12/12/2008 13:25

Cantata Sangui

Cantata Sangui: 'On Rituals and Correspondence in Constructed Realities'

Cantata Sangui's debut album 'On Rituals and Correspondence in Constructed Realities' will be released on January 26th 2009 (March 24th in the US), through Season Of Mist.

1. In Half-Light
2. We'll Have It on Us
3. Exaltata
4. Broken Stars
5. For the Forgotten One
6. Fruitarians
7. The Seven Liers-in-Wait
8. Reality
9. No Longer in the Eyes of Aletheia
10. Sidecast
11. Lazarus
12. De Profundis

One of CANTATA SANGUI's assets is the strong sense of the band's lyrics. The band like to explore the depths of ancient mythologies, natural sciences and philosophies, and they decided to share the meaning of three songs from the album.

"NO LONGER IN THE EYES OF ALETHEIA"

Lethe (Greek for 'concealment') is a river of stagnant water of forgetfulness the dead are made to drink of when entering Hades, so that they would forget about their past life. Aletheia, on the other hand, is the goddess/daimon/personification of truth, her name containing a negation of Lethe. This seems to suggest that truth in being is unlike the mortal knowledge of truth.

One needs not be a philosopher to notice that in everyday life, we use the concepts of true/truth/truthful sloppily. Most of the time we are not too concerned about questions such as what is true and what the truth is, and how. Neither are we usually aware of or concerned about truth's relation to ourselves, save perhaps in the sense that we only try to aim at truth by not lying too much.

If anything is to be found true of being, it first has to be in some relation to our own truths, as all that we consider being true in any sense is related to our experiences of the phenomenal world. These experiences are tied to the concepts and the words we try to get a hold of the world around us with. Consequently, these concepts and words are subject to human errors, like our senses are, even if we try to use them conscientiously - and ever more so if we allow ourselves to use them sloppily.

Sloppy and forgetful of the relation of our being to that which is true to us. Forgetful as if dead drunk of Lethe. As if the truth was just something far too hurtful for us - or not entertaining enough for us to manage avoiding our true selves. Perhaps so, but the truth is out there and it's got bloody big teeth.

"THE SEVEN LIERS-IN-WAIT"

In the Necronomicon of Simon, the translation of the conjuration against the Seven Liers-in-Wait differs slightly from the more orthodox sources like The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia. On the other hand, the conjuration "Zi dingir" sung in "The Seven Liers-in-Wait" can also be found in several Babylonian charms against malevolence of unearthly beings. In addition to this classical formula, one can also find similarities in various protective or banishing rituals.

In this song, the Seven Liers-in-Wait are treated as memic entities, instead of in the vulgar context of physical demon-manifestations (unless we agree that our neuro-chemical and psychotropic levels of being can be summed up as precisely this). These memic entities reside on a structural level of thought man is unaware of, taken as the seemingly objective reality outside our senses, which is invisible to us. Although these entities are usually taken as the evil Seven Liers-in-Wait, the benevolent seven are also likely to exist. Linking the entities to memic activity and transparent reflecting on world should make this quite clear.

These Djinns appear in Babylonian and Assyrian religion and magic, but if you read between the lines, they can also be found in Biblia hebraica (see 2chr 22; consult interpretation from D.D.D. p967 (hebr.MaRVIM), for example), where they are interpreted to be celestials of the Lord of the Hosts (or unearthly beings in any case). If these are the seven evil ones, we must inevitably consider the nature of God of Israel in the Old Testament to be shadowed by gnostic concepts of creator god as the evil demiurge.

One needs to keep in mind that seven was the number of archons of creator (and of many other beings of interesting metaphysical categories). Note too that this echoes with whispers of the supposed evil transcendental agents. Zi-xul! The most evil lies are the ones that claim to be assured truths beyond doubt and imagination.

"SIDECAST"

Man will die. Not only our dear subject of human thinking we occupy our lives with: that is, the individual persons that eventually face death as all living flesh does. All our architecture and civilization will one day be one with fossil fuel. Evolution will see to it that humankind will perish. Much in the same way as our forefathers have been pushed aside to make way for more developed creatures.

Physical life does its best in playing a mad scientist to produce its fancies of living species always better than the previous experiment. This can be seen as active creative forces set loose on moebius paths the infamous demiurge has designed his annealed creation to follow.

If the creators of this world were the Ancient Ones, as some whisper, it is no wonder our fauna includes somewhat nonsensical concepts of flyfish and long ago extinct ammonites that clearly resound with atavistic decline of physical human origins simply too horrific to be clearly understood during seasons of social conformism, let alone with what is normatively understood as "sanity".

"BROKEN STARS"

"If every man and every woman is a star, what becomes of those who fall and break? Pity not the fallen, they say, but aren't we all to some extent in danger of losing ourselves in the grinding jaws of Leviathan, or the society?

"Leviathan is a key concept of this song. While the 17th century saw "that crooked serpent" of Isaiah develop into the social contract theories of Hobbes, it wasn't until 1904 that the missing parts of the puzzle were found by a certain Englishman, and consequently encoded in a red book of his. "Broken Stars" is a modest attempt to piece this puzzle together.

"In many aspects, the modern society appears to its participants as a gigantic clockwork mechanism, of which each of us is born as a tiny and replaceable component. Like a factory left on an autopilot, the world around us grinds on in its aimless fashion, diminishing human life to an echo of a cogwheel's step in life's great, empty factory halls. Every man and every woman may start as stars, but Leviathan's pitiless teeth always wait for the fallen. And as every engine needs maintenance, so does He need his daily supply of fresh blood (cf. AL: III/24).

"As nihilistic as this may sound, there must be at least a seed of warmth grasped within the clockwork engine, a distant promise of a better future that beckons us to stay. Or maybe we're simply just unable to leave it all behind. Thus, the best we can normally do is to make a pact, some sort of a truce with the monster society, which allows us at least a little room to move around - if Leviathan permits, that is. On a second thought, we may have fallen from the starry heights, but could there be a way to climb back up?"

"FRUITARIANS"

"This song looks at the use and abuse of sin, utilising The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch as a starting point. From the orchard's fruitarian paradise it is possible to proceed either to the antediluvian bliss of sinless ecstasy, or to the scorched earth inferno lit by the burning corpses of transgressors.

"Influenced by a late 14th century vision of Hieronymus Bosch, this song explores the same questions that lurk at the background of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Laden with alchemistic allegories, the triptych has often been explained away as a moral warning against the pleasures depicted therein. And true enough, the alluring scent of free, sinful ecstasy lingers in the clear air of the orchard. But what if pursuing the peachy aroma could be justified by some nobler purpose?

"To understand this better, one must look at the theses of preadamism, and the related claim of certain esoteric sects that it is possible for man to return to the sinless state of the preadamites. In this light, reaching for the pre-Eden bliss becomes a divine end that justifies even sinful means, as all sins are wiped off once we reach that goal anyway. Or who knows, maybe progression is only possible through transgression. In any case, once you taste of the strawberry pulp of ecstasy, there's no turning back.

"The lyrics also touch the subject of Yaldabaoth's treachery upon Eve, and the subsequent awakening of Eve's reason. Looking closely at the painting, one notices that black reptiles already hatch in the pond of the demiurge's paradise. These monsters are the seeds of reason that prophesy the downfall of every paradise, however artificial it might be."

"LAZARUS"

"All stories and mythologies conceal apocryphal connotations as well as simple mainstream interpretations, and here the Bible is no exception. This song looks at one of our culture's most commonly known tales of necromancy, and speculates about the obvious Promethean nature of Christ, and also our tendency to overlook this.

"As the name implies, this song again visits the Biblical tradition and the numerous contradictions included in its stories and their common interpretations. While not actually a direct influence, a painting by Juan de Flandes sheds some light on the themes of this song. In the picture, Lazarus's awakening is depicted in a slightly unconventional way, with Jesus robed in black and standing on a pile of skulls, surrounded by a group of villagers who witness the necromantic rite with casual looks on their faces.

"Along with the dead, the rite immediately awakens several associations. First is the connection between the beni elohim, the nephilim, and the Christ. The nephilim, mythological giants of angelic inheritance, are said to have taught to mankind the knowledge of necromancy and all other magic, among other things. Also, even in the mainstream gospels, Christ is on several occasions referred to as Phosphorus, the light-bringer - the Latin translation of which is of course Lucifer. Tying these strings together implies that, throughout the ages, there have been several Christs, several light-bringers, several Lucifers, and each of them a rebel.

"In this light and in this context, the Christ of the painting appears as the archetypal Lucifer, using the forbidden knowledge of Hellenistic necromancy to conjure Lazarus back from the dead. Needless to say, the Christ or the Lucifer could here be replaced by the nephilim and all other rebel angels. And taking this one step further, one might ask whether there could be a stench that might drive us from the safety of our daily graves, and what fallen angel would wait for us outside should we ever wake up."

(source: Season Of Mist)