Uber-Goth or what?

Requiem Vestments from the Church of St.Gery in Roucourt about 1600.

Tori Amos talks on Gnosticism

Excerpts from her fansite "undented.com"


in progress.......
Q: But please be honest now: during turbulences, don’t you send prayers to heaven above and promise to build a church on the cliffs of Dover when you get through alive?

T: Not on your fucking life! I am a minister’s daughter and wouldn’t do it because of that. This monotheistic male God in whose name people are fighting, he doesn’t have anything in common with creative forces. I’m through with that.

Q: How long have you been going to church?

T: 21 years. I went to church for 21 years, 4 times a week!

Q: Since when?

T: I was brought along as a baby, and I went with them even after I was wearing red leather pants and playing in clubs. But my father supported me.

Q: What does your father say to you when you use your art, which you learned in church, for something as profane as rock music?

T: Of course he wanted me to compose church music. In the meantime he learned, but I can’t bring him to read the Gnostic writings. That’s the border he will never cross.

Q: He is only consistent with the church, the Gnostic writings don’t belong to the bible’s canon.

T: Instead of saying, okay, we accept the Gnostic writings as the lost son of the Bible’s canon, he defends this decision. That is why on the cover of Boys for Pele I was breastfeeding a piglet. Because the piglet is not kosher.

Q: Above all it is the worst kind of blasphemy.

T: It is the best kind of blasphemy.

Q: You’re not welcome in Catholic countries.

T: But I’m not a Catholic, I am a Gnostic. In early Christianity, I would have followed the Gnostic direction. But I live today and therefore I believe in the power of the myths, in what Joseph Campbell called “the power of the myths”. In American schools you won’t learn much about these myths.

Q: But excuse me, Campbell’s book “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” is the source for George Lucas’ “Star Wars” myths. Star Wars is the best selling movie of all time. For a certain generation in the USA this myth replaces the Bible’s stories.

T: And that is a good thing. If you grow up in the USA today, you hear stories about Mary and Mary Magdalene and all that at Sunday school, but not about Athena, about Artemis, Demeter and Persephone. Maybe my songs about these 5 women will help......


Read the full interview here.