We are pleased to announce that the first official Mordor’s T-shirt named Life is Nothing<\/em>, originally self-released in 1994, is now reissued by Archivist Records with additional elements, and is available through the Music Hall webshop<\/a>. We owe special thanks to the graphic designer Ben Havlicek, who kindly worked on the layout of this new version.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n This conceptual T-shirt was related to the track \u201cIn Search of the Pure Negation<\/a>\u201d, our first one directly dealing with the Tantric Left-Hand path, initially featured on the 1993 thematic compilation \u201cThe Way of Nihilism<\/a>\u201d before being used as bonus track on the Wild Rags CD version of Csejthe<\/em> in 1995. Consequently, the novel version of Life is Nothing<\/em> includes one strophe inserted into the Mordor seal from a Sanskrit hymn in praise of the Dark Goddess K\u0101l\u012b, ascribed to the famous \u0100di \u015aa\u1e45kar\u0101c\u0101rya, founder of a Hindu monastic tradition, who not only consolidated the nondualistic metaphysical doctrine of the Advaita Ved\u0101nta school, but also composed several devotional odes. From a henotheist perspective, the Goddess equated with the attributeless, formless brahman<\/em> (the highest principle) is beyond n\u0101mar\u016bpa<\/em>, \u201cname and form\u201d (i.e. archetype and aspect), as Her dark complexion may suggest, and She is in a way the negation of the negation constituted by the manifest cosmos compared to the unconditioned Absolute: \u201cJust as all colours disappear in black so all names and forms disappear in K\u0101l\u012b\u201d, as a Tantra says.[1]<\/a> She is the supreme, inconceivable Darkness beyond both speech and mind prevailing before the emergence of the pair of opposites such as daylight\/night, good\/evil, subject\/object, etc., which are but mutually dependent correlations, and of the worlds, the nature of nature.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n The provocative motto \u201cLife is Nothing\u201d was borrowed from the lyrics of \u201cIn Search of the Pure Negation\u201d and was later used as title for the rare bootleg tape \u201cLife is <\/a>Nothing<\/a>!<\/a>\u201d issued in 2009. It emphasises the transient character of life, its deepest incertitude, especially in an absurd and flawed world, and the fact that all conditioned existences are subject to suffering, decline, and destruction: all that is born must perish, all that is produced or composed must disintegrate. As Schopenhauer wrote in The World as Will and Representation<\/em>: \u201cDying is certainly to be regarded as the real aim of life; at the moment of dying, everything is decided, which through the whole course of life was only prepared and introduced.\u201d In a song, the great Nahua king-poet and philosopher Nezahualcoy\u014dtzin asks:<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIs it true that we are happy, According to several schools of Hinduism, the only possibility to escape from the slavery of the cycle of multiple births and deaths is spiritual liberation and recognition of our real nature, by different means, like gn\u014dsis<\/em> or j\u00f1\u0101na<\/em>[3]<\/a>, a suprarational knowledge that is in the end not theoretical information about things by rational cognition, but liberating, experiential wisdom able to release man from the primal ignorance (aj\u00f1\u0101na)<\/em> and all bondage. At a lower level, it may already result in an internal transformation of the human condition, the existential plane, and the view of the world: the crude \u201cliving more\u201d or \u201cwill to live\u201d should give place to a \u201cmore than living\u201d. D\u00f3xa<\/em> (common belief or opinion) and epist\u1e17m\u0113<\/em> (in the sense of \u201cknowledge by reasoning\u201d) may be possibly useful tools or mostly insurmountable obstacles on the path, but eventually we really know only what we have directly experienced. According to the words of the Kul\u0101r\u1e47ava Tantra, <\/em>more than ever relevant: \u201cOnce this essence, this Truth is known all other knowledge is useless [\u2026] J\u00f1\u0101na<\/em>, real knowledge alone can give the liberation. Neither prescribed stages of life [the four \u0101\u015brama<\/em>-s] nor philosophies nor sciences can give the deliverance; only j\u00f1\u0101na <\/em>can give it.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n The T-shirt also includes a Gnostic serpent with a moon representing\nhere the hidden nocturnal wisdom opposed to the limited diurnal knowledge\nrelated to the mind. If serpents \u2013 as corporeal animals or animistic entities\nappearing as snakes \u2013 are both worshipped and feared throughout the world,\nwhile being symbolically ambiguous, they are often considered creatures of\nrenewal, wisdom and power. Several serpent cults like those of the N\u0101ga-s and\nN\u0101g\u012b-s in India, Nepal and other countries, \u201ckeepers of the lowest levels of\nthe Lower World realms\u201d, or the domestic \u017ealtys<\/em> \u201cgrass serpent\u201d in\nancient pagan Lithuania to name a few, are attested. To be swallowed during an\necstatic travel by a serpent, a dragon \u201cson or daughter of earth\u201d or an \u201cearth\nmonster\u201d may be a way to access to the centre of the Earth and be possibly\ngranted with knowledge of some of Her chthonic mysteries or others. In Angel\nand Titan: an Essay in Vedic Ontology<\/em>, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy cites a\nsignificant passage from the Pa\u00f1cavi\u1e43\u015ba Br\u0101hma\u1e47a<\/em>, that says: \u201cBy that\nsacrificial session, the serpents conquered Death; he conquers Death who\nfollows the same course. Thereby they shook off their old skin, and crept\nonwards, put away Death and conquered him. The serpents are the \u0100dity\u00e1-s [a\ndistinct class of Vedic deities, later linked to the months of the year]. He\nwho follows the same course shall shine with the \u0100dity\u00e1-s’ glory.\u201d The author\nremarks: \u201cTo put off the snake skin corresponds, accordingly, to \u2018<\/em>putting off the old man\u2019<\/em>\u201d, and escaping in the Vedic context to\nthe negative bonds of the god Varu\u1e47a, who has contrasted aspects and whose name\nis interpreted as \u201cHe who covers or binds\u201d.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n An interesting reference to the serpent as liberator of mankind is found in Gnosticism, more specifically in the Ophites, a designation for a variety of Gnostic sects maybe coined by a Christian theologian. We know that in the Book of Genesis the snake played a deceptive role for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. However, it is worth noting that in the Gnostic tractate The Hypostasis of the Archons<\/em> for example, the narrative is inverted: the garden is a prison and the \u201cfemale spiritual principle\u201d entered a serpent to instruct Adam and Eve, created materially and psychically by a blind demiurge who arrogantly stated \u201cI am god; there is no other but me\u201d and forbade them to eat from the tree of knowledge, for they will die. The snake advised Adam and Eve to transgress the prohibition: \u201cIt is not the case that you will surely die, for out of jealousy he [the chief demiurge] said this to you. Rather, your eyes will open and you will be like gods, recognizing evil and good.\u201d[5]<\/a> Then Eve took the fruit from the tree and gave to Adam as well as herself, \u201cand those beings, who possessed only a soul, ate. And their imperfection became apparent in their lack of knowledge. They recognized that they were naked of the spiritual […]\u201d.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n They were expelled from the garden and cursed by the demiurge and\nthe rulers, but for Adam and Eve it was the necessary awareness of their\ncondition and ignorance; their disobedience was an act of liberation. Later,\namong their progeny there were spiritual human beings like Seth \u2013 the perfect\nman \u2013 and her young sister Norea in contrast to the psychic (Abel) and the\nmaterial (Cain) sons born from the union of Eve with the Archons, according to\none interpretation of the text. Norea, \u201cthe virgin whom the forces did not defile\u201d,\nwill defy the Archons who want to rape her as they had her mother, and Noah\n(she burns the ark with her fiery breath), before receiving the knowledge of\nher true nature, and the origin and fate of the archontic rulers by one of the\nfour Sethian luminaries, Eleleth. Norea may exemplify the arduous Gnostic quest\nfor wisdom necessary to spiritual liberation.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Text and notes under the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0<\/a>.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> Quotation from the Mah\u0101nirv\u0101\u1e47a Tantra<\/em> taken from Kali, The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar<\/em> by Elisabeth U. Harding. In Arthur Avalon’s translation of the first portion of the Tantra, the probable aforementioned verse is rendered as follows: \u201cAs white, yellow, and other colours all disappear in black, in the same way, O \u015aailaj\u0101! [Born of the Mountain] all beings enter K\u0101l\u012b.\u201d An alternate translation by Manmatha Nath Dutt is: \u201cO daughter of the mountain, as white, yellow, and other colours immerge in black so all objects [of the universe] finally disappear in K\u0101l\u012b.\u201d The name of the Goddess may be translated as \u201cThe Black One\u201d or \u201cThe Deep-Blue One\u201d, and one of Her many names or descriptions, T\u0101mas\u012b, also attributed to Durg\u0101, as \u201cThe Dark One\u201d. Another epithet shared by the two Goddesses, K\u0101lar\u0101tr\u012b, is variously rendered as \u201cNight of Darkness\u201d, \u201cNight of Destruction\u201d, \u201cNight of Death\u201d, or \u201cNight of Time\u201d, all translations pointing out that She is the night of dissolution at the end of the worlds.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, Sir John Woodroffe (aka Arthur Avalon) explains in The Garland of Letters<\/em>: \u201cWhen K\u0101l\u012b withdraws the world, that is the names and forms [\u2026], the dualism in consciousness, which is creation, vanishes\u201d, knowing that the present universe is \u201cbut one of a series of worlds which are past and are yet to be.\u201d (The Serpent Power<\/em>). The Mah\u0101nirv\u0101\u1e47a Tantra<\/em> in Avalon’s translation states that \u201cAt the Dissolution of things, it is K\u0101la who will devour all, and by reason of this He is called Mah\u0101k\u0101la [\u201cGreat Time\u201d, a tamasic form of \u015aiva of terrific aspect], and since Thou [K\u0101l\u012b] devourest Mah\u0101k\u0101la Himself, it is Thou who art the Supreme Primordial K\u0101lik\u0101 [another name of K\u0101l\u012b, which means perhaps \u201cLittle Black One\u201d or \u201crelating to time\u201d, glossed by Avalon as \u201cDevourer of Him who devours\u201d].\u201d A quotation from an hymn used for magical purposes, published in the compendium K\u0101l\u012brahasya <\/em>and translated into English by Mike Magee, may fittingly summarise some of the most iconic characteristics of the Goddess: \u201cK\u0101l\u012b, destroyer of time, goddess of skeletal form, taking the form of a raven, blacker than black, I worship you O Dak\u1e63i\u1e47a K\u0101lik\u0101!\u201d. Dak\u1e63i\u1e47a is, inter alia, an epiclesis of K\u0101l\u012b and other deities, with several meanings; in the context of the hymn, the term has probably a sinister significance related to the south, when this cardinal point is viewed in Hinduism as the region of the god Yama, the dead, cremation places and pyres.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> Excerpt from Fifteen Poets of the Aztec\nWorld<\/em>, by Miguel L\u00e9on-Portilla.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> Both words (Ancient Greek and Sanskrit) are ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *\u01f5neh\u2083<\/em> meaning \u201cto know\u201d. Another Sanskrit term sometimes used to indicate spiritual knowledge is vidy\u0101<\/em>, derived from the verbal root vid<\/em> (from PIE root *weyd<\/em>-, \u201cto see; to know\u201d), found also in the word Veda. According to the Dev\u012b G\u012bt\u0101<\/em>, the highest knowledge and goal of the yogas is brahmavidy\u0101<\/em>, \u201cknowledge of brahman<\/em> (the supreme reality)\u201d, which in the perspective of the scripture means knowledge of the Goddess (Dev\u012b) Herself as \u201cthe true form of brahman<\/em>\u201d.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mordorswiss.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/New-version-flyer-Life-cadre-1024x942.png\")
Click here<\/a> to view larger.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
that we live on the earth?
It is not certain that we live
and have come on earth to be happy.
We are all sorely lacking.
Is there any who does not suffer
here, beside the people?\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mordorswiss.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Garlanded-Na\u0304ga.png\")
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