Tauroctony
One of my favourite places in London is the remains of a Roman Mithraic temple on Walbrook in the City. In sharp contrast to the modern financial centre that has sprung up around it the London Mithraeum has a brooding, claustrophobic and spiritual atmosphere. I took this as the starting point for the long journey that lead to the Tauroctony that forms part of Horrorshow.
The Cult of Mithras was the predominant religious cult within the Roman Army at the time of the conquest of Britain. Originating in Persia, Mithraism was a brutal, men-only affair based on the symbolism of the bull god being killed by the deity Mithras and the blood of the animal fertilizing the earth. Mithraic rituals were blood soaked and powerful affairs - as was the life of the Roman Legionnaire.
The Tauroctony is the centrepiece of Mithraic iconography - every Mithraeum was based around this sacred image. It shows Mithras slaying the bull by cutting it's throat from above. A dog and a serpent drink blood directly from the wound and a scorpion attacks the bulls testicles. Usually a crow, a goblet and a small lion are present, as are Cautes and Cautopates, the celestial twins of light and darkness. The small Tauroctony found in the London Mithraeum has the main action encircled by the zodiac. I've called my piece Tauroctony because I intend it to function as a musical equivalent.
During my research into Mithraism I unearthed the only remaing text of a Mithraic ritual: The "Mithras" Liturgy from the Paris Codex. This long and strange text has come down to us over 2 millennia and seems to have lost none of its potency. I asked actor Tremayne Latham to read the text. As he himself states in his biography, it was during a tour of Pakistan "that Tremayne had a spiritual epiphany that opened his soul to esoteric religions and interest in cults such as Mithraism." For the recording he drew deeply on this source and drenched his reading of the liturgy with a deep magical authenticity. Incidentally the Mithraic texts were destroyed when the Romans embraced Christianity - mainly to conceal how much the younger religion owes to Mithraism. It's not easy to convince an army to jump from one religion to another, unless you can convince them that's it's essentially the same thing - that they're praising the same gods.
Now I had this powerful recording I could set about creating my Tauroctony. The sound sources and music are all derived from the symbolism in the Icon. I sourced and made recordings of all the animals - the bull, lion, crow, dog etc. But this simplicity conceals a greater truth in Mithraism. Its foundation is in Astrology, the bull is Taurus, Leo the lion etc. Each image is in fact a constellation, appearing in the Tauroctony in approximately the positions they appear in relation to each other in the night sky:
The bull = Taurus
Perseus = Mithras
The dog = Canis Major
Cautes and Cautopates = Gemini
The snake = Hydra
The crow = Corvus
The goblet = Crater
The small lion = Leo
The scorpion = Scorpio
I had previously experimented at length (particularly on my album Kaminari 1997) with using the shapes of constellations in music. The graphic nature of contemporary composition programmes means it's possible to translate two and three dimensional forms directly into musical information. More simply the stars that form a constellation could be considered the notes on a musical score - and the constellation would be translated into a melody, a rhythm or a harmony, depending on how the constellation is projected on to the page. For Tauroctony I collected star-maps of each of the constellations concerned and used the relative positions of each star to define pitch and their relative magnitude as a parameter I could set depending on the sound playing the notes. In some cases volume, in others filter frequency or modulation pitch etc.
The combination of the text, the animal sounds and the constellations gave me a wonderfully rich palette to work with. Not only are these elements strong and fascinating in their own right, but their interaction has developed a new and strange expression of an ancient ritual. The animals give a bestial and brutal foundation to the sound. The constellations bring a higher spiritual quality. The text brings the magic of the ancient world to life and defies us to take it lightly.
Furthermore the visual richness that ranges from the ancient world, through the cosmos to buckets of blood on a cold stone floor and the "seven bull-headed pole lords of heaven" is a Pandora's box begging to be opened by any courageous director. As it says in the Liturgy:
"that I may be born again in thought, and the sacred spirit may breathe in me, so that I may wonder at the sacred fire, that I may gaze upon the unfathomable, awesome water of the dawn, and the vivifying and encircling aether may hear me"
