"Alchemy" front cover, designed by Dave Loxley on 1968, actually it's not an original drawing by the artist, but it's a re-elaboration based on an old engraving taken from an ancient book titled "Atalanta Fugiens" written by Michael Meier on 1617 and published in Oppenheim, Germany (see the original reproduction of it at http://www.scribd.com/doc/8098821/Atlanta-Fugiens).
"Est avis in mundo sublimior omnibus, Ovum
Cajus ut inquiras, cura sit una tibi.
Albumen luteum circundat molle vitellum,
ignitio (ceu mos), cautus id ense petas;
Vulcano Mars addat opem: pullaster et inde
Exortus, ferri victor et ignis erit".
The meaning of image - basically a man (soldier?) with a blade in front of a little table with an egg on it - methaporically hints at the alchemical process to get the Philosophical Stone (i.e. the Knowledge): the soldier (i.e. the alchimist) breaks the egg (Ermete's vase) with a blade (the philosophical fire) to originate the chick (the Philosophical Stone).
Infact, the alchimist uses fire to change the vile substance in gold.
See here another b/w following variation of the original engraving:
As Vic - a reader of this
blog - has noted, an important detail of the album cover is represented by the serpents around the border.
Apart the aim to protect band’s music, it must be
recalled that in alchemical tradition serpents who eats himself (Ouroborus) symbolize
cyclic time, the One in All, the Eternal Return, cyclic nature of things… (as in some more recent
TEB covers designed by Carolyn Looker…).
During an old interview to
I.T. magazine (issue 63, August 29th,1969), Sweeney told that “those serpents on the cover are completely magic – they
are in a protected circle, they protect the whole album and the music on
it”.
 |
| A detail from the TEB cover with the egg |
no©2009 Luca Ferrari
Everytime I see this engraving, I can't excape the feeling of someone (or something) that could inexplicably come from the tunnell into the scene. Read on the IT 2-page interview that Sweeney put the serpents around this engraving as a protection. Was Alchemy something that something 'else' could reach to? You really think that the "magic" of TEB was white magic or black magic? In which forms the Alchemy music was really in need of a protection? From what or who?
ReplyDeleteregards, vic
Hi. Very interesting your considerations about the cover. Me too I've always considered very disquieting the images on it... What's happening there? Who/What is coming in from outhere...? It could be a matter to investigate more deeply. I know that the serpents drawed by Carolyn Looker (where the serpent eats itself) are usually the alchemical serpents methaphorizing the circular chain of eternity... Knowing Glen, I can assure you that he was not so involved in it... They (TEB) breath that kind of oriental/medieval subculture on the air, but it was the period... Then TEB used that kind of matters as a sort of underground fashion to get more and more fans expecially in Europe where these kind of things was felt as esotheric and quite special...
ReplyDeleteI think to tell you so, even if it would be been better TEB was really 'alchemical' and 'magic' (then, about 'magic', I think Glen liked the 'black' one... absolutely...).
Cheers.
Luca
This is quite surprising. From the IT interview (which at this point one can only argue as manipulated, but this is also more strange) seems that the 'serpent' story was something more deep. Of course, you may have more direct elements to support a non-magic TEB theory, and i agreed with this. However remains something quite disturbing in TEB, all the Alchemy puzzle seems more than the sums of the components. Many bands tried to do this music but TEB is quite different from Aktuala, Limbus or Nadma. Only clever subcultural metaphors? Black magic scares me, maybe this is why I don't listen more often to TEB.
ReplyDeleteregards vic
Probably I had been too extreme about "magic" in TEB and the things, as you say, are/was much more deep than I can tell now. When I met Glen in Eighties, frankly 'that' kind of things seemed disappeared... Sure, sometimes Glen was scary and criptic for me, to a substratum , even if kind and really funny. I can only imagine that at the time (Sixties-Seventies) things could be very different and that their adhesion to 'magic' was authentic and total... The fact, as you say, is that their music is so strange and different than all the others, a deep interplay that cannot be good technique only, but a different way to feel Life and Death, Reality... Paul was an incredible sensitive person, Glen really impenetrable, so... Their art and music is been a real miracle for myself, absolutely unique. Even for this reason I feel there's so many things to investigate left and I hope with this my little contribute we can understand and learn more..
ReplyDeleteThanks again. Cheers.
Luca
About the Dave (David) Loxley of the Alchemy cover: now i've discovered that was a (chief) druid.
ReplyDeleteA simple google search. So it is rather clear that the Alchemy was conceived as a strictly ritual affair...
vic
Are you sure he's just him?
ReplyDeleteAnyway I could try to contact him...
If TEB played with druids, why an arch-druid could not made the cover? But about the protection, the limited space of the front image: "ghetto raga" means raga of "a ghetto", a restricted place, not available to everyone. Also "stone circle" evokes a closed/restricted place. If it is Karnak or Stonehenge or an Atlanta Fugiens rebus we will never know. But strangely, the following Emblema, number 9, shows a strange cupol-structure that is similar to the central picture of the album gatefold, where all members are INSIDE (and not OUTSIDE). Never to go out of the ghetto, seems to tell us. Or simply was the underground which protected itself, in an expanded sense we cannot answer: the aim of that music and that scene was extreme.
ReplyDeleteregards vic
Right, Vic, good observations. TEB played for Druids at Glastombury and sometimes Glen (and Carolyn) told in past interviews and to me about 'strange' feelings happening around them ("people believed they could make bring the sun", TEB had the power to relax everyone, EMI engineers didn't want to mix the second album, a strange thing happenend in a club in Manchester... and none wanted them playing there anymore...)... so I'm agreed with you about the "ghetto" idea, because I think underground scene was mystical more in a oriental fashion sense than in a deeply pagan one... The same instruments selected by Glen was so eccentric for that period - because violin, oboe, viola, cello was just from classical/avant-guarde or folk tradition - and they didn't play tambura or sitar as the psychedelic fashion of that years... And more than any kind of intellectual analysis we can do (there and) now, the power ot TEB music was/is so deeply strong that trascend any rational dimension: it's music too archetypal, too visceral, too trance, to be led to the normal esthetic categories... So I've always thought that is a real pity that I couldn't listen them in '69-'70 - because I believe their music was thought basically as an 'happening' hic et nunc event, and Glen many times explained me he needed to be stoned to play as in trance (grass in the past, red wine in Eighties...).
ReplyDeleteI'll try to write Loxley and ask him something...
Cheers
Luca
Quite frightening the Manchester "thing"...any idea about? For a similar reaction, I can only suppose something like a poltergeist. What more scaring that a ghost on scene? (But also, what more simply to fake, expecially in front of a stoned 70s audience in the dark?). There would be many bands in that period that I'd wish to see live, Trees and their dark folk, Twink in the Think Pink period... the music quality was incredibly (and suspectly) high in that era, too much energy was released and what we find on records are always "pentacles" more than simply commercial pop recordings.
ReplyDeleteThis great amount of uncontrollated esoterism
is something that can modify our reality also today.
regards vic
About the Manchester thimg, Glen told just this:
ReplyDelete"Occult forces now seemed to manifest themselves. A club in Manchester that we played regularly was located in an old crypt – the seats infact were old stone coffins. As we played late one night a ghost appeared and no one could believe their eyes. The gig was cancelled. “Bad for business”, said the manager. We went to the druids to seek their protection, and played with them at their holy places and solstices".
His wife Carolyn confirmed it, so it could be near the truth... Sure, at that time, with audience stoned in the darkness, everything could be possible... but there no doubt that their music has this not-human force, an uncontrolled esoterism, as you say, that can shock everyone even today...
Luca
This explain the meaning of the Druid concert. Thanks.
ReplyDeletevic