Astral Disaster

The Sea Priestess
Astral Disaster - COIL

“The Sea Priestess”
We thank Frater Perdurabo on the sleeve of the record. This is a magickal name Aleister Crowley used. It means “I will endure”. A lot of the lyrics are based on Crowley’s written descriptions of the so called ‘obscene’ murals on the walls of The Abbey Of Thelema at Cefalu in Sicily. The place still exists. Peter and I made a pilgrimage there last year and while there, we discovered a lost painting on an internal door, the door to Crowley’s bedroom, the fabled “Chambre de Couchmares”. It was a very roughly done Chinese style astral landscape with waterfalls and pagodas. All that remains of the original murals rediscovered and painstakingly restored by Kenneth Anger in the 50’s are crumbling and devastatingly beyond restoration now. I spent the day there photographing what remains, bitterly crying at the terrible loss of such a direct and beautiful magickal temple. The rest of the lyrics were written as a result of experiments with a small obsidian scrying mirror. The sub-concious surfacing. Brion Gysin would scry for hours to gain entrance into the place “where light writes in space”. Whatever pollutants and poisons Manunkind pours into the seas, they too will endure.
jb