image
Artwork by
Christian Degn
Christian Degn

4. A Hammer To The Great Matter Of Birth And Death

from Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone

October 10th, 2025
7 tracks
42:37
Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone
Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone
4. A Hammer To The Great Matter Of Birth And Death
0:00
1:37
4. A Hammer To The Great Matter Of Birth And Death
Terzij de Horde
I have tried To live up to this: The call to reach out, To grasp and to shape The heart of being, Shunning contact Nor responsibility. But I have failed. A sanitized frame Of exclusion and avoidance, Acceptance forever An event horizon. Death is here: An oak tree standing In all things. All is impermanence, Passing quickly, quickly, Along with all great illusions I will be subsumed. Haunting all pasts, Tainting all futures, The poison web Of fear and regret, The teeth of traps Set in inner worlds. And beyond the walls: The golden pavilion Circled by hatred And separation.
7:56

Because each breath is a flame to feed a collective fire. But the work that forecloses the soul is constant and all-consuming. Discarding all adornments, we descend into the underworld together to be reborn. We look for the courage to accept that we are completely entangled with life. To face the great matter of birth and death - our mortality, our vulnerability, our failures and our shadows. To take responsibility, harnessing our rage, our grief and our fear. To find that our wellsprings of power are buried deep below in our communal darkness. Here in the shadows of prefiguration we find the strength to rise up and break the hegemony of tyrannical realities. And raise their corpses towards the sun. 


Bibliography

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Credits

Recorded at Studio Independent Recordings by Quintijn Verhoef, Oct - Nov 2024.

Mixed by Quintijn Verhoef and Demian Snel.

Mastered by Arthur Rizk.

Artwork by Christian Degn.

Lay-out and typography by Mirko Meerwaldt.

Photography by Void Revelations.

All music and lyrics by Terzij de Horde.

Voice and strings on “Discarding All Adornments” by Amelia Baker (Cinder Well).