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Heathen

by Thou

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1.
Free Will 14:35
Open your eyes and exalt--Exalt! in this fragile world, in this knowing flesh, in this very moment. We have forsaken the delusions of Comprehension as we are born into the certainty of the Sensual. We are the stone that starts the avalanche. We are the cough that spreads the plague. We are the spark that lights the inferno. Relinquish those wretched controls of knowledge and experience, those conditions which hinder Desire's progress. Cut away esoteric corruption and seek unfettered fulfillment. In defiance of the sages. In defiance of the intelligentsia. Useless philosophy, theory, and poetry must be heaped upon the cairn. See them consumed in Action--sweet, reckless Action. Join our sad tears and dance on the blackened bones of gods. Beyond the shadow of the citadel, there is no such thing as time, there is no such thing as negation. There is only this tangible, perceptible world. There is only this moment, this very moment.
2.
Dawn 01:18
3.
Feral Faun 09:26
Unbound, unrepressed, untamed, uncontrollable, unknown. No longer cowering beneath the roles hewn to our beings, we shall reclaim our vital energy, unique and unpredictable. Backs bent no more in the mad race of resource production and consumption. That web of domination, that web of mediation. Of limited experience and clearly defined boundaries. We rebuke this overgrown wasteland, teeming with the repulsiveness of pavement and cement. A concrete wilderness? No. An everlasting shrine to submission and death. A false wilderness prostrate and conforming to the will of man. Those vines and shrubs that would bend the knee, a caricature of freedom, an affront to life. We seek that which can only be found in the unmappable, the unknown, the unknowable. And from this venture we can never retreat. We have been recruited in blood. And the blood sings.
4.
So falsely are we led into mired existence, entrapped and sinking in the truest bogs and quicksand of urbanity. But the city lies barren and riddled with disease. No more are we sustained by its lifeless concrete and structure and utility. Flee the dying fortress of civilization, besieged on all sides by wild nature. Hope and contentment will not be found in its manicured lawns and cultivated fields. We were weaned from the nourishment of Nature’s breast and abandoned to the cruel orphanage of modern society. We must return to the womb, to the heart of vitality, wherein lies the strength, the marrow, the pulsating blood. Watch as the Mother’s breath is exhaled, that sweetest incense, night thoughts of the Earth. Find your path amidst the winding contours, that secret passage in the wild.
5.
Clarity 00:45
6.
We are but antlings, vain in our assumptions. We would presume to grasp at the unfathomable. We would presume to dress it as man, to give it names, to speak its intention. Yet we are humbled beneath the shadow of true greatness. Now the earth crest rises to meet our gaze. We are but fleas. We are but lice. We are nothing. Insignificant. Dust motes blown away by the breath of time. Vague memories of no consequence. Vanquished are the fires in the eyes of the friends I knew. Just as they are deafened to my wasted breath. Each one more wasted than the others you can bet. Now I see through the illusion of permanence. I am diminished in the presence of vastness. Useless are my tools of science, of religion. There is no understanding of limitless power. We are at peace in our minor, subordinate role. Accept our frail, short lives.
7.
We reject the esoteric falsehoods, the endless ponderings and useless theories of the mystic inane. Their heads nod, and from their mouths issue lies: an answer for every question, illuminating all the mysteries. Only action is real. The past is lost, the future unknowable. Only the present can be truly experienced, can be truly known. Deny the ecological soothsayers. Deny those self-styled radicals. Reformers! Conformers! Smash the lens of rotting history. Lay your torches on every museum, filled with dead monstrosities, the superstitious veneration. No more heritage. Destroy the past completely along with its abortive children: unauthentic present and rust-encrusted future. Now, we will create ruins. And after—something new and unimagined.
8.
T'ain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
9.
We scorn the domesticated scholars in their unblemished, halcyon temples, isolated and confined in prisons of theory and vague conjecture. Tempers violent. Passions vehement. Uncaged and unburdened, we now see clearly. Only amidst the sea of refuse shall we find enlightenment pure. To be righteous we must be consumed by the most profane. And so we shall descend into the very bowels of physical consumption. Desperately searching eyes are blinded by the wild joys of boundless pleasure, writhing in the excrement of unfettered appetite. We revel in ecstasy of gratification, the union of opposites, the union of sames. Mask kissing mask, image caressing image, in the sty of self-absorbed enchantment. We are unruly beasts driven by desire. And we delight in our filth. We glory in the visceral, wholly-felt, wholly-witnessed. We relish unfeeling, all-feeling detachment. And you know that I love you. Here and now, not forever. I can give you the present. I don't know about the future.
10.
Oh, constant, unending Pain, my surest, truest friend. Agony, blessed Agony, your ever-present ache identifies unyielding vitality. That sharply labored breath is respiration (fully) experienced. Those overwhelming burdens grant me immune to senseless distraction, grounding me in the present. Oh, merciless teacher. Spread your harshest wounds across the soil of my figure. Find root in my skin and nerves and veins. Killing fields to blanket and smother withering pleasure that waxes and wanes. Thine are the lidless eyes of night that stare upon my tears. Thine is the thickness of the dark that presses in my anguish. Rejoice in the miseries of life unkind. Here, and only here, are the senses stretched and contracted, hone them to their prime strength, to primal vigor. Seek comfort in endurance. Be consumed by struggle. Lasting wisdom only exists in the abandoned fields, in the dusty swamp, on the burnt out plains, on the desolate hillside.

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Recorded in January 2013 in Algiers, Louisiana by James Whitten. Mastered by Adam Tucker.

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released March 25, 2014

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Thou Baton Rouge, Louisiana

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