Goddess Doll Posse
It seem that Bjork isn’t the only popular artist to tap into Pagan-friendly themes lately. According to MTV News, Tori Amos is utilizing goddess archetypes for her new CD “American Doll Posse” (due out May 1st) to help get her message across.
“…in order to make her political statement, Amos called on “Isabel,” one of the four archetypes she developed for the disc. Each of these archetypes symbolizes a particular side of her musical personality, and each is based on one of the female constituents of the Greek pantheon. Isabel, Amos explained, is a photographer and a reflection of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Clyde, who was inspired by Persephone, the goddess of the underworld, embodies the singer’s emotional and idealistic side. There’s also Pip, the confrontational “warrior woman” based on Athena, and Santa, the sensual side of the artist, who was inspired by Aphrodite.”
Tori Amos along with her inner goddesses.
Amos is planning to manifest these aspects on her new tour, where she will begin each show as one of the archetypes before becoming “Tori” again part-way through. But this isn’t just creative dress-up for the singer-songwriter.
“It’s not just, ‘I’m going to wake up and play dress-up today,’ ” she said. “I think it’s fair to say that all women are a different percentage of these archetypes, and each culture has different versions of these if you’re a rich culture. And if you were around before the monotheistic authority, [when] God came and then suppressed the power of the mother gods, these women at one time were powerful and autonomous and part of the pantheon as well as the male gods. Now, of course, there’s just one guy, and the women are subservient to him. I find this incredibly myopic. We have access to this rich culture as women, and we need to open ourselves up.”
This isn’t the first time Amos has exhibited pagan-influenced ideas, her autobiographical “Piece by Piece” (co-authored with Ann Powers) also dipped heavily into goddess archetypes, and her album “Boys for Pele” was partially influenced by the aforementioned volcano goddess. It should be interesting to see what arises at these concerts, though many of her fans already count them as a religious experience.
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