Two Spiritual Worlds
The Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages compares and contrasts the spiritual worlds of two musical artists, Daniel Smith and David Tibet. Both artists embrace some form of Christian thought but there the two figures wildly diverge.
“Cults, by definition, need not just a charismatic and enigmatic figurehead, but also a devoted legion of believers. Persistence pays off in getting the message out there; just look how long it took Jesus…Daniel Smith, who records as the Danielson Famile, Tri-Danielson, and just Danielson, kicked off his own cultdom with a Rutgers senior project-turned-debut album, A Prayer for Every Hour…Smith’s cult status has grown, even while he himself remains childish when addressing his Christian faith.”
While Daniel Smith approaches Christianity with a simple almost childlike temperament, David Tibet, while also singing about Christianity, does so from a very different perspective. Tibet’s faith is obsessed with eschatology, and is influenced by mysticism (this includes a long-running interest in Aleister Crowley, and Tibetan Buddhism).
“The central voice, of course, is that of Tibet, a portentous and feral device falling somewhere between Johnny Rotten’s mewl and the projection of a bit player in Macbeth. Tibet too, deals with occult forces, this mortal coil, Lazarus, and other lost deities as his band plies a strange and moldered strain of folk much like what might emanate out of Stonehenge or a witch’s cove.”
While some might say that this shows the elasticity of the Christian faith, I instead think it shows a pre-modern/post-modern split in thinking about religion. Smith’s faith is simple, direct, and exists as a lone truth. Tibet’s view is pluralistic and inclusive, willing to take inspiration from outside spiritual and mystic traditions, and open to working with wildly variant faith practitioners. It is the world of one truth versus the world of many truths; one is open to a world where modern Paganism exists and one (despite how “liberal” it becomes) is not.
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