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Hail and welcome. This essay begins a series I’ve been wanting to do almost as long as I’ve been doing this project, which is about two and a half years now. I’m glad I didn’t try to tackle it earlier, before I had my writing and research chops under my belt, and even now it’s a subject I’m hesitant to approach. I had also thought that the subject might perhaps be too niche, that it might be of interest only to a few of those who follow my work. But having done the writing, I think there’s likely something here for everyone.
I’ve spoken before about my transition from being a Buddhist to being a Satanist. In brief, after a pilgrimage to the city of Kathmandu in Nepal, I became disillusioned with the Buddhism, but that’s really only half the story, the story of motion away from one religion. The other half, my coming to Satanism, resulted from the confluence of three things: the Bible, the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the music of the French black metal band Deathspell Omega. I’ve covered the Bible extensively, in general and in terms of its relationship to my theology of Satan the Accuser, and I’ve also covered the relevant Hegelian philosophy in several essays, as well as the Nietzschean philosophy that also came to significantly characterize my Satanism. This essay, and likely others in the future, will focus on the third element: the music of Deathspell Omega and its relationship to my religious Satanism.
But why now? If I’ve been wanting to do this particular series for so long, what changed to get me to actually get started on it?
I’ve said before that I don’t intend for this show to become some kind of confessional, but this time, my personal life is relevant to the work. As some of you already know, I’m recovering from a long stint of overindulgence in alcohol. A few months ago, when I sobered up, I became very self-conscious. I had been using alcohol heavily for as long as I had known that I am a Satanist, and the alcohol served to mitigate the sense of insanity resulting from my work on this project and from publicly identifying with such a radical religion. Once I was sober, I was faced with some difficult questions: is this really who I am, or was that just the alcohol talking? Is this really what I believe?
Even by the time I had gotten back to work and released the episodes on Socrates and Critical Race Theory, I did not yet have answers to these questions. But as I finished up the writing for the previous episode on LaVey and Nietzsche, I decided to confront the question directly by returning to the original inspirations for my Satanic epiphany, the music of Deathspell Omega chief among them. I’ll be discussing my consclusions at the end of this episode, once I’ve properly contextualized the questions.
By way of covering some background and history on Deathspell Omega, I’ll start in 1997, when German-French musician Christian Bouche (known by the pseudonym Hasjarl, by which I’ll be referring to him for the remainder of the episode) released the demo A Hymn to the Ancient Souls with his band Hirilorn. The music of Hirilorn emulated the raw, primitive style of black metal popularized by Norwegian bands such as Mayhem and Darkthrone. They have also mentioned the Swiss band Samael and the Austrian band Abigor as major influences. The Norwegian scene had revolted against the increasing commercialization of metal, drawing influence not from their popular contemporaries like Metallica, Megadeth, and Morbid Angel, but rather from more primitive and Satanic 80’s metal bands such as Venom, Hellhammer, and Mercyful Fate. The central figures of the Norwegian scene wanted to return metal to being raw, dangerous, and Satanic, and in doing so established the metal style known as black metal as a proper, cohesive genre.
In 1999, the year Hirilorn released the EP Depopulate (Prelude to the Apocalypse), Hasjarl also released a demo, Disciples of the Ultimate Void, with a side project he had started with some of the other members of Hirilorn. That side project was Deathspell Omega, and later that year, when Hirilorn split up, Deathspell Omega became Hasjarl’s primary project.
The years 2000 and 2002 would see Deathspell Omega release their first two albums: Infernal Battles and Inquisitors of Satan, which largly continued in the style of Hirilorn and the Norwegian black metal bands. Then, in 2004, after splitting with original member Shaxul over ideological differences, they released their third album, which showed a marked stylistic and thematic shift. The themes of the album will be taken up in my analysis. Musically, the style remains rooted in the Norwegian black metal of the 1990’s but also incorporates influences from Christian liturgical music and contemporary classical music. Their albums from that point forward were more strongly marked by the influence of contemporary classical music, becoming enormously complex and dissonant works of staggering technical difficulty. I am of the opinion that, in terms of their work as a whole, the music of Deathspell Omega can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the greatest works drawn from the entire history of human music.
Before getting to my analysis, however, I have to address a more controversial aspect of Deathspell Omega, that being the involvement of Finnish vocalist Mikko Aspa.
Deathspell Omega has never made their membership known and Aspa’s involvement has never been officially confirmed or denied, but that the vocalist for at least a few of Deathspell Omega’s albums is indeed Mikko Aspa is something of an open secret, and Deathspell Omega has openly worked with Aspa apart from this. Aspa, who has his own band (Clandestine Blaze) and his own record label (Northern Heritage Records), is known to have ties to fascist and racist ideological movements, and while his personal standpoint with regards to these ideologies isn’t entirely clear, it seems evident that he is, at best, a person of dubious character, and likely someone who is entirely reprehensible. Deathspell Omega has, in turn, been the subject of criticism for their association with Aspa, and while I think this criticism is entirely warranted and fair, I also give Deathspell Omega a highly qualified pass because Hasjarl has made it clear in his few interviews that Aspa is involved with the band—and only in a very peripheral way, almost more as a session musician than a proper member—precisely because Aspa and what Hasjarl calls the band’s “inner circle” are ideologically opposed. A repeated theme in Deathspell Omega’s interviews is the intent to document and reflect on the world as it is (e.g. “Our own work aims at creating a mimesis of the world,” Deathspell Omega, 2021). They confront the conflict and contradiction inherent to the world and Aspa’s involvement, it would seem, facilitates such exploration in their music. Quoting from one of their interviews,
A minority of the collective’s contributors—shall we say, parts of the second circle— who’ve been invited to partake because of their incredible talents as musicians are involved with earthly politics, but stand on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum and are therefore irreconcilable political foes. Were it not for dialogue on the grounds of transgressive art, they’d be shooting each other. That tension is what interests us.
Deathspell Omega, 2019
While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this excuses Aspa’s involvement, it does contextualize it and differentiates it from any endorsement of Aspa’s views, and it’s also worth noting that Deathspell Omega’s most recent album, The Furnaces of Palingenesia, serves in part as a scathing critique of fascist and totalitarian ideologies.
As to my own story of finding the music of Deathspell Omega, I had been listening to black metal for several years when I came across their then-newly-released album Fas – Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum in 2007. I listened to their albums on occasion and found them very enjoyable but didn’t notice those things which distinguished them from other black metal bands. Gradually, they became one of my favorites, and I became more aware of their distinct style, but it wasn’t until February 18th of 2017 that I listened to their third album, Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, while simultaneously reading the lyrics, and the experience was nothing less than transformative. I look back on that day as the one upon which I first realized that I was a Satanist, although the realization was a latent one, emerging gradually over the course of the next several years.
Wanting to better understand Deathspell Omega’s music, I looked into their ideological roots and discovered that they’re highly influenced by Christian theology and by the French philosopher George Bataille. I purchased a Bible, as well as a copy of Bataille’s Theory of Religion, but having minimal training in philosophy, I couldn’t understand it, so I started diving into philosophy in general in order to acquire the necessary foundations. This led me to the work of Hegel (who is connected to Bataille and thus to Deathspell Omega via the work of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève), and the exploration of these things led, in turn, to the Satanist Reads the Bible project.
The lyrics of Deathspell Omega present a clearly Satanic worldview, and a theistic one at that, but the exact details are hard to pin down. Hasjarl has conducted only three interviews over seventeen years and has never explicated his religious beliefs apart from the lyrical content of his music, which is dense, complex, and nuanced, and at times, utterly paradoxical and confounding. In general, the lyrics denounce God and praise Satan, but elsewhere the reverse seems to be true. It is not always clear to whom the lyrics are referring when the words “God” or “Lord” are used, and I think that the lyrics often intend multiple, contradictory readings simultaneously. They often acknowledge and affirm the Bible, and while these affirmations may be read as ironic, I believe that at the same time they present the fundamental mechanism of the underlying Satanism: a full acceptance of the Bible, taken beyond a naive understanding to its unavoidable conclusion.
What I present here is my own reading of the lyrics, my own interpretation, which may or may not accurately reflect Hasjarl’s intent, and, even so far as it does, may not reflect Hasjarl’s exact beliefs. To understand this, consider that the lyrics of the aforementioned 2019 album The Furnaces of Palingenesia are satirical in nature, narrated by a character who very clearly does not represent Hasjarl and whose statements are indeed entirely antithetical to statements made by him in his interviews. Generalizing from this, we can infer that he may elsewhere in the lyrics present perspectives that are not his own. It’s also important that his views not be mistaken for mine. My reading of Deathspell Omega has been a central influence in the development of my religious beliefs and there are clearly numerous points where our respective understandings overlap, but I do not claim to follow or promulgate Hasjarl’s religion. I’ll try to be clear about what’s what as I progress through my analysis, which will begin with Deathspell Omega’s third album, released in 2004.
The title of this album, Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, is Latin, a grammatical variation of an epitaph of a seventeenth- and eighteenth- century English architect, Sir Christopher Wren, carved on his tomb in the cathedral which he himself built. Translated, the album title reads, “If you will seek a monument, look around you.” I’ll take up a discussion of the meaning of this title as it arises in the course of my analysis. The album’s first lyrics—which are not performed, appearing only in the liner notes—are Latin as well, reading, “Omnis humana cogitatio in fundamentis putrefactionis conditur, quam ecclesia Domini nostri ei praeposuit.” Lacking any official translation, I’ve had to translate this myself: “All human thought arises from the fundamental decay which our Lord’s assembly placed before them.” Ecclesia is typically rendered as “church;” however, I believe that the intent here is to refer to the older Greek word ἐκκλησία, meaning a legislative assembly. Read literally, the Greek word means something along the lines of “those who have been summoned.” I interpret this to mean the Old Testament retinue of God, which included Satan. This quote situates the intent of the album in its proper context: human mortality and the entropic fate of all things, which stand in stark contrast to the eternal world promised by the Christian religion.
The remaining lyrics in the album’s first song, called “First Prayer,” lay out Deathspell Omega’s intention for the full album:
Lungs filled with embers and regurgitating boiling blood I say
Praise the Lord, praise,
O servants of the Lord…
We will sing a new song to thee,
O God: a psaltry of thirteen Stations, may scoria bury Eden and blind the light of hope…
A psaltry is an ancient Greek stringed instrument which Psalm 71 describes as an instrument used to praise God. The word station is here used to refer to the Stations of the Cross, which are comprised of fourteen scenes or images leading from Jesus being sentenced to death, through his execution on the cross, and concluding with his being laid in the tomb. The lyrics to “First Prayer” mention thirteen Stations, one less than the traditional number, and Si Monumentum is an album of thirteen songs. The intent of the album, then, is nothing less than the presentation of an alternative to the Gospel and the Passion narrative.
The subsequent two songs are entitled “Sola Fide I” and “Sola Fide II.” Sola fide is Latin for “only faith,” and refers to the theological doctrine which holds faith as the necessary and sufficient condition for salvation. This doctrine is held by some branches of Christianity (such as Lutheran Protestantism), while others, such as the Catholic Church, see faith as a necessary condition for salvation but not in itself sufficient.
The first lyrics of the song continue the theme of decay: “O Satan, I acknowledge you as the Great Destroyer of the Universe. All that has been created you will corrupt and destroy.” No interpretation is needed here; I take this as a direct and unambiguous statement of the band’s understanding of Satan. The lyrics continue from this into a rejection of the Atonement and a vow to “lead other hearts away from salvation.”
The centerpiece of “Sola Fide I” is the line “Seest thou how faith wrought with his works and by works was faith made perfect?” This is a direct quote of James 2:22 from the King James Version of the Bible. This verse is used by the Catholic Church as a justification for the rejection of the doctrine of Sola Fide and the affirmation of both faith and good works as necessary for salvation. The word “wrought” is translated from a form of the Greek word συνεργέω, “to work together” or “to cooperate,” from which we get the English word synergy. The works to which the verse refers are those of Abraham. As the prior verse states: “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” As for the meaning of the lyrics within the context of this song, we can situate them in the context of the album’s title: “If you will seek a monument, look around you:” look at the world and the works of the faithful, look at the monument that works and faith have carved together. But I believe as well that the writers of these songs intend to present this music as the works of their own faith.
Another quote follows: “And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us.” This is the First Epistle of John the Evangelist, chapter 3, verse 24, from the King James Bible. Written in Ephasus towards the turn from the first to the second century CE, the book presents maxims for differentiating between the righteous and unrighteous, the truthful and the liars, so that the faithful will not be decieved by false teachers (1 John 2:26). This becomes relevant in a really amusing way a bit further on. 1 John 3:24 specifically references the presence of the Holy Spirit: this, as well as the opening stanza of the following song, suggests that the narrator of the song indeed believes themselves to be possessed by the Holy Spirit:
They burst my veins to pieces, these wan rats inside
With their jaws so contagious of a disease
As if it dropped like pus from the twelve wings of Sammael
The primeval light inside, gift of god and the holy spirit
It bleeds, so swollen by the bubo of this pest divine
The least traces of the consolation of Eden
Were consumed by this heinous blessing in ashes.
The image we have thus far is that of one who has obeyed God’s commandments and who is possessed by the Holy Spirit but who finds it repugnant.
The centerpiece of “Sola Fide II” is the repeated Latin line “Sola Fide. Sola Deo Infernali Gloria.” Bear with me here through a brief discussion of some finer points of Latin grammar, which I’ll summarize further on. Sola fides is Latin for “only faith” or “faith alone;” the change to fide places the phrase in the ablative case, which yields the translation “by faith alone;” in other words, “(salvation) by faith alone.” Faith is a necessary and sufficient condition for salvation. Sola infernali gloria could likewise be read in the ablative case: “by infernal glory alone.” Deo is the dative form of Deus (“God”), thus yielding the full phrase as “By infernal glory to God alone.” However—and this is why Latin drives me batshit crazy—the ablative singular form of infernalis is identical to the dative singular form in all genders, which means that infernali could also be read as a dative adjective agreeing with and modifying Deo, which would be the rather different: “by glory to the infernal god alone.” It’s also possible that sola gloria is in the nominative case, which would yield simply “glory alone to the infernal god,” and I suspect that the ambiguity of the translation was exactly their intent. This resembles a phrase popular in the Protestant Reformation: Soli Deo gloria. In Deathspell Omega’s phrase, solus (“alone”) is declined to sole to agree with gloria (“glory”). Soli, in contrast, is declined from solus into the dative case to agree with Deo. Thus: “Glory only to God,” as in, “Only God is to receive glory.” The Deathspell Omega phrase, in contrast, could be rendered “Only by infernal glory to God,” “Only by glory to the infernal god,” or “Glory alone to the infernal god;” and I suspect it is intended as all three simultaneously. I’m far from an expert at Latin and there may be other possibilities as well, or there may be usage conventions with which I am unfamiliar that make the intent of the phrase more obvious than my grammatical analysis would indicate.
Another stanza of “Sola Fide II” excoriates Christianity for the widespread sexual abuse of children, and further on is a quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia: “The essence of Revelation lies in the fact that it is the direct speech of God to man” (CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Revelation, n.d.). Again, I take the lyrics to these songs as starting from an acceptance of Christian doctrine rooted in the Bible, contextualizing this in the context of the music’s mimesis of the world that I discussed earlier, as well as the context of the consequent religious experience of said doctrine, and proceeding to the conclusions that inevitably result. In other words, given Biblical doctrine, and given the experience of this doctrine within the world as it actually presents itself to us, the necessary consequence is “glory alone to the infernal god” and the invocation recited in the next of the album’s songs, “Second Prayer:”
Oh Satan, you’re the God before whom I stand
Live your life in me,
See how I erase my name from the lamb’s book of life
And reject the benefit of the holy wounds…
Doctrine is not declared false or void but rather acknowledged, and they turn to Satan regardless.
Ideally, I’d cover each of the album’s songs in turn, and I hope I have the chance to get to them in future episodes, but in order to keep things relatively concise, I’ll jump ahead to the title track: “Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice.”
The lyrics begin with a statement of the song’s title, which, again, we have translated “If you will seek a monument, look around you.” This is followed by the words,
The monument of a deceiving spirit
Of myriads of deceiving spirits born of our godly father
Rather, stand up with the twenty-four elders and say
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!
I’ll divert from the analysis here and relay to you a story that I think will help explain how I interpret what Deathspell Omega means by this.
Each week I go out into the city to speak with a certain evangelical street preacher named John. I’ve mentioned before on the show that I also have a friend, a Lutheran pastor, Dave, with whom I meet every week to talk philosophy and religion. Dave is a wonderful human being and one of those rarest treasures of the world, a good Christian. He’s intelligent, compassionate, and wrestles honestly and authentically with his faith. He asks me good questions and says clearly when he disagrees with me, but he has not once made any attempt to convert me to his religion. I respect him immensely and consider him to be among my best friends. John, the street preacher, on the other hand, reminds me of a haiku recited in the show Avatar: The Last Airbender: “Tittering monkey. In the spring he climbs treetops and thinks himself tall.” He entertains me. I like to ask him pointed questions about the scripture and watch him stumble over himself trying to reconcile his answers with others he has given me, before finally smiling and resigning himself to ignorance by claiming himself as a man of faith rather than a man of words. “But God is the word!” I say. “John 1:1.” And so cycle repeats itself.
In the midst of writing this episode, I went out to see John and found him joined by two from his congregation, Frank and Cade. The four of us talked for a short while. A question came up between them: Genesis 6:4 says that the “sons of God”—whom they took to be the angels who had fallen with Satan—mated with the “daughters of men,” resulting in progeny: “the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown,” according to the scripture. John wanted to know how the angels, who were presumably sexless, had been able to mate with humans. Frank responded to this with a tirade about how the sons of God had used black magic fueled by the power of the Egyptian pyramids to give themselves the appropriate reproductive equipment, and that they had then given this magic to people, who turned it into the medicine and technology used to perform what I would refer to as gender confirmation surgury, which Frank evidently disapproved of, and believed that God disapproved of as well. John said, “Yes, that’s what happened!” immediately and enthusiastically assenting to this absurd theory without a single question asked.
Frank and Cade then inquired into my own religion. It hadn’t come up before in my conversations with John that I am a Satanist; he’s quite self-absorbed, speaking of himself at length, with few questions for those with whom he is speaking. Upon hearing my answer, the two of them immediately set to work trying to win me over to their side. Cade attempted logical arguments—nothing I haven’t heard before, analyzed, and rejected—but in the end suggested that I simply try, as an experiment, praying to God out of belief that God is a good and just creator. I told him that I could not pray to God in this way without first rejecting the Bible, which tells me that God is neither good nor just, as he had commanded his people to take sex slaves from among their prisoners of war.
Frank, overhearing, was incredulous that the Bible said anything of the sort until I directed him to the relevant verses of Numbers 31. Upon verifying my claim, he said, “Well… they were better off with them than with those pagans!” He said that the captives were probably well-treated, and that Satan had twisted my understanding of the scripture. I laughed, shook my head, and took my leave.
I bring this up because a repeated theme of my conversations with John regards what Christians sometimes call spiritual fruits, referring to Matthew 7:15-20, in which Jesus says,
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.
Good advice, in my opinion. Si poma requires, circumspice: if you will seek the fruits, look around you. Si monumentum requires, circumspice: if you will seek a monument, look around you. See Christians like John and Frank who will accept absurd theories without question and laugh at their own ignorance. See a world dominated by a particular interpretation of Christianity for almost two millennia, and the genocide, oppression, and ignorance that has followed in its wake. The fruits of this Christianity are a world falling to ruin. The Latin word monumentum means not only monument, but also tomb.
My interpretation of this song is that they are using the ironic, satirical mode that I mentioned before in reference to their recent album The Furnaces of Palingenesia. The narrator is saying “Do not trust in what you see with your eyes; rather turn away and join the twenty-four elders in proclaiming the holiness of God.” This is a reference to Revelation 4:4: in the author’s prophetic vision, he sees “twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones… twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads.” These twenty-four thrones surround the throne of God, which is surrounded by strange creatures who, “day and night without ceasing,” sing paeans to the holiness of God.
In closing, I return to the questions with which I opened this essay. I don’t think you’ll find my conclusions surprising; after all, A Satanist Reads the Bible continues, and I’m not planning on any changes to the project’s title. Lungs filled with embers and regurgitating boiling blood I say: I am a Satanist, and in my sobriety I say this stronger and more clearly than I have been able to in the past. A Satanist Reads the Bible is the work which perfects my own Satanic faith, and I fully encourage you to follow the advice of Jesus on this matter and judge my faith and my works by their fruits. That’s how I look at this project and at my Satanist religion, and from what I’ve heard from my audience, I think I have good reason to believe that my work has been very fruitful in that regard. Both religion and podcast certainly have been for me. I’ve had a lot of fun, learned a great deal, improved myself, and met some wonderful people. And that would be enough for me, but I also remember last year at the beginning of the pandemic when I asked those of my audience to write in just so I could feel a little less isolated as the world went into lockdown, and I got flooded with emails that told me of the ways I had helped people to live better lives. Frank said that I should turn myself over to his side so that I could help people, by which he meant “help people to have their names written in the book of life so that their next life will be a better one.” Well fuck you, Frank, because I’m helping people plenty, and if even one person hears my work and erases their name from the lamb’s “book of life” so that they can live for this life and this world, then I’ll know that I’ve done what I can to avert the nihilism that closes in on us. It’s not the goal of this project to lead people away from hegemonic religion—as I’ve stated before, the only objective is my own elucidation—but such would be welcome news regardless.
Psalm 139:16, addressed to God, reads: “Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” The psalmist here says that God had known them and the course of their life before they were born; thus, in the Book of God is written the day I knew myself to be his accuser and adversary. I cannot be otherwise and still be who I am. Knowing that I am who I am, I know that to kneel before God is to turn away from God.
I am an abject lover.
I hope you’ve found this piece interesting and informative. If you’ve enjoyed it, I encourage you to look at some of my other essays, and if you find my approach to philosophy and religion at all valuable, I hope that you’ll stop in at my Patreon page, which features bonus content for patrons, and that you’ll stop back by to check on my new content.
Works Cited or Referenced
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Revelation. (n.d.). Retrieved July 26, 2021, from https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13001a.htm
CoC : Clandestine Blaze: Interview: 3/13/2001. (n.d.). Retrieved July 5, 2021, from http://www.chroniclesofchaos.com/articles.aspx?id=1-335
Deathspell Omega. (2019, June 23). Deathspell Omega (N. Göransson, Interviewer) [Interview]. http://www.bardomethodology.com/articles/2019/06/23/deathspell-omega-interview/
Deathspell Omega. (2021). Deathspell Omega (R. Kristensen, Interviewer) [Interview]. http://www.cultneverdies.com/p/deathspell-omega.html
Deathspell Omega—Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives. (n.d.). Retrieved July 5, 2021, from https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Deathspell_Omega/4237#band_tab_members
DEATHSPELL OMEGA LYRICS – “Si Monvmentvm Reqvires, Circvmspice” (2004) album. (n.d.). Retrieved July 5, 2021, from http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/deathspellomega/simonvmentvmreqvirescircvmspice.html