A Supernal Evensong

As I sat down to engage in a Qabalistic pathworking tarot spread (courtesy of Joy Vernon), designed to affect an awareness of the sephiroth Chokmah and its conjoined relationship to Binah on the Tree of Life, I desired an ambient soundtrack to keep my mind open and engaged. Not halfway through the spread, I indeed had a revelation about the subject I was exploring. Not from the cards, but from the music.

The music in question was that of two of my favorite musicians, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, in a short-lived but extremely influential collaboration. Much of their work centered around an analog tape delay system, in which a recorded sound would be continuously fed back into the recording device at regular intervals. The effect is like an echo, but here the echo occurs several seconds apart and is able to sustain itself for greater lengths of time. The result is a perpetual building and decaying of layers of improvised notes and textures, continuously unfolding and evolving over time. Fripp, the virtuoso guitarist, provides most if not all of the active performance, while Eno plays the role of producer, manipulating the mechanism that sustains and structures the performance.

In effect, Fripp is acting as the Chokmah to Eno's Binah. Chokmah is described as "the Will to Force", in which the aim is to project an intention outwardly; Binah is the "Will to Form", which seeks to contain and mold the energy it receives. Within the music, there is Fripp's intentional expression captured, modified and reflected back by Eno's apparatus, which in turn inspires Fripp to actively respond in kind. The process is a dialog between two very different modes of operation; one active and dynamic, the other passive and absorbing. This reciprocal dualism has its parallel in the Taoist principals of the yang and yin, which by themselves don't accomplish much of value but create a vibrant living quality when acting in consort.

If I had to pick a tarot card to represent the two musicians, Eno would be the Magician and Fripp would be the Hierophant. In terms of character, Fripp has usually been seen as the grand philosopher, taking an almost spiritual attitude toward the act of making music (even to the point of spouting aphorisms and axioms) while remaining devoted to disciplined technique. One the flip side, Eno's intellect stems from a more amorphous source, often employing calculated uses of chance elements and using his skills to manipulate elements provided by others. It's absolutely no surprise that the corresponding paths on the Tree of Life connect respectively with Chokmah and Binah. True to fashion, with Binah being the "Supernal Mother", it's amusing to note that Eno began his musical career as a glam rocker; more esoterically, the name of Fripp's seminal band, King Crimson, is allegedly a synonym for Beelzebub, an anglicized corruption of "B’il Sabab", Arabic for "the man with aim". (It should be noted, though, that Beelzebub happens to be the archdevil associated with Chokmah).

Together, their interaction produces a sense of timeless power, both hypnotic and awe-inspiring. As Chokmah and Binah are both dualistic expressions of Kether, the "first swirlings" in which the unified source resides, the music of Fripp and Eno provides a spiraling sonic expression of what Kether is, and in fact provides a clue as to the abstract mechanics of the Supernal Triad as it is enacted through the pair. We get a sense of time as an infinitude of possibility, and yet experience it in real time as a generated artifact (this could be viewed as a natural trickle-down into Chesed, the first perceivable idea of form). The traditional goal of trance music is to bring the listener into a state of divine rapture, in direct contact with the source of life, with Kether. Here, it just happens to take the form of modernist conceptualism. More power to us.

Listen to Fripp & Eno's "The Heavenly Music Corporation"