Man of Sorrows (song)

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Man of Sorrows is the seventh song on Bruce Dickinson's album Accident of Birth from 1997. The demo version of the song is included on the Best Of Bruce Dickinson album. On the same CD, Bruce states that Man of Sorrows was originally written for a movie called The Chemical Wedding, which was however never produced. The demo version was engineered by André Jacquemin (who is better known for his sound-engineer work for Monty Python), and had Janick Gers on the guitar.¹

In interviews, Bruce Dickinson has stated that the song's lyrics are about the occult English writer Aleister Crowley. The repeated expression "Do what thou wilt!" refers to the motto of the Abbey of Thelema, which the French Renaissance writer François Rabelais invented in his philosophical work Gargantua. In this abbey, men and women live together in peace and harmony according to the principle:

In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed, Do What Thou Wilt; because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour.

Inspired by Rabelais' ideas, Crowley founded in 1920 a commune called the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily.

The title Man of Sorrows refers to a passage in the Bible, in the book of Isaiah, which describes a man who takes on the sins of all mankind. According to Catholic teaching, this figure foreshadows Jesus, who died for mankind to redeem them:

He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.²

A Spanish version of the song, Hombre de penas, is included on the 2005 expanded edition of Accident of Birth. A radio edit and an orchestral version of Man of Sorrows are included on the same CD.