are a ritual. An exercise for the soul as well as the body. We need to realize
that the monolith we climbed the night before was only there to inspire us. We
cannot take it to work with us for moral support and we cannot hide behind
it to avoid life’s strict requirements. We also need to accept that not everyone
can, or wishes, to be a part of our ritual. We need to respect others for
choosing different paths and not be disappointed if we are not accepted by
them. Despite the overwhelming strength we draw from raving, we have to be
the first to admit that we’re no better than anyone else. If we are to promote
peace, love, unity and respect we need to accept all others before we expect
them to accept us.
(Ramy 1999)In this extraordinary statement, rave is made synonymous with the black stone, the
‘prima materia’ or Philosopher’s Stone which, in alchemical lore, is capable of
transmuting humankind and which, according to interpretation (see Weidner
2000), inspired Stanley Kubrick’s black monolith in 2001. While Spurgeon’s
rhetoric may be obscure, and Ramy’s statement relatively unknown, an awakening
thesis reappears in the web-saturated ‘Raver’s Manifesto’, where it is stated that ‘in
the heat, dampness, and darkness’ of the womb-like party,
we came to accept that we are all equal. Not only to the darkness, and to
ourselves, but to the very music slamming into us and passing through our
souls: we are all equal. And somewhere around 35Hz we could feel the hand
of God at our backs, pushing us forward, pushing us to push ourselves to
strengthen our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. Pushing us to turn to the
person beside us to join hands and uplift them by sharing the uncontrollable
joy we felt from creating this magical bubble that can, for one evening,
protect us from the horrors, atrocities, and pollution of the outside world. It
is in that very instant, with these initial realizations that each of us was truly
born.^3A dawning, a new beginning, rebirth? It seems pertinent to note at this juncture
that the party is more than a pre-linguistic womb, that rave, as Pini (2001: 157)
remarks, speaks, and that, while it is pregnant with possibility, what it
communicates is not uniform or predictable, and that what is delivered may be
mutant. It is also apparent that, if rave speaks, if it reveals information, then it often
speaks in tongues evincing bricolage à la carte (Possamai 2002:203), an effusion
consistent with its syncretic digestion of existing symbol systems, philosophies and
theologies. Nevertheless, while its message may be scrambled, postures and micro-
narratives can be read from the texts, praxis and detritus of techno-rave youth
culture, the gnosis transparent in moods decidedly ascensionist and/or re-enchanting.
20 GRAHAM ST JOHN