New track on Soundcloud – Trimorphic Protennoia pt.4 I cry out in everyone.

Fourth composition for the Trimorphic Protennoia suite:  I cry out in everyone.

It has been a busy week for good and worse, during that time I actually managed to sit down and finish a rather soft, yet intense, piece of ambient music.

The relevant text from the Nag Hammadi scripture Trimorphic Protennoia is

I descended to the midst of the underworld, and I shone down upon the darkness. It is I who poured forth the water. It is I who am hidden within radiant waters. I am the one who gradually put forth the All by my Thought. It is I who am laden with the Voice. It is through me that Gnosis comes forth.

I dwell in the ineffable and unknowable ones. I am perception and knowledge, uttering a Voice by means of thought. I am the real Voice. I cry out in everyone, and they recognize it (the voice), since a seed indwells them.

enjoy!

 

http://soundcloud.com/terjedb/trimorphic-protennoia-4-i-cry

 

New Musical piece on TerjeDB Soundcloud: Trimorphic Protennoia 3: I am a Voice speaking softly

I am a Voice speaking softly. I exist from the first. I dwell within the Silence that surrounds every one of them. And it is the hidden Voice that dwells within my, within the incomprehensible, immeasurable Thought, within the immeasurable Silence.

Trimorphic Protennoia, Nag Hammadi Library, Codex XIII

I have managed to create another monstrous experimental musical piece drawing inspiration from the Trimorphic Protennoia.

http://soundcloud.com/terjedb/trimorphic-protennoia-3-i-am-a

New Ambient music set posted to my Soundcloud page: Trimorphic Protennoia part 1

Trimorphic Protennoia:

I am Protennoia, the Thought that dwells in the Light. I am the movement that dwells in the All, She  in whom the All takes its stand, the first-born among those who came to be, She  who exists before the All.

Trimorphic Protennoia. Nag Hammadi Library Codex XIII. Transl. John  D. Turner. 1990

No one knows for certain were the Coptic Gnostic scripture originates; who wrote it, who edited it, who gave it the form and expression it has today.
What we do know of its transmission through almost two millenia and to a format we can read and share is:

– when it was rediscovered, August 1945 (month of the American bombing of  Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
in the desert outside of the ancient Chenoboskion monastic commune , close to a contemporary Egyptian village which bears the name Nag Hammadi hence the name of the collection of codexes buried in jars, the Nag Hammadi Library.

– who, in a succession of contributions and completions, studied the text and translated
it from its Sahidic dialect of Coptic to contemporary languages.

– what, in a sense of common features and characteristics, it is – an apocalyptic writing
classed with the Sethian or non-Christian Gnostics of the first 4 centuries of the common era Middle East.

1st revelation: I am movement.
The first thought in three forms says of herself :

I am the movement that dwells in the All
… . I move in every creature.

If it is alive, we expect it to move. Even if a mountain is a million times greater than a child, one is experienced by us as more real and substantial than the other. It is arguably a question of quality over quantity. However inert, however diminutive – the most shallow breath, the sway of its body, the beating of its heart, the smallest subconscious gesture. The Revealed is great, the Revealed is perfect – because it is invisibly near , that is to say,
She is perceived that way. Compare that to a woman, there is no quantification of her beauty, virtue, wit or dignity – only qualification.
My musical piece – I am movement, first part of the Piece  Trimorphic Protennoia, is
all over the place, it is rhythmically flowing, and staccato – dissonant, and harmonic;
it does not shift according to convention, some places it translates poorly.  This is part
conscious, and part the result of some very visible, or rather, audible, shortcomings of the
“composer.” What makes me curious as well as courageous enough to unleash this on the Internet, which is the true public domain, is the plot to find out where
music comes from. I perfectly understand that few have patience with that, let’s say they know, if they know, and this knowing does not entertain or stimulate them, it is natural that
they shall have no time with it.
And yes, the style here is something between ambient electronica, contemporary music
and noise.

http://soundcloud.com/terjedb/trimorphic-protennoia-1-i-am

 

Those who sleep I awaken.

I am the life of my Epinoia that dwells within every Power and every eternal movement, and (in) invisible Lights and within the Archons and Angels and Demons, and every soul dwelling in Tartaros, and (in) every material soul. I dwell in those who came to be. I move in everyone and I delve into them all. I walk uprightly, and those who sleep, I awaken. And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.

 

Here we reach deeper, from the demonstration of an invisible mover and movement, towards great mysterious landscapes populated by the supernatural, that is to say –
populated as well. Tartaros is the helleno-roman realm of the dead, the greek Hades,
the shades, Hel, the Gehenna, the West – not quite hell, not quite purgatory.

Those who sleep I awaken, she said – and I’m vision to those who dwell in sleep.

Sleep is the inanimate Animate state, we have not figured out sleep, we are trying –
the more science find the more frustrated, or amazed, scientists, and we their charges,
become. The dead shall not escape her presence, nor her movement. What place could
such take place in, she says herself – and we are stupified by the answer.

“Those who sleep, I awaken.” I like to think – does that. It is more true to how I navigate, I
am more confident with and more at ease with  “I am movement.” In terms of “language”,
frame of references, you have “heard” most of it before, even though the creator thought
he shut up and off everything while creating it. On the first listen as a complete, it struck me that it was both close to some Classical work I have heard and alas, forgot the name of , and something in the genre of Progressive Rock, but it doesn’t pack the same punch, and I thought that was just fine.

http://soundcloud.com/terjedb/trimorphic-protennoia-2-those

– to be continued.
A note: Some of my colleagues, fellow craftsmen, dreamers, obsessive-compulsives wondered how I work and what I use; I use virtual (software) instruments, a MIDI keyboard, a Macbook Pro and a microphone. It is put together, adjusted, edited, automated and mixed in Logic Express 9.

New Gnostic themed/named electronic experimentation tracks left at my Soundcloud site

During the first week of 2012, that fateful year, I have been in a creative fugue.
This is still raw and visceral material, but I do hope you will give it a whirl.

The first, in so many ways. Adamas .

http://soundcloud.com/terjedb/adamas
Adamas is one of the name variants you find for man, in particular, in general and in the specific sense; a person, in “gnostic” lore. The
Apocryphon, or Secret Book, of John – has a great recipe for men and women,
as they are being assembles by the microscopic imps the Archons (rulers) in the
laboratory of the Demiurge (half-maker,creator,architecht), each hoping to gain control
of each organ and tissue type, while collectively having “glory” in the new being they had
brought to life, and eventually to fleshly form. That old anthropological scheme, which is a magico-sympathetic one; ancient cultures, even today, believe that particular attention, ritual prayers,sacrifices, purgations, exorcisms, bribes and so on, can bring human or divine control over unruly,lethargic,weakened particular genius locii which still exists within the anatomy of the offspring of first man. We still “believe” tears purify, wind corrupts and sneezing exorcise evil influence…we have small imps banging on anvils with their tiny hammers when suffering through a particular bad consequence of our joie de vivre the night before….

Adamas should somewhere, someplace in all else that it is, as a musical
piece, contain ambiguity, complexity, conflicted powers that move around within some tense anatomy…

 

The most recent being, Heimarmene

 

http://soundcloud.com/terjedb/heimarmene

Heimarmene means  fate in Greek . My thought were that of an opening into the irrational rationality of an already accomplished plot winding out as so many cuts of celluloid.
Have you ever felt that this moment, right now, has already been spent – that it is worn
thin, as a thin sheet of film being churned through the cosmic machinery? While Jim Morrison and the Doors made long and epic orgiastic rock opera out of the legend of Oedipus, fate, apart from romantic cliché, has apparently gone out of fashion. We are searching the great big sky full of galaxies opening up by the cryptomagical operations of our technology, and splitting everything, below the limit of the atom, that can be divided down towards the particle or particular one that does not allow itself to be divided, at least according to calculation and perception, we are finding our new fates; the predetermined course of biological life, expanding or imploding universes, the dialectics of capitalism and culture…

I have made a more controlled electronic reel which has more material in it than
will be present in the final cut.

 

Unveiling the self; Introspection and Theophany

‘Withdraw into yourself and look; and if you do not find yourself beautiful as yet, do as does the sculptor of a statue …
cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is shadowed …
do not cease until there shall shine out on you the Godlike Splendor of Beauty; until you see temperance surely
established in the stainless shrine.

                                         Plotinus , Ennead, 1, 6, 9.

It is all too easy to invoke the image of a complete,featureless void as a contrast to the persona (Greek for “mask”, actually)
we carry, as Armour and utility set – into the world. If we think upon matters spiritual, we reject as a reflex – every flaw,
every ambiguity, every complication; sitting here thinking about the spiritual in man we are ourselves that flaw, that ambiguity,
that complication – that cloud before our eyes of vision. So looking within becomes an escape into judgment and rejection,
the more we reach the more bleak our self become, the more possessive we grow on an unconscious level. Modern man has
evacuated the superior value into pasts long exiled to memory and futures beyond imagination, his images becomes mere
abstractions, with the added density of number, measure and taxonomy. Thus images are emptied before they are truly
inspected, in the light of our vision. For images have a relationship with their transcendent cause, whose imprint they
have become in the world of the Psyche. Wherefore, instead of being invoked at the threshold into the contemplative
life; wherein the Logos, through which everything came into existence – becomes life and light to every man that enters
into this world; and remembered every time a holy book is opened – Theophany has been buried in the sciences of history
and comparative study. Events outside of the soul motivates the soul to reach towards solutions that are directed towards
outward things, the more concrete the situation is experienced as exterior and outside the extension of self – the stronger
the measure taken to make concrete and opaque the contents of its interior. I intend with this observation nothing less than
provide a diagnosis of the tendency to ignore the relational information contained in the treasurehouse of images which
remains the nature of our religions – the relations become visible when external judgment is suspended or detained, wherein
we can observe what they are in the light of what we know are, and hopefully also determine the relationship that which
we know has being, through being alert to our actual existence, within ourselves. The featureless, empty void, while allotting
all kinds of calm and peace and harmony to the mind – says precisely nothing about what is real, about others, and about your
self, or any kind of soul. There is a season for it, just as there is a season for the Angelic, and for Theophany – for visions,
revelations, interior dialogue and exchange. Beauty has no place to go but into the heart by the awakened eye of vision,
and this eye can only look when it reaches, and this reaching towards necessarily needs an object, a subject,an other.
Knowledge of relations requires a transparency of self – not the annihilation of self, we know others through our selves
, using the experiential, emotive and self-cognitant in us as a medium.
The theophanic vision requires a capacity for this recognition, which is determined by the measure of this knowledge; both as it
relates to ourselves, as it relates to others, and in which way it ever reaches towards the divine in either of them.
If we withdraw into ourselves, and strip these our selves naked of all that is appended to them, all that garbs them because
we wish to conceal this nakedness – we should be able to see Beauty not only in these our selves, but also in others.
These other human beings will thereafter no longer appear as strangers and unknown, but intimately known and familiar
by way of this recognition.
Plato writes, in his Phaedo:

“It seems to me, if anything else is beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful through
nothing else than that it participates in that Beautiful: and all things I say likewise…
Nothing else makes it beautiful than the presence or communion of that Beautiful…
but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful”  (Phaedo, 100d4-8)

Thus recognition of the Soul, unattended by its tormentors, the passions and authorities, opens up Beauty at the level
of our participation; and likewise, recognition of Beauty in the Soul between us, opens up the Soul at the level of a communal
participation in Beauty.

“For I had gone down below their language”

The idealism of Plato informed the ancient Gnostics in their metaphysics, which counter to the
chauvinism against so-called Sophism in Antiquity, was rooted in a new Image of Man.
Coupled with this figure, which is of a different kind entirely than the self-image of preceding
generations (leaving Kings and Shamans be the category they are to themselves, as much as
they were laws unto themselves, that is) – were a new day, a new alertness, a new cosmology,
a new process of unveiling the true nature and reality of all mysteries, natural and supernatural.

In the Apocryphal accounts we find that when Adam is awoken from his sleep, which some Gnostic myths negate or translate into other things, he is addressed directly and replies to the call, either of his counterpart, Eve, or of
an angelic host. At the determining moment, which seals Adam’s fate and plight, Eve turns to him and teaches him a secret; this secret in turn, unifies them in the capacity of “understanding more than their creator(s)”.
Two people that are united in the confidence of a secret are unified continously, as they not only remind eachother of themselves, but also of the secret that they hold in common.
The same goes for the blessing of the brotherly bread and brotherly wine – given the context of a new covenant which is secret, which exist between a chosen company of friends, at the last supper. Here also Jesus divulges
a secret, and the secret which is shared is devoured and assimilated by his friends – this secret becomes Jesus among them, and Jesus in them – and will, with a bright flash of recognition, become the Christ in and among them through the mystery of Pentecost.

The Protennoia speaks of her first descent thusly:

I am the first one who descended on account of my portion which remains, that is, the
Spirit that dwells in the soul, which originated from the Water of Life, and out of the
immersion of the mysteries. And I spoke, I, together with the Archons and Authorities.

For
I had gone down below their language

,and I spoke my mysteries to my own – a hidden mystery
and the bonds and eternal oblivion were nullified. And I bore fruit in them,
that is, the Thought of the unchanging Aeon, and my house, and their Father. And I went
down to those who were mine from the first, and I reached them and broke the first strands
that enslaved them. Then everyone of those within me shone, and I prepared a pattern for
those ineffable Lights that are within me. Amen. Trimorphic Protennoia, (NHC XIII,1.)

Christ became Silence, so that the secret that exists prior to that Silence might have an opportunity to
resurrect in us and ascend through us, and return as fullness which encompasses all stages of existence,
beyond the categories, and below language.

Blogging Hotspots:The Forbidden Gospels Blog

Blogging Hotspots: The Forbidden Gospels Blog

Professor April DeConick belongs to the new generation of scholars who have engaged the background for the New Testament and it’s reception with less filers and academic bias than their preceeding generation.

To be said for their predecessors is that they actually anticipated, and were pretty much agreed upon that such scholars were needed in the future.

Dr. DeConick teaches early Jewish and Christian thought to students at Rice University in –

Houston,Texas, I feel quite confident that her students will in the future become the new pioneers who will take over the heavy responsibility of opening up the past to their generation. The inheritance from the Jewish and Christian religion in our culture, even that of heterodox,heretic and “forbidden” – are formidable, and what is not brought into consciousness, good or bad, are bound to participate in us as an autonomous, dischordant presence, the better we have communicators, analysts, exegetics and discerning historians – engage the topic for us and give us occasion to realise what is going on.

I thoroughly enjoy Dr. DeConick’s occasional Apocryphote fragments from the heterodox/heretical/forgotten traditions of Christendom, which themselves merit a visit to her blog.

Emergence from Silence, to silence?

I notice that while I have promoted the Silence as a primary context for
reorientation, the ground upon which one can stand as well as the sky above
that meets it. and reaches through us to itself – a numbing phenomenon of
constant zero response meets it. The former blogpost is part 1 of a series
I must write; it’s not even pleasant to do so. I should perhaps given a personal
background for it, something to which it could attach, zoom into the place where
I part company with the great shout for Revolution, Armageddon, Justice and Purgation of
Paradise; why I must evaluate our modernity with one foot in the trenches.

Understanding, in any private span of thought, is not capital letter “T” Truth, it is
intimate and ideally part of who you are – it situates you right in what you understand,
there are no sense of distance in it. Therefore we need to have a conversation. We really
do, about what we understand, and how it is even possible to do so. Language is a trap,
but it is more of a beartrap than a hole covered over with branches and filled with spikes –
to be safe from calamity, you have to spring it, with a twig or a branch or something
expendable. Transport it all into the situation of mind, and you will see voluntarily
sidetracking into thoughts which has fleeting, transitory function looks the part, and
as long as we keep trying to keep up with the world, it is of infinite supply.

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