Blog Post #8: Page

 

In line with my previous post on the prevalence of 'witchiness' throughout the music of the late 1960s and the mid-to-late-1970s, Jimmy Page may have been the rocker that possessed the most legitimate and sincerest belief in these ideas. Whereas some artists appeared to exalt witches because of their unique aesthetic qualities and symbolic association with oppressed peoples, Page’s interest lies in the backdrop of this phenomenon instead. Indeed, Led Zeppelin’s lead guitarist is more concerned with the occult than anything else. More specifically, in a sense, Page is more concerned with ‘magick’ than magic.

In 1959, a fifteen-year-old Jimmy Page’s lifelong interest in Aleister Crowley began. Yes, after coming across the Thelemic’s Magick in Theory and Practice, Page stated, “That’s it. My thing, I’ve found it”. While the rocker never officially joined Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, he certainly dabbled in Thelemic philosophy, among other occult practices. This philosophy, which encourages the importance of one’s will through various erotic rituals, appears to have been a key tenet for Page during the height of Led Zeppelin’s success. And, while the guitarist seems somewhat abashed by the way in which his interest in these ideas were publicized during this time period, he nonetheless continues to credit Crowley as a “misunderstood genius”. In fact, not only did Page purchase and reside in the Boleskine House, where Crowley once lived, the artist also briefly ran an occult bookshop in the early 1970’s that promoted his paragon. This bookshop, called The Equinox (after Crowley’s magazine of the same name), even published two works: Crowley’s The Goetia and Isabel Hickey’s Astrology, A Cosmic Science.

Such an interest in astrology was not unbefitting of Jimmy Page. Famous for his ‘Dragon Suit’, which displayed the signs Capricorn, Cancer, and Scorpio, Page was known to be fascinated by astrologically significant people and occurrences. Also on this Dragon Suit was, of course, the “Zoso”, a symbol originating in Gerolamo Cardano’s Ars Magica Arteficii, not to be confused with the Ars notoria mentioned in our class’s textbook. Yet, despite also being interested in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, like Ordo Templi Orientis, Page never officially joined, meaning his pursuits in these practices may have been more personal than anything. Indeed, rather than following these groups for the sake of following them, Page himself admits “[these beliefs are] all just basically coming to terms with yourself”.

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