David Tibet
Encyclopedia
David Tibet is a British
poet and art
ist who founded the music group Current 93
, of which he is the only full-time member. He had earlier collaborated with Psychic TV
and 23 Skidoo. He was given the name "Tibet" by Genesis P-Orridge
, and in January 2005 he announced that he would revert to the name David Michael, although he continues to use the well-known "Tibet" in his public career to date.
in 1983
and founded Current 93
the same year. He has worked with Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound
(of which band he is a member), Michael Cashmore
, Douglas P.
(of Death In June
, on whose albums he has appeared several times), Steve Ignorant
of Crass
(using the name "Stephen Intelligent"), Boyd Rice
, Little Annie
, Björk
, Nick Cave
, Rose McDowall
, and Ian Read
of Fire and Ice.
. At a precocious age, he developed a strong interest in Aleister Crowley
and the Ordo Templi Orientis
. He joined the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis and borrowed the term "93 Current", the current of Thelema
or Agape
, from Crowley. His initial recording as Current 93, LAShTAL
, was, according to Tibet, "the invocation of Malkunofath on the Nightside of Eden
, the reverse of the Tree of Life
". He has long proclaimed a virtual anathema to Crowleyism (despite a strong appreciation for Crowley as an individual) and instead has embraced at various intervals, Tibetan Buddhism
and esoteric
Christianity
. His projects continue to focus on the multifaceted aspects of apocalypse
, mainly death
, loss and destruction. Progressively, his works are tempered by Christian mysticism
and an increasingly strong faith in the end of the world.
Other influences include Noddy
, Gnosticism
, Austin Osman Spare
, Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Bobby Beausoleil
, and a variety of occult
topics.
In April 2006, Ordo Templi Orientis
formed the International OTO Cabinet, an advisory, non-voting panel made up of both OTO Initiates and Non-Initiates. David Tibet was named among the initial non-member appointments.
with much of his work in well-known galleries such as the Henry Boxer Gallery and Isis Gallery. Tibet is interested in the work of Count Stenbock, whose writings he has worked to republish. He also ran the Durtro
publishing imprint and record label (1988–2010) which has since been replaced by an earlier label, Coptic Cat, where many Durtro releases continue to be available. He attended Newcastle University.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
poet and art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
ist who founded the music group Current 93
Current 93
Current 93 is an eclectic British experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet .-Background:Tibet has been the only constant in the group, though Steven Stapleton has appeared on...
, of which he is the only full-time member. He had earlier collaborated with Psychic TV
Psychic TV
Psychic TV or PTV, is a video art and music group that primarily performs psychedelic, punk, electronic and experimental music...
and 23 Skidoo. He was given the name "Tibet" by Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is an English singer-songwriter, musician, writer and artist. P-Orridge's early confrontational performance work in COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, which dealt with subjects such as prostitution,...
, and in January 2005 he announced that he would revert to the name David Michael, although he continues to use the well-known "Tibet" in his public career to date.
Career
Tibet left Psychic TVPsychic TV
Psychic TV or PTV, is a video art and music group that primarily performs psychedelic, punk, electronic and experimental music...
in 1983
1983 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1983.-January-April:*January – ZTT Records is founded.*January 8 – The UK singles chart is tabulated from this week forward by The Gallup Organization...
and founded Current 93
Current 93
Current 93 is an eclectic British experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet .-Background:Tibet has been the only constant in the group, though Steven Stapleton has appeared on...
the same year. He has worked with Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound
Nurse with Wound
Nurse with Wound is the main recording name for British musician Steven Stapleton. Nurse with Wound was originally a band, formed in 1978 by Stapleton, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak...
(of which band he is a member), Michael Cashmore
Michael Cashmore
Michael Cashmore is a British composer and musician who has created music under the name of Nature And Organisation and more recently under his own name.Cashmore has also been a member of the group Current 93 since the late 1980s...
, Douglas P.
Douglas P.
Douglas P. , is an English folk musician, record label owner, photographer and actor who records under the name Death In June. He was born in Sheerwater in Woking, Surrey, and resides in Australia. Douglas P. is openly gay.-Crisis:Pearce began his musical career in a British punk band called Crisis...
(of Death In June
Death in June
Death in June are a neofolk group led by English folk musician Douglas Pearce, better known as Douglas P. The band was originally formed in Britain in 1981 as a trio, but after the other members left in 1984 and 1985 to work on other projects, the group became the work of Douglas P. and various...
, on whose albums he has appeared several times), Steve Ignorant
Steve Ignorant
Steve Ignorant is a singer and artist. He co-founded the anarcho-punk band Crass with Penny Rimbaud in 1977. After Crass stopped performing in 1984, he has worked with other groups including Conflict, Schwartzeneggar, The Stratford Mercenaries, Current 93 , US punk band Thought Crime, as well as...
of Crass
Crass
Crass are an English punk rock band that was formed in 1977, which promoted anarchism as a political ideology, way of living, and as a resistance movement. Crass popularised the seminal anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, and advocated direct action, animal rights, and environmentalism...
(using the name "Stephen Intelligent"), Boyd Rice
Boyd Rice
Boyd Blake Rice is an American experimental sound/noise musician using the name of NON since the mid-1970s, archivist, actor, photographer, author, member of the Partridge Family Temple religious group, co-founder of the UNPOP art movement and current staff writer for Modern Drunkard...
, Little Annie
Little Annie
Little Annie Bandez is an American singer, songwriter, painter, and stage actor...
, Björk
Björk
Björk Guðmundsdóttir , known as Björk , is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Her eclectic musical style has achieved popular acknowledgement and popularity within many musical genres, such as rock, jazz, electronic dance music, classical and folk...
, Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
, Rose McDowall
Rose McDowall
Rose McDowall is a Scottish musician, most notably as a vocalist in the pop band Strawberry Switchblade.-History:...
, and Ian Read
Ian Read (musician)
Ian Read is an English neofolk and traditional folk musician.-History:Read left school at 16, and at the age of 17, he became an adherent of Germanic neopaganism and began studying Germanic paganism . He was particularly interested in galdor or magical metrical poetry and the runes...
of Fire and Ice.
Influences
Tibet's lyrical subject matter reflects a consistent preoccupation with all aspects of apocalypse. He has long been a student of Christian eschatologyChristian eschatology
Christian eschatology is a major branch of study within Christian theology. Eschatology, from two Greek words meaning last and study , is the study of the end of things, whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, or the end of the world...
. At a precocious age, he developed a strong interest in Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
and the Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
. He joined the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis and borrowed the term "93 Current", the current of Thelema
Thelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
or Agape
Agape
Agape is one of the Greek words translated into English as love, one which became particularly appropriated in Christian theology as the love of God or Christ for mankind. In the New Testament, it refers to the fatherly love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God; the term...
, from Crowley. His initial recording as Current 93, LAShTAL
LAShTAL
LAShTAL is the second release by Current 93, the first Mi-Mort was a split-album. The album features musicians Fritz Häaman and John Balance in addition to the primary Current 93 member David Tibet...
, was, according to Tibet, "the invocation of Malkunofath on the Nightside of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
, the reverse of the Tree of Life
Tree of Life
The tree of life in the Book of Genesis is a tree planted by God in midst of the Garden of Eden , whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. Together with the tree of life, God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . According to some scholars, however, these are in fact...
". He has long proclaimed a virtual anathema to Crowleyism (despite a strong appreciation for Crowley as an individual) and instead has embraced at various intervals, Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
and esoteric
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...
Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. His projects continue to focus on the multifaceted aspects of apocalypse
Apocalypse
An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...
, mainly death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
, loss and destruction. Progressively, his works are tempered by Christian mysticism
Christian mysticism
Christian mysticism refers to the development of mystical practices and theory within Christianity. It has often been connected to mystical theology, especially in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions...
and an increasingly strong faith in the end of the world.
Other influences include Noddy
Noddy
Noddy is a character created by British children's author Enid Blyton, originally published between 1949 and 1963. Television shows based on the character have run on British television since 1955 and continue to appear to this day.-Noddy:...
, Gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
, Austin Osman Spare
Austin Osman Spare
Austin Osman Spare was an English artist who developed idiosyncratic magical techniques including automatic writing, automatic drawing and sigilization based on his theories of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious self...
, Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Bobby Beausoleil
Bobby Beausoleil
Robert Kenneth "Bobby" Beausoleil is a convicted American murderer and associate of the Charles Manson "Family" who is serving a life sentence. He killed music teacher and fellow associate Gary Hinman on July 27, 1969, and has been imprisoned since his arrest for that crime...
, and a variety of occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
topics.
In April 2006, Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
formed the International OTO Cabinet, an advisory, non-voting panel made up of both OTO Initiates and Non-Initiates. David Tibet was named among the initial non-member appointments.
Other activities
He is an established Outsider artist and painterPainting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
with much of his work in well-known galleries such as the Henry Boxer Gallery and Isis Gallery. Tibet is interested in the work of Count Stenbock, whose writings he has worked to republish. He also ran the Durtro
Durtro
Durtro was a British independent record label, established by the British poet, singer, songwriter, and visual artist David Tibet in 1988, to publish his own work, and that of fellow friends and musicians. It was replaced by one of Tibet's earlier labels, Coptic Cat, in 2010.Nearly every release...
publishing imprint and record label (1988–2010) which has since been replaced by an earlier label, Coptic Cat, where many Durtro releases continue to be available. He attended Newcastle University.
Further reading
- Keenan, David (2003) England's Hidden Reverse: a secret history of the esoteric underground, London: SAF Publishing.
- Free Tibet (Death In June album)Free Tibet (Death In June album)Free Tibet is an mp3 album by Death In June featuring David Tibet on vocals. The album is available for download on the official Death In June website...