FEATURE:
Her Deal with Gods
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional image for 2011’s Director’s Cut
Kate Bush and the Spiritual Divine
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IT is not a revelation…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1983 (recreating the cover of Depeche Mode’s 1982 album, A Broken Frame)/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Griffin
to say that Kate Bush has woven spirituality and religion through her music. There are cases of Bush’s putting God(s) and religion through her music. If you think about her most famous song, Running Up That Hill. Originally called A Deal with God, it was ridiculously changed because it was feared that the title would cause offense. That it was blasphemous somehow. Now, there would not be a hesitation putting out a song with ‘God’ in the title. However, Bush’s song was not insulting or blasphemous. Indeed, she was doing a deal with God. That men and women could swap places and know what the other was going through. Share the experience, as it were! Bush was raised as a Roman Catholic and although her music is not especially devout or religious in tone, faith and spirituality has been a part of her music from the very beginning. That compromise with Running Up That Hill. Bush was told that at least ten countries would not play the song if it was called A Deal with God. It was one of the few compromises she had to make for the sake of her career. Bush has said that when she was younger she felt like she was on a mission from God. That music was really her calling and she had a bigger purpose. I will explore different sides of Bush’s spirituality and creative curiosity. How she is someone who is very spiritual and compassionate yet is not necessarily tied to one viewpoint or belief. Someone who has in fact woven aspects of different religions through her music. Although Bush was raised in a Roman Catholic household, she didn’t feel that the Church was the right fit for her. Although Bush has mentioned God in her music and in interviews now and then, I think that Bush’s music is her attempt to become more complete and understanding. That is what you get from Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Bush using that plea. An opportunity to speak with God and do a deal. In a larger sense, it is about understanding and making humans more empathetic. Spirituality has clearly been a big part of Kate Bush’s life.
This creativity was a way of filling an emptiness. That mission from God. Rather than her literally doing her own deal with God or there being this religious destiny, I think Bush did feel that her creative drive and love of music was connected to religion. She has said how Breathing was a case of something working through her. She observed: “When I was writing it, it felt like: Hang on, I don't think I'm writing this–this is a bit too good for me! Rather than the song being my creation, I was a vehicle for something that was coming through me”. I want to widen this out and think of Bush in spiritual terms. Even though her Roman Catholic upbringing gave her a sense of destiny and drive – and she felt God working through her for some songs -, you can also feel Bush embracing multiple faiths. Consider the fact that she put the words “Om mani padme” in The Kick Inside’s Strange Phenomena. It is part of a Sanskrit mantra that is central to Tibetan Buddhism. It is associated with Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Bush has expressed interest in several spiritual paths and throughout her life. These include astrology, the paranormal, and New Age beliefs. There is no one path or option that has struck her hardest. In an interview with Q from 1999, Bush remarked the following: “People who create feel a great empty sense of hunger, a feeling of emptiness in life. And by being able to create, you can somehow express yourself in a way that maybe you can't in the ordinary realms of life...so many people are looking for God...In your creativity there can be quite deep attitudes, and I think it's got to be linked somehow with the subconscious that you're tapping into”. If it is not necessarily spirituality that Bush projects and promotes, it is a curiosity for things bigger than us. The unknown.
I have written about this before. How ghosts, mythical creatures and oddities are fascinating to Bush. Ghosts and spirits especially have been the subject of several of her songs, from Wuthering Heights to Get Out of My House. A Yeti or mythical creature in Wild Man. The afterlife and Heaven coming into Blow Away (For Bill) from Never for Ever. I see a lot of spiritual and religious influence through Hounds of Love. The Ninth Wave where the heroine is lost at sea and struggles to stay alive. Moments where she is floating above the water or a sense she is watching from high above to the sea. Maybe trying back to Bush’s upbringing. If she has not explicitly aligned herself to one religion or is a particularly religious writer, one can see God, the spiritual and the divine in nearly all of her albums. Bush has noted that there’s a lot of suffering in Roman Catholicism. ”You hear that in “Running,” the quiet desperation to its sound, a yearning that seems like it has just about given up hope, much like Max” (Max Mayfield is played by Sadie Sink on the Netflix show, Stranger Things). I did cover this in 2020. However, rather than repeat that feature, I wanted to look more about spirituality. This love and compassion for multiple faiths. How many other artists have done this in their career? It can be quite divisive if you put religion or faith in your music. Bush never does it explicitly or overtly. There are sprinklings here and there. This feature asked if Bush was a Rosicrucian (Rosicrucianism is a spiritual and cultural movement that arose in early modern Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts announcing to the world a new esoteric order):
“Is she actually a lifelong Rosicrucian? I could make a list fifty items long. Her appeal crosses age, gender, taste; she’s taken on a quite distinct mythic life in our collective dreaming. People who would usually have nothing to do with mainstream rock music (like Rushton) are smitten. She has a huge gay following (queer pagans, radical faeries). Ex-punks and one-time surly troublemakers line up to hymn her praises, when not so long ago she would have been the very model of everything they professed to despise, what with her taste for fuzzy ‘spirituality’ – ley lines, yetis, orgone energy – and tendency towards heavy concept albums. (One side of Aerial has both a Prelude and a Prologue.)”.
One of my favourite aspects of Kate Bush’s writing is how she can write personally and about universal feelings but also go beyond that. To a more spiritual plain. Bush has said how she believes in angels. Although she could have been referring to angelic people, 50 Words for Snow’s Among Angels offers these lines: “I can see angels around you/They shimmer like mirrors in summer”. I am going to move on, though I want to refer to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) one more time. This feature offered a spiritual perspective on the song’s video:
“The chorus has the power of a mantra which I bet many of you found yourself repeating incessantly, switching roles with the singer only to realize by the end of the song that you too made a deal with God.
A deal with God, in this case, represents a karmic soul contract between Kate and her lover which would allow them to attain a better understanding of each other.
The scenes in which Kate Bush dances with Michael Hervieu seem to take place in an aesthetically pleasing purgatory. A place not of this realm, in between lives. That is why both of them are dressed in gray, to emphasize their lack of earthly individuality. The dance is a visual representation of how the “swapping of places” occurs. Both of them are wearing hakamas, a traditional Japanese garment worn by samurais, a detail which emphasizes through the garment’s symbolism that the pact is official.
In my view, the deal with God is already made, and the video shows not only the symbiosis between the two but also her confusion and fear when she’s swept away by the current of her and his potentialities getting ready for incarnation. By that moment she doesn’t know who she is. She can’t recognize herself in her energy, represented by the extras that wear masks of her and neither in his energy, represented by the men wearing masks of Hervieu”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Katre Bush shot for The Ninth Wave (the conceptual suite on the second side of 1985’s Hounds of Love)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
One cannot escape a certain divinity and spirituality running through The Ninth Wave. I always think of that suite as less about human survival and strength and this being more like a woman experiencing death and a rebirth: “Kate Bush experiences a death and rebirth, though hers is in the water. According to Carl Jung, water symbolizes the subconscious mind into which one must descend before aspiring to the heights of enlightenment. In dreams, the conscious mind fights the pull of water, just as Bush does. Like the subjects of Jung's analysis who though "spirit" comes from above, Bush is disturbed to be in the midst of the water, "the fluid of the instinct-driven body, blood and the flowing of blood, the odor of the beast, carnality heavy with passion." For Bush, the water is another vehicle for an introspective ordeal”. Maybe, and not in a corny way, Bush’s greatest intrigue is other people. Faith in other people. The human spirit. Whilst Bush does look beyond our world and one can summon fairies, ghosts, spirits and mythical beasts, one of Bush’s greatest strengths is empathy and compassion. Not only a positive writer who promotes the joys and understanding of people. Such empathy and love. The more I have been researching around Kate Bush, religion and spirituality, the more I realise how positive that aspect is. When Martin Glover (Youth) saw Bush during her Before the Dawn residency in 2014, he made some interesting observations. Glover played on Hounds of Love and is Bush’s friend. He wrote about her Shivaism, Dionysian and Druid philosophy:
“Opening with Lily was a clue …This song lyrically is an explicit magical ceremony, a literal invocation/initiation, in the style of the Rosicurician Orders, à la the Golden Dawn school of the western magical tradition. “Gabriel is before me, Raphael behind me ….. In the circle of fire”.
This is key to understanding Kate. She has her own cult, her own mystery school tradition. Her unique strand of Shivaism, Dionysian and Druid philosophy, loosely wrapped up in a song and dance tradition. It’s part magical realism, overt nature spirituality and art house ….( Hard to pull off in cynical, post modern narcissistic Britain).
She not only pulled that rabbit out of that hat but also managed to convert each and every one of us to her own personal church of the big sky….a church whose priests are owls, ravens, trees and clouds.
When asked once who her favourite singers were, she replied “Nightingale, Blackbird and Thrush” There is a barrenness in religions today, whether in Christianity, Islam or false prophet new age gurus, humanity is rudderless, bedazzled by materialism. Kate’s communion with nature is the antidote, it is a call to joy, a celebration of the sublime ….it’s about the intoxication of love and the ecstasy that follows… is where wisdom lies, hidden deep within its mystical and poetic roots.
Kate’s “Religion” is the tiny spark of light that defeats the dark forces that seek dominion over the natural world, it’s tooth and claw and blood on the floor …She exemplifies English pagan beauty. A dark timelessness and stillness surrounds her wild abandonment, whilst her voice charges at you like Boudicca returned, riding a golden chariot of weird melody, harmony and bitter dissonance.
Shape shifting her artistry, she played with archetypes. She can access our primordial memory, when we were fish and birds. Her voice, a vehicle for multiple characters. She invokes the triple goddess. Athena, virginal, sensual innocence. Aphrodite, loaded with sexual power or Nimue, motherly, nurturing and “oh so tender ” and finally the Hag, Raven seer.Hecate, Queen of the witches, the dark half of the moon. Terrifying Kali the Crone or Macha in a frenzy, unleashing the furies upon us. All this choreographed into one ritualised, magical, shock and awe vision of an imagined future, all in one performance…..Very elemental, light and shade, earth and fire”.
When promoting Director’s Cut in 2011, Bush spoke with Sinéad Gleeson for the Irish Times. A promotional image of her dressed in what looked like a Tibetan dress and necklace (see the first image in this feature). Maybe a nod to Buddhism. When Bush visited Japan in June 1978, she was seen “attending a Shinto shrine and (apparently) conducting herself with characteristic etiquette”. There is a whole chapter to be written about Bush’s connection to or reference of various faiths and cultures. Her Roman Catholic faith (whether lapsed or strong) and how a sense of spiritual curiosity sets her aside from other artists. Religion and spirituality can be heard through her early work. On Symphony in Blue from 1978’s Lionheart: “When that feeling of meaninglessness sets in/Go blowing my mind on God/The light in the dark, with the neon arms”. Bush’s music has refers to purgatory, Heaven and Hell. She has also incorporated biblical references into some of her songs. I love the more unusual aspects of Bush’s music. How Waking the Witch (from Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave) is about Bush's interest in witch hunting and how she believes the practice is rooted in sexism. Bush’s love of all faiths and people. How substantial Tibetan themes can be heard on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. Bush posted a note to her website in November 2011 for the Tibetan people. A non-political artist, Bush’s exploration of various faiths and spiritual alternatives always intrigues me. It makes her music so much richer and wide-reaching. Someone whose faith and compassion for people is matched her respect for various religions and practices. I will leave things there. A side of Bush’s character and writing that I have been thinking about a lot recently, I do hope someone writes more fully (and authoritatively) than me when it comes to Kate Bush and spirituality. Religion and faith through her music. Going beyond those realms and investigating the paranormal and mythical. Someone whose mind is open to the inexplicable or unexplained. Rooted in all of this is her compassion for people. A fascination of humans. A big reason why Bush is so loved and revered. It is not a coincidence that her most-streamed song, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), is about this burning desire to do a deal with a deity. If two lovers could swap places or be in each other’s shoes, they would have a better understanding. It goes beyond that and speaks to people in general. More tolerance and understanding. So many examples of Bush searching for harmony, connection and empathy through her music. And when it comes to experiences, that is…
AN one worth having!