A Protection Ritual For Phantom!

Tags

"Phantom of the Opera", ALW, “Brilliant Original”, “Liberation Gothic Love Magic”, ChristoPagan, Pagan, Phanship, Phantom, PhantomMagic, spirituality

So in light of the awful announcement last fall that the Broadway flagship production of Phantom will be closing, I designed this spell to ask for protection for the show. I’ll be doing it tonight on the anniversary of the opening of the Broadway production. But I wanted to share it as well for other magically inclined Phans to make use of as well! And don’t worry if you don’t see this till after the anniversary. My thinking was that the occasion might give the spell an extra power boost. But it’s certainly not tailored to the date, and there will surely be plenty more opportunities to work it between now and the slated closing date in April!

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Protection Ritual For The Broadway Production and The Brilliant Original

For this ritual, you’ll need a few simple items. First, you’ll need something you can use as an altar. Second, you’ll need at least one white or black candle, 3 if possible. Though, if you’re going to use 3, I’d suggest either two black candles and one white, with the white candle place between the two black ones, or two white candles with a single black one between them. Thirdly, you’ll need a cup or bowl of water on the altar so all four elements are present (I use my Phantom shot-glass or one of my Phantom mugs or wine-glasses). Finally, you’ll need your phone, MP3-player, etc, set up to play a Phantom soundtrack (I would recommend the original London cast recording), and an object that symbolizes the Brilliant Original for you that you can place on the altar. For example, this might be an old audio-cassette or CD version of the soundtrack, or an original London or Broadway souvenir program, or a copy of George Perry’s The Complete Phantom Of The Opera, or any souvenir you got when attending a production of the Brilliant Original. Oh, you’ll also need something you can use as a wand and/or an athame. I find Phantom pens make great wands by the way! A Phantom letter-opener might work well as an athame if you happen to have one. Place the object symbolizing the Brilliant Original centrally on the altar as in a place of honour.

Note: you may also want to have an object symbolizing protection (see the Work of the Ritual section further on).

Opening

To begin, draw your circle in the air with your wand or athame, starting in the North.

“North – Earth – the Lair Underground and the Labyrinth that leads to it the night.”

(Turn to the East.)

“East – dawn, air – the breath that carries the song, the wind through the organ-pipes – the song of brass and wind instruments.”

(Turn to the South.)

“South – fire – the sun shining down on the city, the candles on the Lake – the passion of the music.”

(Turn to the West.)

“West – water – tears – the Lake underground that leads to the Lair.”

(Turn back to the North to close the circle.)

“All good, wise and well Spirits and ancestors of the elements and the four directions, I humbly call on you to aid me in this work.”

Now, face your altar and light the candle/s on it. (Note, it’s perfectly OK to use LED candles if you don’t feel safe using real ones, although you may only be able to get white candles in that case. Or, you can simply mime lighting real candles, but visualize the flames being lit and burning as you do so.)

“Centre – Holy Spirit, Source,…” (add any other names that feel appropriate.)

“Phantom Of The Opera,…” (Any other spirits/Deities you wish to call on)

“I welcome you all, and I humbly call on you to aid me in this work.”

Work Of The Ritual

“First of all, I give great thanks for the gift of the Brilliant Original ALW stage-musical of The Phantom Of The Opera. I give great thanks for the great blessing it has been to me and to the world.” (Perhaps here name the ways it has been a blessing to you specifically.)

Now, As you say the following, first touch the item symbolizing the Brilliant Original. Then, draw a circle of protection around it in the air or on your altar with your want or athame. And/Or, picture The Majestic Theatre in your mind, and visualize a circle or dome of protection around it. It can be a circle/dome of light, or a web of protective thorns, or something like the Phantom’s portcullis, whatever imagery works most powerfully for you.

“And now, I call on you all to ask for protection for the spirit and message of the Brilliant Original ALW stage-musical of The Phantom Of The Opera, which are at the heart of the show’s power. Guard them from ignorance and greed, and from the whims of those who would innovate merely for the sake of innovation, And let the damage that has already been done by those forces be repaired. Let Phantom hold strong, spirit and voice, human and mystery in one combined. Let it continue to ring out as a beacon of hope and a call to compassion and passion. And once again, guard the spirit and message of the brilliant original, and let the damage already sustained be healed.”

Now, pick up the item which symbolizes the Brilliant Original and hold it in your hands. And with it in hand, while holding your mental image of protection around The Brilliant Original and/or the Broadway production, play the song/scene from Phantom that to you most embodies or manifests the show’s power and message. Let the energy of that song/scene pour into your mental image of protection. Note, use headphones if necessary so you don’t have to keep the volume down.

Note: if visualizing isn’t something that works for you, you might prefer to have an object that symbolizes protection – like a (miniature/toy) sword, or a thorn, or a rose with thorns, etc. Then, instead of visualizing, you can pass the protective object over your Phantom Brilliant Original item as you say the above words and listen to your chosen song/scene.

“In the name of The Phantom, (any other Deities you’ve invoked), and in the name of Creator, Redeemer and Holy Spirit, so mote it be, so mote it be, so mote it be!”

Closing

“And now, I thank you all (name all Deities and spirits invoked, including those of the elements – see opening), very greatly for your aid in this work. Go as you must, stay as you wish.”

Now, trace the circle in the air again, but this time going the reverse way – North to West to South To East, and back to North. This opens the circle.

“The circle is open, but always unbroken. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again! And blessed be.” (You can add “Amen” as well as suits you.)

Notes:

1, re calling on Deities in addition to The Phantom. As a ChristoPagan myself (some one who practices a syncretism of Paganism and Christian elements), I often call on Jesus, Blessed Mother Mary, Mary Magdalen and/or other appropriate Saints in addition to The Phantom. Dionysus might be appropriate here, as the festivals from which much of Western theatre grew were held in his honour, and he’s considered by some the patron God of theatre. Apollo might be appropriate as well, as he’s the patron Deity of music. Similarly, Brigid, the Celtic Goddess of poetry and music might be invoked here. But it really depends on whom – which Deities – you’ve cultivated relationships with. From Christian traditions, you might call on Saint Cecelia (the patron Saint of music), Saint Genesius (patron saint of actors and other performers), and perhaps also Saint Vitus (patron saint of dancers).

2, re song/scene from the show that most embodies the power and message of the Brilliant Original. For me, as I explain throughout my work, this has always been Act I scene 4, the title song – The Phantom Of The Opera. Although, more recently, Act I scene 5, The Music Of The Night as well. To me, these songs and scenes embody the romantic, erotic, political and spiritual heart of the show, even more than the Final Lair (Act II scene 9) as important and powerful as it is. Because, to me, Act I scenes 4 and 5, the title song and Music Of The Night, embody the show’s vision of a transformed world and society where the Phantom and those like him are desired and valued in all their complexity and magnificence.

3. An athame is a magical knife – not sharp – used to direct energies and/or sever energetic/psychic connections.

4. The candles I use are one black and two silver-coloured. And yes, I do only light them symbolicly so far, as I’m not quite brave enough, yet, to actually light them without a sighted spotter around. Although, I hope to get to that point eventually!

5. If at all possible, this working should be done at night, or at least in very low light. Because, Phantom is about “the power of the Music of the Night”, and you want that energy as part of the working.

“I’m not into trans”

Tags

Art, gender, love, politics, relationships, romance

This, totally!!!  Phantom in a nutshell!!!

 

“I’m not into trans”

Phanship on the #Trans Spectrum. #TransDayofRemembrance #gender #PhantomoftheOpera

Tags

"Coming Out", "Phantom of the Opera", "Trans Day of Remembrance", gender, Phanship, Trans

So I’m going to do a podcast episode on this at some point. But because today is Trans Day of Remembrance, I wanted to take some space to talk about my own gender journey. Because, although today is about remembrance, it’s also about breaking silence! And I suspect that I’m often read as a cis ally because I can (sometimes) pass for cis female. So I want to add my voice to those of other Trans-spectrum folks today speaking to and for our realities and existence! Because silence, stereotyping and erasure are part of what cause us to need a Trans Day of Remembrance. They’re part of what create the conditions that enable so much violence against Trans people, including poverty and hyper-precarity. And I’m one of those folks with the privilege of it being relatively safe to be out – which is definitely not the case for way too many people. So I sort of feel like I have a responsibility to do so! That great slogan from the AIDS crisis: “silence = violence”.

Part of the reason it’s taken so long for me to be out, though, is erasure. For the longest time, I literally didn’t have words for my experience of gender. And finding them has been a long (and I suspect on-going) struggle! This is partly because, growing up in the 80s and 90s, for most of my formative years, I had no idea there were options other than girl, which I was assigned at birth but increasingly didn’t fit in the traditional definition of, and boy which didn’t fit either! And then, even when I started to learn about Transgender, I didn’t know any Trans people personally, so what I knew came from media. And that gave me a very rigid, narrow picture of what Trans was – a straight-forward transition from your assigned gender to your felt gender, based on feeling that you were “born into the wrong body”. The only other models I had were androgyny/gender-blending. Basically, all the gender narratives I knew told me you had to choose girl, boy or neither. It took me a long time to find models of, and words for, moving back and forth between two genders. I’d heard of gender-fluidity, but, the way it had always been presented to me, it sounded like blending genders rather than moving back and forth between them. Indeed, it wasn’t till I heard a certain episode of the awesome Off The Cuffs podcast that I realized gender-fluid could mean that, and had an example of some one living it. And I was like “You can do that? It’s a legit thing? Really? Oh Wow!”.

And this lack of language, unfortunately, caused Phantom and my Phanship to inadvertently become part of this erasure of my gender. Though, I hate to say that! But it’s true. Because, of course, the story of Phantom is very much told in a cis, gender-binaried, hetero-romantic idiom. The masculine Phantom loves the super-femme Christine. So, as I’ve talked about in a previous post, without language to articulate an alternative, that set up a feeling that I had to choose. It’s only recently dawned on me that being/doing both, and/or moving back and forth between the two is actually an option. And in truth, I’m still figuring out how the hell that works, especially in terms of the love-story! Straight? Queer? Femme for femme? Masc for femme? POli so I can access both sides of the love-story? Yeah, I’m still confused on that score.

But of course, as a Phan, naturally I want to express my gender/s through Phantom! Because, just as Phantom has profoundly shaped and informed my Disabled identity, so too has it profoundly shaped my sense of gender – both desire and presentation. The first model of masculinity that really powerfully impacted me was the Phantom, especially of the ALW stage-musical, and especially as portrayed by Colm Wilkinson! And I learned how to do Femme from Sarah Brightman’s Christine, especially during Angel of Music and the Title Song as I perceived them! But to figure out how to do both, or to move between them, meant Queering the story in ways I’m only beginning to have the tools to do. In particular, the challenge, for me at least, is to Queer the story so that it becomes fully accessible to folks like me without sacrificing the romance – the “story of deep, dark, dangerous, passionate love” to quote a documentary on the Toronto production – that’s so central to Phantom, and is so much a part of what resonates so powerfully with us Phans!

And this latter work is critically important, because Phantom is a story about the terrible mental and spiritual consequences of exclusion and marginalization. But it also, as I’ve argued elsewhere, contains a powerful call to action to end that marginalization and exclusion, and to heal the trauma caused by it. So it seems to me that it’s critically important that we Phans not allow Phantom itself to contribute to the silencing and erasure of people on account of their colour and/or their lack of conformity to the gender binary! I’m heartened, though, that I’m starting to see this be done. In particular, I’ve finally started to come across well-written Phanfics that explicitly seek to “gender-bend” the story, and others that less explicitly take up other areas of intersectionality. But there’s a lot more need and room for further creative Queering!!

Finding Disabled Awesomeness In The Title Song From Phantom: Or, How Falling In Love With The Phantom Of The Opera Turbocharged My Weird! #PhantomOfTheOpera #WeirdPrideDay #IWD

Tags

"Liberation Phanship", "Phantom of the Opera", ALW, Deformity, disability, kink, Phantom, Queerness

So my favourite part of Phantom is and has always been the title song – The actual song called “The Phantom of the Opera”. It’s the song that first lit the fire of my obsession, even before I’d actually seen the show for the first time or knew really anything about the story. Eventually seeing the staging of that scene only added to the thrill and made me love it even more. But it was the song itself that first captured my heart and imagination.

It’s always struck me, though, that this never seemed to make sense to anyone but me. It always seems to have struck others, even other Phans, as weird that I should love that particular song so much. As one friend asked me in response to my habit of listening to the Title Song over and over again, “I thought the whole show meant everything to you?” And it did/does! I did and do love the whole show! But, that song has always somehow just seemed to me to encapsulate what I love about the ALW stage-version in particular, and about the whole POTO idiom in general. But until very recently, I couldn’t articulate why.

Note: for the full article, check out my Substack!

Loving call-out of #ableism from @PhantomOpera. #PhantomoftheOpera

Tags

"facial equality", "Liberation Phanship", ableism, ALW, Deformity/Disfigurement, disability, Phantom, politics

So a week or so ago, while reading through my Twitter feed, I came across the following tweet from the official Phantom twitter, @PhantomOpera, which represents the show worldwide (although the London, Broadway and U.S. tour productions do all have their own). And I really wanted to respond, because I found it really disturbing coming from an official voice for the musical! But I knew I couldn’t possibly condense why into 140 characters. I really wanted to say something, though, because I didn’t think this should be left without a response! It was part of a discussion on why the Phantom comes out for curtain-call in his full costume, including the hat and mask, when both have been removed during the Final Lair. And @PhantomOpera’s answer was that they wanted to end the show with his “iconic” look rather than his “broken” look, to which another discussant asked if they thought the Phantom is broken. To which @PhantomOpera replied, and this is what I find problematic:

“A little bit. I think the character behaves less refined when he doesn’t have the wig & mask & that’s not a good image to end the show with”

You can (I hope, if I’ve done this right) find the tweet in question here, and you should be able to call up the rest of the discussion from there.

What I find so problematic about this tweet is that it, in fact the whole discussion at least as far as I saw, equates the Phantom’s revealed “deformity” with his being “broken” as though there were some inherent correlation between the two. It makes this correlation by suggesting that he is less “broken” when he conceals his deformity in order to appear more “refined”. And this is classic ableism! Yes, the Phantom is broken, and, yes, he does have low self-esteem (see further tweets in the discussion which describe the wig and mask as props to bolster the Phantom’s low self-image). But this is not “just” because his face is “deformed”. That’s how ableism operates, though. It locates brokenness in the individual body of the person with the bodily/mental/cognitive difference, and, therefore, treats depression, self-esteem issues, feelings of isolation, etc, simply as part of their “condition”. It treats those feelings/psychological states as part of the person’s individual set of problems rooted in their bodily “deficiency” rather than as legitimate responses to the way society treats them. Thus, the “cure” is understood to be to make the person as “normal” as possible so that they can love themself and fit in, not to change society at large to one that can accept them. This is because, to put it baldly, ableism believes that it is the person’s body that is wrong, not society’s inability to embrace them. And therefore, it maintains that to change society would be neither possible nor, in fact, desirable. Thus, in the case of this tweet-discussion, then, it seems to be suggesting that the Phantom’s self-loathing and depression derive from his having a facial “deformity” rather than from society’s exclusion of him – an inevitable, if tragic, reality (Christine’s ultimate acceptance of him being a one-off, miraculous exception) which, if he were “sane”/”well adjusted”, he would have learned to accept. And the phrasing that he “behaves more refined” when hiding his “deformity” implies that his doing so is a good thing – a step toward “normalcy” even if he is, ultimately, too “broken” to achieve it fully.

As I said, I find the above really disturbing, especially from an official voice for the show! Because, to me, Phantom is and should be about countering and resisting ableism. Yes, the Phantom is broken, but not by his face. He is broken by a lifetime of marginalization and exclusion by a society that’s decided his face is too different to be accepted. He is depressed, yes, but because of a lifetime of being told he’s unloveable because of his “deformity”. He behaves in a deranged and violent manner because he can’t take it any more – because Christine’s fear and seeming rejection, coming on top of this lifetime of experience, were the straws that broke the camel’s back. This doesn’t excuse his behaviour or make it OK. But it does put it into its social and, yes, political context. His problems do not inhere in him. They do not inhere in his face. They were created in him by a society which ranks people’s worth – which ranks people’s very right to exist and survive – according to their ability to measure up to a standard based on the young, White, able, “healthy”, cisgendered, preferably “beautiful” body.

But the answer to that is not to conceal the brokenness. It is not to mask oneself to try to measure up to the very standard that excluded you! As the Final Lair itself suggests, it is to recognize the social, psychological and spiritual harm done when we marginalize and other those who do not measure up to that narrow ideal, and begin to make reparation. That is why that line “Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you known? God give me courage to show you you are not alone!” (Act II scene 9) is so powerful! Admittedly, the gendering can be way problematic – a discussion I’ll definitely have here at some point because it’s absolutely necessary. But, even so, it is the moment when Christine recognizes that it is society that has done this to the Phantom, not his own inner nature. And it can, as I have argued elsewhere, be read almost as an apology on the part of her whole society and an attempt at reparation! And this is also what makes the Phantom’s choice to then let her and Raoul go free so powerful too – not because he has refused that reparation out of some recognition that it’s really all his own psychological fault or problem. But, rather, exactly because he has accepted her reparation. He has recognized and accepted her compassion and, with the strength that has given him, taken at least a small step toward refusing to buy in any more to society’s dehumanization of him. He has finally understood that Christine simply loves the other guy, and that her not loving him romantically truly has nothing to do with his face. And that understanding, combined with her compassion for and comprehension of how he has been marginalized, gives him the strength to stop behaving in a dehumanized way – to stop passing on to her and Raoul the violence he himself has endured.

Considered this way, then, I would argue that the Phantom with his “deformity” and brokenness, yes, but also re-found dignity revealed is exactly the image with which to end the show! And I wonder how audiences would respond, given this, to him coming out for curtain-call unmasked and without the wig, or perhaps to re-unmask while taking his bows? Because, I suspect that audiences would get it, and that that could actually be really powerful! At the very least, though, I’d like for those who represent the show – actors, crew, media spokespeople, etc., – to understand the Phantom’s actions and behaviour in their proper context, and to please not use ableist tropes to present the character as exotically tragic or tragically exotic. Don’t re-marginalize, either the Phantom, or those of us for whom his story resonates as our own!

Note: I’ve put the words “deformed” and “deformity” in quotes to indicate that these are socially constructed concepts that derive from the belief that there’s only one “correct” way for a face to look. Recently, however, I have seen a number of activists reclaiming the word “disfigured” and using it to make the same argument with regard to both congenital and acquired facial differences. Because, as they point out, both are othered for their differences in appearance, and in both cases that stems from the idea that there is only one proper and pleasing human figure. And I totally cheer on these activists’ awesome and courageous work! Indeed, I recently heard the term “facial equality” coined by one such person, which I absolutely love! I use the language of “deformity”, however, because that is the term used in the show (Act 1 scene 10, Act II scene 2) and which, therefore, has tended to be used in the Phandom.

Note 2: The above might, perhaps, make it sound as though I am arguing that the Phantom is better unmasked because that is the “truth”. But that is not quite what I mean to convey. Indeed, I love the Phantom in his full regalia and, in fact, find it smoking hot, especially when played by an actor with the right voice and stage-charisma! But, to me, though I suspect to other Phans as well, the power of his “iconic” look does not come from the fact that it hides his “deformity” and makes him more “normal”. Because, in fact, it does neither. It neither makes his mind and heart less broken by the exclusion he has suffered, nor does it allow him to successfully “pass”. However, and this is something I’ll discuss more in future posts, because it is an attempt to claim dignity even without being able to successfully pass, the Phantom’s Phantom persona and, therefore, regalia can be understood as a form of resistance. And that, for me, is what makes it so potent.