音の帯〜Phonon Belt

Hello! It's been a while. My new job doesn't leave much time for translating, but I am still listening to Mr. Hirasawa, so all is well.

A while back someone asked about the song "Opus" and I finally got around to taking a stab at it.

As I discussed here, the theme for the Philosopher's Propeller album is alchemy and the process known as the magnum opus or the "great work." The song is titled "Opus" in English, but the Japanese word in the title can also simply be translated as "work," so it all fits together.

While much of the rest of the album fits with alchemy, this song to me seems more imbued with the atmosphere of things from the Hermetic tradition and the ideas of Aleister Crowley. (Just skim the descriptions of the magnum opus here and see if you agree.) The use of the word "The Fool" (the first card in a tarot deck) in the song title also hints towards this occult/spiritual meaning rather than the purely alchemical idea. Crowley was influential in modern tarot deck creation and study, in particular through the Thoth Tarot painted by Lady Frieda Harris. If you take a look at "The Fool" card in a Thoth deck and then consider the crazy imagery of this song, you might start seeing connections...are those feathers? And a lion? What?

At any rate, this is a mellow yet intriguingly beautiful song--a song of innocence and curiosity and perfect power, maybe. What do you think?

平沢進 -「作業(愚者の薔薇園)」
( Japanese lyrics )

( Romaji lyrics )

Hirasawa Susumu - "Opus (The Fool's Rose Garden)"
( My attempted English translation )

As discussed here, rubedo (or "reddening") is the final step for creating the philosopher's stone in alchemy. In terms of spiritual/mental growth, though, it is the culmination of the process of self-realization and leads to the appearance of the Self archetype, which Jung apparently described as "the total, timeless man . . . who stands for the mutual integration of conscious and unconscious." The process of rubedo has also been described as follows:

Once the inner light has been discovered, it must be made into the only reality in our consciousness. After having descended into the unconscious [in nigredo and albedo] . . . we found the Light. [...] [O]ur conscious, or attention, must completely penetrate our unconscious, or soul, or everything that lies hidden in ourselves.

Perhaps that's why this song is one big command to "see" or become conscious of something?

平沢進 -「ルベド（赤化）」
( Japanese lyrics. )

( Romaji lyrics. )

Hirasawa Susumu - "Rubedo (Reddening)"
( My English translation )

Translation Notes:( Read more... )

As I mentioned here, nigredo is the first step for creating the philosopher's stone--a source of enlightenment, basically--in alchemy, but the concept has been applied to spiritual/psychological development as well.

To quote from this random website:

Psychologically, nigredo is a process of directing oneself to find self-knowledge. A problem is given full attention and reduced to its core. This is not done so much in an intellectual way, but especially by feeling the emotions. By really going into . . . it, one causes . . . the decomposition of that in which one had been stuck. The confrontation with the inner reality is often painful, and can lead to depression. But once in the depth of the darkness, with the discovery of the seed of the problem . . . the white light is born (= albedo, whiteness, the next phase). A state of rest arises.

Now, on to the song!

平沢進 - 「ニグレド(黒化)」
( Japanese lyrics )

( Romaji lyrics )

Hirasawa Susumu - "Nigredo (Blackening)"
( My English translation )

Translation Notes:( Read more... )

- Interestingly enough, these lyrics have a lot in common with the lyrics of "In the Square," a much earlier song.