By David Gosselin

‘Cause when you killed me inside, that’s when I came alive
—“The Dead Dance” by Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga has done it again.

Watching pop culture transform from up-beat party anthems and romantic love songs into death rituals, cannibalism cos play and sacrificial rites is a reminder of pop culture’s sordid Faustian pact with the culture gods.

In her latest music video, Gaga celebrates the murder of her former self, which has lead to her rebirth as a “creature of the night.”

Now she celebrates with a “dead dance.”

The official “Dead Dance” music video features Gaga reborn as a kind of zombie doll avatar. She is surrounded by her fellow lost souls trapped in creepy zombie doll avatar bodies who collectively celebrate her “rebirth.”

The performance hardly suggests the kind of rebirth one would associate with a traditional baptism, conversion, or profound lifestyle change. Rather, it suggests one’s rebirth as a dark avatar, a newly minted “creature of the night.”

But this is only the latest example of pop stars making light of their Faustian pact and turning it into a full-blown ritual-spectacle. In fact, it appears that just about every mega pop star has done the same.

Has it become a sacred rite for the industry?

Pop Culture’s Sacrifice

In the music video for The Weeknd’s smash hit “Sacrifice,” the singer is greeted by a radio voice that announces he’s been in the dark for far too long, it’s now time to “step into the light.” The scene cuts to our star passed out on a dance floor in some kind of underground club; he wakes up encircled by a group of black hooded figures. They proceed to pick him up and carry him to a platform where’s he’s chained and bound.

“Sacrifice” begins:

I was born in a city
Where the winter nights don’t ever sleep
So this life’s always with me
The ice inside my veins will never bleed

After a few ooh, ooh, oohs, the pre-chorus is introduced:

I sacrificed (sacrificed)
Your love for more of the night (of the night)
I try to put up a fight (up a fight)
Can’t tie me down (down)

Then a scarlet woman walks up to the bound star and sucks his soul out—just in case the symbolism weren’t clear…

The singer confesses that his sacrifice is not for love or any kind of higher purpose for that matter—his sacrifice is for the “night.”

But this allegiance to a nocturnal realm may have been presaged in The Weeknd’s debut music video.

In “Can’t Feel My Face,” the young performer is giving it his all before an indifferent audience at a night club. Soon, a strange character appears who checks off most of the boxes for creepy music producer who wants to buy your soul. As the song reaches a climax, the mysterious figure throws his lit zippo lighter directly at the stage and sets the star on fire. By that time the audience is on its feet enthusiastically dancing and cheering ecstatically. The performer continues to dance and sing and give it his all as he’s immolated, then finally walks out of the club.

The video’s symbolism seems to presage the industry’s decision to green-light The Weeknd’s career and propel him into mega stardom.

If these music videos weren’t symbolic enough, “Save Your Tears” begins with a self-harm warning label from YouTube. The Weeknd appears to have a swollen post-cosmetic surgery face as he sings at an exclusive banquet attended by anonymous oligarchs wearing Venetian masks.

The video ends with The Weeknd repeating the “save your tears” refrain while cos playing suicide by pointing a gun at his head. Finally, he pulls the trigger and confetti shoots out, at which point the audience applauds.

Of course, given all these songs are produced for mass commercial distribution, they must be catchy, hypnotic, musically interesting, and tell a good story. And we find that most pop hits do just that.

But are Gaga’s ritual rebirth and The Weeknd’s sacrifice less symbolic of a Faustian pact because the music is playfully up-beat or composed as infectious dance tracks? Or is there perhaps something more nefarious lurking beneath mainstream pop’s playful introduction of darkly enchanted themes? Or maybe we’re just being presented with the exoteric version of an esoteric message, whose symbols and meanings are perfectly clear to the initiated?

After all, that’s the basic framework used by most esoteric schools and occult spiritual movements, from Gnosticism and Hermeticism, to Theosophy and Free Masonry, right on down to Scientology and Mormonism.

In reality, from the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” to the Doors’ “Peace Frog,” atavistic themes of sacrifice and communing with the “dark side” have always been present throughout the evolution of rock, metal and pop music.

While pop music is itself not meant to be taken too seriously, might its messages be rooted in something deeper and darker than what its playful surface suggests?

Sympathy for the Devil?

I was ‘round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzlin’ you
Is the nature of my game
— “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones

Even a slight examination of modern pop lyrics and imagery reveals an occult philosophy that has thrived in the underground for thousands of years. From the worship of Baal and Molech, to its later manifestations under the cover of Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Transcendentalism, Theosophy et al, these not so secret doctrines have been around for thousands of years.

In this context, the dark currents surfacing in commercial pop seem more like a reveal rather than a sudden conversion.

Even if one rewinds to the hippy/sex, drugs and rock n’ roll days, sympathy for the devil and occult ritual cos play were mainstays of the counter-culture. The full self-actualization and complete liberation of the individual was a central theme—rooted in Aleister Crowley’s own Self-worshipping religion, Thelema.

How cognizant artists are of their own relationship with shadowy occult forces is another story. But as Grand Master and founder of the Scottish Rite of Free Masonry Albert Pike observed in his Morals and Dogma, “Men are but the automatic of providence.” That many famous artists are themselves only vessels for the real magicians and artists is only natural in occult philosophy.

In “Newborn Awakening,” (also released under the title “Peace Frog” as a B-side number), Jim Morison sings :

Blood screams her brain, they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born in the birth of a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union
—“Peace Frog” by The Doors

Apparently, the eerie lyrics for the funky boogie song were derived from three poems written by Morrison before any music was ever written, “Abortion Stories,” “Dawn’s Highway” and “Newborn Awakening.” The song was originally titled “Abortion Stories,” but was changed at the behest of Doors producer Paul Rothchild.

Who called these dead to dance?
Was it the young woman learning to play the “Ghost Song” in her baby grand?
Was it the wilderness children?
Was it the Ghost-God himself, stuttering, cheering, chatting blindly?

I called you up to anoint the earth
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well
To glory in self like a new monster
And now I call on you to pray
— “Peace Frog” by The Doors

“Riders of the Storm” warns a mother driving through the stormy night with her children that:

There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin’ like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If you give this man a ride
Sweet family will die
Killer on the road, yeah

The ambiguous warning is sandwiched between refrains like “gotta love your man” and “Riders on the storm.”

Was this a song about serial killers in the 1960s? We can’t be sure. But we never find out what happens to the family.

Jim Morrison’s fascination with Satanism is well-known and has been explored elsewhere. But as with many of the biggest acts of the 1960s, the difficulty becomes finding bands without any occult relationships.

Modern pop seems like the continuation of an unbroken legacy in the music industry.

A Faustian Pact?

In her smash hit, “Judas,” Gaga harkens back to the ancient Gnostic theme of the divine union between the sacred and profane. Such unholy unions are usually consecrated with some kind of sacrifice. The symbolism in Gaga’s video is driven home using the image of the sacred whore, an allusion to the Gnostic Simon Magus’ prostitute priestess wife, Helen. As author Mathew Ehret notes in his Revenge of the Mystery Cults series:

Simon also promoted himself as a god-man who had mastered and superseded the teachings of Jesus Christ, and like Jesus has hid ‘sacred prostitute’ Mary Magdalene (according to gnostic doctrine), his prostitute priestess named Helen, who was herself an incarnation of the gnostic archon Sophia.

Informed by early accounts from the Church Fathers, Revenge of the Mystery Cults reminds us that Simon Magus was, “a Samaritan mystic who came to Rome during the reign of Claudius and who attempted to infiltrate the early Christian Church. According to the writings of 2nd century church leaders Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons and Eusebius, Simon the Sorcerer promoted sacred orgies, cannibalism and child sacrifice within a Christian framework.”

Not surprisingly, “Judas” is full of biblical references and allusions to Gnostic doctrine, making the symbol of Gaga as Simon’s prostitute priestess crystal clear.

Gaga sings:

In the most Biblical sense, I am beyond repentance
Fame hooker, prostitute, wench vomits her mind
But in the cultural sense, I just speak in future tense
Judas, kiss me if offensed, or wear ear condom next time

I wanna love you
But something’s pulling me away from you
Jesus is my virtue
And Judas is the demon I cling to
I cling to

The music video concludes with Gaga the Gnostic priestess herself being stoned and sacrificed.

Interestingly, all the music videos described incorporate biblical, spiritual and Gnostic themes, yet the music for the lyrics might be described as an ungodly marriage between death and disco. Both Gaga and The Weeknd pioneered this new darkly enchanted sound, where sacrifice and the self are treated as both sacred and profane subjects—an unholy union of opposites—which everyone can dance to.

While traditional themes of love and heartbreak have always been staples for both mainstream pop and rock lyrics, the darker blends of sex and death rituals, sacrificial rebirths, witchcraft and the wedding of the sacred and profane all bear a characteristically Gnostic quality.

One video circulating online made the before-and-after conversion from light to darkness fully transparent.

Even Taylor Swift concerts now feature ritual magic performances; and several of her music videos are distinct for the way in which they appear to re-brand witches as the icons of powerful, independent women.

The fact that these themes are present not just among any pop star, but literally the biggest pop stars working in the industry, seems strange. Given the music industry is by any measure a very small world, with only a small select group of power players and artists, one has to wonder what the chances are that mega pop stars have all adopted similar Gnostic motifs in their music.

Are audiences really clamoring for this kind occultism and dark initiation, or is the industry itself trying to lead audiences in a particular direction?

In her first smash hit, “Bad Guy,” Eilish whispers (she rarely sings) about seducing grown men, but confesses she’s “the bad guy.” Images of bruised knees are flashed on the screen. Even more disturbing, the song was released when she was still technically a seventeen year old minor.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/HUHC9tYz8ik?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

In other videos, Eilish appears demonically possessed with bleeding eyes, looking like the victim of some MK-Ultra mind-control experiment gone wrong (or right). The song, “Bury a Friend” contains lyrics like:

It’s probably somethin’ that shouldn’t be said out loud
Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now (Wow)
Calling security, keepin’ my head held down
Bury the hatchet or bury a friend right now

The debt I owe, gotta sell my soul
‘Cause I can’t say no, no, I can’t say no
Then my limbs all froze and my eyes won’t close
And I can’t say no, I can’t say no
Careful

Rather than some new dark turn, modern pop culture has arguably just made the decision to bring the music industry’s Gnostic/Luciferian roots “into the light.” But given the many dark stories that have emerged out of Hollywood of late, a Faustian pact between pop artists and today’s powers and principalities may not come as much of a revelation.

Children of Saturn

The philosophy underlying themes of sacrifice and the union of light and darkness may actually be fairly well explained by analyzing a few ancient myths. One in particular is the myth of Uranus and his son Kronos. Uranus, the personification of the sky, was the father of the Titan Kronos. Uranus was overthrown by his son, at the behest of his mother Gaia, who was tired of Uranus imprisoning her children. Kronos decided to ambush his father and dismember him with a scythe.

However, this violent act of castration led to something unexpected: the birth of Aphrodite, the goddess of Beauty herself.

When Uranus was castrated, his testicles fell into Earth’s ocean. By this divine seed, the beautiful Aphrodite emerged out of the sea’s fertile waves. Thus, the creation of Beauty and incarnation of the divine itself demands some kind of violence or sacrificial offering for the timeless divine principle to emerge in Time.

In Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, occult scholar Edgar Wind explains the deeper significance of this archaic creation story:

The castration of Uranus is of one type with the dismemberment of Osiris, Attis, Dionysus, all of which signify the same mystery to the neo-Orphic theologians: For whenever the supreme One descends to the Many, this act of creation is imagined as a sacrificial agony, as if the One were cut into pieces and scattered. Creation is conceived in this way as a cosmogonic death, by which the concentrated power of one deity is offered up and dispersed: but the descent and diffusion of the divine power are followed by its resurrection, when the Many are ‘recollected’ into the One.

In a word: no creation emerges without some kind of destruction—the two are intimately wed. And no creation myth embodies this principle more clearly than that of the pre-classical Kronos, the god of Time.

In short, sacred Beauty demands some kind of sacrifice, pain, or undoubtedly ugly acts if it is to be realized and preserved in the face of a ruthless Earth and inherently cannibalistic Time, which destroys all that it creates.

Aldous Huxley in his Perennial Philosophy succinctly addresses the importance of sacrifice for all Time-bound notions of the divine:

God who is Spirit can only be worshipped in spirit and for his own sake; but God in time is normally worshipped by material means with a view to achieving temporal ends. Time is manifestly the destroyer as well as the creator; and because this is so, it has seemed proper to worship him by methods which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. Hence, in India, the blood sacrifices to Kali, in her aspect as Nature-the-Destroyer; hence those offerings of children to ‘the Molochs,’ denounced by the Hebrew prophets; hence the human sacrifices practised, for example, by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Druids, the Aztecs. In all such cases the divinity addressed was a god in time, or a personification of Nature, which is nothing else but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring; and in all cases the purpose of the rite was to obtain a future benefit or to avoid one of the enormous evils which Time and Nature forever hold in store. For this it was thought to be worthwhile to pay a high price in that currency of suffering, which the Destroyer so evidently valued. The importance of the temporal end justified the use of means that were intrinsically terrible, because intrinsically time-like.

Under these circumstances, one were better off making a sacrifice of his own choice, given it would be exacted from him in any case. On the other hand, a truly meaningful sacrifice could confer great power or divine gifts. Whether the voluntary sacrifice is one’s self, former self or whether the sacrifice is someone or something else, the Time god requires a sacrifice for an earthly reward.

Had these archaic ideas and ancient traditions been completely forgotten, this new brand of atavistic pop might seem strange.

But such ideas are indeed still popular—more than we think.

Pop’s Alchemy: The Union of Opposites

Reflecting on Goethe’s famous lyrical drama Faust, Carl Jung wrote:

“At last I had found confirmation that there were or had been people who saw evil and its universal power, and–more important—the mysterious role it played in delivering man from darkness and suffering. To that extent Goethe became, in my eyes, a prophet… In reading the drama I had discovered that Faust had been a philosopher of sorts, and although he turned away from philosophy, he had obviously learned from it a certain receptivity to the truth. Hitherto I had heard virtually nothing of philosophy, and now a new hope dawned. Perhaps, I thought, there were philosophers who had grappled with these questions and could shed light on them for me.” (Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections., p. 537)

Jung the alchemist would go on to express his disappointment with the fact that Goethe did not wish to fully embrace the idea of evil he entertained in his Faust drama. Goethe would go on to playfully warn his readers against the dangers of magic and spell-casting in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and he rejected any and all kinds of necromancy and alchemical fast-tracks to enlightenment in poems like “The Treasure Seeker,” much to Carl Jung’s chagrin.

But the occult philosophy of the union of opposites promoted by Jung and Gnostic schools leads to the logical conclusion that full freedom and liberation can only come as a result of the abolition of all duality, that is, the conscious and willful integration of both light and darkness into a higher Unity. Only once all duality has been transcended and all opposites have been reconciled is the individual truly free.

Only then can men truly become “gods.”

In “Understanding Abraxas – Simplicity Through Simulation: The Algorithm of Humanity,” the author explains the significance of an occult “union of opposites” for Jung and his Gnostic precursors using Jung’s archetype of Abraxas. Abraxas was one of the names given to the “Great Archon” of Gnostic Christianity.

Carl Jung’s archetype of Abraxas in Aion and The Red Book reveals the darker, chaotic potential within the psyche as much as it unveils the possibility for integration. Abraxas does not conform to moral binaries of good and evil but encompasses both, integrating destructive forces alongside generative ones. Jung saw Abraxas as an archetype that transcends the notion of order, embodying a wholeness that includes the shadow as well as the light. This unity of opposites means that Abraxas is both a bringer of wisdom and a harbinger of madness. In confronting Abraxas, one is compelled to face not only the potential for self-discovery but also the lurking chaos within oneself.

This “union of opposites” also happens to be one of the highest forms of purported wisdom which Free Masons attain as they ascend to the 33rd degree.

In Masonic symbolism, this union of opposites is represented using the white and black checkerboard floors or the androgynous half-man/half-goat deity, Baphomet. The deity inhabits the liminal space between good and evil, male and female, the earthly and the divine.

In this light, pop culture’s marriage of light and darkness, the sacred and the profane, becomes perfectly sound symbolism.

Conclusion

Regardless of which daemon or Aion inspires modern pop stars, a union of opposites becomes both a spiritual and practical necessity, as it is for occultists and Luciferians of all stripes. After all, there can be no light without darkness, right?

And that may be true.

However, the alchemical integration of light and darkness, and the rebirth which it entails, never comes without a price—or sacrifice.

The question is: are today’s pop stars really the true self-actualized individuals, or are they themselves the sacrifice?

David Gosselin is a poet, researcher, and translator in Montreal, Canada. He is the founding editor of The Chain​ed Muse. His personal Substack is Age of Muses, where he publishes historical deep-dives, original poetry and a variety of writings for a new renaissance. His new book A Renaissance or New Middle Ages: Magic, Mystery, and the Trance Formation of the West can be purchased here