Empyreum

traces the passage through seven stages of psychological transformation.

Here is the psychology and symbolism behind the music.

Mask

Within the first few moments of our lives we gasp for breath and cry out. In the most ideal of circumstances, we are met by a loving other who provides attention and support, models compassion and strength, and serves as an authority who balances the awareness of self and other. Though many of our early relationships seldom demonstrate all of the above, we continue to use our voice to signal to the outer world, “I need you.” Throughout the first half of life, this need for external authority, and the equally important external sources of love and attention, helps orient and guide us in a world that would otherwise be completely overwhelming. But rather than introducing us to the world as it is, inevitably our authority figures imprint upon us their own conclusions and prejudices. We seek truth about external reality and our relationship to it, but receive at best a limited and biased view, at worst a distorted and traumatizing one. Because there are differences between who we are and what the world tells us that we need to be, our psyche creates a mask, which serves as a vital intermediary between the world and the Self. But while it protects us, it also conceals psychological, social, and spiritual contents deep within each of us that must be repressed in order to adapt to authority’s demands. When the outer authority does not accept and nurture these contents, they go within and lay dormant. But dormant does not mean passive. Quite the opposite, these are the contents that seek to be sung; eventually they flood our hearts with desire, passion, fear, anxiety, depression, and pain until the mask that we wear no longer serves us. We head out into the forest to forge new and unfamiliar paths, paths upon which that same authority told us not to tread. These early experiences form and inform what the alchemists called the “prima materia” or the essential matter of life’s work: our true selves.

Interlude I: Mercury

In this phase of psychological development, aspects of our outer and inner world are in conflict. The old mask doesn’t fit anymore, and we’re caught in a liminal space between the person we used to be and the one our true self desires to become. If we cling to our familiar patterns because we fear the unknown, the conflict will express itself in the form of symptoms like depression, anxiety and addiction. But when we are willing, Mercury is there to guide us. One of the most significant roles assumed by the Roman god Mercury was to escort souls of the dead to the Underworld. Symbolically, he is a connector, a bridge between worlds and states of being. If we have the courage to follow him, Mercury will lead us down to meet our shadows and find out who we really are.

Musically, this interlude plays a kind of rhythm game – sometimes with 3 beats per measure, sometimes 2, and sometimes an ambiguous hybrid that could be heard as either or both – a paradox, like conflicting conscious and unconscious desires that exist simultaneously. It also modulates through tonal extremes – from the pure and innocent C major (all the white keys on the piano) in a high register, down to G-flat (all the black keys) in the lowest register of the piano and as far away from C major as possible. The distance between C and G-flat is also known as a tritone, called “The Devil’s Interval” because it broke the rules for religious music during the Middle Ages. We also hear hints of the medieval chant of the dead, the “Dies Irae,” (“Day of Wrath”) throughout the piece. The first four notes of this chant also appear at the beginning of Mask and in an altered form in Janus and Embrace.

DESCEND

The descent to the Underworld is a mythic motif that emerges throughout recorded history. When unshackled from the literal interpretation, this dynamic alludes to the descent that each of us takes throughout various stages of our lives, when we submit to the inevitability of our suffering. As Dante Alighieri approaches the threshold to the Underworld, he reads the inscription, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here (Canto III).” Led by his guide Virgil he descends through the layers of Hell to meet Dis, or Lucifer. Dis is Dante’s allegorical insight into the dis-membering, dis-orienting, and dis-ordering figure that we must all face as we descend into our suffering and are transformed by it. Hell is the crucible of our transformation; it forces us to consciously release our grip on the predictable and the familiar so that we can dis-cover a more integrated and whole version of ourselves. It leads us outside of the normative modes of consciousness from which we so often operate, and when we expand a sense of ourselves, we also expand the world in which we live. These are the moments when we move from the familiar into the unknown mysteries that live beyond our awareness. William Blake calls those who live here The Eternals, but throughout time humans have referred to them as gods. 

Interlude II: Pluto

In Roman mythology the god Pluto was the ruler of the Underworld, the repressed realm of our unresolved, unconscious conflicts. Our conscious egos naturally want to avoid the descent into the suffering and death we will find there. But suffering and death belong to the inevitable cycles of nature. Religious symbolism acknowledges this reality, and Judeo-Christian expressions include the Dark Night of the Soul, the Belly of the Whale, the Great Flood, and Death as a prerequisite for Resurrection. As in Dante’s ninth circle of Hell, at our lowest points, we feel dead, petrified, and frozen.

In the Underworld we can no longer continue with business as usual. To illustrate this idea, the first section of this interlude abandons traditional piano techniques to include sounds produced by strumming, plucking, and even bowing the strings inside the piano. The wind sounds were recorded by NASA’s InSight Lander on the uninhabitable surface of Mars. One theme included is that of the murdered King Agamemnon from the opera Elektra by Richard Strauss. Greek tragedies, myths and fairy tales often elaborate upon the theme of the dead king – the passing away of the old order that must be grieved before a new order can emerge. In the second section of the interlude, the ice begins to thaw with the violin’s statement of the Agamemnon theme. This represents an acceptance of grief and sadness of loss, the descent into authentic suffering. Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung makes a distinction between neurotic and authentic suffering. In earlier stages of the process we suffer by seeking to shut out the pain we would rather avoid. We rely on addictions which help us to go on autopilot in an effort to numb ourselves. This is neurotic suffering, a vicious circle leading nowhere. The true healing potential of the Underworld lies in authentic suffering, which frees us from the past and reconnects us to the dissociated parts of our psyche. Reconnecting these inner parts gives us the energy to climb out of the Underworld and rejoin life.

Listen

Throughout human history, the god-image has appeared in various forms, though similarities in this image exist that transcend cultural and geographical boundaries. Viewed through a collective lens, we quickly see that in our human history divinity has gradually moved from the external to the internal. In the beginning of our development, all of nature was viewed to be “ensouled.” We lived in a profound relationship to the world around us – the trees of the forest were sacred, the buffalo, the ocean, the mountain, the wind, and the sky. As the awareness that we were not only in nature, but that we are nature progressed, so too did the location of the god-head migrate. Around 2500 years ago, we began to see a transformation from the external and objective god-image to a more internal and subjective experience of the divine. What was once a voice from the tree or the mountain top, could now be heard from within. Thus, our journey to meet with the divine is no longer only discovered within a sacred place of worship or a walk to the mountain top. It is no longer exclusively held or heard by one particular community; we need only to look within, and listen. Our awareness of the vox dei, the voice of god, and our capacity to hear it, is in large part based on our willingness to cultivate an attitude that is open and receptive. Sometimes we shut out the divine because we fear the pain that can come from the vulnerability of receiving. But the voice of god on the mountain, and the descent to the depths of the Underworld are two sides of the same experience. When we open ourselves and listen we begin to understand that the trauma we once feared is one of the great thresholds we all must pass, and that through this pathway, we come to know a deeper truth: what you seek outside of yourself is within you. Go within and not only hear, but listen. 

Interlude III: Janus

From the onset of this interlude, the piano, synthesizer, and violins establish a repetitive pattern mirroring our habitual psychological and emotional processes. Later new themes introduce a fresh perspective, offering a different relationship to those patterns and thereby yielding new harmonic and melodic possibilities. The ambient sounds in this interlude were recorded by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in its exploration of Saturn and its moons – one of which is named Janus. Janus was the Roman god with two faces, one looking toward the past and one to the future. He is the god of doorways, transitions, and new beginnings.

We cannot change our families of origin or the traumas of our past, and often these voices and experiences become internalized as mental dialogue, repeating old messages to us again and again. (As William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”) At this stage of psychological development, authentic suffering has transformed our perspective of the past and present. The descent into the Underworld and reemergence into life has integrated unconscious material and reconnected us to our true Self.  C. G. Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” This enlarged awareness transforms those inner voices in the present and opens up new possibilities for the future.

Embrace

The journey we have reflected upon in this album is a paradox, but as the Zen saying goes, “if it is not a paradox, then it is not true.” The way down to Hell eventually leads us back up to the fullness of life, and it is by going inward that we authentically connect to the world around us. The chorus sings “holding it all,” because after we have emerged from the Underworld, we experience those beautiful moments in life where everything belongs, and we belong to everything. Ultimately, everything is connected. C. G. Jung wrote, “Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.”

Theologian Rudolf Otto describes these conscious moments of divine connection as “numinous.” Otto continues, saying that numinous experiences consist of three elements: mysterium, tremendum, et fascinans – mysterious/wholly other, terrifying, and fascinating/awe-inspiring. Our minds are usually obsessed with identity and stability, past and future, but in these moments, we are aware and fully present. We are able to hold it all, and in turn, we are held. Our need to understand and to control is replaced by pure numinous presence. This is true joy and not merely fleeting happiness. This is the joy of understanding that the darkest days belong, and that they will pass, and that our most joyful days belong, and they too will pass, and somehow the mysterious fullness of life is able to hold it all.