$19.98
NOTE: THIS IS A PRE-ORDER. These 2 CDs will be shipped to you as soon as they are available.
2 physical compact discs, mastered by SickTanicK, and professionally pressed, with original cover and insert artwork by Valerie Herron.
For more information about the artists and tracks on this anthology, head over to Hermetic Library Anthology Album - Magick, Music and Ritual 5
If you prefer, a digital download is available via Bandcamp
For more information, check out the project page at Hermetic Library Anthology and the actual site at Hermetic Library
This fifth album from the Hermetic Library Anthology Project is being released on Samhain in Fall 2012, at 15° Scorpio. This fifth issue completes the first full year of releases, one on all four quarters in 2012. Magick, Music and Ritual 5 brings together 16 tracks by 14 artists with over 2 hours of music which spans 2 physical CDs.
Two parts of this playlist seem to have developed for me a ritual structure, or at least a passage through liminality. The first part is an arrival which is also the departure from normal place and time and the second part is a departure from a place of imagination but also a return to world, having perhaps changed ourselves and world in the meantime. Beginning with a two-part track that develops from a mostly unadorned oud playing a lament and then unfolds in the second track to reveal a heavily processed and altered dirge; thus the circle of the ritual is cast. We move further into liminal place and time with a series of tracks leading deeper into the unknown, offering a self-reflection with mysterious overtones. This is an unfolding descent into a metaphorical and allegorical darkness that paradoxically reveals us to ourselves. The ritual progresses to a lacuna between parts, a space where in ritual one might do a specific working. You may decide each time you listen to take advantage of this place and time between parts to interact with this playlist by enacting your own work here in the space prepared by you and these artists. The second part of the playlist lifts us back through an ascent that returns us, not ourselves the same nor to the same world from which we departed but to see with new eyes a place slightly different than before. We have polished our vessel through travel into the self and have become better prepared to share our specific gifts with the world. Like the long delayed return of Odysseus, we are entering a season of increasing darkness from which light is inevitably liberated.
This cover for this issue was designed and illustrated by Valerie Herron. When I think of the top heaviness of antlers, I actually think of the looming ominous canopy of fall trees in the dark with their skeleton arms and fingers sloughing off leafy skin. I also think of the way that the tree of life looms large above the single point at Malkuth, such a long, tall and precarious spectral ladder to the stars … a place, perhaps, where the dark romance of both old school esotericism and new American Gothic meet.
Please join the Hermetic Library in promoting these artists who have contributed their work to this benefit anthology album project. Please also spread the word about these anthology albums to people you think may be interested in the work of artists who combine magick, music and ritual.