Part 3 now of the following 4-part series on my
idiosyncratic beliefs about “ultimate reality”:
- Azathoth, of the Lovecraft mythos
- Az, of Zoroastrian mythology
- Azerate, of anti-cosmic Satanism, via Dissection’s album “Reinkaos”
- How do you venerate a “blind idiot” god without running a nihilistic death cult?
As mentioned previously, each entry in this series will start off by describing the “primary” entity as I have come to understand it from various sources, and then provide some tie-ins re: why, beyond the “A” and the “z,” I interpret these as all being essentially one being, albeit with three distinguishable facets.
Note about the entry below: Technical terminology for
“what Dissection believes in” has only recently been clarified to me, vs. in
the past absence of said terminology (“The 218 Current”) my ability to seek out
any/all connected literature was hindered.
I have thus not yet gotten around to reading the actual books of the 218
Current, e.g. “Sitra Ahra” and so forth.
Therefore, what follows does not pretend to be a comprehensive take on
how Azerate is conceptualized by that particular Satanic tradition. Rather, it
is a reflection on how I relate what I have discerned about the entity - mostly
via Dissection’s music, but also via a limited selection of online sources – to
other things that I know and believe, so as to arrive at something meaningful
to myself.
* * *
Azerate
Azerate is an entity venerated by black metal band
Dissection on their album Reinkaos. Some
lyrics typical of how the entity is conceptualized can be found in the song
“Beyond the Horizon”:
This is the realm of Azerate, eleven as one
Destroyer of cosmic order, extinguisher of the sun
In this place so sinister I shall find my dreams
Illuminated by the blackest flame to transcend with dragon wings
Salient details thus alluded to include:
- Azerate is a composite being, consisting of eight Dark Gods and three Dark Goddesses, for a total of eleven-entities-in-one.* The significance of the number eleven is tied to this Satanic denomination’s interest in Qabalah (an interest that I myself definitely share), but that is way too complicated a topic to get into in the current entry.
- As a being of chaos, it is an enemy of order in general, but particularly of the current order inasmuch as that order is dominated by light-oriented right-hand-path religions.
- The occult adept who is a devotee of Azerate sees the promised destruction positively, inasmuch as it will deliver them to “a place of eternal freedom, the void where all illusions die,” as lyrics later in the same song state. Multiple Satanic denominations associate “black flame” with self-evolution; context then suggests that “place so sinister” here can be taken to mean “via the left-hand path,” though of course it can also be taken to mean something less ethos-oriented and more overtly-occult-oriented, such as “the acausal realm.”
- As a composite being, Azerate is envisioned as an eleven-headed dragon.* Other songs on the same album refer to “dragon mother” and equate her with primal chaos monsters of every pantheon, e.g. Tiamat, Leviathan, Apep, etc.
(* = the chaos magician in me feels it is salient to point
out: these two details in combination look to yield the somewhat-amusing
conclusion that apparently, what we have here is not only a Hydra in the mythological sense of “multi-headed dragon,”
but also a Hydra in the Marvel sense
of “a group of villains cooperating toward the end of producing maximum
mayhem.” :))
Beyond just the association with chaos, the aspect of
Azerate that makes me think of Azathoth is the reference in multiple songs to
bringing about the apocalypse by waking the
dragon. This detail fits very well, it
seems to me, with the notion that the world’s stability depends on Azathoth
remaining in some sort of torpor, vs. the end of the cosmos coming about if he
were roused.
This analysis admittedly paints Dissection as being
real-life’s manifestation of the worst kind of insane Lovecraftian
cultists. Really though, I feel like that
is not entirely unfair, what with the whole “they probably would have eventually staged their own mini-Jonestown if Nodtveidt hadn’t gone to prison for that homophobic-murder-thing first” business.
Important note related to this issue: I stand solidly with
what I hope is a majority of
Dissection fans when I say, “great music, but too bad about the lunatic-asshole
front-man.” Also, I personally think you
have to be a special kind of loser to
style yourself as any kind of chaos-devotee while at the same time taking issue
with anyone’s sexuality for any reason, but maybe that’s just me.
In any case, the aspect of Azerate that makes me think of Az
is the dark feminine aspect, as when the entity is given any gender at all, it
is typically female – “dragon mother” as above.
Going even further though, there is also an explicit tie-in to Lilith
here, both via Lilith being one of the eleven “Azerate members,” and via Lilith
herself being called “dragon goddess” on the song “Dark Mother Divine” on the
same album. The lawlessness of Az, and
the adept’s hope of “eternal freedom” in Azerate’s wake, also appear to be
congruent with one another.
Now, since the previous two entities discussed are
horrifying primarily in concept, vs.
this one, as per the above-given link, has actual
real life casualties of both a homicidal and suicidal nature associated
with its adherents, obviously it’s a bit urgent for me to clarify where I’m
going with the idea that there’s any possible way of engaging constructively
with Azerate.
The nature of the beast though is such that I’ll have to
wander through quite a bit of philosophy to get there, much of which is not
going to initially sound like it is helping much. Nonetheless, to proceed:
One thought is that, parallel to the above discussion of
“dark realities” personified via Azathoth and Az, I think Azerate can be
understood similarly: basically, in Freudian terms, Az is equivalent to libido
and Azerate to thanatos; the former seeks a pleasure as total as that of the
embryo with all its needs supported by the mother’s body, while the latter
seeks dissolution in accord with the default entropic tendencies of the
inorganic matter.
Acknowledging these
forces then need not be equivalent to worshipping them, but rather just entails
recognizing that life is driven by chaotic forces that are both antisocial and
destructive if unregulated. It would
then follow that if “indulgence” is the goal, self-mastery is a pre-requisite,
which brings us back to the ethos of LaVeyan Satanism.
Another “dark reality” that Azerate can be taken as an
expression of would be the Medea hypothesis, which argues that contra the Gaia
theory of life on earth self-regulating toward a harmonious state, actually
life tends to be suicidal in the long run, since:
- The drives and adaptations that are selected-for by evolution are those that favor the individual and its immediate descendents, without an eye to the horizon of the species or biosphere as a whole;
- Populations just are large groups of such individuals, who are then adapted in such a way that they tend to individually compete for resources and reproduce until a shortage of resources forces starvation and die-off, not before;
- Such a population additionally produces ever-increasing amounts of waste just in the process of staying alive, which within the context of a closed system (which a planet ultimately is) means slowly poisoning itself;
- Getting life to not behave in the manner just described in 2 & 3 is an uphill battle, because to accomplish this, you would have to convince it to resist drives strongly selected for in 1.
This is not, by
the way, an argument against trying
to fix the environment, so much as it is rather a case of “I am really, really not surprised that we are
failing” on that front. :/
What is interesting
mythology-wise though is that Medea seems to embody a lot of the same drives as
Az so long as she is getting her way (i.e. accomplishes all manner of wondrous
feats and transgresses all sorts of boundaries in pursuit of her own desire), vs. the same drives as
Azerate once she is not getting her
way (i.e. seeks total destruction of
the currently-existing order – the familial, in this particular case – out of
sheer malice).
That this should be so is suggestive of the unity of the two
figures. It is suggestive too of the dystopian
experience of an evolved-and-aware consciousness, simultaneously insisting on
the goodness of persevering in existence on one hand, and sensitive about the
frustrations of life to the point of being tempted toward nihilism on the other.
Faced with such a fork in the road, the LaVeyan Satanists go
one way and the Anti-Cosmic Satanists go the other. This is perhaps most evident
via contrasting LaVey’s strongly negative attitude toward suicide to
Nodtveidt’s seeing suicide as a fitting and perhaps even triumphant conclusion to his life.
I would nonetheless argue
that the difference between the two positions lies not in one denying the
darkest side of life and the other plunging
headfirst into it, but rather, in one
merely acknowledging that darkness with open eyes while the other was utterly overpowered and possessed by it.
One thus arrives again at the idea that, from
a Satanic perspective that values “undefiled wisdom,” we ought to acknowledge
this dark force within ourselves in order to become empowered to take steps to
overcome the aspects of it that are ultimately not in our best interest.
A further constructive angle for Azerate is an angle that I
think also applies to a lot of other apocalyptic discourse, regardless of
specific religious origin of that discourse: that which leads to very bad places when taken literally and projected outward can be constructive if taken figuratively
and directed inward. From this perspective, references to destroying the cosmos refer to the need
to break down one’s unreflective default worldview, toward the end of replacing
it with something more comprehensive, adequate and/or freeing. This process
naturally manifests as tribulation prior to its full completion though, since
it throws one into a state of pervasive doubt and attendant temptations toward
hatred and despair – i.e. chaos prior to the re-establishment of a better
order.
The inadequacy of Anti-Cosmic Satanism – at least in my heavily-skewed-by-Dissection-and-thus-not-necessarily-reflective-of-the-218-Current-as-a-whole
opinion – lies primarily in its neglect of that rather-important last
step. And yet, at the same time, I think
hints of this perspective can be found on Reinkaos itself in the song “Internal Fire,” specifically with its reference to “Atazoth.” This name is the Order of Nine Angles’
dyslexic spelling of Azathoth (i.e. I am under the impression that there is
literature openly attesting that they are the same thing) with the rationale
that “at-azoth” means “an increase of azoth,” azoth being the agent of
transformation in alchemy.
So, in other words: keeping the Daemon Sultan asleep may be
a good idea if you are fine with the status quo, but if that is
dissatisfactory, waking up the Black Dragon of Chaos would mean clearing the
path of the obstacles that stand in the way of evolution and actualization.
Construed that way, Azerate starts to seem rather a lot like
some of the Hindu deities like Shiva and Kali, whom plenty of people manage to
venerate without construing “the Destroyer” as permission to be a nihilistic
fuckhead. Yes, I know, there’s a Kali song on Reinkaos, but let’s not write off all the actual Indian Shiva and Kali
worshippers who are functional people over that one small detail. :)
Summing up then about Azerate: tempting as it may seem to
jettison the idea of a Destroyer in this trinity, since doing so might make it
easier to explain the whole thing in a way that sounds constructive, it seems
to me that destruction does have its place here, both as a force of nature that
simply needs to be acknowledged with open eyes, and as a process worth
undertaking intentionally for the purposes of replacing that which has become
old and inadequate with something new and better.
The idea mainly goes astray when it drifts into destruction
for destruction’s own sake, wherein it can wind up leading into some disturbing
territory. I would argue, however, that this
drift can be arrested via proper attention to the other two elements of the
trinity. I will elaborate more on this
in the final installment to follow.
