THE CAULDRON OF CHANGE � reviving the wes

something different

THE CAULDRON OF CHANGE � reviving the western tradition
by Neil Giles

One of the central images in the traditions of western magic and spirituality is the cauldron of life, the sacred vessel of the Goddess. It is filled by her waters, heated by her fires. All life flows from this cauldron of consciousness, a vessel that alternately simmers, boils and is still again. We are fed by the cauldron, we are the life of the cauldron, we are the life within the cauldron.

No condition of our lives is stable for long. The fruits enjoyed by one generation are rarely given to the next. We gain periods of stability that reward us for effort, like a meal served and enjoyed. But, as the fire rises, what seems stable must be shaken and then return to the depths. Order gives way to the boiling chaos that renews all life. In this process, old themes come back to us in new forms like forgotten memories returning, new themes sweep away the old as sound sweeps away silence.

This image of the cauldron functions on many levels. It is a magical object used in ritual, ceremony and for the preparation of food and drink; a symbol of the womb and the Goddess, the source of all life; an archetypal image of the process of transformation for both the individual and society. And, it is society itself with all its mass and fluid, constant changing under the heat of the social container.

BLACK & WHITE/ROCK & ROLL

In the 1940s, America was a cauldron of cultural change. While older generations of men were away at the war and women were in the factories, young people (they weren't called teenagers then) reached across a racial barrier and began to embrace the music of black Americans, listening to gospel, jazz and blues as black artists played and sang them. Black musicians moved from the South to set the Northern cities humming to their tunes and rhythms, working their magic on a whole generation. For conservative America, jazz was the music of fornication and the devil. Preachers railed against the onset of decay but, by the 1950s, this 'unholy alliance' between white and black culture would give birth to twins: rock 'n' roll and the teenager. The new music set in motion a youth culture that could not only hear itself, but see its own image portrayed on screen.

In the early fifties, a tortured Marlon Brando made 'method acting' a household name, though few households knew what the term meant. He struck a powerful chord in The Wild One, a study of alienated youth and rebellion. �What are you rebelling against?� they asked him. �What have you got?� he replied, pregnant pauses and slurring syllables creating a dynasty of charismatic mumblers that lives today in the likes of Sylvester Stallone. Rock 'n' roll was busy inventing itself with the help of artists like Bill Haley, Little Richard, Elvis Presley and DJ Alan Freed. There was an explosion of feelings. Johnny 'Cry Baby' Ray reduced Australia to riotous hysteria when he flew in with his particular brand of orgasmic warbling. The cauldron was boiling now with screaming fans, pouting idols and dangerously decadent dancing. But it wasn't just hysteria and gyrations. There was also violence. In Britain, the Teddy Boys donned Edwardian gear and stepped out with their razors. Down under, while Johnny O'Keefe shouted in the dance halls, 'bodgies' fought outside as their 'widgie' girlfriends looked on or joined in. Fights involving hundreds of young men and women were regular Saturday night occurrences. Youth was in rebellion, 'the teenager' was the image, and rock 'n' roll was the music. Children were being seen and heard. The cancer-causing emotional retention of a society that had staunchly borne the burden of two world wars and a depression was under threat from an emotional insurrection. Young people were riding the risks of a leap into a new world, their own, a world that was frowned on by the older generation. But every ride has a price. The Blackboard Jungle of 1955 showed the fears of the adult world about a rising tide of violence within schools and young people. This film made Bill Haley and the Comets an international act, but it also signaled the presence of the ghetto and the urban slum, the shadowy nightmare that stood in stark contrast to the dream of the middle class suburbs.

For those of us who are inclined to look back on the fifties as an idyllic time of tranquillity, a time to be feted and even venerated against the backdrop of the current tide of chaotic social change, it could be instructive to note that it is as easy to misremember history as it is to forget it. While the security of the suburbs enforced a feudal peace for certain sectors of society, remember that there was life outside in the war zone. This was also the era of the cold war where radical politics was punished with ostracism and McCarthyist severity. This was the era when the solo parent was the 'unwed mother' and social pariah, when working women were looked upon as a feisty and unwelcome hangover from the employment upheavals of the war and when the guise of ideal suburbia was, in many cases, a mask for unhappiness, alcoholism and abuse that remained the dark secret of our feudal peace. This was the era when bohemians, musicians, poets, artists, homosexuals, in fact anything at all that was different from the tennis-playing, chop picnic (we didn't call them barbecues then) norm was regarded with scorn and hostility. It wasn't safe to be 'queer' in the classic sense. Could we ask ourselves now when we sigh and think of this utopian age, what was the price of suburban security? And just who did it protect?

In the year of 1955, the mood was wilful. Everyone began to push beyond the limits. James Dean was dead a month before his second major film was released but he haunted the cinemas as a Rebel Without a Cause. Elvis was the idol of teen America and, from southern boy to southern life, racial discontent bubbled to the surface as a black woman named Rosa Parkes refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, sending wave after wave of boycotts and controversy across the USA. As race issues heated up to boiling point, teenage alienation was the craze. The lonely, restless soul of youth began to haunt the media. Slick back hair was a serious statement. Fashion was God. Church leaders and pillars of the community cried 'foul!'. They tried to shut down venues and put curfews on the wild at heart. But business knew there was money to be made in rock 'n' roll. Teenagers were a market. While Hollywood launched into epics such as The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur, an army of James Dean and Elvis look-alikes wandered the middle class landscape, looking fairly ungrateful for all that had been done for them and very bored with such pseudo-history. But then, it seemed as though not only the older generation but God Almighty had answered the prayers of the middle-aged and turned against the coming wave of angry rock 'n 'rollers.

In two years of turmoil, Little Richard turned to religion, Chuck Berry went to jail and Jerry Lee Lewis to ignominy over scandals with minors, Elvis went into the army and a wave of accidents, breakdowns and disasters struck the rock 'n' rollers, not just in the US, but world wide. When Buddy Holly and friends went down in the infamous light plane crash in 1959, it was God's punishment for creating disorder in society, according to the pulpit. God's hand was turned against the pagans. Preachers railed against the devil's music. It was banned in schools and condemned by the civic leaders. Those artists who weren't dead or burned out were bowdlerised, forced to sing lukewarm songs and star in Bandstands across the Western world, along with the shining teeth of Dick Clark and Australia's Brian Henderson. It was a Little Pattie world of surf music and fun.

But all the rhetoric against rebellion and disorder was in vain. By the 1960s, those twins of youth and music born from black and white raised another wave from the boiling cauldron and began to dream of taking over the asylum.

THE SIXTIES

Rock 'n' roll suddenly became rock music as a new wave of teenage British musicians heard rhythm 'n' blues and began to sing a new song. In 1962, the Beatles released 'Love Me Do' and, while John F. Kennedy faced the Cuban missile crisis as the youngest American president ever elected to office, Britain rose from the ashes of a Pyrrhic military victory in the Second World War to become a world power in music. Bands grew serious hair, wild and unkempt. The Beatles sang, the Rolling Stones pouted, the Who smashed their instruments and the eardrums of a generation. We went to rock concerts and raised the roof. We went to folk festivals and protested. A new music was being born, a music that would eventually bring together folk, jazz, blues and even classical to create a new musical ethos that still spins its ever-changing forms. This new industry spiralled into a phenomenon of stars, concerts, social protest, revolution and festivals that created a genuine global culture for young people that continues to challenge and change society's perception of itself.

While music was in revolution, the media boomed. TV showed us [its version of] what was happening when it was happening. Never before had a generation been so educated in immediate reality. Presidents, political and civil leaders died at the hands of assassins, burning Buddhists lit up the news like candles of protest, the war escalated, the skies over Vietnam were thick with planes, the streets of the western world were full of marchers being pummelled by police, the Ho Chi Minh trail ran red with blood and fire. In the US, the civil rights movement became a wave of civil rioting that bordered on civil war. The black power movement was born, the weathermen bombed the cities, the hippies went back to the earth and Canned Heat went back to the country. While China held its own Cultural Revolution at home, the teenage world was in cultural revolution across the globe, though many of the participants were (at least physically) beyond their teenage years. Paradoxically, both the health food craze and the drug craze that began in the sixties took root and formed the basis of major new industries. The business of sound evolved with the music, flashing through the light years from megaphone to microphone to the almost mystical experience of present-day digital technology and CDs.

AND THE BAND PLAYED ON

Music played relentlessly. Jim Morrison toyed with the doors of perception. Jimi Hendrix changed the history of guitar playing in a few brief but incandescent years. Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin gave birth to metal music. Psychedelia, Punk, Reggae, Techno, Disco, New Romantic, ... new musical forms spun out from the cauldron's chaos. New stars were born. They got married and divorced on a carousel of bands and wives. Rock stars spoke out, sat in and rioted. Rock stars died, rock stars found god, rock stars took drugs and went to India in an endless pageant of What The Rock Star Did Next. Rock stars, like the heroes of any generation, proved to have feet of clay, hearts of gold, great spirits and mean spirits.

But, these idols of a new generation weren't the point. Things were actually changing. Doors were opened that any seeker could freely enter. New thoughts were spoken, new places were named, new ideas and old ones found voices to sing of them. The cauldron was working its magic.

For all the events that took place both remembered and forgotten, both important and unimportant, this was a time of searching when the quest for truth, the eternal quest that is always with us, was renewed for the coming era. We are still in that era now. Just as we can see in consciousness now the older threads of change that began in the mid-nineteenth century with the birth of spiritualism, theosophy and the new astrology, so we can see these threads of youth and music from the more recent past. All things are part of the web of life. What began as a mixing of white and black music has led, not logically or intentionally but rather fluidly and surprisingly as the web will always lead us, to a new mix of cultures, ancient and modern, western and eastern, bizarre and basic. This is a mixing that must return to the cauldron of chaos to be reborn as the future we will leave for our grandchildren. Whereas in the sixties and seventies we sought ideas and new experience, now in the nineties we seek the tools and the systems that can put ideas and experience to work.

TRADITION: REVIVALS & INNOVATIONS

Increasingly over this time, people in the west have been drawn towards other cultures, philosophies, religions and faiths in order to find answers or simply experiences that will reveal another set of values, another way of thinking, another way of life. Often this has come from feelings of barrenness and alienation that seemed to be inherent in the post-war western world. In their disillusion with consumerism and a house in the suburbs, people turned to the east, to drugs, to the ancient world, to the heavens and, more recently, to the cultures of indigenous people in order to rediscover some sense of connection with the environment and with themselves.

People need land, tradition and a code more than they need the wealth of consumer junk that can be produced at the drop of a forest.

The shadow of alienation hung over the west because it had forgotten itself in time and space, forgotten that people need land, tradition and a code more than they need the wealth of consumer junk that can be produced at the drop of a forest. Something primal within the human identity takes form because of a sense of belonging. We are a tribal people. We belong to the forest, the plains, the wild river and the sea because we are part of them and cannot be separated from them without the cost of dignity, purpose and even life itself. Spirit lives in all things, from the fire of the stars to the dust of this earth and the dust of this earth is living. It is our past, the living ancestry that whispers on the wind so that truth does not die. It is our future for it will hold us in the bosom of spirit sleep. We are born from it and we return to it so that new generations can be born.

In this era we have seen men on the moon, treks to the east and beings come from other worlds. We have sought in the beyond what we felt we lacked at home. Magic, medicine and mana have walked amongst us as the traditions of other cultures came to life before us. Yet our own western tradition is a rich one, filled with the all the subtleties and power that are part of the journey into the unseen world, that are part of the spiritual quest. Our own heritage is as rich as that of any of the indigenous cultures such as that of the Aborigine, Native American or Maori. While we can explore other cultures and learn from them, gaining in truth and wisdom, it is as foolish to ignore the traditions of the west as it is to demean the great traditions of indigenous peoples.

Our own heritage is as rich as that of any of the indigenous cultures such as that of the Aborigine, Native American or Maori. While we can explore other cultures and learn from them, gaining in truth and wisdom, it is as foolish to ignore the traditions of the west as it is to demean the great traditions of indigenous peoples.

We are learning to put aside the images of the Hollywood Indian and the acceptably laundered and grateful Aborigine so that we can begin to understand the true native spirit of other races, races for whom we are the foreigner and invader. Now, we must also put aside the stereotypes of our own culture, the bloodthirsty Viking, the overdressed sun-worshipping Druid and learn the truth that lies beneath the veneer. So, where does this search take us? To the great god 'Revival'.

These are the days of Riverdance and the Celtic Harp where designer tarot decks vie with the Angel Cards and Ralph Blum's Book of Runes for the ideal Christmas gift. What we have forgotten is that Christmas keeps alive memories of the Yule festival, the Roman Saturnalia and the Persian birth of the Unconquered Sun. And, because these are essentially seasonal celebrations, we would do better to honour them at the Winter Solstice on the 21st of June. There is no honour for the land and the cycle of the year when we get the name half right without knowing the timing or the reason. The western tradition is a complex journey, with many turnings and interweavings, yet it is full with reward in the making if we are committed to seeking the truth rather than picking up what suits our fantasies, what we would like to believe or what is simple enough to do without much thought.

So where do we begin? Like the 1940's couple who said, 'Why don't we go to the black jazz joint?', like the Liverpool teenager who bought a rhythm 'n' blues record and wrote a song, like the fairy godmother who told Cinderella 'You shall go to the Ball!', we need to try something new. When we set an intention and follow it through with action, we make a magic that changes the world. The cauldron of history proves this. So, in this age of fingertip control, remote control and control at the touch of a button, let go of control and surrender to chaos.

Do something different. Go to a meditation class, buy a set of runes, try herbal healing, have a massage, have aromatherapy, stand on your head, drum, dance or sing, laugh at something you've always taken seriously, take seriously something you've always laughed at. But, whatever you touch, find its truth for that is what will change you. Change doesn't always come as we plan or imagine. In the sixties, we wanted a new world the next day. When we didn't get it, we pouted or gave up. Yet now we live in a world where our children reject cynical commercialism, embrace environmentalism, see spirits and walk the path as a matter of course. The sixties eventually gave birth to the generation it wanted to be. The lesson is that if we set the intent and take right action, change always comes. It comes over time, in the way that is needed, woven into the threads of the web of life which is the soul of western tradition and magic just as the cauldron is its heart. What we yearn for is not lost, just lost to us for we have lost our connection with it. Magic is all around us. Reconnect now.

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