The English lead singer of the heavy metal band, Black Sabbath – John Michael “Ozzy” Osbourne – is dead. Known as the “Prince of Darkness,” Ozzy rose to fame in the 1970s as his Black Sabbath pioneered the metal genre. The rock world rewarded its Prince of Darkness with one induction into the UK Music Hall of Fame and two more into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Known as just “Ozzy” to his millions of minions, he built a career on playing with the occult, dancing with the Devil, photographing himself with the Cross of Christ in his mouth, allowing his adoring fans to believe he’d actually bitten the head off of a live bat during a concert, all while claiming he was not really a satanist. . . he just looked, sounded, and acted like one.
I can’t imagine how anyone would have gotten the idea the lead singer for BLACK SABBATH was a Satanist. After all, his album covers were always so Christian themed:
One lovely collection of Ozzy tunes was even called “Black Mass.” But we mustn’t judge, right?
No wonder the pioneers of the traditional Catholic movement were just as intent on fighting the culture war and the likes of Ozzy Osbourne as they were the Novus Ordo and the likes of Annibale Bugnini in the Church. These days, we’ve “grown up” and become “sophisticated.” We know that Ozzy was just a fun-loving vaudevillian stage performer who was laughing all the way to the bank. He was just pretending to be evil!
You can tell yourself that, if it makes you feel better. But I wonder how you would defend the inverse. In other words, what exactly is the great good that Ozzy Osbourne contributed to society and the lives of his fans that makes you feel so defensive of him? Did he make kids better adults through his macabre antics? Did he encourage them to aim higher with his libertine attitude toward sexuality? Did he bring them closer to God with his out-of-control behavior and notorious substance abuse problems? Because for those of us who lived through the rise of Ozzy Osbourne, it seems that a different phenomenon is at work here. To us, it looks as if a societal/cultural transformation has taken place wherein good people have lost the ability to recognize the face of evil even when it’s laughing in their faces. It’s as if the Devil has doubled down, and his greatest trick now was to convince us that evil doesn’t even exist. To paraphrase Alexander Pope:
“Evil is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
Despite his satanic persona, Ozzy was embraced by millions of impressionable kids, many of whom found deep meaning in the macabre underworld of Ozzy Osbourne. He may have been playing the Prince of Darkness on stage, but for millions of 15-year-olds Ozzy was the high priest of darkness, preaching a powerful religion that for them was the great equalizer. His concerts were far more spiritually meaningful than anything they’d seen from Jim and Tammy Baker on Sunday morning TV.
For two generations of young men, spiritually orphaned by the system, Ozzy was very real. And we’ll never know how many souls were introduced to the real Prince of Darkness by Ozzy’s poetry, his lost boys vampirism, his sexual predilections, and his lifelong struggle with alcohol, cocaine, heroin, acid, glue, cough syrup, Vicodin, etc.
For at least two generations of young men who’d been spiritually orphaned by the system, Ozzy was very real. And we’ll never know how many souls were introduced to the real Prince of Darkness by Ozzy’s poetry, his lost boys allure, his sexual vampirism, and his lifelong struggle with alcohol, cocaine, heroin, acid, glue, cough syrup, Vicodin, etc. As a role model, he was a Satanist at worst and a drug addict at best. Either way, he was far from harmless. He certainly paved the way for Marilyn Manson, Lamb of God, Lady Gaga and the rest of the cultural hedonists to peddle their blasphemous product to generations of impressionable kids.
Just because most people today do not even understand what it was, this does not mean that the rock ‘n’ roll revolution didn’t pave the way for the chaotic debauchery in which our society finds itself incarcerated today. Rock ‘n’ roll was the soundtrack of the amoral, contracepting, drugging, cutting, castrating, child abusing, baby killing tidal wave that drowned the family, buried the Church, and left the survivors so dazed and confused they don’t even know which bathroom to use.
Our fathers were right about rock ‘n’ roll, in other words. Trouble is, most of their sons got tired of fighting the cultural tsunami. Most of them eventually gave up and, before long, even England’s benighted queen was out there knighting Mick Jagger. And the rest is history – countries at war, cities in chaos, drag queens in libraries, families destroyed, a hundred million babies exterminated, and God is dead. . . or so the Marxist minstrels would have us believe.
My mother used to say: “If the atheists are right and there is no God – when we die, we’ll never know who was right, either way. But if I’m right and there is a God then when we die, there’s going to be hell to pay for you.”
Pray for Ozzy? Of course, pray for everyone that faces that illuminating moment of discovering in death that not only does God exist, but so does Hell. Ozzy now knows it all.
Pray for Ozzy? Of course, pray for everyone that faces that illuminating moment of discovering not only that God exists, but so does Hell. Ozzy now knows it all.
The real Prince of Darkness met guys like Ozzy at the proverbial crossroads and gave them enough power and fame to corrupt most of the Children of Light. All they had to do in exchange was sell their souls. But yesterday, Ozzy found out it was all a scam. We don’t get to close our eyes forever. Our eyes are finally opened when we die. Ozzy now knows the Truth. And his fans are left to ask him the same questions he famously asked Aleister Crowley back in 1980 – Mr. Osbourne, what went on in your head?
Who is “Mr. Crowley”? Aleister Crowley was an English occultist (1875-1947) who was once described in the English press as the “wickedest man in the world.” Known as “The Beast,” he founded Thelema which he based on the Luciferian principle – “Do as thou wilt shall become the whole of the law.” He also created “magick,” adding the “k” in order to distinguish his occultic sexual religion from mere stage magic.
Crowley’s sex “magick,” and dark arts were so nefarious that he eventually distinguished himself as the only man G. K. Chesterton flat out refused to debate. That was 1944. By 1964, Crowley had become extremely popular with the rock ‘n’ rollers of the so-called British Invasion – including The Rolling Stones, The Beatles (yes, that’s Crowley on the cover the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album), Led Zeppelin, and, yes, Ozzy Osbourne.
The lyrics to Ozzy’s 1980 hit song, “Mr. Crowley,” seem somehow appropriate here the day after his death. Indeed, Mr. Ozbourne, what went on in your head? We want to know what you meant…
Mr. Crowley
What went on in your head?
Oh, Mr. Crowley
Did you talk to the dead?
Your lifestyle to me seemed so tragic
With the thrill of it all
You fooled all the people with magic
Yeah, you waited on Satan’s call
Mr. Charming
Did you think you were pure?
Mr. Alarming
In nocturnal rapport
Uncovering things that were sacred
Manifest on this Earth
Ah, conceived in the eye of a secret
And they scattered the afterbirth
Mr. Crowley
Won’t you ride my white horse?
Mr. Crowley
It’s symbolic, of course
Approaching a time that is classic
I hear that maiden’s call
Approaching a time that is drastic
Standing with their backs to the wall
Was it polemically sent?
I wanna know what you meant
I wanna know
I wanna know what you meant, yeah
