Mournful Congregation The Incubus of Karma 1. The Indwelling Ascent Instrumental 2. Whispering Spiritscapes Black horses ride waveless skies Traversed as shapeless voids Blackless night and voidless light Words and symbols yet unseen Unhallowed deeds left unredeemed We dream within a greater dream The masque of despondency Tethered to the rippling gaze From behind which peers A black luminescence Beckoning to thee Alluring, yet repelling Unnering, perpetually recurring Obscure presence in the outer abyss Wisdom's muse or man's conception The voice of dreaming dissolves in creation Cloaked in tattered gravecloth I navigate the whispering spiritscapes "My child, you are receiving the primal matter, Understand the blindness and the dejection of your first condition" I long not for life I long not for death 3. The Rubaiyat "Earth could not answer nor the seas that mourn and the thoughtful soul to solitude return" "Up from earth's centre through the seventh gate I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate and many knots unravel'd by the road but not the knot of human death and fate" "With Earth's first clay They did the Last Man's knead And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed: Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read" With a new dawn, comes a new birth From the first utterance to the final murmur A day is slain, and a new dawn birthed In night's black majesty, is the new-born lain The joy of one day, is the sorrow of the next Arriving at the pain of the future past Bringing to dust all mortal pride Pitying the very lot of kings We recall all despair borne of the last A reflection of man's pain so vast 4. The Incubus of Karma Instrumental 5. Scripture of Exaltation and Punishment Slow crawl amidst boughs of oak Where light of sun is banished The incubus of karma is upon us How tall these trees, scent dampened by earth Where darkness and cold shade reign I seek the wooded secrets The knowledge that conceals more than it reveals I am the voice of all sorrows I am the source of all pain I speak the voice of sorrow I speak the voice of pain So harmoniously beautiful So reverently melodious The deceptive magic of temptation Respite only in deep dreamless sleep These temptations The seeing of their loathsomeness eludes me Evil incarnations Broken vows Of the old kings Dark span looming Onerous chants Linger in the peripheral Evil, evil Fates weave through winding fates Darkness lay siege to light Exaltations turn to punishments All earthly pleasures cease The incubus of karma is upon us..... 6. A Picture of the Devouring Gloom Devouring the Spheres of Being A time when skies fell And all expanse Constricted to nought The golden serpent sat impregnable in the womb of darkness Coiled in wait Breathless in hibernation All inner voices sang (the song of) silence Wise but blind Seeing but unknowing All-consuming All-devouring The first, devoured by the second Shadows of the shadow We are they Shadow of the shadows The imperishable may now perish The devoured now devour Draw deep this breath, for it is thy last The great prayer has now been sung..... The laws of nature have been buried in ruin The affrighted sun has been deprived of its light All futures have cast their shadows before All pasts have left their impress behind