:RIVERS:

"Rivers, especially those that flowed from the west to the east were sacred. Our ancestors, as we do now, see that the west, the waters of the west, is the place of the otherland, the place of death, the place of the underworld. So the waters coming out of the underworld is very much a connection between life and death. And if that's happening in the west, and then flowing waters into life's creation, heading east towards the sunrise, the place of rebirth."

In many cultures through out the world, the river symbolises a barrier that separates two different realms. In ancient Egypt, the dead pharaoh was carried across the Nile, from east to west, to be buried on the west side of the river. The same idea of a passage across a river, passing from the side of life to the side of death, is also found in classical belief, where the souls of the dead were carried across the river Styx to the underworld by the ferryman Charon. The eponymous goddess of the river Styx, also acted as a boundary guardian, having a realm that stood between night and day, and was described by Hesiod as "vaulted over by great rocks and propped up to heaven all around with silver pillars... and there, all in their order, are the sources and limits of the dark earth and misty Tartarus and the unfruitful sea and starry heaven, loathsome and dark, which even the gods abhor. And there are shining gates and an immovable threshold of bronze having unending roots and it is grown of itself. And beyond away from all the gods are the Titans, beyond gloomy Chaos." In Norse kozmology, the underworld river, one of twelve collectively known as Elivagar, is called Gjall, and divides this world from that of the goddess Hela. Gjall, and the crystal and gold bridge that spans it called Gjallarbru, is watched over by a female figure, like the goddess Styx, called Mordgud. Mordgud is a premonition of Hela, she has all Her characteristics, and in a way, is Her, but not completely. She hints at the green aurora borealis that characterises Hela's realm in Her face, which shines with an identical unearthly light; the light of her face shows the way to Hela's paradise. Another example of the boundary river in Norse kozmology is the river of Geirvimul, which protects the land of the giant Geirrod, and which is guarded by his daughter, Gjalp, who makes the river rise with her own menstrual blood. The river as a river of blood is also seen in the Highland ballad of the dark goddess initiate Thomas the Rhymer, who travels with the Queen of Elfland across as a bloody river for forty days and nights. whoseJohn Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the river of death is the last obstacle which the pilgrim much cross to reach the heavenly city. In many Christian hymns and spirituals, the dead must cross the Jordan River to attain the next life.

"If one looks at what exactly granular synthesis is, as an envelope into which we cast sound particles to create an overall sound, the parallels of this process and the concept of birth/rebirth/death/rivers and, well, pretty much all those other things I didn't write are within this. So lets start with the envelope. It is a container- this container can be many things. It can be womb, river, ocean, world, or anything else. Within this container, we place small tiny increments of sound. These can be extracted from an acoustic or external source, or can be synthesized within the program. In essence, we can take a sound from our world, bring it into the otherworld of the small container we've just designed, break it apart, destroy it, and birth it again, new. We can also ask that the processor use a base sound, like a pure sine wave, and build our sound by using the blocks that are found within the processor. Now what is the main emphasis in most ambient works? The concept of flow. So we want to use granular synthesis to make a "natural flow" of things. So we take this sound envelope that we've filled with grains of sound, and we want it to flow. Of course we are going to get to waters, to sand, even to lava. So we take these envelopes and make them flow, make them grow into tributaries, make them into something that we can use. These flowing objects must be able to transport sound and substance. So we need to equate these to organic structures which we are familiar with, which we know flow and travel and carry other objects. And within this we have water. So when we work in granular synthesis, we are actually working with the "atoms" of sound to build creation, creating our own little multiverses, and our own little rivers, our own methods of transportation, our own worlds within to live." -Lyn Goeringer.

:COLD SEED (HAGALAZ MEDITATION):

Hagall er kaldakorn
ok krapadrífa
ok snáka sótt.
grando hildingr.

Hail is cold grain
and shower of sleet
and sickness of serpents.
Grando is hail.

Hagalaz (Haegl, Hagall, Hagal, Hagla, Haal) is the nineth rune of the the Elder Futhark (where its form is similar to the Latin "H"), and the seventh rune of the Younger Futhark (in which it resembles the Ior Rune from the expanded Anglo Frisian Futhark). In its Younger Futhark form, Hagalaz has six spokes radiating from the centre, implying the shape of an ice crystal; what is referred to in the rune poems as "cold grain". This is apposite, because Hagalaz is the mother rune, a seed crystal, out of which the shapes of all the other runes can be derived. It stands as a microkozmic image of the magickal macrokozmos, with its central axis representing the spine of the world tree and world axis, surrounded by pathways into the four principle directions, or into the other worlds of Norse kozmology. Cold Seed presents a meditation on this principle, with the listener sitting at the centre of the rune, surrounded by the outstretched icey arms of Hela, and journeying out through the crystaline tendrils.

I Fall As A Hearted Hailstone.