part of the struggle of modern existence is learning to be your own priesthood & temple. the delphic oracles didnt need to worry about mundane concerns or being worldly (as distinct from the world), and instead the function of the temple & priesthood was to translate their experience into something that could be comprehended & consumed by the layperson, audience or uninitiated.
but today you dont really have that luxury. and either you learn to be your own clergy and balance the mundane & worldly with the divine, or perish/ fade into schizophrenic obscurity. not that theres anything wrong with either option. there is a dignity in obscurity.
but if you choose to be both, to live in both worlds; to be both the oracle and the clergy & temple... its like being a diy internet musician.
the delphic oracle in the purest sense is experience. the priestess experiences. the temple facilitates or provides the platform for experience. and the clergy interprets and conveys the experience to the layperson. in musical terms, the priestess (musician) experiences music & one way this experience might manifest is through creation or composition. the temple is the instruments or location or technique where experience can be expressed & performed. and the clergy is every element that alows this to be relayed and experienced by others e.g. recordings, production, promotion, distribution etc.
e.g. musician -> DAW -> bandcamp & social media
or musician -> guitar & tape recorder -> handmade cassettes
a while ago i wrote about christ being an internet musician or even a diy black metal musician. the more time passes the more i think about this. christ was perhaps the first diy internet musician in as much as christ was (archetypally) the first priestess to be their own temple and clergy. i think its why the later echoes of christ following his death ring hollow. all attempts of church feel idolotrous and like the commercial prostituting of a musicians legacy after their death. christ experienced, performed and conveyed his music all by himself & built his following organically. to create a temple and priesthood after the fact misses the point. theres a line in love exposure about christ being like kurt cobain. i dont know enough about kurt cobain to really know how true this is, but i think its not far off from the idea. but i think christ is more like the reclusive internet musician.
this isnt to make a point against collaboration to be clear. christ collaborated and collaborating in experience is also a function of being a priestess. both in music & elsewhere collaboration can lead to profound & new experience. (ketamine fuelled sacred love rituals while listening to vocaloid is an example of collaborative modern day delphic oracle)
this also isnt to make a point against temples or clergy. those able to enlist the help or collaboration of a preisthood & temple in the expression of their musical experience can be a useful thing (e.g. recording studios, record labels etc) but of course these come with their own dangers which i dont really think i need to explain.
im not really trying to make a point of anything at all really, but more i just realised the parrallels between being an independent musician and also as someone who attempts to express their experience or revelation or love through writing on the internet. i think about the people who have been influential to me; internet personalities & artists who express themselves (or sometimes more accurately ‘reveal’ themselves) online to varying degrees of ‘success’ (assuming that success can be measured through the combined metric of the breadth of reach and the purity of expression or interpretation (considering i tend to fall into the camp of believing that art exists in the relationship between the art & audience, with the artist themselves mostly irrelevant, just typing out the word “success” feels dirty and gross to me)). but at the very least in this sphere of internet artistry or expression, their legacy is mostly determined by how well theyre able to embody & perform all 3 functions of priestess, temple and clergy. but as i said earlier the dignity inherent to obscurity means a failure to do this isnt necessarily negative (but usually results in being branded a ‘lolcow’).
i guess the concise way of expressing this would be: the difference between being a lolcow or a beloved quirky eceleb lies within the ability of performing all 3 roles of oracle: priestess, temple & clergy.
popular internet musicians tend to fall into the latter while memeable 4chan schizos tend to become the former. hence the dignity in obscurity.
if you are to be successful in all 3 there is a sort of balance you have to reach between managing the worldly or experiencing the beyond. i tend to flit between mostly 2 states with little balance between them: either manic & creative or lucid but depressed & suicidal. my creative process at least when it comes to music tends to revolve around effectively making the most of each state as and when i find myself in them (altho this is me trying to understand and explain a not very conscious process). i suppose i want to find a way of applying it to the rest of my life too. i resent the fact that i dont write here or elsewhere as much as i used to. recently while im happy i tend to be too busy to write or create things, but when im depressed i lose all motivation. i feel like my maturing or emerging from the chrysalis into the form i inhabit now must involve a successful splittinng of myself intothe 3 functions of priestess, temple and clergy in both music and my real life.
its easy for my obsession with death to make me dismissive of practical concerns. i am still enamoured with annihilation and oblivion in all of its seductive forms. but seeking out death does not necessarily mean i have to neglect the days i have left, and i am trying to be a better temple.
may love & chaos take the world