audioMer Brethren of the Free Spirit : All Things are from Him, through Him and in Him (NL/UK,2007)***'
This cooperation between Jozef Van Wissem (lute) and James Blackshaw (12-string guitar) took the name of this group from spiritual and religious thinkers.
Intro.
In early medieval times we did not have the tendency to divide-and-unite into one centre as much as tends to happen today, -with all the emotional troubled personal opinions looking for attention, underneath, fighting their wars seeking a place of their own-, because the game is ruled now within a sort of fundament of a post-inquisition position of thinking, because we all still believe the idea of the so called official Churches, who call all the others the "non believers" or consider them as not recognised sects ; also Muslims today in media in Europe seems to be split into two groups of attention mostly, of which both ways of thinking in reality receive blind political respect. Any backwards, conservative or personal opinions with help of God-beliefs are taken nowadays much more seriously and blindly, and are not judged any longer, like in medieval times, as one way or degree in understanding to liberate oneself, something which with philosophy could be divided in partly useful or hardly useful ideas.
In early days there were many ways of thinking, of searching and yearning and all them presented some essence of understanding, while, to comprehend each other most of them were still associated with an underlying belief system, so many of them still used the word God, even if you can leave that out their readings if you really want to understand their essences.
Many of these essences developed into certain belief systems or organised definitions of thinking, can be sensed still in peoples morals / understanding in a natural kind of human communication and social development, where certain hidden rules show how we can respect each other, but much more also a certain free, and evolving social growth, that tends to seek how with more differences we can develop a shared trust.
For the Brethren Of Free Spirit, (especially active in Northern Europe in the 13th and 14th century), a deeper essence meant a feeling that something in us that needs to be felt and made free, in order to understand all.
In the introduction of the CD, a great text of Marguerite Porete (from “The Mirror of simple souls”) is included, which sounds more a combination of a Buddhist and Zen-Buddhist way of thinking mixed with Pantheism, about trying to liberate ego-driven desires for becoming one with the nothingness so that all can be understood well, and a person can be a free person.
People from Brethren of the Free Spirit tended to become 'subtle in spirit' instead of having a cruel spirit or having all-consuming egocentric goals. You could say they tended to live like 'Angels' (in a Christian sense) and not like devils on this earth, and (in their way of saying) they tried to find the (being) God-way during life. But their ‘spirituality’ and ‘free spirit’ would also mean that there were no longer rules how to develop this further. Without having limitations in its expressions, sins, they later said, were also not possible for those who were not attached by these desires or were bound in slavery to them. In reality that last part can hardly be translated in a materialist way or with laws and understanding without seeing behind the human person, which is a difficult task for a restricting outsider to see how this free way of acting should happen to be able to make judgement in seeing, who is an honest free spirit and who is a selfish sick-minded "hedonist".*
The CD front cover.
I have no idea why the group has taken such a serious association, but it is great to remember something more of how consciousness evolved, sometimes degraded, loses its sense in too much theory and then still finds a renewed attention (with or without giving attention again to its struggling and even abusing variations, but much more associated with originating, former or today’s reference points, to just sense the human inspirations behind it). The illustration refers to a heretic’s delusions or visions (CD-version), or (the LP-version) just a surreal statue with the heretic sleeping in a hole at the foot of the statue. It gives very much the impression of an alchemist picture, with the usual psychological inner attitude association, symbolic to the achieved chemical process. The titles with no doubt still refer to a conscious process, performed as a rather esoteric alchemist process, with or without spiritual goals.
The CD.
The first introductory track is a majestic inspiration, with the right intention (“the lifting of the veil”), where the changing chords are emphasised with lute (with just a few odd chords-variations), while the guitar makes the picking improvisations. The main title track, after this, uses lots of minimal repetition, almost too much too bear if not listening more attentively to the tiny details and change, or when leaving the clockwise repetition reveals itself as being rather hypnotic. Still, I am a bit cautious to such simplifications and repetitions for they can be caused by a limited or very slow creative imagination in the expressions, compensated by theorizing about them to justify the slow mind (like with mentioning the use of palindromes or whatever fact that on its own, this cannot be enough of a reason to limit creativity deliberately), but as I said, there luckily is enough dialoguing interaction, and it is not too long, so is acceptable, although it launched the feeling of a more limited world and musical character with only tinier ideas blooming. The third track, with electric guitar feedbacks and deliberately odd chords still doesn’t take away the feeling of limiting imagination, deliberately focused or not. Somewhere, a cat sound also seeps through. Some lute chords and other elements sound weird without showing much of its reason. This is clearly the influence of Jozef’s own world, whose imaginations often tend to hang in tiny spaces revealing more inner spaces within limitations. Within this strangeness, Jozef and James have found some rhythmical and sound combinations, to conclude somewhere as it started, with more melodic chord-wise variations of this tiny space, opening up a bit with more melodic pickings.
I am still left with the feeling that this deeper context is only used as an inspiration, just like a picture from an alchemist book could tickle someone's imagination. With such an association nobody seems to remember the way of thinking behind it exactly, but it still creates a space of imagination, strangeness, a different way of thinking, and perhaps not much more is wished for to find access to.
The CD is limited to 1078 copies, while the LP is printed 330 copies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additional Essay based upon the idea of the Free Spirit with Christanity on the background.
* PS. I am sure that a theorizing belief system like that remembered as the Brethren of the Free Spirit came into existence because people who act and do things from their heart sometimes do unacceptable things for a held fast rules regulated society, like for instance, a divorce from a bad relationship and going to a better person, even when this is an honest, and not pure selfish decision, it was not always recognized and accepted this way. To ensure its essence in those days, only any alternative belief system would be convincing enough for trying to explain inner motives to these religious thinkers who claim for themselves something of a superior position. Against them, only such a newly written down resume into a belief-system can demand an alternative to them, even when the last one is only about being consciously human, and trying to live like that. However, theorizing this with an explanatory system, seemed to be hardly provable for those who claim laws and order, and it also becomes a system that can easily be abused, even when also Christianity was already an abusing system of order with a practically worked out political system.
It became so, that the most materialistic systems of laws won the battle for official recognition in the end. Luckily, in the 15th century, science and neo-Platonism were still more succesful alternative and practical foundations compared to all the religious claims and abuses. Only today, science and psychology face again a new battle against law and order from inquisition-like eyes from those who claim to have superiority by having "direct instructions from God" (especially now, the New Born Christians and certain groups using Islamic associations).
In the 15th century, in Eastern societies (like China and Korea) they didn’t face this whole game of Gods-this-and-that so much ; they had ‘Wisdom’ as a judgement for human behaviour, something that could stand beyond laws if necessary. Those few inspectors who could make judgments out of wisdom could only find such a position when they were capable of wisdom, on various levels. But European history knew a whole other growth, where intelligence was part of it but not wisdom like in the East.
Our spiritual-philosophical/moral/religious history hangs together with evolutions coming from Egypt, Greece, Rome and Middle East mostly. Because these evolutions hang also together with the Middle East, (-more than with the East-), the responsibility of our reactions towards it reflects also something still unsolved in our own world. In this way it wouldn’t be too bad an idea to write a book or essay on the history of God and morals, not from a religious, but from a philosophical viewpoint, especially when, when I see we still inherit a blind tolerance/acceptance towards any kind of thought or act with religious associations, and also don't find any philosophical argument against any discrepancy in it.
A logical evolution...
It seems that the first appearances of Gods, in human shapes, might have been real persons who did something so special that they were remembered as examples of beings with a different level of associations. This gave these persons a God-status, because their history worked on a different level, and they were not forgotten. Egyptian pharaohs were very spiritual but thoroughly that society forgot lots of its origins, like the ancient meditative ways to meditate under ground like in a wintersleep, and what it meant to become like a Star, a God. Under the Romans, it was no longer clear where all their Gods came from, and the emperor even called himself beforehand a 'son of God'. When the Romans established themselves in the Middle East, people were still looking for the true sense from inside, and they changed ideas from the Romans, as a first reaction. Just like Jesus there were many more people around making alternatives, but the social wish for an alternative ruler, and an example for the society was very big. It was the people themselves who called Jesus 'Son of God' as an alternative to the emperor. This Jesus movement had more success than others because it was a message which didn’t have many restrictions in selecting people. Rome eventually embraced Christianity, after a prolonged struggle, for some reasons I will not write about this time. The struggle in finding a place for these remaining thoughts didn’t end, because at some point some preachers of Jesus felt superior, and in the end only one person claimed the throne and became the pope (in Rome, again-where else-), and who was called 'representative of God on Earth' (can you imagine). Also Islam and all that was living as thought-systems in those areas this was synthesised into the Koran, which was compiled and stagnated in notions of by law and order by one man who then claimed that he was the 'last prophet', setting up in rules all that he assembled (which luckily still included something of the human heart and its free conditions, in combination with common rules ; -the feminine ruled religions at that stage were overruled, with order and discipline, -as one of the last places in the world-, so their vague intuitive freedoms, feelings and influences were also wiped out in the evolutions of thinkers and religions; they only kept the moon symbol-).
Anyhow, all these evolutions resulted in people forgetting one important and original essence behind all that, the trying to form a spiritual being, different from an egoistic animal. Sadly enough, the two biggest religious forms of today with their regulations are no longer associated very much with that essence of 'human being', and only tend to come up with a set of rules on how to have acceptable behaviour, as an attention especially to the outside person. But in truth, people from any such religion can also be blind and egoistic, and are no longer associating things very freely towards the true 'human being', which is the true spiritual essence from where it all started, with the attempt to become a free, or say it in Eastern terms, an enlightened person. Who still remembers what it really means to be a free and an unattached mind ?
Unfortunately for the evolutions within Islam, and for the world's evolutions, is that Khomeini, who lived in France, found the Western idea of a pope very clever, and he established, in the 70s, the most radical new form of Islam than ever before, with even more rules (I thought there wasn't a new prophet possible?). It is these radical evolutions which are felt as a threat to Western Society because they symbolise a society that stopped the spontaneous evolution which still respects the idea of a free person, which is socially and personally developed by experience and communication, and in that way gets its true significance within our or any Culture.
I personally consider as a very inner-rich or Culturally-rich society, a Community which has very little rules but lots of understanding and a developed condition of trust. In such a well developed Free Community, -which you can still notice in small villages (when not having unwanted visitors -like gangsters-), or in old times, even in cities, woman can walk freely, also at night without facing problems, and generally one’s possessions are respected. Problems were able to be be solved by some mediators.
Unfortunately, it seems that people who were never be able to build up these free regulations are also primitive with them. Men from societies who still sell women for marriage, have not developed a rich communication field with women, and are also often primitive with them. The rules of cutting off hands for stealing might help in Northern Africa, but this way they didn't have the chance to learn to see the importance of Trust, socially and personally.
So again, I must proclaim howof much importance a Free Spirited Society is. It is important to continue to be able to build on that basic trust, and those who can't build this up with the society we could perhaps again lower its possibilities to climb up, like we always spontaneously did, without exaggerating diminishing any chances for people who are very different. Many gypsies were murdered in WOII. Nowhere you can find statues to remember that. It was said that you could hardly trust Roman gypsies in those days. In Rumania they still don't get that trust, but then after all these years it became a racist kind of regulation where they no longer have a chance to participate in society and they now are doomed to remain outlaws. The climbing up in society stagnated and that is a real shame. When some wealthy Jews had enough money, and allowed usury and loans to the Germans during the thirties crisis, people found afterwards this making profit in time of extreme need, something inhumane in its lack of human perspective. (In Islamic usery no profit at all is allowed, but when any people can, many will also do so, -there is not much difference between people). But sometimes, not being able to work further on a human and social continuity enough makes dangerous situations. It is possible that those who don't succeed enough socially for something will be blamed for it. On the otherhand it can also be that those who want it different will change society completely. Everybody fights for his own place in his own selfish way. That's is not the spiritual part in them, but the opposite.
Within that world of struggle one battle is fought between trust and distrust. Both of them develop spontanuously and hopefully this will be without exaggerations, with enough opposite chances, and in our post-war trauma condition hopefully we're not devellping the other way in giving too much trust in this battle of the fittest. For instance, today I see politically forced exaggerations to put people with dubious pasts into security jobs. It is of course difficult to find the right conditions where we can face people as people, and are able to do so, however their beliefsystems makes them different. We could also judge this from the human hearts and conditions and be honest with that, whatever the consequences brought with it. Perhaps there are certain conditions that can build up trusts, while other situations make it more difficult. But no matter how this is worked out in practice, this wasn't the reason why I started to write this essay... What I wanted to say is be careful of a further development in this society that we should not trust new regulations that take away some human fundament. It was the being human which was the first spiritual conquest which all people, when communicating and even struggling for their survival still needed to survive.
It is important for those who want a change in positions and if society allows it, that we keep in mind the importance of the essence of a Free Society, and that this is NOT like an anarchic, spoiled Western Society, which only with that excuse will be attempted for ever to become overruled step by step with Trojan Horses, to more law and order inspired by so called religions, who only know a certain order, but who themselves dodn't develop the freedom of human conditions within society to make such a change a trust-making development. What we really need is a further evolution that should be able to keep the personal freedoms protected, while developing with it the whole sum of human conditions. First of all for this sake, we must consider people again as people, with a common source of inspiration, no matter where it comes from. Religion hereby is never superior, because humans are always inspired and think as limited as humans, no matter what source of inspiration they bring along. Everybody wants their place, and that's ok, but that's also the primitive and selfish part. We can now only choose to make rules over this selfishness with a great human condition, or with a whole set of increasing rules. What kind of society shall we create ? A society that will work on the human conditions with the availability of trust with few rules where much can be solved from communication from within, or with a new form of tyranny regulated by one dominating opinion which will speak for all the differences ? Of course, trust and human condition demands a realistic discipline and a personal vision which needs to get its own development of experiences.
With the Bertren of Free Spirit I realized something of our evolution which we should remember, and develop further.
In today’s society we associate of course this continued battle of consciousness with religion because any associations with religions, together with an oversensitive carefulness regarding towards other opinions/races and beliefsystems, we continue to pamper even this with more stimuli. But, in reality it are also groups, societies and communities with ‘rules of the street’ who are built more on Distrust (where it is normal to buy off people for instance), which are an equal, if not bigger danger when they enter a more free society. But it is the cocktail of change which uses our own idiocy and acceptance towards everything associated with religion which will make real human sense, and integrations less discussable, so that also the protection of certain human values will become even more difficult. At the time when we will welcome the rest of Eastern Europe a completely free entrance into the EC, and with more economic change expected, it seems that we are growing directly towards a repetition of the conditions from just before World War II. Also then, we will not do something about the real changes that are happening already now, because the memories of the Word War are based upon different things and are coloured by guilt because then, people used racism with sacrifice and abuse of its system and were not improving communication to give growth alone to an honest human mentality. I have no idea how the battle for new majorities will be faced this time, and even if we can stop the changes about to happen. I only understand the importance of certain, also unwritten, foundations, and the attempts of certain people wanting to change it with a new law and order, where we will lose certain essences with it. Within any change that happens, please do not neglect the consciousness of the free spirit over human conditions. While certain people will prefer particular ‘law and order’, and while some might think it will be the best system for them, (as long as they didn’t learn to adapt well on any other system), for all the others, which are most of us who live in this Western Society, it will still be the best for our true nature to keep a certain freedom in behaviour, because also, if we are allowed to solve everything as I explained before, within a certain limited in size society, we will be proved trustworthy in it. We know already and have experienced the discrimination by Roman Catholicism (-if you were not completely with them, but were for instance a socialist you had trouble to survive-), there is no reason why that should repeat itself.
About the essay : a few more thoughts and about the changes in Europe see youtube here & here & here
next album with Van Wissem->
