Re: The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

[vickie@pilot.njin.net (Vickie Mapes)]

(I'm cc'ing this to Ecto because of some Happy content)

robh@cyberspace.org (Robert Henderson) writes in gaffa:

>Here you go, folks.  After last night's wonderful ritual, and the
>encouragement of a few people on the group (Thanks, IED and |>oug!),
>I'm going ahead and posting my explanation of the LBRP and its
>influence in the Kate song "Lily."  Damn the flames, full speed
>ahead!  Enjoy!
>======================================================================
>             The Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

First, this *isn't* a flame. I'm one of these people who honestly
thinks "whatever's your bag" is fine in things like this. I don't
believe in this stuff any more than I believe in god or the tooth
fairy, but the key word there is *I*. I don't believe, but it makes
no difference to me if anyone else does. If, someday, I felt some
sort of *need* for "something" of a religious nature, I'd probably
check out Wicca, because I like their goddess philosophy. (Please
though, I don't feel that need, so don't e-mail me about Wicca or
any other religion/cult.)

What caught my eye were a couple of lines in here.

>Pretty basic stuff here.  Kate (or Kate's character in the song)
                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*Thank you* for saying that. I *personally* (as in IMHO) think that
it's a "character" is who is singing. Not that I'd care if Kate's into
this stuff for real. It doesn't matter to me. The only thing that
would make me drop Kate is if I found out she was a Scientologist.
(which I've never even heard a hint about, so there's no reason
to start a thread about it.) 

>order!  Many people on alt.magick have discussed this.  One person
>has pointed out that if Kate is facing west and standing upside
>down, then everything works out the same.  There's another
>explanation, though.

There is, you know, a third explanation. Kate just read this stuff
about Michael & Gabriel & whoever, and it was wrong, and she didn't
know any better, and wasn't into it enough to *seriously* research
it, and put it in the song that way, not realizing that it would
cause massive discussion amongst pagans who *are* into it. In other
words, as fascinating as all this stuff is (and I'm not aligned with
Chris when it comes to posting it. I don't care if people want to 
talk about it, I just delete it anyway) I think *maybe* some people
are taking it far too seriously *with regards to* Kate. That's just
my opinion.  

If I might offend anyone, I don't mean to do that. It's just that I've
been through this before. Non-Kate story ahead: One of my listeners
in Kansas City was absolutely *convinced* that Happy Rhodes was a
Wiccan. He and his wife had diagrammed songs, written up parallels
between Wicca stuff and her lyrics, and had really gone into detail
about "documenting" their belief about Happy. When I interviewed
Happy live on the air one night (well, it was a phone interview) he
called to ask Happy directly if she was a Wiccan. She answered by
asking "What's that? I'm sorry, but I've never heard of Wiccan" and
that was that. I explained to her later a bit about the religion and 
she may well know more about it now than she did then. My point is that
this guy was convinced that she was, and she wasn't.  Now, obviously,
Kate knows *enough* about Wicca to know something about that ritual,
but IMHO she just used it in the song, and there just isn't enough
evidence to say that she actually practices the religion or ritual.

Of course, I could be wrong, but unless she actually says she's now
a Wiccan in an interview, I'll look at the song the same way I look
at all her songs. Interesting lyrics about interesting subjects is
a trademark of Kates, something she does so well, and it's fine if
her songs get people to broaden their knowledge about different
subjects (I actually *bought* the W. Reich biography "Fury On Earth"
but never finished it) but it really isn't a good idea to latch
onto *any* of Kate's lyrics to "prove" she believes in any one thing
or another. They're all stories, after all. Almost all.
 
>(And of course, when studying any kind of occultism, it's always
>best to take everything with a pinch of salt!)

:-) I'll take that the way I read it.

Vickie (who doubts that Kate is "into" incest just because she wrote
"The Kick Inside")