Notes to “Romantic Total Revolution: The Democracy Of Soul & The Goddess Of Liberty”

Part 2

Text: I’m not peaking hyperbolically when I state that Shelley’s anarcho-Romantic ideas about the “spirit of that age” were prophetic. (After all, I have already pointed out that the Romantic poets took on the office of the poet-prophet.) And, so, as for where to look for the fulfillment of Shelley’s prophecy, we can look for his spirit of an age to be reborn in the Sixties—1968 to be more precise. It was in that year that world revolution in the name of Imagination seemed have its flashpoint. 1968 was the year that rocked the world. A time of unparalleled upheaval across the world, especially in America and France, the remarkable events of 1968 created a legacy that was to shape a generation.

Song: Rolling Stone’s ‘Street Fighting Man’

I used this song as representative of the revolutionary year of 1968 in America and France, when street protesters carried signs at read: “All Power to the Imagination.” I could have used other songs (songs less about violent revolution). But there was something about the energy of this song, and so I went on my instincts. After I had presented the musical essay, I was curious as to when the song was actually written (I had a vague notion at it was in the late sixties), so I did a background check on it.

Jagger allegedly wrote it about political activist and writer Tariq Ali after Jagger attended a March 1968 anti-war rally at London’s U.S. embassy, during which mounted police attempted to control a crowd of around 25,000 protesters. He also found inspiration in the rising violence among student rioters on Paris’s Left Bank, the precursor to May 1968. The song was recorded on March–April and May 1968. On the writing, Jagger said in a 1995 interview in Rolling Stone:

Yeah, it was a direct inspiration, because by contrast, London was very quiet…. It was a very strange time in France. But not only in France but also in America, because of the Vietnam War and these endless disruptions…. I thought it was a very good thing at the time. There was all this violence going on. I mean, they almost toppled the government in France; DeGaulle went into this complete funk, as he had in the past, and he went and sort of locked himself in his house in the country. And so the government was almost inactive. And the French riot police were amazing.

So my intuition about which song to use proved sound. Yet, the timing of the song with the events of 1968 and my discourse on the imagination and democracy in the musical essay had another significance: was May of 1968, and this theme of popular uprising in revolution actually went back to my May Day series of musical essays. I had pointed out that the seasonal May Day festivities included a figure called “The Lord of Misrule” (a Jack-in-the-Green or Robin Goodfellow, who later became Robin Hood), who presided over what sociologists have termed a period of “social reversal.” This was a period when the normal order of society was inverted or “turned upside down.” The ruling classes were satirized; priests and lords were the butt of many jokes and players called “mummers” would poke fun at the local authorities. It was a time when commoners let many of their frustrations about their living conditions be heard. As would be expected, the church and state didn’t particularly abide this part of the holiday, especially during times of popular agitation. They were threatened by rioters, and many priests and lords were overturned during these celebrations. So the Mayday celebrations, with their Maypoles, were eventually outlawed. Yet the tradition still carried on in many rural areas and the trade societies still celebrated Mayday until the late 18th century. I also pointed out that it was in these May Day festivities and parades that the first trade guilds were prominently represented, which later became the trade unions—the same trade unions that agitated for worker’s rights in the streets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the same that were to choose May Day as their holiday. Thus, the traditional holiday of the common people, which had been banned for centuries, was reclaimed once again for the common people.

I then introduced the sociological concept of “carnivalesque” to aid in explaining the motives behind this outlawing of May Day festivities and the maypole and to aid in defining the increasing socio-political aspect of the sixteenth-century May Day festivities. Social historians of this period refer to all traditional festivities, including May Day, under the classification of “carnival” or “carnivalesque.” They tell us that there were all sorts of regional and temporal variations on the theme of carnival repression by the Catholic south and the Puritan-Protestant north of Europe (even though Protestantism rode in on a wave of carnivalesque revolts in Germany). The governments of these countries eventually took a hard stance against public festivity or disorder in any form. Everywhere the general drift led inexorably away from the medieval tradition of carnival. I then cited historians Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, who summarized the change in legislation:

In the long‑term history from the 17th to the 20th century there were literally thousands of acts of legislation introduced which attempted to eliminate carnival and popular festivity from European life . . . Everywhere, against the periodic revival of local festivity and occasional reversals, a fundamental ritual order of western culture came under attack—its feasting, violence, processions, fairs, wakes, rowdy spectacle and outrageous clamour were subject to surveillance and repressive control.

Thus, these popular May Day “carnivalesque” festivities increasingly gain a political edge after the Middle Ages, from the sixteenth century on, in what is known today as the early modern period. It is then that large numbers of people begin to use the masks and noises of their traditional festivities as a cover for armed rebellion, and to see, perhaps for the first time, the possibility of inverting hierarchy on a permanent basis, and not just for a few festive hours. And at the center of this inversion was the seasonal Maypole, which became increasingly used by the common people as a stand to express their socio-political grievances and a lightening rod to popular uprising, until they were outlawed in the 1600s. Both the religious and secular authorities wanted to prevent their order from being turned upside down:

From the sixteenth century on, the carnivalistic assault on authority seems to become less metaphorical and more physically menacing to the elites. . . . People again and again dressed up their rebellions in the trappings of carnival: masks, even full costumes, and almost always the music of bells, bagpipes, drums. Similarly, the maypole, around which so many traditional French and English festivities revolved, became a signal of defiance and a call to action.

Therefore, my general point in reviewing these past musical essays on May Day is to suggest for your consideration that the events of May 1968, which threatened to turn the world upside down, have their historical roots in the carnivalesque uprisings of the early-modern European May Day festivals.

Part 3

Text: It is interesting to note here how this modern goddess, with her pole or tree, may be a survival of the archaic Great Mother goddess, who was associated with the world tree and its counterpart, the world axis or axis mundi as a pole. It is also interesting to note that some cultural historians of the Great Goddess see her as representing a pre-patriarchal order of social egalitarianism. (For instance, see Riane Eisler, The Chalice & the Blade, 1987.) . . . . It is interesting to note here that the Goddess Liberty’s pole could be a survival of the popular fifteenth- and sixteenth-century seasonal Maypoles, which, as pointed out in my May Day series of musical essays, became increasingly used by the common people as a lightening rod to popular uprising, until they were outlawed in the 1600s.

In my past musical essays for New Year’s, I discussed the archaic origins of the Mother Goddess and her world tree (and the world tree symbols in Celtic, Norse, and other myths) and the shamanic rituals of the world axis. This all came to mind when I came across the various depictions of the Liberty Tree and Pole associated with the Goddess Liberty in the iconography of the American Revolutionary period. These are archetypal symbols that undergo transformation through history. So why couldn’t this archetypal symbol complex enter the colonial American story through the revolutionary period? Though, admittedly, this is just speculation on my part, I’m suggesting, if we see the origins of the American Goddess of Liberty (in her multifarious depictions as statues, on seals, coins, and flags) in the goddesses of Greek and Roman times, like Athena and Minerva (which themselves go back to pre-patriarchal Great Goddesses, who tended to represent a more egalitarian social order), then we can have a basis upon which to begin to understand that Lady Liberty has a deep, archaic ancestry, which evokes an imagination of democracy as more than just a strictly modern political idea. This is an essential part of my project, which I stated at the beginning of these musical essays—the re-mythologization of the image of America (and thus making explicit the implicit deep connection between the eighteenth-century aesthetic tradition of the Imagination and the political tradition of Democracy).

Again, I cast my mind back to my May Day series of musical essays when I discovered the image of the Liberty Pole. The May Day festivities included the crowning a May Queen, a parade with Jack-in-the-Green or Robin Goodfellow, the coronation of a “Lord of Misrule,” and dancing around a Maypole. Generally because of the Maypole, the May Day festival was finally outlawed by the Puritans in 1644 and by the Catholic Church in the 1700s. Yet the tradition still carried on in many rural areas and the trade societies still celebrated May Day until the late 18th century. Thus I must ask: If the Maypole by the sixteenth century became such a symbol of popular revolt against the ruling class that it had to be outlawed in Puritan England, why not see its former citizens, now colonists in America, instinctively erecting Liberty Poles in the same way they used to erect Maypoles as rallying points against their overlords? And, furthermore, is it too much to see how the same Maypole is transformed into the Liberty Pole, the same pole upon which the new flag of the independent colonies was hung? Again, this is speculation, but I have found one promising clue as to the twin identity of the Liberty and Maypoles. According to folklorists, when medieval people danced around the pagan Maypole, the ribbons or streamers around it were customarily red and white, and the dance was a kind of fertility dance of the young men and women, which wrapped the Maypole. I have not been able to discover the significance of the colors. However, a further clue comes from the contemporary neo-pagan religion of Wicca. As pointed out in my May Day series of musical essays, the Wiccans ceremoniously dance the “wrapping of the May Pole.” Traditionally, the ribbons attached around the top of the May Pole are red and white, representing either the red as the Sun God and the white as the Virgin Goddess, or the white for the Maiden and the red for the Mother. The participants dance around the May Pole carrying the ribbons, the males holding the red and the females holding the white. As they dance, they weave and intertwine the ribbons to form a symbolic birth canal wrapped around the phallic pole, representing the union of the Goddess and God.

Again, I have no concrete proof of this, but it seems more than a mere coincidence that the Liberty pole (that became the pole upon which the new red, white, and blue flag was hung—the stripes being red and white, like streamers) and the earlier May Pole (with red and white ribbon-streamers) share the same color scheme. (Of course, I could resort to the Masonic connection to the art, architecture, and symbols of early America, but popular esotericism is not in the purview of these musical essays. And far be it from me to get involved in what some might call “occult conspiracy theory”! Note: I did just mention in this last essay that the Statue of Liberty designer and sculptor, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, was a French Freemason.)

[For images of Goddess of Liberty, Liberty Pole, and May Pole, go to my “Playlists & Images” page.]

Part 3

The following is the full citation of which I could only read a part, because of time limitations at the end of the program. I feel that it exemplifies the uncanny correspondence between the account I read of Washington’s Valley Forge prophetic vision of America, published in 1880 (an apocalyptic vision of a mighty Angel), and Blake’s prophetic poem, America, A Prophecy, which I’ve been using throughout all these musical essays. (I only found the Washington account last week in preparing for this third essay.) Here’s what I read at the closing of the musical essay:

And so to conclude this Epilogue, “Blake’s Prophetic Tradition Reaches America’s Shores,” the beginning and final verses from that “Son of Liberty,” Blake’s America: A Prophecy:

The shadowy daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc.

When fourteen suns had faintly journey’d o'er his dark abode …

Crown’d with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;

A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,

When pestilence is shot from heaven; no other arms she need:

Invulnerable tho’ naked, save where clouds roll round her loins,

Their awful folds in the dark air; silent she stood as night;

For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise;

But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay’d his fierce embrace.

Dark virgin; said the hairy youth …

I howl my joy! and my red eyes seek to behold thy face

In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight….

The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent,

Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America’s shore:

Piercing the souls of warlike men, who rise in silent night,

Washington, Franklin, Paine & Warren, Gates, Hancock & Green;

Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albion’s fiery Prince.

Washington spoke; “Friends of America look over the Atlantic sea;

“A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy iron chain

“Descends link by link from Albion’s cliffs across the sea to bind

“Brothers & sons of America, till our faces pale and yellow;

“Heads deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands work-bruis’d,

“Feet bleeding on the sultry sands, and the furrows of the whip

“Descend to generations that in future times forget.” …

In the flames stood & view’d the armies drawn out in the sky,


Washington Franklin Paine & Warren Allen Gates & Lee,

And heard the voice of Albion’s Angel give the thunderous command ….

And so the Princes fade from earth, scarce seen by souls of men


But tho’ obscur’d, this is the form of the Angelic land.

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For the complete text of America: A Prophecy, here’s a link:

http://www.netpoets.com/classic/poems/003023.htm