Track By Tracks: IA - IntiAtion (2020)

The album initIAtion is a concept album rooted in different shamanic and mystical traditions, personal experiences and stories. It conveys a tale of the birth of a shaman: from the realization of the inherent inner power to the healing of the self and ultimately to the death and rebirth of the shaman-to-be. On the other hand, it’s a story of a soul’s struggle in fulfilling it’s inescapable destiny to become a medium between the ordinary and the spirit world.

1. PromethIA:

“An answer looms beyond the thought, unthinkable, but realized”

This song is about an awakening, the self-realisation of the truth seeker. The innate curiosity and the capability to ask questions leads the seeker on a path of discovery of the world within. But with answers more questions arise! How to cope and deal with knowledge that blows your mind? How to find truth in contradiction and paradoxes? The seeker has to go beyond reason to take a leap of faith. The acceptance and surrender to what is, is what sets the seeker free. There is a catch though: where did the questions come from in the first place? To see more light is to shed light on the other seekers of truth as well.

2. IA:

“We have the power! We have the force!”

The activation and inauguration of higher personal power. We call the elements to our aid and state higher will to activate the dormant divine forces of the human potential. The song starts with a Kalevalian chant in Finnish where the shaman calls forth their divine nature. Take it as a spell, if you will.

3. Blackcurrent:

“Confront the darkness of your spirit”

When becoming a healer you must face your past life, wounds and hardships altogether. It’s about giving into repressed pain - to be with it, feel it and accept it. Denial of pain is a severe hindrance on the path of becoming a healer. The only way is to let the pain out, so you can see yourself for who you really are. You are not your pain. You are not your lies. But yes, there is darkness. You will confront it and make peace with it and it becomes your helper on your path.

4. The Golden King of the Forest:

“The sickness grows strong in this one Its roots reaching deep beneath the feet of our souls”

The Golden King of the Forest is an epic about sickness, animorphing and healing by retrieving a stolen fragment of soul from the underworld. It is told from the viewpoint of an experienced shaman helping the album’s protagonist. The healing process is a mandatory part of a healer’s path. To heal, you must first be healed.

The song begins with introducing a musical theme depicting sickness. The theme recurs in many parts of the song, getting more twisted as the malady evolves. After the shaman recognizes the sickness, the shaman asks help from the most powerful spirit known to the woods. Then the shaman takes the form of a bear, that is known as The Golden King of the Forest in the Finnish traditions. The bear spirit helps the shaman to tear the sickness out of the body and breathe fire on it to burn it to death.

In many shamanic traditions, illnesses are always related to the soul. If the body and mind get sick, it is seen that the soul gets fractured and a part of it is taken to the dark underworld by malignant spirits. The sickness is a result of this. The shaman’s duty is to get that broken part back from the depths of Tuonela. In the song, the way to the underworld is known to the ravens, and the shaman asks their help to get there. During the travel, the shaman faces many hazards and dangers that the shaman must outwit with the help of the spirit guides. The shaman finds the fragment, inhales it, returns back to the ordinary world and breathes it back to the protagonist’s fractured soul.

The lyrics are based on actual stories from shamans and on several shamanic and mystical cultures and mythologies from around the world.

The Initiation Trilogy: 

A journey to the underworld with the guidance of helping spirits is fundamental to classical shamanism of Siberia and inner Asia. The trilogy is inspired by the recorded story of the initiation of a Siberian shaman Djaruoskin (aka IArockii). During the initiation, the initiate must accept his destiny to become a shaman, face the spirit of madness, make a journey to the underworld and undergo three deaths.

5. The Initiation pt1: The Initiation:

“But those who meet The Spirit of Madness Will begin to shamanize”

A call to shamanhood. The initiate receives the call through dreams and the waking state through synchronicities. The call only takes you up until a certain point and it is by will and desire that the initiate falls into trance. In trance the initiate transcends old beliefs and thought patterns into the unknown. The realm of the spirit world opens it’s veil. This transcendent state can and will lead to madness, if the will is not strong. Those with strength and determination will ultimately face The Spirit of Madness. Then, beyond the borders of strange, the silence speaks to the initiate and shares the secrets of the trade.

6. The Initiation pt2: The Collapse:

“...”

Descent into the underworld through heavenly spheres.

7. The Initiation pt3: Skeletonize:

“Death, the birthmark of the chosen one Imminent, soon to be actualized”

To master soul travel through the different planes of the spirit world one must undergo the grand initiation. It is one of many initiations, but in several shamanic traditions around the world it is considered to be essential to ultimately become a shaman. It is the forging of the spirit body under the hammer of the cosmic smith. The shaman is violently taken apart to the bone and then recombined three times over. The skeleton of the shaman is reinforced with iron - the metal connected to the world of spirits. This seals the deal to become a channel between the ordinary and the spirit world.