[artists] bestia centauri

Hidden Black Hole in Centaurus-A

Releases on Afe:
Teratogenesis [afe093cd]
The Antediluvian Earth [afe048lcd]

Related releases:
A.A.V.V.: No Abiding Places [afe030lcd]

On the web:
http://bestiacentauri.blogspot.com/

Myth is simply the re-interpreting of perceptions of temporal phenomena in terms of the trans-temporal. The "myth" of Bestia Centauri is one that I intuited in precisely this way. It began when I saw the cover of Tangerine Dream's 1971 album Alpha Centauri. The cover was a strange, almost abstract black-and-white representation of that most proximate star, and it seeded my mind with a fascination with that region of the cosmos. In my meditations - a term that is much preferable to the New Age-like "pathworking" - I began to intuit a presence in this region: Bestia Centauri.

Bestia Centauri is Latin for "the Beast of Centaurus" (hereafter, "the Beast"), an old and obscure name for what is now called the constellation Lupus ("Wolf"), near Alpha Centauri. The common tradition holds that the beast in question is a prey of the Centaur. This interpretation is, of course, incorrect. It is a sort of Christian-like sanitization of its deeper meaning, which links the Beast and the Centaur with what the writer and visionary Arthur Machen called, in a famous tale of his, "The Great God Pan". This "god" is not some benign, "New Age" pagan nature spirit: It is the totality of all that is. Those few who have perceived the Beast too directly in rare moments usually go mad: The English word panic derives from the Ancients' understanding of this idea.

The "physical" matter of the Beast is located in the aforementioned constellation. It lurks there, an indescribable force, in its lair of dark matter. Certain artists and poets have periodically been inspired, wittingly or not, by this force, and have described elements of it and its influence in pictorial, poetic, and fictional works. Among these artists are H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Arthur Machen, Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, John Martin, and many others.

The aim is to understand and channel the Cthulhu-like emanations of the Beast consciously, as a sort of Earthly avatar or representative. The Beast is akin to Lovecraft's fictional Cthulhu, in that it "calls" those who are receptive to its nature. Its emanations are closely related to what the Traditional Satanist group the Order of the Nine Angles terms "acausal" energy, a form of energy that is diametrically opposed to the causal energies that we perceive as a part of the tri-dimensional universe. The figure of "Satan", however, is a mere acolyte at the altar of the Beast, which is, in itself, far from such a human conception. In fact, the Beast is utterly beyond any human conceptions; one can, at best, use figurative and poetic language to capture its attributes. At the same time, however, attunement to the Beast is a means of transferring to oneself acausal energy from the outer spheres, in order to increase chaos and "presence the darkness" on Earth. The diffusion of such energy is necessary to the transformation of an elect few: Those who resemble humans, but who are, in fact, demonic intelligences bearing the human form. This is what Nietzsche referred to as the Superhuman, a new sort of race--or, ultimately, species--altogether.

Of course, the Beast itself cares nothing for the humanoid species, or for any other: It merely emanates the energies that enable certain inhabitants of the cosmos to "raise the sail", and to harness these energies in a sort of self-directed evolution. As the esoteric tradition of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky states, the majority of the human race are, despite appearances, mere unconscious automata. They exist only to provide "food for the moon"; that is, to provide energy off which other bodies in the cosmic economy may feed. For those who wish to escape the general law, such conscious, self-directed evolution offers the greatest hope. Few, however, are capable of following this path to its conclusion. This is because such an evolutionary pattern invariably takes the form of the monstrous, albeit in the original sense of the Latin etymology for the term monster: a prodigy, a wonder, something outside nature.

In sum, tapping into the "crawling chaos" of acausal energies, such as the Beast emanates, is one pathway to the Superhuman. This is why the music mediated through the inspiration of the Beast is so unhuman; in its small way, it spreads acausal energies that will affect those who hear it either positively or negatively. For those who resonate to primal myths of chaos, to Lovecraftian vortices, to the secrets of dark matter, or to the interstices of interstellar chaos, the music of the Beast will infuse them with degrees of acausal energy. To those who are not attuned to these mysteries, however, the music will sound like mere noise, or may even cause or exacerbate physical illness. Despite the reverberant, flowing textures that provide its sole link with the genre of “Dark Ambient”, this music is also dynamic and, most of all, disorienting, akin to the effect of the strange angles of the architecture of R'lyeh.

It is electricity that best bears the forces described above, which is why electronic music, with its ability to replicate and create such strange sonorities and frequencies, is also the best means of propagating this form of acausal energy. It is also worthwhile to mention that, if others wish to interpret the above merely as an allegorical or metaphorical evocation of Rudolph Otto's concept of the Numinous (Mysterium tremendum et fascinans; “a fearful and fascinating mystery”), then they are welcome to do so. This notion encapsulates the mysterium (something wholly other and altogether alien to anything that we experience in ordinary reality), and correlates it with the idea of tremendum, something that provokes awe and even terror because of its overwhelming power. It is, however, also potently attractive and alluring, or fascinans.

Of course, no one would insist on the objective reality of these notions, "objective reality" being defined as the consensus reality of ordinary persons who define "reality" solely in terms of the five senses. Such a view, however, also does not call their reality into question. Arthur Machen accurately limned the nature of Acausal reality in his “Great God Pan”: The forms that it takes are protean, and will appear differently, in true shape-shifting fashion, to everyone who perceives them. For some, the Dark Gods may be an incomprehensible gaseous mass of interstellar matter, for others, a giant mauve insect on a black star. The common denominator is the feeling that accompanies these perceptions that rend, however briefly, the fabric of ordinary reality. This much is certain: However extraordinary, or even outré, one's visions of "the Great God Pan" may be, the ultimate reality is vastly beyond the bounds of even the most advanced humanoid sensory abilities. If ever we were to confront it unmasked, we would likely face the fate of the narrator of Clark Ashton Smith’s epic poem The Hashish-Eater. Like him, we might stare into the maw of an utterly innominable force, and be consumed in the great alchemical furnace of the stars, "with lips of flame that open". Some may recoil in terror, but I can conceive of crossing the Abyss in no other way. [Bestia Centauri]

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