Eternal Return

Devotee of Blood & Beauty

[cultofthedarksun]

“He who begets something which is alive must dive down into the primeval depths in which the forces of life dwell. When he rises to the surface, there is a gleam of madness in his eyes because in those depths life lives cheek by jowl with death. The primal mystery is itself mad—the matrix of the duality and the unity of disunity.”

—  Walter F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult

[cultofthedarksun]

So would I die As then I saw him die, The friend, who like a god Into my darkling youth Threw lightning’s light and fire: Buoyant yet deep was he, Yea, in the battle’s strife With the happy dancer’s heart. Amid the warriors His was the lightest heart, Amid the conquerors His brow was dark with thought — He was a fate poised on his destiny: Unbending, casting thought into the past And future, such was he. Fearful beneath the weight of victory, Yet chanting, as both victory and death Came hand in hand to him. Commanding even as he lay in death, And his command that man annihilate. So would I die As then I saw him die, Victorious and destroying.

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Last Desire

[cultofthedarksun]

Adolphe Bouguereau

[cultofthedarksun]

“Man is a combination of the beast and the super-beast; higher man a combination of the monster and the superman: these opposites belong to each other. With every degree of a man’s growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows downwards into the depths and into the terrible: we should not desire the one without the other.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

[cultofthedarksun]

you easily became one of my fave art blogs

Thank you!

[cultofthedarksun]

I'm getting posts copied identically by a twitter account daily with over 200k followers, thinking of heading to insta to lock this lurker out (I'm petty)

[cultofthedarksun]

“But this is a different Dionysus from the one Ariadne knew in her childhood. He wasn't called Dionysus then.. he was the Bull: the total Bull, who descends from the heavens like Zeus, rises from the sea like Poseidon, grazes under the plane trees of Gortyn. He encompassed all things: he was in the honey and blood offered to the gods, he was in the slender horns at each side of the altars, in the ox skulls painted along the walls of the palace. Youths with armbands, loincloths, and wavy hair gripped him by the horns at a run. The Bull had always followed Ariadne about, right from the start, always accompanied her, always kept his eye on her.”

― Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

[cultofthedarksun]

O blessed is the man, the fortunate man who knows the rituals of the gods, who leads a pious life, whose spirit merges with these Bacchic celebrations, frenzied dancing in the mountains, our purifying rites— one who reveres these mysteries from Cybele, our great mother, who, waving the thyrsus, forehead crowned with ivy, serves Dionysus.

— Euripides

[cultofthedarksun]

“Do you really believe that the sciences would ever have originated if the way had not been prepared by magicians, alchemists, astrologers, and witches whose promises and pretensions first had to create a thirst, a hunger, a taste for hidden and forbidden powers?”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

[cultofthedarksun]

“The tragedies shall be the festivals of mankind; in them, freed from every convention, the free, strong and beautiful man will celebrate the raptures and agonies of his love and enact the great love-offering of his death with worthy and sublime solemnity.”

— Richard Wagner

[cultofthedarksun]

“I desired dragons with a profound desire… the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories

[cultofthedarksun]

Penetrate deep mountain caverns, Follow clouds towards the heavens: Muses call, to stream and valley, Many a thousand times, oh, many. As soon as fresh flowers meet the eye, New songs our efforts earn: And though fleeting time goes by, The seasons they return.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Ever and Everywhere

[cultofthedarksun]

“From early youth he was animated by an intense desire to learn all about the poet’s art and to perfect himself in everything connected with it.”

— Hermann Hesse

[cultofthedarksun]

“My world has just become perfect, midnight is also midday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun - be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. Did you ever say Yes to all joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love. O that is how you loved the world, you everlasting men, you loved it eternally and for all time..”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

[cultofthedarksun]

“Poetry was simply a detour: through it I escaped the world of discourse, which had become the natural world for me; with poetry I entered a kind of grave where the infinity of the possible was born from the death of the logical world.”

— Georges Bataille, The Impossible

[cultofthedarksun]

“Let us then believe in our star friendship even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

[cultofthedarksun]

Alexander Frenz