My Amazon review of Tito Gobbi in Mozart's Don Giovanni

Mozart: Don Giovanni ~Archipel  (1)

High Quality Singers, Poor Quality Recording, December 10, 2012 By Julianus Dante (So Cal, USA) Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Mozart: Don Giovanni (Audio CD) I got this CD because Tito Gobbi is my favorite baritone of all time. I was delighted when I found out this recording was available, and by this time I was already familiar enough with Don Giovanni to enjoy the music without trying to follow the story line. There are some marvelously beautiful voices in this recording. Unfortunately, the live recording suffers from the singers appearing to be too far or the orchestra getting muffled with the voices. Also, and to my surprise, I didn't feel Gobbi truly owned his role. I don't know if it's me or if he was uncomfortable and disoriented in the German arena. I want to say the latter was the case. I simply did not get to enjoy his Don Giovanni like I have others. It's a shame. I know he's perfect for it. His Figaro and Scarpia are proof enough of his suave bravado, but here he seems lost at best or drowned out by the orchestra. Un Italiano perduto in Alemania. Still worth having in your collector's box, but not as your first recording of this Mozart masterpiece.

Rossini's Le comte Ory starring Juan Diego Florez (2003)

This recording of Rossini's Le comte Ory stars Florez in his best form and is a rare Rossini delight. The composer had a knack for writing beautiful music that at the same time was so comical, not just in a theatrical sense, but in the musical composition itself. I burst out laughing at the choruses; the trios and duets were delicate enough to make Mozart proud yet still retain their Rossini picaresque quality.

The Act One Finale became an instant favorite of mine. The voices literally skip over each other in a delightful, fanciful melody that builds to a booming crescendo that celebrates vitality. Curiously, the mezzo didn't have a solo. The bass solo was pleasant but repetitive and lacked the ingenuity of The Barber of Seville's bass solo "La calunnia e un venticello." The demand for high notes from the soprano were beyond what seem humanly possible yet were executed here with such grace it is to marvel at.

The tenor truly carries the weight of the entire opera and he is practically in every scene. Florez here was masterful and carried the pacing well, which is rare of me to say of him normally and especially recently. This role requires the tenor to be a team player and lead the way without drowning out the other voices. Florez took that initiative and proves to be a great lirico leggero.

The opera as a whole is so light-hearted that it feels too short. The most impressive quality of this opera is the seamless way in which Rossini blends voices in and out of each other in every form of song available, whether duet, trio, quartet or chorus. Even in the arias the singers are never alone. It truly feels like a comic ensemble piece and a tour de force of coloratura. Thank Heavens for such rare gems of the classical music world!

My Amazon review of Mozart's Don Giovanni

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Mozart: Don Giovanni ~Decca  (12)

Making Mozart proud, September 23, 2012 By Julianus Dante (So Cal, USA) Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Mozart: Don Giovanni (Audio CD) This is my first experience with a Mozart opera. It's hard getting into it after being so used to the Italian masters. But once I watched a video of the Karajan production and played this over and over, I became truly in love with it. It's long but shock full of great arias, duets and quartets. The more you listen to it, the more its style stays with you and the genius of each piece strikes you. You can see why Mozart is Mozart and influenced all major composers who came after, most noticeably Rossini, who clearly uses musical phrases from here in his own operas, including _The Barber of Seville_. I truly enjoyed hearing the similarities. I have yet to experience Mozart's other operas but this one will certainly stay with me as a tour de force. Performed well, as it is in this recording, its three-hour length becomes negligible as the stream of events unfold seamlessly towards the great resounding finale with the Commendatore. Still, it's an opera best admired seen first than purely heard and this CD package does not come with a libretto, making it impossible to follow if you're not already familiar with the opera. Purely as a recording of Don Giovanni, this is quality at its best and will not disappoint. Every voice is in top form and moves masterfully over the vocal challenges presented by Mozart.

My Amazon Review of the Carreras Foscari CD

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Verdi: I due Foscari ~Philips  (6)

The quintessential Foscari, September 23, 2012 By Julianus Dante (So Cal, USA) Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Verdi: I due Foscari (Audio CD) This recording of this obscure early Verdi opera is heavenly. The voices are beautiful and in their prime. Unfortunately, some of the drama is lost as this opera is a less-inspired version of Nabucco and must be seen to appreciate the drama. The music and voices alone don't do the trick. Carreras sounds simply heavenly singing "Dal piu remoto esilio." And Ricciarelli sounds like an angel dropped from the heavens to please our ears with her exquisite voice. The soprano is in nearly every scene of this opera and, in true Verdi fashion, carries the weight of the opera and is challenged continuously. It may not be his most beautiful sounding opera, but it's certainly not any easier on the voices. You truly have to be a master to pull this opera off. It's quickly become one of my favorites, both for its rarity and theme. There is still plenty of Verdi to enjoy here. He does some amazing transitions, has a powerful prelude, and gives the Doge, Jacopo, Lucrezia and the Council of Ten each their own theme music that adds a dramatic quality to an otherwise uneventful opera. I'm proud to own it.

My Amazon Review of Verdi's The Two Foscari

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Verdi - I Due Foscari / Bruson,... ~BBC / Opus Arte  (12)

Quality Singing, Meager Staging, September 23, 2012 By Julianus Dante (So Cal, USA) Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Verdi - I Due Foscari / Bruson, Roark-Strummer, Cupido, Roni, Gavazzeni, La Scala Opera (DVD) I just saw the LA Opera's production of this rare Verdi opera starring Placido Domingo and while the LA Opera's production design and costumes are far superior to this 80's La Scala production, the voices in this video are far superior. Renato Bruson does great early-Verdi. I have La Scala's production of Nabucco with him and he never disappoints. The production design on this stage is very sparse and makes it hard to get into this already obscure opera, but if you love Verdi and the challenges he gives his sopranos as well as the seamless way in which he goes from a duetto to a terzetto to a quartet, this production demonstrates it effortlessly. Bruson definitely steals the show in the finale. To his credit, Placido does the same in the LA Opera's production but he definitely tires faster in his old age. His theatricality, however, is matchless! One hopes they have a DVD of the production for the sake of the costumes and production design. The soprano and tenor, however, leave much to be desired. Alas! A great age of operatic voices has ended.

Stop wanting things and start letting them

Do you ever find yourself in a messed-up situation and notice after the fact that the warning signs were there all along, then wonder how you could have possibly missed them? Well, that’s happened to me twice in one week and, as always, wanting to get to the root of the problem, I realized they had a common cause: namely "wanting." We make a big fuss about desire in America. We build ourselves up to believe that if we want something bad enough, it is attainable. “Follow your dreams. Be all you can be.” But it’s "wanting" in the first place that draws us away from who we really are.

Lao Tzu was the first philosopher to say so in China hundreds of years before Christ and the Greeks.  His Tao Teh Ching is one of the most important books you could ever own. It has a very holistic approach towards being human in tune with the universe. He doesn’t pound us with a God, he tells us about the Way. And he teaches that to be in harmony with yourself and the world around you, you simply have to NOT want. Everything should flow and be natural. In other words, stop trying so hard to make things happen and instead let them. Of course, that doesn’t mean sit in your room and do nothing. It’s simply a different attitude towards the things that you do. You stop letting the ego dominate by saying, “I did this. I want that. I will achieve this.” Stop using the word mine. Instead say, “I am compelled to do this. I see this coming to fruition.” Instead of it being mine, it’s now part of the Way.

The ego blinds you to what’s right in front of you. I’ve had my wake-up call and I hope to continue to break away from the ego that’s being constantly fed through the media by tuning out. You have to stop wanting things to happen the way you’d like them to. You simply have to make a sincere effort and let it happen the Way it’s meant to happen. There lies true happiness and wisdom. And yes, it’s hard to do at first. But like with everything, where there's a will there's a Way.

“When one’s task is accomplished,

One lets go of it and seeks no reward or recognition.

Because one does not claim credit for oneself,

One does not do any damage to oneself.”

Excerpt from Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching

The Illness killing Humanity

The way I see it -- and I see it quite clearly -- humanity is suffering from a fatal two-fold illness. First is our refusal to love. Second is our refusal to accept responsibility for our lives. The lack of love is evident by the abundance of greed, selfishness and aggression bred of fear in the collective human psyche in our times. If there were love, these evils would not be so predominant across the board. What brought to mind the lack of responsibility is interesting.

I make plenty of mistakes in my life but I try at least to be aware of them, so I can identify why I make them and try to amend the personality traits that lead to such harmful decisions. I don't want to continue being unhappy and I understand that it all begins with attitude, even if changing that attitude requires time and effort.

All of us who are unhappy with where we are in our lives refuse to accept that, outside influences aside, our attitudes put us there. And if perhaps we are not responsible for being put there, we are certainly responsible for staying there. This is very difficult for the human ego to accept because it's stubborn and proud.

Some time ago I realized that if I am unhappy with my job and the idiots surrounding me, all I need to do is observe their behavior to understand the same attitude and personality problems that led me to ending up around them. It's a scary and distasteful exercise to undertake but it is accurate. If you honestly and sincerely want your life to change for the better, your best bet is to observe those qualities in others that you find odious and acknowledge that you also have them and must eliminate them, because that is what's holding you back from progress. However, that requires accepting responsibility for your life and we have all been born in the media-driven generations that want to be party animals forever. And so we stay in this mode until we reach a mid-life crisis and see that we've done nothing with our time but sulk and perpetuate a victim mentality, and now our most productive years are past us and we have nothing to share with our children but bitterness and grudges. Sound awful? It sure is.

We must accept responsibility for our lives and stop making excuses for our failures or a life spent refusing to act. It is better to do something than to live in fear of it and do nothing. Success or failure doesn't matter. It's the experience and the growth that comes with it that does. And your attitude determines ultimately the outcome; nothing else. If it didn't kill you, then you can only grow stronger from it. But we are so mentally embarrassed of even trying and possibly failing that we end up doing nothing, sulking and blaming anyone but ourselves.

This is certainly the modern disease, purposely implanted to keep us from making true positive changes in our lives and, by doing so, on the planet Herself. I cannot deny that I suffer from this disease as well. Waking myself up from it and injecting the antidote is an ongoing daily struggle, but one that I must fight. But that's because I genuinely want to be happy and embrace love in my life, and that journey begins by changing the mental attitude. Perhaps not enough people have a will to experience joy, happiness and love.

That's the true crisis right now on this planet and nothing else, not the economy or lack of resources. We refuse to live in harmony with the Creation. If not enough of us turn around, we will make ourselves extinct. Stop worrying about money and pining after things you cannot take with you to the grave. What matters now is the future we build together. What resonates is cherishing the moments we share with one another.

We are the Masters. Our Becoming is in our own hands.

Magus' Speech at the Battle of Feingloria

A recording of the speech Magus gives the Brotherhood at the Battle of Feingloria.

Conceived while I lived in Findlay, the battle is a dramatic confrontation between the Brotherhood and a local gang sent to riot in a town so the government can declare martial law. The Brotherhood catch them outside of town before they invade and find military already staged there. Although it is a hopeless cause for the Brotherhood, their leader Magus motivates them with a speech and leads them into battle.

I've been re-writing this speech for years now. The other week I had a sudden inspiration and let the words speak themselves and recorded myself. I couldn't post the audio as is, so I added some visuals to turn it into a video. I'm posting it for those who want "an alternative to this: the living dead."

Sorry for the audio quality. I don't have sophisticated recording equipment. It is what it is.

Song of the Pearlfisher Bard

He no longer desires the anguish of transient emotions,

But the comfort of constant Love.

The pearlfisher has wept many tears,

Bitter drops in sobs of self-loathing.

Each dive brings more anguish;

Each crawl to shore more regret.

“What am I seeking?” he asks.

“A phantasm, a white spectre,

A pearl buried in the depths of my own hate.

Even now I can see her glimmer in the utter blackness. Yet

When I dive into those frigid waters

I cannot find her, and losing my breath

I resurface, gasping for air before a starless night.

I half-believe in her and if she does exist

Is she faithless?

Betrothed to another, a whore, or worse,

A witch!

“I know she’s a witch. Her emerald eyes

Have robbed me of peace. I am mad

If not with her. I am nothing without her.

She holds my heart and with it

The Key to unravel this mystery.

A shroud remains over

Our untold memories,

Secrets of revelry (reverie?)

Shared in ancient monuments to my glory.”

He thinks of her and looks out upon the endless expanse;

Black ooze in waves keep him entranced.

He must dive again.

Water dripping from his body, stinging, frigid.

The Afanc wail from the deep in the dark,

A race of cruel demons, beasts with the mark.

Yet a sparkle catches his eye,

A candle in the darkness,

Deep under waters of drowning sadness.

& something from within, something unbidden,

Uncoiling from the unconscious, like a red dragon,

Possessed his being until there was no thought,

Only impulse plunging him into the abyss.

& now the stinging cold

Threatens to dull the senses

Until the quiet stillness of sloth.

He gives in.

Lets it work upon his brain

Until he floats aimlessly.

Ignorance is bliss.

& yet it is death, and worse than death,

Being nothing.

The voice of the Rose came through

With words that are true:

“Magus, you need no one for all is in you.

Go forth without fear. To be is to do.”

He pulls out from his stupor and realizes the witch

Had placed him in a trance with a lover’s kiss.

Out of breath he scrambles to the surface,

Pulls himself out before the Afanc take notice.

“If anyone knows in this world it is me,

About Thor Ballylee and the Goddess Three,

Of the elvish dance and the demons’ jig,

Of a glorious age in old Celliwig,

Of Yngur’s illusion, of Manos our King,

Seek near or seek far I shall find Her within.

“That sparkle in the depths of my hate is a dream

An illusion sent by that merciless Fiend

Who uses the mind to prey on the soul

& only in silence releasing that hold.

I realize then that the search is in vain

For you cannot find what’s already ingrained

But seek to unleash it with what’s in your heart,

That terrible struggle: pursuing your Art.

“So now I can see I was never alone.

The duke of twelve battles but never a throne.

The heir of a magick as ancient as stone.

The Red Dragon’s roar on a heap of men’s bones.

The voice of the Lamb in an age now forlorn.

The pearlfisher’s dive, Poimandres reborn.

All of these I was, am and will be

Thanks to the grace of the Goddess Three.

& if I obey this sanctity,

I will learn that the pearl that I seek is within me.”

Gracious the lesson, more gracious the gift

Given to him with a lover’s kiss.

This pearlfisher bard now goes forth with a Key

To unlock the seal number seven with bliss.

The veil now lifted his book once complete,

So bitter in stomachs but sweet on the lips,

Engenders in men that love for the pearl

That they had forgotten makes the Spirit whole.

The feminine divine at your fingertips.

This was the Salvation our Lord meant to teach.

& now she comes of his rib as before,

A woman complete ‘cause she tires no more

Of having to hold up the burden of man,

Of controlling the meek simply because she can,

But having no purpose, desire or mind,

Is grateful for life and what she can find,

In tune with herself and the mystery unseen

In an age when the veil’s removed. The Obscene

Become good, the Self-righteous are marked.

Amarantus recalls every shining Soul Spark.

& now that it’s possible for things to be done,

She draws him to her, her & him, they are one.

As was meant to be from the very start,

Two minds, two souls born of the same heart.

This transformation from the pearl within

Will turn back the clock on original sin.

That’s what the voice of the Rose meant to say:

She’s inside of you: let her come out and play.

A gleam across the waste now appears

Burning blue, the true light, so far, so near;

A sea of glass these waters now form,

A stillness, for life is born of the foam.

Yet Soul Sparks come straight from the source Amarantus,

To which they must return one day,

& all they have to guide them’s a phantom.

The gates of Death are the only way

Into the eternal realm of bliss,

Where the righteous men go who resist

The pain and suffering caused by Satan’s elite,

The agony of love when Lilith bares her teeth.

Bloodied and scarred these men need relief

& they’ll find it, when our Lord frees the meek.

She appears, splendid in her raiment,

Hair of burning lava pouring down

Over Her shoulders, silver tiara,

Diadem of the brightest stars, blinding,

Invigorating, humbling Her servants.

& I most in love of all, yet grudging

For I am not Her all like She is mine.

She spots me in the crowd of revelers,

Kneeling in tears amongst angels and men.

My chin is uplifted by her fingers

& I see: “Yes, it’s Her! She is Goddess!

She has spared me for this splendid moment

At the Gates of Death where She chooses us

Each according to our hearts’ true desire

To sail on Her boat to Amarantus:

Life, Resurrection, Joy, Eternal Song.”

My tears cannot be hid, in vain I try.

Her green eyes penetrate my mind and soul.

These words She spoke without Her lips moving:

“You will have command over your world.” And I

Stood in Stonehenge flooded in sea water.

A great pillar of water surging up

Into dark oblivion. I, afraid,

Knew my time had not come, for She desired

That I tell Her story long forgotten

In the annals of mankind’s religions.

Only a man who loved Her completely

Could face the pounding waves of mankind’s hate

With no hope but faith in Amarantus.

& so I accepted Her charge in sooth

With heavy heart and some consolation

That my place by Her is secure so long

As I pull through and repay my soul’s bond.

Her final words burned into my Spirit:

“You’re my Pearlfisher Bard; I, your Goddess,

Nyykys Elia En Amarantus."

---

 [W1]6/15/11 Wed. 21:27:24

 [W2]8/1/11 Mon. 7:39:37

 [W3]6/30/12 Sat. 19:50:52

Solenicon: A Myth, A People, A Revolution

My legendarium as a whole is entitled The Solenicon, which means “Children of the Moon.” The name itself stands for an important idea: that some of us belong in a better world than this. This idea is explicitly stated in the Gospel of John 15:19 where Jesus says—

If you belong to the world, then the world would love you as its own.

But I chose you from this world, and you do not belong to it.

That is why the world hates you.

The Gnostics called themselves the Children of Seth, who encompassed on Earth the Thirteenth Kingdom and were destined to follow in the steps of Christ to another world. I take this a step further and insist that this is all literal and there is in fact a world (and dimension) waiting for us that is our inheritance. I connect it symbolically with Camelot because in my mind they are one and the same. The Solenicon are therefore those of us who want to break away from the American Dream and the paranoid crusade to defend “freedom,” for something much simpler—a life in tune with the Cosmos, the inexplainable, and in this way with one another.

Moon symbology has beckoned to me for a specific reason. If the world we live in was built up by Sun worshippers, then the world to come awaits the Moon worshippers. But this statement by itself is too vague to capture your hearts and minds. Therefore the Two Ladies haunt me, that I may tell at last the full story of how we came to be here and the future promised us in a word—Amarantus. The word means “flower that never wilts” and I chose it to symbolize the place where one achieves Oneness with Goddess.

The Solenicon begin with these Two Ladies, who occupy central roles in my legendarium. They came to me at first simply as names. Little by little they’ve coaxed me to unravel their identities and in so doing, discover my own. And that’s what life is all about: the journey of unraveling who you truly are. I, for one, have never truly felt at home in this world and am convinced now that it’s because it isn’t. At a young age I used my imagination to write worlds into existence more alive and meaningful than ours. Now I understand that writing (and the music that inspires my writing) is my way of connecting with what lies beyond our five senses, of living supersensually. This is why I’ve never been able to give it up despite crippling criticism during my years at university. The more I indulge in it, the more I become in tune with something that makes me truly happy and fulfilled. And at the heart of this experience are these Two Ladies, who have finally revealed themselves to me and who make me feel that there is a purpose for me having been born in this world after all, and that’s to tell you about them.

The name Nyykys (pronounced NAI-jis) was told to me in a dream once by a young girl. I believe it was Nyykys’ voice who came through in a postcard given to me by a Wiccan witch during my time in Findlay, Ohio. The witch filled it with automatic writing addressing me as Pearlfisher Bard. The final verses still wring my heart to this day:

You’ve travelled through depths of risk,

You’ve travelled through oceans of hate,

You’ve travelled through life to Death’s emotional gate.

Pearlfisher Bard, Here is the Key,

Love has brought you once again to me.

It was a life-changing moment. I had found the Muse I was seeking and it was only natural to associate her with the Lady of the Lake. It stuck and she has remained that ever since. The Lady of the Lake is the darker, more mysterious character of the Arthurian legends, and being somehow tied to a body of water, I naturally saw her as goddess of the moon, the dark side that is, tied to its magnetic powers that create the forms of things before they acquire substance in our material world. She is the stuff of dreams; that subconscious impulse that is more who we are than our conscious egos and can make us do crazy, wonderful things. Yes, she can be a virginal, dangerous huntress like Diana, but she’s so much more; and her true face lies hidden from all but the most humbled and honorable men, because it is of such beauty and purity, merely looking upon it cleanses the soul and moves the hearts of such men to pity and tears of joy.

This is how I picture her. And I think Tolkien touched upon this very sentiment when he spoke of Gandalf during his time as Olorin in Valinor spending his time with weeping Nienna: “and of her he learned pity and patience.” When I read George MacDonald’s Lilith, I instantly recognized Nyykys in the “cat-woman” Mara, who also weeps for mankind’s suffering, comforts the repentant in her house and reveals her true face only at the right moment to help a man carry on. It is my deep desire for Nyykys that fueled this whole journey to begin with.

Now, when I say “moon” I don’t mean our moon, which scientists now admit is hollow and others say is an artificial satellite like a space station. But there is a true moon in the world we, Solenicon, belong to and its waters lie hidden, drawn to the surface by an ancient magick in cycles like the tides. When this happens, an island forms surrounded by water, like Avalon in the midst of a vast, shallow lake. I call it Alufia (pronounced ah-LOO-vee-ah) and there Nyykys became immortal, but it was by the power of another enigmatic lady. The name that came to me is Aramys (pronounced ah-RA-miss), and I knew of her importance from the beginning, but not her identity until more recently. I know her now as the Grail Maiden because she is the conduit for supernatural forces to enter the natural world. Like the hermetic maxim: “As above, so below.” In this role she becomes therefore the holy vessel that receives Life and regulates its flow into our natural world. A woman of radiance and deep wisdom, like Athena, Aramys is almost inhuman. She cares not for our petty grievances but knows what needs to be done, and is ready to exact the sacrifice necessary to make it happen.

These Two Ladies are the pillars of the Solenicon. Imagine my shock when it turns out they actually do exist and were worshipped thousands of years ago in Egypt. That discovery began with my esoteric name: Wrias (pronounced oo-REE-as). I never imagined what importance that name would hold and how it would link me to the Welsh tale of the two dragons. Somehow I was lead to learn of the Egyptian Uraeus, which sounds uncannily similar to my name. It turns out the Uraeus is the Egyptian cobra standing upright and a symbol of the goddess Wadjet, who along with the goddess Nekhbet were worshipped as “The Two Ladies,” joint protectors of unified Egypt. They were so important that every pharaoh had to take on what is called a Nebty name as part of his title that basically said, “He of the Two Ladies.” This tradition survived among the rulers of Egypt until the end of the Roman Empire. That’s four thousand years in which despite many drastic changes in god worship, the Two Ladies remained core to the continuity of Egypt as a unified people.

The story of the Uraeus is also relevant in how it relates to my legendarium. It was Isis who fashioned Uraeus, granted him life, and sent him out to give Ra the poisonous bite that would bring him to the brink of death, forcing him to give up his secret name of power to Isis in exchange for the antidote. Similarly, in my tale, Wrias is a demon brought back to life in the form of a red dragon by Aramys so that he might recover the Cauldron of Light stolen by the servants of Mamuc. Experiencing this resurrection forces Wrias to acknowledge that his former master Mamuc is not the only God he claims to be. Guarding the Cauldron is Wrias’s twin (and now nemesis) Tali, who takes on the form of a white dragon typical of Mamuc and his followers. Unable to convince Tali of the truth concerning their false god Mamuc, Wrias accepts that he must sacrifice himself by jumping in the Cauldron, causing it to explode, thus ending both his and Tali’s lives.

It is my understanding of sacrifice, my devotion to the Two Ladies, and my interpretation of the climaxing struggle against the Sun worshippers that informs my writing through and through. The reason why their monotheistic religions don’t satisfy is because they deny Goddess and therefore half the spectrum of human experience, causing a severe imbalance in the human psyche and the collective mind-space.

I have only scratched the surface of what my legendarium aims to explore, but it gives you a good sense of the depth of the material. We are born unto this earth besieged by crippling ideologies. Each one of us must look into those dark corners within that make us uncomfortable and upset and churn the cream to see if we turn out butter. It is a dire, personal struggle out of which you might emerge a real person. The alternative—following along with what is spoon-fed to you—is guaranteed to turn you into a wretch. Here lies the true Devil and here lies my message. Your life has purpose. Fulfill it. And if you’re like me and are dissatisfied with the lifestyles the Sun worshippers have provided for your pleasure, and see wisdom in the pain of sacrifice, join me in exploring The Solenicon and seeking a life in tune with the Cosmos, in tune with those who care to live—in tune with yourself. That is gnosis. Here lies the true church.