Ten Years of Blood and Fire

Nearly a fortnight has passed since the Summer Solstice on Neudegg Alm, and life has barely calmed since that wondrous night of flame and belonging. With the heat of the moment propelling once-aching feet towards new possibilities, I must take pause to reflect and release before moving on.

It was my tenth year on the mountain, save the isolation of restricted times, and I returned to Abtenau burdened by conflicting thoughts. Prior years compelled questions of place, there and elsewhere, and a search for purpose and presence through all manner of misdeeds. A purpose I now carried within myself. Months of soul-searching through greater challenge had forged foundations once lacking, and I walked with new, noticed, certainty.

Last year’s gathering had not settled well. The elements of the ceremony still very much present, but the atmosphere laden with doubt. The pall of death weighed heavy then, in moments of mourning and the strife of insincerity. Forced expectations and shallow smiles – perhaps a mirror to the mindset I brought with me. I wondered if this would continue into another year and briefly considered forfeiting my invite. Yet, knowing the potential of what could be, I placed my trust in the cycle of things to move forward.

Death must, so life follows, and this year saw the rictus mask lift to joyful rebirth.

A return to what was and what should be.

Ever evolving, House of the Holy held a more relaxed, thoughtful pace this year. Tempering the raw immediacy of recent times with a reflective pause more suited to the surrounds. Additional aspects of the gathering outside the grounds had also been refined, offering a greater sense of holistic awareness.

The first night again took place in Abtenau itself, where locals and passing tourists alike were treated to a performance in front of the town church. Headlined by Dool, this night included the addition of separate beer vendors to ensure the already packed restaurants weren’t as overrun as prior years. The balconies swelled with the curious and entertained as old friends and veterans reunited.

Before entering the site itself on the second day, last year’s experimental art gallery took greater form. A phenomenal installation, curated in collaboration with renowned occult artists and photographers. Captivating and provocative, death itself was brought into beautiful life in the essence of creativity. Enhanced further by crafting sessions so others too may create. A place for cool-minded introspection away from the incessant heat outside.

For the weather itself was possibly the best the gathering had ever experienced. The persistence of Sol unfiltered scorched skin and rendered futile most means of protection. At times many felt it too warm and overwhelming, but conversations soon cropped up under shade and over beer. United by the experience, all eyes soon turned to the stage.

The music this year returned to a more varied mix. With the relentless onslaught of Thursday’s War Metal fury maturing into a more intriguing soundscape as the days progressed. Londoners Cold in Berlin were the stand-out surprise of the weekend. Their post-punk doom revitalised weary legs on Saturday, fixating me in awe as vocalist Maya effortlessly cast her intent through the crowd.

Mention must also be made to Swedes Myling, performing a ritual of their own on Friday to herald the longest day. As they left the stage to burn wreaths on the smaller fire, the atmosphere of the Alm ascended to a higher state. Through such heady performance and more, the aches and inconveniences of being had dispersed. We were ready for Midsummer.

For the final hours, filled once more with visceral music and the vibrant pulse of camaraderie, we prepared for fire. As Absu‘s incendiary set faded I was taken by surprise. There was time again to pause and reflect before the liminal threshold. To breathe. To talk. To share our collective anticipation.

Then the ceremony began. Not in rushed aggression, but in calm determination. Torches lit at the stage were carried once more to the pyre, where each found their own way upwards. Once more I walked widdershins around the flame in my own tradition of bonding. Blood surged through my veins in fierce vitality. Belonging.

At the fire I met a barefoot soul. A precious friend with the sun in her smile, who had shared conversations of ungrounded intensity across the nights. In the spontaneity of smoke and white sage, mere feet from the flame, she cleansed old energies to invite the new – reflecting the rebirth of the rite. The fire roared white in response and we held each other a moment. The intent of wild words once scattered as embers, reforming and rekindling into silent, assured contemplation.

We were meant to meet in Magick. At the animus and anima of primal fire, where individual will integrates with shared wonder to contemplate the spirit of something above all. New bonds form in anticipation, and sear their permanence in memory. A transcendental sense of togetherness and tradition reasserting itself under cloudless skies. Light in Darkness.

Beyond the Alm, the distant flames of other peaks raged clear. For once they could be seen, as sharp as the stars above and as bright as the Milky Way beyond. A connection diminished in prior years, regained and reestablished as it deserves to be.

Yet even in the joy of the moment, of friendships old and new beneath the flame, thoughts reached out to those not present. Those missing who should be there, divided by harsh words, misunderstandings and worse. The ache of their absence stings, sustaining a presence in hearts that long for reconciliation.

Sometimes people grow apart. Sometimes they grow beyond. I myself have grown much this past decade. Perhaps later in life than most, yet perhaps also further than many. I am no longer the Fool that blundered upwards in reckless reverie all those years back. There is purpose to my passion now. Stability and certainty.

For the flame is not just to be absorbed in a single static moment. It is to be carried in reverence along a path of deeper understanding. A steady beacon of conscious learning and shared wisdom, illuminating the way for others to step beyond the shadow.

And the mountain abides.

https://heathenstorm.com/2025/07/03/ten-years-of-blood-and-fire/

#Blog #austria #blackmetal #coldinberlin #death #dool #doom #fire #houseoftheholy #livemusic #magick #music #myling #neudeggalm #occult #postpunk #ritual #solstice #warmetal

Of climbing…

I’d never climbed a mountain before.

At the start of this year’s House of the Holy festival in Abtenau, Austria, a group of friends from the UK and Sweden decided that’s just what they were going to do, taking on the First Pass in the nearby Tennengebirge range. Accepting their kind invite and relishing the challenge, I joined them.

Of course, this was not an extreme ascent requiring specialist gear. Rather a hike up increasingly narrower trails with the occasional extreme drop. Not for amateurs either, the climb was still gruelling. With the gradient tending towards near vertical in places, and scree slipping underfoot, I soon learned to clamber with all my will, determination, and limbs.

And four hours later, with a few unplanned breaks taken into account, we made it to the rewarding vistas of the summit.

There will always be a taller peak. A greater ascent. Betterment comes from taking that individual responsibility to grow beyond. To push past the expectations of others, and find fulfilment in actualising what is truly possible.

But with cuts and scrapes carving my legs in memento, and my feet finding blisters in places I never predicted, I’m proud of what we achieved together.

https://heathenstorm.com/2025/06/19/of-climbing/

#Blog #abtenau #austria #climbing #houseoftheholy #mountain #tennengebirge

I was not alone for Midsummer.

It had been a hard year for many. Some had lost those dear, and others still had lost part of themselves. The abrasion of existence scratching away at the best of us, compelling cruelty and distrust through uncertain times. A common burden, one often and needlessly borne alone.

Thoughts of the one who first brought me to the mountain haunted my mind, and in recent months another had passed. The kind landlady with whom I had lodged in prior years, and last summer delivered flowers to. Although I regret not finding time to attend her grave; I gain solace knowing fellow lodgers laid a stone heart upon it on behalf of all to commemorate the sense of family we once shared.

But this was a new family now. A gathering of separate ways, archetypes all their own. A Pilgrim of Death returning to the mountain; an Empathic soul who had performed at past gatherings; and a Priestess new to the Alm. Strangers to one another, each sworn to fire. My duty to braid together these disparate beings by way of friendship and camaraderie. Seeking communication and concordance, learning how each speak so all may hear. The centre around which madness must dance.

There would be no masks in our covenant. No biting of tongue for the sake of convenience. Any natural friction discussed openly, and resolved in kindness.

By this simple rule, strangers soon became friends.

As we fortified ourselves to ascend on the Solstice morning, a funeral procession solemnly passed through the town square. Different from the pomp of prior years’ Corpus Christi, a single soul was memorialised by what seemed the entire town. The clink of cup and cutlery grew silent as they filed into the church, and tears flowed in empathy.

Gaining comfort from our cohort’s closeness, we made our way upwards. To reconnect, refocus, and for most, return. As is the way of things, our group dispersed to meet others. Yet amid the joyful jubilation of reacquaintance, there was a fresh coldness in some we met. An insatiety of spirit staunched by quick-fix distraction.

It felt different this year. Some fellow veterans were noted by their absence, and others seemed too far lost. A mosaic of once-kind faces in abstract. Serpents on the mountain. Had the purpose of the gathering changed, or had I?

Such troubled thoughts sought solace by the stage. The music was violent, intense, and dramatic as it should be. With much Black Metal on the bill, there would be no half-measure at the apex of nature. At times the clouds spoke in response, a drenching certainty which took even this veteran by surprise.

Respite from righteous fury, Hexvessel were a needed counterpoint to chaos. Before their set, I burned incense with other old friends in the crowd. Sharing truth and Samhain herbs prepared by the Moon Temple and saved for this moment. It would be a night to speak to the spirits.

I returned to my empathic friend, to relax in good company even as others shuffled to-and-fro. A song was announced in tribute to those departed, and we wept for the one who introduced us all those years ago. The same who first brought me here. We held each other so tightly and dearly as anguish cried for comfort. A moment of sincerity in an often superficial world.

All turned to fire, and as the ritual began I daubed my eyes with ash. An embodiment of sorrows unspoken. With the hill thankfully dry underfoot, I swiftly scaled upwards to the pyre. Circling as I do once flame took hold, meeting with friends and wishing them well with gifts of love and liquor. Prior concerns of coldness melted away by the warmth of belonging.

I found my dear friend once more and we hugged joyfully in the fire’s glow, anointed in oils of rebirth. Smiling, laughing, we saluted the sky in libation as grief took flight to flame. The Sorceress, I feel, would be proud of the close, sincere friendship that has burgeoned in her wake.

The others made their own way to the fire, and it is not my place to speak of what they discovered. But as my heart raised and my burdens dispersed into the black, I considered what each of us brought to our crazy, dysfunctional family. For all the frustrations and misunderstandings found in our covenant resonated with my deeper concerns; and spoke of another tacit, yet ever-present, companion.

Death walks her path in parallel, and does not contrive to convenience. One cannot predict her swathe, nor can we escape her inevitable embrace. We can and should be angry and frustrated by all of this, to regret the words unspoken and love unrequited as in politeness we bide time ’til tomorrow. All we can do in the now is be reminded that we are together, to sustain such love in the echo of memory. And simply, especially, to just let go.

The tears of the mountain fall, and splash the earth in renewal. A ground salted by insincerity and the dust of dreams forlorn.

Sparks of divinity. Fragments of an ideal. We may strive to be superluminal beings, but are still nonetheless human. Caked in the dirt and ash endemic of our nature. Scrabbling through the debris of fearful obligation, suffocating virtue in the rote whims of expectation. Staunched by stimuli we find ourselves lost and yearning. White light simulacra supplanting our essential truth.

Yet the mountain is bigger than any of us, and impassively wise to the wickedness of man. It weeps for the profane and the lost potential of what was, yet churns in timeless tectonic cycle. Spirits of countless ceremonies ascend and descend through the centuries; each carving their own path yet ever sanctifying the land.

And under the mountain’s eternal auspice, this house may yet become holy.

https://heathenstorm.com/2024/07/05/tears-of-the-mountain/

#blackmetal #death #fire #hexvessel #houseoftheholy #livemusic #mementomori #metal #music #occult #ritual #solstice

To Dream among the Spires of the Earth

With two weeks to go until the annual Alpine pilgrimage to Neudegg Alm and the House of the Holy gathering, I reflect upon one of my rare dabbles into journalism.

Back in 2017, the festival had changed. Previously known as ‘Funkenflug’, this year would have it renamed to the current form, and with it a greater sense of transformation. Through my reputation as an occasional writer, chronicling my experiences in more ephemeral form, I was approached by fellow creative Diana “Sunve” Muschiol to write a report for Via Omega magazine. Although sadly no longer published, the international magazine’s focus on extreme art in all forms – not just music – had previously piqued my interest. Naturally, I leapt at the challenge with garrulous aplomb, presenting a rambling draft awash with detail and personal introspection.

My wandering words were (thankfully) edited down into something more focused. Interspersed with quotes and commentary from the organiser, and embellishing beautiful vistas from renowned photographers.

It was an honour and delight to see my writing in print, and I thank magazine chief Lariyah Perrin and crew for the opportunity.

More than just another disposable festival of drunken stupor and campsite fumbling; the Funkenflug Society presents an ideal. A creative space of substance and sincerity. Three days of music, art and solstice ritual.

A common theme is transformation. The transmutation of the ephemeral into form. Will invokes action, and action invokes result. It is all too easy to languish in the safe realm of the known, believing that to be the limit of existence. But there is a passion, a feeling in the hearts of many that there must be something more. Something greater than the individual. A sense of higher belonging.

Transformation was present on the mountain this year. Previously known as ‘Funkenflug’, this year saw the gathering renamed to ‘House of the Holy’, a refinement of spiritual growth and deeper understanding.

The traditions of place and purpose are evident in every hand-carved corner of the site. This is a lodge of love and blood. Wooden buildings embellished with runes and animal skulls hold the necessary trappings of merchandise, food and drink. Inside the ‘temple’; a throne built of bones and skulls lies empty, representing not a king, but a concept.

Above the stage area, a higher hill is crested by the pyre. The centrepiece of the festival, to be burned at celebration’s crescendo. But this is no superficial feel-good retreat, to be experienced as novelty before returning unchanged to the workaday world. This is a place of visceral honesty, one which may repulse the unwary.

A trio of skinned animal heads rest on a plinth at the centre of the site, constricting and decomposing in the sun. A reminder that death and change is ever-present, even among the wild jubilation of lives lived and loved freely. All must turn to filth, and through this filth new beginnings may spawn.

Friday night saw a smaller fire gathering at the cardinal points surrounding the pyre. Previously, at the entrance each one was given a disc of wood, and through inscription or imagination carved onto it whatever one wished to burn. The interpretation of those words was left open. Then everything changed. As the disc fell into the fire, reality snapped into hyper-focus. A symbol aflame, representing a personal aspect of being that no longer served its purpose or was meant to be sacrificed to the fire.

On Saturday different rituals were performed.  As dusk fell, a solemn silent torch-lit procession ascended the hill, leading into the deep forest. The darkness beyond the edge of reason.

Some stumbled, some lost their breath and needed to rest briefly, but the procession continued. Deeper and darker, until we came upon a torchlit grove surrounded by trees. Here was a ceremony to the dark heart of the wood. Off kilter music accompanied chanting and indecipherable spoken pieces. As my eyes grew ever more accustomed to the night I saw the hooded performers, devoid of individual identity but instead part of this sacred mystical moment. As much a part of the cosmos as the trees and earth and distant stars.

It is a fascinating aspect of humanity that, of all the conscious creatures, we may comprehend the infinite. Lives so fragile are gone so fast, but we fill them with distractions and excuses for fear of actually living. We trap ourselves in wageslave drudgery and a passionless, medicated existence. Wearing the brand sigils of designer labels as we chug our corporate coffee. Posturing, preening, and neglecting collective potential in favour of pissing and point-scoring.

I looked back into the sky as distant stage lights cast their rays into the black, and I realised that we need empty spaces. We need the indecipherable. We need our god-concepts and empty thrones. We need that which we may never know. How else can we be inspired to grow, to reach beyond our limits if in our arrogance we believe we know everything? We need to be humble. Although just as small and fragile as ever, we may choose to believe in something greater.

Finally there came fire. Headliners Jess and the Ancient Ones played their psychedelic occult rock with renewed vigour as a new procession formed at the front of the stage. Torches held aloft with pride and passion. No solemn silence now, but instead sheer delight. The crowd parted as torchbearers and attendants bound up the hill, and we each took our places around the stone circle. At the apex of the pyre, the alchemic symbol remained. Below it a jawbone sunwheel, each bone painted by a different artist present at the gathering. A collective symbol of renewal and creativity, soon to be engulfed in flame.

The fire burned. In defiance of, or perhaps deference to, the unyielding black skies. It was a clear night despite the smoke, and a galaxy of distant stars twinkled in the night. We embraced and performed our rituals, ever closer to the flame.

We dream among the spires of the earth. Forever grounded by circumstance, yet seeking the inspiration of higher planes. Seeking the mountain. Seeking the distant horizon. Pushing beyond the unknown into that moment where we may finally know our potential. Our passion.

Ourselves.

Originally printed in Via Omega magazine Issue 6 – “The Black Abyss” – August-October 2017.
Republished with permission.

https://heathenstorm.com/2024/06/05/to-dream-among-the-spires-of-the-earth/

#Writing #abtenau #austria #blackmetal #creativity #festival #houseoftheholy #neudeggalm #occult #review #sunve #viaomega

After a 2500+ mile round trip to the mountain, I finally have time to reflect upon the journey. One which took me across eight countries and to the brink of wild abandon.

The first time I’ve celebrated my actual birthday in Abtenau, it was humbling to receive such kindness from friends old and new. My gratitude is absolute.

The mountain itself was different from other years. With music more compatible with my nature, the sound and fury proved empowering to the point of raw, primal madness. Leaving me bruised, bleeding, and enriched with purpose; yet still apart upon my own path.

Where does a wanderer set their roots? It’s obvious I’m happiest in motion, even if few are able to keep up. The road is where I find my strength to stand, and courage to embrace opportunity.

Although sometimes I feel I don’t belong, at the very least my presence is welcome as I pass through. I could not have made the journey without cherished friends who offered enthralling conversation, comfort, and company. Walking with wise, creative souls who crave authenticity as much as I; and making art of our own at the conjunction of ways.

Refreshed and re-energised, these next weeks compel me to catch up with production work. Editing videos, prepping for the tours, and hammering things down for planned projects and exciting collaborations to come.

I am seen. I am heard. I will bring my vision to form.

But how am I going to top this for next year’s big five-oh?

https://heathenstorm.com/2023/06/27/memories-of-midsummer-madness/

#abtenau #art #austria #birthday #creativity #fire #houseoftheholy #neudeggalm #travel