CVRRENT 93 – Patripassian (1996)

All the Pretty Little Horses (TheInmostLightItself) is an album by Current 93. It forms the second part of the Inmost Light trilogy; the first being 1995’s Where the Long Shadows Fall (Beforetheinmostlight) and the last being 1996’s The Starres Are Marching Sadly Home (Theinmostlightthirdandfinal). Unlike its bookends, All the Pretty Little Horses is a full-length album. Like the earlier Of Ruine or Some Blazing Starre, All the Pretty Little Horses contains several songs based on repeating melodic themes.

Lyrically, the album revolves around the ideas of pain and death, specifically as reflected in Patripassianist theology (see below), along with the overarching concept of the “inmost light”, or soul. In contrast, the music itself is some of Current 93’s most traditional, relying heavily on acoustic guitar. Exceptions appear in the form of two spoken-word tracks: the ominous, drone-based round “Twilight Twilight Nihil Nihil”, and “Patripassian”, backed mainly by a heavily treated loop of Carlo Gesualdo’s Miserere.

In Christian theology, Patripassianism is a version of Sabellianism (modalism, modalistic monarchianism, or modal monarchism). Modalism is the belief that God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three different modes or emanations of one monadic God, as perceived by the believer, rather than three distinct persons within the Godhead – that there are no real or substantial differences between the three, such that the identity of the Spirit or the Son is that of the Father.

In the West, a version of this belief was known pejoratively as Patripassianism by mainstream theologians critics (from Latin patri-, “father”, and passio, “suffering”), because they alleged that the teaching required that since God the Father had become directly incarnate in Christ, the Father literally sacrificed himself on the cross.

The rivers of Babylon flow And fall And carry away Jesus is alone on Earth Not merely with no one to feel and share his agony But with no one even to know of it

Heaven and He are the only ones to know Jesus is in a garden Not of delight, like the first Adam Who fell and took with him all mankind But of agony Where he has saved himself And all mankind

He suffers this anguish and abandonment In the horror of the night

Jesus will be in agony Until the end of the world There must be no resting in the meantime

Jesus will be will be in agony Until the end of the world There must be no resting in the meantime

To Eden with me, you will not leave To live in my cottage of crazy crooked Eves In your own heavy home, take care of this night When you let your little cat in, turn on the light Something scurries behind and finds a cozy place to stare Something sent to you from paradise, paradisaically somewhere Tongues flouring, they leap out laughing Lapping, disappear