Generating Pitch Material from the Magic Sigils of the Western Esoteric Tradition

Generating Pitch Material from the Magic Sigils of the Western Esoteric Tradition te_?fa Johann F.W. Hasler I. Introduction According to the Hermetic Tradition,1 there is consciousness in all of the universe, forThe All, known in exoteric monotheist religions by the somewhat limiting term "God"2 is ever present, and ever aware of everything in creation: even those things that to us are seemingly inert and apparently void of any form of life and understanding are gov erned, taken care of, and overseen by invisible but ever-present sparks of consciousness emanating from The All, and in constant communion with It. The exact nature of these sparks of consciousness is still a matter of lively debate among occultists,3 and several interesting interpretations and proposals of what theymight actually be have been put forward 204 Perspectives of New Music recendy, in the light of the theories and world views taught by themod ern sciences, especially psychology, quantum physics, information systems theory, and even memetics (U.\D.\), (Blackmore 2000). Yet for many centuries Hermeticists4 simply considered them as spirits of various kinds: archangels, angels, so called "intelligences," element?is, demons, and so forth, and dedicated awhole branch ofHermetic magic, that of evocation or conjuration, to the art and practice of establishing safe and productive communication with them. How music can express the order of the universe, and how everything in the universe may have a musical equivalent thatwe may or may not perceive through our physical hearing?different authors have different views on this (Goodwin 1987)?is the subject of study of speculative music (Clark and Rending 2001). A modern development of this ancient interest is sonification, whereby experimental data obtained from empirical and quantitative scientific observation is transformed "into sound dimensions such as frequency, amplitude, and duration" (Dela tour 2000). It must be pointed out, though, that the purpose of this procedure in the physical sciences isnot generally to generate anymate rial ofmuch musical (i.e., artistic) interest, "but simply as a research tool which allows experimenters to spot patterns in data more easily?since certain kinds of patterns are better picked up by the ear in the pitch and time domains than by the eye in the domains of space and color. The transformation into sound [for the purposes of scientific sonification] is only ameans to direct more traditional mathematical or statistical analy ses to points of interest rather than an end in itself."5 Since it is the purpose of speculative music to look at the cosmos musically and at music cosmically (Godwin 1982), a speculative music that adopts the standpoint of theHermetic world view must therefore take serious notice of the spiritual entities that populate the universe according to thismystical and philosophical tradition (Van Den Broek and Hanegraaff 1988). A lot ofmusicological work has gone in the analysis and discussion of how composers have used magical squares, sigils or other Hermetic or cabalistic magical material in certain of their compositions, especially in the later twentieth century (Lister 2005; Hirsbrunner 1998; Sherlaw Johnson 1998; Sterne 1983-84). I am aware of some of thiswork, but in this article I do not intend to duplicate it, expand on it, or generally collaborate in the project of analyzing or pointing out these mysti cal/magical/numerological bases of some pieces in the contemporary art-music repertoire. This article is not in any sense analytical or repertoire-based, but centers on the history of ideas, in this particular case of the idea of translating sigils of spirits into pitch rows. Magic Sigils 205 What I am interested in doing here is reviewing the theoretical bases which allow the sigils of spiritual entities as proposed by theHermetic Tradition to be translated into musical material, limiting the specific scope of this article to the translation of the sigils into pitches. In a way, I am reviewing or proposing some methods to achieve the "sonifi cation" of the sigils of spiritual entities of the Hermetic tradition, comparable to the sonification of other empirical data observed through themethods of modern science. After all, theHermeticist, as a sort of occult scientist, considers the entities as separate personalities, and thus the information derived or obtained...