Monthly Archive for February, 2006

- Horse Rotovator – First 5 Minutes After Death (Coil) lyrics - [from Angels: Messengers of the Gods (Peter Lamborn Wilson)]

The Angel of Death stands between heaven and earth
holding a poison-dripping sword. Identified with Satan, he is full of
eyes, a diligent reaper, an old fugitive and wanderer like Cain, a
begger, a peddler, an Arab nomad, a skeleton capering with sinners and
misers in a juggler’s dance.
But the nightmarish Angel presents a different face to one who has “died
before death” or who has attained some measure of the saint’s _apatheia_.
Jili tells us that Azrael, Death, appears to our spirit in a form
determined by our beliefs, actions and dispositions during life. He may
even manifest invisibly, “so that a man may die of a rose in aromatic
pain” – or of a rotting stench.
When the soul sees Azrael it “falls in love”, and its gaze is thus
withdrawn from the body as if by a seduction. Great prophets and saints
may even be politely invited by Death, who appears to them in corporeal
form. Thus it was with Moses, and with Mohammed. When Rumi lay on his
deathbed Azrael appeared as a beautiful youth: “I am come by divine
command to enquire what commission the Master may have to entrust to me.”
We begin to discern a strange connection between _Mors_ and _Amor_, Death
and Love. The moment of “extinction” in the pleasure of love resembles
that of death, and thus that of the mystic. In mythic terms Eros and Thanatos are
almost twins, for in some cases Death appears as a lovely youth, and Eros as a withered starveling. Both Love and Death are gateways; hence their eternal adolescence, their fixation in the midst of
the _rite de passage_.