Season of the Witch : How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll (9780698143722) by Peter Bebergal

occult elements, the obsessive looking for clues in Beatles album covers inspired what would become a regular part of the activity of listening to rock and roll: searching for hidden meaning in every album cover. The band always denied ever deliberately helping to perpetuate the myth, but the emblematic quality of some of their album covers are evocative of those mysterious Rosicrucian posters and otheroccult drawings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally conceived of in the Renaissance, emblems served as a visual allegory for some deeper, often esoteric truth. Meditating on the symbols could bring spiritual or psychological illumination. The album cover, however, is not in the context of a tradition. Many emblems were clearly meant to convey biblical or alchemical truths, but the album cover exists in a vast sea of culture. There is no telling exactly what all those people and items on the cover of
Sgt. Pepper
meant to the band, if anything at all. What makes the album covers occult is the same thing that gives any graphic form the power to function as an emblem. In the case of the 1960s, awash with LSD and mystical mottoes, the desire of the viewer and the spiritual rebellion at the heart of rock and roll came together. This is where the culture was created, in that special and powerful bond between the audience and the musician. The painter and graphic designer Paula Scher was once asked about her experience with
Sgt. Pepper
as an art student in 1967: “Everyone I knew stared at the cover for hours on end, unlocking special, secret clues to its meaning . . . and we debated our obscure findings forever. Nothing before or since affected me as strongly. I doubt anything ever will.”
    There is also a negative side to how rock inspires this kind of exegesis. Those with enough time and inclination could read the Beatles album covers as an occult terrorist’s handbook, a step-by-inscrutable-step guide to helping Satan and his legions take over the world. Even today, the search continues. One contemporary blogger has gone to the trouble of compiling every esoteric connection that can be found, if the right lens is applied to the task. From the cover of
A
Hard Day’s Night
: “Eighteyes. 8=sun worship.” From
Help!
: “H=8 (the sun worshipper’s number), HE=13 (occult), ELP=33 (masonic degrees) . . . So ‘HELP’=Masonic occult sun-worshipper’s record.” From
Yellow Submarine
: “John Lennon makes the ‘devil’s horns’ (‘corna’) hand sign.” And
Sgt. Pepper
is a veritable encyclopedia of hidden occult symbols:
    [A] hookah (drug bong), a purple velvet snake (serpent/satan/phallic), Snow White (from mason Walt Disney), a Mexican Tree of Life (usually depicting the serpent satan offering Adam and Eve forbidden knowledge in the Garden of Eden), and a Saturn trophy (sun/satan) near the “L” (90 degree square).
    It is almost too easy for those with a particular religious agenda to find in the Beatles all the evidence they need to claim a vast occult conspiracy working its subliminal messaging through the mass media. The Beatles’ fame made them either willing participants or naive dupes under the control of a satanic master plan. The Beatles pushed every fundamentalist button. The band’s history included a guru and an admission of drug use, and even the tragedy of Lennon’s death was seen as a key to their infernal dealings. But this is more often than not the voice of someone preaching to other believers. It is a self-perpetuating delusion that only fuels itself. Unfortunately, this kind of confused occult interpretation can also take a darker turn.
    When the police arrived at 3301 Waverly Drive, the home of Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, they were met not only by the atrocities of the way the couple had been killed, but with the graffiti on the walls, written in the blood of the victims.One