One year on and Bowie’s life and legacy still fascinates,  Lee Gerrard Barlow’s article digs a little deeper : BWH

Osiris is a Black Star ~ David Bowie and the Occult

Lately many have written on the occult aspects of David Bowie’s video ‘Blackstar’.

Most writers, however, have only touched upon some superficial aspects. This article aims to rectify this, but makes no claim to be the conclusive work on these speculations

Was Bowie truly as immersed in the esoteric & the occult as some claim? Certainly I believe Bowie had an interest at certain early periods (around 1969), during the creation of The Man Who Sold the World. Perhaps even prior to this point he had made some studies. If so, these still appeared to be important when he was writing Hunky Dory, as we know from themes  in the song ‘Quicksand’, where he mentions the Magician Alastair Crowley and the society Crowley once belonged to:

“I’m closer to the Golden Dawn
Immersed in Crowley’s uniform
Of imagery“I’m closer to the Golden Dawn
Immersed in Crowley’s uniform
Of imagery…

..If indeed this was an opportunity to turn this point in the journey of his life into ‘art’, it was also an opportunity to make a ‘Magical gesture’ of profound depth. If, there is any possibility that what I am about to write here is was in fact the intention of Bowie in the last phase of his existence, then it is a beautiful and wonderful gesture of offering to the world, hidden under symbol and allegory. If this last gesture of Bowie’s is indeed truly Occult, then it is possibly also meant as a signpost pointing toward the ultimate mystery of death, and is based on a special  understanding that a dying man furnished with the adequate symbolic skill had gleaned…..

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