All those myths and legends of antiquity, related to sound and music, also have a part of truth. For example, the myth of Amphion has always been a favourite among those who write about the extraordinary power of music. This son of Zeus, with his lyre, managed to make the stones of the city of Thebes slide effortlessly towards their site. This is how the walls of the Thebes of the Seven Gates were erected thanks to the power of music. Amphion, then, may have been some prehistoric engineer in possession of the mathematical knowledge that is in all ancient music. Knowing the calculations and techniques, what is known today as technology was formerly considered natural magic.
By these universal laws and forces of nature, gravity can be overcome or neutralized and a stone can float in the air. In this way, and according to Edgar Cayce, one of the most notable American psychics of the 20th century, the Great Pyramid was built by levitation, that is, by means of songs and chants, in the same way that the Druids of England raised their enormous stones in a later time.
The myth of Amphion maintains the memory of the existence in ancient times of secret forces that modern humanity has lost. Music, or at least sound, seems to have had a huge role in this. You have to know that anything, no matter how small, is subject to a vibration, and thus, to a musical tone; hence a voice can break a glass, or a bridge shakes by the march of some soldiers. All this is the product of a previous accumulation of energy during a certain period of time. In this way, the harder materials renounce and obey the dictates of a higher order of things, which is transmitted through sound, which leads us to the idea that in the end Nature does not respond to laws easily perceptible of cause and effect that seem to rule the world, but to transcendent principles that eternally exist on a higher level of being.
A very common experience is that of synesthesia, in which music is instantly transferred to other sensory impressions, often visual. Some people, like the composer Olivier Messiaen (born 1908), have this natural gift and cannot listen to music without seeing colours with inner vision. Messiaen felt quite misunderstood in his time, because people did not believe him, but he was able to see colours in music, and he captured it in his works. The musician Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), for his musical compositions, not only required the orchestral apparatus, but also used projectors that reflected colours that he had predetermined and that were in synchrony with music. Other people have had experiences of colours and music from the use of psychedelic drugs. And of course, certain altered states of consciousness can be reached through meditation and sound.
At a time when so few people were aware of the world of the imagination as reality and the source of transcendent knowledge, psychotropic drugs served to open a window into it for some people. But drugs can only offer a perishable glimpse of these things. Unless you earn the right to them by your own efforts, the seeming revelations of the psychedelic experience are not permanently soul-elevating, and you may pay for it with a long period of purgation. Carlos Castaneda‘s story is in this sense a fable of our time: in the first book, the Mexican shaman Don Juan Matús uses drugs to get him out of the ignorance of his rational and socio-scientific knowledge. Among the musicians, Pete Townshend, the leader of The Who and long a symbol of Dionysian behavior, said in a recording that after years of listening to music high he realized he had to start over and feel his ecstasies without the help of the drugs that were ruining his life. Drugs and insanity are not really the only means of embarking on a journey to the other world. In an ancient time it seems that the door to these kingdoms was more open.
When the Great Man will use and display his ceremonies and his music, heaven and earth will display their brilliant influences in response. They will act in happy union, and the energies of nature, now expanding now contracting, will act in harmony. The benign winds from above and the responsive action from below will spread and feed all things, Thus plants and trees will grow luxuriantly, buds and curly buds will expand, the winged and feathered multitude will spring into action; horns and antlers will grow, insects will come to light and revive; birds will breed and nest; furry animals will mate and give birth; mammals will not have abortions, and no eggs will break or rot: And all this will have to be attributed to the power of music.
