Interview with Genesis P. Orridge
by Baba Raul Canizares
Baba's establishment of the Orisha Consciousness Movement and religion is a "New Way On" for the ancient Yoruba Orisha traditions of Nigeria handed down for generations through his familial bloodline and Cuban Santeria heritage to be transmitted by his authority as an Oba or King.
You can discover a great deal more about Baba Raul Canizares life and religious practices by reading his book "CUBAN SANTERIA" (of which an expanded new edition was published last year). Go to all good online bookstores to order it.
You can visit Baba's website by going to the ALLIES zone of The Next New Way On and clicking on Baba Raul Canizares name which activates a link.
English avant-garde musician, artist,and thinker Genesis P-orridge is one of the century's most influential cultural figures. With his groups COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle, and Psychick TV, he defined Industrial music. He is also the father of that 90s phenomenon, the raves, and is a force in the "modern primitives" movement. What follows are excerpts from a recent conversation I had with him. The entire interview can be read in the present issue of NEW AEON'S ORISHA!
BABA RAUL: As I read the new book WRECKERS OF CIVILISATION (LONDON: BLACK DOG PUBLISHING, 1999) about your early exploits with COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle, I see in your actions a quintessential Eshu, yet I know that at that time you had not heard of Eshu.
Genesis P-orridge: That's right, I first heard of Eshu about two years ago.
Baba: How did you feel upon finally encountering that force we call Eshu?
Genesis: Relieved! I think the first thing that I felt was terribly relieved. Because it gave me hindsight, and with the hindsight going back all those years, a lot of things I did back then make sense now, from always wanting to play with rocks, moving and arranging them in circles, to all sorts of other things that attracted me and I now clearly see were markers along the path that led me to Eshu. Now I understand that all my life I was clawing and dragging myself against the flow of my own culture--it was as if my own culture was a river going one way, and I did not want to go that way, though at the time I did not understand why. I felt like I was drowning in my own culture. I had asthma, I literally couldn't breathe, so I felt like I was literally, physically, "drowning."
Baba: Tell me about your near-death experience and how this changed your perspective.
Genesis: When I was seventeen, I had a medical emergency and I ended up in the hospital, and I physically died. The doctors actually came out of the emergency operating theater and told my parents that I was dead and that all there was left to do was pray. Being a devout Christian, in the best sense of the word, my mother prayed and I came back. I woke up the next morning not knowing any of this. I didn't have any strange experiences, I didn't go down any white tunnels, nothing like that. I do remember hearing the doctor saying I was dead, and then nothing. When I came back the doctor told me that I could live a normal life, or I could drop dead at any moment. Although this statement could be true of anyone, it does have a sobering effect when it is presented to you as a little flag. It was lmost engraved in my body, my metabolism. That whole experience was really helpful, for I had already dreamed of living a Bohemian life . . . I wanted to be totally creative, to become a being that lived, breathed, and only existed to create, to communicate, and to discover.
PRIEST NARAYAN of OCM
with Genesis P-Orridge
photo by Miss Jackie Superstar
Baba: To what do you attribute your incredible connection to the path of Eshu, the path of sacrifice?
Genesis: That's a good question! In a way, I was born in an alien culture, for a reason, and I'm so relieved, and I feel so blessed, that whenever an important choice happened in my life, I had the good sense to follow my intuition, and not the advise of those around me, so in a way, it was like being blind and knowing that there was a way to see.
Baba: A particularly Eshu-like quality you embody is the ability to shape-shift. When I first met you, I thought you were a woman. It took me a few minutes to realize you were a man. Yet as I got to know you, I saw other sides of you that were decidely masculine, even macho. What I find fascinating is that you embody such opposites with equal ease.
Genesis: Ha Ha Ha! Well. . . I have different roles to fulfill in everything I do. Sometimes I am on the road with a band and I have to keep twelve or fourteen neurotic, egocentric, or exhausted people happy, and I have to deal with promoters, T-shirt sellers, people who want autographs, and then I have to perform, so I have to do all kinds of stuff wich require organizational or alpha-male qualities. But I am equally content to be soft and gentle and kind, and even submissive . . .
Baba: You also like to wear beautiful make-up.
Genesis: Yes! and I also like to dress up and be the opposite of macho. I've dedicated my life to being nothing and everything all at once!
Baba: I know I'll be criticized for saying this, but I believe the orishas incarnate, and that this is true today. I've divined that you are an embodiment of Eshu.
Genesis: The more I look around me, the more I come to believe that all the people on this planet are sparks or fragments of greater beings, which tends to imply that there are GREATER BEINGS! It's as if there were twelve or fifteen of these deities, these super-beings, and they built a 'game of the gods', or some other devise that spun them into manifest reality. My own life has been 'cut it up, change it, reassemble it, and see what happens.' Well, if I feel like that, and if I've discovered that all the normal ideas about what is real, and not real, and how the Universe works are not what I was told, that the Universe is infinitely malleable and changeable, and incredible . . . and wonderful, then, if my tiny being can come up with that appreciation of the Universe, a super-being would do that to a super-being's nth degree! And, wouldn't you like to find out what happened if you applied your theories as a super-being in a material plane? So I feel that there's an absolute direct connection between every living being on this planet and these other divine beings, and that there are probably divine beings beyond them, and ultimately a Supreme Creator, I have no choice but to accept this at this point in my life.
Thats it for the portion that was originally posted online The remainder of the interview appears in the Winter 1999 Issue of New Aeon's Orisha.Should anyone out there have the remainder and would like to contribute it to the archive please get in touch!
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