Re: "Lily" and religious references

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

> Chris,  I disagree with your contention that examination of the
>sources from which Kate Bush may have drawn her material is irrelevant,
>and I think that you are personally uncomfortable with it, thus
>motivating your responses.

  This is a misrepresentation of my position. I have done plenty of
examination of source material myself. That is a worthy thing, but
my objections came true. Several people have used this "research" as
an excuse to pour hundreds of lines of nonsense verbage only tangentally
related to the song onto rec.music.gaffa.

> The Jewish prayer to which you refer comes from the same mystical
>tradition which gave birth to ceremonial magic and modern-day Wicca:
>Jewish Qabalistic thought.  All the forms of invoking the

[rest deleted in annoyance at the prospect of having to clean-up
over-80 char lines, remove tabs and other stuff.]

>  This person could be a witch, a Jewish mystic, or a
>ceremonial magician, or just an occultist drawing on what works from
>various
>paradigms.  Kate herself may fit into any of these categories.

   Kate may also be a hurt, confused person who has fallen into the
clutches of a table-tapper. From what we can gather from the credits
and interviews, Lily is a real person, probably the elderly woman who
appears in the song and the _Rubberband Girl_ video.

   People who have lost a loved one are often victims of "spirtualists"
and "mediums" who promise to contact the dead. That this has never
succeeded has not stopped the "seekers" (there's one born every minute.)

   I'll be kind and credit Lily with simply being deluded, rather than
actually evil. She may well believe that she can contact the dead, or
she may not even be engaged in that hateful charade, and may only be
advising Kate on "protecting" herself from "psychic attack."

(The fact that "psychic attack" does not exist give the "psychic"
tremendous lattitude in claiming success.)

"...it keeps the tigers away."
"But there are no tigers around here!"
"See, it works!

> As well as suggesting that the person (Jean) who posted previously
>about the possibility of Kate's being Wiccan is a fool, you suggested
>that she had contributed nothing to the discussion
>about the song and that she was merely prosyletizing.

   I never used the word "fool" and I would perfer to be quoted rather
than paraphrased. And it certainly read as prosyletizing.

> When I read the post I noted that she suggests that the 
>circumstances of Kate's life may have ledher to this use of a
>magical rite/spell.  That's clearly supported by the song, and if
>you bother to look at the Banishing Ritual, you find it further
>supported. Note that she refers to protection with a circle of fire..
>..this is a reference to the fiery flaming pentagrams of the ritual, I
>believe.
>[See my other post on Lily].  Thus, examination of a possible source
>leads
>to one possible point of lyrical analysis.

    Yes, but out of your own post, which I did read, only a few
sentences could be construed as anaylsis, the vast majority of it was
a painfully tedious description of the "ritual." The source to anaylsis
ratio was very poor.

> I also see no harm in Jean's statement that she believs Kate to be
> Wiccan.

   Jean is perfectly welcome to believe that Kate is a well-disguised
duck-billed playtypus for all I care. But if she attempts to claim that
this is *true*, especially on gaffa, we *will* ask for proof.

> She might be. We don't know.  Since her lyrics suggest it as one
>possibility, that is a perfectly logical hypothesis.  You are simply
>being unreasonable.

   *This* is annoying. If anything, I am being *hyper-reasonable*. It
is my insistance on reason that you seem to find objectionable. I
believe the word you meant was "pliable."

   Vickie had a very valid point. Kate got the positions of the angels
wrong, because it wasn't important enough to her to check.

> If you are uncomfortable with kate's use of magical/spiritual
>references, don't read posts about them, and certainlty don't attempt
>to derail or suppress discussion about them.

   How, pray tell, have I derailed or suppressed a damn thing? The last
digest contained two painfully long dissertations on the "ritual"
several posts about obscure points, and a long Jorn regurgitation.
I have been around rec.music.gaffa long enough to be able to
(accurately) predict that the "discussion" would simply provide
the opportunity for several people to expound at length on a subject
of dubious Kate content. And they have.

>  Your problems with the subject may prevent you from analysis and
>discussion of the magical elements of her work, but they don't impede
>the rest of us.

   If I was attempting to impede discussion, I would hope I would
have been a lot more successful. I didn't and wasn't. I simply
warned everyone that it would serve as a forum for a bunch of zealots.


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)