12 Theosophy and the Esoteric Roots of Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Foreword xi
4. Acknowledgments xiii
5. Introduction: The Muzzled Muse 1
6. Part I. Esotericism as a Form of Thought
7. 1 The Hermaphroditic Nature of the mi-fa Complex 19
8. 2 Athanasius Kircher and the Nature of Ecstatic Listening 41
9. 3 Claude Bragdon’s Images of the Seven Degrees of the Scale 64
10. 4 Music Analysis as Esoteric Activity: Victor Zuckerkandl at Eranos 78
11. Part II. Esotericism as the Keeping and Revealing of Secrets
12. 5 Concealment Revealed: Sound and Symbol in Ockeghem’s Missa Quinti toni and Missa Prolationum 101
13. 6 Air and Eros: Musician as Demiurge in Renaissance Magic 125
14. 7 “De septenario illo et sacro numero”: The Divine Septenarius in Baryphonus and Grimm’s Pleiades musicae 147
15. 8 The Hoard and the Grail: A Wagnerian Conspiracy in Five Parts 166
16. Part III. Esotericism as an Identity
17. 9 Tommaso Campanella, the Barberini Palace, and the Soul’s Perception of Music 179
18. 10 Sonic Symbolism: Matthew Cooke’s Music for the Scottish Rite Craft Degrees 201
19. 11 New American Eden: Katherine Tingley in Lomaland 210
20. 12 Theosophy and the Esoteric Roots of Sun Ra’s Afrofuturism 234
21. Part IV. Esotericism as a Signifier
22. 13 “Im Himmel und auf Erden”: Geometry, Alchemy, and Rosicrucian Symbol in Buxtehude’s Herr, wenn ich nur Dich hab’ (BuxWV 38) 255
23. 14 (In)Audible Sound and Spiritualist Acoustemologies 276
24. 15 As Above, So Below: Magic Squares and Immutable Laws of Nature in Webern’s Opus 24 287
25. 16 The Osiris-Light in Nino Rota’s Music 311
26. Notes on Contributors 323
27. Index 329