Episode 1 - Introduction / The Esoteric Connections Between Led Zeppelin Guitarist Jimmy Page and Famed Occultist Aleister Crowley

Welcome everyone! In this very first episode of the Magick Music Podcast I discuss what the heck this podcast is about. I give a brief introduction to the occult and the relation between Jimmy Page and the esoteric beliefs of famed occultist, Aleister Crowley! Thank you all for listening and I hope you enjoy! Join me, as we delve deep into the abyss of the unknown and bridge the gap between music and magick. 

"Do what though wilt shall be the whole of the law" - Aleister Crowley 

Discover that which makes you shine, always and forever into infinity.

-Joseph Matthew 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome, one and all, to the Magic Music Podcast. I'm your host, Joseph Matthew, and in this series, we will be discussing various occult and esoteric practices in music, art, and culture. So sit back, relax, and let's explore the unknown together. Enjoy. Welcome, welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is the very first episode of the Magic Music Podcast. During this series, we're going to be talking about different occult esoteric practices as they relate to music, art, and popular culture. I decided to start this podcast because I've always had an affinity for things that I cannot explain. whether it's UFOs or ghosts, things that are just otherworldly, that are not in this physical domain that we live in. And I am a musician. I'm an audio engineer. I have my bachelor's degree in music. So my entire life, I've been obsessed with music. I play bass guitar, electric guitar, drums, do a little bit of singing. to describe myself as like a one-stop shop band where you know i could probably you know play make like a demo of myself playing as one band kind of like dave grohl did on the first foo fighters record i'm not like an expert or like an extraordinaire at one instrument um i'm kind of broad with all of them and i just have an affinity for just music in general like how it sounds I love mixing music, writing songs, being a part of a process with other musicians. I've been in various bands over the years, different rock bands. I make my own music as well. So it's very, very fun for me. Yeah, so let's get into it. I mean, I think that this episode, since it's the first episode... We'll kind of just go over some basic terminology in the occult, starting with, like, what is it? Like, what is the occult? And my journey with the occult started probably when I was about 10 years old. My father had a decent record collection down in our basement. And, you know, I would go down there and I would, you know, sift through. his records and just stare at the artwork because it was so fucking cool to see all these bands and what the people looked like. That's the guy that sang that song or played guitar on that song. You felt this connection with that person even though you've never met them before. And one of the records that stood out to me the most out of all of them was Led Zeppelin IV. And that's the record that basically has the hermit representation of the tarot card where he's up on the hill with the lantern and he's looking down at the small town. And it's kind of like a gatefold. So you open up the record all the way and you can see you can see the hermit, like this, this wizard looking guy, he's got a big white fucking beard. And like, he just looks super cool. And I was like, holy shit, like 10 year old me was like losing my fucking mind looking at this thing. Like I thought it was so cool. And then also what fascinated me about that record was songs aside. I mean, it's, it's a, brilliant record it has you know some of their best tracks zeppelin classics on that one stairway of course rock and roll black dog every single song on there is basically a fucking hit what really um what really piqued my interest was seeing you know their individual um symbols that they had or sigils you know jimmy page um The guitarist for Led Zeppelin, his famous sigil was, I don't know if it's called Zozo, but it's Z-O-S-O. That's kind of what it looks like. And then also Robert Plant was a feather. And then John Paul Jones and John Bonham had their own symbols, like the Holy Trinity symbol. I just can't remember the other one off the top of my head. But yeah, they were super, super interesting to look at that and go, wow, you can identify as a symbol if you want to. That you can make a piece of art that people can just recognize you. By seeing that symbol, you're like, oh yeah, that's Jimmy Page. Right off the bat. So I started kind of looking into it when I was... probably in my early 20s. But I've always loved just, you know, ancient stuff and, yeah, just looking at like ancient cultures and what they believed and how it kind of resonates with modern day religion. I grew up around Christianity, but, you know, I kind of went to church on Sunday and, you know, I went with my parents. I was baptized and did... Communion, confirmation, all the steps to take, the necessary steps to take to become a full-fledged Christian that will one day possibly get into heaven. And I'm not here to knock any kind of religion. I think religion is beautiful. It gives someone purpose. It gives someone... It's something to look forward to. It gives them faith and just kind of like a stable rock, whether it's Jesus or Muhammad or any deity that you feel this connection to. I didn't really feel a connection with Jesus or God when I was younger. It was strange. If God was this all-knowing, all-powerful being, why is there so much horrible shit in the world? He would think he would want to make this paradise, right? That was my question. Why am I doing this? Why am I choosing to go to this place where I don't feel a connection? And with the people or the priest or whatever. And it kind of depends on the church too. Like if you, you know, go to a smaller church where you know everybody, there's like 50 people in there or like maybe even less. It's a small church. You feel that sense of community. You feel connected to something, you know, so much bigger than you are that you can't even fucking fathom it. So I think that's great for those people. But for me, like I kind of stemmed off into this stuff. Because there's not really like a school besides, I guess, like, you know, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or the Illuminati. And there's all these like ridiculous, like negative connotations about the occult. And I think that in popular culture, it's been like demonized. Like, oh, you only use it to fucking summon these horrific things, these really dark things. And yes, you can go down. that path you can go way down like way the fuck down and you can get into some really dark shit

SPEAKER_01: 8:35

and it's hard to get out of it so i'm here to kind of just

SPEAKER_00: 8:43

you know explain to people that there is there is a bright side to it most of it is good positive spiritual energy And, you know, there are very... What's the word? There's various occultists throughout time that have tried to explain these practices in full and the best way that they can. You have different types of practices that can resonate with you. It's such a vast... a vast topic that you can definitely get lost in it. It's like a sea of things that you may or may not perceive. That's why people don't really possibly resonate with it too

SPEAKER_01: 9:44

much. Yeah, it's like

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if you don't resonate with it, there's definitely a reason for it. And it is because it's very dense. It's very dense to get into. So I hope to kind of just help you guys learn or help you guys, you know, help to figure out, you know, some of these things and how you can apply them in your own life and specifically in like a musical and artistic context.

SPEAKER_01: 10:22

So when I...

SPEAKER_00: 10:25

Was getting into Zeppelin, you know, I started doing some research when I was younger and came across all these different things and all these different stories about how Jimmy Page was a huge fan of Aleister Crowley. And Aleister Crowley... He's a pretty famous occultist. I think he's known as the most evil man in the world. He wrote some really, really influential books, very dark books. He came up with the idea of Thelema, and he had that famous phrase in his Book of the Law, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. which is actually printed on, I think, the inner cover of Led Zeppelin 3. So, you know, Jimmy Page, you know, he got into this stuff. He got into this stuff at an early age and was fascinated by it. You know, one of the other concepts that Crowley talked about was sex magic and how you can use, you know, your sexual powers to channel it into something else. You know, Jimmy Page was an incredible guitarist. Before he was in Zeppelin, he was in the Yardbirds. And before that, he had an amazing career as a studio musician. He was the go-to guy for a lot of sessions back in the day. a lot of artists who were looking for guitarists that could fingerpick really well. And he was an amazing acoustic guitar player, still is. I mean, he's still alive. He's still with us. But yeah, an amazing guitarist in general. He definitely imbued a lot of symbolism into the music and into the lyrics themselves. I mean, Stairway is just, you know, has so many references that are kind of unexplained. And I think that if you leave something alone and you let your fans kind of figure it out for themselves, there's a lot of power in that. There's a lot of power in just kind of letting things out into the wild without giving an explanation for it. And that band did that very, very well. I mean, they rarely gave interviews. They were, yeah, a lot, like they were kind of like behind the scenes. Like they were four, Led Zeppelin was four, you know, just amazing musicians that came together under one roof to make incredible songs. And Jimmy Page, you know, I think he is a magician. Like he, has channeled all of these things into creating something that has lasted a lifetime, and it will continue to last. I mean, it's 2025 right now. Zeppelin started in the mid to late 60s, and still their influence is so strong. But I think maybe, and I don't know this for a fact, but Maybe Jimmy got lost in a lot of that stuff. Like maybe he just, his head was like spinning because he was, you know, he had all this fame and it's like, how do you deal with it? And you're like, you know, reading into a guy like Aleister Crowley, you know, who had a lot of interesting things to say, but, you know, was probably not the best person in the world. You know, he was probably a very narcissistic individual. Yeah, that believed in like, like hedonism and, yeah, just taking things for yourself. But, you know, you could also spin that another way of like, you know, do what thou wilt

SPEAKER_01: 14:49

for the betterment of mankind. And yeah, Zeppelin was one of those acts that

SPEAKER_00: 14:59

was just a powerhouse. And there's so many things that have affected that band over time. You know, there was the Led Zeppelin curse where, you know, a lot of horrible things happen. Robert Plant got into a car accident. I think he lost his son. You know, John Bonham, you know, passed away. Yeah, that Zeppelin curse, you know, people thought it was because, you know, Jimmy Page and how he acquired a bullskin house, which... for Crowley was like that's where he practiced a lot of his rituals and his seances and maybe you know Jimmy Page like channeled like some kind of of demon you know to enter into into that world to enter into the band's music possibly I don't know it's all speculation but at the end of the day their influence remains like very very strong and they've influenced a ton of other bands and you know how can you take what Zeppelin did and kind of apply it to your own life How can you apply it to writing a song? Where does that idea come from? Where does that idea stem from? Does it come from within or does it come from the ether? Does it come from something outside of yourself, outside of this physical plane and into the spiritual plane? Does a being just drop it into your head? Does it plant a seed? Or are you influenced by other people that might say a word to you or say a phrase to you to get your mind really thinking? And I think it's probably both. I think that just enacting your own will

SPEAKER_01: 17:31

onto something, that's

SPEAKER_00: 17:35

magic. That's magic. Most people think about magic as if you are pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Someone's doing all these tricks and they're fooling you.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

But I don't know if I would call that magic.

SPEAKER_00: 17:59

Because I think magic might be life itself. like the essence that makes up life. You know, we're more than just this physical body. We have so much more that drives us, that pushes us to do something. It's like, why do people want to create things? Like, why do people want to have children? You enact that ritual of having sex with somebody, and the next thing you know, you have a baby, and then that baby grows up, and you are basically continuing this cyclical pattern over and over and over again. But the will to create is such a strong will, such a strong desire in people. And it's as if we are channeling something from another realm. And whether that's a good entity or a bad entity, it's still something that's being channeled and you should be very wary of. Because once you open that door,

SPEAKER_01: 19:21

you have to close it.

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

And if you forget to close that door, I'm not saying a demon will harass you and make your life a living hell, but there might be a good chance of that. I don't have any proof for that, but maybe the people who are listening, maybe you guys have experiences that you want to share. I'm very, very open to that. I think on the next podcast, I'll kind of talk about that, having those experiences. you know, like seeing like a loved one or a friend or relative that you have maybe like a dream of them. And then you write a song about them the next day. And you think about them. And you take that idea of like, oh, I just saw like this person in a dream. And then the next day you're like, oh, I miss this person so much. I'm going to write a song about them. I'm going to make a video about them. I'm going to remember what their legacy was and, you know, do my best to you know, show honor

SPEAKER_01: 20:28

for that. So yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 20:35

this is something that it's going to be a work in progress. I'm so excited to go on this journey with you guys. And thank you so much for joining me on the very first episode. And I hope you guys, I hope I got the gears spinning in your heads of like just, you know, thinking about this stuff and like you know we're gonna delve into more specifics like you know in each episode coming up um because i know this one was kind of like broad in general and talking about like zeppelin a little bit but um yeah we're gonna go a lot further into this stuff as the next um episodes come out so um thank you so much for joining me um stay safe and i hope you guys have had a happy easter And I will see you next time. Thank you so much guys.