Dear melomaniac, the time has come to open our hearts and remember that we are spiritual beings in need of spiritual epiphanies. There is a God, there is a Source – and our duty is to search for it. This search can take many lives, many mistakes, many misfortunes – until we reach the higher self – a being that was locked in our hearts.
This, dear melomaniac, is the very succinct definition of one’s path into its spirituality. This is a complicated and vast subject that will take us ages to define and discuss, but this introduction was most necessarily due to the album we are going to talk about today, Loreena McKennitt’s – “The Mask and Mirror”.
The concept behind this album fascinated me as soon as I laid my eyes on the first paragraph of its booklet:
I looked back and forth through the window of 15th century Spain, through the hues of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and was drawn into a fascinating world: history, religion, cross-cultural fertilization… From the more familiar turf of the west coast of Ireland, through the troubadours of France, crossing over the Pyrenees and then to the west through Galicia, down through Andalusia and past Gibraltar to Morocco… The Crusades, the pilgrimage to Santiago, Cathars, the Knights Templar, the Sufis from Egypt, One Thousand and One Nights in Arabia, the Celtic sacred imagery of trees, the Gnostic Gospels… who was God? and what is religion, what spirituality? What was revealed and what was concealed… and what was the mask and what the mirror?
These are Loreena’s own words, and they are sufficient to clarify the truth behind the music of The Mask and Mirror, the truth of search and the truth of discovery through reading the book inside of us, the book that is only an instruction on how to reach our true self. And how to read this book if not by looking in a mirror? There you will see yourself, you are the book, you are the discovery, just open your heart and truly see yourself and drop that mask.
This is what happens when I hit play and really listen to this disc, I hear Loreena’s travels and searches through historical lands, but I hear also her findings which are not of the physical realm but rather findings regarding one’s soul. The Mask and Mirror is more than music, it is the heartful diary of a spiritual being who asks some deep questions:
Who was God?
What is religion?
What is spirituality?
The answer to these questions comes after you hit play and listen with your eyes closed and with your heart open, Loreena will take you to all these places she visited: Galicia, Andalusia, Gibraltar, Morocco, Santiago, Egypt and of course, the British motherland, getting in touch with her Celtic ancestry. Dear melomaniac, I do not know if you are a spiritual awakened being, but, for sure, this album will open your heart, at least just a bit.
The Mask and Mirror was launched back in 1994, and it was the fourth album of Loreena McKennitt. The official genre of the album is new age, but there are certain drops of “folk” and “world” in its style. The album was a great success for Loreena, being certified gold in the United States. The cover of the album features a collage made from medieval “The Hunt of the Unicorn” tapestries. In my CD collection I have the original 1994 CD released by Quinlan Road Limited at Warner Music Europe, release number 4509-95296-2.
Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt was born in 1957 in the small city of Morden, situated in the province of Manitoba, Canada. She is of Scottish and Irish descent to parents Jack and Irene. She found her love of music right there in Morden, tapping into the passion for music of the local Mennonite community. In her youth she studied to become a veterinary, but shortly she fell in love with Celtic music, traveling to Ireland to discover this ancient music at its root.
Before The Mask and Mirror, she launched four other albums: Elemental (1985), To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1987), Parallel Dreams (1989) and The Visit (1991). Another essential album is The Book of Secrets launched in 1997. After this one, Loreena took a long pause from music, suffering a personal loss, her fiancé and his brother, together with some of their friends, drowned in a tragic boating accident. This left Loreena in despair and she took her a few years to build up her courage to come back to music.
This happened in 2006 with her seventh album called “An Ancient Muse”. This is when she launched also her amazing concert called “Nights from the Alhambra”, held, of course, inside the mystical and highly spiritual Palace of Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Today she is still active, touring and releasing discs, her following albums were A Midwinter Night’s Dream (2008), followed by The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2010), the most recent one being Lost Souls (2018).
Going back to The Mask and Mirror, if you have the CD or the vinyl at your disposal, you will see that the booklet itself is a glimpse into Loreena’s real diary, with entries from her lifelong pilgrimage in search of the questions at hand. The journal notes span for over 14 years, from the beginning of the 80s all the way to the launch of this album in 1994. I will copy here the oldest journal entry available in the liner notes, written in 1892 in Stratford, England:
March 19, 1982, Stratford: have just begun rehearsals for the Stratford production of The Tempest… I am singing the part of Ceres, goddess of agriculture, in the masque… enchanted by the magic and function of masque as a conduit to the worlds of the gods and nature. The cast had an interesting discussion with a psychologist on the nature of Caliban and what qualified as “the civilized world”…
As you can see, Loreena’s journey is not only in spirit, but also in reality – she made a real pilgrimage for this album, that started back in her youth, this being the oldest journal entry from the booklet dating back to 1982 when she was studying in Stratford, England, where she took the role of the goddess Ceres in a play. This is when probably she first took serious contact with her spirituality by impersonating a God, this being the strongest incentive to start asking yourself who is He. You can hear this on “PROSPERO’S SPEECH”.
I will try to decrypt the journal entries I found in the booklet and put together a map of Loreena’s steps that she took to find the answers to the previously mentioned questions. The pilgrimage continued in 1988 in Canada, where she studied the connection of Benedictine monks with God by staying at the Benedictine monastery in the Eastern Townships of Québec – you can hear all of this in the song called “FULL CIRCLE”.
She was back in her native Ireland in 1990, where she stayed for a period working on the album “The Visit”. This is when she read a lot of poetry, she got in touch with the Unicorn Tapestries that she will later use for the cover of this album, but also she got in touch with some of the traditional music of Ireland – you can hear all of this on Loreena’s version of “THE BONNY SWANS”.
Next on the map, in 1992, is Spain’s Santiago de Compostela where she held a concert. There she recognized the mystical realm of Galicia, with its wonderful mix of flavors – Spanish, Moorish, Semitic and Celtic. You can hear all of this on “SANTIAGO”.
In 1993 she is back in Stratford, England, where she spends a lot of time reading John Butler Yeats’ poetry, coming across a poem called “The Two Trees”, in this one she recognizes the wonderful sentiment of one’s sense of goodness, the true state of human beings, so opposite to other kinds of directions that some of us take. At its heart a human being is good, and this is what we should aim for. You can hear about this on “CÉ HÉ MISE LE ULAINGT? / THE TWO TREES”.
Next in her travels is a very special place: Spain’s Granada. Loreena writes:
January 24, 1993, Granada, Spain: evening… lights across the city embrace the body of the Alhambra; the smells of woodsmoke and food hang in the narrow streets. Rambled around the Moorish section of the city; picked up a little gold mirror, an incense burner, a tiny bottle of perfume… Reading Idries Shah’s book The Sufis, prefaced by Robert Graves. “…a secret tradition behind all religious and philosophical systems, Sufis have significantly influenced the East and West… They believe not that theirs is a religion, but that it is religion….The ‘common sufi’ may be as common in the East as in the West, and may come dressed as a merchant, a lawyer, a housewife, anything… to be in the world, but not of it, free from ambition, greed, intellectual pride, blind obedience to custom, or awe of persons higher in rank.”… It appears there may be an association with the Druidic order of the Celts.
I was there and I can definitely tell you that Granada and Alhambra are very spiritual and full of high positive energy. In this place you will feel at peace, even if you will need to do a lot of stair and hill climbing, you will not feel fatigue at all, you will feel the place’s own special energy, the energy that Loreena felt when she stayed there. As I said, Granada is a special and mystical place that does not compare with anything I’ve seen in Europe. I will leave a photograph below which I took when I visited this mystical place. The photograph is taken from the hill of Albaicín and it overlooks the Alhambra hill and castle.
Last, but not least, her last stop before recording The Mask and Mirror, was Morrocco in 1993. Her travels in Morrocco took a few months and she stopped first in Marrakesh, where she was struck by the hive-like vibe of the city, then she traveled to the African desert, where she drank coffee in a tranquil oasis, observing a strong sense of antagonism with the restlessness of the city. Last, but not least, in Morrocco she heard people still calling for God:
March 23, 1993, Morocco: Ramadan; I wake up early to catch my flight home, and at 5:30 a.m. hear men chanting in the mosque, one of the most moving and primitive sounds I have ever heard. They are calling their God. I think, when have I heard this before?
So, the travels for “The Book and Mirror” have ended for Loreena in 1993, but, for sure her spiritual travel has not ended. The questions that Loreena has asked at the beginning: “Who was God?” “What is religion?” “What is spirituality?” – will not get a simple answer, as you may expect.
When asked, these questions mark the true beginning of one’s awakening and spiritual trip. When started, spiritual seeking never stops, and even if it does not offer you precise answers, you will see its precision by looking at yourself in the mirror, and as time passes, you will see more and more through the mask, at the end you will be able to really look in your eyes, the mask being completely gone. There you will see the reflection of God, and, please, don’t get me wrong: you are not God – we are all God.
So, dear melomaniac, you may understand from my sincere and heartfelt words that this album is a serious foundation stone for modern spirituality and marks its most important and fundamental factor: “the seeking”. So, search for your own questions and find your own answers, The Mask and Mirror is a great start.
Silviu TUDOR
An article written in my sweet spot,
and this is what I’ve heard.
