September 1, 2010 on MSNBC
Why the Church Times is right to laud Iron Maiden et al.
Here’s a sentence you might not expect to read in the Church Times, courtesy of the Rev Rachel Mann: « Metal has no fear of human darkness. It calls the Church to discover a liberative theology of darkness: darkness not understood as negative, but as a place of possibility. » Her suggestion, in the latest issue, that Britain’s Anglicans have much to learn from heavy metal will doubtless raise eyebrows at jumble sales and coffee mornings in church halls, but Mann is right. Indeed, heavy metal offers us all lessons. Here’s why:
Heavy metal makes kids read Romantic poetry
By taking the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and turning them into songs, Iron Maiden (with Rime of the Ancient Mariner) and Rush (Xanadu, based on Kubla Khan) have done more to draw attention to one of English literature’s heroes than any number of Oxbridge academics. Every teenager who hears these songs goes on to dig out the originals, boosting Coleridge’s audience several thousandfold.
Heavy metal makes kids engage with religion
While few metal abums offer as profound a consideration of the relationship between God and man as, say, Cardinal Newman, metal does engage with religion in a way no other branch of rock does. Usually that takes the form of detailing the lifestyle and activities of Satan and his chums. But even Black Sabbath, who institutionalised the genre’s obsession with darkness, sang in 1971: « Could it be you’re afraid of what your friends might say if they knew you believed in God above/They should realise before they criticise that God is the only way to love. »
Heavy metal encourages kids to be loyal
Metal fans do not write off bands after one album, nor desert them when someone younger and more fashionable comes along. Nor, though, is their loyalty blind: if a metal band makes a substandard album, their audience declines. Unlike most other forms of rock, however, the fans return when the music improves. See Iron Maiden, who reached No 1 in the album charts last month for the first time in 18 years.
Heavy metal is prophetic
More or less everything bad that happens in the world is foreseen by metal bands. Admittedly, it’s usually by accident, but the genre’s obsession with dystopias means it’s always engaged in futurology. In 1982, Electric Eye by Judas Priest sounded like a silly song about an all-seeing robot. In 2010, it sounds like an everyday description of CCTV culture.
Heavy metal nurtures the imagination
For all its reputation as the most priapic musical form, very little true metal is about sex. Most metal lyricists write about subjects beyond their experience, forcing them to actually use their imaginations. This is to be encouraged, even if it does risk encouraging audiences to read too much fantasy fiction.
Michael Hann
guardian.co.uk
Les gars d’Amanita Bloom m’ont offert ce ‘long-jeu’ pour me remercier d’avoir travaillé sur la pochette de leur album ‘Furniture Music’ (Gatefold LP & CD) à parraitre sur Machette (fin Octobre). Tout à fait dans le ton. Un réel plaisir. Mes sentiments les meilleurs.
THE OCCULT EXPLOSION
Interviews with some of America’s leading occult spokes’men and women in their respective fields, explaining their work in their own voices, with a narrative which weaves it all together in an illuminating whole.
Experts cover topics such as Astrology, Yoga, Mysticism, UFO’s, Withcraft, Satanism, Reincarnation, ESP, Psychic Phenomena, Spiritualism, Indian Magic, and Meditation.
This recording is based on Nat Freedland’s book of the same name. Released as a double LP record set in 1973. A tripped out Gatefold sleeve, incorporating a 12 page booklet (w. illus. by Wilfried Satty), written by Freedland, a former LA Free Press columnist. Recordings feature interviews with, among others, Anton Szandor LaVey (Satanism), Alan Watts (Meditation), Thelma Moss (ESP), the artist/illustrator Satty, and two « Satanic inspired rock recordings » by British rockers Black Widow. These two tracks are satanic rock at its finest! HAIL SATAN!
FROM LINER NOTES
« Flying saucers, witchcraft, Satanism, reincarnation, ESP and psychic phenomena in general, what’s it all about? More and more people are asking themselves this question as these things appear more frequently in magazines and newspapers, on TV, and wherever people gather to talk. »
« This LP organizes, summarizes, and places in clearly understandable context the many confusing aspects of the Occult. »
« Explore Invisible doorways to that misunderstood and endlessly fascinating place, the world of the occult. »
WIST10 news, August 11, 2010 :
WEST COLUMBIA, SC – If you go to fill up your tank in West Columbia you may see the message « One nation under God and if you don’t like it, leave. »
Ça fait suite au billet sur les ‘African Witch Children’ (publié ici le 13 avril 2009) :
AKWA IBOM STATE, NIGERIA – Just after midnight, the pastor seized a woman’s forehead with his large hand and she fell screaming and writhing on the ground. « Fire! Fire! Fire! » shouted the worshippers, raising their hands in the air.
Pastor Celestine Effiong’s congregants are being delivered from what they firmly believe to be witchcraft. And in the darkness of the city and the villages beyond, similar shouts and screams echo from makeshift church to makeshift church.
« I have been delivered from witches and wizards today! » exclaimed one exhausted-looking woman.
Pastors in southeast Nigeria claim illness and poverty are caused by witches who bring terrible misfortune to those around them. And those denounced as witches must be cleansed through deliverance or cast out.
As daylight breaks, and we travel out to the rural villages it becomes apparent the most vulnerable to this stigmatization of witchcraft are children.
A crowd gathered around two brothers and their sister. Tears streamed down their mother’s face as she cast out her children from the family, accusing them of causing the premature deaths of two of their siblings with black magic.
« I am afraid. They are witches and they can kill me as well, » she sobbed.
Taking his time to talk to the mother, Sam Ikpe-Itauma, an imposing man wearing a « Child’s Rights & Rehabilitation Network » t-shirt, has come to try to rescue the three children.
« If we are not here there’s a possibility of them being thrown into the river, buried alive or stabbed to death, » Sam said.
He tries to persuade their mother and a crowd of villagers that the three children are not witches – but no one believes him. And so, putting the children in his white pick-up, he drives away to his orphanage and safety.
Sam runs Child’s Rights & Rehabilitation Network, or CRARN – an orphanage that supports nearly 200 children. All of them were accused of witchcraft and cast out by their families, often after being tortured. The orphanage provides security, healthcare, nutrition and counseling.
Godwin’s story is typical. As he sat next to the quiet 5-year-old, Sam said that after Godwin’s mother died, the church pastor told his family that « Godwin is responsible. »
From his own investigation, questioning Godwin and talking with neighbors, Sam said that when a relative asked Godwin if he was a witch, « he said no and was beaten and made the confession that he actually killed the mother. »
Sam said Godwin was locked up with his mother’s corpse every night for three weeks with little food or water before a neighbor contacted Sam, who was able to rescue him.
Other children at his orphanage bear the scars of being beaten, attacked with boiling water, and cuts from machetes. But these children are the ones lucky to be alive.
« A child witch is said to be a witch when that child possessed with certain spiritual spells capable of making that child transform into cat, snake, vipers, insects, any other animal and that child is capable of wreaking havoc like killing of people, bringing diseases, misfortune into the family, » Sam said.
« When a child is accused of being a witch – that child is hated absolutely by everybody surrounding him so such children are sent out of the home… But unfortunately such children do not always live long. A lot of them, they’re either killed, abandoned by the parents, tortured in the church or trafficked out of the city. »
Sam doesn’t believe in witchcraft and is trying to raise awareness in local communities now gripped by hysteria.
Belief in witchcraft is rooted in centuries of tradition, but it’s only in the last 10 years, that it has become associated with child abuse, he said.
« It’s a social crisis, » he added. « Poverty propels this child witch phenomenon and poverty is a twin sister to ignorance« .
« Most vulnerable children come from single parents, divorced parents, dysfunctional families. »
But the orphanage has very little space for more children. Overstretched finances mean he can barely pay a skeleton staff of four people, as well as feed the children.
Instead, many children are left to roam the streets.
« My parents sent me out of the house – said I’m a witch, » said Samuel, a 15-year-old who has lived on the streets for five years after a local pastor blamed him for unexpected deaths in the family.
« I was beaten by the prophet in the church, » he said in a quiet voice.
Samuel lives in an abandoned building with 10 other children accused of witchcraft. A local group, ‘Stepping Stones Nigeria,’ which is dedicated to helping street children, visits them.
« Religious leaders capitalize on the ignorance of some parents in the villages just to make some money off them, » said Lucky Inyang, project coordinator for ‘Stepping Stones Nigeria’.
« They can say your child is a witch and if you bring the child to the church we can deliver the child but eventually they don’t deliver the children… The parents go back to the pastor and say, ‘why is it you have not been able to deliver the child’ and the pastor says ‘Oh – this one has gone past deliverance – they’ve eaten too much flesh so you have to throw the child out.' »
And most pastors charge a fee for deliverance – anywhere from $300 to $2,000.
One of the most notorious and influential pastors is Helen Ukpabio of Liberty Gospel Church. Her 1999 film, the widely distributed, « End of the Wicked« has been attacked by child rights groups for its depictions of Satan possessing children.
She had agreed to an interview but the meeting was continually postponed for two days.
But in her preaching at Liberty Gospel Church, she heralds success stories of how she has driven out demons through deliverance.
« Witches and wizards, they started getting afraid. I never gave them rest! » she shouted to a cheering congregation.
Some pastors believe education is a more powerful tool against witchcraft fears.
« One of the things that caused the parents to abandon the children is ignorance, » explains another local pastor, Celestine Effiong.
The local government, however, accuses Sam Ikpe-Itauma and Lucky Inyang of using the children to run a scam.
« We insist that the name of Akwa Ibom state must not be smeared and the people of the world should not be deceived by certain NGOs who are claiming to be taking care of stigmatized children of Akwa Ibom, » said Aniekan Umanah, the Information Commissioner of Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom state.
« This is a ruse, they are making money for themselves. »
Stories of NGOs rescuing children, say the government, are exaggerated. They argue instead, that a new Child Right’s bill outlawing child stigmatization has largely ended the problem.
But despite some arrests, so far, the government acknowledges, there have been no prosecutions.
« There may be problems yes but it’s been blown out of proportion and people are capitalizing, on what ordinarily may be a social problem, across the globe in painting Akwa Ibom state black – that is the aspect we say no to. We will not allow the image of our state to be smeared. »
Sam and other NGOs deny any improprieties, insist their finances are a matter of public record and plead with the government to support their cause.
« Relevant government agencies, working on security and protection of children must step up their efforts to make sure any child that is stigmatized must – that parent, the churches, the law must be evoked to make sure such people face the law immediately, otherwise it must go on and on, on and on. »
With the night comes the screams of more deliverances – and more witches to be cast out.
Christian Purefoy
CNN (Video)