This song has been our anthem for the past year. It explores the roots of oppression deep in the soil of culture, and tears them out, challenging us to live like as the divine beings we are inside, rather than spending our power pretending that we are inadequate. It is a call to action and a celebration of those already in motion.
lyrics
The Costly Delusions of Man
Lyrics: Sol Invictus (Evan Jenks)
“Know yourselves and then you will be known,
and you will understand that you are already children of the living One.
But if you do not know yourselves,
Then you live in poverty. And you,
You are the poverty."
In considering the costly delusions of man,
Beneath his wrath and greed,
Lies his most brutally expensive and unacceptably wasteful thought,
He imagines that there is not enough,
That the things of life are scarce.
He is afraid
But death comes anyway
All the competitive cruelty, his scheming and scrambling,
Stems from the trunk of greed,
Whose roots are famous,
But whose name is fear.
We, whose Ancestors defeated the Titans on every continent
Have reached a truly ironic and perverse place in history
For when we count up the spoils of human triumph
There is no lack, no shortage at all
And since the tigers have all fled
Why do our leaders persist in carrying weapons?
Hail, ruler, Demiurge, ye flail in the right hand, harvester,
We, the vicars and fashioners of the gods,
Who bend the shepherd’s crook from the straightest of the faithful rods,
Cross arms with us and whisper…
What if the flock were planted firm,
in the earth,
heads upturned,
eyes closed, begging for sufficient toil?
Surely legs will rot into roots with time.
Let us provoke our servant Job, write for him a code no man can follow.
Bury him up to bended knees and judge him, yet unworthy.
Teach him psalms with which to weep at the door of an empty house
For the silence of the puppets
We placed in his soul…
And what I can’t get past is, how can he be a jealous god, if he is really the only one?
Subset of paranoid gods
Subset of paranoid gods
Subset of paranoid gods
Subset of paranoid gods
Too many times, have I witnessed the mechanisms of priests and kings… … operating.
Those Authors and Finishers
Obsess and marginalize
Generation after generation
Sin, guilt, repentance, forgiveness, joy, sin
An addiction to
Process the pain of life,
Without learning, without moving on
Only the Gods can enslave the Gods.
It is unacceptable for Human Beings, the royalty of the animal kingdom, to live without their needs met on their own planet, in their own house.
It is equally unacceptable for them to do violence when they live in abundance.
Treat people as the Gods that they are. Demand the same.
Human Beings are Living Gods, not dead ideas on a piece of paper.
Ideas are meant to serve people, not the other way around.
When people give their power away to a story or a symbol
They are really serving the tellers of that story, the makers of that symbol.
We are the Gods.
I am tired of pretending.
I am tired of pretending that I do not know.
credits
from The Conflict is the Illusion,
released June 8, 2016
Sol Invictus: lead vocals, guitars, bass, lyrics, Theurgy, being Evan Jenks
Telos: lead guitars, vocals, Gnosticism, being Chris Whitlock
Solipsis: guitars, song structure, vocals, Non-Violent Communication, being Drew Clark
Recorded @ Nightal Labs in Oakland, CA in Fall, Winter and Spring, 2015 & 2016
Mastered by Mammoth Sounds
Released June 8, 2016
Cover art by Evan Jenks
NIHL - empty, void
OTEP - god
NIHLOTEP - 1. (noun) the Divine Emptiness, the Great Mystery, the terror and the romance of the Unknown.
2. (noun) brilliant psychedelic heartfelt music from the place where knowing and choosing are one.
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