Commentary On "The 'Myth' of Bestia Centauri"

The essay posted immediately below, "The 'Myth' of Bestia Centauri", had its genesis in e-mail correspondence with one or two individuals who expressed interest in the project following the release of Ubbo-Sathla. The material dates from ca. 2002. I later expanded my ideas into a formal essay, which has since been taken, willy nilly, as a sort of "programmatic" statement for the project.


It now seems appropriate to re-publish the essay here. Of course, as anyone might expect, after a period of ten years, there is much that I would change if I were to write such a piece today. Because this is an archive of material related to Bestia Centauri, however, I shall let it stand unrevised, for others to make of it what they will. Is it a product of illumination, a visionary statement? Is it a load of pretentious bollocks? Is it an elaborate joke? Is it, in some measure, all three, simultaneously? Again, I leave this for the reader (and listener) to decide.

The "Myth" of Bestia Centauri

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

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

My aim is to understand and channel the Cthulhu-like emanations of the Beast consciously, as a sort of "priest", or Earthly avatar or representative. The Beast is akin to Lovecraft's fictional Cthulhu, in that it "calls" those who are receptive to its nature. (The figure of "Satan", by contrast, is a mere acolyte at the altar of the Beast, which is, in itself, far from such a human conception.) In fact, the Beast is utterly beyond any human conceptions; one can, at best, use figurative and poetic language to capture its attributes. At the same time, however, attunement to the Beast is a means of transferring to oneself acausal energy from the outer spheres, in order to increase chaos and "presence the darkness" on Earth. The diffusion of such energy is necessary to the transformation of an elect few (those who appear to be like other humans, but who are, in fact, demonic intelligences bearing the human form) into what Nietzsche referred to as the Superhuman, a new sort of race--or, ultimately--species!--altogether.

Of course, the Beast itself cares nothing for the humanoid species or any other: It merely emanates the energy that enables certain inhabitants of the cosmos to "raise the sail", if you like, and harness this energy in a sort of self-directed evolution. As is stated in the esoteric tradition of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, the majority of the human race are, despite appearances, mere unconscious automata. They exist only to provide "food for the moon"; that is, to provide energy off which other bodies in the cosmic economy may feed. For those who wish to escape the general law, such conscious, self-directed evolution offers the only hope. Invariably, this evolution takes the form of what the uninitiated would call monstrous, in the original sense of the Latin etymology for the term monster: a prodigy, something outside nature.

In sum, tapping into the "crawling chaos" of acausal energies, such as the Beast emanates, is the pathway to the Superhuman. This is why the music mediated through the inspiration of the Beast is so unhuman; in its small way, it spreads acausal energies that will affect those who hear it either positively or negatively. For those who resonate to primal myths of chaos, to Lovecraftian vortices, to visions of icy planets whose volcanoes weep tears of blood, to the secrets of dark matter, or to the interstices of interstellar chaos, the music of the Beast will infuse them with degrees of acausal energy. To those who are not attuned to these mysteries, however, the music will sound like mere noise, or will even cause or exacerbate physical illness. For example, in the one negative review that my music has received so far, the reviewer complained that the music was similar to the effects of a stomach virus from which he was suffering! This is wonderful; it is exactly the sort of effect that the music should have on such persons! This music is intended to be dynamic and, most of all, disorienting, like the strange angles of the architecture of R'lyeh.

One should also note that it is electricity that best bears this force, which is why electronic music, with its ability to replicate and create such strange sonorities and frequencies, is also the best means of propagating this form of acausal energy. As a concluding note, it is also worthwhile to mention that, if others wish merely to interpret the above as an allegorical or metaphorical evocation of Rudolph Otto's concept of the Numinous (Mysterium tremendum et fascinans; "a fearful and fascinating mystery"), then they are welcome to do so!