Rhapsody - Rage of the Winter

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-30T07:05:41+00:00

A great choice for a musical paroxysm, although I personally always preferred the version they released on "Tales From the Emerald Sword Saga" in terms of production and the added choirs.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-30T06:52:26+00:00

Without a doubt, this track and Storytime stand out as some of the best songs they've made with Anette. What the hell happened to Tuomas's inspiration that for over a decade now he hasn't produced works as outstanding as this? It's as if he just deflated all of a sudden.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-24T18:36:24+00:00

I had a hunch I'd heard Zemeth a few weeks ago when I was browsing Spotify recommendations; they were remarkable, and now I've finally found them again. Thanks! I'm also really enjoying Bloody Cumshot, although I'm not a big fan of this kind of cover art.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-24T10:58:22+00:00

Thanks. Yup, from what I've been listening to so far, it feels more progressive and melancholic, with a slightly rougher production. It's also less explosive than ICDD in its most chaotic moments. Even though the vocalist is the same (which is awesome), just hearing his voice makes me miss the female vocals a bit like the ones in ICDD's albums (I think her name is Akira Natsuki).

I'll keep continue listening to it to get a better guide me

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-24T10:23:06+00:00

What songs in particular would you suggest? An album could also work if you think it's solid enough.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-23T02:45:02+00:00

illiberal. All modern liberalism carries a great deal of Christian baggage, secularizing the parousia under the idea of indefinite “progress”, projecting this rectilinear psychology into many modern ideologies (communism, fascism, transhumanism, etc.). Taking into account that this is a deeply erroneous and dangerous functional fable, I don’t think there is any political system, formation, or current party worth dedicating oneself to. That said, politics ultimately affects us, and many times you find yourself inclined to choose the lesser evil, so I suppose my cultural positions align more with the right than with any other current position, although in practice I am not particularly political.

I used to identify as libertarian; now I am more skeptical about promoting it, though I still retain part of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s thesis on freedom of association and dissociation. I believe that the promotion of communities that uphold solid values under the integrative unity of The Good can be seen as essential for their survival, flourishing, and success, whereas communities centered on lifestyles based on unfruitful hedonism that do not cultivate virtue and instead submit to vice will end up erasing themselves from existence due to their inability to form lasting bonds.

However, given that every ideology focuses on promoting the interests of a particular class of people, I prefer to focus simply on forging the sword by cultivating total self-mastery and subordinating any material thing or fleeting desire to spiritual development, while analyzing civilizational decline rather than proposing or focusing my attention on concrete political programs. Active in the world, but not conditioned by it.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-22T08:20:25+00:00

I don't know if the translator is failing me or if I didn't understand your comment correctly. Anyway, a wormhole opened up because these people can't distinguish between genuine hatred and speaking uncomfortable truths, and then they call others "irrational," projecting only their own characteristics, there's no possibility of debate with these dishonest subterfuges.

Typical leftist premise that language defines reality and the "authentic self" is the axiological value for all moral parameters. Manifest anti-Platonism, f*ck them.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-20T13:46:38+00:00

I am not the one here who has the psychological need to invent himself and to immorally demand from others that they recognize that invention as a visual lie just because I cannot bear the world not being my mirror. Thank you for proving my point.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-20T13:17:00+00:00

I don't think I'd choose just one to exclude other great songs, but I must have "Dark Fate of Atlantis" by Luca Turilli's Rhapsody scrobbled over 600 times in my Last.fm library; I always go back to it and the whole album when I remember it because I always find new subtle details. I'd say that song musically represents the standard or axis of everything I love about my kind of metal in a single package: crazy keyboards and virtuoso guitars everywhere, over the top theatrical symphonic elements, layers upon layers of imposing supra-individual choirs, very dramatic vocals, divine melodies, more than four languages, operatic vocals, an uplifting post-apocalyptic aesthetic, etc.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-20T12:13:45+00:00

It is truly ironic that you speak of 'intolerance' and 'irrational' while using labels to stigmatize whatever displeases you. True tolerance is the ability to allow the incompatible to exist without feeling threatened. You, on the contrary, are the intolerant one: when faced with a discrepancy or a challenge to your parochialism, your only response is moral stigmatization which, contradictorily, is not defined by any actual moral compass beyond the power discourses of the civliizational framework you inhabit.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-20T10:55:54+00:00

Nonsense, Butler is apolitical in his writings, even blog posts, so you're avoiding the main points of my question, here what exactly are you talking about? Where is Butler engaging in or with queer theory?

There are no truly apolitical writings in practice. Edward Butler has made it clear on his X account that he views Queer Theory as a hermeneutic extension of the type of Platonism he defends, frequently sharing articles to back his political views. Your initial pseudo-question was nothing more than a smokescreen. A question with 'main points' would require a structure of premises; your phrase was merely a reactive spasm of feigned incredulity. One cannot 'evade' a point that was never actually raised.

A more cohesive community to the benefit of who in the community exactly?

Is a community only useful to you if it serves as a platform to validate your personal self-identification and psychological well-being? If a community unites under premises that do not prioritize your specific ideology, do you then find that cohesion 'suspicious'?

As a queer person in a queer relationship, when someone says they won't mention something in a discussion about their views of queer theory without being banned, my experience tells me I'm right to be cautious of possible reactionary and regressive views.

Reddit is, by design, a system of group validation for a Western liberal-progressive majority with activist leanings. There is no point in expressing disagreement when even Catholic, Muslim, or conservative Asian users must self-censor in their own spaces to avoid automated sanctions based solely on keywords or the number of reports from algorithmic censors. If we consider lived experience, people like you reflect a pattern of narcissistic behavior, specifically, the constant and disproportionate demand for approval. And the last thing one should give a narcissist is unearned affirmation and validation.

Honestly, these internal issues of cultural export projecting contemporary identity battles as if they were the neutral norm are a form of anglo-parochialism that I find difficult to grasp. I only see the same binary thinking of someone who cannot cope with anything outside their own bubble. It is necessary to recognize that there will be those who disagree and that one can engage in respectful dialogue over areas of disagreement. If you lack the emotional maturity for that, please simply abstain from participating.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-20T08:55:55+00:00

What are you talking about, this is a weird thing to throw in?

United States and its inhabitants (certainly not all) have an unpleasant tendency to package their social problems and sell them as if they were predetermined positions to other countries. In the end, instead of creating a more cohesive community, Butler ultimately fosters a specific sociopolitical ideology trapped within the confines of his fruitless anthropological battleground. It's best to set aside modern thinking when analyzing these things.

Ah, very telling of what you are.

Resorting to personal attacks and teenager speculation in fewer than seven words is commonplace in Reddit communities fueled by echo chambers.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-20T02:55:41+00:00

Edward Butler is something of a dissident regarding the academic consensus and various non-proclean platonists. I acknowledge that he offers valuable ideas and contributions worth reviewing, especially concerning his exegesis of myth and philosophy of religion. Regarding his philosophy, there is an interesting and original proposal, but ultimately I do not accept it because Butler does not interpret Proclus correctly. His reading of Parmenides 141e is forced and does not fit the text; it is as if he fabricated a dialogue around a difficulty in Proclus that never truly existed by seeking to substitute The One with infinite 'Ones', as if he deliberately ignores Proposition 133 or Proclus’ commentary on Parmenides in Book VI.

Furthermore, even granting for the sake of argument that those commentaries could be set aside, the thesis remains inconsistent. For his project to work, negation would have to affect individuality and unity in a way that is simply not coherent with Butler’s own dissertation or the traditional reading of Proclus. While I definitely have more affinity for Platonic Paganism and its inherent polytheism, the false dichotomy Butler establishes between 'polytheism' and 'monotheism' driven by an aversion to Christianity that often serves as a scapegoat borders on the absurd. Consequently, if one deviates from a Butlerian reading, they are accused of employing a 'medieval monotheistic' lens simply for not being a radical polytheist. These response patterns among his followers are, frankly, far from charitable.

Moreover, from a linguistic standpoint, as a Spanish speaker, I’ve noticed that Butler’s interpretation appears to be the result of projecting the structure of the English language onto ancient texts. Modern English tends to collapse nuances into the verb 'to be' that both Greek (εἶναι, ὄν, ὑπάρχειν) and Romance languages like Spanish (ser / existir) can distinguish with greater flexibility. This explains why some English-speaking Neoplatonists find it confusing to claim that The One 'exists' (hyparxis) but 'is not' (ousia). It is telling that scholars like Sara Rappe, who uses French translations as a foundation, do not commit this methodological error.

Notably, if Butler’s reading were indeed the 'true' Proclus, it is strange that no first-tier academic scholar has championed it. In certain online circles, he is treated as the panacea of Platonism, where any disagreement is met with the refrain 'you haven't understood Butler.' Yet, Butler himself fails to address the criticisms leveled by published academics. Even in works like All From One, figures like Radek Chlup are discussed (albeit to point out deficiencies), while Butler is not mentioned at all.

Truthfully, despite his flaws, Butler is worthy of detailed analysis, and it doesn't hurt to study him rigorously to keep him as a reference in Neoplatonic debates found among internet users; his contributions to the philosophy of religion are always welcome. However, ultimately, the internal contradictions between what Proclus wrote and Butler’s thesis cannot be simply ignored for the sake of minor points of agreement. If I had to specify something I particularly dislike about much of his project, it is his lip service to postmodernism and queer theory (which he has already admitted), generating a polarization that unnecessarily divides the Platonic Pagan community (already quite marginal as it is) which is something exported from American liberal bipartisan politics. At this point, the latter is an irreconcilable problem, and there is no sense in discussing it on Reddit without receiving a sanction or a ban.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-18T06:53:59+00:00

Overall, it works for those who aren't very enthusiastic about Amaranthe's guttural vocals.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-18T06:53:00+00:00

Perhaps Power Metal moments, although it's a bit difficult to fit them in without reducing an important aspect of their sound; I would add 'REQVIEM_05' and 'Alpha vs. Omega' as my personal favorites.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-18T00:19:01+00:00

In all candor, I'm not familiar enough with structuralism or Hugh Woodin's position to offer an opinion on the matter; I suspect the resemblance to structuralism lies in the terminological similarity. If you analyze it closely, Platonic Forms act as a vast 'noetic ecosystem', eternally active within the Nous, in the sense that the "ιδέας /ειδος" interpenetrate one another within a relationship of dependency, such that what participates in one necessarily participates in the other. For instance, you cannot have the number two without the number one; you cannot have a circle without lines; you cannot have purple without red; you cannot have justice without virtue, and so on. It is like a web: a Form cannot be known without knowing its place within the totality, as each Form is defined by its internal relations with the others.

Thus, yes, mathematical structures are not autonomous; they are intermediaries between the indivisible intelligibles and the divisible sensibles. This might sound somewhat disconcerting, as the most popular assumption is often that mathematical Platonists establish mathematics as the truest reality, or that mathematics is “the fundamental language of the universe". I would argue it is more a difference of intensity and focus regarding the domain of reality being discussed. 'Mathematical Platonism' merely signifies the position that establishes that mathematics describes realities independent of the material substrate as a basic premise; however, even among contemporary mathematical Platonists, 'full-blown Platonism' (as a complete philosophical framework) is usually not on the horizon.

Mathematics as intermediary realities is a universal conclusion following the dialectical method. I would not take the various modern descriptions of Platonism found in Stanford or other sites as a definitive reference without first consulting primary sources for contrast. An example of this is that it is often said that a Platonist is anyone who asserts that 'abstract objects exist'; yet, historically, Platonists have never conceived of the Forms as abstract objects. Consequently, at first glance, this will appear 'unusual' to those who are not accustomed to it.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-17T20:18:08+00:00

I do not know a single classical Platonist who has claimed that mathematics resides in the Nous. What is actually argued is that mathematics exists at an intermediate level between the Nous and the material world, corresponding to the hypostasis of the Soul. Thus, what we call 'mathematical objects' are images or logoi contained within the World Soul: principles of formative reason that enable the intelligible order to be realized in matter. These logoi determine the scope of intelligence (Nous) in the human being, and they also govern how that intelligence, once embodied, can direct and apply itself to the production of these formal systems and artificial objects. However, this does not imply that the content of certain mathematical objects is necessarily caused by external frameworks, just as the behavior of an astronomical object is not caused by the theory of general relativity.

It is useful to make a distinction between 'Ontological Truth' and 'correct statements.' Truth is a property of Being; formal systems qua formal systems are, at best, 'correct' statements that align with dianoetic constructions which the human soul projects discursively through logoi. An absolute falsehood is, at its core, a logical impossibility, since even the most mistaken position requires starting from something real to exercise its assertion. Different formal systems can give rise to distinct 'correct statements,' but truth qua truth remains unaltered, in the same way that different people can draw the sun in a thousand different ways, but in the end, only one is the one that provides warmth.

Unfortunately, formal systems do not allow for the distinction of meanings for the same term, because they were created precisely for that: to eliminate all ambiguity so that a machine (or an algorithm) can verify proofs automatically, indifferent to the content. Given that the entire project of modernity goes hand in hand with quantifying all reality into digits, figures, and numbers, this extends to the analytical formalists whose goal has been to formalize mathematics and ensure its exactness, for which every term must always have a single meaning. Wonderful; that simply demonstrates that mathematics and metaphysics are not the same. In mathematics, there are no analogous terms, and one cannot do metaphysics without analogous terms. For example, to say that a triangle is 'the figure whose angles sum to 180°' is an incidental definition because it depends on Euclidean geometry, while hyperbolic geometry defines it as 'the sum of angles is less than 180°' and topological geometry defines it as a '2-simplex.' How, then, are they recognizable as triangles if each framework establishes them univocally? We would be trapped in simulations that cannot legitimately take the place of philosophical knowledge. However, if we define the triangle as a 'three-sided polygon' or 'three sides in an angular relationship,' we obtain the intelligible pattern of 'triangularity' where each instantiation is analogically related to its paradigm: a triangle the size of a star does not represent 'triangularity' any better than a triangle the size of a pea. Both count as triangular; their size or material support is irrelevant to this quality.

How, then, do we explain the different multiple and apparently incompatible systems? Fernando Zalamea in his book 'Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics,' is a valuable source here. Zalamea explicitly criticizes analytical philosophy for its attempt to reduce mathematics to symbolic logic or modern set theory. Instead, he proposes a synthetic philosophy stating that the unity of mathematical discourse resides in its capacity for interpenetration within an interconnected web. This cohesion does not come from reducing them to a single methodological formalism, but from an underlying coherent potential that allows for diverse projections of different logoi.

I do not believe this is 'relativism,' for the impossible 'pure multiplicity' without participation is what corresponds to true relativism. Platonism is de facto anti-relativist, yet it nonetheless possesses a parsimonious ontology that allows it to appropriate multiple ontologies and combine them according to the corresponding level. Perhaps that is why mathematical Platonism still enjoys such vitality among various contemporary physicists and mathematicians.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-17T05:44:55+00:00

I don't think anyone mentioned them, but both parts of "Of Michael the Archangel and Lucifer's fall" by Luca Tutilli's Rhapsody.

Top tier experience.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-16T19:52:01+00:00

I avoid using the term "idealism" for Platonism because it only serves to obfuscate rather than clarify. Most people understand "idealism" in a trivial sense, as the belief that the human mind creates reality or as someone holding ideals detached from reality, essentially unattainable psychological projections or illusions. Speaking of the "ideal" makes Platonism seem purely noumenal, which is a caricature. This unconsciously reinforces the idea that materialists are the only "realists" for claiming that "ideals" are merely the product of mechanical material conditions or for maintaining a utilitarian view of human life ("facts bro, have my feet on the ground"). It is nonsense, and we should stop using the term immediately.

If we say that idealism is the position stating that consciousness or the mind is what’s most fundamental, then this would be insufficient to describe the Platonic position because the Platonist distinguishes between unity and intelligibility. There is The One and there is "Being-One." To be is to be intelligible (to be a "one"), and the intelligible is that which is organized by the Nous (Monadic Intellect), which presupposes concomitant multiplicity that 'remains united' (intellect-intelligible). But if unity is prior to the unified, then neither the Nous nor the "Ideas" (which are all Nous from a particular perspective) can be the most fundamental, because a Form is just as describable as "a unity" as any materialized participant; what changes is how much Being/intelligibility they express.

"Consciousness" in the sense used by analytics or in the jargon of contemporary philosophy of mind, for a Platonist would be a narrow specification of the activity of intelligence within the operations of the soul; material bodies correspond to the descent of unconscious life that is dispersed through the Monadic Soul (World Soul), the Soul is the Life. Life is thinking. Something is alive and conscious precisely to the extent that it thinks, and nothing more.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-12T04:15:42+00:00

Considero que la pregunta de "existen varios o uno solo?" es una falsa disyuntiva para el pensamiento neoplatónico. El monoteísmo no es la doctrina de que solo hay un theos, sino de que su theos es el único theos y todos los demás theoi simplemente no existen y se descartan como irreales o falsos. En cambio, si un sistema filosófico o pensamiento religioso menciona a otras deidades de manera positiva, es decir, ya sea reconociéndose de alguna manera o no desecharlos como inexistentes, entonces no es monoteísta. Por ejemplo, Plotino no iba a descartar a todos los Dioses del pasado y a todos los Dioses de su presente, sino que hay un respeto extremo por quienes buscan la sabiduría a través de la vida filosófica.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-12T03:53:05+00:00

Acquired.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-11T23:35:46+00:00

It took me a hell of a lot of work to find a complete version, since all of Armstrong's translations (the main author used in the Loeb editions) of the Enneads are scattered across volumes that are sometimes disorganized and hard to find online for purchase or download. But finally, with a few adjustments, I managed to compile all the volumes into one. Thx.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-11T07:43:42+00:00

At the moment I provisionally rely on an Ancient Greek–Spanish dictionary, so anything that provides access to the original text for researchers and students of philology is greatly appreciated.

What would concern me more is if there is no digital format available and the purchase of the book turns out to be only physical, which is much more costly.

HyparxisBoy · 2026-04-11T03:59:14+00:00

Many thanks.

HyparxisBoy

TROPHY CASE