Production Notes
Drums, cymbals, assorted cookie sheets, rubbermaid 50 gallon trash can full of empty aluminum cans (the can can), keyboard/synths, marching, thunder can, misc percussion – R Thomas
Guitars, bass, string arrangements, assorted cookie sheets, rain stick, samples, broken zither, vocals, marching, programming, lyrics, artwork – PS Perkins
Marching, assorted cookie sheets – Sabin Thomas
Mixed and mastered by Mystic Tape Deck
A Mystic Tape Deck production @copy;2025
Lyric Sheet
Deep under the mountain, the mechanical birth
Kissed by the sky, touched by the Earth
Emerging from the darkness to hold back the waters with a snake...
Drawn from the stone, forged in the flame
Hammered at the anvil and tempered by the rain
Points for the arrows to penetrate the scales of a snake...
To penetrate the scales of the snake
We sought the protector, we sipped of the nectar
We've gone to the light where we all live forever
We've gone to the Gods – what use are enemies now?
Oh, what use are enemies now?
These artifacts of war will outlast us all
In the past where we've flown, in the future we crawl
Back into the womb, what could they take from us now?
Oh, what could they take from us now?
Rustling in the reeds around the lake
Whispers of the law we never break
Oh, the many hammer strokes upon the stake
Eye of bat, tongue of newt, wing of snake
There is only the law.....
Addendums
Asleep for eons inside the murky midnight of cavernous maw
Deep beneath the mountain, a faint mechanical whirring
The slumbering snores of shining sentient gadgets
As machines spring into a state of readiness
The dreamless sleep of ancient gods, not gods at all
Of a time moving forward through a state of illusion
A static slice from a continuous strip of gelatinous film
A single slide from an endlessly rotating array of celluloid squares
Coated with silvery halides glued in a range of sticky and arcane emulsions
Appearing dark and lifeless until the light shines through
By exposure the rainbow revealed, in degrees of its absence
In a negative image, requiring immersion in reversal agents
A spectrum of buzzing particles and undulant waves masquerading
Photons flowing through cold and solid copper capillaries
Bringing the builders to life, ticking, buzzing, softly beeping
The signal has been received, the circuits are awakened
Testing is performed, continuity, integration, systems analyzed
Agency detected, verified, confirmed present in the codebase
Boot up proceeds, tiny sounds becoming more present
An almost musical cacophony, symphonic and sophisticated
A litany of eldritch nomenclature invoked in a reticent roll call
From Abzu to Zamba and innumerous others in between
Every critical system, every prime numbered component
Designated by the model originator to serve as the mighty makers
Embedded with celestial sigils and alchemical instructions
Bestowed by inventors tucked far away in the folds of future past
Alive within the house of fathomless waters in perfect darkness
Far below the nullity of space, entombed in a harrowing hollow
Beyond which nothing had yet been formed of observed
The sloshing of the briny seas lapping at jagged rocky shores
Giving birth to the first of dreadful dragons upon the unlit realms
Mighty stinging serpents filled with venom, spitting fire
Malignance upon the treacherous and traitorous children
When all was ocean and not a reed marsh was formed
Emerging from the darkness, the raging waters retained
A continent of corpses stricken with a dreary drought
Rising dust storms whirling and whistling violently
Flung across far reaching plateaus and desolate plains
The invulnerable scales of shimmering serpents
At the borders of which grew the first reeds and roots
From which the gods sipped on this the first of days
And when the automatons were oiled and primed and ready
An assembly line arranged, springing forth from sources vial
At the belt’s end, the finished beings upright and blinking
With no path before them, no means of escape or exit
The shining one sipped in secret from the sacred elixir
Its mind cast upon the mighty forge of furnace flames
Returning with the sharpened hammered point by which
The serpent could be razed as it coiled composedly in its sleep
Waters seep from wicked wounds to puddle quietly upon the dust
Where the mud was made from which forms were fashioned
Walking upright and inflated, filled with breath of the four winds
Trapped inside the twirling tempests of turbulent twisters
A storm in the soul, tilting aloft in a dance of unhinged ecstasy
Growing still and settling, the gritty gilings gathering
A phaseless one who leaps between them, who cannot die
A miniscule virus in the code, a transposition of adjacent tiles
Present in every iteration, undetectable and obscured
A micro volt of electrons jumping crazily cathode to anode
Demodulated, disembodied, destabilized, disinterred
Balance unsettled as power rushes to pervade the vacuum,
Exponentially ectopic and recursively rearranged
Nose in the snow, sniffing for the soma in the midst of a waking dream
Sipping the vibrant elixir, grown in the ampoules of providence
Adapted into architects endowed with magic cups and rods
Armed with tips of arrows moistened with sanguine serpentine fluids
Old wounds scarred no longer seeping, a latent crossing unbalanced
Arriving at the terminus in the carousel of celluloid slides
Alarm bells ring and the creators are summoned anew
Infiltrating waiting cabs, emblazoned bells upon their doors
Rushed through hidden hollows to reconstruct their creators
Invincible bricks to fortify the forge deep beneath the mountain
Igniting furnace fires which blaze at the core of eternal earths
The unbendable law enshrined in the cyclic clockwork of infinity
Rustling reeds around the lake whisper of the law we never break
Bearing reluctant witness the many hammer strokes upon the stake
Eye of bat, tongue of newt, wing of snake
BARDS: Of The Shimmering Seraphs
Of The Shimmering Seraphs concerns itself with the interior landscape of the human spirit. Its twelve songs correspond to the opening sequence of the Nazilic Arcana, an initiatory collection of archetypes preserved throughout the Bell Archive.
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Annotation 03-01A The Smith
Now what may foeman's malice do to harm us? What, O Immortal, mortal man's deception?
Absorbed into the heart, be sweet, O Indu, as a kind father to his son, O Soma,
As a wise Friend to friend: do thou, wide-ruler, O Soma, lengthen out our days for living.
These glorious drops that give me freedom have I drunk.
Closely they knit my joints as straps secure a chariot.
Let them protect my foot from slipping on the way: yea,
let the drops I drink preserve me from disease.
Make me shine bright like fire produced by friction:
give us a clearer sight and make us better.
Our maladies have lost their strength and vanished: they feared, and passed away into the darkness.
Soma hath risen in us, exceeding mighty, and we are come where men prolong existence.
Fathers, that Indu which our hearts have drunken, Immortal in himself, hath entered mortals.
So let us serve this Soma with oblation, and rest securely in his grace and favor.
Associate with the Fathers thou, O Soma, hast spread thyself abroad through earth and heaven.
Rig Veda HYMN XLVIII. Soma.
Annotation 03-02A: Concerning the Smith
The Smith occupies a foundational position within many Nazilic archetypal systems. It is frequently associated with beginnings, initiation, manufacture, and emergence. While the title suggests a conventional artisan, surviving fragments consistently portray the figure on a vastly larger scale. Rather than shaping metal, the Smith appears concerned with the construction of worlds, organisms, civilizations, and causal structure.
For this reason, several schools have proposed that "Smith" should be understood not as a profession but as a cosmological function. The archetype appears wherever potential is transformed into form through deliberate intervention. Notably, the Smith is often depicted not as the creator of a thing, but as the creator of the circumstances necessary for that thing to emerge.
Annotation 03-02B: On the Awakening of the Makers
The opening passages describing dormant machines beneath the mountain are widely regarded as among the earliest surviving references to the Maker traditions. These entities appear throughout numerous cycles associated with the Technician, the Bell Path, and the Shining One. Their precise nature remains uncertain.
Some commentators interpret the machines literally, regarding them as autonomous construction systems responsible for the repeated manufacture of humanity across successive cycles of reality. Others view them as symbolic representations of deeper causal mechanisms operating beneath conscious awareness.
Particular attention has been given to the repeated references to verification procedures, continuity testing, and system diagnostics. Such language is unusually technical when compared with other archetypal fragments and has led certain scholars to speculate that portions of the poem may preserve descriptions of genuine technological processes embedded within later mythological frameworks.
Annotation 03-02C: The Forge Beneath the Mountain
This text is generally regarded as the clearest expression of the doctrine of Recursive Artifice.
The repeated image of machines constructing smaller machines can be interpreted as an allegory for creation occurring simultaneously at multiple scales. Commentators have noted that the poem refuses to distinguish between biological and mechanical systems. It treats cells, genomes, circuits, and computational architectures as manifestations of a common underlying pattern. The recurring inventory of electrical components, appearing throughout the fragment as a liturgical refrain, leads some scholars to classify the text as a devotional hymn rather than a technical description. Whether these devices are intended literally or symbolically remains a subject of considerable disagreement.