Friday 17 December 2010

Starless and Bible Black Widow (3)

A remark on the album "Sacrifice." There exist effectively two versions of this album; between the original demo recordings made in 1969 and the recording of the final version as released in 1970, Kay Garrett who sang the main vocal part on "Way to Power" and "Seduction" and duetted with Kip Trevor on "Come to the Sabbat," "Attack of the Demon" and "Sacrifice" left the band after getting married; these songs were reworked with Kip Trevor on main vocals throughout, and in the case of "Seduction" and "Attack of the Demon" the lyrics changed. The demo recordings were eventually released in 2000 as "Return to the Sabbat" and remastered and slightly cleaned-up versions appeared on the 2002 compilation "Come to the Sabbath -- Anthology." The song that suffered most from the changes was "Seduction." The opening lines:
"You asked me to come to you Prayed to have me here Here I am in human form Throw away your fear."
coming just after "Conjuration" (more or less the same on both versions) in which the magician declares:
"To make my dream come true I call the lady Astaroth, come join me here."
makes far more sense spoken by the demon summoned (when one recalls the common demand in Solomonic-stylee Grimoires for the spirit to appear "in fair human form") to the magician rather than vice versa. Astaroth, of course, while in the Grimoires and later demonologists a male arch-demon, is patently a corruption (possibly via the Hebrew plural form) of Ashtoreth, a Caananite goddess called Astarte by the Greeks (Milton at least realised this). Like almost every other major Caananite deity except Yahweh, she suffered demonisation in later Judæo-Christian thought.

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