Wayfarer - Toward Mountains

Stormcrow - Kingdom of Vertical

Stormcrow Stormcrow on Piz Julier 3380m "In the track 'Kingdom of Vertical', the image of the mountain is almost analyzed in an architectural way, and the power of its phenomena redirects into music with a deafening and unstoppable impetus, until it's clarified that the closeness of this ban to the world of mountains and mountaineering is anything but purely and simply coincidental . . . It's during this journey, and in alpine wanderings, that the Stormcrow soul and music has been forged and shaped, become powerful as hundreds of rockfalls, penetrating as the sinister creak of an ice sheet, melancholic as a horn that resounds calling from the lonely summit, waiting to be replied" (http://www.stormcrow.it/bio/)

Bathory - To Enter Your Mountain

Bathory
Blind fools who see only what they tell you to Open up your eyes you might see it too See there is a lot to see within you too Don't be like the rest and let them take it from you
Dumb fools who say only what they tell you to Speak up and find that there is more truth within you than you knew Somewhere someday you will stand before it too
Trust me there is a never ending mountainside to climb for you too To enter your mountain Go into your mountainside To enter one's mountainside Will take its man
Who enters his mountain With or without sword in hand Who enters his mountainside He will learn Deaf fools who hear only what they tell you to Open up your ears you might hear it too Listen there is a wild storm within you too Burst out use its powers don't be a...
Damn fool how can you follow paths not made by nor for you The only way you will ever need to walk is right there for you Somewhere someday you will stand before it too Trust me there is a never ending mountainside to climb for you too
To enter your mountain Go into your mountainside To enter one's mountainside Will take its man
Who enters his mountain With or without sword in hand Who enters his mountainside He will learn
[He who enter...] He who enters his mountain He who enters his mountain He who enters his mountain He who enters his mountain [He who enters his mountain He who enters his mountain He who enters his mountain Into one's mountainside]
"[T]he high mountain . . . belongs neither to this world nor to the one beyond it" (Ernst Bloch)
"I love those who do not first seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacrifice, but who sacrifice themselves for the earth, that the earth may some day become the overman's" (Nietzsche)

Brown Mountain, or, the Ulyssean Failure of Manifest Destiny

Brown Mountain
"Et nunc apparuit illi quidam mons tante altitudinis, quante nunquam in nostro mundo habitabili circunspexit. Ideo ait Ulixes in textu:
quando ci apparve una montagna, bruna per la distantia, et parvem'alta tanto quanto veduta non ave' alcuna.
Que autem terra sit ista quam a longe in plaga meridiana vidit Ulixes non bene sciri potest, quia de illa terra nulla vera ystoria reperitur; tum quia nullus unquam de illis partibus ad nos venit, nec de nobis unquam illuc ivit qui ad nos postea sit reversus. Tamen beatus Ysidorus dicit, XIIIIo libro Eth., quod extra tres partes orbis, Asiam scilicet, Affricam et Europam, quarta pars transocceanum interior est in meridie, que propter solis ardorem incognita nobis est, in cuius finibus anthipodas fabulose inhabitare produntur. Anthipode autem dicuntur homines qui subter nos habitare fabulose finguntur, qui tenent plantas contrarias nostris plantis." (Guido da Pisa (1327-28[?]), Inferno 26.133-135]
"Cinque volte si era illuminato (racceso) ed altrettante (tante) spento (casso) l'emisfero visibile (lo lume... di sotto) della (da la) luna, da quando (poi che) eravamo entrati ('ntrati) nella difficile impresa (ne l'alto passo), quando ci (n[e]) apparve una montagna, scura (bruna) a causa della (per la) distanza, e mi parve (parvemi) così (tanto) alta quanto non ne avevo (avëa) veduta nessuna (alcuna). – L'alto passo (che è anche il viaggio di Dante, il quale però usufruisce dell'ausilio divino: cfr. Inf. II.12; si tenga presente l'occorrenza di passo a Inf. I.26, in rima con basso) sta per giungere all'epilogo. Dopo un viaggio durato cinque lunazioni (l'emisfero inferiore della luna, quello visibile dalla terra, si era per cinque volte racceso e cinque casso: cfr. Aen. II.85), quasi cinque mesi, appare un'altissima montagna (cfr. Purg. III.14-15; IV.40), ancora bruna, cioè indistinta, dai contorni vaghi (cfr. Aen. III.522). È la montagna alla cui sommità si trova il Paradiso Terrestre (essa diverrà dopo l'Avvento la sede del Purgatorio), l'accesso al quale è vietato agli uomini dopo il peccato originale (Gen. 3.24; Purg. I.130-132). Secondo una leggenda di origine araba, in mezzo all'Oceano sorgeva un monte, sede del Paradiso. Ulisse, che con un atto di superbia ha oltrepassato i limiti dall'alto stabiliti, non può proseguire oltre; come subito si vedrà, egli sarà punito dall'intervento divino. ”Il viaggio non si svolge sotto la luce radiante del sole, simbolo della grazia divina, ma all'ombra della luna, simbolo della ragione umana non illuminata dalla grazia“ (A.A. Iannucci, Forma ed evento nella 'Divina Commedia', Roma, Bulzoni, 1984, pp. 163-64). Ulisse – accusa Aiace (cfr. n. 139-142) – compie le sue imprese con la complicità della notte (Metam. XIII.15), non fa nulla alla luce del sole (Ivi XIII.100). La presenza del numero ”cinque“ non è forse casuale, dato che si tratta del numero dei sensi, del mondo terreno. Comunque va notato che il tragitto della nave di Ulisse è lo stesso del lieve legno che trasporta le anime alla spiaggia del Purgatorio: le anime, ovviamente, sono prive di corpo, ma soprattutto contrite e perdonate da Dio." (Nicola Fosca (2003-2006), Inferno 26.130-135)

CRUX

Young and In the Way - I Am Not What I Am

YAITW - I Am Not What I Am

"I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries!—Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?" (Thoreau, "deep within the hostile ranks of clouds" on Mt. Katahdin)

Falls of Rauros . . . Tol Brandir

Falls of Rauros
"'Behold Tol Brandir!' said Aragorn, pointing south to the tall peak. 'Upon the left stands Amon Lhaw, and upon the right in Amon Hen the Hills of Hearing and of Sight. In the days of the great kings there were high seats upon them, and watch was kept there. But it is said that no foot of man or beast has ever been set upon Tol Brandir. Ere the shade of night falls we shall come to them. I hear the endless voice of Rauros calling' . . . The day came like fire and smoke. Low in the East there were black bars of cloud like the fumes of a great burning. The rising sun lit them from beneath with flames of murky red; but soon it climbed above them into a clearly sky. The summit of Tol Brandir was tipped with gold. Frodo looked out eastward and gazed at the tall island. Its sides sprang sheer out of the running water. High up above the tall cliffs were steep slopes upon which trees climbed, mounting one head above another; and above them again were grey faces of inaccessible rock, crowned by a great spire of stone. Many birds were circling about it, but no sign of living things could be seen" (J.R.R.  Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring).

Oubliette

Eidetind by Christopher Radlund

Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life, The middle Tree and highest there that grew, Sat like a Cormorant; yet not true Life Thereby regain'd, but sat devising Death To them who liv'd (Milton, Paradise Lost, IV.194-7)
"But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness" (Isaiah 34:11)

Xexyz - Primeval Mountain

Mount Nintendo

The Howling Wind - A Dead Galaxy Mirrored in an Ice Mirage

The Howling Wind "Antarctica’s dynamic ice processes are always working to erode the possibilities of a seemingly stable form of accounting for geographical space. Wråkberg argues, ‘The slow pace of Antarctic exploration as a whole also indicated that there might be more to this than just adjusting field practices developed elsewhere to extreme polar conditions. The grand geographic project of the nineteenth-century Western culture seemed to have struck difficulties of a more profound nature in its encounter with the vast ice mass in the far south’. What this Antarctic excess suggests is that there are entropic forces at work within the making of all maps. The hallucinatory capacity of landscape phenomena, such as the mirage, works to re-inscribe the very notions of geographical fact within these processes of accounting for spaces. As vision sagged under the weight of ‘snow’, this formlessness demanded a new order of knowing and observation, and a new order of knower that could contend with how the landscape was realised through speculation . . . Antarctica constitutes a privileged site for critical thinking about vision and its relationship to the establishment of geographical truths. Wilkes did not know how to map the mirage because his predisposition to novel forms of unknowing precluded that possibility. This did not make the mirage any less ‘real,’ but it did make the possibility of its understanding that much more distant. The mirage, while seemingly illusory, emerges from real conditions and real contradictions within vision. It is illusory only to the extent that it did not fit within the way Wilkes delineated and mapped territory, but it did open up new climates of sight that eventually expanded the visual knowledge of the Antarctic region. The mirage is dialectically linked to our perception of the real, to a geographical form from which we establish normalising strategies. This dialectic suggests that these phantom displacements are not opposed to perception, but an extended quality of the state of perception, of an altered perception specific to place. This suggests that investigating the conditions of unknowing holds potential for geographical thought. As Antarctica provided an awkward terminus to a trajectory of nineteenth-century geography, it also suggested most clearly ‘openings’ to other kinds of geographical knowledges that acknowledge the dialectic relationship of vision to blindness and unknowing." (Kathryn Yusoff, "Climates of Sight Mistaken Visibilities, Mirages and ‘Seeing Beyond’ in Antarctica," in High Places).

Aluk Todolo - Occult Rock

Aluk Todolo "In Tana Toraja, the idea of the to manurun, mythical beings who descended from the heavens on mountain tops and became local rulers, may have been borrowed from the Bugis . . . Toraja tomanurun are always paired with an equally supernatural spouse, a woman who rose out of a river pool" (Roxana Waterson, "The Contested Landscapes of Myth and History in Tana Toraja," in The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality, ed. James Fox [ANU E Press, 1997]).  

Sapthuran - Astigan Se Beorg

Sapthuran

Astigan Se Beorg (Journey up the Mountain)

He continued his journey
With eyes fixed upon the mountain
Soon he would reach its base
Soon he would ascend its slopes
The winds began to blow
The warm breeze turned to ice
It's bite invigorated his spirit
As he walked onward
The pain turned steeply upward
He struggled to to traverse the incline
The air grew thin
A faint snow began to fall
And he stepped out upon its apex
Looking over the forests below
He stood atop the highest mountain
And, finally, he was alone
Here he learned true peace
And he vowed never to descend

Never to return to the world

"But the third death, by which this Soul died, no one living grasps except the one on the mountain" (Marguerite Porte, Mirror of Simple Souls, Love speaking).

Ulver - Capitel V: Bergtatt - Ind I Fjeldkamrene

Ulver

"I will not speak about the mountain but through the mountain" (Rene Daumal)

Panopticon - Killing the Giants as They Sleep

We wept as we passed through the mountains clothed in July clouds,  under the restraint of power lines, their fury bursting through the summer haze as ethereal music filled the air. Nearly conquered by the mountain, I have found such deep respect for what you destroy. Older than time and cut down by a lesser foe, like thieves in the night mined for coal. Timeless stone buried beneath, unearthing the secret poisons into its belly… You hack at the mountain and scrape away for your simple need what was formed by silent gods on the day the void first burst with sound. Pulsing with life, you don't see its shimmering green. You see the deeps hue of coal, grey smoke and black waters in the stream… Poison the earth, poison the stream, killing the weary giants as they sleep, blackened waters, sand and soot-grinding gears halt serenity. Panopticon, "Killing the Giants as They Sleep," Kentucky (2012)

Bergthron - Autarktis

The throne of mountains - how can it be reached? Breathless, only with ropes or rather by meditating in your head, thus ascending?

Better fetch up a mask for breathing;
better cover your body;
better test your muscles before
heading towards the bergthron.


Pretenders have often been rebuked and fallen great depths.
The mountain sent you a warning, so prepare yourself.



Bergthron on the journey to Autarktis, the Anti Arctic in autonomy. Leaving Ragnarök behind.





Wie definiert man Gott,
auf dem Gipfel der Welt?
Wo ist das Leben,
wenn man nach unten blickt?
Wie definiert man Gott,
wenn man den Himmel
mit einer Hand berührt?
Wohin weht der Geist,
wenn man zwischen zwei
Welten steht?
Hinauf zu den lichten Göttern,
oder hinab ins finst're Tal,
dort, wo die Menschen hausen?
Eine Expedition in das höchste Land,
durch unwegsames Gelände,
über steinige Pfade...

...der höchste Berg ist nicht zu steil.
Nicht zu steil, um zu fallen,
zu fallen, tief in sich hinein,
tief hinein ins eigne Sein,
tief zu sich selbst herab.
Kalt ist es auf jedem Gipfel,
gefahrvoll und stürmisch, eisig und steil.
Ohne Gefühl ... alle Sinne taub.
Augen ohne Licht,
Ohren ohne Resonanz,
Worte ohne Klang.
Ob Tag, ob Nacht,
ob Gott, Berg oder Mensch.
Hier, auf dem Gipfel der Welt.
Hier, ist alles Eins!

(c) 2010 by Bergthron

Digging into stone (III)

We lacked entertainment up here at 3,000 meters altitude. One of our engineers had brought a deck of cards with him yet I’ve already grown sick of all these parties playing cards. The guy even started to read horoscopes from the cards as he was mumbling something about gypsies while defining the number 8 in combination with a queen of hearts. He was clicking with his tongue every time he realized a new meaning disclosed under his very eyes. This was happening every two evenings in a small tent intended to cover one half of our small expedition. I decided to change tents after the first evening. 

In the other tent I read books dealing with the problem of metal materials in the mountains. We all know that gold is to be found deep below in the galleries. They started in ancient times to dig for the gold in the stones. Some in the US combed the rivers, but let’s focus on the mountains. So while I was reading this book on the Art of Gold Digging, at 3,000 meters above sea level, thinking or rather blackdreaming of men wearing sharp hats on their heads and digging with shovels into loose stone to uncover gold, I understood that bergmetal maybe only existed in my head. All of a sudden my heart muscles cramped and the chambers threatened to narrow. Dangerously narrow. I screamed of angst. Has the whole expedition only started its doleful course because of a crazy idea of mine? My heart pushed hard against the skin. Can we really find bergmetal or just a material I had mistaken for it? Only because I want to find it, my fingers should feel the touch of cold bergmetal. 

Anne Burgess [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The tasty muffy smells of stones when I arranged them for my grandparents to acknowledge my first demonstrations of natural history. I used a room under the rooftop for installing a museum of geology and paleontology, temporarily. There were fossils and minerals, besides stones from Icelandic volcanoes. My father brought some stones with holes from there. He journeyed as lone wanderer through the Land of Fire and Ice. Postcards reached my mom’s mailbox and so the children’s ears. Definitely I remember the adventures. When winds had destroyed his tent and had blown it away so he had to ask around with local peasants to sleep in their haystocks. 

All the memories appeared in the mountain night on the tenth day of our small expedition to gain some bergmetal specimen. Outside was cold, inside the tent as well but I wrapped myself up in a warm sleeping-bag. We planned to reach a lower peak of a whole peak chain. On the left and right slopes of the peak we expected chasms in which bergmetal reservoirs might be found. Still there was not enough material to base a decent research on. Only problem was that the region we were climbing was exposed to heavily capricious weather changes. Today we could walk in sunshine and tomorrow in snowfall and storm. The stones only answered in silence. 

We reduced our talks when we tried to scale the protruding noses and bushy eyebrows in rock. The mountain throws back any echo thousandfold. Surrounded by stones, we felt isolated and so we continued to reach our next mark. All around alone, only the expedition brought some human life into this rather indifferent world. This was the world-without-us reaching me through the night. Could discern some voices in the rolling stones and howling winds through all the mountain nights. Long ago when our earth was shaped by heat eruptions and seismic movements, the stones screamed out. Yet I don’t believe that the element bergmetal was already created back then. Rather it was a newer sidetrack of evolution. One of my assistants suggested bergmetal to be some cultural facet in urban civilization. Couldn’t agree because that seemed quite far-fetched to me. Bergmetal is to be found in nature. The expedition will deliver evidence. After sunbreak the piledriver will drill into stones to tear out bergmetal. I recall a German saying: Im Berg ruhet geborgen das Metall im Schall. Echoes can lead us to this element which is resting in the berg. By violence the geologists enter the inner realm below. In Windischeschenbach (Germany) a Continental Drilling Program (KTB) tried to reach the core of our planet and the machine mines minerals from kilometres beneath the surface. Be sure the coming wars will revolve around resources. Bergmetal can be an element freely distributable and renewable as it is located in the highest of heights. Yet would that geologically mean that it was of rather new origin?

You can buy this postal card at: www.briefmarkenhaus-dresden.de / keyword: Rumänien

„Mister, we oughta leave now.“

Shit! This cannot be! Overslept ... on an expedition trip where I am supposed to lead. Holy Mother Moses! I mumbled yes yes coming coming, pushing the sleeping-bag away and not really jumping up. In a split second hastened to dress me in half-lying, half-sitting position still in the tent. When I left the tent there was some embarrassing applause by the team. Yoho! Boss! We’re ready to fly! Some members even put their fingers in the mouths to whistle. I waved to my assistant professor of geology and asked him about the weather changes and if we can estimate the smooth running of our today’s route. He shrugged his shoulders and added: Yes surely we can achieve some altitude as of today. The team seems to be really up-to-strength and he calculated the majesty of the places we’re crossing. Now you don’t really know what majesty could be in matters of scientific categories. We both found out that bergmetal needs some element of majesty in its constitution. So most likely at impressing places bergmetal as a pure element can be found. However, what shape does bergmetal actually show when it is unearthed from mountainside? We are anxious to experience it. 

The team members knew I had worked until late at night and so they excused my oversleeping. Some guys continued to giggle a bit while we were pushing the mules upwards. As a breeze came up the guys muted. For breakfast I couldn’t eat anything as I was expecting some turn in our expedition soon. The closer we got to the peak of the mountains somewhere here, the better the chances of extracting enough material for our studies. Strongly do I believe that bergmetal must be some kind of metallic stone – maybe glimmering like an anthracite. 

As of now, I don’t know in what layer bergmetal resides. In the highest bed is to exclude from rational argumentation as it has taken some time to develop. 

Anyway, if we follow the reasoning of my assistant, bergmetal is also a cultural fact. So searching for it in the mountains would be a hardly sensible thing to do. On the contrary, I still believed it lay in rest in rock. Strangely enough, the colloquial term for it appeared in a dream one night and I was already known in the scientific world as Stig Olsdal, a specialist in dubious surfaces. When there was reasonable doubt about a sediment or layer what it could bear inside, I was called upon. Don’t misunderstand my task. 
Naturally, any geology professor could work on the location as he or she was efficiently trained to handle the tools and to be an expert in the history of our earth. Yet I was expected to clarify haunted soils. There were several cases in the United States when old Native American trails seemed to be still haunted by some spirit and I was expected to demystify the place and then extract the specimen for further investigations. Some minerals are believed to hold special powers in ancient myths. So I was trained both in geology and folklore. As in the specific case of bergmetal I nurtured the notion of an elementary resource in the mountainworld. 

As for now I should really focus on the ascent of the mountain. Readily I will elaborate on the cultural facts of bergmetal next time. Just now I heard some screams of surprise from the avantgarde section. I better rush forward to ... later.

Apparently there were no interruptions this time. This blog can only rely on the texts being delivered to the editors here. We have no means to double-check the suppositions made here. It is at the reader's discretion.

I Don't Know: Spontaneity, Bouldering, and the Crowleyan whY

"As far as Wasdale is concerned the inclination to practise on boulders and other apparatus appears to have been something that arose spontaneously in the mid 1890s" (Michael Cocker)  

1.  The Easy Way.

2.  The Right Slab. You may not use the edges.

3.    do.     You may not use the slab for handhold.

4.  The South Arete. One leg each side all the way.

5.  The Overhung Arete.

6.  The Left Crack.  You must not use the jammed stone.

7.    do.   You must not use the left branch of  the Y for handholds.

8.    do.   Finishing to the right of the j.s. (jammed stone)

8a. Between the cracks. Doubtful if this has been done fairly.

9.   The Right Crack.

10.   do.   Not using the Left Crack.

11.  The Left Undercut. Not using the Right Crack.

12.  The Right Undercut.  Keeping (?) the edge.

13.  The North Corner on the face.

14.    do.     in (?) the corner.

15.  The Steeple Ridge from the NE.

16.    do.    N. end.

17.    do.    W. end.

18.  The Left Slab.

19.    do.    Not using the edge.

20.  The Easy Crack.

21.  The Middle Slab.

22.  The Easy Way. Feet first. Face inwards.

Source: John Gill, "The First Bouldering Guide?"

Mr. Crowley, what went on in your head 

Mr. Crowley, did you talk with the dead 

Your life style to me seemed so tragic 

With the thrill of it all 

You fooled all the people with magic 

You waited on Satan's call 

Mr. Charming, did you think you were pure 

Mr. Alarming, in nocturnal rapport 

Uncovering things that were sacred 

Manifest on this earth 

Conceived in the eye of a secret 

And they scattered the afterbirth 

Mr. Crowley, won't you ride my white horse 

Mr. Crowley, it's symbolic of course 

Approaching a time that is classic 

I hear the maiden's call 

Approaching a time that is drastic 

Standing with their backs to the wall 

Was it polemically sent 

I wanna know what you meant 

I wanna know 

I wanna know what you meant

THE MOUNTAINEER

Consciousness is a symptom of disease.

All that moves well moves without will.

All skillfulness, all strain, all intention is contrary to ease.

Practise a thousand times, and it becomes difficult; a thousand thousand, and it becomes easy; a thousand thousand times a thousand thousand, and it is no longer Thou that doeth it, but It that doeth itself through thee. Not until then is that which is done well done.

Thus spoke FRATER PERDURABO as he leapt from rock to rock of the moraine without ever casting his eyes upon the ground.

(Aleister Crowley, Book of Lies, Kephale LB)

Depressive Silence - Depths of the Ocean

Depressive Silence

"One tyme mine understondyng was led downe into the see ground, and there I saw hill and dalis grene, semand, as it were, mosse begrowne, with wrekke and with gravel. Than I understode thus, that if a man or a woman were under the broade watyr, if he might have sight of God, so as God is with a man continually, he should be save in body and soule and take no harme; and, overpassing, he should have mor solace and comfort than al this world can telle" (Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love, chapter 10)

Bergwerk: Metal Mining

Omega Massif

"Great is the power of memory, a fearful thing, O my God, a deep and boundless manifoldness; and this thing is the mind, and this am I myself. What am I then, O my God? What nature am I? A life various and manifold, and exceeding immense. Behold in the plains, and caves, and caverns of my memory, innumerable and innumerably full of innumerable kinds of things, either through images, as all bodies; or by actual presence, as the arts; or by certain notions or impressions, as the affections of the mind, which, even when the mind doth not feel, the memory retaineth, while yet whatsoever is in the memory is also in the mind- over all these do I run, I fly; I dive on this side and on that, as far as I can, and there is no end." (Augustine, Confessions, 10.17)

"For descend as low as we may, even to the reputed regions of Tartarus and Pluto, we never find the course of our passage any one thing absolutely similar to another. We are always meeting something new, something different; and every new and different substance is only an indication of some different change. Look at the vegetable kingdom; how varied! how pleasing! how delightful! because of this variety! And why so varied, but in consequence of the variety prevailing in the mineral kingdom, which contains its origin, root, and essence?" (Emmanuel Swedenborg; on Swedenborg and mining, see Lars Bergquist, Swedenborg's Secret, 113ff.)

"Behold,  wonderful thing! I glide down from the upper world in a bucket, / thus hanging, I am brought all the way to the dark shadows of death. / But, as I moved to and fro hanging in the middle of the air, / it was pleasant for me to sing holy hymns" (Swedenborg, Ludus Heliconus).  

"He sat down on the bench beside Elis, and began to describe the various processes minutely, placing all the details before him in the clearest and brightest colours. He talked of the Mines of Falun, in which he said he had worked since he was a boy; he described the great main-shaft, with its dark brown sides; he told how incalculably rich the mine was in gems of the finest water. More and more vivid grew his words, more and more glowing his face. He went, in his description, through the different shafts as if they had been the alleys of some enchanted garden. The jewels came to life, the fossils began to move; the wondrous Pyrosmalite and the Almandine flashed in the light of the miner's candles; the Rock-Crystals glittered, and darted their rays. Elis listened intently. The old man's strange way of speaking of all these subterranean marvels as if he were standing in the midst of them, impressed him deeply. His breast felt stifled; it seemed to him as if he were already down in these depths with the old man, and would never more look upon the friendly light of day. And yet it seemed as though the old man were opening to him a new and unknown world, to which he really properly belonged, and that he had somehow felt all the magic of that world, in mystic forebodings, since his boyhood. 'Elis Froebom,' said the old man at length, 'I have laid before you all the glories of a calling for which Nature really destined you. Think the subject well over with yourself, and then act as your better judgment counsels you."' (E.T.A. Hoffman, The Mines of Falun).

Bergmannslied 

Der ist der Herr der Erde,

wer ihre Tiefe mißt
und jeglicher Beschwerde
in ihrem Schoß vergißt.

Wer ihrer Felsenglieder
geheimen Bau versteht
und unverdrossen nieder
zu ihrer Werkstatt geht.

Er ist mit ihr verbündet
und inniglich vertraut
und wird von ihr entzündet,
als wär' sie seine Braut.

Er sieht ihr alle Tage
mit neuer Liebe zu
und scheut nicht Fleiß noch Plage;
sie läßt ihm keine Ruh'.

Die mächtigen Geschichten
der längstverfloss'nen Zeit

ist sie ihm zu berichten
mit Freundlichkeit bereit.

Der Vorwelt heil'ge Lüfte
umwehn sein Angesicht,
und in die Nacht der Klüfte
strahlt ihm ein ew'ges Licht.

Er trifft auf allen Wegen
ein wohlbekanntes Land,
und gern kommt sie entgegen
den Werken seiner Hand.

Ihm folgen die Gewässer
hilfreich den Berg hinauf,
und alle Felsenschlösser
tun ihre Schätze' ihm auf.

Er führt des Goldes Ströme
in seines Königs Haus
und schmückt die Diademe
mit edlen Steinen aus.

Zwar reicht er treu dem König
den glückbegabten Arm,
doch frägt er nach ihm wenig
und bleibt mit Freuden arm.

Sie mögen sich erwürgen
am Fluß um Gut und Geld;
er bleibt auf den Gebirgen
der frohe Herr der Welt.

-- Novalis

[translation here]

What is outer is what is inner, raised to the level of a secret -- Perhaps also vice versa. (Novalis)

Georgious Agricola, De re metallica

Minas Morgul
further reading: Mareike Henrich, Im Bergwerk der Seele. Das Bergwerkmotiv in Novalis'Heinrich von Ofterdingen' und E.T.A. Hoffmanns'Die Bergwerke zu Falun' (2003); Noah Herigman, Romantic Rocks, Aesthetic Geology (2004); Catherine E. Rigby, Topographies Of The Sacred: The Poetics Of Place In European Romanticism (2004), 104ff.

Sunn 0))) - Why Dost Thou Hide Thyself in Clouds?

Sunn O)))

Why art thou silent & invisible, 
Father of Jealousy?
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye?

 -- William Blake, "To Nobodaddy"

Furze - Beneath the Wings of the Black Vomit Above

No 1 Asks at the Known End's Edge it's clearest answer

No 2 Temporarily controls No 1's fear of No 3
No 3 Strays out away from all relations
No 1 Names No 2 "HALF-ETERNITY"
No 2 (don't) reply to that
No 3 Will sometime be pure

No 1 Must think of No 1 as No 1 in action and end
No 2 May have replyed but also eventually made that question...
No 3 Is the Only one at last; No 1 and No 2 blindly related

They blindly related, for some (knew)...
For Black is the holy Unholy...is this the call for existence
Stimulating the unrelated Woe. Sold as one as Everything.

Furze

The summit of the mount—that high state of perfection we here call union of a soul with God . . . The darkness and trials, spiritual and temporal, that fortunate souls ordinarily undergo on their way to the high state of perfection are so numerous and profound that human science cannot understand them adequately. Nor does experience of them equip one to explain them. Only those who suffer them will know what this experience is like, but they won’t be able to describe it. (John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel)

Aurvandil - Over the Seven Mountains

Aurvandil

"There is a Mountain situated in the midst of the earth or center of the world, which is both small and great. It is soft, also above measure hard and stony. It is far off and near at hand, but by the providence of God invisible. In it are hidden the most ample treasures, which the world is not able to value. This mountain - by envy of the devil, who always opposes the glory of God and the happiness of man - is compassed about with very cruel beasts and ravening birds - which make the way thither both difficult and dangerous. And therefore until now - because the time is not yet come - the way thither could not be sought after nor found out. But now at last the way is to be found by those that are worthy - but nonetheless by every man's self-labor and endeavors.

To this Mountain you shall go in a certain night - when it comes - most long and most dark, and see that you prepare yourselves by prayer. Insist upon the way that leads to the Mountain, but ask not of any man where the way lies. Only follow your Guide, who will offer himself to you and will meet you in the way. But you are not to know him. This Guide will bring you to the Mountain at midnight, when all things are silent and dark." (Thomas Vaughn, Lumen de Lumine, or a New Magical Light [1651]).

And the seventh mountain was in the midst of these, and it excelled them in height, resembling the seat of a throne. (Book of Enoch, chapter XXIV)