Interpreting the symbolism of The GazettE - part 2 - The Guitars
When I 1st saw pic1 I thought - it's the Yin-Yang guitars! The way Aoi is holding his makes no sense otherwise. And when I got to read the interview translation from pic2, Kai pretty much confirmed it for me:
"Kai: Aoi is a very skillful musician, he absorbs everything around him, letting it go through himself and then gives it out, without pretence, with his own sound."
Indiscriminately absorbing all the feelings is the most textbook definition of Yin.
Yin is the feeling, the subjective, absorption, the darkness & the negative (and we will get to what negative means further in the article, spoiler - it's not "bad").
And Aoi says things like this:
"Actually, I don’t think (*laughs*). Nah, the truth is I feel."
(It's from Guitar Book interview where he is with Uruha and yet again holding his guitar upside down)
The way they are styled - Aoi always in black, flowy outfits that merge with shadows and Uruha always light and flashy. Even when whole band is dressed in black, Uruha is wearing something white or uses a white guitar.
All of Aoi's guitars are black. The snake skin textured one always makes me think of Ouroboros, one of the oldest and most popular symbols of transformation and occult (hidden) knowledge.
Uruha's real name is 広揚 Kouyou. The 2nd kanji is literally Yang and the name translates to something like "immense sunlight"
The rhythm and lead guitar correspond really well to Yin-Yang as well. Rhythm being the darkness that let's the stars (lead guitar) shine.
More from the Guitar Magazine (September 2015) interview translated by @mizmyerz :
"Kai: Uruha is a type of a musician who’s going by touch - he experiences an internal conflict, fixates on it and thus the new sound is born.
Reita: I think they both work hard to improve oneself. It’s so interesting to observe how they become similar at one point and then go in reverse at another.
Kai: To me, at the very beginning neither of them had his own unique sound, but they were able to find and express it thanks to one another.
Ruki: Uruha is very meticulous, prone to theoretical thinking. Aoi is serious and more realistic.
Reita: Uruha first thinks of an image and then develops a theory based on it. Aoi's reasoning is very realistic, he always, let me say it, hits the core."
...
But let's dig deeper and talk about DOGMA album.
From the Black B-Pass (2015) interview, once again translation by @mizmyerz (you can find both interviews on her blog and reblogged on mine):
"Uruha: First of all, even though we want to distance ourselves from visual kei, we don’t mind the visual scene itself. We’ve been pushed forward by visual kei, received the impulse, it was like a stencil, so it’s still very important to us, but the current visual scene seized to be attractive. Furthermore, several years ago we wanted to expand our presence within the genre, we aimed to grow and evolve, but at some point it started to limit us, to hold us back, that’s why now we’re moving in a different direction. Of course, it created a solid ground under our feet. Then again, you must bring in something unique to arouse interest. Because of that, when you can’t find a way out, you start looking inside yourself. In other words DOGMA became a turning point for us, since it feels like recently the band itself turned around and changed the course."
The bold part of the quote is best explained by Kenneth Grant in "Outer Gateways":
"There is another faculty of human consciousness, the intuitive or 'inseeing' faculty; one might almost describe it as the fourth dimensional faculty. It is a faculty that appears sometimes in the artist, the poet, the occultist, and in a certain kind of scientist, and it functions also, though rarely, in almost everybody. It is epitomized on the Tree of Life by the third sephira, Binah, the Sphere of Understanding. Not the understanding of empirical things, but that insight into the hidden side of things made possible by a sudden total identity of the mind with its substratum, pure consciousness, wherein all ideas are stored and which under stands, or stands under, the mechanism of mentation.
The faculty of understanding is incommunicable because it has its origin beyond the Abyss, where human laws of logic and ratiocination do not apply. Hence initiation is necessary before the faculty can be activated and utilised. But such initiation is always and can only be self-initiation; all other forms of initiation are false because necessarily inadequate. [..] The Supernals (Binah, Chokmah, Kether) cannot be contained below the Abyss where the laws of Subject/Objects relationship obtain. Initiation denotes a journey inwards and may only be undertaken by each traveller for and by himself. Initiation and intuition are virtually identical in the sense that the journey leads to absolute Subjectivity which is beyond all subject/objects relationships. [...] Those who achieve successfully this penetration of the veils of Binah are thereafter as it were branded with the most ancient and inscrutable hieroglyphics that remain forever undecipherable by those without the deepest Within of Being.
The Typhonian Way is the Negative Way, the descent from the Mother, i.e. the pre-solar source. Its way of attainment is by reflection, shadow, the negation."
DOGMA album starts with Nihil. Nihilism can mean the dissolution or negation of conventional beliefs, structures, or realities, often as a precursor to a deeper understanding or transformation of consciousness. It might involve the rejection of established moral or religious frameworks (heresy) in pursuit of a more profound spiritual truth.
The Dogma lyrics "I deny everything" always make me want to correct them to "I negate everything" and it's rather easy for me to do so because in my native language deny and negate is the same word. I looked up how it is in Japanese and it seems to also be the same - hitei suru.
Yin is the Negative and since Aoi is the Yin guitar I've put the 3 DOGMA songs with Aoi guitar solos (and of course It's the songs that are utterly and completely devoted to the goddess) - Goddess, Wasteland and Ominous in a playlist and listened attentively. The 3 of them really felt like a unit, seamless. A menacing feeling building towards something. The solo at the end of Ominous is the culmination point. It expresses so much pain. Listening to it felt like my heart is being torn open. It almost felt like a physical pain. I snapped out of it and my mind immediately went to the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism. Specifically Dukkha (suffering) and Samudaya (roots of suffering).
Then I looked at Ominous lyrics:
Sleep…Count me down…Again
So I’ll close my eyes
As I turn to face you
My prayer shattered into ruins
Is reflected in your eyes as you spread your wings to fly
I see you whirling with nightmares
Through a sky thick with darkness
Don’t forget
That the heart can’t die
Don’t forget
Really, dreams don’t always mean what they seem
True…Dread
Sleep…Count me down…Again
This cycle of constant change is ominous
I fall into the recurring darkness
It steals away my formless future and whenever I step forward
The sky darkens until I can no longer see
I’m killing myself with loneliness and even my screams
Won’t bring any rescue
Sleep…Count me down…Again"
For explanation of what the mentioned sleep means we are once again referring to K. Grant's "Outer Gateways":
"Ultimate subjectivity contains the seed of sangsar, as deep sleep contains the latency of thought (dream), which appears only when subjectivity objectivises; sleep then becomes dreaming. The final process is one of objectification, which causes the illusion of a waking state in which the thoughts or dream objects are experienced as 'real'. Total absence of objects (as in deep sleep) is thus the total presence of Subject, whose manifestation then appears phenomenally as Sangsar (the Universe). But this fact is lost sight of when Subject objectivises (i.e. dreams), or objectifies (awakens)."
And going back to Buddhism, to quote Thich Nhat Hanh in "The Heart of Buddha's Teaching" :
"Contemplation on interdependence is a deep looking into all dharmas in order to pierce through to their real nature, in order to see them as part of the great body of reality and in order to see that the great body of reality is indivisible. It cannot be cut into pieces with separate existences of their own.
The object of our mind can be a mountain, a rose, the full moon, or the person standing in front of us. We believe these things exist outside of us as separate entities, but these objects of our perceptions are us. This includes our feeling. When we hate someone, we also hate ourself. The object of our mindfulness is actually the whole cosmos. Mindfulness is mindfulness of the body, feelings, perceptions, any of the mental formations, and all of the seeds in our consciousness. The Four Establishments of Mindfulness contain everything in the cosmos. Everything in the cosmos is the object of our perception, and, as such, it does not exist only outside of us but within us."
(From the DOGMA book)
The more I dig at The GazettE symbolism, the more I find, it's a boundless trove of riches. It's pretty common for metal bands to use symbols - some dabble in esotericism only a little, others are doing it for the aesthetic or just because everyone does it. For me, as someone who always looks and interprets everything, seeing such an elaborate and detailed esoteric creation is a huge pleasure. The fact that the 5 band members are the ones responsible for every single detail makes it even more impressive.
They are out there on Tool's level when it comes to combining mysticism and music (if you don't know Tool I recommend you listen to Lateralus). By the way I saw a pic of Kai's drum tech wearing a Tool t-shirt, it made me wonder if the GazettE themselves are influenced by them. Somehow I think they are.
I found Kenneth Grant's works (the author I quoted twice earlier) through Tool's drummer's library on his website. And their vocalist uses a lot of Jungian alchemy terms in their lyrics. I wonder if the Japanese fans sort of see the GazettE like the westerners see Tool.
I did not write much about Uruha but let me leave you with these pictures of him being immense light.
the fact that teasing is Aoi's love language is known but the way Uruha is so obviously undeniably Aoi's favorite person to bother like he never puts this much effort into bullying anyone else that's just. JUST.
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