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Hierurgy

by PANEGYRIST

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Alveus Lacuna
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Alveus Lacuna Avant-garde, grandiose, ambitious…whatever you want to say, it’s extraordinary and moving. There is a depth to the song structures and lyrics that progressively deepens through repeated listens.

Just decide for yourself. I love it.
Archmage Orladin
Archmage Orladin thumbnail
Archmage Orladin Occult avant-garde black metal with mature and interesting lyrical themes? Yes please, oh so very much yes please. Incredibly good album conceptually and musically. Ophidian Crucifix has one of my favorite guitar solos of all time. I cannot wait for their sophomore release. AOTY 2018. With repeated listens this album has really shown itself to be an all time great: you MUST engage seriously with the lyrics to fully appreciate what a masterpiece this work is. Favorite track: Ophidian Crucifix.
Jake W.
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Jake W. This was my 666th Bandcamp purchase. Favorite track: Idylls Of The Cave.
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1.
O Hierophos older than night, O Living Ikon, coeternal sired, O Center that creates the wheel. Translated one, Slaughter-silent eater of the curse, Well hast thou known the cup of want: Self-libation from the hollow of the grail. Lifted as the brazen serpent of pharmakon, The holy poison floweth From desert stone and piercéd corpus, These bloodgates five. Sign of Jonah, ΙΧΘΥΣ by the eye of nous: "Thou hadst cast me into the deep... Floods compassed me about... And the earth with her bars was about me for ever..." Quake all hearts, beneath and beyond, Above and below, crown and kingdom Phosphoros ascendent, riseth the morning star From riven belly of harrowed Leviathan.
2.
Long I've sat, dreaming forth gods. I sit in the subtle void, and it sits in me -- These inner plummeting halls where I carve my gods. My void be their shrine! Genuflect in fever and transport. Fresco forth arcadia: These satyrs and nymphs, Children neither of this world nor any other, Painted icons of stillborn apotheosis. Gods in mine image, With hands to pull me upward. To ascend I place myself beneath myself. Cruel masters! Bright bolts rain down on me, Flaying for each sin. These eyeless ones I've set on high, Browbeating with hopes of ascent. Hear me, Christ aflame, As I fall into myself, A droplet into this subtle void. Hear me, Christ aflame, As I fall into myself; Afloat in the emptiness we speak. How is it I carry the limitless within -- This emptiness, defined yet not? The circumference is not the space, But the space transcends its circle, Radiant nihil, shadow of the lotus. Reaching toward limitless: To hunger in all directions, inward becomes outward. I fall into myself, become the very question. I am your reflection, though counter-wise you reflect yourself into flesh. I fall into myself, become the very question. In this darkest inner church I kiss the Living Ikon. In you the transcendent delineates as a vector, A wounded hand outstretched into my abyss. Let me clothe myself in you.
3.
Was ever sacred fire within these halls, Or mere ghostcandle, ignis fatuus? A temple turned sepulcher, Marmoreal and self-become! A fool's edifice unto smoke-scattered divinity! Was ever truth quick amid the coals? Ἰδοὺ τίθημι ἐν Σιὼν λίθον προσκόμματος Kαὶ πέτραν σκανδάλου· Decriers -- Their dictum echoes in atria To fracture quaint remembrance. They set it all down as naught, They set it all down as naught -- Naught but the ponderous slough From whence the gnosis slithered, Slithered forth in shining, new scales. Visita Interiore Templis, Rectificatus Inveniat Occultum Lapidae. Enter amid the chanting stone, Whose murmuring corridors are holy ground. Red Horeb burns with fire Yet is not consumed. A presence is here, And a multitude. Silencers, do you stop your ears? The stones become a dread chorus, Seed of faith's patriarch, raised of the very rock. And spiritwoven in igneous union, Rise as living stonework, a priesthood ascendant. May our voices harrow you That you should never forget. With burning syllables Mark we thee witness Henceforth unto death.
4.
Trace the liminal space, the edge of self: My negative, the border of I-am-not-this. Question condenses along the curve, speaking forth its shape As coastlines selfsame On oceans of Other The dance pressing outward, the lotus unfolding. As with the scribal mark: A hollow in the center of the question writ, Such void given shape by its semicircling coil. Ho Ôn, Prime being and answer, Suffuse the secondary With emanations of fire. I prayed today to be both stillness and fire, My outer borders alive with your energies. But lucid is the darkness at the center of the flame, Where the heat is strongest. The void is the heart of the flame Where question feeds upon answer: "This is my body… This is my blood…" ("Hoc est corpus meum… Hic est sanguis meus…") I myself am question, my being a prayer. By the eye I see. The chasm dilates admittance. Lucid is the darkness at the center of the eye. By the void I see Thy light given. Flames rise in constellation: Each an eye, each a saint, each a prayer. I shall be among them. And the fire and the lotus be one!
5.
Twofold tongue did whisper once Of gnosis, impetuous to rise And so envenom The dust-born lords of earth: So stern a knowing Upon us is visited, Slain by a wisdom Too great to wield. וַתִּפָּקַ֙חְנָה֙ עֵינֵ֣י שְׁנֵיהֶ֔ם (Wat-tip-pā-qaḥ-nāh ‘ê-nê šə-nê-hem.) (Recall again:) The desert slithered with fiery scale, And old enmities burned: (Cycle of death) The endless wheel of stricken heel. But pharmakon hung aloft. An ensign of brazen coils, That the gazing eye, beholding, Might strong physic find Against the dust-eater. Recumbent, the first axis: Letter and limit, the salt of the dead. Though affixed to horizon, mercurial-tethered, The miracle sleeps under coldblooded crest. Ὃτι εἶδον οἱ ὀφθαλμοί μου τὸ σωτήριόν σου· O liminal mount of transfixion, Axis mundi, inverter of stars: Here, Lord, thy knowledge speaks A triumph, silent, from scaffold, In that suspended twilight Where wisdom runs backward. Thou tookest up the cup And drankest full the dust therein. In thee we transcend death Through counterwisdoms. וַתִּפָּקַ֙חְנָה֙ עֵינֵ֣י שְׁנֵיהֶ֔ם Kαὶ ἐπέγνωσαν αὐτόν· Ascendent, the second axis: Pillar of niter and salt of the earth. The poison that healeth, the crown of the helix, O flame-feathered Spirit, alight on this healer's staff. This birthright of two trees, Effected through the third. In wisdom ophidian, In innocence as doves.
6.
Hierurgy 12:03
I seek the ice that forms at the edges of all things, The half-places outermost. Quietus, the winter of all. Hibernaculum, the heart of all. Brittle in reverence, bow -- Before all becomes mercury. Bodiless sea, and beyond, great silence. Far from the keep of familiar idols, Here stirs the breath from beyond, Across the nought, knows not shore. It cannot be, yet was forever given. In places most still Echoes all the wordless thunder, Murmuring chasms of blood-dark light. Homesick am I For nameless places Where I am foreign -- For perpetual return To what I have never known. Forever peregrine On wings of red sulfur. Pneuma, wake in every hall And cavern of my inmost, As once you touched sea before light. You. In every sacred shrine: Sanctum gives unto well, Well gives unto sea, Sea gives unto chasm, Chasm gives unto thee. From this secret fire I cannot repent. For this I was called into being -- For this, named forth from the void. So end my dyad and swallow my death! Converge parallel rays -- solved in one, ever-distinct, Swallowed in telos, World without end. (Knower of the field and the harvest) From the field of this black hierurgy To the solar blood, through white and red, The sickle turns upon itself, O firstborn from among the dead. (Stone-set my face against the world's dying starlight) Make me a blasphemy Against the star that rules the age; Phosphoros, dawn within my heart, Beyond all world's and flesh's rage. (In everliving fire of the fluxion) Forever peregrine, On wings of theion borne aflame, As burning adamant unburned, Inscribed with secret, sainted name. (So long I've sat dreaming through glass darkly of your face) In living I want nothing more, In dying nothing more I seek, But I should come to you at last And tremble as my name you speak.

about

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4-Panel Digipack CD with Gold Pantone. 20-page booklet complete with lyrics. Cover painting and booklet art by Elijah Tamu / Ikonostasis
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I, Voidhanger Records proudly attends the birth of PANEGYRIST, a mysterious entity sure to take the avant-garde black metal scene by storm. Hailing from USA, PANEGYRIST's debut full-length “Hierurgy” – meaning "ritual" or, literally, "holy work" – is an expression of burning religious impulse. This collection of meditations explores the theme of theosis, the process whereby the individual is transformed and united with God through the operations of the divine energies. “This unification is not a dissolution of self into a generic 'divinity',” asserts PANEGYRIST's singer/lyricist Elijah Tamu, “but is instead a higher individuation that occurs in relation to the Divine Other, across the ontological abyss. The abyss is transcended in a manner parallel to its very existence: the living relation between the individual and God is precisely the higher unity that is made possible by the distinction. Existence itself is prayer.”

Offering a unique, vertiginous combination of avant-garde/progressive black and epic heavy metal, sacred vocal chants and powerful screams, and with the furious drumming of Marcel Szumowski – who played on INFERNO's “Gnosis Kardias” – each track on “Hierurgy” is a spiritual working focusing on a particular aspect of theosis. Journey through alchemical riddles and contemplations on the inner and outer temple, the void and the eye, the serpent and the savior. Come at last to the shores of primordial mercury, and take flight on wings of theion, the philosophical sulfur and everliving fire.

Though conceptually dense, the music and words contained in “Hierurgy” are not merely theoretical musings; rather, they are drawn from prayers and meditations grounded in personal agonies and triumphs. “The Morning Star lights a narrow and all-consuming path,” concludes Tamu, “and these are the songs of those who dare to tread it.”

credits

released May 18, 2018

Cover painting and booklet art by Ikonostasis: Artwork of Elijah Tamu.
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Cat. Nr. IVR099

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