Re: "Lily" and religious references

[smc@gandalf.rutgers.edu (kirke)]

Dear Chris,

        Washing dishes, I had another thought, and I returned to look at your 
last post to make sure that I had remembered correctly.

        I said:

        "...this person [Lily] 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."

        you replied:

        "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 "spiritualists" 
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.""

        I guess that here you are putting together the general "spiritual" 
content of the song with knowledge of her mother's death to suggest that 
Lily could be a phony medium.  While I can see your line of reasoning, I do 
not think it likely for the following reasons.
        The lines that Lily speaks are highly reminiscent of ceremonial 
magick, or as another person on the board put it, one of the Western Mystery 
Traditions.  The lines that kate speaks (or her character, whichever you 
prefer to think) are clearly from ceremonial magick or the pre-existing 
Qabalistic tradition from which they diffused.  To my knowledge, there is no 
connection between ceremonial magick and Spiritualism, the movement that 
produced mediumship in the 1800's.  Ceremonial magicians do not much concern 
themselves with talking to the dead.  They focus on communicating with angels 
and higher spirits.  Although I am not a ceremonial magician, I know several 
and have at least a shallow background in its birth as a movement.  
Spiritualism does survive in an altered form today, but likewise, I have 
never heard of a spiritualist ceremonialist.  In fact, ceremonialists tend to 
dismiss Wiccans, spiritualists and New Agers as practitioners of Low Magic, 
sort of the ignorant peasants of the magickal community.  They see themselves 
as practitioners of High Magick, for the most part, an elaborate and highly 
developed system of communicating with universal beings that left such common 
concerns as talking to the dead and casting love spells behind in the dust.
        Although this does not rule out that an individual has chosen to 
combine the two philosophies, it does suggest that it is unlikely.  Drawing 
on the ceremonial implications of Lily, I would guess that Lily is not a 
medium, but rather someone who "believes" as you have put it, in a partially 
ceremonial view of the world, and someone who has offered the Banishing 
ritual, or parts of it, to Kate/Kate's character as a shield from the pain of 
the world.
        I don't think that Lily has offered it as protection against psychic 
attack.  Kate sings, "I feel the world has blown a great big hole through 
me," or something very similar.  Lily answers, "...you can protect yourself," 
and we may ask, from what?  The text suggests, from the world and the pain it 
has inflicted on Kate/Kate's character.  turning to the post on The Lesser 
Banishing Ritual, we find that the person who originally posted it (Rodrigo, 
I believe) tells us that this ritual was used as a meditation to quiet the 
mind, and to invoke a calm, protected space.  It also had other uses, he 
tells us, but given her (Kate's) recent brush with death, it is likely that 
the ritual is meant to offer her protection from pain, disquiet, and as a 
shield from an often painful world (of course, she may be projecting all of 
this on her character, who can find comfort in this ritual as she cannot.  We 
don't know.).
        Turning to your implication that mediums are all crooks, and the 
greater implication that ceremonialists, Wiccans and mediums are all the same 
in some basic way, and that they are all deluded (when you are being kind) or 
evil (when you are not): all of these groups share a belief in non-concrete 
phenomena, and the first two share a common source of ritual material and 
some dogma.  from there on, the similarities end.  They don't "all look 
alike" to insiders, although outsiders and those who are unfamiliar with them 
may say they can't see any differences.  In all groups there are crooks, 
cheats and evil people.  In all groups, there are kind, sincere and 
enlightened people.  For almost fifteen years I have read Tarot and in that 
time i have encountered many Red-Palms who deliver little of use for a lot of 
money.  but I have also may kind and talented readers who have offered 
additional information, another perspective, and encouraged their friends and 
clients to evaluate the readings as they thought best.
        I suggest that you research each individual group and make a point of 
meeting a variety of people within those groups before you decide that they 
are all creeps and deluded persons.  Of course, you risk meeting good, 
intelligent people that may challenge your absolute paradigm :) but hey, you 
might get lucky and just meet creeps, and then you will at least have 
investigated your beliefs on real human subjects before accepting them 
entirely.
                                        Good Kate Bush Analysis To You,
                                        Sabrina/kirke smc@gandalf.rutgers.edu