The Sound Sacrifice

Sacrifice is the metaphor of a banquet that the earth offers to the sky and that sky cannot refuse, thereby finding mutual sustenance. This encounter, evident in the final part of the alchemical works, can open a “private channel” which, at the level of the human senses, is opened by sounds (see also Turba Philosophorum’s Ambition).

In 1960, musicologist Marius Schneider wrote an impressive little book entitled La Musica Primitiva or The Primitive Music, which brought together the subject of sound in ancient mythologies from around the world. The author’s research is not limited to the various Genesis works, in which the element of divine sound-voice-roar-whisper is ubiquitous and already widely known, but brings to light a surprisingly complex web of sound ceremonies and vocal evocations that make manifest the relationships between heaven, sky, and earth, through movements between the stars, the sun, the earth’s caves, trees, minerals, wood, smoke, fires and finally the human body and spirit.

Perhaps only an alchemist can deeply appreciate and understand the Grande Opera of Marius Schneider.