Recently my interest in Black Metal was revived [much due to the fellow blog Documents]. It has been a long time [if ever] since I was interested this much in it. I was into bands like Peste Noir or Meads of Asphodel, the avant/experimental side of the genre [don't blame me on genre tagging I know there are differences in this field of unusual / experimental / avant-garde black metal but I am no expert to tell]. Anyway my entry point to Black Metal per se is the pre-mid-nineties era. Much now in the progress of discovering and rediscovering.

One of the discoveries is early Satyricon. Dark Medieval Times is a neglected masterpiece [at least in comparison with other highly praised 'all-time-classics'] of the old times. Brilliant!

Concurrently I am going also through Burzum’s discography. A much different case. His music is tormented and far more cryptic. I made though a single observation [of no use] that struck me as interesting.

There is a phrase in Skyggedans [3rd track of Dark Medieval Times] starting slightly after 2mins [about at 2.04], on the same phrase [a little more muted perhaps] is based Stemmen Fra Tårnet the opening track of Aske EP. In Satyricon’s case it is part of a rather ‘descriptive’ song, while in Burzum’s is the very core of Stemmen.. There is, in Stemmen.., a trance-like quality, based on repetition and circulation of a slowly evolving musical part, technique we are familiar to, holding key-role to other Vikernes’ compositions as well [reaching its inimitable height in Jesus' Tod].

The material on this two releases was composed and recorded around the same time [mid'92 to '93] by two pioneering Norse acts with much different approaches to the genre. I, at least, was intrigued to find this immediate connection.

This is the concluding phrase of Solar Anus. Anus, the ‘blind eye’ of the flesh, is described intact and belonging to a young woman. Unspoiled, longs to be celebrated, open and be opened to knowledge, to gnosis. Blinding as only Sun can be, though the Night itself. Blindingly bright in a manner that obscures it from our incapable eyes, darkness from light, not due to the absence of it but to excess.

Anus is the entrance to the labyrinth of our intestines, to the ‘labyrinth-built’ Acéphale abdomen. Anus is also the mouth of the snake. According to some Gnostic traditions, referring mainly to the Ophites sect, the whole history of the world begins and ends with the serpent [thus their name deriving from the Greek word ophis, meaning serpent]. In the cosmic level [Leviathan], in the earthly level [Ocean] and finally in the human level [the meanders and spirals of the intestines, where food is transformed and life is sustained], the serpent is present everywhere.

The serpent is the first Rebel of history, in Paradise it defied false god’s authority and gave man the secrets of his birth and his destiny. The serpent freed Adam and Eve by luring Eve [luring meaning penetrating]. Sethian Gnostic went even further to claim that Adam was also lured in the same way. Thus the serpent offered to man the double apocalypse of knowledge [gnosis] and pleasure.

Anal penetration is a rebellious action. Infertile pleasure [the erotic movements of the ground are not fertile like those of the water, but they are far more rapid] against any social, sacred, ethical or even emotional regulations. Bataille is familiar with the teaching and the myths of Gnosis, Sun worshiper, transformed into the great penetrator, longs to have his throat slashed while violating the girl to whom [I] he will have been able to say: you are the night, unity in excess, eros and death, the smashing of discontinuity of the one.

read the Solar Anus

Eye for nipple, face for breast, an interesting metaphor, heavily symbolical. Intriguing read, the chapter Before The Milk Of The World: Nipple-Eyes out of N. Hilton’s Lexis Complexes.

Visions of excess nurtured at all costs and for no ‘obvious’ and ‘simple’ cause. No ‘economical management’ in the try to ‘feel’ [or probably even to experience anew] and serve the Grandeur, which lies beyond man to remain out of reach irrevocably within the boundaries of humanness.

We now live in ‘small times’ deprived of any ‘un-orthological’ operations of this nature. Pseudo-ethological issues and a restricting way of ‘right’ thinking asphyxiated any strive to ‘reach’ Superhuman and any possible transcendental experience. The Minotaur mythos intensionally misrepresented and oppressed serves as a great starting point, an ark of knowledge and symbols.