Seraphim
Scene I from The Shaman: The Heretical Story of Francis of Assisi
PRESAVE Release online: January 23, 2026
Francis of Assisi climbs alone up Mount La Verna, among fissures in the rock, crevasses, and water-soaked moss. There he encounters Laverna, the goddess of the Beyond.
This excerpt is his first-person account, the testimony of a shamanic journey into the invisible. It is not legend, it is not history: it is sacred theatre. Francis descends into the cavern of the goddess of the dead and confronts a creature from the unknown, a bird with six wings (identified by tradition as a Seraph). He emerges transformed by the struggle, marked forever.
Voice, clarinet, brass, and synthesizer intertwine in a sonic tapestry of visions, resonances, and natural sounds recorded in the field. Matter becomes spirit, fiction becomes art. The clarinet—now ironic, now dark—acts as the contemporary accomplice to this ascent and descent between worlds.
A work poised between music and initiation, between mystical chronicle and prophetic dream. An open threshold: for those who truly want to listen.
This piece is the first scene from The Shaman: A Heretical Story of Francis of Assisi, a poetic and musical work that tells the life of the (not yet) saint as an initiatory journey between the worlds of the visible and the invisible.
Lyrics
Here is a possible English translation of the text for this piece. It is as faithful as possible; however, the full semantic nuances and layers of meaning in a poetic text like this cannot be fully rendered in translation. The complete text will be available in Italian in the book + CD Lo Sciamano. Storia eretica di Francesco d’Assisi, to be released later in 2026.
Black as death the figure acted
scratches shouts shrieks blood,
without word fury of metaphor.
It marked the body, only sacred art.
I.
Coils the spine tortuous terribilis the road, the falcon had warned me. Simple for him high in the azure sky a quick eye, like a perilous storm on the open sea for me, a knight without a horse, no longer a knight, no merchant, no troubadour. (How sweet is this gentle storm that the leaves of Chiusi dance in the wind...)
Of the first black wound, I was not. I was not.
Falls the body from the wondrous vessel of water, like a fish it plunges out, the air burns in the newly opened lungs of a son. A name, Franciscus poter beating his chest to say the pride of having founddecided the con-fine of all things, like the simple counting of the horse's steps.
And then the count is mistaken, even if like Eratosthenes by little, and in the stumble the falcon most high swift alone comes to your aid with sure gaze and pure of animal.
De-fine. Heretical etymology: to take away the threshold.
I cannot hold my future days, it assaults me, it assaults me, it howls from the earth and in the eternal instant of the end, the end ceases.
Ere I was not of the black wound, I was not.
To bleed is definition is to bleed.
Infinite is identity,
o Laverna of darkness, terribilis dea:
a whole life to understand this death.
Credits
Voice of Francis of Assisi: Alessandro Ciacci.
Clarinet: Alessio Zanovello.
Synthesizers: Carlo Matti.
Field recordings by Carlo Matti at the Sanctuary of La Verna (Chiusi della Verna, AR, Italy).
Production, mixing, and mastering: Carlo Matti.