Admittedly that's sort of an awkward picture to have frozen, but ignore that and listen to at least some of it. This is a performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, a lovely Italian Baroque setting of a famous Marian devotional prayer, as performed by Les Talens Lyriques, soprano Sabina Puertolas, and mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux. The whole thing is really quite amazing, but particularly great is about 18:26 minutes in when the "Fac ut ardeat" starts.
The Stabat Mater, by the way, is an old Marian devotional prayer that's actually quite a long poem. It describes various aspects of the Passion from the perspective of the Virgin Mother, and petitions the Virgin to allow the supplicant to feel the same sorrow as she did in her beholding of the Passion. The Virgin's grief is an expression of her ardent love for her Son, and so in asking for grief the supplicant is really asking for greater love of Christ.
The full text of the "Fac ut ardeat" is brief, just a stanza of the whole poem.
Fac, ut ardeat cor meum
in amando Christum Deum
ut sibi complaceam.
Which means essentially, "Make my heart to burn in the love of Christ the Lord as you did." As you'll notice, Pergolesi's setting of this portion is incredibly feisty, contrapuntally intricate, and rhythmically unrelenting. He certainly captures the sense of burning and fire here, as well as the passionate sense of urgency in that feeling of crushing sorrow born out of ecstatic love. The competitive ascent up the scale by the overreaching of one voice over the other also conveys not only virtuosity but that sense of ecstatic, practically orgasmic love. I would argue that the chromatic descents down the scale near the end of the movement also represent death (as descending chromatic 4ths usually did in the Baroque era), and the in the Renaissance Italian poets began using death as a metaphor for orgasm. There are many Italian poems from the 16th and 17th centuries that say something to the effect of, "O, that I would die 1,000 times a day, etc." So the placement of descending chromatic 4ths here really is quite significant. This is a passionate representation of divine love as experienced through sexual energy and release.
This movement for me is entirely about Arcanum XI Lust. Lust isn't just passion or desire, it's about the kind of ecstatic, transcendent love one can experience for Divinity. Those moments are sort of indescribable. It usually feels like my heart is radiating warmth and joy mixed with reverence. Sometimes I feel transported somewhere else, sometimes I can't stop smiling, it's always beautiful no matter what. And it's that energy that can be channeled in various ways in a magickal sense. When harnessed in the proper way that same sexual love for God can be used for prayer and ritual.
All that being said, I thought this piece captured XI Lust for me. Maybe you agree? Let me know!
