The Hermetic Library Anthology Album – Magick, Music and Ritual 5

The Fall 2012 album from the Hermetic Library Anthology project is now released at The Hermetic Library Anthology Album – Magick, Music and Ritual 5 for immediate download! Physical CDs of this Fall 2012 issue are also available as a pre-order.

Please join the Hermetic Library in thanking and promoting these artists who have contributed their work to this benefit anthology album project by picking up this release. Please also spread the word to people you think may be interested in the work of artists who combine magick, music and ritual.

Be sure to also check out the previous issues of the Hermetic Library Anthology and look for a call for submissions to the Winter 2013 anthology album on Dec 15th!

 

 

The full track list for this Fall 2012 anthology album consists of 16 tracks with over 2 hours of music:

Part I – Arrival

  1. Shams93 – Wahabibi (Part 1) 04:21
  2. Shams93 – Wahabibi (Part 2) 04:00
  3. Anantakara – Unlock an Immortal Seal 09:20
  4. Apollon – Juxtaposition of the Shadow Traveller 06:25
  5. Troy Schafer – Blue Death 01:22
  6. Ophwurld – Spontaneous Involuntary Feeling 07:18
  7. y3mk – Shalicu 07:16
  8. Mahatma Dalí – Elephant Graveyard 11:21
  9. Exomène – Doom 04:49
  10. Dr J Cephei – Mystic Prophecy 04:27
  11. (m) – Izmir 02:24

Part II – Departure

  1. Ikipr – Orbits (Reprise) 03:41
  2. Machabray – Empty Room (Part V) 04:25
  3. (m) – Dark Liquid Replicating 02:38
  4. David B Metcalfe – Fields of Light – Lumen Siccum 24:50
  5. Kim Cascone – Ros Crux – Alchemisphere Zero 34:09

 

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.

The Hermetic Library at Hermetic.com has an overall vision of Archiving, Engaging and Encouraging the living Western Esoteric Tradition. I started the benefit anthology project to help promote newer works in the Western Esoteric Tradition to the audience of the Hermetic Library and beyond. The anthology project also further raises awareness about the corpus and culture of magick and ritual.

I encourage you to check out the Hermetic Library at Hermetic.com, if you aren’t already familiar with it, as that’s the reason this project exists and may also offer inspiration to you. The site was started in 1996 and has ever since consistently been an extremely popular resource for students and researchers interested in the Western Esoteric Tradition.

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.

Hermetic Library
Hermetic Library Anthology Project
Hermetic Library blog
Hermetic Library audio pool

Production by John Griogair Bell
Artwork and Design by Valerie Herron
Mastering by SickTanicK of SKR

All songs used with permission. All rights reserved.

Consider also:

  1. Last few hours to grab the pre-release bonus track along with The Hermetic Library Anthology Album – Magick, Music and Ritual 1
  2. Father Time & The Rings of Saturn
  3. Audrey's Trance
  4. “It was at Cambridge that I perceived the futility of worldly ambitions. I had wanted to be a poet and to attain to the greatest success in the Diplomatic Service, for which the late Lord Salisbury had intended me.”
  5. A review of Occult Traditions