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Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

'As we previously discussed, the main series of Zeppelin’s public bad luck started with Robert Plant’s car accident in 1975 but that was before Anger’s Curse of King Midas on Jimmy Page. I think Anger’s general involvement with Page starting in 1971 began a slow buildup of chaos energy and the dam began to crack and ultimately broke with the 1975 car crash. His curse after being ejected from Jimmy Page’s home in 1976 just expedited what was already happening energetically with the band due to his earlier involvement. It was all downhill for Zeppelin from there.

Fame and all that comes with it draws in massive amounts of psychic energy and those who seek to get close to the famous get a hit, if you will, of that juice and it can become addictive. People that know how to harness and manipulate psychic vibrations, people like Kenneth Anger, can tap into the pool of energy that rock stars like Zeppelin have around them and use it as a sort of fuel; akin to vampirism. Anger was very clever in this regard, but he may not have been fully conscious of what he was doing. Sure, he intended the curse but the long-term energy drain connected to Page’s creative inertia and inability to tour as Zeppelin again may have been covertly orchestrated by the demonic forces around him.

Although it may appear that I’m painting Anger as the villain this is not the case. What is Star Wars without Darth Vader? Would Lord of the Rings be any fun without Sauron? What I’m getting at here is that Kenneth Anger was serving a cosmic purpose in the dance of life. Without conflict we learn nothing. Humans evolve through cause and effect and Kenneth Anger’s (as well as Aleister Crowley’s) insertion into Jimmy Page’s orbit was a necessary part of his personal growth.

I would even cautiously venture to suggest that Zeppelin would not be the mega-legend they are today without Anger’s injection of caustic energy. I know that will seem blasphemous to some of you but this theory cannot be proven or disproven. There are innumerable alternate realities and maybe in the one where Kenneth Anger doesn’t exist, the original lineup of Zeppelin (including Bonham) are travelling the nostalgia concert circuit. Maybe history would have lumped them in with their less successful contemporaries?

Was Jimmy Page in some way responsible for the curse? Did he practice black magick? Personally, I don’t think he made any pact with the Devil or performed black magick rituals. How one defines these rituals is another matter though. Some consider any sort of a ceremony in which one seeks to commune with and/or benefit from nonphysical agents ‘black magick’. I don’t agree with that at all.

However, JP did reprint the demonic Goetia conjuring book through his Equinox store and I can’t imagine that he didn’t at one time or another try to summon and converse with the entities from this ancient manual. It’s utterly fascinating and irresistible for young occultists to throw caution to the wind and knock on that door. But I think JP was just experimenting and maybe sought to bring good fortune to the band through these energies. The catch is that demons always want something in return.

Playing with Goetia, even without any malevolent intent, would have drawn in a plethora of nasty energies which I’m sure swirled around the band. But once again, Anger’s involvement was like repeatedly dumping a bucket of gasoline onto a small campfire. In the end, I don’t think Jimmy Page meant to harm anyone through his experimentation. He’s indirectly culpable, at best, for the Led Zeppelin Curse. But then again, aren’t we all? Isn’t life just one grand experiment?

Although I do feel that Kenneth Anger is the lynchpin to this curse, an interesting connection between Jimmy Page, Aleister Crowley and Anger has emerged. Both Page and Anger are...'

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