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1. 

   Know Thyself @[email protected] · 2026-05-16 · 14:12 UTC

   Wanna Stop Writing After This

   
   

   “For a long time now, the role of the Brahmin has been outsourced to other countries, particularly Europe and the US. Why? Because we Indians have stopped thinking many centuries back.”

   Neruda, I Feel Sadder Than You Tonight

   No reason Neruda that I feel sad

   You at least had your girl to blame

   I have nothing and no one to blame

   For how I feel now, just life itself

   Galls me to no end, where I feel mocked

   By life itself which demands it be understood

   Am I supposed to love life and not the woman

   But I do not know what life is nor how to live

   Shall I just drink a Coke and open happiness

   But Coke’s fizz lasts less time than morning dew

   The sun is hot but it’s supposedly life-giver

   But when I step out in the aft’noon it’s killing

   So, I cannot trust the very so-called life-giver

   Nothing in nature seems benign, not even society

   And when night comes, cocooned here in my flat

   I can’t see the stars, and moon interests me not

   All I can look forward to now is slow deterioration

   One by one the powers will desert me, from the teeth

   To the knees to the memory to the interest

   Time cares not to show anyone any compassion

   The philosophy I know is even more problematic

   In a way it gives me relief from these thoughts

   And in a way it doubles the pain by showing

   This whole life was a waste of time, no study

   Nor emotion nor smile nor understanding

   Takes you where you want to be, and these days

   I am not even sure where I want to be, not even to be

   I cannot even go back to where I came from

   Nor can I know where I have to go, nor whether

   Any journey is worth it at all, as now I understand

   This flight from myself is the cause of all problems

   And, when I look into myself, I find only wisdom

   And that wisdom tells me I do not understand at all

   Neither Truth nor Love, for wisdom tells me

   If you think you understand Truth and Love

   Why are you still undertaking many a journey.

   “Everything in this world has a cause. And every effect becomes in turn a cause. Where there are causes and effects, there is change underway. Where there is change how can Truth be. And where there is no Truth how can love be.”

   “Definition of a perfect love story: Going from aroused to erased.”

   “Most human love arises out of fear, is sustained by fear, and ends a quiet death due to fear.”

   “Life is a Russian roulette.”

   “Perfect recipe for dissatisfaction in life: Wanting to be happy always all the time no matter what.”

   “Some say God is Truth. Some say God is Love. Both are wrong. God is. Period.”

   “Love is not an add-on to the other things in your life. Love is the life.”

   “Love is the ultimate soporific which dullens the pain of existence.”

   “We think there is life. That is the death of us.”

   “We are all lost in our desires. Desires take us to the future. Inhabiting the future, we fail to live because life is happening in the present.”

   Jagat (Sanskrit: जगत्) primarily means the world, universe, or earth. It is derived from the root gacchati (“that which moves”), signifying that the universe is in constant motion, ever-changing, and ephemeral.

   Core Meanings & Contexts:

   •  The Moving World: It refers to all that is moving, animate, living, and changing, encompassing the entire material universe.

   •  Vedanta Philosophy: It is often described as mithya (dependent reality/illusion) in comparison to the absolute reality of Brahman, often referring to the subjective experience of the material world.

   •  Spiritual/Non-dualism: In some contexts, it is interpreted as the manifestation or “body” of the divine, completely dependent on the Supreme for existence.

   •  Common Usage: In Hindi and other Indian languages, it is used for “world” or “universe,” and sometimes implies a specific field or community (e.g., Nari Jagat – world of women).

   Common Compound Words:

   •  Jagadish/Jagannath: Lord of the Universe (Vishnu or Shiva).

   •  Jagatmata: Mother of the World (Durga).

   Jagat is also a common Indian name for boys, signifying the universe.

   “Don’t wait for retirement or for that smile; be happy today, nay, right now.”

   “Dare to be who you are.”

   Give me some deeply philosophical quotes of Arthur Rimbaud.

   Claude responded: Here are some deeply philosophical quotes from Arthur Rimbaud:

   ________________________________________

   On the Self & Identity

   “I is another.” — Letter to Georges Izambard, 1871

   One of his most famous lines, suggesting the self is not a fixed entity but something foreign, observed from the outside — a radical idea that anticipated modern theories of subjectivity.

   ________________________________________

   On Disorder & Vision

   “The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses.” — Letter to Paul Demeny (Lettre du Voyant), 1871

   Rimbaud’s manifesto for poetry: to reach true vision, the poet must shatter ordinary perception and embrace suffering as a path to illumination.

   ________________________________________

   On Life & the Absolute

   “Real life is absent. We are not in the world.” — A Season in Hell

   A haunting declaration of alienation — the sense that authentic existence lies forever beyond reach, and the world we inhabit is a kind of unreality.

   ________________________________________

   On Suffering & Knowledge

   “One must be absolutely modern.” — A Season in Hell

   Deceptively simple, this is Rimbaud’s demand to break entirely with tradition — to find truth not in the past but in the raw, uncharted present.

   ________________________________________

   On Love & Hell

   “I have swallowed a famous mouthful of poison. Thrice blessed be the counsel that came to me! My bowels are on fire. The violence of the venom twists my limbs, deforms me, lays me low.” — A Season in Hell

   A visceral metaphor for the self-destruction that comes with absolute passion — love, ambition, and vision as simultaneously poison and revelation.

   ________________________________________

   On Eternity

   “It has been found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea mixed with the sun.” — Eternity

   A mystical fragment — eternity not as abstraction but as a sensory, almost pantheist fusion of natural forces.

   ________________________________________

   On Freedom

   “Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.” — A Season in Hell

   Rimbaud suggests that rational intellect alone cannot unlock the deepest truths — only a surrender to something greater can.

   ________________________________________

   Rimbaud’s philosophy is essentially one of radical becoming — the self must be destroyed, perception unhinged, and comfort abandoned in order to glimpse something true. He abandoned poetry entirely at 19, which many see as the ultimate philosophical act: refusing to be captured even by his own genius.

   “Vivekananda, when he was young, really young, went around asking everyone, ‘Have you seen God’. And when he posed the same question to Ramakrishna Paramahansa, RP replied, ‘Yes, only more clearly than I see you now.’ Now, the question that can be asked is was RP, like J. Krishnamurti always said he does, ‘Answering the questioner rather than the question.’ Otherwise, the correct answer is, ‘What a stupid question, Naren, all you have been seeing all your life is ONLY God but you have been thinking you are seeing the world’.”

   Buddha’s Mistake

   Sam’s First Noble Truth

   I agree with Buddha’s First Noble Truth that “Life is suffering”.

   Sam’s Second Noble Truth

   I do not agree with Buddha’s Second Noble Truth that “Desire is the cause of suffering.”

   My point is that once you have understood that “Life is suffering”, you should also understand the simple logic that “No life, no suffering.”

   So, do not bother about desires and all such nonsense.

   Do not get caught in such traps, traps which arise only if you are living.

   Just end life and you are done.

   Or, rather realise you were never born.

   No Sex, No Salvation, No Sam

   I do not want to get caught

   In the vortex of these Fie-loss-oafers

   And whatever theories they spin

   About this world, existing only in imagination;

   When I talk about myself Sam

   Or about Sex and Salvation, I do so

   Under Erasure, as that Algerian Jew would have it

   Who set afire many an academic department in the US

   And, I note with pleasure his association in 1966

   With my alma mater Johns Hopkins, kickstarting

   That peculiar school of philosophy, poststructuralism,

   But, why dabble and grapple even dilettantishly

   With these games that minds of philosophers play

   I who have understood Kena Upanishad’s admonition

   That if you think Truth is there for the taking by the mind

   You poor thing how little you understand

   And where is the mind but in this world

   Or is the world in the mind

   Now, now don’t confuse me

   I refuse to play this game with these words

   For I know too well that if I renounce words

   Which is the only true Vairagya that is there

   And not so-called Vairagya of Kamini-Kanchana

   Then in that silence all doubts are quelled

   All truths stand revealed, and I know

   Whatever I knew till now was wrong

   And I learn to let go of not only Socrates and Sartre

   But also of Maharshi and Maharaj

   For where do they all exist

   Except in my fertile imagination

   As do Sex, Salvation and Sam.

   “The tree has to bend to every wind, but it cannot know why the wind is blowing.”

   “In the autumn, it is foolish for the tree to try to hold on to the leaves.”

   “There is no spot in the pot where there is no clay.”

   “In every love story, there is something more than biology at play.”

   “My Call”

   Yes, Michael, it always was your call

   To go solo or to go with the family

   And also your call to spread love and light

   To this world through your moves.

   Music, moods, musings, and murmurings

   And did you change the world?

   Who knows? Maybe a few and here and there

   When you were alive, and a few more might change

   Long after you are gone as long as your music lives on

   Surely, though, you yourself must have escaped

   The suffering that the blind strivings of the Will

   Imposes on one, if Schopenhauer is to be believed,

   With your Dionysian spirit that Nietzsche championed.

   Yet how I despair Michael, my call

   Is that this world is condemned to its duality

   Of light and darkness, good and bad, virtue and vice

   Socrates, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus could not fix the world

   So, Michael, you are forgiven, too, for failing

   Though your critics would point out your own failings.

   —

   Maya (the cosmic creative/illusory power) is constituted by the three gunas — Sattva (clarity, harmony), Rajas (activity, passion, restlessness), and Tamas (inertia, darkness, ignorance). As long as manifestation exists — as long as anything is appearing — all three gunas are present in varying proportions. You can’t have Maya with only Sattva, because pure undifferentiated Sattva would dissolve back into Brahman. The tension and dynamism of Rajas and Tamas are what keep the world-appearance going.

   So yes, suffering and evil are structurally baked into manifestation itself. Tamas produces ignorance, delusion, and stagnation; Rajas produces craving, conflict, and agitation — both are inexhaustible engines of suffering at the cosmic level.

   This creates an important asymmetry:

   At the individual level, liberation is possible — you can step out of identification with the gunas entirely, which is what Nisargadatta and Ramana point to. The Self is not a product of the gunas.

   At the collective or historical level, you might get periods of greater Sattva, but Rajas and Tamas always reassert themselves — civilizations rise and fall in cycles (the yuga framework reflects exactly this).

   At the cosmic/natural level, as long as Maya is operating, the interplay of gunas never ceases. Suffering doesn’t “end” — it’s part of the texture of manifestation.

   This is also why Advaita doesn’t promise the world will get better or that evil will be eliminated — it says the world as such is the wrong level to seek resolution. The resolution is recognition of that which was never in the gunas to begin with. Nisargadatta’s typical move is precisely this — he doesn’t ask you to fix the dream, he asks you to wake up from it.

   Universal liberation of the cosmos is a category error within this framework. The most Maya can do is oscillate; it cannot transcend its own constituents.

   Two Ways to Retire Early

   1. Earn as much as is 100% sufficient for your wants.

   2. Pare down your wants (but NOT to the bare minimum) so that you can retire earlier than you can under Scenario 1.

   I chose the latter option by becoming sort of a minimalist because I realized that happiness does not come from accumulating more and more, be it wealth or any other damn thing.

   When did more and more wealth ever make anyone more and more happy.

   And, if you need more and more money to become more and more happy, know that you are not going about it the right way.

   Money cannot buy almost anything worthwhile.

   Anyway, the best things in life are either damn cheap or totally free.

   Don’t think so?

   Well, my friend, good luck with that happiness you are chasing.

   No, I forget, you are chasing money not happiness.

   Let me know when you shift your rat race from pursuing money to pursuing happiness, then as Paul Simon sang, “I can be your long-lost pal.”

   What about the work that needs to be done in this world that might suffer if you retire early?

   Ha, ha, ha, as if you are working FOR the world. Get real.

   Besides, there are enough unemployed people out there to fill the space that you vacate.

   And, besides, if people thought like I am suggesting, then believe you me, far less work will be needed to be done in this world so that the world can get along by just fine.

   Ha, ha, ha…how bad people are at thinking!!!

   Well, well, I guess God knows what he is up to.

   Homo Duplex

   Homo duplex (“the double human”) is a theory by sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) proposing that humans possess a dual nature: part biological organism driven by selfish individual desires (“profane”), and part social being guided by morality, collective consciousness, and social constraints (“sacred”).

   Key Components of Homo Duplex:

   •  The Profane (Individual): This side consists of personal appetites, instincts, selfishness, and bodily sensations.

   •  The Sacred (Social): This side comprises moral forces, social solidarity, shared values, and altruism, which are cultivated through societal interaction and collective rituals.

   •  The Tension: Durkheim argued that society requires a balance between these two sides to prevent individualism from leading to unhappiness, greed, or excessive anomie (social instability).

   •  Societal Role: Socialization, education, and religion play crucial roles in regulating the individual’s “animalistic” nature and nurturing their “moral” or “social” side.

   This concept underscores the idea that humans find their highest potential not in isolation, but by participating in a larger social whole.

   What Durkheim Was Really Saying

   At its core, Homo Duplex is Durkheim’s answer to one of philosophy’s oldest

   questions: what kind of creature is a human being? His answer was deliberately

   paradoxical — we are simultaneously two things at once, and that tension is not a

   flaw to be resolved, but the very engine of social and moral life.

   This was a bold move in the late 19th century. Darwinian biology was pushing toward

   the view that humans were essentially animals with sophisticated brains.

   Enlightenment liberalism, on the other hand, celebrated the sovereign individual.

   Durkheim rejected both as incomplete. He insisted you cannot understand a human

   being by looking only at their biology or their individual rational mind — you must

   look at what society does to and inside them.

   Unpacking the Two Sides

   The Profane (the animal self)

   The word “profane” here doesn’t mean vulgar in the everyday sense — it means

   outside the sacred, ordinary, earthly, bodily. This is the self that:

    Hungers, lusts, fears, and competes

    Acts in its own interest without reference to others

    Exists in time and space as a finite, mortal organism

   Durkheim didn’t moralize this side as evil — he saw it as simply pre-social. It is what

   we are before society gets hold of us. Left entirely to this nature, humans would be,

   in Hobbes’ famous phrase, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

   The Sacred (the social self)

   The “sacred” is what society implants into the individual. This is a profound and

   somewhat unsettling idea: your moral conscience, your sense of duty, your empathy,

   your values — these are not naturally yours. They were installed by the collective.

   This side includes:

    The capacity for self-sacrifice

    Loyalty to groups, nations, ideals

    Moral disgust and reverence

    The ability to feel that something is bigger than yourself

   Crucially, Durkheim believed this sacred dimension is genuinely real and genuinely

   powerful — but its source is social, not divine or innate. When you feel moral awe,

   you are, in his view, feeling the weight of society pressing on your consciousness.

   The Tension: Why the Conflict is Necessary

   Durkheim didn’t want the tension resolved — he wanted it managed. Here’s why:

    Too much profane (pure individualism) leads to anomie — a condition where

   social norms collapse, individuals feel unmoored, and rates of depression,

   crime, and even suicide rise. His famous study Suicide (1897) showed that

   societies with weak social bonds had higher suicide rates — a radical,

   counterintuitive argument.

    Too much sacred (total collective absorption) leads to fatalistic overregulation

   — where individuals are crushed under the weight of social duty,

   also producing misery and, paradoxically, suicide of a different kind (what he

   called altruistic suicide, dying for the group).

   The sweet spot is a productive friction — society strong enough to give life meaning

   and structure, but not so totalizing that it erases the individual.

   Socialization as the Civilizing Mechanism

   When Durkheim says education, religion, and socialization regulate the individual’s

   animalistic nature, he means something very specific: they transfer the sacred into

   the individual so thoroughly that it feels like their own conscience. This is the

   machinery of moral internalization.

   Think of how a child is taught not to steal. At first, it’s external — “don’t do that or

   you’ll be punished.” Eventually, the prohibition becomes internal — “I don’t want to

   steal, it feels wrong.” For Durkheim, that feeling of wrongness is society speaking

   through you. You have been successfully socialized. The collective has colonized

   your inner life — and this is not manipulation, in his view; it is what makes you fully

   human.

   Religion, in particular, fascinated him because its rituals (collective gatherings, shared

   symbols, emotional ceremonies) were the most powerful mechanisms for recharging

   the social self — reminding individuals viscerally that they belong to something

   beyond themselves.

   Where Homo Duplex Connects to Bigger Ideas

   Concept Connection to Homo Duplex

   Freud’s Id/Superego

   Strikingly parallel — the id (drives) vs. the superego

   (internalized social rules). Both emerged around the same

   era, independently.

   Rousseau’s Noble

   Savage

   Durkheim inverts Rousseau — society doesn’t corrupt

   natural goodness; it creates moral goodness in the first

   place.

   Nietzsche’s critique of

   herd morality

   Nietzsche saw society suppressing the individual as a

   tragedy. Durkheim saw it as a necessity — even a gift.

   Modern psychology

   Jonathan Haidt’s social intuitionist model echoes Homo

   Duplex — moral feelings are social products, not individual

   reason.

   A Critical Perspective

   Homo Duplex is elegant, but not without its critics:

    It’s overly binary. Human nature resists clean splits into “animal vs. social.”

   Much of what Durkheim calls “profane” (love, curiosity, creativity) is not

   straightforwardly selfish.

    It romanticizes the collective. Durkheim’s framework can justify social

   conformity too easily. History shows that the “sacred social” can endorse

   racism, nationalism, and genocide just as easily as altruism.

    It underestimates individual agency. Humans don’t just receive society

   passively — they also reshape it. The individual isn’t merely a battleground

   between animal drives and social imprinting.

   The Bottom Line

   Homo Duplex is a powerful lens for understanding why humans are so

   contradictory — capable of extraordinary selfishness and extraordinary sacrifice,

   often in the same person, sometimes within the same hour. Durkheim’s lasting

   insight is that this is not hypocrisy or moral failure. It is the structure of what we are:

   biological creatures who can only realize their deepest potential by surrendering part

   of themselves to something collective and larger. We are, as he saw it, always living

   on the border between the animal and the social — and civilization is the ongoing,

   never-finished negotiation between those two halves.

   Kids? Just say no

   You don’t have to dislike children to see the harms done by having them. There is a moral case against procreation

   https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral

   No Words To Say What I Want To Say

   Strange how sometimes you are at a loss for words

   When you realize the words you used have not been understood

   And using more words would only complicate the picture

   Because the words have to go through the sieve

   Of other minds and hearts, though  mine they have navigated,

   And this is not just my problem, just the human condition

   And until we understand silence we cannot understand each other

   But unfortunately, until then we have to keep using words

   And thereby keep encountering battlefields of various sorts.

   “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will” is a famous quote from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act 5, Scene 2). Spoken by Hamlet, it means that a divine power or fate determines the ultimate outcome of our lives, regardless of how clumsily we plan them.

   Key Details and Context:

   Context in Play: Hamlet says this to Horatio while explaining how he survived

   a plot to kill him, suggesting he has accepted fate.

   Meaning: “Rough-hew” refers to shaping a rough block of wood. It suggests

   humans make rough plans (“rough-hew”), but God or destiny refines the final

   outcome (“shapes our ends”).

   Theme: This reflects a shift in Hamlet from indecision to a fatalistic acceptance

   of whatever happens, including the “special providence in the fall of a

   sparrow”.

   It shows a shift from a belief that mortals control their destiny to a belief that higher

   forces are in control.

   “There’s a Divinity That Shapes Our Ends” — Through the Lens of Advaita

   Vedānta

   And the Self Reveals Itself to Whom She Chooses

   I. The Two Voices Speaking the Same Truth

   Shakespeare’s Hamlet, standing at the threshold of death with a curious calm, utters

   something that no purely Western philosophical framework can fully contain. He is

   not simply expressing fatalism. He is not surrendering to an external God the way a

   theist might. Something deeper is trembling in those words — something that

   Advaita Vedānta, the non-dual philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya, can illuminate with

   remarkable precision.

   Advaita means not-two. Its central revelation is that Brahman — the infinite,

   undivided, self-luminous Consciousness — is the only reality. What we call the

   “individual self,” the jīva, is not a separate entity that Brahman controls from outside.

   The jīva is Brahman, appearing individuated through the veil of avidyā (ignorance).

   The drama of human life — the planning, the struggling, the winning and losing — is

   līlā, the cosmic play of Consciousness with itself.

   With this as our foundation, Hamlet’s line ceases to be merely about fate and

   becomes a window into the nature of Reality itself.

   II. “Rough-Hewing” — The Activity of the Ego-Self

   “Rough-hew them how we will…”

   In Advaita, the one who “rough-hews” is the ahaṃkāra — the ego, the sense of

   being a separate, autonomous “I” that plans, decides, and acts. This ego-self believes

   itself to be the kartā (the doer). It picks up the chisel, surveys the raw wood of

   circumstance, and begins to hack away according to its desires, fears, and

   calculations.

   Hamlet spent four acts doing precisely this. He rough-hewed furiously:

   • He devised the play-within-a-play to trap Claudius
   • He calculated when to strike and when to hesitate
   • He philosophized endlessly about whether to act at all

   And what did all this rough-hewing produce? Chaos. Mistaken killing. Broken

   relationships. Near-annihilation.

   The Advaitic teaching here is precise: the ego is real as appearance but not as

   substance. It is like a wave that believes it is generating the ocean’s movement. It

   hews and carves, but its cuts are always rough — approximate, distorted, limited by

   its own ignorance of the whole. The jīva cannot see the totality because it is the act

   of pretending to be separate from the totality. You cannot see the whole painting

   while believing yourself to be only one brushstroke.

   This is not a moral failure. It is the nature of individuation itself. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad

   says: “The Self is not attained by the weak.” The weakness referred to is not physical

   — it is the weakness of clinging to the ego’s rough-hewing as if it were the final

   word on reality.

   III. “The Divinity That Shapes” — Brahman as the Immanent Sculptor

   “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends…”

   Now we arrive at the heart of the Advaitic mystery. What is this “divinity” that

   shapes?

   It is not an external God standing above creation, adjusting outcomes like a cosmic

   bureaucrat. That would be dvaita — duality, two-ness. In Advaita, the Divinity that

   shapes is Brahman itself, operating as the innermost reality of everything that

   appears to happen. It is not separate from the rough-hewing. It is the very ground

   within which the rough-hewing occurs — and it is simultaneously the one who knows

   that rough-hewing is never the final act.

   Śaṅkara would say: Brahman is both the material cause and the efficient cause of the

   universe. Like gold that becomes ornaments without ceasing to be gold — the

   ornaments appear different, but gold alone is real. Every “end” that is shaped —

   every outcome, every death, every transformation — is Brahman alone, crystallizing

   into form from its own infinite freedom.

   This is why the shaping is so effortless and inevitable. It does not struggle against the

   rough-hewing. It uses it. Every awkward cut the ego makes, every miscalculation,

   every tragedy — Brahman absorbs it and shapes it into exactly what was needed for

   the whole. The sculptor does not fight the chisel marks. She works with the grain of

   the wood, which she herself laid down before the carpenter arrived.

   IV. The Self Reveals Herself to Whom She Chooses — Ātman Prasāda

   Here we arrive at the most luminous, and most humbling, dimension of this teaching.

   The Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad declares:

   “Nāyam ātmā pravacanena labhyo na medhayā na bahunā śrutena। Yam evaiṣa

   vṛṇute tena labhyas tasyaiṣa ātmā vivṛṇute tanūṃ svām॥”

   “This Self is not attained by instruction, nor by intellect, nor by much hearing. It is

   attained only by the one whom the Self chooses — to that one, the Self reveals its own

   nature.”

   This is perhaps the most radical statement in all of Vedāntic philosophy. And it

   reframes Hamlet’s entire journey.

   Hamlet spent the whole play trying to know — trying to verify the Ghost’s truth,

   trying to understand his duty, trying to calculate the right moment. He brought great

   intellect, great sensitivity, great moral seriousness. And none of it worked in the way

   he intended. The knowledge he needed did not come through his efforts. It came

   through a sea voyage, a near-death encounter, a pirate attack — through

   circumstances entirely outside his planning.

   And then, at the beginning of Act 5, he simply knows. A calm descends. He speaks of

   providence with the ease of one who has stopped arguing with reality. He is ready.

   The Self has chosen him.

   From the Advaitic lens, what happened? The jīva Hamlet had exhausted its roughhewing.

   The ego’s strategies had all collapsed. And in that exhaustion, in that

   surrender — not as a strategy, but as a genuine letting-go — avidyā thinned. The veil

   grew transparent. Brahman, which had always been Hamlet’s own deepest nature,

   turned toward itself through the instrument of Hamlet’s readied consciousness.

   The Self does not reveal itself as a reward for correct behavior. It reveals itself when

   the ego becomes sufficiently transparent. Grace — prasāda — is not earned. It is

   received. And the receiving is only possible when the clenched fist of the ego-self

   relaxes its grip on rough-hewing.

   V. Why “She Chooses” — The Feminine Ground of Being

   To speak of the Self as She is to invoke Śakti — the dynamic, creative power of

   Consciousness. In the non-dual Śākta interpretation of Advaita, Brahman’s power of

   self-revelation is understood as intrinsically feminine — not in the gendered human

   sense, but in the sense of that which receives, gestates, and births reality from within

   itself.

   Māyā — the power that veils Brahman — is feminine. And Anugraha Śakti — the

   power that removes the veil — is also feminine. The same divine Mother who wraps

   the world in the dream of separateness is the one who, in her grace, tears the veil

   away.

   This means the Self’s self-concealment and self-revelation are not opposites. They

   are two movements of the same creative freedom. Brahman chooses to hide in order

   that the joy of rediscovery can be complete. The rough-hewing is part of the plan.

   The chaos is choreographed. The tragedy is embraced.

   The “divinity that shapes our ends” is not a cold determinism. She is a Mother who

   allows her children to wander, to build, to destroy, to suffer — because she knows

   what they are, even when they have forgotten. She shapes the ends not by

   preventing the rough-hewing but by ensuring that every rough mark ultimately

   reveals the beauty of the finished form.

   VI. Hamlet’s Enlightenment — The Shift into Sākṣī

   Hamlet’s final equanimity — “the readiness is all” — is, in Advaitic terms, a

   spontaneous shift from identifying as the kartā (doer) to resting as the sākṣī

   (witness). He no longer needs the outcome to be controlled. He no longer needs

   certainty. He acts when action is called, rests when rest is called, and accepts death

   when death arrives — without any of it disturbing the stillness beneath.

   This is not stoic resignation. The Stoic still believes the ego is real and chooses nobly

   to endure. Hamlet’s shift is subtler and deeper: the ego has become transparent to

   itself. He sees through the rough-hewing to the shaping beneath. He does not

   become passive — he kills Claudius, he orchestrates the final scene — but he does so

   without the contracted, desperate quality of his earlier scheming. He acts as an

   instrument of the Whole.

   In Advaita, this is called Jīvanmukti — liberation while still living. The body-mind

   continues to function. The drama of life continues. But the one who believed they

   were only the rough-hewer has recognized themselves as also the Divinity that

   shapes. Subject and sculptor are one.

   VII. The Final Integration

   Shakespeare could not have known Advaita Vedānta. And yet he wrote this line, and

   it carries the full weight of the tradition as though it were distilled from it. This is not

   coincidence. It is evidence that certain recognitions are not cultural — they are

   structural. They arise whenever human consciousness is pressed to its limit and

   breaks open into something larger than itself.

   The Divinity that shapes our ends is not other than us. It is the deepest stratum of

   what we are — the Ātman, Brahman, the Self — appearing as destiny from outside,

   because we forgot that we are inside it.

   And She reveals Herself not when we have perfected our rough-hewing, but when we

   love Her more than our own plans.

   When the chisel drops — She speaks.

   The Drama of Desire

   A friend wrote, “Desire…

   I realised drama we are all living in”,

   Really, my friend, really you “realised?”,

   But to realise is to realise that

   There is no “We”.

   Do you know where you’re going to?

   Do you like the things that life is showing you?

   Where are you going to?

   Do you know?

   Do you get what you’re hoping for?

   When you look behind you, there’s no open doors

   What are you hoping for?

   Do you know?

   Now, looking back at all we’ve passed

   We let so many dreams just slip through our hands

   Why must we wait so long before we see

   How sad the answers to those questions can be?

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMBl1peAlo

   This Dream, This Life

   Aw, shucks, this dream

   This life, oh so unnecessary

   Yet we keep dreaming

   We keep living

   As if we have no choice

   Do we have a choice,

   And is the choice only death

   Some say the choice is immortality

   But if it indeed is immortality

   Immortality can have no beginning

   So, right now it surely must be the case

   That I am indeed already immortal

   And being immortal

   ‘Tis strange that a mere dream

   A mere life

   Bugs me to no end.

   “This unreality, oh this unreality…where neither love is true, nor the truth is true…oh this unreality.”

   “Ah, to disappear, be submerged…”

   The Passion and the Intezaar

   When passion for you

   Is no longer a passion

   When passion for you

   Is no longer in fashion

   Know that

   The wait is almost over.

   Lekin intezaar bhi kahi baar

   Bahut meetha hota hai

   Intezaar may dard bhi kyu na ho

   Aur tumhaari zindagi may

   Ye ittefaq bhi ho sakti hai

   Ye taqdeer bhi ho sakti hai

   Jis pal pe tumhari zindagi hai

   Aakar rukhi hai, tehri hai

   Ab tum aur kuch lumhe

   Sirf intezaar may bitana hai

   Aur iss ittefaq ko, iss taqdeer ko

   Galay lagaanay ke siva

   Aur koi raasta nahi hai

   Aur agar koi waisa raasta hai

   Tumhari taqdeer may nahi hai

   Ki tum uss raastay pe chal sakogay.

   “When I read some poets, I feel like it is high time I stopped writing poetry, and left that job to the poets.”

   Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

   What I was walling in or walling out,

   And to whom I was like to give offense.

   Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

   That wants it down.’

   “Mending Wall” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall) is

   one of Frost’s most celebrated poems, and these lines are among the most analyzed

   in American poetry. Here’s a deep commentary from multiple angles.

   The Lines in Context

   These lines come near the end of the poem, spoken by the narrator as a

   counterpoint to his neighbor’s repeated mantra: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

   The narrator is the questioner, the skeptic, the one who wonders why the wall exists

   at all.

   Line by Line

   “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out”

   This is the poem’s central philosophical provocation. Frost draws on a binary that

   cuts in two directions simultaneously:

    Walling in — keeping something of yours contained, protected, defined.

   Territory, identity, privacy, culture.

    Walling out — excluding something foreign, threatening, or simply other.

   The genius of phrasing it as a question is that the narrator admits he doesn’t always

   know which is which. A wall built for protection can become a cage. A wall built for

   exclusion can become a statement of fear. The act of building precedes the

   understanding of the act — and Frost is warning against that.

   There’s also a quiet confession here: the narrator says “I’d ask to know,” not “I’d

   know.” He’s humble. He’s not claiming wisdom, only the willingness to pause and

   question before acting.

   “And to whom I was like to give offense”

   This line introduces an ethical and social dimension. Walls don’t just affect the person

   who builds them — they mean something to others. A wall is a message. It says: I

   don’t trust you. You are not welcome here. This far, and no further.

   The word “offense” is carefully chosen. It suggests that walls can wound — not

   physically, but relationally and psychically. They can communicate contempt,

   suspicion, or rejection without a word being spoken. Frost is nudging the reader to

   think about walls not just as practical structures but as acts of communication, and

   sometimes, acts of aggression.

   “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, / That wants it down.”

   This is the poem’s most famous line, and it opens and echoes throughout the poem

   like a refrain. Notice Frost refuses to name what that “something” is — and that

   refusal is deliberate and profound.

   Nature? Earlier in the poem, frozen groundswell heaves the boulders apart every

   winter. Nature literally dismantles the wall year after year, as if the earth itself resists

   the partition.

   Human nature? There’s a deep instinct toward connection, curiosity, and openness

   in people — children especially. We are social animals. Something in us chafes at

   barriers.

   The cosmic or spiritual? Some readers hear in “something” a quasi-divine force — a

   universe that tends toward unity, entropy, dissolution of artificial categories.

   The unconscious? The vagueness of “something” is psychologically astute. We often

   can’t name the part of ourselves that resists conformity, convention, or inherited

   thinking — but it’s there, eroding our certainties.

   By ending with “That wants it down,” Frost gives the force a kind of desire — almost

   personifying it. The wall isn’t just falling apart; something wants it gone. This is

   subversive and tender at once.

   Thematic Angles

   The Paradox of Community

   The poem never actually argues that walls are bad. The narrator helps rebuild the

   wall every spring! He participates in the very ritual he questions. This is Frost’s

   honesty: we simultaneously crave connection and separation. The wall-mending is

   itself a form of connection — the two men meet, work together, talk. The wall

   enables the relationship in a strange way. So the lines aren’t a simple anti-wall

   polemic; they’re an admission of complexity.

   Individual vs. Inherited Tradition

   The neighbor repeats his father’s saying: “Good fences make good neighbors.” He

   thinks in proverbs; he doesn’t question. The narrator questions everything. These five

   lines are essentially the voice of the Enlightenment — don’t build anything you can’t

   justify rationally and ethically. The neighbor, by contrast, represents tradition,

   continuity, inherited wisdom. Frost doesn’t entirely mock either. Both impulses are

   human. Both have costs.

   Political and Social Reading

   Frost wrote this in 1914, but its political resonance never ages. Every era has its wall

   debates — literal (border walls, ghetto walls, apartheid walls, the Berlin Wall) and

   figurative (class walls, racial walls, cultural walls). The question “What I was walling in

   or walling out?” is a haunting one for any nation or community grappling with

   immigration, identity, or belonging. Who do we include? Who do we shut out? And

   do we even know what we’re doing when we do it?

   The Epistemological Angle

   These lines are deeply concerned with knowledge before action — a Socratic impulse.

   Don’t act on habit, tradition, or fear. Know what you’re doing and why. The narrator

   doesn’t say walls are always wrong; he says building them without asking these

   questions is reckless. This is a poem about the ethics of unreflective behaviour.

   Frost’s Tone: Wry, Not Preachy

   Crucially, Frost never lets the narrator become a moralist. He’s mischievous, a little

   playful — he considers telling the neighbor that elves knocked the wall down, then

   thinks better of it. The narrator’s wisdom is offered quietly, almost to himself. This

   makes these lines feel like thinking aloud rather than lecturing, which is far more

   persuasive and far more true to how genuine insight actually arrives.

   In short, these five lines compress a whole philosophy: think before you divide,

   consider who you hurt, and know that something in the world — in nature, in us — will

   always push back against walls that exist without justification. That “something” is

   never fully named because Frost understood that the best questions outlast their

   answers.

   “To attain Nirvana, now I need to do some juGod.”

   “The very restlessness and attempting to become perfect is the imperfection.”

   The Discovery

   I have discovered the recipe for happiness

   No, it is not owning the oil fields in Kuwait

   Nor is it winning the John Bates Clark Medal

   Nor the Merc parked in your driveway

   Nor your byline in Sunday NYT

   Simpler, far, far simpler than that

   Just an evening at Roastery Coffee House in Banjara Hills

   Sipping Cranberry Coffee and eating lasagna

   What would double the happiness though

   Is if a certain someone is in the opposite chair

   Or we both in some other place

   Else, it is just perfect, perfect.

   “I have reached an age where if a girl smiles at me, I cannot read too many meanings in it.”

   “Spending time with and understanding our children will make us understand philosophy faster than by reading any religious texts.”

   “Love at first sight is a killing concept. But then dislike at first sight is a different kind of killing.”

   “Just because you suspect you are wise; it does not mean your wisdom will be of a helluva lot useful when it comes to interpreting all the meanings in a smile. And, God’s photos and statues depict a smile on the face of the deity. Damn. It is hard enough interpreting the smile of a girl, now God is also smiling at us. Shit, we are screwed. No way we can know what life is all about.”

   Think About These Things

   One of the very few virtues that Ramana Maharshi extols is humility.

   He says in his short book “Who Am I?”:

   “To the extent we behave with humility, to that extent there will result good.”

   Meanwhile, Nisargadatta Maharaj in his book “I Am That”, keeps saying repeatedly that the most important virtue is “earnestness”.

   “When the mind is silent, any amount of speech and action do not vitiate that silence. Mind cannot be silent when there are desires in our being. Find out how to deal with desires.”

   Betwixt Wise and Otherwise

   Today’s morning comes

   Like any other morning

   It does not seem that different

   Until I start thinking, feeling

   Then, too, it does not seem that different

   Unless I resist, protest, regret, wish for,

   And why do I resists, protest, regret, wish for?

   That seems to be the way things are

   That seems to be our lot here on earth

   Some may come and say things can be otherwise

   Between this wise and otherwise I live my life.

   “Sometimes, to be wise is to accept defeat. Why flow against the current of life?”

   Suicidal Impulse

   Today morning

   I told a friend

   “Come, let us go and commit suicide.”

   “No,” the friend protested,

   “I want to live and enjoy life.”

   Now, I have to gather

   The courage and wisdom

   To travel alone

   The journey cannot be given up

   Just because

   One’s companions want to rest.

   “Duniya paison ke peeche baag rahi hai. Mai fursat ke peeche baag raha hoon. Paise bahut mushkil hai milna, mahnat karni padti hai. Fursat toh yoohee mil jaati hai, bina kuch kiye…kuch muth karo aur fursat pao…samjha karo kyunki ismay ek raaz chupi hai…lekin mai galat bhi ho sakta hoo…zindagi toh jua hai…aur judai bhi….”

   “Truth divorced from love is no truth. Love divorced from truth is no love.”

   “Don’t be an archaeologist. Don’t dig up the ruins of your past, otherwise you will be ruined.”

   The Itch

   The itch is

   inside my heart.

   But I am scratching the paper

   with my pen.

   “It was daffodils that flashed upon the inward eye of Wordsworth. On my inward eye, it is she who flashes.”

   “To love someone truly is to give them the freedom to walk  away from you without any guilt or regret should they want to.”

   “Someone sang, the whole night your memory troubled me. My problem is far worse. Even the whole day her memory is troubling me.”

   “Sitting here alone in this coffee shop, I am lost in thought, wondering what Donne meant.”

   “Something shifted in me that day when she gave me that look and said, ‘Sam, I don’t see you nowadays’. Life is full of loose ends and some knots live on inside us.”

   “I told her ye death ke baraay may zyada buk buk muth karo. Hum sab har raat aath ghante ke liye mar jaatay hai.”

   “There seem to be different kinds of love. Oh, oh…just when thought you can stop going to the library.”

   Cutting Out the Social Self

   Sartre wrote, “Hell is other people.”

   But, also at the level at which Sartre is speaking, it is also true that “Heaven is other people.”

   But, at this social-self level, one gets stuck in a certain level of living where the dialogue “chal daaroo peeyingay” plays out in its various shades and nuances.

   And that daaroo is not the wine that Sufis would have us drink.

   And, it is this social self that makes you earn more money than we need, etc.

   From this social self, you need to reach inside to find your true self.

   The moment you leave your social self behind, then your thinking and emotions also are less in play because most of them are in service of our social self.

   “No, Kirshna, I will wage war with my love and not with bows and arrows. Jesus knew something you did not. Besides, it is not my job to wage war against injustice with bows and arrows. Isn’t that your job as the creator of this universe, which you anyway you say you are. Remember what you said about being the creator of the four castes. Then, why you are passing the buck to me. Besides, you yourself say, ‘sambhavami yuge yuge’. Deal with it, Krishna, deal with it. After all, this world is your baby. Don’t instruct me. Leave me alone to me and my love.”

   “Zindagi koi jung nahi. Sirf junglee loga waisay sonchthe hai. Mai pyaar ko itna samajh chuka hoon ki pata lag gaya hai ki jung sirf woh mushkilay kada karthi hai jo pahlay nahi the, aur jo mushkilay pahlay the unka hul teek say nahi kar paatha.”

   “Ye kya jung jung kahthay phir rahay ho. Mai zindagi ko tukhratha hoo, kyunki mujhe woh zindagi nahi chahiyay jahaan mujhe jung may haasil hona padtha. Jung nahi ladnay say zyada se zyada sirf meri zindagi mujhse cheen jaayegi. Cheen lo jitna chahiya utna ye meri zindagi. Mai todi poocha pehale naa ab pooch raha hoo mujhe paida karo aur zinda rakho.”

   “The mind says, ‘Look, look, there are so many problems, stay focused and awake.’ Heart says, ‘Chill, I have the solution to every problem’.”

   The Darkness in My Soul

   For too long I have seen

   The sun in me eclipsed

   By something or the other that comes,

   Some emotion, some yearning, some dreaming,

   Between me and the truth that be

   That light, that love, that beauty

   Slowly I begin to see far too clearly

   This flight outward that gnaws at my soul

   That waits for the right consonance, right season

   Waits and waits but waits in vain

   Thwarted by some destiny that I cannot control

   I learn to let go, knowing I can control

   Neither my destiny nor that of others.

   I thought I had left them all behind

   That some emotion, some yearning, some dreaming

   Back in the stormy days of my confused youth

   Why are they coming back again to me

   As if I am still accountable for I know not what.

   Who was Arjuna?

   Arjuna is anyone in this world who is NOT content to just keep the body alive but also seeks to keep the mind and heart alive.

   Such a one finds himself having to fight many a battle on many a Kurukshetra.

   Hence also such a one will keep needing the counsel of a Kirshna.

   But the Arjuna who is content to keep just the body alive and lets go of the mind and heart, has no battles to fight nor has any need for any Krishna.

   Understand this and not any other Gita, be that Gita of Kirshna or Ashtavakra.

   👍🏼 just the B and when the pot breaks you are one with the rest of the only consciousness.

   Yes.

   Even before the pot (B) breaks, what keeps the illusion that you are NOT right now one with the rest of the only consciousness is ONLY the mind and heart.

   When the mind and heart are NOT in play, then the illusion of separation also does NOT exist.

   Like in deep sleep

   Yes.

   Perfectly said.

   That is why, Ramana Maharshi said, “What happened in sleep is your real nature.” (Talk 304)

   In many places in his Talks book, the Maharshi says something to the effect of deep sleep is NOT ignorance but reality itself.

   That is why he says, one has to be in the state of wakeful sleep or jagrat sushupti.

   #Arjuna #Disillusionment #Enlightenment #faith #Gita #God #Happiness #Life #Love #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfLife #Poem #Poetry #QuotableQuotes #Quotes #Retirmeent #Sadness #Spirituality #Truth #WorkLife

   #worklife #truth #spirituality #sadness #retirmeent #quotes
2. 

   Know Thyself @[email protected] · 2026-05-06 · 17:12 UTC

   Latest Writings (and some shares)

   The Questions

   Again, the moon comes up in the night

   Again, the stars

   They stir up in me some questions

   Without letting me know

   Where the answers might be

   Nor is the sky helpful

   Soon it will be dawn

   And the most useless guy to ask

   When it comes to such questions

   Will be there, giving life to us

   But not the kind of life we are seeking.

   “Embrace yourself fully before you embrace anyone else or not.”

   “How helpless we are to take care of even our loved ones when karma comes hard at them.”

   “I know I know. But then I start getting doubts.”

   “Woh female ka mere paas sirf email hai.”

   “One of the advantages of being a theist is that one can leave the bloody work of revolutions to God, trusting he will bring them about in his own inimitable ways, and rest comfortably in one’s drawing room, reading The Motorcycle Diaries.”

   “The cause of suffering is not desire but the gap, irrespective of whether the gap is real or imaginary, between expectation and reality. The funny thing is that in actual reality there are no gaps. So, the gap is always between expectation and imagined reality. Because expectation sets in ONLY when you falsely imagine a gap between that which you are or where you are and that which you want or where you want to be. All in all, it is such a ludicrous situation that I cannot fathom why creation exists at all? Just to annoy us to no end with no good purpose served thereby? And yet we suffer not just alone but along with the rest if mankind.”

   “Life is the ultimate physician. It will not leave you alone until you are cured of the malady called ignorance.”

   No Loneliness

   I am never alone

   Never ever alone

   I who love words

   And bask always

   In their company.

   “The only bitterness I have is toward myself that I made so many mistakes in life. And yet in the midst of that bitterness, there is an inner peace.”

   The Poetic Soul

   Yedo teliyani baadha

   Yedo teerani daaham

   Yedo vedinche tapana

   Yedo leni santhrupti

   Yedo satyam grahincalekapothunna anay avedana

   Yedo prapanchani uddarinche korika

   Ila vivarinchutu pothay inka ennenno cheppochu

   “Our ontology is not exhausted by our biology and psychology.”–DSR

   People Are Too Awake

   Where’s a soporific when one needs one

   Be it the company of Plato or Nisargadatta

   That dullens the pain of this dreary day

   Where the sun beats down mercilessly

   Though the trees seem to love him

   And those with solar rooftops

   Me, I prefer the moon and the stars

   When stern duty is not calling me

   To prove myself worthy to a cause

   Life seems all too superfluous

   Though none with me agrees

   They’re too busy living to think or feel.

   The Wild Goose Chase of Self-improvement

   Self-help books to motivational speakers to life coaches abound. From Dale Carnegie to Napoleon Hill to Tony Robbins to Jordan Peterson to the Stoics.

   This malady afflicts even the spiritually inclined, who keep polishing the mirror of their mind so that they may better see the reflection of the Truth in it.

   This, in my opinion, is a largely mistaken enterprise, and if we foolishly undertake it, that will be nothing short of a Sisyphean burden.

   Why?

   Because the mind or our personality is the shadow of our real original nature, and we are too busy either trying to sharpen the shadow so that we understand the contours of “ourselves” better or getting aghast every time the shadow falls on the gutter.

   This world can contain only our shadow.

   Nay, this whole world is our own shadow.

   Forget the shadow.

   Rest blissful in your own original nature, O Sat-Chit-Ananda.

   “The winds of heaven mix for ever”

   Whatever heavens there be or not

   Methinks it for sure is here with me

   As I sit idly and let the hours pass by

   So that the night’s wait is not long

   Should the day decide to tarry a bit

   And in this idleness, I find now here

   Those who wait for retirement to find.

   Neither the sound of a car passing by

   Nor an emotion seeking attention

   Disturbs me in my idyllic idleness

   Everything seems just right, in place

   Cars passing by and the needy emotions.

   My Silly Heart

   I keep thinking

   Many years down the line

   When the moon is full

   And the stars are shining bright

   And she in her balcony

   Amidst flowers in bloom

   She will remember me

   And for a fleeting moment

   She will wonder

   If she made a mistake.

   “Cha, this world is full of women. God is a big teaser.”

   “Sometimes I think there is something to Islam and its theory of burqas. That way, when I meet her on the road again, I will not recognize her and no old wounds will be reopened.”

   “I have started to laugh now. Enlightenment is just round the corner. Summa iru is too easy, far too easy. Everytime, I venture into the territory of thoughts and feelings, her memory will come on strong and with it loads of pain, so in no time I will be convinced summa iru is so much better. Yaaaay.”

   “By the time you discover love is truth and truth is love, it may be too late, dear.”

   “Blame your mother. She made you addicted to love.”

   Summa Iru

   Do not ask why

   There may be a reason

   In her mind

   There may be a reason

   In your mind

   But the world goes on

   Not as per our reasons

   But as per God’s will.

   Besides, dear Sam,

   This very looking for reasons

   Is what keeps alive

   Both the mind and heart

   And who can be at peace

   Whose mind and heart are at play.

   Nevertheless

   One thinks about her

   And perhaps she thinks about me

   Giving scope

   For some more mischief in this world.

   “Roxette sang ‘It must have been love’. I sing ‘It must have been desire’. The world drama gets underway due to confusion over the blurring of the two.”

   Pablo Neruda, Nah I Will Not Write Any Sad Lines Anymore

   Neruda, Neruda, Neruda

   How you suffered, you poor thing

   And wrote many a sad line

   If you were alive, I would come

   To sit beside you and share in your sorrow

   But in the end, I would point out

   Irrespective of whether you would get it or not

   That if you had known love

   You would have crossed the sea of sorrow

   And of course you would protest, saying

   It is precisely because of that

   You were now suffering

   Then I would gently say

   Why you went in search of love

   When there was no hatred in you?

   “God has to run the life histories of both the murdered and the murderer down  to the minutest and last detail so that they meet at the appointed hour.”

   Reinterpreting the Vedic Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice)

   The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad begins (1.1.1) by reinterpreting the Vedic Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice) not as a physical ritual, but as a meditation where the cosmos itself is viewed as a sacrificial horse. It symbolizes the identification of the individual with the universal, using the horse’s body to represent time, space, and the elements.

   Symbolism of the Sacrificial Horse (1.1.1):

   •  Head: The Dawn

   •  Eye: The Sun

   •  Vital Force: The Air

   •  Mouth: Fire (Vaisvanara)

   •  Body/Time: The Year

   •  Back/Belly: Heaven and Sky

   •  Hoof/Footing: Earth

   •  Veins/Bones/Flesh: Rivers/Stars/Clouds

   Key Philosophical Aspects:

   •  Meditation over Ritual: The Upanishad converts a physical act into a meditation, aiming to transform every object into the Universal Subject.

   •  The Cause of Duality: The horse sacrifice represents the desire for material prosperity, which arises from the ignorance of our non-dual nature with Brahman.

   •  Creation as Desire: The text explains that in the beginning, there was only “Death” or “Hunger” (a creative desire), which manifested as the universe.

   •  Identity with the Divine: The one who understands this symbolic sacrifice (as in 1.2.7) conquers further death, meaning they realize their true identity with the absolute, and death cannot overcome them.

   The text implies that the material world and its rituals (the sacrifice) are transient. The true goal is to understand that the sacrificer, the sacrifice, and the deity are ultimately one (the Absolute).

   On Friendship by Francis Bacon

   “A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of the fullness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind: you may take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flowers of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession.”

   Full essay here:

   https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/baconf/friends.htm

   “In the wickedness of another might lie a lot of good for us, though our puny brains cannot understand that often.”

   “A friend puts us to sleep. The enemy awakens us.”

   “A Ramana Maharshi does not need a Nisargadatta Maharaj as a friend. But you and I, we need each other for many things in life.”

   Shunyam, Shunyam, Sarvam Shunyam

   This void at the core

   That infects all existence

   Including mine

   Which mocks all

   Who think deep enough

   And feel long enough

   Cannot be filled

   And so, we are screwed

   If the void is real.

   “If I could, I would. Both personally and otherwise. But I just do not know how.”

   “Stop reading. Silence is speaking.”

   “The word is meant for the ear. But somehow my heart keeps eavesdropping.”

   The Merry-Go-Round

   An ache

   The never goes away

   In all our lives

   I wonder how they smile

   Despite this

   I wonder how they cry

   Despite this

   This merry-go-round

   Who gets on, who gets off

   Unconcerned

   Is the merry-go-round.

   Revisiting the Past

   These words

   That promise much

   Much understanding

   Both for me and her

   She who read my letter

   Many decades back

   And thought she understood me

   Little did she understand

   I did not understand myself.

   “Silence also seems to be of different kinds.”

   “I find it strange when people say God resides in our hearts because space itself resides in God.”

   “That which moves the rivers and earth, moves me also.”

   The Sad Part about Marriage as a Legal Institution

   That marriage exists as a legal institution is a sad commentary on human nature.

   Look at it this way.

   If there is love, where is the need for legal guarantees.

   Now, I know some will think I am being naive because practically speaking, even if love does not change, the needs may change and people cannot live together any longer. Again, no problem, part on good terms.

   Now, in both the above scenarios, the property or financial or livelihood issues can and will be taken care of easily enough because both parties are decent.

   The problem comes I think when people fall out of love and it leads to acrimony.

   But, even in such a case, it will be far easier to separate than if the couple were legally wedded because then it will lead to a long and messy divorce if it is not mutual.

   But, what about property, or financial or livelihood issues in this scenario if the couple are not legally wedded.

   I do not think just for that thing one should erect a legal institution called marriage and complicate matters for everyone concerned because one can find a creative solution to these issues.

   Plus, think of the vast burden that would be reduced for those less well-to-do parents who incur huge debt to perform the wedding ceremony.

   Can love ever be legalized?

   “Funnily, people are more bothered about whether someone is walking-the-talk rather than about what the talk is. If you understand the full implications of what I am saying here, you would have understood a lot.”

   “We should learn to look at all people as different kinds of trees, without superimposing on them some ‘I’ or personality, or a so-called ‘ghost in the machine’ as Gilbert Ryle would characterize it. Then we can see the thoughts, feelings, words, actions as the different fruits on the people-trees, exposed to and responding to the changing weather patterns. After we all are part of nature, sprung from the earth and into which we will dissolve.”

   “Psychiatrists are unaware that Advaita is the correct antipsychotic.”

   “My mind wants to cease existing. My heart wants to experience the rainbows.”

   “Stop and smell the roses”

   “Stop and smell the roses” is an idiom advising to slow down, relax, and appreciate life’s beauty, rather than rushing through it. It emphasizes mindfulness, gratitude, and finding joy in small, daily moments instead of solely chasing goals or worrying about work.

   Meaning and Key Takeaways:

   •  Slow Down: It is a gentle reminder to take a break from a frantic, busy schedule.

   •  Appreciate the Moment: It encourages being present and noticing the pleasant things around you.

   •  Enjoy the Process: It serves as a reminder to find happiness during the journey, not just at the destination.

   •  Self-Care: The phrase suggests that resting and recharging prevents burnout.

   Origins:

   While the exact origin is unclear, the phrase is often associated with professional golfer Walter Hagen (who encouraged golfers to “stop and smell the roses” between shots) and was famously featured in the 1974 song “Stop and Smell the Roses  ” by Mac Davis.

   How to Practice It:

   •  Be Mindful: Focus your attention on your immediate surroundings.

   •  Practice Gratitude: Count your blessings every day.

   •  Reduce Stress: Actively avoid letting work-related worries dominate your life.

   The Malaise

   There’s a malaise deep down

   In all our minds and hearts

   That neither knowledge can cleanse

   Nor can our all too human love

   Yet we keep searching for those two

   This tussle between the outer and inner

   Will be our undoing one day

   And when we collapse in despair

   Where neither our karma can kill us

   Nor our knowledge and love save us

   We might at last learn to laugh heartily

   Seeing how comic the condition is

   Of all us humans on this earth

   And at long last might start to think

   We can last the night even now

   Because our laughter might allow us

   To bear whatever pains be our lot

   Till the light might dawn at dawn.

   “There is nothing wrong with you. That is what is wrong with you.”

   “Svadharma, too, is ultimately Svadrama, in that it is playing out the role of a dream character who is part of this cosmic drama — and as a poet said, ‘Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die’.”

   The Disconnect Between Me and the World

   The world is interested in the economy, society, politics, history, religion, and sports.

   I am interested in political philosophy, psychology, philosophy, poetry, literature, arts, and spirituality.

   Hence the disconnect.

   Hearing a Different Drummer

   “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

   This famous quote by Henry David Thoreau (from his 1854 book Walden) encourages individual nonconformity, self-reliance, and following one’s own path rather than societal expectations.

   Key Aspects of Thoreau’s “Different Drummer” Philosophy:

   •  Individualism & Nonconformity: The quote advocates for being true to oneself and ignoring peer pressure or conventional standards.

   • Context in Walden: It is found in the “Conclusion” chapter of Walden, where Thoreau explains his decision to leave the woods and encourages others to pursue their own unique, unconventional lives.

   •  Self-Reliance: It emphasizes listening to one’s internal convictions (“the music which he hears”) over the opinions of others.

   •  Interpretation: The “different drummer” is interpreted as an inner voice, passion, or calling that differs from the mainstream “beat” of society.

   The phrase is widely used today to encourage being unique, original, and independent.

   “Be materialistic if you want to be, but be so in a light, cool, bindaas, zany, nonchalant, innocent, devil-may-care attitude sense, but not in a heavy, in-your-face, flaunty, gawdy, flashy, show-offish, status-seeking, richer-than-thou way.”

   “Forget Buddha. Tell me what is your suffering?”

   The Five Senses

   Every eye judges me

   Well, not every eye.

   Every ear misunderstands me

   Well, not every ear.

   Every tongue defames me

   Well, not every tongue.

   Every nose smells me out

   Well, not every nose.

   Every hand avoids the touch

   Well, not every hand.

   Pablo Neruda, Today I Indeed Will Write Even Sadder Lines Than You

   You knew what you wanted

   And it was her, whoever she was;

   I, too, have wanted many a she

   Whether each of those she’s

   Wanted me or not, and at the end

   After having forsaken love for truth

   I find I have neither truth nor love

   What I have are just these

   These words, these lines

   In which again people see in them

   Not truth or love but merely mistakes.

   “Very few get me. Most get to me.”

   “I wonder how many are lucky to find what they look for. I wonder how many are lucky to not find what they look for.”

   “What would the great DiMaggio do?”

   In Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago asks “what would the great DiMaggio do?” to find the strength to endure immense physical pain and isolation, using the baseball legend as a model of resilience. DiMaggio represents playing through injury—specifically bone spurs—symbolizing fighting through suffering to achieve excellence and survival.

   What “The Great DiMaggio” Symbolizes to Santiago:

   • Perseverance Over Pain: Santiago’s hands are cut and cramped, yet he tells himself, “I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing… They say his father was a fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand”.

   • Mental Toughness: Even when facing impossible odds (sharks eating his catch), Santiago draws inspiration from DiMaggio’s “painful condition” (bone spurs) yet still playing, reminding himself to remain a “champion” in his own field of fishing.

   • Excellence and Duty: For Santiago, DiMaggio is a, “model of strength and commitment,” a hero who does his job with excellence regardless of circumstances.

   In summary, DiMaggio represents the unwavering commitment to duty and the endurance of pain, prompting Santiago to say, “I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today”.

   “Johns Hopkins, a businessman in Baltimore, funded the JH School of Medicine for those weak in body and the JH University for those strong in mind, as he himself put it. But, for me the least preferred spot on earth is a hospital, be it as a patient or as a doctor, and the most preferred spot is a university, be it as a student or as a professor.”

   “The differences between castes, such as they may be, are not so much due to differences in ability as much as due to differences in what they love.”

   “A poet’s job is not to tell the truth but to make you fall in love with the truth.”

   from Robert Frost’s poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (https://allpoetry.com/Two-Tramps-In-Mud-Time)

   The last stanza reads:

   But yield who will to their separation,

   My object in living is to unite

   My avocation and my vocation

   As my two eyes make one in sight.

   Only where love and need are one,

   And the work is play for mortal stakes,

   Is the deed ever really done

   For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

   Key Aspects of the Quote:

   Meaning: Frost argues against separating love (avocation) from necessity (vocation/work).

   Philosophy: He believes true fulfillment comes only when passion and work are united.

   Context: The poem contrasts the speaker’s pleasurable, yet necessary, labor of splitting wood with the serious, paid labor needed by the tramps, ultimately aiming to align his love for the task with the necessity of doing it.

   The phrase emphasizes holistic living—combining what you love with what you must do.

   The Prologue to Bertrand Russell’s Autobiography

   What I Have Lived For

   Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

   I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.

   With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

   Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

   This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

   Hopkins’ most famous dropout

   Gertrude Stein’s brief tenure as a student at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is often treated as mere literary trivia, but her four years in Baltimore helped set the stage for an unconventional, extraordinary life.

   https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2026/spring/gertrude-stein-at-jhu/

   Pablo Neruda, I, Too, Write the Saddest Lines Tonight, But…

   Yes, Neruda,

   I, too, am writing them now

   You pined for your love

   Without taking a name

   Well, all that is fine and good

   But you never wrote

   In that poem of yours

   What love was

   Is it merely pining

   Like you would have us conclude

   And if pining were it

   Isn’t everyone pining

   For someone or something

   In what way your pining was different

   That you needed to write about it?

   Aren’t you also fooling us

   In some way

   That such pining has some merit.

   Did you spend your life pining away

   I hope not.

   But tonight I write

   About a different kind of pining

   One where one’s pining

   Is not one’s own pining

   But one’s pining

   About the pining of others.

   The difficulty is not that it is difficult. The difficulty is that we are interested in things other than what he is talking about in the book or at least not sufficiently interested in those matters because our focus is on ourselves as body-mind and consequentially on this world with which we need to interact to serve the purposes of our body-mind…and by that I do not mean only our base or gross desires but also this “thirst” to gain more and more knowledge of this world, be it through natural sciences but also about our own selves in the form of our feelings, emotions, the societies we have built, the “history” that we think we have been through, the future that seems to lie ahead of us, etc., because we are psychophysical organisms or we think we are that, but as Ramana Maharshi pointed out, “Knowledge of duality is ignorance” because duality is unreal and so knowledge of unreality can only be ignorance…understanding this we should live our lives as best as we can doing our svadharma because there is a gap been intellectual understanding and the realization, and it is in that gap our lives will have to be led in such a manner that the gap closes or more correctly we will realize one day that the gap also was merely an imaginary gap…

   No Jana, No Dukhi

   Which ganja-smoking bloke in which Himalayan cave came up with this prayer or moral ideal (if you ask me, it is nonsense) of “Sarve jana sukhino bhavantu” I do not know, but I do know that he must have been a ganja smoker.

   I mean under which possible metaphysical, religious, philosophical. political, social, psychological Weltanschauung can such a state of affairs be brought or has it ever been brought about or has anyone ever put forward a theory or model that can bring it about?

   So, as long as jana exist, there will be both sukhis and dukhis, if only sometimes for the simple reason that I will be become a dukhi if I see someone else more sukhi than me.

   The only way there will be no dukhi is if there are no jana.

   And, if you think about it, strangely enough, spirituality is taking you to that space where you become sukhi by realizing there is no sarve jana but ONLY YOU.

   “The source of suffering is NOT what is MISSING from your life, including enlightenment, but what you DO NOT WANT to be MISSING from your life, including enlightenment. Understanding this IS enlightenment.”

   “Gender discrimination, caste discrimination, class discrimination, racial discrimination, and ideological discrimination, etc., are all symptoms of one and only one disease.”

   “Narayana Murthy thinks he is wise because he has learned the art of ignoring his subconscious mind, which is why he said that thing about the 72 hours. Now, when Sudha Murty got to know that Murthy is going around claiming he is wise, she suppressed her smirk and putting her tongue in her cheek, she wrote for Times of India a column titled, “Yes, he is wise”. This episode is very instructive for us lesser mortals on many things…from the intelligence level of the bourgeois capitalists and their wives, the dynamics of marriage in India, the status of women in Indian society, the standards of journalism in India, the level of public discourse in India, how impotent Arnab Goswami is in certain matters, the awful stupidity that the Infosys employees had to put up with over the years, etc. — too many to enumerate, but I think you get the picture. Nevertheless, as a true desh bhakt I cannot but point out gleefully that Narayana Murthy is now retired, and I do not think Sudha Murty can do much damage as the Chairman of Infosys Foundation. Jai Hind.”

   “Fathers are our enemies. Based on their vast experience of married life, they never have a heartfelt conversation with us about what a lot of trouble a woman is, and we end up committing the same mistake they did.”

   “You are mistaken. Women do not use reason. They will either cry or slap you.”

   Questions to Ask Yourself to Know if You Have Nailed the Concept of Non-doership

   1. Am i spontaneous in my reactions?

   2. Have I stopped overthinking?

   3. Do I worry less than usual?

   4. Do i feel less anxious?

   5. Am i less afraid?

   6. I feel less fearful of the future?

   7. I regret the past less?

   8. I smile more often?

   9. I love others more these days?

   10. Others irritate me less?

   11. I live these days by the philosophy of Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)?

   12. I am happier these days?

   If your answers are no to any one of the above such questions, then, dear non-doer who is thinking you are the doer, you have some more work to do.

   But then if you ask me if I am not the doer then why are you asking me to do anything, then I will have to say that it will cost you a lot if I have to teach you that—maybe you will need to forgo your vacations for next 5 years to afford my fees.

   “The noise is the loudest when she is silent.”

   Urgently Hiring: Translator Needed — from English to Silence

   The ideal candidate has a master’s degree in Silence — PhD is desirable but not a requirement.

   He/she will have a youthful of experience, though we strongly discourage women from applying since our past experience tells us that they find the job too demanding.

   Hours of work: The noisy part of the day.

   Husbands are strongly encouraged to apply since they know the art of listening better than most.

   Salary Expectation: Send us a selfie rather than a voice note.

   Location: The World.

   Hiring Company: Maya, a conglomerate of all the companies.

   Apply @ [email protected]

   “Definition of God: That supreme power which can convert in a jiffy emptiness into pain.”

   “Does anyone have God’s email ID? I want to write him an email with subject ‘Are you mad?'”

   “Definition of a Woman: The magical alchemical potion that converts mard into dard.”

   “Emotions are perhaps the counterpart in the heart of the thoughts in the mind, both of which are responses to the desires that our being harbours beneath the mind and heart.”

   Seize the day | Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara

   “Seize the day my friend” is an iconic dialogue from the 2011 film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, delivered by Laila (Katrina Kaif) to Arjun (Hrithik Roshan). The scene highlights the importance of living in the present, enjoying life’s small joys, and not waiting for the future to live, encapsulated by Laila’s line: “Pehle is din ko puri tarah jiyo, phir 40 ke bare me sochna”.

   Key Context & Related Lines:

   The Context: Laila tells this to Arjun when he says he will retire after 40, questioning him on how he knows he will even live that long.

   Related Dialogue: “Insaan ko dibbe mein sirf tab hona chahiye jab woh mar chuka ho” (A person should remain in a box only once he is dead).

   Significance: The phrase summarizes the film’s theme (YOLO – You Only Live Once), prompting a shift from work-centric stress to experiencing life.

   This philosophy, heavily influenced by Laila’s character, encourages Arjun to overcome his fear of missing out on money and instead focus on finding happiness in the moment.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvOF0qn_r_0

   The Four Yogas

   As Sankaracharya pointed out, action is NOT opposed to ignorance, only “knowledge” counters ignorance.

   And, the problem is ONLY ignorance, ignorance that you are the bound entity called body-mind.

   Hence, any amount of karma will not bestow moksha.

   So, the only yoga that works ultimately is Jnana Yoga — sravana-manana-nididhyasana.

   Rest of the yogas – karma, bhakti and meditation – are merely preparatory or purify and concentrate the mind so that one can then understand Jnana Yoga more easily.

   So, how can one tell if other yogas still need to be practiced? They may be needed ONLY if you find that you are not getting “intellectually” what Jnana Yoga is trying to teach.

   Nevertheless, one could still deploy all the yogas in one’s daily life.

   But, paradoxically, only one who knows Jnana Yoga correctly can practice the other yogas better.

   For instance, what is karma yoga ultimately? As Ramana Maharshi pointed out, “kartrutva-bhava rahita karma is karma yoga”, that is, action done without the sense of doership is karma yoga. But only through Jnana Yoga you come to know you are not the doer.

   When it comes to Bhakti Yoga, unless you know what is God, you will fall in love with the wrong bloke, and only Jnana Yoga teaches you what exactly God is — see the two verse I will share below from Upadesa Saram of Ramana Maharshi.

   And, unless one has understood from Jnana Yoga that there is no distance between you and the Truth (Tat Tvam Asi), then you will be “trying” to (at least subconsciously) some place or state called moksha, and that sets up a restlessness to get there and that disturbs the peace and stillness in meditation because any “desire” be it even “desire” for moksha generates thoughts…remember the chain — ignorance—desires–thoughts—speech and other bodily actions…

   from Upadesa Saram

   Verse 5

   Ether, fire, air, water, earth,

   Sun, moon and living beings

   Worship of these,

   Regarded all as forms of His,

   Is perfect worship of the Lord.

   Verse 8

   Than contemplation with Duality,

   the “He is me” (Non-dual) type

   of contemplation without Duality,

   is considered by Sruti to be more purifying or holy.

   Verse 5 and 8, which are part of Bhakti Yoga section In Upadesa Saram, can be done only if one understands why what they are saying is true, and only Jnana Yoga lets you know why they are true.

   “Although I am not caught in the rat race, I seem to be caught in some other race, though I know not what race.”

   “The ego stays alive as long as you do not fall in love either with a woman or with the idea of liberation or with both.”

   Purushulandu punya purushulu veraya ani Vemana rasaadu.

   But, I feel he missed a trick by not adding another line to his uppu kappurambu poem:

   Kaani, purushulandu ye purushulu veru kaadayya

   Maybe he understood that truth, though I cannot be sure, but somehow, he failed to point that out.

   Thereby I feel he did a great disservice because now Brahmins are going around deluded, thinking memu Dalitula nunchi veraya.

   “That there are no words to name somethings is perhaps a good thing.”

   Life Is a Meaningless Farce???

   “I had a day to go and I went with it. There was no plan. There was an outline, one which I could follow, floating, gently. There was no goal, no prey to be caught. I was not a circling raptor, a vulture, a shark, a big cat poised to spring. I was not on my guard. This was something else. I was on a journey. On my way home, I thought. I was traveling on an open ticket, with no itinerary. I journeyed through the minutiae of the streets in a universe replete with minor incidents, a host of objects and occurrences and sensations all crowded together in my memory.”

   Gosh, to hit upon that! I just couldn’t believe how much these passages expressed this way of living that had something to do with experiencing time — this term “being present” — but it took no effort. How amazing it was! It was a beautiful way to live in the world. And I knew it would go away, too. I have to try to remember it. I have to try to live this way. The degree of freshness to the world around me and the amazement and the beauty of it was something I got to be in!

   Read full interview with Bob Odenkirk here:

   https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/magazine/bob-odenkirk-interview.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eFA.O1eL.9zvvACzTT9p1&smid=url-share

   A friend shared:

   “The world will trouble you so long as any part of you belongs to the world.

   It is only if you belong entirely to the DIVINE that you can become free”

   Sri Aurobindo 🪷

   I replied:

   So, how do you plan to “belong entirely to the DIVINE”?

   Now, I am not asking that in any skeptical way.

   My opinion is that to “belong entirely to the DIVINE” one has to  basically be silent.

   I am not sure how being “silent” can be pulled off by people who are still working.

   At the same time, I am not sure how even people like me who work only 1 hr/day can also pull off being silent.

   I think one has to really be wanting liberation desperately that one will go after it almost single-mindedly — I will give a few quotes of Nisargadatta below, which sort of speak to this, but before that let me share my own insights into this.

   I basically realized that it is not that difficult to keep just the body alive. And, what is this world and all its feverish activity but the various ways to keep the mind and heart not only alive but also somehow happy and joyous. So, I sort of said at one point, “Just keep the body alive, and forget the mind and heart.” In my case, where I am hardly working and even that work, I do from home, and I am single and I almost never visit anyone nor anyone visits me that much, I perhaps could somehow pull it off. But, here, too, a person like J. Krishnamurti will create some doubt in your mind because he keeps saying, “to be is to be related”, and moreover Nididhyasana is best done in the midst of all the relationships in this world and while “living” in the world.

   But I find myself somehow pulled into online interactions, though these days since I have deleted almost all my social media accounts, only WhatsApp keeps me engaged, and the occasional phone call.

   So, it is a bit unclear how to spend one’s day. Hence, I have decided that perhaps Maharshi’s advice to spend 1-2 hrs a day in meditation and spend the rest of the day anyway might be the middle path I am looking for because in that case, I can follow my svadharma, though not in the field work involving livelihood but other “work” whereby I pursue literature, arts and philosophy, which not only satisfy my svadharma of the intellectual life but also would contribute directly or indirectly to purifying the obstacles (which you, too, are somehow focused on with you turn to Abhidharma), and in the process somewhere down the road maybe a more radical inward turn could take place.

   Maybe we can also use the advice given by WB Yeats in his poem “Down By the Salley Gardens”, though that advice was given in the context of romantic love between two humans, but I do not see why the same advice cannot be followed when it comes to the relation between our individual soul and the divine because love, even of the romantic kind is to “belong entirely to one’s beloved”, and all that Aurobindo seems to be saying is let your beloved be the DIVINE, so love has to be there but in what proportion one loves the various objects one’s love could vary.

   She bid me take love easy,

      as the leaves grow on the tree;

   She bid me take life easy,

      as the grass grows on the weirs;

   from I Am That: Dialogues of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

   Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see, because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and be willing to pay any price; the price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream itself.

   The desire to find the self will be surely fulfilled, provided you want nothing else. But you must be honest with yourself and really want nothing else. If in the meantime you want many other things and are engaged in their pursuit, your main purpose may be delayed until you grow wiser and cease being torn between contradictory urges. Go within, without swerving, without ever looking outward.

   Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is ‘try’. Allot enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality, with its addictions and obsessions. Don’t ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are, now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success.

   “When love comes calling, be prepared to lose everything. Because to hold on to love, you have to let go of your hold on everything else.”

   “I have been kicked around since I was born by words.”

   “Love is a pleasure that conceals the pain.”

   “Love’s only task is to make you aware how far you are from it.”

   “Something strange is going on in this world of love. Our parents loved us. Our siblings loved us. Our teachers loved us. Our friends loved us. Our colleagues loved us. Sometimes the boss loved us. Sometimes the wife loved us. Our children loved us. Even the janitor loved us. At the end of it all, we are still searching. Wanting perfect love? But, did the others, the parents, the siblings, the teachers, the friends, the colleagues, the boss, the wife, the children, the janitor get that perfect love from us? Are we here on earth only to leave one other forever dissatisfied?’-

   What’s This Reaching Out?

   What’s this reaching out

   That is happening all the time

   In all climes, reaching out for what

   To possess a smile, to set free a pain

   To win the Nobel or become Noble

   To bring about World Peace

   To dress the neighbour’s wound

   Most often we do not know

   What wounds a neighbour has.

   The Ignorance

   Sometimes I wonder

   If I have in me

   That which love wants.

   And I also wonder

   If love has

   That which I want.

   “What gives philosophers sleepless nights is emotion because try as they might they just cannot account for it in their neat overarching theories.”

   “When it comes to us humans, probably there is something like optimal distance even in love, but when it comes to God, one has to go all the way, otherwise one can never reach him.”

   “When you can love the girl in mini-skirt who has a cute smile but do not exclude the guy in the unemployment line from the ambit of your love, then consider that you are beginning to understand life.”

   “Every generation talks of love in its own way, writes songs in its own way, makes movies in its own way, writes novels in its own way, writes poetry in its own way, creates art and music in its own way, and yet every generation keeps missing the mark by and large. O, the pity of it, it makes me cry.”

   Being Gen Z

   My Brahmin friend

   Yes, I gotta mention his caste

   Since Gen Z, too,

   Has not forgotten caste,

   Thinks I am not as cool as Gen Z

   I know he has read history

   He has read DD Kosambi

   And keeps mentioning

   Some Brahmin king Pushyamitra

   I am surprised then

   He has not heard of Romeo and Juliet

   O lover of Che Guevara

   And to an extent Marx

   Know that love is as old as the hills

   Nay older than the hills

   If some Greek philosopher

   Is to be believed, who said

   Eros and Eris are the two forces

   That give rise to this world

   So, don’t give me this Gen Z bullshit.

   “Keeping Quiet”

   Now, people will start wondering why is the guy who is saying “Just keep quiet” is not keeping quiet.

   Without confusing all you people by saying things like, “It depends on what you mean by ‘quiet'”, let me put things more simply.

   You cannot get to quietude by “trying” to be quiet, because that very attempt and trying is the unquietude.

   Instead, just keep saying, writing and doing things that will allow you to get to quietude.

   Because after all, one will soon get tired of shouting and fall silent.

   Maybe that is why the Bhagavad Gita says, “Action is better than inaction.”

   So, keep shouting instead of keeping quiet when the urge to shout is there inside.

   “The world is the fashion parade of Brahman.”

   Quote of the day by Christina Rossetti:

    ‘Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun’ ;

   lessons on productivity from British poet –

    The Economic Times https://share.google/sTSRqKdlMyTJnJh2C

   Why Should We Imagine Sisyphus Happy?

   Explaining Camus’ Famous Quote | TheCollector

   https://share.google/ZcxfGM9HXVIqDjvpt

   From The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling — https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_eastwest.htm

   Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

   Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

   But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

   When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

   Kipling’s justly famous ‘Ballad of East and West’, in which an English officer and an Afghan horse-thief Kamal discover friendship by respecting one another’s courage and chivalry. The ballad tells how, when Kamal the border thief steals a prize bay mare, the Colonel’s son (not named) follows them into enemy territory.

   When his own horse collapses from exhaustion the Colonel’s son, having lost a pistol to Kamal and being threatened with the prospect of making a meal for the jackals and crows, ‘lightly’ responds by promising vengeance:

   …Do good to bird and beast’

   But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast’ .

   His jesting defiance wins the tribute: ‘May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath’ from Kamal, and the Colonel’s son responds in kind:

   Take up the mare and keep her – by God she has carried a man.

   Kamal instead gives back the mare with the ‘lifter’s dower’ of his own jewelled accoutrements, and when the Colonel’s son in return offers him the gift of his remaining pistol Kamal, not to be outdone in generosity, whistles up his ’only son’ to be the companion and fellow-soldier of the Englishman. The two young men return to ‘Fort Bukloh’ and: ‘the boy who last night was ‘a Border-thief’ is now ‘a man of the Guides.’

   One Way of Looking at Some Things

   “To love truth and see the truth in love — these are the only two worthwhile goals in life.”

   “Love is in the air but the problem is we have stopped breathing.”

   “No two pairs of eyes can see the same world.”

   “All worlds are relative to the one who sees.”

   “To know and yet not know is the anguish.”

   “The very need for love is the lie, and yet we cannot seem to go beyond the need for love.”

   “God keeps appearing in our life as the sunrise, the smile, the love, and sometimes as the sunset, the smirk, the separation, and we keep thinking they are just sunrises, smiles, loves, sunsets, smirks, and separations.”

   “Sometimes he who knows too much, understands very little.”

   “Knowledge keeps adding to the doubt.”

   “All fear prevents the flowering.”

   “Everybody fears everyone in this world. Hence so many contracts, including the wedding vows.”

   “When love itself needs to be reaffirmed from time to time, what fulfillment can we expect in this world.”

   “Aristotle said ‘Man is a social animal’. But as long as we remain a social animal, the animal in us also will live on.”

   “He who is afraid of hatred cannot understand what love is.”

   The Dream Analogy and Castes

   Remember the dream analogy.

   The waking world is also a dream.

   The dream characters of Brahmins and Reddys are NOT real…they are just dream characters.

   Only the dreamer is real.

   And the dreamer can dream up even 10 castes, why only 4 castes.

   “Is one ever NOT in love? Only the object(s) of one’s love keeps changing. Find out what you love truly and deeply.”

   “In the depths, and at the very foundations, of every body of knowledge, every romantic love, every one-night stand, every relationship, every extra-marital affair, every mode of thinking, every emotion, every sadness, every failure, every success, every joy, every betrayal, every criticism, every praise, every blame, every shame, every envy, every guilt, every remorse, every destruction, every hate, every deceit, every judgement, every forgiving, every kindness, every sympathy, every empathy, every compassion, every doubt, Truth and Love await to receive you with open arms.”

   Apollonian and Dionysian Dichotomoy

   Apollonian and Dionysian are philosophical concepts from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1872) representing the duality between order/reason (Apollo) and chaos/emotion (Dionysus). Apollonian represents structure, logic, and individualism, while Dionysian represents ecstasy, intoxication, and unity. Nietzsche argued that great art arises from the synthesis of these opposing forces.

   Key Aspects of the Apollonian and Dionysian Dichotomy:

   Apollonian (Order and Form): Associated with Apollo, the god of light, music, and reason. It embodies principles of moderation, clarity, beauty, and individuality. It relates to structured arts like sculpture and epic poetry, creating a “beautiful illusion” that makes existence bearable.

   Dionysian (Chaos and Unity): Associated with Dionysus, the god of wine, ritual, and madness. It embodies irrationality, intense emotion, unbridled passion, and the dissolution of the individual into a collective, chaotic whole. It relates to art forms like music, which break down individual barriers.

   Nietzsche’s Perspective: Nietzsche believed Greek culture reached its peak by balancing these two forces, notably in Athenian tragedy, which combined structured dialogue (Apollonian) with musical chorus (Dionysian). He argued that a, overemphasis on the Apollonian (rationality) since Socrates led to the decline of art and cultural vitality, calling for a return to a healthy tension between the two.

   Application: These terms are used to analyze art, psychology, and personality, describing a person’s tendency toward control (Apollonian) or passion and spontaneity (Dionysian).

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGQzyb5fgrQ

   “No Brahmin could have taught the Bhagavad Gita.”

   Why

   Because the Brahmin (and by this I do not mean merely Brahmin by birth but in the sense in which Krishna himself describes in Gita that one’s caste is determined by one’s guna and karma, and not by birth, which point even Buddhism talks about in a  whole chapter in Dhammapada as to who is a Brahmana) is one characterized by Sattva Guna, which in turn is characterized by Happiness and knowledge.

   The field of karma and action is the domain of Rajas.

   Hence, the Brahmin will struggle to understand the metaphysics of action, which only a Kshatriya like Krishna could fathom. The Brahmin, with his knowledge, might be able to invent better bows and arrows, and the art of archery, etc. The Brahmin might even be able to say why Kurukshetra is necessary, etc., given his political understanding. But he will be struggling to connect action and duty and karma drama happening in the physical world to the metaphysical world of soul and moksha.

   That is why Vedas make a sharp  distinction between action (Karma Kanda of yajnas, sacrifices, etc.) and knowledge (Jnana Kanda of Upanishads), the two clear demarcations in Vedas, the so-called apara vidya and para vidya, which has led to the Varnashrama Dharma.

   Krishna comes and blurs the distinction between apara vidya and para vidya, saying that both can take you to moksha.

   Karma Yoga road also takes you to the same destination as the road of Jnana Yoga, is what Krishna pointed out.

   The Brahmin is dwelling in the world of knowledge and wisdom, and the kshatriya like Krishna is dwelling in the thick of action or you could say applied knowledge. So, only Krishna is in the best position to understand the mysteries of action and karma.

   In the modern world, these Brahmins would be people like professors, researchers, consultants, etc.

   “It is not the path that is important but the traveller. Because every path takes you to the truth, but the traveller may like to take rest, or fear the hardships on the path, or want to switch paths, etc.”

   “Ultimately, our love for others helps us much more than it helps others.”

   “Marx says it’s the bourgeois. Maharshi says it’s you.”

   The Secret Few Know

   You can try

   But you ain’t gonna succeed

   Better give up

   Why, you ask

   Surely, you can fail

   Only when you try to succeed.

   “Only when you are at ease to be sitting with even  a murderer and allowing him to tell his side of the story can you be said to be enlightened to a large extent.”

   “Among all the castes it is the Brahmin who is the coward. Why? He lives in constant fear that even the shadow of the Dalit will eclipse the light of knowledge in his being.”

   “Always assign at least a tiny corner to doubt in the impressive edifice of your knowledge and wisdom.”

   “Hell is your underemployed and unmarried friend with access to WhatsApp.”

   “Ghar waapsi karna chahta hoon. Lekin kitna bi sonchoo ya dhoondoon pata hi nahi lag raa ghar ka pataa.”

   “Gandhi is supposed to have said, ‘My life is my message.’ I, not being so profound, can only say, ‘My life is my joke’.”

   “One kind of bad karma, there are many kinds mind you, is when people start laughing more at you than at your jokes.”

   “It is so sad that till now I have recognized instantly every friend I have met no matter how long it was since we last met.”

   “In friendship there is a giving without any expectation and a receiving without any obligation.”

   ‘Sometimes freedom throws itself around your arms as unrequited love.’

   ‘She was wearing the rose in her hair, and I was brushing off the snow from my jacket.’

   “The longing for the home is the cause for all the strife in this world. To feel at home anywhere and everywhere is freedom.”

   “When you set aside the mind and heart, you reach that state of aloneness that is also oneness in which there can be no loneliness.”

   “This is the mistake we keep making that we seek the truth with our mind and love with our heart, without realizing that only when we set aside the mind and heart will we find the truth and love that we seek.”

   Sambhavami Yuge Yuge: Thoughts While Reading Some Diaries

   Sometimes a boy from Argentina

   Is the antidote

   If you ask “For what?”

   Then you are part of the problem.

   “Every day the sun arrives and with it some smiles, and those make us dance and dance till our feet ache.”

   #faith #Family #Life #Love #Poem #Poetry #Quotations #Quotes #Truth #Writing

   #love #poem #poetry #quotations #quotes #truth
3. 

   Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2024-12-27 · 13:00 UTC

   Thus Spoke and Maddog’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

   By Steel Druhm

   Thus Spoke

   My second AMG End-of-Year piece?! Didn’t I just get here? This is my typical reaction to life’s happenings. I’m blindsided by everything. You’ll probably notice that many of the below list entries ‘snuck up on me’ in how much I liked them, compared to everything else. The fact that we’re now halfway through the 2020s makes me feel a bit nauseous. I keep telling people I ‘just moved’ into the home I bought this year, but I’ve been in it since April. And that huge milestone—for which I feel immensely grateful and privileged to have achieved this side of 30—would have solely dominated my year were it not for two other facts: 1) I was finally diagnosed with and very recently started medication for ADHD; 2) 2024 has got to have been the strongest year of the decade so far for metal. So, time to talk about the music rather than myself.

   My overoptimistic prediction that Ulcerate would release new music came true,1 and there was, in general, a particular influx of excellent material from the darker, more dissonant, and extreme sides of death and black metal. This was also the year I finally reconnected with my love of doom after a long period of lukewarm engagement. But I wouldn’t have known about half of it were it not for this gig, and the amazing people I share it with. Whether it was Dear Hollow, Kenstrosity, or Mystikus Hugebeard pinging across something they thought I might like, or a particularly potent review penned by a colleague, a commenter chipping in with some gem, or the group buzz around an album I might otherwise never have considered, there’s no better place to find and discuss metal. And speaking of community, if I ever needed a confirmation that this right here is the loveliest place on the internet, the rallying response to Ken‘s plight earlier this year from staff and readers was it.2 I couldn’t ask for better company.

   I said as much last year, but I’ll probably say it every year: having this opportunity is wild and I feel so blessed. To be able to send my thoughts about music into the world where people read and consider them, that’s mad. Bumping into an AMG fan in the wild was also an affirming and heartwarming experience reminding me that there are actually real people out there who know who we are; and let me say, however enthusiastic and grateful you might be for us, the feeling is mutual. So to everyone reading this, to all the folks at AMG who make it possible for me to continually wax lyrical about stuff I love (and stuff I don’t love so much) and put up with all my overrating, to all of you: thank you. Shout out also to my list buddy Maddog, whose EOY write-up is bound to be more br00tal and much less flowery than mine, and whose in-person company I continue to have the pleasure of enjoying whenever he deigns to visit our little island up here. Oh, and thank you to the original creator and to Kenstrosity for my new avatar! I asked and you delivered. And if you actually read this far down, thank you for indulging me. But now, finally, it’s list time.

   #ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – I unintentionally ended my reviewing year on a high with Pillar of Light. Or perhaps a low, if we consider mood. When a record evokes a genuine emotional response in me,3 as Caldera does, it deserves more than an Honorable Mention. So here it is. It’s one of those albums you experience that forever afterward remains tied to your particular life situation when you were first immersed, and for that reason, its longevity is increased and its impact amplified. Given how “Leaving” and “Infernal Gaze” leave me in pieces, it’s probably a good thing the misery comes down from 11 at other times. But on the next album, who knows? I’ll be ready at least.

   #10. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – Much like Kenstrosity, author of the review, I have not historically been Replicant’s hugest fan. For some reason their music never stuck with me; I just didn’t get it. Infinite Mortality has been the enlightenment I needed. It’s undeniably fantastic. Brilliantly technical and ruthlessly efficient in execution, it manages to also be ridiculously groovy in a way that you wouldn’t expect from this flavor of extreme death metal. Suited, evidently, to desk sessions and gym sessions alike, given the range of play it got from me since its release, its balance of skronk and style proved why I should, long ago, have been paying attention to Replicant. Ken himself struggled to find a negative and so do I. Even interlude “SCN9A” is great, especially as it leads into monster “Pain Enduring.” Only the superlative strength of other contenders causes this to fall so low on the list.

   #9. ColdCell // Age of Unreason – In a rare case of me underrating something, my review of Age of Unreason did not quite do justice to its strength. Not only have I revisited it often, but I have of late been struck ever deeper by its profundity. The honest, vulnerable lamentations on inequality (“Solidarity or Solitude”), hatred (“Discord”), and human selfishness (“Dead to the World”) go far beyond a jaded misanthropy and strike a real chord. In wrapping this up in an insidiously simple package of compelling, devastating black metal with a distinctive voice, ColdCell have made, I now recognize, a true masterpiece. Brutal in its own way, and beautiful in many more, this is a record I hardly realized had made such a strong impact on me until I saw just how many times I’d spun it. This year may have seen black metal that goes harder, or with more powerful atmospheres, but none that are as memorable as Age of Unreason.

   #8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – What a behemoth. It’s hard to believe that—just for a little while—Sparagmos slipped my mind many months after its February release. Relistening brought it all back into horrifying clarity. This record throws a veil over the sun, stares at you with unseeing, ecstatic eyes of Dionysian worship, and forces you into terrified awe. I’m still blown away by how crushingly heavy and immersive it is; how it still manages to blindside me with sudden turns from ominous crawling into chaotic, chthonic tremolos and clustered, hideous vocals. A masterclass in patient, predatory ambush. Nothing else this year was like it, which is partially why I’ve had to return so often to its dark embrace. Every nightmarish track was at some point in the runnings for the Song of the Year playlist. In the end, only one could make it, and it is, as I said in my review, “as inexorable as death.”

   #7. Hamferð // Men Guðs hond er sterk – I’m surprised as well. Before Men Guðs hond er sterk, I had never laid ears on Hamferð and I was quite stunned to find how instantly I loved them. It’s not often an album by a band you’d previously never spent time with claims a spot on your year-end list after one listen, but this was one of those rare occasions. Something about the sorrowful, yet also soaring, melodies delivered through the interplays of resonant chords and gentle plucks, and between caustic growls and clear, ardent cleans just transports me. I feel the solemnity, the fear, and the grief in alternately forceful and graceful heaviness thanks to these intricately woven compositions and ardent performances that make the fact the lyrics are all in Faroese completely irrelevant. And Hamferð cover breadth with such ease, the slowly rolling wave of doom rising with tremolos into new intensity; and yet still controlled, still patient. The closer and it’s sample used to bother me, but I’m long past that now. In short, as the Angry Metal Guy himself said, “the record’s flow is impeccable,” and “the writing is subtle but addictive”. He’s not kidding about that last part, I really can’t stop listening to it.

   #6. Föhn // Condescending – I was not prepared for what Condescending would do to me. Like any funeral doom worth its salt, it’s massive, but its presence is not smothering, it does not suffocate. Instead, it dampens the sound of anything else, so that the lugubrious chords, vocals, and fraught, lamenting refrains reverberate inside your mind, alone. This presence is redoubled by the heart-rending devastation of the compositions it centers—lyrically and musically. Bleakly beautiful, crushing doom in all its low, slow, cavernous hell leads you into an almost blissful moroseness, just in time for the veil to tear and your spirit to crumble as haunting melodies spill in from impossibly delicate sources of saxophone, synth, or ringing strings. Condescending will not leave my mind, and as broken and misty-eyed as these songs make me—”A Day After” and “Persona” especially—I’ll keep returning to experience it again and again. Maybe I can only speak for myself; maybe you’re sensing a theme wherein I like albums that make me feel sad. Whatever the case, Föhn took my breath away, and I don’t want it back.

   #5. Cave Sermon // Divine Laughter – It’s pretty irresponsible of me to put this in the list at all, let alone in this position, considering how late in the day I discovered it. But I’m not really known for being ‘responsible’ around these parts, so, what the hell. What some might pigeonhole as just wonky death metal, or blackened post-hardcore—or even post-metal, as Metal Archives confusingly stamp it—is really much more complex, deep, and unique. Gripping and strange, in a way that struck me on my very first listen, Divine Laughter is responsible for me going from never having heard of Cave Sermon to being an ardent fan in one afternoon. Every listen gives me my new favorite part and uncovers more and more of its treasures. Savage and beautiful and with unnervingly easy flow, large parts of it are total perfection (“Liquid Gol, “The Paint of An Invader”). I cannot get enough. It’s so good, actually, that it’s made me feel a bit anxious about how much I’ve still missed this year, though I am very glad that this made it to my ears, even at the 11th hour. Divine Laughter is simply one of the greatest things I’ve heard in 2024, and it’s a crime that more people aren’t talking about it.

   #4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I was waiting for Blessing of Despair since January, and as it always is with things we have high expectations for, part of me was preparing for disappointment. That preparation proved unnecessary once I finally got my hands on this in the Autumn. Devenial Verdict delivered. This time, they amped up all their unique little idiosyncrasies that made me fall in love with Ash Blind, and added a criminally heavy helping of groove. This thing is atmospheric and punchy, providing soundscapes that are just as haunting and mysterious(TM) as they are stomping and cutthroat. Either way, these riffs will make you shiver. “Garden of Eyes”! “Solus”! Ahhhh! Even “Counting Silence” and “A Curse Made Flesh,” which I initially dismissed as a little understated, have this delicious melancholic presence I just want to be immersed in 24/7. Devenial Verdict’s slick mixture of mournful melody and menacing, barked growls; neck-snapping flicks of cymbal, and those resonant, aggressive chord progressions make for—almost—my favorite take on death metal that exists. The sole reason Blessing of Despair wasn’t my most-played album of 2024 is that I only started in September.4

   #3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – Back in 2017 or so, I was struck by what at the time I considered the most gorgeous opening guitar on any song ever. It was “…Of Solitary Ramblings,” the first track on Selbst’s self-titled debut.5 From that day forward I was enamoured. The undercurrents of lamenting melodrama and a black metal interwoven with a distinctive style of flowing, weeping strums continue to make Selbst very special. But if I had thought that their depths of emotional poignancy and stirring, multi-layered compositions had been reached, Despondency Chord Progressions showed they had not. Cleans that some wrote off as unsavory, rather bring—in my opinion—a new vulnerability, and their rawness compounds the pathos of already intensely cathartic compositions. The album’s title is, as I noted, an apt descriptor for the musical themes, but really undersells the cry of grief and despair that erupts from the music with every shuddering, tremolo-shaken, surge and every plaintive, somber quietude. I stand by what I said back in April, that “[t]his is black metal at its most stirring, entrancingly beautiful, and existentially affecting.” The sheer magnitude of its impassioned peaks (“Third World Wretchedness,” “Between Seclusion and Obsession”) and the sting of its humanity (“When true Loneliness is Experienced,” “Chant of Self Confrontation”) are like nothing else in the genre.

   #2. Amiensus // Reclamation [Parts 1 & 2] – Take it up in the comments if you think this is cheating; Reclamation is one work in my eyes. And what a masterpiece. Each part a gorgeous, immersive side of one breathtaking journey that is best experienced together. I remain stunned by Amiensus’ mastery of musical storytelling through a flowing, intricate soundscape—at turns triumphant (“Vermillion Fog of War,” “Sólfarið”), sorrowful (“Reverie,” “Leprosarium”), and always stirring. Everything about Reclamation is graceful, which is another part of its magic because it’s not as though Amiensus left the black metal behind. Rather they seem to have found the deepest essence of the genre’s unique propensity for raw emotional expression, and moulded its elements into what is hands-down the most beautiful thing I’ve heard at least this year. It is, as I noted in my write-up of Part 1, a distillation of pure joy, and uplifting no matter how wistful (“Sun and Moon”), or suffused with bittersweet longing (“A Consciousness Throughout Time,” “Acquiescence”). And with so much of it—albeit, a time that flashes by with thrilling speed—it’s impossible not to get lost in. “Sun and Moon” was so close to being my favorite song of 2024, and in another year, it would have been. For that matter, in another year Reclamation itself would have claimed the top spot on this list.

   #1. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – What else could it have been? I worry that by this point I may have used up all of the words that are possible to describe this pinnacle of excellence. In reality, though, I’m not sure I even have the words to express it in the first place, not for lack of trying. Ulcerate have long been a behemoth in their realm within the larger world of death metal, but while distinctive, they have never settled, continually carving up the template of dissonance with varyingly-sized blades of atmosphere and melody, moving between their most barbed and chaotic (Everything is Fire) to their most somber and moody (The Destroyers of All) in just one album. Later Shrines of Paralysis—my former favorite—saw a turn back towards the urgency and aggression, but with this new harmonic undercurrent in place. With hindsight, I can see now that the deeply atmospheric, disquieting Stare into Death and Be Still marked a turning point, paving the ground for what could be their magnum opus. Distilling the tension and the turmoil, into tidal forces of incredible rhythm, and dark, brilliant melody, with Cutting the Throat of God, Ulcerate reach transcendence. Dire (“The Dawn is Hollow”), deadly (“Transfiguration in and Out of Worlds”), devastating (“To See Death Just Once,” “Cutting the Throat of God”). Its intricacies only continue to reveal themselves to me; helped, no doubt, by a phenomenal live performance that bewitched me anew this October. I had to upgrade this album’s score to Iconic, because it is. This is atmospheric death metal perfected, and if genre-mates weren’t already looking in Ulcerate’s direction, there’s hardly any choice now. Cutting the Throat of God represents, in the greatest form, “the savagery, authenticity, and more recently, beauty that makes this icon of the dissonant death metal world who they are.”

   Honorable Mentions:

   Gaerea // Coma – Despite having calmed down considerably from my previous Gaerea overhype, there’s no denying that they’ve really got something. With a new vocalist, they retain their distinctively melodramatic and intense style, while incorporating a little more vulnerability via some genuinely really lovely cleans. A great record that just wasn’t great enough for the ridiculously high standard set by this year’s fare.

   Eye Eater // Alienate – I am immensely grateful for Dolphin Whisperer for bringing this to my attention. Much of this album feels like it was written specifically for me, because it uses pretty much all of my favorite things in metal. It’s atmospheric and dissonant, like Ulcerate and others in that vein; it’s kind of post-death-y, and replete with minor melodies, and a particular kind of urgency my brain associates with specific kinds of ‘-core’. I just didn’t get quite enough time with it.

   Songs of the Year

   “To See Death Just Once” – Ulcerate

   “Sun and Moon” – Amiensus

   “Solus” – Devenial Verdict

   “Terminal” – Vorga

   “Third World Wretchedness” – Selbst

   “The Paint of an Invader” – Cave Sermon

   “A Day After” – Föhn

   “Ábær” – Hamferð

   “Inversion” – Endonomos

   “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity” – Spectral Voice

   “Leaving” – Pillar of Light

   Maddog

   It’s been a weird year, and this is a weird list. Last December, I lamented the emotional hollowness of 2023’s metal output. If anything, 2024 fell even flatter. My most anticipated heavyweights were competent but inconsistent (Alcest, Julie Christmas), and few albums moved me. Unfazed, death metal picked up the slack and made this year a pleasure. Led by a flurry of excellent releases from genre titans, 2024 helped rekindle my love for cantankerous death metal.

   Even so, the brutality of 2024’s output shocked me. Despite my worship of Suffocation and Dying Fetus, most brutal death metal releases of the last decade haven’t gripped me. But 2024 pulled me onto the brutal train with creativity and pizzazz. Both the techy and the knuckle-dragging corners of that subgenre thrived, including several artists that didn’t make my list (like Gigan, Iniquitous Savagery, and Nile). After tending toward more emotive music and other poseur nonsense in recent years, I took a long jump back in 2024.

   As if that wasn’t enough, this was a banner year for dissonance. That’s a sentence I never expected to type; even dissonant death metal’s classics tend to be hit-or-miss with me. In 2024, the skronk finally broke through, aided by many avant-garde bands drifting toward a more accessible sound. This year’s screechy screeds were cogent enough to grab my arm and unhinged enough to rip it out of its socket. It’s been a jarring but eye-opening year.

   This comment from the Brodequin review doubles as a summary of my 2024 music picks:

   I wonder if I, we, they or all of us have a screw loose.

   Heading into 2024, I craved immersive soundscapes and misty eyes. Instead, I was met with discordant gurgling. I didn’t expect it, but I don’t regret it.

   #ish. Hypoxia // Defiance – Defiance never gets old. This old-school death metal behemoth has been around for ten months and hails from a subgenre that’s infamous for monotony. And yet, like Monstrosity’s best work, it blossoms on every spin. Defiance sports 2024’s fiercest harsh vocal performance, and riffwork so potent that it could revive the Selbst baby. I don’t have anything fancy to add, so I won’t try. Defiance is a rare death metal record that’s simple, thrilling, and well-written.

   #10. Dawn Treader // Bloom & Decay – The thought sometimes crosses my mind: Why does atmospheric black metal even exist? The musical possibilities abound; who would pay $8 for tremolo scales recorded in a rest stop bathroom? Records like Bloom & Decay jolt me out of my pretension. Dawn Treader’s underground gem is both a product and a peddler of overpowering emotion. Ross Connell unleashes a tirade against violence and oppression using grief-stricken guitar melodies. On the flip side, Bloom & Decay’s heavy use of major keys—my second biggest fear—blurs the line between despair and tentative hope. Most impressive is the album’s flow, which Itchymenace described better than I ever could: “The majority of Bloom & Decay is instrumental, but you hardly notice because the music has such a storytelling quality.” Bloom & Decay’s 53-minute chokehold on my heart is ineffable but unyielding.

   #9. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Germany’s nameless Noise has built up a remarkable CV – 7 years, 3 bands, 8 albums. While I’ve often enjoyed his music, I never fell under his spell. Die Urkatastrophe was the last straw. A pacifist tirade told through first-person WWI vignettes, Die Urkatastrophe depicts nationalist violence and its aftermath. Armed with a sharp-edged blackened death foundation and surging chorus melodies, Kanonenfieber provides rewarding fodder even for unfeeling riff addicts. However, its excellence lies in its raw emotion. Both Noise’s lyrics and his songwriting embrace a “show, don’t tell” approach that brings the album to life. As the narrator’s cavalry offensive meets with a hilltop ambush in “Gott mit der Kavallerie,” Kanonenfieber’s upbeat riffs transform into a sudden dirge followed by frantic black metal. The epic “Waffenbrüder” evokes the wide-eyed optimism of childhood friends, the pride of enlisting, the tragedy of losing a companion, and the regrets of a life wasted. Die Urkatastrophe is both a transformative album and exemplary storytelling.

   #8. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Chronicles of Lunacy is essential listening for any fans of extreme metal. Its greatest triumph is its fine mix of Defeated Sanity’s signature ingredients. Chronicles excels as pure brutal death metal through punishing caveman riffs and a tasteful dose of slam. Vaughn Stoffey’s guitars elevate this to an art form using wily fretboard acrobatics and seamless jazzy breaks. Led by kit-meister Lille Gruber, Defeated Sanity’s off-kilter rhythms and heavy syncopation miraculously aid the album’s staying power rather than hindering it. Put simply, Chronicles of Lunacy is 2024’s most vivid reminder of why I love death metal. I love its unforgiving brutality; I love its dazzling technicality; I love its groove; I love its genre-bending creative expression; I love its rhythmic feats of strength; I love its intellect; I love its idiocy. In other words, I love Defeated Sanity.

   #7. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – It’s a match made in heaven: Cutting the Throat of God is Ulcerate for dummies, and I’m a dummy. Ulcerate continues to march toward more accessible ground, leaving behind the merciless dissonance of Everything is Fire. Powerful melodic themes peek through the chaos and take time to shine, offering both souvenirs and footholds. Despite Cutting’s lowbrow appeal, Ulcerate’s inimitable signature remains. Unease pervades the record, and Ulcerate’s cohesive songwriting transforms it from a concept to an emotion. In Thus Spoke’s words, Jamie Saint Merat’s drums are “more body than skeleton,” using their distinctive start-stop style to guide the mood. The album’s climaxes alone justify a purchase, as hypnotic melodies and frenzied dissonance coalesce into a tsunami. In short, Cutting the Throat of God captured both my brain and my heart.

   #6. Hippotraktor // Stasis – I first heard about Belgium’s Hippotraktor from an insistent coworker, long before I discovered GardensTale’s well-worded underrating. Psychonaut meets Karnivool meets The Ocean meets Meshuggah in this pounding, beautiful prog/post adventure. Stasis’ hard-won achievement is that it navigates through disparate ideas with fluidity and flair. Psychonaut-drenched sludge forms a jagged backbone that sways between meditative and explosive. Meanwhile, Hippotraktor’s mastery of melody catapults them into genre royalty. “Stasis” uses this superpower for peaceful guitar jams, “Echoes” uses it for soaring As I Lay Dying vocal lines, and “The Reckoning” uses it for haunting continuity across its eight minutes. The djenty interdjections are well-written and screwed in tight, packing a punch even for listeners with severe djent allerdjies. Stasis is a bold statement from a new band, and it’s jostled up my list posthaste.

   #5. Hell:on // Shaman – Hell:on’s folk-infused take on death metal stands apart. Shaman’s diverse influences complement each other and flourish in isolation. Phrygian themes, throat singing, and driving sitars steer the album. But despite Shaman’s folk roots, it’s an excellent slab of death metal. Hell:on’s riffs recall the threatening leviathans of Nile’s Annihilation of the Wicked, while the narrative song structures feel like a roided-out Aeternam. Even among such storied company, Shaman’s melodies stand out. Over the record’s runtime, Hell:on’s guitars shred, soar, flail, and wallop, evolving smoothly and dragging the listener along. As icing on the cake, Holdeneye’s review of Shaman features the most sobering and most badass introductory story of 2024. Hell:on demanded my attention and earned it.

   #4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I started warming up to Exhaust on my first listen, but it took a while to diagnose why. Pyrrhon’s earlier releases didn’t click with me, but Exhaust is a trailblazer and a paradox. Pyrrhon rewrites the textbook on riffs, displaying a mastery of groove even in their wildest moments. And the noisier cuts, which remind me most of Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Velvet Underground, are evocative narratives rather than lifeless technical exercises. The longer pieces intersperse hypnotic buildups with furious cacophony (“Out of Gas”), while the shorter tracks are simultaneously caustic and infectious. With a thick leading bass performance and a master that highlights every detail of the drums, Exhaust grows on me with every spin. Pyrrhon’s off-the-deep-end brand of experimental death metal isn’t my usual fare, but I can’t avert my ears this time. Both mellifluous and disgusting, both rifftastic and immersive, Exhaust is singular.

   #3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – My first toe dip into Selbst made a lasting impression. Shortly after Despondency Chord Progressions came out, I spun it at the office. In the final minute of the opener “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos,” I felt the involuntary tears start to flow, and I had to nuke the music and run to the bathroom to avoid worrying my desk neighbor. This embarrassing first encounter perfectly encapsulates the album. While it’s “merely” black metal, its gorgeous melodies and shrilling tremolos showcase the genre at its finest. Alternating between meditative dirges and howling chords, Selbst conveys both muffled sobs and hysterical bawling. Selbst’s fluid compositions captivated me at once and dug their claws even deeper over the ensuing months. The most heart-rending record of 2024, Despondency Chord Progressions showcases the paralyzing power of music.

   #2. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Noxis’ debut is a remarkable blend of old and new. The album’s stomping riffs and popping snare drum root it in 1990s brutal death metal. Conversely, its exuberantly grimy bass tone, its proggy rhythms, and its surprise woodwind extravaganza feel unabashedly modern. Much like last year’s Ohio death metal highlight, Violence Inherent in the System succeeds by ripping throughout, whether with a vile Dying Fetus riff or with an adventurous bass melody. Although this is the longest record in my top five, its 46 minutes fly by. Boasting momentum that would make Newton blush, Noxis keeps the energy high from the barnburner “Skullcrushing Defilement” to the proggy old-school “Emanations of the Sick.” After six months of scrutinizing and adoring Violence, I still can’t fathom that this is a debut album.

   #1. Wormed // Omegon – I’ve already said my piece on this, and nothing has changed. Omegon feels as thrilling, as alien, as robotic, and as human as it did in July. In a year where brutality and dissonance thrived, Wormed maxed out both dimensions. Omegon is at once a painstakingly crafted work of art, an all-consuming atmosphere, and 2024’s punchiest death metal record.

   Honorable Mentions:

   • Oxygen Destroyer // Guardian of the Universe – Redefining Darkness strikes again. Oxygen Destroyer’s latest death-thrash opus is a concise half hour of exhilarating riffs. The album sounds one track, but I don’t care; it gains steam as it progresses, and it lodges deeper on every listen. There’s no excuse for missing this.
   • Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – Despite its morose title, Harbinger of Woe is straightforward and riotous. Brodequin has honed a sleek archetype of brutal death metal, far from the likes of Wormed. It doesn’t aim to innovate; it just aims for high impact. It succeeds.
   • Kryptos // Decimator – India’s heavy metal kings dealt me an irreplaceable shot of adrenaline. Decimator is Kryptos’ most melodically inspired work to date, an absolute scorcher, and the most viscerally satisfying production job of 2024.
   • Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – Somehow, despite competition from In Aphelion and Necrophobic themselves, Necrowretch churned out the best Necrophobic album of 2024.

   Songs o’ the Year:

   1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
   2. Hippotraktor – “The Reckoning”
   3. Kanonenfieber – “Waffenbrüder”
   4. Hypoxia – “Scorched and Skinned”
   5. Kryptos – “Fall to the Spectre’s Gaze”
   6. Wormed – “Protogod”
   7. Alcest – “Améthyste”
   8. Defeated Sanity – “Heredity Violated”
   9. Andy Gillion – “Acceptance”
   10. Selbst – “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos”
   11. Pyrrhon – “Out of Gas”
   12. Ulcerate – “Cutting the Throat of God”
   13. Noxis – “Abstemious, Pious Writ of Life”
   14. Keygen Church – “La Chiave del mio Amor”

   #2024 #Amiensus #BlogPost #Brodequin #CaveSermon #ColdCell #DawnTreader #DefeatedSanity #DevenialVerdict #EyeEater #Föhn #Gaerea #Hamferð #HellOn #Hippotraktor #Hypoxia #Kanonenfeiber #Kryptos #Necrowretch #Noxis #OxygenDestroyer #PillarOfLight #Pyrrhon #Replicant #Selbst #SpectralVoice #ThusSpokeAndMaddogSTopTenIshOf2024 #Ulcerate #Wormed

   #amiensus #blogpost #brodequin #cavesermon #coldcell #dawntreader
4. 

   Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2024-12-27 · 13:00 UTC

   Thus Spoke and Maddog’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

   By Steel Druhm

   Thus Spoke

   My second AMG End-of-Year piece?! Didn’t I just get here? This is my typical reaction to life’s happenings. I’m blindsided by everything. You’ll probably notice that many of the below list entries ‘snuck up on me’ in how much I liked them, compared to everything else. The fact that we’re now halfway through the 2020s makes me feel a bit nauseous. I keep telling people I ‘just moved’ into the home I bought this year, but I’ve been in it since April. And that huge milestone—for which I feel immensely grateful and privileged to have achieved this side of 30—would have solely dominated my year were it not for two other facts: 1) I was finally diagnosed with and very recently started medication for ADHD; 2) 2024 has got to have been the strongest year of the decade so far for metal. So, time to talk about the music rather than myself.

   My overoptimistic prediction that Ulcerate would release new music came true,1 and there was, in general, a particular influx of excellent material from the darker, more dissonant, and extreme sides of death and black metal. This was also the year I finally reconnected with my love of doom after a long period of lukewarm engagement. But I wouldn’t have known about half of it were it not for this gig, and the amazing people I share it with. Whether it was Dear Hollow, Kenstrosity, or Mystikus Hugebeard pinging across something they thought I might like, or a particularly potent review penned by a colleague, a commenter chipping in with some gem, or the group buzz around an album I might otherwise never have considered, there’s no better place to find and discuss metal. And speaking of community, if I ever needed a confirmation that this right here is the loveliest place on the internet, the rallying response to Ken‘s plight earlier this year from staff and readers was it.2 I couldn’t ask for better company.

   I said as much last year, but I’ll probably say it every year: having this opportunity is wild and I feel so blessed. To be able to send my thoughts about music into the world where people read and consider them, that’s mad. Bumping into an AMG fan in the wild was also an affirming and heartwarming experience reminding me that there are actually real people out there who know who we are; and let me say, however enthusiastic and grateful you might be for us, the feeling is mutual. So to everyone reading this, to all the folks at AMG who make it possible for me to continually wax lyrical about stuff I love (and stuff I don’t love so much) and put up with all my overrating, to all of you: thank you. Shout out also to my list buddy Maddog, whose EOY write-up is bound to be more br00tal and much less flowery than mine, and whose in-person company I continue to have the pleasure of enjoying whenever he deigns to visit our little island up here. Oh, and thank you to the original creator and to Kenstrosity for my new avatar! I asked and you delivered. And if you actually read this far down, thank you for indulging me. But now, finally, it’s list time.

   #ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – I unintentionally ended my reviewing year on a high with Pillar of Light. Or perhaps a low, if we consider mood. When a record evokes a genuine emotional response in me,3 as Caldera does, it deserves more than an Honorable Mention. So here it is. It’s one of those albums you experience that forever afterward remains tied to your particular life situation when you were first immersed, and for that reason, its longevity is increased and its impact amplified. Given how “Leaving” and “Infernal Gaze” leave me in pieces, it’s probably a good thing the misery comes down from 11 at other times. But on the next album, who knows? I’ll be ready at least.

   #10. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – Much like Kenstrosity, author of the review, I have not historically been Replicant’s hugest fan. For some reason their music never stuck with me; I just didn’t get it. Infinite Mortality has been the enlightenment I needed. It’s undeniably fantastic. Brilliantly technical and ruthlessly efficient in execution, it manages to also be ridiculously groovy in a way that you wouldn’t expect from this flavor of extreme death metal. Suited, evidently, to desk sessions and gym sessions alike, given the range of play it got from me since its release, its balance of skronk and style proved why I should, long ago, have been paying attention to Replicant. Ken himself struggled to find a negative and so do I. Even interlude “SCN9A” is great, especially as it leads into monster “Pain Enduring.” Only the superlative strength of other contenders causes this to fall so low on the list.

   #9. ColdCell // Age of Unreason – In a rare case of me underrating something, my review of Age of Unreason did not quite do justice to its strength. Not only have I revisited it often, but I have of late been struck ever deeper by its profundity. The honest, vulnerable lamentations on inequality (“Solidarity or Solitude”), hatred (“Discord”), and human selfishness (“Dead to the World”) go far beyond a jaded misanthropy and strike a real chord. In wrapping this up in an insidiously simple package of compelling, devastating black metal with a distinctive voice, ColdCell have made, I now recognize, a true masterpiece. Brutal in its own way, and beautiful in many more, this is a record I hardly realized had made such a strong impact on me until I saw just how many times I’d spun it. This year may have seen black metal that goes harder, or with more powerful atmospheres, but none that are as memorable as Age of Unreason.

   #8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – What a behemoth. It’s hard to believe that—just for a little while—Sparagmos slipped my mind many months after its February release. Relistening brought it all back into horrifying clarity. This record throws a veil over the sun, stares at you with unseeing, ecstatic eyes of Dionysian worship, and forces you into terrified awe. I’m still blown away by how crushingly heavy and immersive it is; how it still manages to blindside me with sudden turns from ominous crawling into chaotic, chthonic tremolos and clustered, hideous vocals. A masterclass in patient, predatory ambush. Nothing else this year was like it, which is partially why I’ve had to return so often to its dark embrace. Every nightmarish track was at some point in the runnings for the Song of the Year playlist. In the end, only one could make it, and it is, as I said in my review, “as inexorable as death.”

   #7. Hamferð // Men Guðs hond er sterk – I’m surprised as well. Before Men Guðs hond er sterk, I had never laid ears on Hamferð and I was quite stunned to find how instantly I loved them. It’s not often an album by a band you’d previously never spent time with claims a spot on your year-end list after one listen, but this was one of those rare occasions. Something about the sorrowful, yet also soaring, melodies delivered through the interplays of resonant chords and gentle plucks, and between caustic growls and clear, ardent cleans just transports me. I feel the solemnity, the fear, and the grief in alternately forceful and graceful heaviness thanks to these intricately woven compositions and ardent performances that make the fact the lyrics are all in Faroese completely irrelevant. And Hamferð cover breadth with such ease, the slowly rolling wave of doom rising with tremolos into new intensity; and yet still controlled, still patient. The closer and it’s sample used to bother me, but I’m long past that now. In short, as the Angry Metal Guy himself said, “the record’s flow is impeccable,” and “the writing is subtle but addictive”. He’s not kidding about that last part, I really can’t stop listening to it.

   #6. Föhn // Condescending – I was not prepared for what Condescending would do to me. Like any funeral doom worth its salt, it’s massive, but its presence is not smothering, it does not suffocate. Instead, it dampens the sound of anything else, so that the lugubrious chords, vocals, and fraught, lamenting refrains reverberate inside your mind, alone. This presence is redoubled by the heart-rending devastation of the compositions it centers—lyrically and musically. Bleakly beautiful, crushing doom in all its low, slow, cavernous hell leads you into an almost blissful moroseness, just in time for the veil to tear and your spirit to crumble as haunting melodies spill in from impossibly delicate sources of saxophone, synth, or ringing strings. Condescending will not leave my mind, and as broken and misty-eyed as these songs make me—”A Day After” and “Persona” especially—I’ll keep returning to experience it again and again. Maybe I can only speak for myself; maybe you’re sensing a theme wherein I like albums that make me feel sad. Whatever the case, Föhn took my breath away, and I don’t want it back.

   #5. Cave Sermon // Divine Laughter – It’s pretty irresponsible of me to put this in the list at all, let alone in this position, considering how late in the day I discovered it. But I’m not really known for being ‘responsible’ around these parts, so, what the hell. What some might pigeonhole as just wonky death metal, or blackened post-hardcore—or even post-metal, as Metal Archives confusingly stamp it—is really much more complex, deep, and unique. Gripping and strange, in a way that struck me on my very first listen, Divine Laughter is responsible for me going from never having heard of Cave Sermon to being an ardent fan in one afternoon. Every listen gives me my new favorite part and uncovers more and more of its treasures. Savage and beautiful and with unnervingly easy flow, large parts of it are total perfection (“Liquid Gol, “The Paint of An Invader”). I cannot get enough. It’s so good, actually, that it’s made me feel a bit anxious about how much I’ve still missed this year, though I am very glad that this made it to my ears, even at the 11th hour. Divine Laughter is simply one of the greatest things I’ve heard in 2024, and it’s a crime that more people aren’t talking about it.

   #4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I was waiting for Blessing of Despair since January, and as it always is with things we have high expectations for, part of me was preparing for disappointment. That preparation proved unnecessary once I finally got my hands on this in the Autumn. Devenial Verdict delivered. This time, they amped up all their unique little idiosyncrasies that made me fall in love with Ash Blind, and added a criminally heavy helping of groove. This thing is atmospheric and punchy, providing soundscapes that are just as haunting and mysterious(TM) as they are stomping and cutthroat. Either way, these riffs will make you shiver. “Garden of Eyes”! “Solus”! Ahhhh! Even “Counting Silence” and “A Curse Made Flesh,” which I initially dismissed as a little understated, have this delicious melancholic presence I just want to be immersed in 24/7. Devenial Verdict’s slick mixture of mournful melody and menacing, barked growls; neck-snapping flicks of cymbal, and those resonant, aggressive chord progressions make for—almost—my favorite take on death metal that exists. The sole reason Blessing of Despair wasn’t my most-played album of 2024 is that I only started in September.4

   #3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – Back in 2017 or so, I was struck by what at the time I considered the most gorgeous opening guitar on any song ever. It was “…Of Solitary Ramblings,” the first track on Selbst’s self-titled debut.5 From that day forward I was enamoured. The undercurrents of lamenting melodrama and a black metal interwoven with a distinctive style of flowing, weeping strums continue to make Selbst very special. But if I had thought that their depths of emotional poignancy and stirring, multi-layered compositions had been reached, Despondency Chord Progressions showed they had not. Cleans that some wrote off as unsavory, rather bring—in my opinion—a new vulnerability, and their rawness compounds the pathos of already intensely cathartic compositions. The album’s title is, as I noted, an apt descriptor for the musical themes, but really undersells the cry of grief and despair that erupts from the music with every shuddering, tremolo-shaken, surge and every plaintive, somber quietude. I stand by what I said back in April, that “[t]his is black metal at its most stirring, entrancingly beautiful, and existentially affecting.” The sheer magnitude of its impassioned peaks (“Third World Wretchedness,” “Between Seclusion and Obsession”) and the sting of its humanity (“When true Loneliness is Experienced,” “Chant of Self Confrontation”) are like nothing else in the genre.

   #2. Amiensus // Reclamation [Parts 1 & 2] – Take it up in the comments if you think this is cheating; Reclamation is one work in my eyes. And what a masterpiece. Each part a gorgeous, immersive side of one breathtaking journey that is best experienced together. I remain stunned by Amiensus’ mastery of musical storytelling through a flowing, intricate soundscape—at turns triumphant (“Vermillion Fog of War,” “Sólfarið”), sorrowful (“Reverie,” “Leprosarium”), and always stirring. Everything about Reclamation is graceful, which is another part of its magic because it’s not as though Amiensus left the black metal behind. Rather they seem to have found the deepest essence of the genre’s unique propensity for raw emotional expression, and moulded its elements into what is hands-down the most beautiful thing I’ve heard at least this year. It is, as I noted in my write-up of Part 1, a distillation of pure joy, and uplifting no matter how wistful (“Sun and Moon”), or suffused with bittersweet longing (“A Consciousness Throughout Time,” “Acquiescence”). And with so much of it—albeit, a time that flashes by with thrilling speed—it’s impossible not to get lost in. “Sun and Moon” was so close to being my favorite song of 2024, and in another year, it would have been. For that matter, in another year Reclamation itself would have claimed the top spot on this list.

   #1. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – What else could it have been? I worry that by this point I may have used up all of the words that are possible to describe this pinnacle of excellence. In reality, though, I’m not sure I even have the words to express it in the first place, not for lack of trying. Ulcerate have long been a behemoth in their realm within the larger world of death metal, but while distinctive, they have never settled, continually carving up the template of dissonance with varyingly-sized blades of atmosphere and melody, moving between their most barbed and chaotic (Everything is Fire) to their most somber and moody (The Destroyers of All) in just one album. Later Shrines of Paralysis—my former favorite—saw a turn back towards the urgency and aggression, but with this new harmonic undercurrent in place. With hindsight, I can see now that the deeply atmospheric, disquieting Stare into Death and Be Still marked a turning point, paving the ground for what could be their magnum opus. Distilling the tension and the turmoil, into tidal forces of incredible rhythm, and dark, brilliant melody, with Cutting the Throat of God, Ulcerate reach transcendence. Dire (“The Dawn is Hollow”), deadly (“Transfiguration in and Out of Worlds”), devastating (“To See Death Just Once,” “Cutting the Throat of God”). Its intricacies only continue to reveal themselves to me; helped, no doubt, by a phenomenal live performance that bewitched me anew this October. I had to upgrade this album’s score to Iconic, because it is. This is atmospheric death metal perfected, and if genre-mates weren’t already looking in Ulcerate’s direction, there’s hardly any choice now. Cutting the Throat of God represents, in the greatest form, “the savagery, authenticity, and more recently, beauty that makes this icon of the dissonant death metal world who they are.”

   Honorable Mentions:

   Gaerea // Coma – Despite having calmed down considerably from my previous Gaerea overhype, there’s no denying that they’ve really got something. With a new vocalist, they retain their distinctively melodramatic and intense style, while incorporating a little more vulnerability via some genuinely really lovely cleans. A great record that just wasn’t great enough for the ridiculously high standard set by this year’s fare.

   Eye Eater // Alienate – I am immensely grateful for Dolphin Whisperer for bringing this to my attention. Much of this album feels like it was written specifically for me, because it uses pretty much all of my favorite things in metal. It’s atmospheric and dissonant, like Ulcerate and others in that vein; it’s kind of post-death-y, and replete with minor melodies, and a particular kind of urgency my brain associates with specific kinds of ‘-core’. I just didn’t get quite enough time with it.

   Songs of the Year

   “To See Death Just Once” – Ulcerate

   “Sun and Moon” – Amiensus

   “Solus” – Devenial Verdict

   “Terminal” – Vorga

   “Third World Wretchedness” – Selbst

   “The Paint of an Invader” – Cave Sermon

   “A Day After” – Föhn

   “Ábær” – Hamferð

   “Inversion” – Endonomos

   “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity” – Spectral Voice

   “Leaving” – Pillar of Light

   Maddog

   It’s been a weird year, and this is a weird list. Last December, I lamented the emotional hollowness of 2023’s metal output. If anything, 2024 fell even flatter. My most anticipated heavyweights were competent but inconsistent (Alcest, Julie Christmas), and few albums moved me. Unfazed, death metal picked up the slack and made this year a pleasure. Led by a flurry of excellent releases from genre titans, 2024 helped rekindle my love for cantankerous death metal.

   Even so, the brutality of 2024’s output shocked me. Despite my worship of Suffocation and Dying Fetus, most brutal death metal releases of the last decade haven’t gripped me. But 2024 pulled me onto the brutal train with creativity and pizzazz. Both the techy and the knuckle-dragging corners of that subgenre thrived, including several artists that didn’t make my list (like Gigan, Iniquitous Savagery, and Nile). After tending toward more emotive music and other poseur nonsense in recent years, I took a long jump back in 2024.

   As if that wasn’t enough, this was a banner year for dissonance. That’s a sentence I never expected to type; even dissonant death metal’s classics tend to be hit-or-miss with me. In 2024, the skronk finally broke through, aided by many avant-garde bands drifting toward a more accessible sound. This year’s screechy screeds were cogent enough to grab my arm and unhinged enough to rip it out of its socket. It’s been a jarring but eye-opening year.

   This comment from the Brodequin review doubles as a summary of my 2024 music picks:

   I wonder if I, we, they or all of us have a screw loose.

   Heading into 2024, I craved immersive soundscapes and misty eyes. Instead, I was met with discordant gurgling. I didn’t expect it, but I don’t regret it.

   #ish. Hypoxia // Defiance – Defiance never gets old. This old-school death metal behemoth has been around for ten months and hails from a subgenre that’s infamous for monotony. And yet, like Monstrosity’s best work, it blossoms on every spin. Defiance sports 2024’s fiercest harsh vocal performance, and riffwork so potent that it could revive the Selbst baby. I don’t have anything fancy to add, so I won’t try. Defiance is a rare death metal record that’s simple, thrilling, and well-written.

   #10. Dawn Treader // Bloom & Decay – The thought sometimes crosses my mind: Why does atmospheric black metal even exist? The musical possibilities abound; who would pay $8 for tremolo scales recorded in a rest stop bathroom? Records like Bloom & Decay jolt me out of my pretension. Dawn Treader’s underground gem is both a product and a peddler of overpowering emotion. Ross Connell unleashes a tirade against violence and oppression using grief-stricken guitar melodies. On the flip side, Bloom & Decay’s heavy use of major keys—my second biggest fear—blurs the line between despair and tentative hope. Most impressive is the album’s flow, which Itchymenace described better than I ever could: “The majority of Bloom & Decay is instrumental, but you hardly notice because the music has such a storytelling quality.” Bloom & Decay’s 53-minute chokehold on my heart is ineffable but unyielding.

   #9. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Germany’s nameless Noise has built up a remarkable CV – 7 years, 3 bands, 8 albums. While I’ve often enjoyed his music, I never fell under his spell. Die Urkatastrophe was the last straw. A pacifist tirade told through first-person WWI vignettes, Die Urkatastrophe depicts nationalist violence and its aftermath. Armed with a sharp-edged blackened death foundation and surging chorus melodies, Kanonenfieber provides rewarding fodder even for unfeeling riff addicts. However, its excellence lies in its raw emotion. Both Noise’s lyrics and his songwriting embrace a “show, don’t tell” approach that brings the album to life. As the narrator’s cavalry offensive meets with a hilltop ambush in “Gott mit der Kavallerie,” Kanonenfieber’s upbeat riffs transform into a sudden dirge followed by frantic black metal. The epic “Waffenbrüder” evokes the wide-eyed optimism of childhood friends, the pride of enlisting, the tragedy of losing a companion, and the regrets of a life wasted. Die Urkatastrophe is both a transformative album and exemplary storytelling.

   #8. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Chronicles of Lunacy is essential listening for any fans of extreme metal. Its greatest triumph is its fine mix of Defeated Sanity’s signature ingredients. Chronicles excels as pure brutal death metal through punishing caveman riffs and a tasteful dose of slam. Vaughn Stoffey’s guitars elevate this to an art form using wily fretboard acrobatics and seamless jazzy breaks. Led by kit-meister Lille Gruber, Defeated Sanity’s off-kilter rhythms and heavy syncopation miraculously aid the album’s staying power rather than hindering it. Put simply, Chronicles of Lunacy is 2024’s most vivid reminder of why I love death metal. I love its unforgiving brutality; I love its dazzling technicality; I love its groove; I love its genre-bending creative expression; I love its rhythmic feats of strength; I love its intellect; I love its idiocy. In other words, I love Defeated Sanity.

   #7. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – It’s a match made in heaven: Cutting the Throat of God is Ulcerate for dummies, and I’m a dummy. Ulcerate continues to march toward more accessible ground, leaving behind the merciless dissonance of Everything is Fire. Powerful melodic themes peek through the chaos and take time to shine, offering both souvenirs and footholds. Despite Cutting’s lowbrow appeal, Ulcerate’s inimitable signature remains. Unease pervades the record, and Ulcerate’s cohesive songwriting transforms it from a concept to an emotion. In Thus Spoke’s words, Jamie Saint Merat’s drums are “more body than skeleton,” using their distinctive start-stop style to guide the mood. The album’s climaxes alone justify a purchase, as hypnotic melodies and frenzied dissonance coalesce into a tsunami. In short, Cutting the Throat of God captured both my brain and my heart.

   #6. Hippotraktor // Stasis – I first heard about Belgium’s Hippotraktor from an insistent coworker, long before I discovered GardensTale’s well-worded underrating. Psychonaut meets Karnivool meets The Ocean meets Meshuggah in this pounding, beautiful prog/post adventure. Stasis’ hard-won achievement is that it navigates through disparate ideas with fluidity and flair. Psychonaut-drenched sludge forms a jagged backbone that sways between meditative and explosive. Meanwhile, Hippotraktor’s mastery of melody catapults them into genre royalty. “Stasis” uses this superpower for peaceful guitar jams, “Echoes” uses it for soaring As I Lay Dying vocal lines, and “The Reckoning” uses it for haunting continuity across its eight minutes. The djenty interdjections are well-written and screwed in tight, packing a punch even for listeners with severe djent allerdjies. Stasis is a bold statement from a new band, and it’s jostled up my list posthaste.

   #5. Hell:on // Shaman – Hell:on’s folk-infused take on death metal stands apart. Shaman’s diverse influences complement each other and flourish in isolation. Phrygian themes, throat singing, and driving sitars steer the album. But despite Shaman’s folk roots, it’s an excellent slab of death metal. Hell:on’s riffs recall the threatening leviathans of Nile’s Annihilation of the Wicked, while the narrative song structures feel like a roided-out Aeternam. Even among such storied company, Shaman’s melodies stand out. Over the record’s runtime, Hell:on’s guitars shred, soar, flail, and wallop, evolving smoothly and dragging the listener along. As icing on the cake, Holdeneye’s review of Shaman features the most sobering and most badass introductory story of 2024. Hell:on demanded my attention and earned it.

   #4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I started warming up to Exhaust on my first listen, but it took a while to diagnose why. Pyrrhon’s earlier releases didn’t click with me, but Exhaust is a trailblazer and a paradox. Pyrrhon rewrites the textbook on riffs, displaying a mastery of groove even in their wildest moments. And the noisier cuts, which remind me most of Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Velvet Underground, are evocative narratives rather than lifeless technical exercises. The longer pieces intersperse hypnotic buildups with furious cacophony (“Out of Gas”), while the shorter tracks are simultaneously caustic and infectious. With a thick leading bass performance and a master that highlights every detail of the drums, Exhaust grows on me with every spin. Pyrrhon’s off-the-deep-end brand of experimental death metal isn’t my usual fare, but I can’t avert my ears this time. Both mellifluous and disgusting, both rifftastic and immersive, Exhaust is singular.

   #3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – My first toe dip into Selbst made a lasting impression. Shortly after Despondency Chord Progressions came out, I spun it at the office. In the final minute of the opener “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos,” I felt the involuntary tears start to flow, and I had to nuke the music and run to the bathroom to avoid worrying my desk neighbor. This embarrassing first encounter perfectly encapsulates the album. While it’s “merely” black metal, its gorgeous melodies and shrilling tremolos showcase the genre at its finest. Alternating between meditative dirges and howling chords, Selbst conveys both muffled sobs and hysterical bawling. Selbst’s fluid compositions captivated me at once and dug their claws even deeper over the ensuing months. The most heart-rending record of 2024, Despondency Chord Progressions showcases the paralyzing power of music.

   #2. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Noxis’ debut is a remarkable blend of old and new. The album’s stomping riffs and popping snare drum root it in 1990s brutal death metal. Conversely, its exuberantly grimy bass tone, its proggy rhythms, and its surprise woodwind extravaganza feel unabashedly modern. Much like last year’s Ohio death metal highlight, Violence Inherent in the System succeeds by ripping throughout, whether with a vile Dying Fetus riff or with an adventurous bass melody. Although this is the longest record in my top five, its 46 minutes fly by. Boasting momentum that would make Newton blush, Noxis keeps the energy high from the barnburner “Skullcrushing Defilement” to the proggy old-school “Emanations of the Sick.” After six months of scrutinizing and adoring Violence, I still can’t fathom that this is a debut album.

   #1. Wormed // Omegon – I’ve already said my piece on this, and nothing has changed. Omegon feels as thrilling, as alien, as robotic, and as human as it did in July. In a year where brutality and dissonance thrived, Wormed maxed out both dimensions. Omegon is at once a painstakingly crafted work of art, an all-consuming atmosphere, and 2024’s punchiest death metal record.

   Honorable Mentions:

   • Oxygen Destroyer // Guardian of the Universe – Redefining Darkness strikes again. Oxygen Destroyer’s latest death-thrash opus is a concise half hour of exhilarating riffs. The album sounds one track, but I don’t care; it gains steam as it progresses, and it lodges deeper on every listen. There’s no excuse for missing this.
   • Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – Despite its morose title, Harbinger of Woe is straightforward and riotous. Brodequin has honed a sleek archetype of brutal death metal, far from the likes of Wormed. It doesn’t aim to innovate; it just aims for high impact. It succeeds.
   • Kryptos // Decimator – India’s heavy metal kings dealt me an irreplaceable shot of adrenaline. Decimator is Kryptos’ most melodically inspired work to date, an absolute scorcher, and the most viscerally satisfying production job of 2024.
   • Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – Somehow, despite competition from In Aphelion and Necrophobic themselves, Necrowretch churned out the best Necrophobic album of 2024.

   Songs o’ the Year:

   1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
   2. Hippotraktor – “The Reckoning”
   3. Kanonenfieber – “Waffenbrüder”
   4. Hypoxia – “Scorched and Skinned”
   5. Kryptos – “Fall to the Spectre’s Gaze”
   6. Wormed – “Protogod”
   7. Alcest – “Améthyste”
   8. Defeated Sanity – “Heredity Violated”
   9. Andy Gillion – “Acceptance”
   10. Selbst – “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos”
   11. Pyrrhon – “Out of Gas”
   12. Ulcerate – “Cutting the Throat of God”
   13. Noxis – “Abstemious, Pious Writ of Life”
   14. Keygen Church – “La Chiave del mio Amor”

   #2024 #Amiensus #BlogPost #Brodequin #CaveSermon #ColdCell #DawnTreader #DefeatedSanity #DevenialVerdict #EyeEater #Föhn #Gaerea #Hamferð #HellOn #Hippotraktor #Hypoxia #Kanonenfeiber #Kryptos #Necrowretch #Noxis #OxygenDestroyer #PillarOfLight #Pyrrhon #Replicant #Selbst #SpectralVoice #ThusSpokeAndMaddogSTopTenIshOf2024 #Ulcerate #Wormed

   #amiensus #blogpost #brodequin #cavesermon #coldcell #dawntreader
5. 

   Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2024-12-27 · 13:00 UTC

   Thus Spoke and Maddog’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

   By Steel Druhm

   Thus Spoke

   My second AMG End-of-Year piece?! Didn’t I just get here? This is my typical reaction to life’s happenings. I’m blindsided by everything. You’ll probably notice that many of the below list entries ‘snuck up on me’ in how much I liked them, compared to everything else. The fact that we’re now halfway through the 2020s makes me feel a bit nauseous. I keep telling people I ‘just moved’ into the home I bought this year, but I’ve been in it since April. And that huge milestone—for which I feel immensely grateful and privileged to have achieved this side of 30—would have solely dominated my year were it not for two other facts: 1) I was finally diagnosed with and very recently started medication for ADHD; 2) 2024 has got to have been the strongest year of the decade so far for metal. So, time to talk about the music rather than myself.

   My overoptimistic prediction that Ulcerate would release new music came true,1 and there was, in general, a particular influx of excellent material from the darker, more dissonant, and extreme sides of death and black metal. This was also the year I finally reconnected with my love of doom after a long period of lukewarm engagement. But I wouldn’t have known about half of it were it not for this gig, and the amazing people I share it with. Whether it was Dear Hollow, Kenstrosity, or Mystikus Hugebeard pinging across something they thought I might like, or a particularly potent review penned by a colleague, a commenter chipping in with some gem, or the group buzz around an album I might otherwise never have considered, there’s no better place to find and discuss metal. And speaking of community, if I ever needed a confirmation that this right here is the loveliest place on the internet, the rallying response to Ken‘s plight earlier this year from staff and readers was it.2 I couldn’t ask for better company.

   I said as much last year, but I’ll probably say it every year: having this opportunity is wild and I feel so blessed. To be able to send my thoughts about music into the world where people read and consider them, that’s mad. Bumping into an AMG fan in the wild was also an affirming and heartwarming experience reminding me that there are actually real people out there who know who we are; and let me say, however enthusiastic and grateful you might be for us, the feeling is mutual. So to everyone reading this, to all the folks at AMG who make it possible for me to continually wax lyrical about stuff I love (and stuff I don’t love so much) and put up with all my overrating, to all of you: thank you. Shout out also to my list buddy Maddog, whose EOY write-up is bound to be more br00tal and much less flowery than mine, and whose in-person company I continue to have the pleasure of enjoying whenever he deigns to visit our little island up here. Oh, and thank you to the original creator and to Kenstrosity for my new avatar! I asked and you delivered. And if you actually read this far down, thank you for indulging me. But now, finally, it’s list time.

   #ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – I unintentionally ended my reviewing year on a high with Pillar of Light. Or perhaps a low, if we consider mood. When a record evokes a genuine emotional response in me,3 as Caldera does, it deserves more than an Honorable Mention. So here it is. It’s one of those albums you experience that forever afterward remains tied to your particular life situation when you were first immersed, and for that reason, its longevity is increased and its impact amplified. Given how “Leaving” and “Infernal Gaze” leave me in pieces, it’s probably a good thing the misery comes down from 11 at other times. But on the next album, who knows? I’ll be ready at least.

   #10. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – Much like Kenstrosity, author of the review, I have not historically been Replicant’s hugest fan. For some reason their music never stuck with me; I just didn’t get it. Infinite Mortality has been the enlightenment I needed. It’s undeniably fantastic. Brilliantly technical and ruthlessly efficient in execution, it manages to also be ridiculously groovy in a way that you wouldn’t expect from this flavor of extreme death metal. Suited, evidently, to desk sessions and gym sessions alike, given the range of play it got from me since its release, its balance of skronk and style proved why I should, long ago, have been paying attention to Replicant. Ken himself struggled to find a negative and so do I. Even interlude “SCN9A” is great, especially as it leads into monster “Pain Enduring.” Only the superlative strength of other contenders causes this to fall so low on the list.

   #9. ColdCell // Age of Unreason – In a rare case of me underrating something, my review of Age of Unreason did not quite do justice to its strength. Not only have I revisited it often, but I have of late been struck ever deeper by its profundity. The honest, vulnerable lamentations on inequality (“Solidarity or Solitude”), hatred (“Discord”), and human selfishness (“Dead to the World”) go far beyond a jaded misanthropy and strike a real chord. In wrapping this up in an insidiously simple package of compelling, devastating black metal with a distinctive voice, ColdCell have made, I now recognize, a true masterpiece. Brutal in its own way, and beautiful in many more, this is a record I hardly realized had made such a strong impact on me until I saw just how many times I’d spun it. This year may have seen black metal that goes harder, or with more powerful atmospheres, but none that are as memorable as Age of Unreason.

   #8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – What a behemoth. It’s hard to believe that—just for a little while—Sparagmos slipped my mind many months after its February release. Relistening brought it all back into horrifying clarity. This record throws a veil over the sun, stares at you with unseeing, ecstatic eyes of Dionysian worship, and forces you into terrified awe. I’m still blown away by how crushingly heavy and immersive it is; how it still manages to blindside me with sudden turns from ominous crawling into chaotic, chthonic tremolos and clustered, hideous vocals. A masterclass in patient, predatory ambush. Nothing else this year was like it, which is partially why I’ve had to return so often to its dark embrace. Every nightmarish track was at some point in the runnings for the Song of the Year playlist. In the end, only one could make it, and it is, as I said in my review, “as inexorable as death.”

   #7. Hamferð // Men Guðs hond er sterk – I’m surprised as well. Before Men Guðs hond er sterk, I had never laid ears on Hamferð and I was quite stunned to find how instantly I loved them. It’s not often an album by a band you’d previously never spent time with claims a spot on your year-end list after one listen, but this was one of those rare occasions. Something about the sorrowful, yet also soaring, melodies delivered through the interplays of resonant chords and gentle plucks, and between caustic growls and clear, ardent cleans just transports me. I feel the solemnity, the fear, and the grief in alternately forceful and graceful heaviness thanks to these intricately woven compositions and ardent performances that make the fact the lyrics are all in Faroese completely irrelevant. And Hamferð cover breadth with such ease, the slowly rolling wave of doom rising with tremolos into new intensity; and yet still controlled, still patient. The closer and it’s sample used to bother me, but I’m long past that now. In short, as the Angry Metal Guy himself said, “the record’s flow is impeccable,” and “the writing is subtle but addictive”. He’s not kidding about that last part, I really can’t stop listening to it.

   #6. Föhn // Condescending – I was not prepared for what Condescending would do to me. Like any funeral doom worth its salt, it’s massive, but its presence is not smothering, it does not suffocate. Instead, it dampens the sound of anything else, so that the lugubrious chords, vocals, and fraught, lamenting refrains reverberate inside your mind, alone. This presence is redoubled by the heart-rending devastation of the compositions it centers—lyrically and musically. Bleakly beautiful, crushing doom in all its low, slow, cavernous hell leads you into an almost blissful moroseness, just in time for the veil to tear and your spirit to crumble as haunting melodies spill in from impossibly delicate sources of saxophone, synth, or ringing strings. Condescending will not leave my mind, and as broken and misty-eyed as these songs make me—”A Day After” and “Persona” especially—I’ll keep returning to experience it again and again. Maybe I can only speak for myself; maybe you’re sensing a theme wherein I like albums that make me feel sad. Whatever the case, Föhn took my breath away, and I don’t want it back.

   #5. Cave Sermon // Divine Laughter – It’s pretty irresponsible of me to put this in the list at all, let alone in this position, considering how late in the day I discovered it. But I’m not really known for being ‘responsible’ around these parts, so, what the hell. What some might pigeonhole as just wonky death metal, or blackened post-hardcore—or even post-metal, as Metal Archives confusingly stamp it—is really much more complex, deep, and unique. Gripping and strange, in a way that struck me on my very first listen, Divine Laughter is responsible for me going from never having heard of Cave Sermon to being an ardent fan in one afternoon. Every listen gives me my new favorite part and uncovers more and more of its treasures. Savage and beautiful and with unnervingly easy flow, large parts of it are total perfection (“Liquid Gol, “The Paint of An Invader”). I cannot get enough. It’s so good, actually, that it’s made me feel a bit anxious about how much I’ve still missed this year, though I am very glad that this made it to my ears, even at the 11th hour. Divine Laughter is simply one of the greatest things I’ve heard in 2024, and it’s a crime that more people aren’t talking about it.

   #4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I was waiting for Blessing of Despair since January, and as it always is with things we have high expectations for, part of me was preparing for disappointment. That preparation proved unnecessary once I finally got my hands on this in the Autumn. Devenial Verdict delivered. This time, they amped up all their unique little idiosyncrasies that made me fall in love with Ash Blind, and added a criminally heavy helping of groove. This thing is atmospheric and punchy, providing soundscapes that are just as haunting and mysterious(TM) as they are stomping and cutthroat. Either way, these riffs will make you shiver. “Garden of Eyes”! “Solus”! Ahhhh! Even “Counting Silence” and “A Curse Made Flesh,” which I initially dismissed as a little understated, have this delicious melancholic presence I just want to be immersed in 24/7. Devenial Verdict’s slick mixture of mournful melody and menacing, barked growls; neck-snapping flicks of cymbal, and those resonant, aggressive chord progressions make for—almost—my favorite take on death metal that exists. The sole reason Blessing of Despair wasn’t my most-played album of 2024 is that I only started in September.4

   #3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – Back in 2017 or so, I was struck by what at the time I considered the most gorgeous opening guitar on any song ever. It was “…Of Solitary Ramblings,” the first track on Selbst’s self-titled debut.5 From that day forward I was enamoured. The undercurrents of lamenting melodrama and a black metal interwoven with a distinctive style of flowing, weeping strums continue to make Selbst very special. But if I had thought that their depths of emotional poignancy and stirring, multi-layered compositions had been reached, Despondency Chord Progressions showed they had not. Cleans that some wrote off as unsavory, rather bring—in my opinion—a new vulnerability, and their rawness compounds the pathos of already intensely cathartic compositions. The album’s title is, as I noted, an apt descriptor for the musical themes, but really undersells the cry of grief and despair that erupts from the music with every shuddering, tremolo-shaken, surge and every plaintive, somber quietude. I stand by what I said back in April, that “[t]his is black metal at its most stirring, entrancingly beautiful, and existentially affecting.” The sheer magnitude of its impassioned peaks (“Third World Wretchedness,” “Between Seclusion and Obsession”) and the sting of its humanity (“When true Loneliness is Experienced,” “Chant of Self Confrontation”) are like nothing else in the genre.

   #2. Amiensus // Reclamation [Parts 1 & 2] – Take it up in the comments if you think this is cheating; Reclamation is one work in my eyes. And what a masterpiece. Each part a gorgeous, immersive side of one breathtaking journey that is best experienced together. I remain stunned by Amiensus’ mastery of musical storytelling through a flowing, intricate soundscape—at turns triumphant (“Vermillion Fog of War,” “Sólfarið”), sorrowful (“Reverie,” “Leprosarium”), and always stirring. Everything about Reclamation is graceful, which is another part of its magic because it’s not as though Amiensus left the black metal behind. Rather they seem to have found the deepest essence of the genre’s unique propensity for raw emotional expression, and moulded its elements into what is hands-down the most beautiful thing I’ve heard at least this year. It is, as I noted in my write-up of Part 1, a distillation of pure joy, and uplifting no matter how wistful (“Sun and Moon”), or suffused with bittersweet longing (“A Consciousness Throughout Time,” “Acquiescence”). And with so much of it—albeit, a time that flashes by with thrilling speed—it’s impossible not to get lost in. “Sun and Moon” was so close to being my favorite song of 2024, and in another year, it would have been. For that matter, in another year Reclamation itself would have claimed the top spot on this list.

   #1. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – What else could it have been? I worry that by this point I may have used up all of the words that are possible to describe this pinnacle of excellence. In reality, though, I’m not sure I even have the words to express it in the first place, not for lack of trying. Ulcerate have long been a behemoth in their realm within the larger world of death metal, but while distinctive, they have never settled, continually carving up the template of dissonance with varyingly-sized blades of atmosphere and melody, moving between their most barbed and chaotic (Everything is Fire) to their most somber and moody (The Destroyers of All) in just one album. Later Shrines of Paralysis—my former favorite—saw a turn back towards the urgency and aggression, but with this new harmonic undercurrent in place. With hindsight, I can see now that the deeply atmospheric, disquieting Stare into Death and Be Still marked a turning point, paving the ground for what could be their magnum opus. Distilling the tension and the turmoil, into tidal forces of incredible rhythm, and dark, brilliant melody, with Cutting the Throat of God, Ulcerate reach transcendence. Dire (“The Dawn is Hollow”), deadly (“Transfiguration in and Out of Worlds”), devastating (“To See Death Just Once,” “Cutting the Throat of God”). Its intricacies only continue to reveal themselves to me; helped, no doubt, by a phenomenal live performance that bewitched me anew this October. I had to upgrade this album’s score to Iconic, because it is. This is atmospheric death metal perfected, and if genre-mates weren’t already looking in Ulcerate’s direction, there’s hardly any choice now. Cutting the Throat of God represents, in the greatest form, “the savagery, authenticity, and more recently, beauty that makes this icon of the dissonant death metal world who they are.”

   Honorable Mentions:

   Gaerea // Coma – Despite having calmed down considerably from my previous Gaerea overhype, there’s no denying that they’ve really got something. With a new vocalist, they retain their distinctively melodramatic and intense style, while incorporating a little more vulnerability via some genuinely really lovely cleans. A great record that just wasn’t great enough for the ridiculously high standard set by this year’s fare.

   Eye Eater // Alienate – I am immensely grateful for Dolphin Whisperer for bringing this to my attention. Much of this album feels like it was written specifically for me, because it uses pretty much all of my favorite things in metal. It’s atmospheric and dissonant, like Ulcerate and others in that vein; it’s kind of post-death-y, and replete with minor melodies, and a particular kind of urgency my brain associates with specific kinds of ‘-core’. I just didn’t get quite enough time with it.

   Songs of the Year

   “To See Death Just Once” – Ulcerate

   “Sun and Moon” – Amiensus

   “Solus” – Devenial Verdict

   “Terminal” – Vorga

   “Third World Wretchedness” – Selbst

   “The Paint of an Invader” – Cave Sermon

   “A Day After” – Föhn

   “Ábær” – Hamferð

   “Inversion” – Endonomos

   “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity” – Spectral Voice

   “Leaving” – Pillar of Light

   Maddog

   It’s been a weird year, and this is a weird list. Last December, I lamented the emotional hollowness of 2023’s metal output. If anything, 2024 fell even flatter. My most anticipated heavyweights were competent but inconsistent (Alcest, Julie Christmas), and few albums moved me. Unfazed, death metal picked up the slack and made this year a pleasure. Led by a flurry of excellent releases from genre titans, 2024 helped rekindle my love for cantankerous death metal.

   Even so, the brutality of 2024’s output shocked me. Despite my worship of Suffocation and Dying Fetus, most brutal death metal releases of the last decade haven’t gripped me. But 2024 pulled me onto the brutal train with creativity and pizzazz. Both the techy and the knuckle-dragging corners of that subgenre thrived, including several artists that didn’t make my list (like Gigan, Iniquitous Savagery, and Nile). After tending toward more emotive music and other poseur nonsense in recent years, I took a long jump back in 2024.

   As if that wasn’t enough, this was a banner year for dissonance. That’s a sentence I never expected to type; even dissonant death metal’s classics tend to be hit-or-miss with me. In 2024, the skronk finally broke through, aided by many avant-garde bands drifting toward a more accessible sound. This year’s screechy screeds were cogent enough to grab my arm and unhinged enough to rip it out of its socket. It’s been a jarring but eye-opening year.

   This comment from the Brodequin review doubles as a summary of my 2024 music picks:

   I wonder if I, we, they or all of us have a screw loose.

   Heading into 2024, I craved immersive soundscapes and misty eyes. Instead, I was met with discordant gurgling. I didn’t expect it, but I don’t regret it.

   #ish. Hypoxia // Defiance – Defiance never gets old. This old-school death metal behemoth has been around for ten months and hails from a subgenre that’s infamous for monotony. And yet, like Monstrosity’s best work, it blossoms on every spin. Defiance sports 2024’s fiercest harsh vocal performance, and riffwork so potent that it could revive the Selbst baby. I don’t have anything fancy to add, so I won’t try. Defiance is a rare death metal record that’s simple, thrilling, and well-written.

   #10. Dawn Treader // Bloom & Decay – The thought sometimes crosses my mind: Why does atmospheric black metal even exist? The musical possibilities abound; who would pay $8 for tremolo scales recorded in a rest stop bathroom? Records like Bloom & Decay jolt me out of my pretension. Dawn Treader’s underground gem is both a product and a peddler of overpowering emotion. Ross Connell unleashes a tirade against violence and oppression using grief-stricken guitar melodies. On the flip side, Bloom & Decay’s heavy use of major keys—my second biggest fear—blurs the line between despair and tentative hope. Most impressive is the album’s flow, which Itchymenace described better than I ever could: “The majority of Bloom & Decay is instrumental, but you hardly notice because the music has such a storytelling quality.” Bloom & Decay’s 53-minute chokehold on my heart is ineffable but unyielding.

   #9. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Germany’s nameless Noise has built up a remarkable CV – 7 years, 3 bands, 8 albums. While I’ve often enjoyed his music, I never fell under his spell. Die Urkatastrophe was the last straw. A pacifist tirade told through first-person WWI vignettes, Die Urkatastrophe depicts nationalist violence and its aftermath. Armed with a sharp-edged blackened death foundation and surging chorus melodies, Kanonenfieber provides rewarding fodder even for unfeeling riff addicts. However, its excellence lies in its raw emotion. Both Noise’s lyrics and his songwriting embrace a “show, don’t tell” approach that brings the album to life. As the narrator’s cavalry offensive meets with a hilltop ambush in “Gott mit der Kavallerie,” Kanonenfieber’s upbeat riffs transform into a sudden dirge followed by frantic black metal. The epic “Waffenbrüder” evokes the wide-eyed optimism of childhood friends, the pride of enlisting, the tragedy of losing a companion, and the regrets of a life wasted. Die Urkatastrophe is both a transformative album and exemplary storytelling.

   #8. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Chronicles of Lunacy is essential listening for any fans of extreme metal. Its greatest triumph is its fine mix of Defeated Sanity’s signature ingredients. Chronicles excels as pure brutal death metal through punishing caveman riffs and a tasteful dose of slam. Vaughn Stoffey’s guitars elevate this to an art form using wily fretboard acrobatics and seamless jazzy breaks. Led by kit-meister Lille Gruber, Defeated Sanity’s off-kilter rhythms and heavy syncopation miraculously aid the album’s staying power rather than hindering it. Put simply, Chronicles of Lunacy is 2024’s most vivid reminder of why I love death metal. I love its unforgiving brutality; I love its dazzling technicality; I love its groove; I love its genre-bending creative expression; I love its rhythmic feats of strength; I love its intellect; I love its idiocy. In other words, I love Defeated Sanity.

   #7. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – It’s a match made in heaven: Cutting the Throat of God is Ulcerate for dummies, and I’m a dummy. Ulcerate continues to march toward more accessible ground, leaving behind the merciless dissonance of Everything is Fire. Powerful melodic themes peek through the chaos and take time to shine, offering both souvenirs and footholds. Despite Cutting’s lowbrow appeal, Ulcerate’s inimitable signature remains. Unease pervades the record, and Ulcerate’s cohesive songwriting transforms it from a concept to an emotion. In Thus Spoke’s words, Jamie Saint Merat’s drums are “more body than skeleton,” using their distinctive start-stop style to guide the mood. The album’s climaxes alone justify a purchase, as hypnotic melodies and frenzied dissonance coalesce into a tsunami. In short, Cutting the Throat of God captured both my brain and my heart.

   #6. Hippotraktor // Stasis – I first heard about Belgium’s Hippotraktor from an insistent coworker, long before I discovered GardensTale’s well-worded underrating. Psychonaut meets Karnivool meets The Ocean meets Meshuggah in this pounding, beautiful prog/post adventure. Stasis’ hard-won achievement is that it navigates through disparate ideas with fluidity and flair. Psychonaut-drenched sludge forms a jagged backbone that sways between meditative and explosive. Meanwhile, Hippotraktor’s mastery of melody catapults them into genre royalty. “Stasis” uses this superpower for peaceful guitar jams, “Echoes” uses it for soaring As I Lay Dying vocal lines, and “The Reckoning” uses it for haunting continuity across its eight minutes. The djenty interdjections are well-written and screwed in tight, packing a punch even for listeners with severe djent allerdjies. Stasis is a bold statement from a new band, and it’s jostled up my list posthaste.

   #5. Hell:on // Shaman – Hell:on’s folk-infused take on death metal stands apart. Shaman’s diverse influences complement each other and flourish in isolation. Phrygian themes, throat singing, and driving sitars steer the album. But despite Shaman’s folk roots, it’s an excellent slab of death metal. Hell:on’s riffs recall the threatening leviathans of Nile’s Annihilation of the Wicked, while the narrative song structures feel like a roided-out Aeternam. Even among such storied company, Shaman’s melodies stand out. Over the record’s runtime, Hell:on’s guitars shred, soar, flail, and wallop, evolving smoothly and dragging the listener along. As icing on the cake, Holdeneye’s review of Shaman features the most sobering and most badass introductory story of 2024. Hell:on demanded my attention and earned it.

   #4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I started warming up to Exhaust on my first listen, but it took a while to diagnose why. Pyrrhon’s earlier releases didn’t click with me, but Exhaust is a trailblazer and a paradox. Pyrrhon rewrites the textbook on riffs, displaying a mastery of groove even in their wildest moments. And the noisier cuts, which remind me most of Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Velvet Underground, are evocative narratives rather than lifeless technical exercises. The longer pieces intersperse hypnotic buildups with furious cacophony (“Out of Gas”), while the shorter tracks are simultaneously caustic and infectious. With a thick leading bass performance and a master that highlights every detail of the drums, Exhaust grows on me with every spin. Pyrrhon’s off-the-deep-end brand of experimental death metal isn’t my usual fare, but I can’t avert my ears this time. Both mellifluous and disgusting, both rifftastic and immersive, Exhaust is singular.

   #3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – My first toe dip into Selbst made a lasting impression. Shortly after Despondency Chord Progressions came out, I spun it at the office. In the final minute of the opener “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos,” I felt the involuntary tears start to flow, and I had to nuke the music and run to the bathroom to avoid worrying my desk neighbor. This embarrassing first encounter perfectly encapsulates the album. While it’s “merely” black metal, its gorgeous melodies and shrilling tremolos showcase the genre at its finest. Alternating between meditative dirges and howling chords, Selbst conveys both muffled sobs and hysterical bawling. Selbst’s fluid compositions captivated me at once and dug their claws even deeper over the ensuing months. The most heart-rending record of 2024, Despondency Chord Progressions showcases the paralyzing power of music.

   #2. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Noxis’ debut is a remarkable blend of old and new. The album’s stomping riffs and popping snare drum root it in 1990s brutal death metal. Conversely, its exuberantly grimy bass tone, its proggy rhythms, and its surprise woodwind extravaganza feel unabashedly modern. Much like last year’s Ohio death metal highlight, Violence Inherent in the System succeeds by ripping throughout, whether with a vile Dying Fetus riff or with an adventurous bass melody. Although this is the longest record in my top five, its 46 minutes fly by. Boasting momentum that would make Newton blush, Noxis keeps the energy high from the barnburner “Skullcrushing Defilement” to the proggy old-school “Emanations of the Sick.” After six months of scrutinizing and adoring Violence, I still can’t fathom that this is a debut album.

   #1. Wormed // Omegon – I’ve already said my piece on this, and nothing has changed. Omegon feels as thrilling, as alien, as robotic, and as human as it did in July. In a year where brutality and dissonance thrived, Wormed maxed out both dimensions. Omegon is at once a painstakingly crafted work of art, an all-consuming atmosphere, and 2024’s punchiest death metal record.

   Honorable Mentions:

   • Oxygen Destroyer // Guardian of the Universe – Redefining Darkness strikes again. Oxygen Destroyer’s latest death-thrash opus is a concise half hour of exhilarating riffs. The album sounds one track, but I don’t care; it gains steam as it progresses, and it lodges deeper on every listen. There’s no excuse for missing this.
   • Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – Despite its morose title, Harbinger of Woe is straightforward and riotous. Brodequin has honed a sleek archetype of brutal death metal, far from the likes of Wormed. It doesn’t aim to innovate; it just aims for high impact. It succeeds.
   • Kryptos // Decimator – India’s heavy metal kings dealt me an irreplaceable shot of adrenaline. Decimator is Kryptos’ most melodically inspired work to date, an absolute scorcher, and the most viscerally satisfying production job of 2024.
   • Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – Somehow, despite competition from In Aphelion and Necrophobic themselves, Necrowretch churned out the best Necrophobic album of 2024.

   Songs o’ the Year:

   1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
   2. Hippotraktor – “The Reckoning”
   3. Kanonenfieber – “Waffenbrüder”
   4. Hypoxia – “Scorched and Skinned”
   5. Kryptos – “Fall to the Spectre’s Gaze”
   6. Wormed – “Protogod”
   7. Alcest – “Améthyste”
   8. Defeated Sanity – “Heredity Violated”
   9. Andy Gillion – “Acceptance”
   10. Selbst – “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos”
   11. Pyrrhon – “Out of Gas”
   12. Ulcerate – “Cutting the Throat of God”
   13. Noxis – “Abstemious, Pious Writ of Life”
   14. Keygen Church – “La Chiave del mio Amor”

   #2024 #Amiensus #BlogPost #Brodequin #CaveSermon #ColdCell #DawnTreader #DefeatedSanity #DevenialVerdict #EyeEater #Föhn #Gaerea #Hamferð #HellOn #Hippotraktor #Hypoxia #Kanonenfeiber #Kryptos #Necrowretch #Noxis #OxygenDestroyer #PillarOfLight #Pyrrhon #Replicant #Selbst #SpectralVoice #ThusSpokeAndMaddogSTopTenIshOf2024 #Ulcerate #Wormed

   #wormed #ulcerate #thusspokeandmaddogstoptenishof2024 #spectralvoice #selbst #replicant
6. 

   Billows @[email protected] · 2026-03-07 · 13:41 UTC

   CW: Nude Model

   Dionisia #Sexy #Femjoy #Nude

   #sexy #femjoy #nude
7. 

   Billows @[email protected] · 2026-03-07 · 13:41 UTC

   CW: Nude Model

   Dionisia #Sexy #Femjoy #Nude

   #sexy #femjoy #nude
8. 

   Billows @[email protected] · 2026-03-07 · 13:41 UTC

   CW: Nude Model

   Dionisia #Sexy #Femjoy #Nude

   #sexy #femjoy #nude
9. 

   MikeHuckebein ☮️:nona: :lgbt: @[email protected] · 2024-05-30 · 11:52 UTC

   #ZumaDionys #Dionysius

   https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=nAWtBhPfh74

   #dionysius #zumadionys
10. 

    Gospel in Krefeld @[email protected] · 2023-12-13 · 08:25 UTC

    Unter dem Titel "Winterklänge" steht ein Chorwochenende mit Chören aus #Krefeld und der Partnerstadt #Venlo am 16. und 17. Dezember 2023. Der Krefelder #Gospelchor #LivingVoices tritt mit einem #Gospel-Programm am Sonntag, 17. Dezember, um 15 Uhr in der #Dionysiuskirche auf.
    https://krefeld650.de/event/winterklaenge-mit-venloer-und-krefelder-choeren/

    #dionysiuskirche #gospel #livingvoices #gospelchor #venlo #krefeld
11. 

    Alaska Native News @[email protected] · 2023-06-02 · 13:00 UTC

    This Day in Alaskan History-June 2nd, 1840
    [the_ad id="30587"]

    [the_ad id="37544"]

    https://alaska-native-news.com/june-2nd-1840/49398/
    #dionysius #hudson bay #Russia #saint #shakes #stikine #united states #wrangel

    #dionysius #hudson #russia #saint #shakes #stikine
12. 

    Alaska Native News @[email protected] · 2023-06-02 · 13:00 UTC

    This Day in Alaskan History-June 2nd, 1840
    [the_ad id="30587"]

    [the_ad id="37544"]

    https://alaska-native-news.com/june-2nd-1840/49398/
    #dionysius #hudson bay #Russia #saint #shakes #stikine #united states #wrangel

    #dionysius #hudson #russia #saint #shakes #stikine
13. 

    Alaska Native News @[email protected] · 2023-06-02 · 13:00 UTC

    This Day in Alaskan History-June 2nd, 1840
    [the_ad id="30587"]

    [the_ad id="37544"]

    https://alaska-native-news.com/june-2nd-1840/49398/
    #dionysius #hudson bay #Russia #saint #shakes #stikine #united states #wrangel

    #dionysius #hudson #russia #saint #shakes #stikine
14. 

    Greg Johnson @[email protected] · 2025-03-25 · 09:57 UTC

    Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, early Christian, writes on Christians in a plague. They visited, prayed, and died with the sick without a thought of peril. They laded selves with pains.

    We saw Christians object to COVID measures if it laded selves with pains. Others wanted to close borders when dark people might have a disease, but let in cruise ships full of sick white people.

    How can you demonstrate exceeding love & brotherly-kindness?

    #christian #churchs #TheTruth #yesandamen #repentance

    #christian #churchs #thetruth #yesandamen #repentance
15. 

    MikeHuckebein ☮️:nona: :lgbt: @[email protected] · 2024-05-30 · 11:52 UTC

    #ZumaDionys #Dionysius

    https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=nAWtBhPfh74

    #zumadionys #dionysius
16. 

    MikeHuckebein ☮️:nona: :lgbt: @[email protected] · 2024-05-30 · 11:52 UTC

    #ZumaDionys #Dionysius

    https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=nAWtBhPfh74

    #zumadionys #dionysius
17. 

    MikeHuckebein ☮️:nona: :lgbt: @[email protected] · 2024-05-30 · 11:52 UTC

    #ZumaDionys #Dionysius

    https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=nAWtBhPfh74

    #zumadionys #dionysius
18. 

    MikeHuckebein ☮️:nona: :lgbt: @[email protected] · 2024-05-30 · 11:52 UTC

    #ZumaDionys #Dionysius

    https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=nAWtBhPfh74

    #zumadionys #dionysius
19. 

    Venice church of Christ @[email protected] · 2026-03-01 · 15:00 UTC

    Imagine being Damaris or Dionysius. Our lives should be transformed by the Gospel just like theirs were.

    03.01 | The Voice 16.09 | #Transformed by the #Gospel
    https://www.venicechurchofchrist.org/voice/transformedgospel/

    #transformed #gospel
20. 

    Whatyawannasee 🏳️‍🌈🇫🇷 @[email protected] · 2023-06-13 · 17:37 UTC

    CW: NSFW; Adults only; 18+

    JJ Knight And DO #Dionysius

    #gay #gayporn #porn #bareback #fucking

    #JJKnight #DO #Dionysius

    #do #jjknight #fucking #bareback #porn #gayporn
21. 

    V Martín @[email protected] · 2022-11-24 · 08:26 UTC

    #TBT to the wonderful eastern rim of Dionysius crater, as imaged by #LROC

    More info here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4221

    and to navigate the whole rim in exquisite detail, down to individual boulders and their downslope tracks, check the interactive pic at the bottom of this other post:

    http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/748

    #DionysiusCrater #Moon #Space

    #tbt #lroc #dionysiuscrater #moon #space
22. 

    50+ Music @[email protected] · 2025-07-27 · 01:09 UTC

    #OnThisDay in 2022, #TomSpringfield [Dionysius O'Brien], British folk-pop singer-songwriter (The Springfields; The Seekers - "Georgy Girl"), died at 88.
    #RIP 💔🕊️

    #onthisday #tomspringfield #rip
23. 

    Geeks anciens @[email protected] · 2023-02-27 · 09:22 UTC

    Du 18 au 27 mars à Paris auront lieu les Dionysies, festival de théâtre antique organisé par la compagnie @demodocos Il donnera lieu, entre autres, à une récitation de l'intégralité de "L'Odyssée" d'Homère, à plusieurs pièces de théâtre (dont "Antigone" de Sophocle, "Les Suppliantes" d'Euripide, "Les Perses" d'Eschyle) et à des lectures de Platon.
    http://www.demodocos.fr/2023/02/27/les-dionysies-du-18-mars-au-27-mars-2023/
    #GeeksAnciens #GrèceAntique #Théâtre #Paris #Homère #Platon #Tragédie #Odyssée #lecture

    #geeksanciens #greceantique #theatre #paris #homere #platon
24. 

    Swabcraft @Swabcraft · 2022-04-11 · 20:28 UTC

    Bacchanalia Dream
    https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/107289820

    #deepdream #artwork #lovely #party #cult #deepdreamstyle #deepdreamgenerator #art #bacchanalia #modernart #artnouveau #publicdomain #neuralnetwork #ai #aiart #grapes #beauty #beautiful #wine #drunk #greek #bacchus #dionsyiua #Dionysius #succulent

    #succulent #dionysius #dionsyiua #bacchus #greek #drunk
25. 

    Alexander Huber @[email protected] · 2026-02-09 · 21:01 UTC

    On this day (169 years ago), Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857) died this day.

    Poems appear in the #RomanticPeriodPoetryArchive:
    https://www.romanticperiodpoetry.org/authors/#id/pers00125

    #c19th #poetry #DH #Romanticism #19thC #OnThisDay #OTD

    #romanticperiodpoetryarchive #c19th #poetry #dh #romanticism #19thc
26. 

    Bagolina @[email protected] · 2025-02-27 · 20:08 UTC

    #Pompei, torna alla luce un ciclo dionisiaco che accende la politica | il manifesto
    https://ilmanifesto.it/pompei-torna-alla-luce-un-ciclo-dionisiaco-che-accende-la-politica
    De nouvelles #fresques d'un cycle dyonisiaque découvertes à Pompéi
    #archeologie

    #pompei #fresques #archeologie
27. 

    info-war.gr @[email protected] · 2024-05-27 · 15:00 UTC

    Ένα νέο βιβλίο του Διονύση Ελευθεράτου για το «τέρας» της «Μεταπολίτευσης» https://info-war.gr/ena-neo-vivlio-toy-dionysi-eleytherato/ #απαλλοτριωμενα #εκδόσειςΤόπος #ελευθεράτος #σκαμνάκης

    #απαλλοτριωμενα #εκδόσειςτόπος #ελευθεράτος #σκαμνάκης
28. 

    mythologyandhistory @[email protected] · 2024-02-22 · 05:32 UTC

    Did you know that there was a #god that is claimed to be a previous version of Dionysios?

    The #Phrygian people were nomads that settled in Anatolia. They brought their pantheon, including a god named Sabazios.

    He was a god of #agriculture, teaching humans how to cultivate plants.
    His followers would #dance & get #drunk.

    #Ancient #Greeks equated Sabazios to Dionysos.

    It was said that Sabazios was ripped apart by #Titans & reassembled as the Greek god of #wine.

    #mythology

    #mythology #wine #titans #greeks #ancient #drunk
29. 

    Michael @[email protected] · 2023-09-01 · 16:59 UTC

    Da ich gerade unterwegs war, gleich noch schnell das Street Food und Musik Festival auf dem Dionysiusplatz gestreift. #PulledPorkBurger #Churros

    #pulledporkburger #churros
30. 

    Darestiet @[email protected] · 2023-04-25 · 11:40 UTC

    Orgelmai 2023 nennt der Kirchenmusiker Niklas Piel die Reihe von fünf Konzerten an der Klais-Orgel in der #Dionysiuskirche #Krefeld. Samstags um 18 Uhr sind jeweils junge Organist:innen eingeladen. Das erste Konzert am 29. April bestreitet Niklas Piel selbst. Eintritt frei, Spende erwünscht.
    #Kirchenmusik #Orgel #Orgelkonzert
    https://johannes23-krefeld.de/liturgie-und-spiritualitaet/kirchenmusik/konzerte-orgelmusik_0001/

    #orgelkonzert #orgel #kirchenmusik #krefeld #dionysiuskirche