain part of the Tree - or looking at a certain part of the Tree with the magickal mirror and than using those images to astrally enter into this part of the Tree. This is not a common technique but it can be used (and is used) and this second interpretation is in my opinion more in accordance with the song.
But because Bowie uses the word "listen", this could mean that a certain evocation of a being is indeed present as in evocations the beings are usually firstly heard and only than you make a visual connection. But looking at this with the conclusion that we found in the second paragraph, I would say that he is using general scrying of some sphere of the Tree and that first some being(s) "appear" and they first make audible contact but the working is 'concentrated' on the sphere of the Tree and not on a part icular being - so that the 'apperance' of this being(s) is more a contingency than anything else. Than he uses astral travel to intensify the experience of this sphere and make the more definite visual connection – the word "see" could imply that.
I would say that "Oh-oh-oh-oh" means sexual intercourse, so we have another point that this is about sex magick.
The lines "You're such a wonderful person" and "But you got problems" could hint at the experience that he is getting through - first the vision of beatitude in all and then because of the transformative nature of this working, the unconsciousness complexes came to the surface of the consciousness and he sees his problems or project them to him/her. Or it could mean that he gets clairvoyant.
"I'll never touch you" could perhaps mean that Bowie will not hurt him/her or better that he/she is not going to be influenced by all this as this is his personal working and that he/she is not part of it. "Don't look" in "Don't look at the carpet" could mean exactly that - you must be ready for this experience or they might be too much for you, so Bowie is protecting him/her. Crowley used sex magick in this way, as he could not find a suitable partner.
Rabbi Luria's old schema, given pre-eminence in the Golden Dawn and A.'.A.'.. Serious Qabbalah scholars like Gershom Scholem thought Crowley and Mathers (the founder of the GD) were a bunch of swindlers.

Maggie Ingalls, famous in the Thelemic Continuum for expanding Crowley's Thelema in the 70s:
This is an interesting set of lyrics. I read it as a loony accusing his girlfriend of being nuts: ("But you got problems"), which is just a projection of his own mental state. The breaking of glass, in the way he words it (especially with the "again") seems obsessive/compulsive action designed to harm both the girlfriend and himself.
I agree that the first glass that comes to mind is a mirror or crystal ball, but the Tree of Life symbolism leads me to consider that the broken vessels, shells, or shards that are the Qlipoth might be what he means. "Don't look at the carpet" is contradicted by "See!", which suggests that the broken glass is all over the floor.
The last line, "I'll never touch you", can be read as either a threat or a promise. He'll never touch her, but he will create hazardous conditions in her room--he'll never touch her because he thinks she's the crazy one--or he's assuring her that he won't physically assault her--or all of the above?
There do seem to be ritual elements implied, but it feels to me that it's a private ritual invented by the 'speaker' of the words...maybe he's in a moral struggle, his 'angelic' and 'diabolic' aspects locked in combat.

Explanation of the used keywords and more details about the lyrics of "Breaking Glass" in the forthcoming book

"Put a Bullet in my Brain"

Meanwhile, having somehow consumed all potential musical rivals, his sound-tapestries gained lyrics again.

Lou Reed of Velvet Underground fame had been imported by Bowie to the UK from America; Bowie had then produced Reed's famous 'Transformer' Album in 1972, hence making Reed's success largely dependant on Bowie's reputation. That year Bowie wrote songs for one of Britain's most successful bands of the day, Mott the Hoople, as well as producing Iggy Pop's most influental album 'Raw Power'. His name also appeared on albums by Lulu, Mick Ronson, Dana Gillespie, Steeleye Span, The Beatstalkers, Dib Cochran & The Earwigs, Peter Noone, Arnold Corns and many more. As if this were not enough, he had developed a deep friendship with Mick Jagger, recorded or appeared on stage with Gene Vincent, Jeff Beck, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Eno, Rick Wakeman, Cher, Bing Crosby, Marc Bolan, Marianne Faithfull, John Lennon - and re-recorded his songs in Italian, German and French versions - it was obvious Bowie was an 'Artist'. There was hardly any better description of a true gnostic than a "Man who Fell to Earth" (a sci-fi film of 1975, where he starred the main rôle), bringing "Sound and Vision" (1977) or alias Ziggy Stardust saving the world.

But a definite loss of creativity had overshadowed him; all his life Bowie had confined much of his admiration to those who tried to emulate him. By 1979, the whole universe seemed crowded with more or less accurate Bowie-clones, among whom was the opera-singer Klaus Nomi [know me]. As a pure gnostic, Bowie 'consumed' Nomi, by performing with him; both wore stiff plastic Pierrot costumes when they sang 'The Man Who Sold The World', who had "died a long long time ago".

During the Song 'TVC15' Bowie performed a Golden Dawn Posture, called "The Enterer"

    

At this stage Bowie also distanced himself from any taint of fascism - three years before, in 1976 he had been photographed giving something that looked suspiciously like a Nazi salute, and had been overheard muttering "I am the only alternative for Premier in England. I believe Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader. After all, Fascism is really nationalism". It had been reported that Bowie had a strong interest in the saga of King Arthur ("I had this morbid obession with the so-called 'mysticism' of the Third Reich" in the 1970's. "The side of it that fascinated me was the apocryphal tales of the SS coming to England and searching through Glastonbury for the Holy Grail").

Now those Knights had been sent off on a quest for the Holy Grail. In magickal and sex-magical interpretations, this grail is the vagina containing semen and vaginal fluids. Consuming this elixir (the Elixir of Life, as it is called, or "psychosexual fluids") gives rise to the Homo Superior, the God in Man, and the Man in God ("the Golden Ones" (Warriors) in 'Oh! You Pretty Things', 1971).

Glastonbury had a history of mystical connotations going back ages. Allegedly, Christ was there—or at least the cup from the Last Supper, the Holy Grail containing Christ’s blood. St. Patrick is supposed to be buried in Glastonbury, and King Arthur lived nearby. In the 1950s and 60s, many books dealt with the quest of extratererrestrials or Atlanteans for cosmic power at the site of the ruined Benedictine Abbey, i.e. Glastonbury. In 1971, a serial of Glastonbury festivals began. Of course, Bowie sang there, to thousands: “Where all were minds in uni-thought / Power weird by mystics taught.” ('The Supermen.') Angie Bowie had this to say: “Arthur? He wasn’t fxated on Arthur, he never even mentioned him. Grail? Well, he hung out with Ken Pitt who loved dressing up as a [***]. Maybe he liked the rakish slant of the offcer’s hat or the feel of a lash on the thigh, who knows? I wasn’t there. Before my time. Ken Pitt was interested in [***] dress-up and things occult! There are only twenty or thirty international legends; to what or which was he supposed to attach his new belief system if not Arthur? [It’s] the only distinct legend which features the English doing something apart from running around covered in Wode or empire building.”

Me: “Did he believe he could become God with the help of occult practises?”
Angie Bowie: “David wants to be a dictator, not God. His fxation is with himself and he strives to ignore his own self-loathing... Due to his interest in Tibetan Buddhism he skirted around the issue of Tibetan black magic, but I never saw any evidence that he performed rituals or was exerting any infuence whatsoever through the practice of any ceremonial religion: Black magic, Tibetan guarding of the unconscious, e tc., blah di blah di blah... David called it ‘the dark side of Buddhism.”

So what was Bowie most concerned with by 1980? He sang "This is the message from the action man: I never did anything out of the blue... _I wanna axe to break the ice_" (Franz Kafka's definition of a book). Bowie was now presenting his Gnosis as a prison represented by the Pierrot costume. He reacted to an earlier persona, Major Tom who sang in 1969: "I think my spaceship knows which way to go" (in 'Space Oddity').
Bowie's life as a show "hung out in heaven's high: hitting an all time low." Gnosis as an escape from, and result of, the pain of being and resisting philistinism. "My mama said to get things done you better not mess with Major Tom." Bowie's Gnosticism manifesting itself as a mechanical womb in his 1980 video for 'Ashes to Ashes'. And this would be the last creative act by Bowie for a decade; after this ultimate act of coitus with himself, Bowie obviously felt in need of a very long cigarette-break.

Vampires of Human Flesh

German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder had a reputation for vampirising worn-out superstars in his films. Alas, the planned film of Bertolt Brecht's 'Threepenny Opera' with Bowie was still-born; but Bowie (then living in New York) added the 'Alabama Song' (from Brecht's 1928 opera 'The Rise and Fall of the Town Mahagonny') to his live set, and played the title rôle in the BBC's 1981 television production of Brecht's 'Baal' - possibly to rekindle his dying fires "with gasoline"? Brecht's songs, which Bowie sang live during the programme, and which were also released in a studio-recorded version, are among the best interpretations this writer has ever heard; they are perfectly in accord with Bowie's desire to alienate everything (Brecht was the 'inventor' of the literal alienation between the actors and play on the stage, and the audience).

Nobody seemed to appreciate the complexity and subtlety of it all. So long as Ziggy Stardust was "making love with his ego", Bowie had the potential to develop his creativity. But his burgeoning wealth, the loss of any true opposition for him to work against in his commercial and social life, as he was now an 'acceptable' performer, and mostly surrounded by lackeys and toadies - all this meant that his consciousness of once having been a 'suffering- individual- splintered- into- countless- pieces' manifestly receded into the background. The suicide machine grew tired, the drug problems became easier to handle, and the sex-life grew straightforward.

Now a very rich man, where was the gnostic thorn in the side that had existed between 1983 and 1992? Had he become a self-parody with the 1984 song 'Blue Jean'? Or was it a case of 'the unbearable lightness of being' in the Italian ballad 'Volare' (which he sang in the film 'Absolute Beginners' in 1985), or John Lennon's 'Imagine' (sung live in 1983)? Once again he told the world: now I am the real David Robert Jones - and produced music which he had done "with love" - but later would hate.

So when Bowie put a 'For Sale' sign at his front gate during the 1980's, who or what moved in? Bowie's live performance of 'Time' on the 1987 Glass Spider video shows that he now used the Tarot Card 'The Hanged Man' to represent himself as the 'Redeemed Redeemer', a key figure in occultism, which hints at Baphomet, the central idol of the Knights Templar and the Ordo Templi Orientis. Bowie was hanging on a rope as he let himself down from the huge Glass Spider that overshadowed the stage, his legs crossed mimicking the pose of the 'Hanged Man' Tarot card - at the same time referring to the Hindu creation-myth of the universe being spewed out of a giant spider's bowels.

Who is Bowie singing about here: "The sniper in the brain", who "flexes like a whore" in a Stefan George sort of park where lovers quit - but who were the lovers - Bowie and God? 'Baphomet' was also one of the magical names of Aleister Crowley who identified himself with the Antichrist, the Beast 666, or an erected Penis.

In an e-mail correspondence in December 1999 and January 2000, Norman Ball speculated about Bowie having made a contract with an Angel (a sort of Lucifer/Mephistopheles figure) in the 1970's - but this was not a Faustian pact in the mediæval sense, signing your soul over in blood on a parchment to a devilish figure hovering at your shoulder. Mr. Ball mentioned the belief that it is possible to have conversations with an inner voice where such a deal is consummated. This is what Crowleyans call "The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel" (the 'Angel' in the 'Golden Years' song?).
The sephirot/station Tipareth is the seat of the Holy Guardian Angel, the Sun (Son, i.e. Christ) and Osiris, the husband of Isis, the father of Horus and the brother whom Set murdered. Osiris is exemplary of the death-rebirth gods, of which Ziggy Stardust is a postmodern type, characteristic of the old Aeon when humanity’s view of the universe was geocentric rather than heliocentric.

Here are Mr. Ball's intriguing thoughts about David Bowie in the 80's (predicting some ideas introduced later in this article):

"I'm not alleging that such a pact existed. I don't even know whether such pacts can be genuinely entered into. Nonetheless it is a interesting image.
Bowie' self-preservational instinct got the better of him and he simply flinched from Lucifer's project. For a bright guy like Bowie, the culmination was hardly a matter for deep rumination: the road was littered with dead rock gods, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, etc., i.e. all victims of their Luciferian trajectories. This theory is premised on the notion that Lucifer wants rock gods to crash and burn, so confident is he of his own supreme powers of seduction. He will get your soul AND kill your idol! Cause he's bad and your "always crashing in the same car." The fastidious, control-freak aspect of Bowie's personality prevailed upon him to renounce Lucifer's plan. Surely things could be re-negotiated as with a bad record deal, no? Thinking fast, Bowie says "Wait, wait, I'm not the Lizard King or the Voodoo Child, I'm the Man Who Sold the World. And by Hades, I mean to prove it." Bowie spends the 1984-93 period tinkering in his basement to little avail. Lucifer gazes on like an impatient investor, his Brixton project slowly rotting on the vine before his very eyes. The boy better have something good, he thinks.
Thank God, the mid-nineties arrive. Bowie's mystique, sustained almost entirely by Lucifer's lavishing of creative riches during the 70s, sustains him long enough to win the mantle of Rock God Survivor or, as Peter-R. Koenig suggests, the Redeemed Redeemer. This is the "escapee from the asylum" designation, ostensibly outside Lucifer's purview, an "unintended consequence" of the remarkable staying power of those London Boys who, by all rights should be dead but persist nonetheless as merely the undead: Bowie, Richards, Jagger, Clapton, Page, Townshend, Osborne, et al. See them fall over themselves on VH1 retrospectives, condemning drugs and loud parties. To a man, they confess to past failings and "youthful indiscretions". Bowie pleads nolo contendere claiming a sort of spiritual "amnesia" during the coke-infested days of 1975-77. But in truth they are all merely being lured to a still larger seduction: the multi-billion dollar corporate industrial complex of the late 90's OR "Lucifer meets the financial markets." Bowie bonds, a sort of creative mummification, become the rage. However Satan is bad for business. It scares the adults. Sprint and Revlon co-opt Her Satanic Majesties Tour. Gee mom, they were all silly personæ anyway. See, it was only me behind the ouija board. Bowie's abandonment of Lucifer cannot sit well with the Great Pitch Forked One. I mean, doesn't a Luciferian pact seal your fate forever? Are you allowed to reap the rewards and then disclaim the pact? One might "look back in anger" at a deal signed in haste or in a period of personal distress. But there's no going back. Bowie may have miscalculated or realized the price of his bargain too late. Lucifer cannot simply be shed like a stage costume. Let me put it this way: IF Lucifer exists, he should be VERY pissed with Bowie.

There are other prospects:

• Bowie has abandoned nothing. The "regular guy" Bowie of the last 20 years is merely a more cunningly conceived image, designed to beguile an even broader audience. So pleased was he with Bowie's early successes, that Lucifer has decided to employ Bowie to resonate across ever larger segments of society. There's no doubt that Bowie's wealth and global renown have, inexplicably, grown over the last couple of decades, despite the atrophying of his creativity. What sustains his popularity?
• Bowie has seduced Lucifer. No longer simply a minion of the devil, Bowie's persona has been adopted by Lucifer as his own. He is a permanent preening project, the consummate vehicle, so photogenic, so empty. Bowie is Lucifer. In the ultimate "selling of the world", Bowie/Lucifer are demonstrating most audaciously that the world can be beguiled on image alone. Content and merit be damned. The world is a whore ["The earth is a bitch ... Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use" as Bowie sang in "Oh! You Pretty Things" in 1971; and in "Time" in 1973: "His script is you and me, boy / He flexes like a whore"] which will lift its skirts for nothing at all (The Whore of Babylon). Lucifer would derive great pleasure from seducing millions on pure illusion/falseness and then laughing at them eternally for their stupidity and the ease of their capitulation.
• Don't kid yourselves. Bowie, not Al Gore, is the spiritual father of the Internet. The schizophrenic flitting down numerous threads like hallways in an asylum, closets full of Yahoo identities and personæ, tenuous, spurious links from one conceptual framework to another. Bowie's crowning acheivement (or most toxic legacy if you prefer) is the centrality of the gif/jpg image. In a Bowie cosmology, consistency breeds only contempt. No address is comprehensive, nothing is sacred and most can be led anyplace when they have been unmoored from everything/hitched to nothing. If Lucifer exists, he owes Bowie much for working diligently to prepare such a fertile environment. It can only work to Lucifer's advantage. This would be my "Bowie as John the Baptist" theory, i.e. the Great Preparer, preparing for whom, the AntiChrist, Satan himself? Others have worked on this Grand Project in other stations of life and art. Bowie is a very capable lieutenant within this Project."

Tin Machine was initially conceived as a complete departure from anything he'd done before, but Bowie soon started doing parodic versions of Ziggy at the band's live gigs in 1989. The gap between past and present yawned wider still, while the critics mocked his latest incarnation. Once more he seemed to be posing as an artist, a generalist, a Renaissance universalist and 'professed' "I don't care which shadow gets me... switch the channels, watch the police cars. I can't reach it anymore" (pronounced "read shit").

Slowly but surely, the inner core of a Weltanschauung is revealed: Art as Therapy. It had grown up during the long summer holidays Bowie had spent on the island of Mustique, where he had been spending his vacations since 1975 - Mustique was a highly exclusive millionaire's playground - Bowie would have rubbed shoulders with Mick Jagger and Princess Margaret. As opposed to being a 'post-modern Buddhist', he had set himself up as the historian of his own identities, an antique-collector specialising in cast-off personæ: "I've always found that I collect. I'm a collector, and I've always just seemed to collect personalities and ideas" [1973].

In 1992 he married Iman Muhammid Abdulmadjid, duly "sanctified by God", and told the press: "I'm not a religious person. I'm a spiritual person. God plays a very important part in my life - I look to Him a lot and He is the cornerstone of my existence... I believe man develops a relationship with his own God." ... "Religion is for people who believe in hell; spirituality is for people who've been there." He did a lethargic recording of a hectical song about 'Sex and the Church' where he considered that "there is a union / between the flesh and the spirit / It's sex and the church".

In 1993, his music had come to seem like the ultimate parody of modern jazz - the instruments like a torn sound-fabric, the tunes overwhelmed by electronic rhythms and samples - it all seemed rather like a Brian Eno album without Eno. Obviously, Bowie was "looking for God in exciting new ways".

The 20th Century Boy

Possibly remeniscing about life before Iman, and mulling over an old staged suicide attempt, sipping cocktails served by the world's most beautiful woman, (his wife was also an ambassador for UNESCO), some time in 1993 Bowie actually spent some time listening to some avant-garde music - while painting masturbating Minotaurs.

Bowie was not the first one to produce such beasts. A painting by Alastair Campbell appeared on page 40 of 'Starfire' Vol I, No.1, published April 1986 -- 'Starfire' is the magazine of the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis. It accompanies a poem entitled 'The Minotaur' by his partner, Ann Campbell.

"My death waits there between your thighs    [does "death" mean the 11th sephira "Da'ath"?]
But what ever lies behind the door
There is nothing much to do
Angel or devil, I don't care
For in front of that door, there is you"

As to the title '1. Outside', Bowie had the media believe that he had been inspired by his visit to see the patients at the Artist's House at Gugging in Austria, where schizophrenic patients practice art as therapy - some have become famous worldwide - an exhibition of these painters in New York during January 1994 had the title '...Outside Art'. But in fact Bowie and Brian Eno recorded the songs for '1. Outside' between January and May 1994, while Bowie, Eno and their friend André Heller only visited Gugging in September of that year.

The instrumentation is cold and soulless; Bowie appeared to perform it in a black rubber costume, trying to break away from his image as a sort of Club Mediteranée tourist entertainer, and sang "There is no Hell / like an old Hell". He crooned "i hurt myself today / to see if i still feel / i focus on the pain / the only thing that's real" and evoked Nine Inch Nail's picture of an insect crawling into a vagina. But the "spontaneously invented" pseudo-dramatic enigmas like "I hit the rose" (possibly a reference to Lou Reed's 'Vicious'), and his screams of "this chaos is killing me" sounded too serialized, loud, and contrived. There was a huge contrast between what was happening on stage and the widely-avalable Bowie-as-Icon; this was what struck the observer. His emotions came across as synthetic and pasteurized, as he squeezed out gobbets of æsthetic resistance of the kind that Bob Dylan had already voiced decades before: "i accept chaos, i'm not sure whether it accepts me". Or how about some warmed-over Freud: 'There shall be Me/Ego where there was It'? Instead of 'Un Chien Andalou', Bowie raised a banner on stage with the words "Open the Dog" on it, from his 1970 song 'All the Madmen' - where they took "some brain away". Both reviewers and audience were deeply displeased with Bowie for refusing to reprise any of his old hits; they only felt boredom when he sang "the music is outside"; they were waiting for some ecstasy, but couldn't understand the complexity of Bowie's pain, because Bowie sacrified articulation and emotion to an artistic concept where he remained the Master of Ceremonies.

New Musical Express 25 November 1995: the show "involved all these strange neo-futuristic characters running around El Bowza's head".

In Zuerich 1996, Bowie interpreted the song "Andy Warhol" with some lyrics from his 1983 hit "Let's Dance", ecstatically twitching under a roof of neon light.
Being in the first row of the audience, one still wondered why Bowie never broke into sweat while performing: Intensity noted through its lack. Presence through its absence.

"I'm so thankful that we're strangers when we meet"

Wildly he pushed his career as a painter, meanwhile sitting on a bunch of selfportraits gazing sinisterly à la Anton LaVey (the founder of the Church of Satan); paintings titled 'Satan', 'Crouch', 'We Saw A Minotaur', the Tarot cards 'Love', 'Moon', 'Death' and 'Star' (originally produced as Christmas presents for his friends in 1975) ... The Prince's Trust sent out plain white masks to over 1000 public figures in late 1996. Bowie's design consisted of a simple "666" stencilled on the forehead, complemented by the handwritten annotation "Your pretty face is going to hell."

Both, album "1. Outside" and paintings turned out to be artistic flops as he had predicted "I think I lost my way".

The National Portrait Gallery simply noted: "I suspect nothing very exciting of David Bowie has ever come our way." In April 1995 he hired a gallery and hang his own work in it. Critics called it a "vanity exhibition".

It was precisely the pain caused by such rejection that spurred Bowie into renewed action. With the cold-blooded efficiency of a chamæleon changing colour, he removed all the parts of his act that met no favour with audiences - such as the 'art-ritual murder' of baby Grace Blue - and started performing his back-catalogue of hits again. A deluge of PR 'news releases' hit the media, and Bowie rummaged through his bran-tub of showbiz VIPs (Damien Hirst, David Lynch, Julian Schnabel, Dennis Hopper (riding in occult circles in the 1970s), Balthus, and many more) to raise his profile.

But the context was still Gnostic: the long-planned involvement with the stock-market, the purchase of several more pieces of property - and a suddenly natural-looking smile. This was a kind of yogic exercise in Asana (or posture) as he adjusted his position, for both himself and his audience. Perhaps this was why he sat shoeless in a difficult yoga posture at the Zurich show on February 14th 1996 as he sang 'The Man Who Sold The World', while styling himself as re-frozen into the man who yet again "died a long long time ago". This song dated from 1970, and had already received two new interpretations in recordings made with Lulu, in 1973, and in 1979 with Klaus Nomi; here it got an 'Oriental' arrangement remeniscent of Madonna's live version of 'Like A Virgin'.

His live performances 'looked the business' again - they were now commercial transactions between him and the audience - who got a precisely-measured dosage of ecstasy, and a share in Bowie's evolving stock-market activities, with his Ziggy Stardust songs.

You Rebel Rebel

When a Mythos has died, the need for compensation grows into the infinite.
And so it happened. Bowie became the first human who sold his persona to the stock market. One month after his 50th birthday, in February 1997, the finance boutique Fahnenstock & Co, issued Bowie bonds on expected royalties (via a firm that transfers future income into a new society: in other words, Bowie is not going public himself, which would have meant to reveil his financial situation). Included were 25 earlier records published prior to 1993. Because Bowie had kept control and the rights over his work since 1975 (that is, the master tapes, despite disastrous contracts binding him until 1982; a fact which was responsable for his constant change of music styles), in one second 55 million Dollars sloshed into his bank account. Because only the second firm/society (contrary to the first) is rated, it receives better conditions than the first. So, the Bowie bond has a repayment period of 10 years and yeald a net interest of 7,9%. This is remarkably higher than any US-government bond issue to date. Although other artists sell more CDs, the product "David Bowie" is considered to flow back one of the strongest commissions in the History of Popmusic. Income is generated especially through licensing the use of a catalogue of some 250 (330?) songs which can be played now in lifts, TV ads (e.g. Microsoft) or telefone answering machines.
This constant money flow makes the Bowie bond so strong that it received the AAA-rate from the Rating Agency Moody's considering Bowie ranking 16th amongst the top-earning entertainers in 1997. The ordinary consumer is left outside this charmed circle gazing in wonder (some in dismay), and even hardcore fans are left out: the whole stock of bonds vanished in the treasure vaults of the large British insurance conglomerate Prudential.

On December 28, 1999, Bowie's 'Rubber Band' from 1966 was used as background for a German TV documentary about flatulence ...
Oddity 2002 or Proto-Heathen: The music department started to shed its stable of unproductive cash-cows in 2001. Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Sinead O'Connor and Anita Baker became victims of this new policy; in 2002, Mariah Carey and Mick Jagger were added to the list. EMI refused to option Bowie's future songs - and as he has to repay his advances until 2007, he's forced to earn enough money for this with a new contract. Initially he announced he would be doing this on his own recording label, but in the spring of 2002 he signed up with Phillips.
It is likely that Bowie's new songs will sound much more like his old catalogue - which sells well - rather than his post-1983 releases.
Record companies have minimum orders... and since the last album there have been a lot of changes in their distribution methods and minimum orders have increased substantially. The minimum order from Sony, who are the distributor, is UK £2500... which equates to 250 albums or 800+ singles per annum: small dealers are being increasingly driven out of the market. The best place to buy them is probably 'CD NOW'... or Amazon. CD NOW is selling 'Heathen' for UK £8.99 inclusive of shipping. And in the UK, retailers like 'Music Zone' and 'Woolworths' have new titles for £9.99.

He did buy a sixty-four acre plot of land, including Tonche Mountain, near Woodstock, upstate New York, for $1.16 million in July 2003.

The fragmentation, the virtualisation and the mechanisation of Society have found their restless soundtrack.
In March 2004 the Bowie bonds were downgraded from A3 by Moody's to Baa3 — just one notch above junk, after a lengthy review process.

His heart problems of June 2004 forced him to draw back from the stage. How will this infect his creativity? Is he a clone of commercialism, a postmodern Golem?

Meanwhile, Bowie's involvement with masks has become mainstream and been adopted as a pose by many other musical artists, Madonna and Curt Cobain were rare in being inspired more by Bowie's Gnosis than by his hairstyles.

Anybody home?

Like the apocalyptic 'Diamond Dogs' tour of summer 1974 (which was based on Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'), which had in turn inspired the bleak tone of the 'Outside' tour in the winter of 1995, the business of dealing with a death-wish was resolved for Bowie in dance-music; after the depressing summer 1974 tour, there was the 'Philly Dog' tour in autumn 74, that culminated in Bowie's disco album 'Young Americans' in 1975.

In the spring of 1997, Bowie created a mélange of drum'n'bass and dancefloor sounds, which yet again took critics and audiences by surprise - even though he was meeting their urgent demands for something they could dance to. He shouldn't have been surprised himself at the bemused reaction when it was revealed to the world that he'd been doing fabric designs for Laura Ashley's latest bedroom collection.

Both of Bowie's dance tours (in 1974 and 1997) are only preserved in the form of bootleg recordings; the two exceptions are tracks he issued in 1997, but these pieces only go to prove Bowie's inconsistancy (they were issued under the alias 'Tao Jones Index'). This dance music's interminably monotonous quality bears witness to Bowie's sense of a new creative phase about to start - but simultaneously betrays defeat in its sheer repetitiveness.

Still, Bowie's stage personæ became less androgynous, and more humorous; he bared a set of vampire fangs at his audiences, and told them to focus on him, and only him. TV interviewers and the members of his band had to play second fiddle (as always) they were a chorus present merely to react to his key-words and bizarre bon-mots, which he scattered before them with lackadaisical charm, like pearls before swine. Bowie qua Bowie no longer exists, except in the scraps of conversation he has syphoned off for re-use, or in the key-words and shards of reality he has preserved for posterity some moments ago, some books ago. He only seems interested in bits of the past, myths, guitar-noises, and the books he happens to be reading at the moment - apocalyptic platitudes. The most outlandish thing he does these days is accompanying Mick Jagger to drag-balls; for the rest he fills his days by playing golf with Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper, going skiing at St. Moritz or Gstaad, and appearing at a photo-call with Tony Blair for an anti-drugs campaign (though Bowie did wear a huge pair of earplugs inscribed with the word "SEX" to this event).

"What a fantastic death abyss"

Appearing on TV talk-shows in 1997, Bowie wore carefully 'distressed' torn Pierrot costumes, and sang once more of the 'Scary Monster and Super Creep'. On his right hand he wore a giant false rat's paw - was he being his own pied piper? The guitars screamed, and his backing band were "running scared" (and breathlessly) behind the master. On the next show he would do the same song again, but this time in a much more subdued Johnny Cash manner, strumming his guitar in a leisurely fashion and singing "she opened strange doors that we never close again." The 'Doors of Perception' is a phrase deriving from Aleister Crowley's friend Aldous Huxley as far back as 1930, and refers to an entrance to other realities opened through taking drugs. The "doors of perception" were first spoken of by William Blake. At the climax of orgasm, these doors are blasted wide and pure apprehension of reality can be attained.

Finally deciding to work up a sweat in the hot summer of 1997, Bowie donned a red polo-neck sweater, and opened most of his gigs "immersed in Crowley's uniform" with the 1971 song about the Golden Dawn, as his thrilled audiences joined in joyfully to his words: "Don't believe in yourself / Don't deceive with belief / Knowledge comes with death's release." Never, one suspects, was the eleventh Sefira Da'ath celebrated by so many people simultaneously.

The superb live show cybercast on the Internet on October 1st 1997 was opened by Bowie with the words "I tried to sneak on but..." immediately followed by "I'm closer to the Golden Dawn..." - was this an explanation of his enduring absence of creativity? Other shows started with the 'Supermen' from 1970 filling the Earth before recorded history began, with "Nightmare dreams no mortal mind could hold", to a riff supplied by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page - the world's most enthusiastic private collector of Crowleyana, who contributed in 1965 to Bowie's song 'I pity the Fool'.

Sometimes he asked his audience to dance, no doubt having his 1974 lyrics in mind: "For you're dancing where the dogs decay, defecating ecstasy / Because of all we've seen, because of all we've said / We are the dead." Plato related that a wise old man said to him, "Now we are dead and in a kind of prison," matter: the gnostic prison. -- Between songs Bowie spoke about Jean-Paul Sartre, and also about Heinrich Harrer (author of 'Seven Years In Tibet') because "this is the book part of the show." The ballad honouring Jean Genet/Julien Green of 1972 vintage was revived as a blues number, though it still reminded us to "keep all your dead hair for making up underwear" - even though this came across as more of a parody of occultism by 1997. Near the end of this live set there was a drum'n'bass rescension of Laurie Anderson's decidedly individual conception of communication 'O Superman': "Well, you don't know me, but I know you. And I've got a message to give to you... when love is gone, there's always justice".

And in the name of Justice, Bowie has been discovered giving benefit concerts for children's charities, staging 'unplugged' versions of his greatest hits at schools, eventually consenting to participate in the 1997 'Children in Need' charity record of Lou Reed's 1972 song 'What a Perfect Day'; Bowie contributed his own dia-Gnosis with "What a Perfect Day / You made me forget myself." At this time he gave a sort of Dadaist interview about smoking cigarettes, from which unpromising topic he even managed to squeeze out a few Gnostic insights: "All life's pleasures leave you unsatisfied because you try to reach that high every time." Being a smoker among non-smokers makes him feel "like the lowest of the low...".

"I love death, the more of it the better. I think it's a good thing, heh heh heh!"

Around this time photographic portraits emerged showing Bowie with a halo and bleeding stigmatas (e.g. on the cover of the 1998 bootleg "Jungle Fever"). In the autumn of 1997 he forbade his audience from dancing while doing a now jazzy version of Brel's "My Death Waits There". Despite constant touring and being on stage since 1987 (the Glass Spider tour was followed by the several Tin Machine tours, the Sound and Vision Tour, the Outside Tour, the Open Air Festivals) there were no signs of wear: the sound of the band was full and satisfying, the songs' arrangements became increasingly subtle, his voice stronger, his mood more entertaining. His 'Always Crashing in the Same Car' (now in an unplugged version) of 1977 turned "Crowley's uniform of imagery" into "Crowley's uniform of symmetry" (October 97, live on the Internet).

Bowie's constantly reiterated expressions of ecstasy in live performances for years on end, raises obvious questions about how genuine this ecstasy really is. Repeatedly simulating this ecstasy (having sung 'White Light White Heat' for the thousandth time) nurtures a suspicion that Bowie's sort of ecstasy is merely a component of his disciplined and choreographed Pierrot, expressing a depressing intensity. Bowie's Gnosis remained in the new arrangements as part of Bowie's progression, but ceased to be an isolated fragment of his identity. It always was, and still is, the persona that is called 'David Bowie' that continues to attract the attention of the world: never mind the quality, feel the myth; that's what sells. But not everyone buys this; the well-known Viennese remixers Kruder & Dorfmeister refused to remix one of Bowie's songs in 1998, considering it to be a "waste of time".

"What's Really Happening?"

At the age of 50, David Bowie changed his views about the cut-up method of creating the lyrics of his songs. Previously he'd considered this method to be a tool for determining both past and future: now he senses no past or future either for the individual or Society at large. Everything was going too fast for him, leaving no time to grasp things properly and analyse the past, let alone talk about projects for the future. All that matters is the present. Remember how the days used to last so much longer when you were five than they do when you're fifty? Now it's not a question of going through a series of personæ or identities, but a matter of experiencing their completely post-modern simultaneity: a sort of "TV karma", as he called it. By the end of 1997 Bowie expressed a desire to retire from the business, stop smoking and have another child. Of course, he retained much of his old hyperactivity, coating some cars with mirrors as a publicity stunt, constantly recording new songs, and adding his strength (not always very tastefully) to sundry projects, like Stanislaw Lem's idea of reviewing non-existant books.

Post-modernism has no aims, no original thought, no authenticity, and ultimately no authority. An eternal contiguity ties everything in with art, artistic objects, and semiotics. Everything is connected somehow with everything else: a TV series, a piece of art, a clapped-out superstar, a successful star, a line, its mirror-image, its compression. But there again, what would pop and rock be without these identifications and correspondances? What is reality without its simulation?

"Seven Ways To Die"

Bowie always expressed interest in electronic dreams. As early as 1983, the 'Serious Moonlight' tour was organised via e-mail. In September 1998 he created 'BowieNet' on the internet: an internet service provider (ISP) for web accounts, with news, a (planned) sports news service, stock market news, a 'BowieBank', e-mail facilities and a supermarket where those interested may purchase his paintings and other memorabilia. Rarely has the music business been epitomised better than in this advertising slogan: "Buy David Bowie online, you rebel rebel". The circle had closed, for the internet is of course a form of virtual reality - a Gnostic world beyond this world below. This is Gnosis through Bowie as the reedemer, who brings complete and constant availability of the Bowie icon. Marketing itself becomes a myth.

"Live 'til your rebirth and do what you will"

In those varieties of occultism that derive from Hinduism, fragmentation is a major theme - just as it is in the internet, and the definition of identity in post-modernism. The equality or unity between the individual and their rôle has to be dissolved; multiple or decentralised personality is the measure of post-modern knowledge. There is a form of reasoning in the association between fragments (or the fragmented perception), but there is no ultimate truth behind it. This creates room for a new myth: fictional being becomes an integral part of being real. To be one simulation among other simulations. One result of this was Bowie's being made into the hero in a computer game called 'Omikron, the Nomad Soul'.

Andy Warhol once predicted "Nobody really knows you". You can be anything, even the website that you visit on the internet - eclectic creations that are tied together by the star's image and elements from other kinds of multimedia. These products are supposed to enhance the intimacy of the relationship between star and fan - though they still keep you well aware of the superhuman range of Bowie's interests - as well as another closed circle he foresaw in 1971 in 'Moonage Daydream', where he sang of electronic dreams: "Don't fake it baby, lay the real thing on me / The Church of man, love, is such a holy place to be."
There are extant early versions of this song with slightly different lyrics, recorded by Bowie and his costume designer Freddi Burretti (aka Alfred Corns) who designed all Ziggy Stardust's and Halloween Jack's costumes until 1974. This song reappeared on the live set list in 1996-97.
Electric dreams were also mentioned in the 1971 song 'Hang Onto Yourself' (closely based on the Velvet Underground, even down to the lyrics of earlier versions referring to Lou Reed's song-book) where a quintessentially Gnostic phrase is "The bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar".
There is a 1971 recording of 'Hang Onto Yourself' with Gene Vincent, one of the original leather-jacketed exponents of rock'n'roll; his voice lends a juicy quality to the lyrics. Both 'Moonage Daydream' and 'Hang Onto Yourself' were central songs in the Ziggy Stardust live shows.

Since 1997 David Bowie has never tired of professing to be the happiest person on the face of the earth, as he will soon finally become the real "David Robert Jones". But can we really believe these words, and the automatic smile of this laughing gnostic? His little witticisms are the sort peculiar to people accustomed to having their jokes laughed at. Though it's highly unlikely that Bowie will ever regain the god-like prominence of his prime, his influence persists. He is currently resuscitating the Ziggy persona for a film to be made by himself - probably for sound commercial reasons as he released some BBC live recordings of the Ziggy era in 2000 - but there is always a waywardness in the man. Perhaps Ziggy Mk. 2 means something else again, and is a sign that Bowie plans to jettison the hard-won 'mainstream' acceptance that he's achieved over the last couple of decades. Is he getting bored again? "Their tragic endless lives could heave nor sigh / in solemn perverse serenity, wondrous beings chained to life" as he sang in the 1970 'Superman' song. Even collecting awards and personae must get terribly monotonous after a while...*

"They say he has two gods"

As Bowie wondered "Can I change the channel on my TV without using the clicker?" in 1976 (entertaining anecdote between two tracks, live late 1999): Does David Bowie believe in magick, does he think that it has any ability to affect the physical world?: "No, I think all those things merely become symbolic crutches for the negative. ... I can't become comfortable with any organised religion and I've sort of touched on all of them. I'm not looking for a faith, I dont' want to believe anything. I'm looking for knowledge" [NME 25 November 1995]. Of course, he sang on 'Law (Earthlings on Fire)': "I don't want knowledge / I want certainty." (1997).
Revealing that he had "problems" with Jesus Christ he also admitted that "The gods forgot that they made me / so I forget them too."

When I asked Angie Bowie whether her ex ever said that he believed in magic, she answered: “No! Just when he was trying to scare or impress people. He said that to me once: Oh come on, I’ll show you how to astral travel... yeah, right! I saw some weird shit, but that comes from fxation and visualization, not because there was any magic involved.”
Me: “Do you have reason to think that he ever got rid of occultism/said practices?”
Angie Bowie: “I don’t think he was ever involved; he’s too egotistical to put his fate in the hands of someone else.” (E.g. supernatural forces.)

"Just watch me!"

"Music Now!" in December 1969: "Do you like seeing pictures of yourself?" Bowie: "Yes, because it means I am being seen."
Andy Warhol: "I'd prefer to remain a mystery; I never like to give my background and, anyway I make it all different all the time I'm asked. It's not just that it's part of my image not to tell everything, its just that I forget what I said the day before and I have to make it all up over again. I don't think I have an image, anyway, favourable or unfavourable." [on the cover of the rare _double-album version of "Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground featuring Nico", 1969]

There is an overall marvel at David Bowie's stamina. But does he do this so that his audience marvels, is that the point? Does he derive self-satisfaction from all this movement? Or is his self-satisfaction born out of his sense of the appreciation for him? A chameleon changes his colours when excited: Bowie changes himself to get excited. But if this were a world without cameras, what would Bowie do? Would he be inclined to do half of what he does today if there was nobody watching? Does a falling Mask make a sound in a deserted forest?*
And what kind of forest is this? Sean Mayes about 1978: "When David sat down later, he tucked one leg up under him and I noticed that the sole of his shoe was as clean as the day he'd bought it. OK, maybe the shoes were new, but it struck me that he hardly evers sets foot in the street. It's all hotels, limousines, sterilised airports."

Other lyrics/songs of relevance:

Silly Boy Blue, 1966,
Lieb mich bis Dienstag, 1967 / Love you till Tuesday
Mit mir in Deinem Traum, 1967 / When I live my dream
Karma Man, 1967
In 1970, Bowie was reading Nietzsche and many references can be found in the albums "The Man Who Sold The World" and "Hunky Dory"
Ziggy Stardust 1971
Moonage Daydream, 1971
Hang Onto Yourself, 1971
Time, 1973
Can you hear me?, 1975
Word on a Wing, 1976
Cat People (OST, 1982)
Volare, 1986
Glass Spider, 1987
Under the God, 1989
Heaven's in Here, 1989
Reptile, 1995
The Hearts Filthy Lesson, 1995
Scary Monsters 1979, 1997
Little Wonder, 1997