In place of the moderns’ imperious command to push ever plus ultra, philosopher Bruno Latour urges us to burrow into our Earthbound condition. The direction is not ever going forward, ‘plus ultra’, but inward, ‘plus intra’; back home (Tresch, 2017).
From the earth we are born, and to the earth we shall return. Part of this neverending cycle, we are bound to reap and to sow; to take and to give; to live in equilibrium with our surroundings. Not as mere inhabitants of our planet, but as beings conceived from the same primordial energy as our planet.
Given this realisation, this remembrance; there is no distinction or dissimilarity in stating that this album is an ode to – and is inspired by – nature, as opposed to articulating that this music is an expression of the self, an externalization of affections, thoughts and sentiments. They are one and the same – nature and the self. We are part of nature, and nature is us.
To truly bring ourselves into harmony with the natural world, we must return to seeing humanity as part of it. The fates of humanity and nature are intertwined. Let this idea be a starting point for the listener; to indulge in the chaotic and the ordered, the constructed and destructed, in tranquility and disturbance; the opposing forces that create the oneness of natural and, thus, human ‘be-ing’.
This Principle of Polarity is represented in this music, as are the other six Hermetic laws: The Principle of Rhythm or Vibration, The Principle of Harmony and Balance, The Principle of Resonance or Attraction, The Principle of Correspondence or Analogy, The Principle of Cause and Effect, and The Principle of Spirit or Mentalism.
Pilgrimage to Pleroma - MMVH
"It is true without untruth, certain and most true:
that which is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below; by these things are made the miracles of one thing.
And as all things are, and come from One, by the mediation of One, So all things are born from this unique thing by adaption.
The Sun is the father and the Moon the mother.
The wind carries it in its stomach. The earth is its nourisher and its receptacle.
The Father of all the Theleme of the universal world is here.
Its force, or power, remains entire,
if it is converted into earth.
You separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, gently with great industry.
It climbs from the earth and descends from the sky, and receives the force of things superior and things inferior.
You will have by this way, the glory of the world and all obscurity will flee from you.
It is the power strong with all power, for it will defeat every subtle thing and penetrate every solid thing
In this way the world was created.
From it are born wonderful adaptations, of which the way here is given.
That is why I have been called Hermes Tristmegistus, having the three parts of the universal philosophy.
This, that I have called the solar Work, is complete."
[The Emerald Table of Hermes, new translation from Fulcanelli 1964: 312.]
credits
released January 19, 2020
Music, mixing and mastering by Pilgrimage to Pleroma
Original coverphoto by Gert Stockmans, lay-out by Sam Coussens
Special thanks to Chiaran Verheyden
PILGRIMAGE TO PLEROMA brings ambient music arising directly from contemplative meditation. Drawing on Buddhist thematics and
practice, the central concepts in the music – as well as the music itself – revolve around a disintegration of the ego, and a pursuit of absolute one-eness with our world, nature, and the universe....more
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