When I first found out about Bowie's passing, I had just logged onto social media late on Sunday night and saw someone's post about it first thing in the newsfeed. I remember just blankly staring at it in state of disbelief for a long time before my brain could register what I had just read. I found myself unable to speak and immobilized with a flood of grief so intense I couldn't cry but had tears running down my cheeks. I was in a state of literal shock, which I knew from experience as a result of real life trauma. I felt sick on a deep physiological level and faint. Never have I had a response so visceral upon hearing of a loved one's death and this was a stranger. My mind was fluctuating between a numbness of denial and sudden rushes of emotional devastation. I kept whispering to myself, "No, this can't be, no he can't be dead, not in my lifetime." Bowie felt immortal and because he could be reborn over and over in a continual metamorphosis on the world stage he was like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Surely he would never be gone forever, surely he had not left us alone, the man who consoled us with the lyrics from Rock and Roll Suicide: "Oh no love you're not alone, give me your hand, cause you're wonderful". Growing up with all of Bowie's incarnations throughout my life, it felt as if he was a part of me, deeply resonating in my psyche since my formative years. To many of us his music was the soundtrack to some of our greatest life experiences. His lyrics were a passionate clarion call to celebrate and express openly our otherness, he inspired those of us who were different and alienated to embrace this proudly.
I immediately posted on social media how I was feeling and started to see an overwhelming out poor from friends online who felt the same, reminiscing his legacy together, if just for one day. For those of us who felt so alone being the outsider and disenfranchised our whole life, suddenly the pain of his death brought us together in our memories that resonated on a universal level, and I never cared about celebrities or fame and could never understand why people idolize or deify them. I learned to separate the art from the artist. But Bowie was the exception, he was not just a performer but multifaceted characters in all consuming drama not unlike that of the Pierrot he claimed to be inspired by. He was more than an iconic aesthetic, musician, actor, poet: he was transcendence itself, a living canvas of exploration, pulling us out of ourselves into magical realms and mysterious dimensions feeding our senses with the arcane, the taboo and esoteric, the sublime. As teacher, prophet, alien preacher, he was a prolific catalyst of change in the 20th century, an exponent of total autonomy, the ascended master of theosophy ushering in the new aeon. Bowie seemed immortal, a mythological being that lived outside of space and time. He was also an inner space alien, alchemy's third being, the holy androgyne of the alchemical wedding who taught us to see our world in awe and wonder through the eyes of a child, the reborn. In alchemy this third being that was an integration of both the male and female is represented by the fluid duality of the Mercury archetype of which Bowie embodied and in a strange coincidence he was born with Mercury in his 12th House. He spoke on behalf of the many facets of our identity, spirituality and sexuality that we denied and kept hidden behind societal mores and its oppressive inhibitions.
His music was catalyst for social change as a liberator and cultural agitator on such a grand scale he changed the world forever. The following week laid heavy on my mind and I felt this indescribable emptiness. Losing Bowie was as if a great light and brilliance had gone out of the world, one that we would never see again for another thousand years. As he traveled through these various epochs of discovery, we were given the testimony of his music and bore witness to his prophetic visions to our location throughout history. As a goth teen in the 1980s when androgyny and gender bending was at its height among the mainstream after the cultural inception of the 70s glam rock movement that Bowie manifested with Ziggy Stardust, Bowie's albums Station to Station and the Berlin trilogy, mainly Low and Heroes were the soundtrack to this Symbolist moment during the emergence of Goth. Low was the defining album along with Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures in its aching, tormented, and haunting beauty. The Thin White Duke became a stylistic icon for the poetic, fatalistic romanticism that we lived in, full of existential nihilism, drug induced spiritual exploration and sexual experimentation that always verged on self destruction, suicide or overdose. We lived each day as if it was our last, many were using heroin heavily and so the song Heroes was a kind of anthem, that we could be each others heroes but just for one day. Making unusually sanguine promises late into the night: "I, I will be king, you, you will be queen, though nothing, will drive them away, we can beat them, just for one day, we can be heroes, forever and ever." We lived in this fragile promise of forever, lost in our youth. Low was a musical liminal state between this otherness and the desperate longing of the outsider to find solace.
As I scoured through friend's Bowie revelations, people began to tell heartfelt stories of Bowie the man, of knowing him on a personal level. The stories were fascinating ranging from Shade Rupe's recollections of working with David Bowie on the set of Twin Peaks and the constant black humor the surrounded the set to Steve Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees who reminisced of opening for David Bowie in 1987 during the Glass Spider Tour at the Angels stadium in Anaheim, and how after a lengthy sound check, they heard someone applauding alone in the back of the stage, to their surprise it was David Bowie himself. This post on social media had triggered such a response that it inspired him to write his autobiography and within days he was offered a book contract. It was this same tour that my then boyfriend had invited me to attend and meet David Bowie backstage, as his uncle had opened for David Bowie years earlier on the Serious Moonlight Tour and they were close friends. Imagine as a teenager the impact an opportunity like this would have, it was something I would have never imagined at that age. A few years later in 1991, I was working at the Warfield for the Tin Machine shows and invited that same boyfriend to work alongside me. Strangely the audience was near empty and David Bowie spent almost the entire show singing to us as we stood in the balcony. It felt as though the theater venue had become a church and that night, we took our vows of matrimony as we sang his lyrics in unison. We had planned to be married when we were of age anyways but nothing could have been more of a sacred union than this experience for us. The stories people told that night and the following day about Bowie personally and what he meant to them were heartbreaking and exhilarating, some of which I felt should be shared here with my article on what he mean to me. Many great stories can still be found in the Facebook group Church of David Bowie.
Every song on Bowie's last album released two days before his death: Black Star was his swan song, his embracing of death and culmination of vast studies of the esoteric, illuminating us with this knowledge he'd gained over decades. Many have theorized the meanings of the lyrics in Black Star, searching for the final wisdom to imparted to us before his death. Some have said the song Lazarus was symbolic of his studies in Gnosticism, while Black Star focuses on Kabbalism and The Middle Pillar ritual that consists of bringing down white light through the center pillar from the godhead, which he may have practiced to heal himself. When he sings, in the center of it all, he may be referring to this and the Black Sun of theosophy, which we see as the eclipsed sun in the video. The lightening bolt that shot across Bowie's face for Aladdin Sane, he says represents the duality of consciousness and the splitting of the psyche, but it is also the lightening bolt of illumination that is a Kabbalistic meditation to ascend the tree of life, as we see in the Tower card of the tarot. This card represents death and rebirth. On this card behind the Tower, the Tree of Life hit with the lightening bolt of enlightenment, which we can see in the Black Star video and lyrics of the song. Bowie being an admirer of Crowley, especially during the years of the creation of my favorite albums, he is also proclaiming Crowley's axiom "Every man and woman is a Star". The last song on Black Star has the lyrics "Seeing more and feeling less, Saying no but meaning yes, This is all I ever meant, That's the message that I sent ,I can't give you everything." To me, Bowie is telling us to live fearlessly and without inhibitions. To always see everything with great awe as if through the eyes of a child without fear or judgement, being open to other worlds, dimensions, experiences in the unknown and to never let your fears keep you from saying or writing what you really mean, so that you die with no regrets. Always speak your mind and live fully with authenticity. And that lastly, he can't tell us how do this because we have to follow our own paths and hearts.
To truly honor his memory we should be sure to donate to his chosen charities and to fund research in finding a cure for Cancer.
"David Bowie was the conduit and the curator for most everything I have ever loved. If it wasn't the surreal and heartbreaking intensity of his music and fashion, then it was others who were channeling his inspiration and influence. For me, he taught me that it wasn't only ok to not fit in, but it was something to strive for! I will always dance when I hear David Bowie, I will always shut my eyes and throw my arms in the air." Gooby Herms
"He taught me not only the epitome of what was cool but also how to just be yourself. His music was my anthem to teen angst and my escapism into ballads from Mars. When a genius such as Bowie reaches a mass audience, his soul becomes an egregore. It is from this that myths have always been generated. Like Osiris and Hermes, I believe Bowie has left his immortal mark on the Arts and Magick within out hearts and mind for the ages." Dashiell Johnson
"Through my incredible sadness I find I am ultimately inspired to push myself to artistic expression beyond anything I've done before. I salute the magic and the artistry of a life lived fully cognizant of ones personal particular gifts of character. I shall be pushing my own boundaries and comfort zones from here on out. Rest in Peace David Bowie, divine inspiration." Justin Warner
"The devastating news of David Bowie's death is crushing. He's been my favorite since I was a little girl. Bowie shaped me into the person I've become, bending ideas into my music, photography, art, fashion, and costumes. I'm not one for speaking of celebrity deaths. Though, this one is making me choke tears. My mom just kept saying to me, "Pobrecita..." A term of endearment for when a child is sad. She felt my pain. I can thank my parents for introducing me to him before I even went to school. Perhaps kindergarten.Starman, you'll always live on in my heart." Lizzbeth Tamburri
"The night he died was very dark and very still. I saw the terrible news and sat in stunned silence for a long, long time, staring at the computer screen through a haze of tears. I feel certain that everyone in my generation will remember where they were when they heard Bowie died." Amie Althaea
"I can't stop crying. How do you call into work because your hero is dead? I saw the news about Bowie last night but I flat out refused to accept it." Annalee Fanning
"All I can say is that the old gods are dying , and not the right gods. I always felt I was born just slightly at the wrong time. Rock and Roll has been my life! Old Hollywood has been my life. The late 60's , early and mid 70's , Glam Rock . That was my sliver in the sidewalk . Where the worlds met . Watching my comrades and hero's die and with all these deaths , a part of me goes. This just is something I cannot get my head around. At all! I can't believe it. I am overwhelmed . The first time I remember hearing David Bowie was probably in 1973 or maybe 74. Space Oddity had been re released in the States . I would sit in class thinking about it and thinking about time. I could not stop pondering the meaning of the song! And other Bowie songs continued to ignite the radio waves. And there were so many questions . With every new song there were many questions , and particularly about gender . I didn't know what gender was but I knew what he was singing about and I took it all into consideration . When I heard Rebel Rebel it struck a major chord in me. The lyrics said many things to me , or rather addressed many questions or possibilities , and I knew that there was no turning back on anything , ever ! Rebel Rebel became not only an anthem , but a road map . A road map of no direction , but more of a calling that required being astute.There were no obvious instructions then. You had to feel and then you had to follow the map of your possibly convoluted heart and just go!" Kitty Diggins
I immediately posted on social media how I was feeling and started to see an overwhelming out poor from friends online who felt the same, reminiscing his legacy together, if just for one day. For those of us who felt so alone being the outsider and disenfranchised our whole life, suddenly the pain of his death brought us together in our memories that resonated on a universal level, and I never cared about celebrities or fame and could never understand why people idolize or deify them. I learned to separate the art from the artist. But Bowie was the exception, he was not just a performer but multifaceted characters in all consuming drama not unlike that of the Pierrot he claimed to be inspired by. He was more than an iconic aesthetic, musician, actor, poet: he was transcendence itself, a living canvas of exploration, pulling us out of ourselves into magical realms and mysterious dimensions feeding our senses with the arcane, the taboo and esoteric, the sublime. As teacher, prophet, alien preacher, he was a prolific catalyst of change in the 20th century, an exponent of total autonomy, the ascended master of theosophy ushering in the new aeon. Bowie seemed immortal, a mythological being that lived outside of space and time. He was also an inner space alien, alchemy's third being, the holy androgyne of the alchemical wedding who taught us to see our world in awe and wonder through the eyes of a child, the reborn. In alchemy this third being that was an integration of both the male and female is represented by the fluid duality of the Mercury archetype of which Bowie embodied and in a strange coincidence he was born with Mercury in his 12th House. He spoke on behalf of the many facets of our identity, spirituality and sexuality that we denied and kept hidden behind societal mores and its oppressive inhibitions.
His music was catalyst for social change as a liberator and cultural agitator on such a grand scale he changed the world forever. The following week laid heavy on my mind and I felt this indescribable emptiness. Losing Bowie was as if a great light and brilliance had gone out of the world, one that we would never see again for another thousand years. As he traveled through these various epochs of discovery, we were given the testimony of his music and bore witness to his prophetic visions to our location throughout history. As a goth teen in the 1980s when androgyny and gender bending was at its height among the mainstream after the cultural inception of the 70s glam rock movement that Bowie manifested with Ziggy Stardust, Bowie's albums Station to Station and the Berlin trilogy, mainly Low and Heroes were the soundtrack to this Symbolist moment during the emergence of Goth. Low was the defining album along with Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures in its aching, tormented, and haunting beauty. The Thin White Duke became a stylistic icon for the poetic, fatalistic romanticism that we lived in, full of existential nihilism, drug induced spiritual exploration and sexual experimentation that always verged on self destruction, suicide or overdose. We lived each day as if it was our last, many were using heroin heavily and so the song Heroes was a kind of anthem, that we could be each others heroes but just for one day. Making unusually sanguine promises late into the night: "I, I will be king, you, you will be queen, though nothing, will drive them away, we can beat them, just for one day, we can be heroes, forever and ever." We lived in this fragile promise of forever, lost in our youth. Low was a musical liminal state between this otherness and the desperate longing of the outsider to find solace.
As I scoured through friend's Bowie revelations, people began to tell heartfelt stories of Bowie the man, of knowing him on a personal level. The stories were fascinating ranging from Shade Rupe's recollections of working with David Bowie on the set of Twin Peaks and the constant black humor the surrounded the set to Steve Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees who reminisced of opening for David Bowie in 1987 during the Glass Spider Tour at the Angels stadium in Anaheim, and how after a lengthy sound check, they heard someone applauding alone in the back of the stage, to their surprise it was David Bowie himself. This post on social media had triggered such a response that it inspired him to write his autobiography and within days he was offered a book contract. It was this same tour that my then boyfriend had invited me to attend and meet David Bowie backstage, as his uncle had opened for David Bowie years earlier on the Serious Moonlight Tour and they were close friends. Imagine as a teenager the impact an opportunity like this would have, it was something I would have never imagined at that age. A few years later in 1991, I was working at the Warfield for the Tin Machine shows and invited that same boyfriend to work alongside me. Strangely the audience was near empty and David Bowie spent almost the entire show singing to us as we stood in the balcony. It felt as though the theater venue had become a church and that night, we took our vows of matrimony as we sang his lyrics in unison. We had planned to be married when we were of age anyways but nothing could have been more of a sacred union than this experience for us. The stories people told that night and the following day about Bowie personally and what he meant to them were heartbreaking and exhilarating, some of which I felt should be shared here with my article on what he mean to me. Many great stories can still be found in the Facebook group Church of David Bowie.
Every song on Bowie's last album released two days before his death: Black Star was his swan song, his embracing of death and culmination of vast studies of the esoteric, illuminating us with this knowledge he'd gained over decades. Many have theorized the meanings of the lyrics in Black Star, searching for the final wisdom to imparted to us before his death. Some have said the song Lazarus was symbolic of his studies in Gnosticism, while Black Star focuses on Kabbalism and The Middle Pillar ritual that consists of bringing down white light through the center pillar from the godhead, which he may have practiced to heal himself. When he sings, in the center of it all, he may be referring to this and the Black Sun of theosophy, which we see as the eclipsed sun in the video. The lightening bolt that shot across Bowie's face for Aladdin Sane, he says represents the duality of consciousness and the splitting of the psyche, but it is also the lightening bolt of illumination that is a Kabbalistic meditation to ascend the tree of life, as we see in the Tower card of the tarot. This card represents death and rebirth. On this card behind the Tower, the Tree of Life hit with the lightening bolt of enlightenment, which we can see in the Black Star video and lyrics of the song. Bowie being an admirer of Crowley, especially during the years of the creation of my favorite albums, he is also proclaiming Crowley's axiom "Every man and woman is a Star". The last song on Black Star has the lyrics "Seeing more and feeling less, Saying no but meaning yes, This is all I ever meant, That's the message that I sent ,I can't give you everything." To me, Bowie is telling us to live fearlessly and without inhibitions. To always see everything with great awe as if through the eyes of a child without fear or judgement, being open to other worlds, dimensions, experiences in the unknown and to never let your fears keep you from saying or writing what you really mean, so that you die with no regrets. Always speak your mind and live fully with authenticity. And that lastly, he can't tell us how do this because we have to follow our own paths and hearts.
To truly honor his memory we should be sure to donate to his chosen charities and to fund research in finding a cure for Cancer.
"David Bowie was the conduit and the curator for most everything I have ever loved. If it wasn't the surreal and heartbreaking intensity of his music and fashion, then it was others who were channeling his inspiration and influence. For me, he taught me that it wasn't only ok to not fit in, but it was something to strive for! I will always dance when I hear David Bowie, I will always shut my eyes and throw my arms in the air." Gooby Herms
"He taught me not only the epitome of what was cool but also how to just be yourself. His music was my anthem to teen angst and my escapism into ballads from Mars. When a genius such as Bowie reaches a mass audience, his soul becomes an egregore. It is from this that myths have always been generated. Like Osiris and Hermes, I believe Bowie has left his immortal mark on the Arts and Magick within out hearts and mind for the ages." Dashiell Johnson
"Through my incredible sadness I find I am ultimately inspired to push myself to artistic expression beyond anything I've done before. I salute the magic and the artistry of a life lived fully cognizant of ones personal particular gifts of character. I shall be pushing my own boundaries and comfort zones from here on out. Rest in Peace David Bowie, divine inspiration." Justin Warner
"The devastating news of David Bowie's death is crushing. He's been my favorite since I was a little girl. Bowie shaped me into the person I've become, bending ideas into my music, photography, art, fashion, and costumes. I'm not one for speaking of celebrity deaths. Though, this one is making me choke tears. My mom just kept saying to me, "Pobrecita..." A term of endearment for when a child is sad. She felt my pain. I can thank my parents for introducing me to him before I even went to school. Perhaps kindergarten.Starman, you'll always live on in my heart." Lizzbeth Tamburri
"The night he died was very dark and very still. I saw the terrible news and sat in stunned silence for a long, long time, staring at the computer screen through a haze of tears. I feel certain that everyone in my generation will remember where they were when they heard Bowie died." Amie Althaea
"I can't stop crying. How do you call into work because your hero is dead? I saw the news about Bowie last night but I flat out refused to accept it." Annalee Fanning
"All I can say is that the old gods are dying , and not the right gods. I always felt I was born just slightly at the wrong time. Rock and Roll has been my life! Old Hollywood has been my life. The late 60's , early and mid 70's , Glam Rock . That was my sliver in the sidewalk . Where the worlds met . Watching my comrades and hero's die and with all these deaths , a part of me goes. This just is something I cannot get my head around. At all! I can't believe it. I am overwhelmed . The first time I remember hearing David Bowie was probably in 1973 or maybe 74. Space Oddity had been re released in the States . I would sit in class thinking about it and thinking about time. I could not stop pondering the meaning of the song! And other Bowie songs continued to ignite the radio waves. And there were so many questions . With every new song there were many questions , and particularly about gender . I didn't know what gender was but I knew what he was singing about and I took it all into consideration . When I heard Rebel Rebel it struck a major chord in me. The lyrics said many things to me , or rather addressed many questions or possibilities , and I knew that there was no turning back on anything , ever ! Rebel Rebel became not only an anthem , but a road map . A road map of no direction , but more of a calling that required being astute.There were no obvious instructions then. You had to feel and then you had to follow the map of your possibly convoluted heart and just go!" Kitty Diggins