JENNIFER LEWIT- SHOCKING EARLY HARDCORE !!
Astonishing pre-MTV porn movie! Stills & Video!!!">
Wickety wickety wack! poor brob in his poo bra! running flying puking fucking a cow patty I found in the field! Shipping Weight: 1.50 pounds
Deep down, you always knew the end was near. And that Y2K was only the beginning.When you first mentioned the Y2K Bug to your friends, they said you were overreacting.When you cashed out you bank accounts and began stockpiling food, water, guns, ammo and gasoline, they said you were paranoid.And when you built your bunker (armed with a surplus .50 caliber machinegun), they said you were crazy!Yeah, you were crazy all right. Crazy like a fox.Because when all the computers and power grids crashed on January 1, 2000, you immediately realized it wasn't just a technological glitch. It had to be part of something bigger. Your fears were confirmed when a couple million alien monsters from another dimension swarmed through our electrical grids and phone-lines to literally shut-down human civilization. ****************When the cities fell, and the world went "off-line," all seemed lost. Anarchy reigned.All that is left, are the Survivalists, Nature-Lovers, Farmers, Gun Bunnies, Eggheads and backwoods wackos on the fringe. People living in remote regions and those prepared for the Y2K Bug and the collapse of civilization. Oh, and there are "bugs" alright. Alien bug-like things that feed on energy and turn humans into zombie-like slaves.Things are even worse than those who were "prepared" could have imagined, but these survivors aren't ready to give up. America (and then the world) will be free! And they mean business.
the amazing summer
..my lovely friend jessica,
gother than thou gothike, hehe
J E F F
amy
my adorable little bitch on the left,from SHEL
Avis from Sunday Munich, mmm hair...blue yum
The Villain: Inhuman invaders from another dimension.
The Heroes: Society's castaways, nutcases & survivalists.
The adventure: Reclaiming the world for god-fearing humans.
emmatheoddisgod!
The Villain: Inhuman invaders from another dimension.
The Heroes: Society's castaways, nutcases & survivalists.
The adventure: Reclaiming the world for god-fearing humans. Earn Cash
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It describes a vision of the distant human future, in outer space, followed by a vision of a lifeless earth and a final impending battle of the good and evil spiritual powers.
Uh... human beings and space-aliens living together throughout the galaxy?And we colonized outer space because of our poets?And what the poets told us wasn't true? fantasy helps the human race make progress. Deep in that lion-haunted inland lies
A mystick city, goal of high emprise. I stood upon the Mountain which o'erlooks
The narrow seas, whose rapid interval
Parts Africa from green Europe, when the Sun
Had fall'n below th' Atlantick, and above
The silent Heavens were blench'd with faery light,
Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,
Flowing Southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue
Slumber'd unfathomable, and the stars
Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.
Lines 1-9:
I gaz'd upon the sheeny coast beyond,
There where the Giant of old Time infixed
The limits of his prowess, pillars high
Long time eras'd from Earth: even as the Sea
When weary of wild inroad buildeth up
Hugh mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves. Lines 10-27:
And much I mus'd on legends quaint and old
Which whilome won the hearts of all on Earth
Toward their brightness, ev'n as flame draws air;
But had their being in the heart of Man
As air is th' life of flame: and thou wert then
A center'd glory-circled Memory,
Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves
Have buried deep, and thou of later name
Imperial Eldorado roof'd with gold;
Shadows to which, despite all shocks of Change,
All on-set of capricious Accident,
Men clung with yearning Hope which would not die.
Lines 16-27:
As when in some great City where the walls
Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces throng'd
Do utter forth a subterranean voice,
Among the inner columns far retir'd
At midnight, in the lone Acropolis,
Before the awful Genius of the place
Kneels the pale Priestess in deep faith, the while
Above her head the weak lamp dips and winks
Unto the fearful summoning without:
Nathless she ever clasps the marble knees,
Bathes the cold hand with tears, and gazeth on
Those eyes which wear no light but that wherewith
Her phantasy informs them. Lines 28-39:
Where are ye
Thrones of the Western wave, fair Islands green?
Where are your moonlight halls, your cedarn glooms,
The blossoming abysses of your hills?
Your flowering Capes, and your gold-sanded bays
Blown round with happy airs of odorous winds?
Where are the infinite ways, which, Seraph-trod,
Wound thro' your great Elysian solitudes,
Whose lowest deeps were, as with visible love,
Fill'd with Divine effulgence, circumfus'd,
Flowing between the clear and polish'd stems,
And ever circling round their emerald cones
In coronals and glories, such as gird
The unfading foreheads of the Saints in Heaven?
For nothing visible, they say, had birth
In that blest ground but it was play'd about
With its peculiar glory. Lines 40-56:
Then I rais'd
My voice and cried, 'Wide Afric, doth thy Sun
Lighten, thy hills enfold a City as fair
As those which starr'd the night o' the elder World?
Or is the rumour of thy Timbuctoo
A dream as frail as those of ancient Time?'
Lines 56-61:
A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
A rustling of white wings! The bright descent
Of a young Seraph! And he stood beside me
There on the ridge, and look'd into my face
With his unutterable, shining orbs. Lines 62-66:
So that with hasty motion I did veil
My vision with both hands, and saw before me
Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes
Of those, that gaze upon the noonday Sun. Lines 67-70:
Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath
His breast, and compass'd round about his brow
With triple arch of everchanging bows,
And circled with the glory of living light
And alternation of all hues, he stood. Lines 71-75:
'O child of man, why muse you here alone
Upon the Mountain, on the dreams of old
Which fill'd the Earth with passing loveliness,
And odours rapt from remote Paradise?
Thy sense is clogg'd with dull mortality,
Thy spirit fetter'd with the bond of clay:
Open thine eyes and see.' Lines 76-83:
I look'd, but not
Upon his face, for it was wonderful
With its exceeding brightness, and the light
Of the great Angel Mind which look'd from out
The starry glowing of his restless eyes. Lines 83-87:
I felt my soul grow mighty, and my Spirit
With supernatural excitation bound
Within me, and my mental eye grew large
With such a vast circumference of thought,
That in my vanity I seem'd to stand
Upon the outward verge and bound alone
Of full beatitude. Lines 88-94:
Each failing sense
As with a momentary flash of light
Grew thrillingly distinct and keen. I saw
The smallest grain that dappled the dark Earth,
The indistinctest atom in deep air,
The Moon's white cities, and the opal width
Of her small glowing lakes, her silver heights
Unvisited with dew of vagrant cloud,
And the unsounded, undescended depth
Of her black hollows. Lines 94-103:
The clear Galaxy
Shorn of its hoary lustre, wonderful,
Distinct and vivid with sharp points of light,
Blaze within blaze, an unimagin'd depth
And harmony of planet-girded Suns
And moon-encircled planets, wheel in wheel,
Arch'd the wan Sapphire.
Nay - the hum of men,
Or other things talking in unknown tongues,
And notes of busy life in distant worlds
Beat like a far wave on my anxious ear. Lines 103-112:
A maze of piercing, trackless, thrilling thoughts,
Involving and embracing each with each,
Rapid as fire, inextricably link'd,
Expanding momently with every sight
And sound which struck the palpitating sense,
The issue of strong impulse, hurried through
The riv'n rapt brain; Lines 113-119:
as when in some large lake
From pressure of descendant crags, which lapse
Disjointed, crumbling from their parent slope
At slender interval, the level calm
Is ridg'd with restless and increasing spheres
Which break upon each other, each th' effect
Of separate impulse, but more fleet and strong
Then its precursor, till the eye in vain
Amid the wild unrest of swimming shade
Dappled with hollow and alternate rise
Of interpenetrated arc, would scan
Definite round. Lines 119-129:
I know not if I shape
These things with accurate similitude
From visible objects, for but dimly now,
Less vivid than an half-forgotten dream,
The memory of that mental excellence
Comes o'er me, and it may be I entwine
The indecision of my present mind
With its past clearness, yet it seems to me
As even then the torrent of quick thought
Absorbed me from the nature of itself
With its own fleetness. Lines 130-140:
Where is he that borne
Adown the sloping of an arrowy stream,
Could link his shallop to the fleeting edge,
And muse midway with philosophic calm
Upon the wondrous laws, which regulate
The fierceness of the bounding Element?
Lines 140-145:
My thoughts which long had grovell'd in the slime
Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house
Beneath unshaken waters, but at once
Upon some Earth-awakening day of Spring
Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft
Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides
Double display of starlit wings which burn,
Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom;
Ev'n so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now felt
Unutterable buoyancy and strength
To bear them upward through the trackless fields
Of undefin'd existence far and free.
Lines 146-157:
Then first within the South methought I saw
A wilderness of spires, and chrystal pile
Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,
Illimitable range of battlement
On battlement, and the Imperial height
Of Canopy o'ercanopied. Lines 158-163:
Behind
In diamond light upsprung the dazzling cones
Of Pyramids as far surpassing Earth's
As Heaven than Earth is fairer. Lines 163-166:
Each aloft
Upon his narrow'd Eminence bore globes
Of wheeling Suns, or Stars, or semblances
Of either, showering circular abyss
Of radiance. Lines 166-170:
But the glory of the place
Stood out a pillar'd front of burnish'd gold,
Interminably high, if gold it were
Or metal more etherial, and beneath
Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze
Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan,
Through length of porch and valve and boundless hall,
Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom
The snowy skirting of a garment hung,
And glimpse of multitudes of multitudes
That minister'd around it - if I saw
These things distinctly, for my human brain
Stagger'd beneath the vision, and thick night
Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell. Lines 170-183:
With ministering hand he rais'd me up:
Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,
Which but to look on for a moment fill'd
My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,
In accents of majestic melody,
Like a swoln river's gushings in still night
Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:
'There is no mightier Spirit than I to sway
The heart of man: and teach him to attain
By shadowing forth the Unattainable;
And step by step to scale that mighty stair
Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds
Of glory' of Heaven. Lines 191-196:
With earliest light of Spring,
And in the glow of sallow Summertide,
And in red Autumn when the winds are wild
With gambols, and when full-voiced Winter roofs
The headland with inviolate white snow,
I play about his heart a thousand ways,
Visit his eyes with visions, and his ears
With harmonies of wind and wave and wood,
-- Of winds which tell of waters, and of waters
Betraying the close kisses of the wind --
And win him unto me: and few there be
So gross of heart who have not felt and known
A higher than they see: They with dim eyes
Behold me darkling. Lines 196-209:
Lo! I have given thee
To understand my presence, and to feel
My fullness; I have fill'd thy lips with power. Lines 209-211:
I have rais'd thee nigher to the spheres of Heaven
Man's first, last home: and thou with ravish'd sense
Listenest the lordly music flowing from
Th' illimitable years. Lines 212-215:
I am the Spirit,
The permeating life which courseth through
All th' intricate and labyrinthine veins
Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread
With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,
Reacheth to every corner under Heaven,
Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth;
So that men's hopes and fears take refuge in
The fragrance of its complicated glooms,
And cool impleached twilights. Lines 215-224:
Child of Man,
See'st thou yon river, whose translucent wave,
forth issuing from the darkness, windeth through
The argent streets o' th' City, imaging
The soft inversion of her tremulous Domes,
Her gardens frequent with the stately Palm,
Her Pagods hung with music of sweet bells,
Her obelisks of ranged Chrysolite,
Minarets and towers? Lo! How he passeth by,
And gulphs himself in sands, as not enduring
To carry through the world those waves, which bore
The reflex of my City in their depths. Lines 224-235:
O City! O latest Throne! Where I was rais'd
To be a mystery of loveliness
Unto all eyes, the time is well-nigh come
When I must render up this glorious home
To keen Discovery: soon yon brilliant towers
Shall darken with the waving of her wand;
Darken, and shrink and shiver into huts,
Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,
Low-built, mud-wall'd, Barbarian settlements.
How chang'd from this fair City!'
Lines 236-245:
Thus far the Spirit:
Then parted Heaven-ward on the wing: and I
Was left alone on Calpe, and the Moon
Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!
standing on the Rock of Gibraltar, looking from Europe to Africa. The sun had just set, the sky was dark, and Fred thought about how nobody knows how deep ocean canyons go.
Myths inspire people, even though people make them up. And people keep pursuing imaginary places.
Ulysses's last voyage accomplished nothing except killing him and his crew. clinging to the image of a make-believe god during an earthquake, in spite of the rest of the town calling her to get out of the building.
the legendary city of Timbuctoo, supposedly a high civilization in the interior of Africa. The angel was surrounded by shifting rainbows
Aha!
The Sevenfold Mystery of the Ineffable Love; the Coming of the Lord in the Air as King and Judge of this corrupted World;
Wherein
Under the form of a Discourse between Marsyas an Adept and Olympas his Pupil the Whole Secret of the Way of Initiation is laid open from the Beginning to the End; for the Instruction of the Little Children of the Light.
Written in Trembling and Humility for the Brethren of the A.'. A.'. by Their very dutiful Servant, an Aspirant to their Sublime Order,
Aleister Crowley
THE ARGUMENTATION
A LITTLE before Dawn, the pupil comes to greet his Master, and begs instruction.
Inspired by his Angel, he demands the Doctrine of being rapt away into the Knowledge and Conversation of Him.
The Master discloses the doctrine of Passive Attention or Waiting.
This seeming hard to the Pupil, it is explained further, and the Method of Resignation, Constancy, and Patience inculcated. The Paradox of Equilibrium. The necessity of giving oneself wholly up the the new element. Egoism rebuked.
The Master, to illustrate this Destruction of the Ego, describes the Visions of Dhyana.
He further describes the defence of the Soul against assailing Thoughts, and shows that the duality of Consciousness is a blasphemy against the Unity of God; so that even the thought called God is a denial of God-as-He-is-in-Himself.
The pupil sees nothing but a blank midnight in this Emptying of the Soul. He is shown that this is the necessary condition of Illumination. Distinction is further made between these three Dhyanas, and those early visions in which things appear as objective. With these three Dhyanas, moreover, are Four other of the Four Elements: and many more.
Above these is the Veil of Paroketh. Its guardians.
The Rosy Cross lies beyond this veil, and therewith the vision called Vishvarupadarshana. Moreover, there is the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
The infinite number and variety of these Visions.
The impossibility of revealing all these truths to the outer and uninitiated world.
The Vision of the Universal Peacock--Atmadarshana. The confusion of the Mind, and the Perception of its self-contradiction.
The Second Veil--the Veil of the Abyss.
The fatuity of Speech.
A discussion as to the means by which the vision arises in the pure Soul is useless; suffice it that in the impure Soul no Vision will arise. The practical course is therefore to cleanse the Soul.
The four powers of the Sphinx; even adepts hardly attain to one of them!
The final Destruction of the Ego.
The Master confesses that he has lured the disciple by the promise of Joy, as the only thing comprehensible by him, although pain and joy are transcended even in early visions.
Ananda (bliss)--and its opposite--mark the first steps of the path. Ultimately all things are transcended; and even so, this attainment of Peace is but as a scaffolding to the Palace of the King.
The sheaths of the soul. The abandonment of all is necessary; the adept recalls his own tortures, as all that he loved was torn away.
The Ordeal of the Veil of the Abyss; the Unbinding of the Fabric of Mind, and its ruin.
The distinction between philoso˙hical credence and interior certitude.
Sammasati--the trance wherein the adept perceives his causal connection with the Universe; past, present, and future.
Mastering the Reason, he becomes as a little child, and invokes his Holy Guardian Angel, the Augoeides.
Atmadarshana arising is destroyed by the Opening of the Eye of Shiva; the annihilation of the Universe. The adept is destroyed, and there arises the Master of the Temple.
The pupil, struck with awe, proclaims his devotion to the Master; whereat the latter bids him rather unite himself with the Augoeides.
Yet, following the great annihilation, the adept reappears as an Angel to instruct men in this doctrine.
The Majesty of the Master described.
The pupil, wonder-struck, swears to attain, and asks for further instruction.
The Master describes the Eight Limbs of Yoga.
The pupil lamenting the difficulty of attainment, the Master shows forth the sweetness of the hermit's life.
One doubt remains: will not the world be able instantly to recognise the Saint? The Master replies that only imperfect Saints reveal themselves as such. Of these are the cranks and charlatans, and those that fear and deny Life. But let us fix our thoughts on Love, and not on the failings of others!
The Master invokes the Augoeides; the pupil through sympathy is almost rapt away.
The Augoeides hath given the Master a message; namely, to manifest the New Way of the Equinox of Horus, as revealed in Liber Legis.
He does so, and reconciles it with the Old Way by inviting the Test of Experiment. They would go therefore to the Desert or the Mountains--nay! here and now shall it be accomplished.
Peace to all beings!
AHA!
OLYMPAS. Master, ere the ruby Dawn
Gild the dew of leaf and lawn,
Bidding the petals to unclose
Of heaven's imperishable Rose,
Brave heralds, banners flung afar
Of the lone and secret star,
I come to greet thee. Here I bow
To earth this consecrated brow!
As a lover woos the Moon
Aching in a silver swoon,
I reach my lips towards thy shoon,
Mendicant of the mystic boon!
MARSYAS. What wilt thou?
OLYMPAS. Let mine Angel say!
"Utterly to be rapt away!"
MARSYAS. How, whence, and whither?
OLYMPAS. By my kiss
From that abode to this--to this!"
My wings?
MARSYAS. Thou hast no wings. But see
An eagle sweeping from the Byss
Where God stands. Let him ravish thee,
And bear thee to a boundless bliss!
OLYMPAS. How should I call him? How beseech?
MARSYAS. Silence is lovelier than Speech.
Only on a windless tree
Falls the dew, Felicity!
One ripple on the water mars
The magic mirror of the Stars.
OLYMPAS. My soul bends to the athletic stress
Of God's immortal loveliness.
Tell me, what wit avails the clod
To know the nearness of its God?
MARSYAS. First, let the soul be poised, and fledge
Truth's feather on mind's razor-edge.
Next, let no memory, feeling, hope
Stain all its starless horoscope.
Last, let it be content, twice void;
Not to be suffered or enjoyed;
Motionless, blind and deaf and dumb---
So may it to its kingdom come!
OLYMPAS. Dear master, can this be? The wine
Embittered with dark discipline?
For the soul loves her mate, the sense.
MARSYAS. This bed is sterile. Thou must fence
Thy soul from all her foes, the creatures
That by their soft and siren natures
Lure thee to shipwreck!
OLYMPAS. Thou hast said:
"God is in all. "
MARSYAS. In sooth.
OLYMPAS. Why dread
The Godhood?
MARSYAS. Only as the thought
Is God, adore it. But the soul creates
Misshapen fiends, incestuous mates.
Slay these: they are false shadows of
The never-waning moon of love.
OLYMPAS. What thought is worthy?
MARSYAS. Truly none
Save one, in that it is but one.
Keep the mind constant; thou shalt see
Ineffable felicity.
Increase the will, and thou shalt find
It hath the strength to be resigned.
Resign the will; and from the string
Will's arrow shall have taken wing,
And from the desolate abode
Found the immaculate heart of God!
OLYMPAS. The word is hard!
MARSYAS. All things excite
Their equal and their pposite.
Be great, and thou shalt be--how small!
Be naught, and thou shalt be the All!
Eat not; all meat shall fill thy mouth:
Drink, and thy soul shall die of drouth!
Fill thyself; and that thou seekest
Is diluted to its weakest.
Empty thyself; the ghosts of night
Flee before the living Light.
Who clutches straws is drowned; but he
That hath the secret of the sea,
Lives with the whole lust of his limbs,
Takes hold of water's self, and swims.
See, the ungainly albatross
Stumbles awkwardly across
Earth--one wing-beat, and he flies
Most graceful gallant in the skies!
So do thou leave thy thoughts, intent
On thy new noble element!
Throw the earth shackles off, and cling
To what imperishable thing
Arises from the Married death
Of thine own self in that whereon
Thou art fixed.
OLYMPAS. Then all life's loyal breath
Is a waste wind. All joy forgone,
I must strive ever?
MARSYAS. Cease to strive!
Destroy this partial I, this moan
Of an hurt beast! Sores keep alive
By scratching. Health is peace. Unknown
And unexpressed because at ease
Are the Most High Congruities.
OLYMPAS. Then death is thine "attainment"? I
Can do no better than to die!
MARSYAS. Indeed, that "I" that is not God
Is but a lion in the road!
Knowest thou not (even now!) how first
The fetters of Restriction burst?
In the rapture of the heart
Self hath neither lot nor part.
OLYMPAS. Tell me, dear master, how the bud
First breaks to brilliance of bloom:
What ecstasy of brain and blood
Shatters the seal upon the tomb
Of him whose gain was the world's loss
Our father Christian Rosycross!
MARSYAS. First, one is like a gnarled old oak
On a waste heath. Shrill shrieks the wind.
Night smothers earth. Storm swirls to choke
The throat of silence! Hard behind
Gathers a blacker cloud than all.
But look! but look! it thrones a ball
Of blistering fire. It breaks. The lash
Of lightning snakes him forth. One crash
Splits the old tree. One rending roar!---
And night is darker than before.
OLYMPAS. Nay, master, master! Terror hath
So fierce an hold upon the path?
Life must lie crushed, a charred black swath,
In that red harvest's aftermath!
MARSYAS. Life lives. Storm passes. Clouds dislimn.
The night is clear. And now to him
Who hath endured is given the boon
Of an immeasurable moon.
The air about the adept congeals
To crystal; in his heart he feels
One needle pang; then breaks that splendour
Infinitely pure and tender ...
--And the ice drags him down!
OLYMPAS. But may
Our trembling frame, our clumsy clay,
Endure such anguish?
MARSYAS. In the worm
Lurks an unconquerable germ
Identical. A sparrow's fall
Were the Destruction of the All!
More; know that this surpasses skill
To express its ecstasy. The thrill
Burns in the memory like the glory
Of some far beaconed promontory
Where no light shines but on the comb
Of breakers, flickerings of the foam!
OLYMPAS. The path ends here?
MARSYAS. Ingenuous one!
The path--the true path--scarce begun.
When does the night end?
OLYMPAS. When the sun,
Crouching below the horizon,
Flings up his head, tosses his mane,
Ready to leap.
MARSYAS. Even so. Again
The adept secures his subtle fence
Against the hostile shafts of sense,
Pins for a second his mind; as you
May have seen some huge wrestler do.
With all his gathered weight heaped, hurled,
Resistless as the whirling world,
He holds his foeman to the floor
For one great moment and no more.
So--then the sun-blaze! All the night
Bursts to a vivid orb of light.
There is no shadow; nothing is,
But the intensity of bliss.
Being is blasted. That exists.
OLYMPAS. Ah!
MARSYAS. But the mind, that mothers mists,
Abides not there. The adept must fall
Exhausted.
OLYMPAS. There's an end of all?
MARSYAS. But not an end of this! Above
All life as is the pulse of love,
So this transcends all love.
OLYMPAS. Ah me!
Who may attain?
MARSYAS. Rare souls.
OLYMPAS. I see
Imaged a shadow of this light.
MARSYAS. Such is its sacramental might
That to recall it radiates
Its symbol. The priest elevates
The Host, and instant blessing stirs
The hushed awaiting worshippers.
OLYMPAS. Then how secure the soul's defence?
How baffle the besieger, Sense?
MARSYAS. See the beleagured city, hurt
By hideous engines, sore begirt
And gripped by lines of death, well scored
With shell, nigh o˙en to the sword!
Now comes the leader; courage, run
Contagious through the garrison!
Repair the trenches! Man the wall!
Restore the ruined arsenal!
Serve the great guns! The assailants blench;
They are driven from the foremost trench.
The deadliest batteries belch their hell
No more. So day by day fought well,
We silence gun by gun. At last
The fiercest of the fray is past;
The circling hills are ours. The attack
Is over, save for the rare crack,
Long dropping shots from hidden forts;---
--So is it with our thoughts!
OLYMPAS. The hostile thoughts, the evil things!
They hover on majestic wings,
Like vultures waiting for a man
To drop from the slave-caravan!
MARSYAS. All thoughts are evil. Thought is two:
The seer and the seen. Eschew
That supreme blasphemy, my son,
Remembering that God is One.
OLYMPAS. God is a thought!
MARSYAS. The "thought" of God
Is but a shattered emerod:
A plague, an idol, a delusion,
Blasphemy, schism, and confusion!
OLYMPAS Banish my one high thought? The night
Indeed were starless.
MARSYAS Very right!
But that impalpable inane
Is the condition of success;
Even as earth lies black to gain
Spring's green and autumn's fruitfulness.
OLYMPAS I dread this midnight of the soul.
MARSYAS Welcome the herald!
OLYMPAS How control
The horror of the mind? The insane
Dead melancholy?
MARSYAS Trick is vain.
Sheer manhood must support the strife,
And the trained Will, the Root of Life,
Bear the adept triumphant.
OLYMPAS Else?
MARSYAS The reason, like a chime of bells
Ripped by the lightning, cracks.
OLYMPAS And these
Are the first sights the magus sees?
MARSYAS The first true sights. Bright images
Throng the clear mind at first, a crowd
Of Gods, lights, armies, landscapes; loud
Reverberations of the Light.
But these are dreams, things in the mind,
Reveries, idols. Thou shalt find
No rest therein. The former three
(Lightning, moon, sun) are royally
Liminal to the Hall of Truth.
Also there be with them, in sooth,
Their brethren. There's the vision called
The Lion of the Light, a brand
Of ruby flame and emerald
Waved by the Hermeneutic Hand.
There is the Chalice, whence the flood
Of God's beatitude of blood
Flames. O to sing those starry tunes!
O colder than a million moons!
O vestal waters! Wine of love
Wan as the lyric soul thereof!
There is the Wind, a whirling sword,
The savage rapture of the air
Tossed beyond space and time. My Lord,
My Lord, even now I see Thee there
In infinite motion! And beyond
There is the Disk, the wheel of things;
Like a black boundless diamond
Whirring with millions of wings!
OLYMPAS Master!
MARSYAS Know also that above
These portents hangs no veil of love;
But, guarded by unsleeping eyes
Of twice seven score severities,
The Veil that only rips apart
When the spear strikes to Jesus' heart!
A mighty Guard of Fire are they
With sabres turning every way!
Their eyes are millstones greater than
The earth; their mouths run seas of blood.
Woe be to that accursäd man
Of whom they are the iniquities!
Swept in their wrath's avenging flood
To black immitigable seas!
Woe to the seeker who shall fail
To rend that vexful virgin Veil!
Fashion thyself by austere craft
Into a single azure shaft
Loosed from the string of Will; behold
The Rainbow! Thou art shot, pure flame,
Past the reverberated Name
Into the Hall of Death. Therein
The Rosy Cross is subtly seen.
OLYMPAS Is that a vision, then?
MARSYAS It is.
OLYMPAS Tell me thereof!
MARSYAS O not of this!
Of all the flowers in God's field
We name not this. Our lips are sealed
In that the Universal Key
Lieth within its mystery.
But know thou this. These visions give
A hint both faint and fugitive
Yet haunting, that behind them lurks
Some Worker, greater than his works.
Yea, it is given to him who girds
His loins up, is not fooled by words,
Who takes life lightly in his hand
To throw away at Will's command,
To know that View beyond the Veil.
O petty purities and pale,
These visions I have spoken of!
The infinite Lord of Light and Love
Breaks on the soul like dawn. See! See!
Great God of Might and Majesty!
Beyond sense, beyond sight, a brilliance
Burning from His glowing glance!
Formless, all the worlds of flame
Atoms of that fiery frame!
The adept caught up and broken;
Slain, before His Name be spoken!
In that fire the soul burns up.
One drop from that celestial cup
Is an abyss, an infinite sea
That sucks up immortality!
O but the Self is manifest
Through all that blaze! Memory stumbles
Like a blind man for all the rest.
Speech, like a crag of limestone, crumbles,
While this one soul of thought is sure
Through all confusion to endure,
Infinite Truth in one small span:
This that is God is Man.
OLYMPAS Master! I tremble and rejoice.
MARSYAS Before His own authentic voice
Doubt flees. The chattering choughs of talk
Scatter like sparrows from a hawk.
OLYMPAS Thenceforth the adept is certain of
The mystic mountain? Light and Love
Are Life therein, and they are his?
MARSYAS Even so. And One supreme there is
Whom I have known, being He. Withdrawn
Within the curtains of the dawn
Dwells that concealed. Behold! he is
A blush, a breeze, a song, a kiss,
A rosy flame like Love, his eyes
Blue, the quintessence of all skies,
His hair a foam of gossamer
Pale gold as jasmine, lovelier
Than all the wheat of Paradise.
O the dim water-wells his eyes!
There is such depth of Love in them
That the adept is rapt away,
Dies on that mouth, a gleaming gem
Of dew caught in the boughs of Day!
OLYMPAS The hearing of it is so sweet
I swoon to silence at thy feet.
OLYMPAS Exhaust
The Word!
MARSYAS Had I a million songs,
And every song a million words,
And every word a million meanings,
I could not count the choral throngs
Of Beauty's beatific birds,
Or gather up the paltry gleanings
Of this great harvest of delight!
Hast thou not heard the word aright?
That world is truly infinite.
Even as a cube is to a square
Is that to this.
OLYMPAS Royal and rare!
Infinite light of burning wheels!
MARSYAS Ay! The imagination reels.
Thou must attain before thou know,
And when thou knowest--Mighty woe
That silence grips the willing lips!
OLYMPAS Ever was speech the thought's eclipse.
MARSYAS Ay, not to veil the truth to him
Who sought it, groping in the dim
Halls of illusion, said the sages
In all the realms, in all the ages,
"Keep silence. " By a word should come
Your sight, and we who see are dumb!
We have sought a thousand times to teach
Our knowledge; we are mocked by speech.
So lewdly mocked, that all this word
Seems dead, a cloudy crystal blurred,
Though it cling closer to life's heart
Than the best rhapsodies of art!
OLYMPAS Yet speak!
MARSYAS Ah, could I tell thee of
These infinite things of Light and Love!
There is the Peacock; in his fan
Innumerable plumes of Pan!
Oh! every plume hath countless eyes;
--Crown of created mysteries!---
Each holds a Peacock like the First.
OLYMPAS How can this be?
MARSYAS The mind's accurst.
It cannot be. It is. Behold,
Battalion on battalion rolled!
There is war in Heaven! The soul sings still,
Struck by the plectron of the Will;
But the mind's dumb; its only cry
The shriek of its last agony!
OLYMPAS Surely it struggles.
MARSYAS Bitterly!
And, mark! it must be strong to die!
The weak and partial reason dips
One edge, another springs, as when
A melting iceberg reels and tips
Under the sun. Be mighty then,
A lord of Thought, beyond wit and wonder
Balanced--then push the whole mind under,
Sunk beyond chance of floating, blent
Rightly with its own element,
Not lifting jagged peaks and bare
To the unsympathetic air!
This is the second veil; and hence
As first we slew the things of sense
Upon the altar of their God,
So must the Second Period
Slay the ideas, to attain
To that which is, beyond the brain.
OLYMPAS To that which is?--not thought? not sense?
MARSYAS Knowledge is but experience
Made conscious of itself. The bee,
Past master of geometry,
Hath not one word of all of it;
For wisdom is not mother-wit!
So the adept is called insane
For his frank failure to explain.
Language creates false thoughts; the true
Breed language slowly. Following
Experience of a thing we knew
Arose the need to name the thing.
So, ancients likened a man's mind
To the untamed evasive wind.
Some fool thinks names are things; and boasts
Aloud of spirits and of ghosts.
Religion follows on a pun!
And we, who know that Holy One
Of whom I told thee, seek in vain
Figure or word to make it plain.
OLYMPAS Despair of man!
MARSYAS Man is the seed
Of the unimaginable flower.
By singleness of thought and deed
It may bloom now--this actual hour!
OLYMPAS The soul made safe, is vision sure
To rise therein?
MARSYAS Though calm and pure
It seem, maybe some thought hath crept
Into his mind to baulk the adept.
The expectation of success
Suffices to destroy the stress
Of the one thought. But then, what odds?
"Man's vision goes, dissolves in God's;"
Or, "by God's grace the Light is given
To the elected heir of heaven. "
These are but idle theses, dry
Dugs of the cow Theology.
Business is business. The one fact
That we know is: the gods exact
A stainless mirror. Cleanse thy soul!
Perfect the will's austere control!
For the rest, wait! The sky once clear,
Dawn needs no prompting to appear!
OLYMPAS Enough! it shall be done.
MARSYAS Beware!
Easily trips the big word "dare. "
Each man's an OEdipus, that thinks
He hath the four powers of the Sphinx,
Will, Courage, Knowledge, Silence. Son,
Even the adepts scarce win to one!
Thy Thoughts--they fall like rotten fruits.
But to destroy the power that makes
These thoughts--thy Self? A man it takes
To tear his soul up by the roots!
This is the mandrake fable, boy!
OLYMPAS You told me that the Path was joy.
MARSYAS A lie to lure thee!
OLYMPAS Master!
MARSYAS Pain
And joy are twin toys of the brain.
Even early visions pass beyond!
OLYMPAS Not all the crabbed runes I have conned
Told me so plain a truth. I see,
Inscrutable Simplicity!
Crushed like a blind-worm by the heel
Of all I am, perceive, and feel,
My truth was but the partial pang
That chanced to strike me as I sang.
MARSYAS In the beginning, violence
Marks the extinction of the sense.
Anguish and rapture rack the soul.
These are disruptions of control.
Self-poised, a brooding hawk, there hangs
In the still air the adept. The bull
On the firm earth goes not so smooth!
So the first fine ecstatic pangs
Pass; balance comes.
OLYMPAS How wonderful
Are these tall avenues of truth!
MARSYAS So the first flash of light and terror
Is seen as shadow, known as error.
Next, light comes as light; as it grows
The sense of peace still steadier glows;
And the fierce lust, that linked the soul
To its God, attains a chaste control.
Intimate, an atomic bliss,
Is the last phrasing of that kiss.
Not ecstasy, but peace, pure peace!
Invisible the dew sublimes
From the great mother, subtly climbs
And loves the leaves! Yea, in the end,
Vision all vision must transcend.
These glories are mere scaffolding
To the Closed Palace of the King.
OLYMPAS Yet, saidst thou, ere the new flower shoots
The soul is torn up by the roots.
MARSYAS Now come we to the intimate things
Known to how few! Man's being clings
First to the outer. Free from these
The inner sheathings, and he sees
Those sheathings as external. Strip
One after one each lovely lip
From the full rose-but! Ever new
Leaps the next petal to the view.
What binds them by Desire? Disease
Most dire of direful Destiny's!
OLYMPAS I have abandoned all to tread
The brilliant pathway overhead!
MARSYAS Easy to say. To abandon all,
All must be first loved and possessed.
Nor thou nor I have burst the thrall.
All--as I offered half in jest,
Sceptic--was torn away from me.
Not without pain! THEY slew my child,
Dragged my wife down to infamy
Loathlier than death, drove to the wild
My tortured body, stripped me of
Wealth, health, youth, beauty, ardour, love.
Thou has abandoned all? Then try
A speck of dust within the eye!
OLYMPAS But that is different!
MARSYAS Life is one.
Magic is life. The physical
(Men name it) is a house of call
For the adept, heir of the sun!
Bombard the house! it groans and gapes.
The adept runs forth, and so escapes
That ruin!
OLYMPAS Smoothly parallel
The ruin of the mind as well?
MARSYAS Ay! Hear the Ordeal of the Veil,
The Second Veil! ... O spare me this
Magical memory! I pale
To show the Veil of the Abyss.
Nay, let confession be complete!
OLYMPAS Master, I bend me at thy feet---
Why do they sweat with blood and dew?
MARSYAS Blind horror catches at my breath.
The path of the abyss runs through
Things darker, dismaller than death!
Courage and will! What boots their force?
The mind rears like a frightened horse.
There is no memory possible
Of that unfathomable hell.
Even the shadows that arise
Are things to dreadful to recount!
There's no such doom in Destiny's
Harvest of horror. The white fount
Of speech is stifled at its source.
Know, the sane spirit keeps its course
By this, that everything it thinks
Hath causal or contingent links.
Destroy them, and destroy the mind!
O bestial, bottomless, and blind
Black pit of all insanity!
The adept must make his way to thee!
This is the end of all our pain,
The dissolution of the brain!
For lo! in this no mortar sticks;
Down come the house--a hail of bricks!
The sense of all I hear is drowned;
Tap, tap, isolated sound,
Patters, clatters, batters, chatters,
Tap, tap, tap, and nothing matters!
Senseless hallucinations roll
Across the curtain of the soul.
Each ripple on the river seems
The madness of a maniac's dreams!
So in the self no memory-chain
Or causal wisp to bind the straws!
The Self disrupted! Blank, insane,
Both of existence and of laws,
The Ego and the Universe
Fall to one black chaotic curse.
OLYMPAS So ends philoso˙hy's inquiry:
"Summa scientia nihil scire. "
MARSYAS Ay, but that reasoned thesis lacks
The impact of reality.
This vision is a battle axe
Splitting the skull. O pardon me!
But my soul faints, my stomach sinks.
Let me pass on!
OLYMPAS My being drinks
The nectar-poison of the Sphinx.
This is a bitter medicine!
MARSYAS Black snare that I was taken in!
How one may pass I hardly know.
Maybe time never blots the track.
Black, black, intolerably black!
Go, spectre of the ages, go!
Suffice it that I passed beyond.
I found the secret of the bond
Of thought to thought through countless years
Through many lives, in many spheres,
Brought to a point the dark design
Of this existence that is mine.
I knew my secret. "All I was"
I brought into the burning-glass,
And all its focussed light and heat
Charred "all I am. " The rune's complete
When "all I shall be" flashes by
Like a shadow on the sky.
Then I dropped my reasoning.
Vacant and accursed thing!
By my Will I swept away
The web of metaphysic, smiled
At the blind labyrinth, where the grey
Old snake of madness wove his wild
Curse! As I trod the trackless way
Through sunless gorges of Cathay,
I became a little child.
By nameless rivers, swirling through
Chasms, a fantastic blue,
Month by month, on barren hills,
In burning heat, in bitter chills,
Tr˙ic forest, Tartar snow,
Smaragdine archipelago,
See me--led by some wise hand
That I did not understand.
Morn and noon and eve and night
I, the forlorn eremite,
Called on Him with mild devotion,
As the dew-drop woos the ocean.
In my wanderings I came
To an ancient park aflame
With fairies' feet. Still wrapped in love
I was caught up, beyond, above
The tides of being. The great sight
Of the intolerable light
Of the whole universe that wove
The labyrinth of life and love
Blazed in me. Then some giant will,
Mine or another's thrust a thrill
Through the great vision. All the light
Went out in an immortal night,
The world annihilated by
The opening of the Master's Eye.
How can I tell it?
OLYMPAS Master, master!
A sense of some divine disaster
Abases me.
MARSYAS Indeed, the shrine
Is desolate of the divine!
But all the illusion gone, behold
The one that is!
OLYMPAS Royally rolled,
I hear strange music in the air!
MARSYAS It is the angelic choir, aware
Of the great Ordeal dared and done
By one more Brother of the Sun!
OLYMPAS Master, the shriek of a great bird
Blends with the torrent of the thunder.
MARSYAS It is the echo of the word
That tore the universe asunder.
OLYMPAS Master, thy stature spans the sky.
MARSYAS Verily; but it is not I.
The adept dissolves--pale phantom form
Blown from the black mouth of the storm.
It is another that arises!
OLYMPAS Yet in thee, through thee!
MARSYAS I am not.
OLYMPAS For me thou art.
MARSYAS So that suffices
To seal thy will? To cast thy lot
Into the lap of God? Then, well!
OLYMPAS Ay, there is no more potent spell.
Through life, through death, by land and sea
Most surely will I follow thee.
MARSYAS Follow thyself, not me. Thou hast
An Holy Guardian Angel, bound
to lead thee from thy bitter waste
To the inscrutable profound
That is His covenanted ground.
OLYMPAS Thou who hast known these master-keys
Of all creation's mysteries,
Tell me, what followed the great gust
Of God that blew his world to dust?
MARSYAS I, even I the man, became
As a great sword of flashing flame.
My life, informed with holiness,
Conscious of its own loveliness,
Like a well that overflows
At the limit of the snows,
Sent its crystal stream to gladden
The hearts of me, their lives to madden
With the intoxicating bliss
(Wine mixed with myrrh and ambergris!)
Of this bitter-sweet perfume,
This gorse's blaze of prickly bloom
That is the Wisdom of the Way.
Then springs the statue from the clay,
And all God's doubted fatherhood
Is seen to be supremely good.
Live within the sane sweet sun!
Leave the shadow-world alone!
OLYMPAS There is a crown for every one;
For every one there is a throne!
MARSYAS That crown is Silence. Sealed and sure!
That throne is Knowledge perfect pure.
Below that throne adoring stand
Virtues in a blissful band;
Mercy, majesty and power,
Beauty and harmony and strength,
Triumph and splendour, starry shower
Of flames that flake their lily length,
A necklet of pure light, far-flung
Down to the Base, from which is hung
A pearl, the Universe, whose sight
Is one globed jewel of delight.
Fallen no more! A bowered bride
Blushing to be satisfied!
OLYMPAS All this, of once the Eye unclose?
MARSYAS The golden cross, the ruby rose
Are gone, when flaming from afar
The Hawk's eye blinds the Silver Star.
O brothers of the Star, caressed
By its cool flames from brow to breast,
Is there some rapture yet to excite
This prone and pallid neophyte?
OLYMPAS O but there is no need of this!
I burn toward the abyss of Bliss.
I call the Four Powers of the Name;
Earth, wind and cloud, sea, smoke and flame
To witness: by this triune Star
I swear to break the twi-forked bar.
But how to attain? Flexes and leans
The strongest will that lacks the means.
MARSYAS There are seven keys to the great gate,
Being eight in one and one in eight.
First, let the body of thee be still,
Bound by the cerements of will,
Corpse-rigid; thus thou mayst abort
The fidget-babes that tense the thought.
Next, let the breath-rhythm be low,
Easy, regular, and slow;
So that thy being be in tune
With the great sea's Pacific swoon.
Third, let thy life be pure and calm
Swayed softly as a windless palm.
Fourth, let the will-to-live be bound
To the one love of the Profound.
Fifth, let the thought, divinely free
From sense, observe its entity.
Watch every thought that springs; enhance
Hour after hour thy vigilance!
Intense and keen, turned inward, miss
No atom of analysis!
Sixth, on one thought securely pinned
Still every whisper of the wind!
So like a flame straight and unstirred
Burn up thy being in one word!
Next, still that ecstasy, prolong
Thy meditation steep and strong,
Slaying even God, should He distract
Thy attention from the chosen act!
Last, all these things in one o'erpowered,
Time that the midnight blossom flowered!
The oneness is. Yet even in this,
My son, thou shalt not do amiss
If thou restrain the expression, shoot
Thy glance to rapture's darkling root,
Discarding name, form, sight, and stress
Even of this high consciousness;
Pierce to the heart! I leave thee here:
Thou art the Master. I revere
Thy radiance that rolls afar,
O Brother of the Silver Star!
OLYMPAS. Ah, but no ease may lap my limbs.
Giants and sorcerers oppose;
Ogres and dragons are my foes!
Leviathan against me swims,
And lions roar, and Boreas blows!
No Zephyrs woo, no happy hymns
Paean the Pilgrim of the Rose!
MARSYAS I teach the royal road of light.
Be thou, devoutly eremite,
Free of thy fate. Choose tenderly
A place for thine Academy.
Let there be an holy wood
Of embowered solitude
By the still, the rainless river,
Underneath the tangled roots
Of majestic trees that quiver
In the quiet airs; where shoots
Of the kindly grass are green
Moss and ferns asleep between,
Lilies in the water lapped,
Sunbeams in the branches trapped
--Windless and eternal even!
Silenced all the birds of heaven
By the low insistent call
Of the constant waterfall.
There, to such a setting be
Its carven gem of deity,
A central flawless fire, enthralled
Like Truth within an emerald!
Thou shalt have a birchen bark
On the river in the dark;
And at the midnight thou shalt go
to the mid-stream's smoothest flow,
And strike upon a golden bell
The spirit's call; then say the spell:
"Angel, mine angel, draw thee nigh!"
Making the Sign of Magistry
With wand of lapis lazuli.
Then, it may be, through the blind dumb
Night thou shalt see thine angel come,
Hear the faint whisper of his wings,
Behold the starry breast begemmed
With the twelve stones of the twelve kings!
His forehead shall be diademed
With the faint light of stars, wherein
The Eye gleams dominant and keen.
Thereat thou swoonest; and thy love
Shall catch the subtle voice thereof.
He shall inform his happy lover:
My foolish prating shall be over!
OLYMPAS O now I burn with holy haste.
This doctrine hath so sweet a taste
That all the other wine is sour.
MARSYAS Son, there's a bee for every flower.
Lie open, a chameleon cup,
And let Him suck thine honey up!
OLYMPAS There is one doubt. When souls attain
Such an unimagined gain
Shall not others mark them, wise
Beyond mere mortal destinies?
MARSYAS Such are not the perfect saints.
While the imagination faints
Before their truth, they veil it close
As amid the utmost snows
The tallest peaks most straitly hide
With clouds their holy heads. Divide
The planes! Be ever as you can
A simple honest gentleman!
Body and manners be at ease,
Not bloat with blazoned sanctities!
Who fights as fights the soldier-saint?
And see the artist-adept paint!
Weak are those souls that fear the stress
Of earth upon their holiness!
They fast, they eat fantastic food,
They prate of beans and brotherhood,
Wear sandals, and long hair, and spats,
And think that makes them Arahats!
How shall man still his spirit-storm?
Rational Dress and Food Reform!
OLYMPAS I know such saints.
MARSYAS An easy vice:
So wondrous well they advertise!
O their mean souls are satisfied
With wind of spiritual pride.
They're all negation. "Do not eat;
What poison to the soul is meat!
Drink not; smoke not; deny the will!
Wine and tobacco make us ill. "
Magic is life; the Will to Live
Is one supreme Affirmative.
These things that flinch from Life are worth
No more to Heaven than to Earth.
Affirm the everlasting Yes!
OLYMPAS Those saints at least score one success:
Perfection of their priggishness!
MARSYAS Enough. The soul is subtlier fed
With meditation's wine and bread.
Forget their failings and our own;
Fix all our thoughts on Love alone!
Ah, boy, all crowns and thrones above
Is the sanctity of love.
In His warm and secret shrine
Is a cup of perfect wine,
Whereof one drop is medicine
Against all ills that hurt the soul.
A flaming daughter of the Jinn
Brought to me once a wingäd scroll,
Wherein I read the spell that brings
The knowledge of that King of Kings.
Angel, I invoke thee now!
Bend on me the starry brow!
Spread the eagle wings above
The pavilion of our love! ....
Rise from your starry sapphire seats!
See, where through the quickening skies
The oriflamme of beauty beats
Heralding loyal legionaries,
Whose flame of golden javelins
Fences those peerless paladins.
There are the burning lamps of them,
Splendid star-clusters to begem
The trailing torrents of those blue
Bright wings that bear mine angel through!
O Thou art like an Hawk of Gold,
Miraculously manifold,
For all the sky's aflame to be
A mirror magical of Thee!
The stars seem comets, rushing down
To gem thy robes, bedew thy crown.
Like the moon-plumes of a strange bird
By a great wind sublimely stirred,
Thou drawest the light of all the skies
Into thy wake. The heaven dies
In bubbling froth of light, that foams
About thine ardour. All the domes
Of all the heavens close above thee
As thou art known of me who love thee.
Excellent kiss, thou fastenest on
This soul of mine, that it is gone,
Gone from all life, and rapt away
Into the infinite starry spray
Of thine own AEon ... Alas for me!
I faint. Thy mystic majesty
Absorbs this spark.
OLYMPAS All hail! all hail!
White splendour through the viewless veil!
I am drawn with thee to rapture.
MARSYAS Stay!
I bear a message. Heaven hath sent
The knowledge of a new sweet way
Into the Secret Element.
OLYMPAS Master, while yet the glory clings
Declare this mystery magical!
MARSYAS I am yet borne on those blue wings
Into the Essence of the All.
Now, now I stand on earth again,
Though, blazing through each nerve and vein,
The light yet holds its choral course,
Filling my frame with fiery force
Like God's. Now hear the Apocalypse
New-fledged on these reluctant lips!
OLYMPAS I tremble like an aspen, quiver
Like light upon a rainy river!
MARSYAS Do what thou wilt! is the sole word
Of law that my attainment heard.
Arise, and lay thine hand on God!
Arise, and set a period
Unto Restriction! That is sin:
To hold thine holy spirit in!
O thou that chafest at thy bars,
Invoke Nuit beneath her stars
With a pure heart (Her incense burned
Of gums and woods, in gold inurned),
And let the serpent flame therein
A little, and thy soul shall win
To lie within her bosom. Lo!
Thou wouldst give all--and she cries: No!
Take all, and take me! Gather spice
And virgins and great pearls of price!
Worship me in a single robe,
Crowned richly! Girdle of the globe,
I love thee! Pale and purple, veiled,
Voluptuous, swan silver-sailed,
I love thee. I am drunkness
Of the inmost sense; my soul's caress
Is toward thee! Let my priestess stand
Bare and rejoicing, softly fanned
By smooth-lipped acolytes, upon
Mine iridescent altar-stone,
And in her love-chaunt swooningly
Say evermore: To me! To me!
I am the azure-lidded daughter
Of sunset; the all-girdling water;
The naked brilliance of the sky
In the voluptuous night am I!
With song, with jewel, with perfume,
Wake all my rose's blush and bloom!
Drink to me! Love me! I love thee,
My love, my lord--to me! to me!
OLYMPAS There is no harshness in the breath
Of this--is life surpassed, and death?
MARSYAS There is the Snake that gives delight
And Knowledge, stirs the heart aright
With drunkenness. Strange drugs are thine,
Hadit, and draughts of wizard wine!
These do no hurt. Thine hermits dwell
Not in the cold secretive cell,
But under purple canopies
With mighty-breasted mistresses
Magnificent as lionesses--
Tender and terrible caresses!
Fire lives, and light, in eager eyes;
And massed huge hair about them lies.
They lead their hosts to victory:
In every joy they are kings; then see
That secret serpent coiled to spring
And win the world! O priest and king,
Let there be feasting, foining, fighting,
A revel of lusting, singing, smiting!
Work; be the bed of work! Hold! Hold!
the stars' kiss is as molten gold.
Harden! Hold thyself up! now die---
Ah! Ah! Exceed! Exceed!
OLYMPAS And I?
MARSYAS My stature shall surpass the stars:
He hath said it! Men shall worship me
In hidden woods, on barren scaurs,
Henceforth to all eternity.
OLYMPAS Hail! I adore thee! Let us feast.
MARSYAS I am the consecrated Beast.
I build the Abominable House.
The Scarlet Woman is my Spouse--
OLYMPAS What is this word?
MARSYAS Thou canst not know
Till thou hast passed the Fourth Ordeal.
OLYMPAS I worship thee. The moon-rays flow
Masterfully rich and real
From thy red mouth, and burst, young suns
Chanting before the Holy Ones
Thine Eight Mysterious Orisons!
MARSYAS The last spell! The availing word!
The two completed by the third!
The Lord of War, of Vengeance
That slayeth with a single glance!
This light is in me of my Lord.
His Name is this far-whirling sword.
I push His order. Keen and swift
My Hawk's eye flames; these arms uplift
The Banner of Silence and of Strength--
Hail! Hail! thou art here, my Lord, at length!
Lo, the Hawk-Headed Lord am I:
My nemyss shrouds the night-blue sky.
Hail! ye twin warriors that guard
The pillars of the world! Your time
Is nigh at hand. The snake that marred
Heaven with his inexhaustible slime
Is slain; I bear the Wand of Power,
The Wand that waxes and that wanes;
I crush the Universe this hour
In my left hand; and naught remains!
Ho! for the splendour in my name
Hidden and glorious, a flame
Secretly shooting from the sun.
Aum! Ha!--my destiny is done.
The Word is spoken and concealed.
OLYMPAS I am stunned. What wonder was revealed?
MARSYAS The rite is secret.
OLYMPAS Profits it?
MARSYAS Only to wisdom and to wit.
OLYMPAS The other did no less.
MARSYAS Then prove
Both by the master-key of Love.
The lock turns stiffly? Shalt thou shirk
To use the sacred oil of work?
Not from the valley shalt thou test
The eggs that line the eagle's nest!
Climb, with thy life at stake, the ice,
The sheer wall of the precipice!
Master the cornice, gain the breach,
And learn what next the ridge can teach!
Yet--not the ridge itself may speak
The secret of the final peak.
OLYMPAS All ridges join at last.
MARSYAS Admitted,
O thou astute and subtle-witted!
Yet one--loose, jaggäd, clad in mist!
Another--firm, smooth, loved and kissed
By the soft sun! Our order hath
This secret of the solar path,
Even as our Lord the Beast hath won
The mystic Number of the Sun.
OLYMPAS These secrets are too high for me.
MARSYAS Nay, little brother! Come and see!
Neither by faith nor fear nor awe
Approach the doctrine of the Law!
Truth, Courage, Love, shall win the bout,
And those three others be cast out.
OLYMPAS Lead me, Master, by the hand
Gently to this gracious land!
Let me drink the doctrine in,
An all-healing medicine!
Let me rise, correct and firm,
Steady striding to the term,
Master of my fate, to rise
To imperial destinies;
With the sun's ensanguine dart
Spear-bright in my blazing heart,
And my being's basil-plant
Bright and hard as adamant!
MARSYAS Yonder, faintly luminous,
The yellow desert waits for us.
Lithe and eager, hand in hand,
We travel to the lonely land.
There, beneath the stars, the smoke
Of our incense shall invoke
The Queen of Space; and subtly She
Shall bend from Her infinity
Like a lambent flame of blue,
Touching us, and piercing through
All the sense-webs that we are
As the aethyr penetrates a star!
Her hands caressing the black earth,
Her sweet lithe body arched for love,
Her feet a Zephyr to the flowers,
She calls my name--she gives the sign
That she is mine, supremely mine,
And clinging to the infinite girth
My soul gets perfect joy thereof
Beyond the abysses and the hours;
So that--I kiss her lovely brows;
She bathes my body in perfume
Of sweat .... O thou my secret spouse,
Continuous One of Heaven! illume
My soul with this arcane delight,
Volumptuous Daughter of the Night!
Eat me up wholly with the glance
Of thy luxurious brilliance!
OLYMPAS The desert calls.
MARSYAS Then let us go!
Or seek the sacramental snow,
Where like a high-priest I may stand
With acolytes on every hand,
The lesser peaks--my will withdrawn
To invoke the dayspring from the dawn,
Changing that rosy smoke of light
To a pure crystalline white;
Though the mist of mind, as draws
A dancer round her limbs the gauze,
Clothe Light, and show the virgin Sun
A lemon-pale medallion!
Thence leap we leashless to the goal,
Stainless star-rapture of the soul.
So the altar-fires fade
As the Godhead is displayed.
Nay, we stir not. Everywhere
Is our temple right appointed.
All the earth is faery fair
For us. Am I not anointed?
The Sigil burns upon the brow
At the adjuration--here and now.
OLYMPAS The air is laden with perfumes.
MARSYAS Behold! It beams--it burns--it blooms.
*****
OLYMPAS Master, how subtly hast thou drawn
The daylight from the Golden Dawn,
Bidden the Cavernous Mount unfold
Its Ruby Rose, its Cross of Gold;
Until I saw, flashed from afar,
The Hawk's eye in the Silver Star!
MARSYAS Peace to all beings. Peace to thee,
Co-heir of mine eternity!
Peace to the greatest and the least,
To nebula and nenuphar!
Light in abundance be increased
On them that dream that shadows are!
OLYMPAS Blessing and worship to The Beast,
The prophet of the lovely Star!
Imagine lying on a desolate beach
staring up at stars which form a semi circle around your vision. It appears
as you lay on grains of sand, in vision due to the absence of other
reflecting lights, that there are limits which seem to be as infinite as the
uncountable number of stars. Engulfed in encompassing darkness speckled by
twinklings of dim light on grains of sand, try to decipher the vastness of
the milkyway itself and beyond it's translusent mass. The milkyway being
just one galaxy. The universe surrounding appears to be half of a bubble
above and like Jack imagine being trapped physically and metaphorically
inside this bubble. On the East coast the light does come on around 5:30 in
the summer...at the sea the laws of nature surround, then the computer light
turns on.
an imaginary
infinite indoor setting and our universe which extends in both directions
from the perception of the mind of a human being. . Our knowledge of the size in which we live extends to the
smallest microscopic particles of an atom to the blurred twinkling of stars
in the outer reaches of the universe. All of life as we know it builds upon
levels which extends below it, "our society, our very enviroment, is based
on principles of strict order....we traded a disorderly world for a realm
engineered from pure thought. Unfortunately, when we made the transition,
human nature remained basically unchanged.". It is at this point that Jack sees
something natural in a hallucination---clouds. The clouds are in fact his
wife which appears to be the only thing close to natural in his life; a
humanistic perspective of love peering down daily.
I behold a small dark orb, wheeling in an abyss of infinite space. It is minute among a myriad vast ones, dark amid a myriad bright ones.
I who comprehend in myself all the vast and the minute, all the bright and the dark, have mitigated the brilliance of mine unutterable splendour, sending forth V.V.V.V.V. as a ray of my light, as a messenger unto that small dark orb.
Then V.V.V.V.V. taketh up the word, and sayeth:
Men and women of the Earth, to you am I come from the Ages beyond the Ages, from the Space beyond your vision; and I bring to you these words.
But they heard him not, for they were not ready to receive them.
But certain men heard and understood, and through them shall this Knowledge be made known.
The least therefore of them, the servant of them all, writeth this book.
He writeth for them that are ready. Thus is it known if one be ready, if he be endowed with certain gifts, if he be fitted by birth, or by wealth, or by intelligence, or by some other manifest sign. And the servants of the master by his insight shall judge of these.
This Knowledge is not for all men; few indeed are called, but of these few many are chosen.
This is the nature of the Work.
First, there are many and diverse conditions of life upon this earth. In all of these is some seed of sorrow. Who can escape from sickness and from old age and from death?
We are come to save our fellows from these things. For there is a life intense with knowledge and extreme bliss which is untouched by any of them.
To this life we attain even here and now. The adepts, the servants of V.V.V.V.V., have attained thereunto.
It is impossible to tell you of the splendours of that to which they have attained.
Little by little, as your eyes grow stronger, will we unveil to you the ineffable glory of the Path of the Adepts, and its nameless goal.
Even as a man ascending a steep mountain is lost to sight of his friends in the valley, so must the adept seem. They shall say: He is lost in the clouds. But he shall rejoice in the sunlight above them, and come to the eternal snows.
Or as a scholar may learn some secret language of the ancients, his friends shall say: "Look! he pretends to read this book. But it is unintelligible - it is nonsense." Yet he delights in the Odyssey, while they read vain and vulgar things.
We shall bring you to Absolute Truth, Absolute Light, Absolute Bliss.
Many adepts throughout the ages have sought to do this; but their words have been perverted by their successors, and again and again the Veil has fallen upon the Holy of Holies.
To you who yet wander in the Court of the Profane we cannot yet reveal all; but you will easily understand that the religions of the world are but symbols and veils of the Absolute Truth. So also are the philosophies. To the adept, seeing all these things from above, there seems nothing to choose between Buddha and Mohammed, between Atheism and Theism.
The many change and pass; the one remains. Even as wood and coal and iron burn up together in one great flame, if only that furnace be of transcendent heat; so in the alembic of this spiritual alchemy, if only the zelator blow sufficiently upon his furnace all the systems of earth are consumed in the One Knowledge. 21. Nevertheless, as a fire cannot be started with iron alone, in the beginning one system may be suited for one seeker, another for another.
We therefore who are without the chains of ignorance, look closely into the heart of the seeker and lead him by the path which is best suited to his nature unto the ultimate end of all things, the supreme realization, the Life which abideth in Light, yea, the Life which abideth in Light. LIBER KOTH
"Koth is the Black Tower of Set which overlooks the Abyss. Koth is the High Temple of the Great Old Ones; the place where these solemn workings will unfold... Your view from the Tower of Koth extends over the 8 directions of Space-Time; the hub where you stand is at the centre of the 8-rayed Wheel of Chaos." Liber Liberi
vel Lapidis Lazuli
A.ˇ.A.ˇ
Publication In Class A
Prologue of the Unborn
Into my loneliness comes --
The sound of a flute in dim groves that haunt the uttermost hills.
Even from the brave river they reach to the edge of the wilderness.
And I behold Pan.
The snows are eternal above, above --
And their perfume smokes upward into the nostrils of the stars.
But what have I to do with these?
To me only the distant flute, the abiding vision of Pan.
On all sides Pan to the eye, to the ear;
The perfume of Pan pervading, the taste of him utterly filling my mouth, so that the tongue breaks forth into a weird and monstrous speech.
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The embrace of him intense on every centre of pain and pleasure.
The sixth interior sense aflame with the inmost self of Him,
Myself flung down the precipice of being
Even to the abyss, annihilation.
An end to loneliness, as to all.
Pan! Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan!
Chapter I
My God, how I love Thee!
With the vehement appetite of a beast I hunt Thee through the Universe.
Thou art standing as it were upon a pinnacle at the edge of some fortified city. I am a white bird, and perch upon Thee.
Thou art My Lover: I see Thee as a nymph with her white limbs stretched by the spring.
She lies upon the moss; there is none other but she:
Art Thou not Pan?
I am He. Speak not, O my God! Let the work be accomplished in silence.
Let my cry of pain be crystallized into a little white fawn to run away into the forest!
Thou art a centaur, O my God, from the violet-blossoms that crown Thee to the hoofs of the horse.
Thou art harder than tempered steel; there is no diamond beside Thee.
Did I not yield this body and soul?
I woo thee with a dagger drawn across my throat.
Let the spout of blood quench Thy blood-thirst, O my God!
Thou art a little white rabbit in the burrow Night.
I am greater than the fox and the hole.
Give me Thy kisses, O Lord God!
The lightning came and licked up the little flock of sheep.
There is a tongue and a flame; I see that trident walking over the sea.
A phoenix hath it for its head; below are two prongs. They spear the wicked.
I will spear Thee, O Thou little grey god, unless Thou beware!
From the grey to the gold; from the gold to that which is beyond the gold of Ophir.
My God! but I love Thee!
Why hast Thou whispered so ambiguous things? Wast Thou afraid, O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning?
From the lightning fall pearls; from the pearls black specks of nothing.
I based all on one, one on naught.
Afloat in the ether, O my God, my God!
O Thou great hooded sun of glory, cut off these eyelids!
Nature shall die out; she hideth me, closing mine eyelids with fear, she hideth me from My destruction, O Thou open eye.
O ever-weeping One!
Not Isis my mother, nor Osiris my self; but the incestuous Horus given over to Typhon, so may I be!
There thought; and thought is evil.
Pan! Pan! Io Pan! it is enough.
Fall not into death, O my soul! Think that death is the bed into which you are falling!
O how I love Thee, O my God! Especially is there a vehement parallel light from infinity, vilely diffracted in the haze of this mind.
I love Thee.
I love Thee.
I love Thee.
Thou art a beautiful thing whiter than a woman in the column of this vibration.
I shoot up vertically like an arrow, and become that Above.
But it is death, and the flame of the pyre.
Ascend in the flame of the pyre, O my soul! Thy God is like the cold emptiness of the utmost heaven, into which thou radiatest thy little light.
When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly expire in Thy great N.O.X.
What shalt Thou be, my God, when I have ceased to love Thee?
A worm, a nothing, a niddering knave!
But Oh! I love Thee.
I have thrown a million flowers from the basket of the Beyond at Thy feet, I have anointed Thee and Thy Staff with oil and blood and kisses.
I have kindled Thy marble into life -- ay! into death.
I have been smitten with the reek of Thy mouth, that drinketh never wine but life.
How the dew of the Universe whitens the lips!
Ah! trickling flow of the stars of the mother Supernal, begone!
I Am She that should come, the Virgin of all men.
I am a boy before Thee, O Thou satyr God.
Thou wilt inflict the punishment of pleasure -- Now! Now! Now!
Io Pan! Io Pan! I love Thee. I love Thee.
O my God, spare me!
Now!
It is done! Death.
I cried aloud the word -- and it was a mighty spell to bind the Invisible, an enchantment to unbind the bound; yea, to unbind the bound.
Chapter II
O my God! use Thou me again, alway. For ever! For ever!
That which came fire from Thee cometh water from me; let therefore Thy Spirit lay hold on me, so that my right hand loose the lightning.
Travelling through space, I saw the onrush of two galaxies, butting each other and goring like bulls upon earth. I was afraid.
Thus they ceased fight, and turned upon me, and I was sorely crushed and torn.
I had rather have been trampled by the World-Elephant.
O my God! Thou art my little pet tortoise!
Yet Thou sustainest the World-Elephant.
I creep under Thy carapace, like a lover into the bed of his beautiful; I creep in, and sit in Thine heart, as cubby and cosy as may be.
Thou shelterest me, that I hear not the trumpeting of that World-Elephant.
Thou art not worth an obol in the agora; yet Thou art not to be bought at the ransom of the whole Universe.
Thou art like a beautiful Nubian slave leaning her naked purple against the green pillars of marble that are above the bath.
Wine jets from her black nipples.
I drank wine awhile agone in the house of Pertinax. The cup-boy favoured me, and gave me of the right sweet Chian.
There was a Doric boy, skilled in feats of strength, an athlete. The full moon fled away angrily down the wrack.
Ah! but we laughed.
I was pernicious drunk, O my God! Yet Pertinax brought me to the bridal.
I had a crown of thorns for all my dower.
Thou art like a goat's horn from Astor, O Thou God of mine, gnarl'd and crook'd and devilish strong.
Colder than all the ice of all the glaciers of the Naked Mountain was the wine it poured for me.
A wild country and a waning moon.
Clouds scudding over the sky.
A circuit of pines, and of tall yews beyond. Thou in the midst!
O all ye toads and cats, rejoice! Ye slimy things, come hither!
Dance, dance to the Lord our God!
He is he! He is he! He is he!
Why should I go on?
Why? Why? comes the sudden cackle of a million imps of hell.
And the laughter runs.
But sickens not the Universe; but shakes not the stars.
God! how I love Thee!
I am walking in an asylum; all the men and women about me are insane.
Oh madness! madness! madness! desirable art thou! 30. But I love Thee, O God!
These men and women rave and howl; they froth out folly.
I begin to be afraid. I have no check; I am alone. Alone. Alone.
Think, O God, how I am happy in Thy love.
O marble Pan! O false leering face! I love Thy dark kisses, bloody and stinking! O marble Pan! Thy kisses are like sunlight on the blue Aegean; their blood is the blood of the sunset over Athens; their stink is like a garden of Roses of Macedonia.
I dreamt of sunset and roses and vines; Thou wast there, O my God, Thou didst habit Thyself as an Athenian courtesan, and I loved Thee.
Thou art no dream, O Thou too beautiful alike for sleep and waking!
I disperse the insane folk of the earth; I walk alone with my little puppets in the garden.
I am Gargantuan great; yon galaxy is but the smoke-ring of mine incense.
Burn Thou strange herbs, O God!
Brew me a magic liquor, boys, with your glances!
The very soul is drunken.
Thou art drunken, O my God, upon my kisses.
The Universe reels; Thou hast looked upon it.
Twice, and all is done.
Come, O my God, and let us embrace!
Lazily, hungrily, ardently, patiently; so will I work.
There shall be an End.
O God! O God!
I am a fool to love Thee; Thou art cruel, Thou withholdest Thyself.
Come to me now! I love Thee! I love Thee!
O my darling, my darling -- Kiss me! Kiss me! Ah! but again.
Sleep, take me! Death, take me! This life is too full; it pains, it slays, it suffices.
Let me go back into the world; yea, back into the world.
Chapter III
I was the priest of Ammon-Ra in the temple of Ammon-Ra at Thebai.
But Bacchus came singing with his troops of vine-clad girls, of girls in dark mantles; and Bacchus in the midst like a fawn!
God! how I ran out in my rage and scattered the chorus!
But in my temple stood Bacchus as the priest of Ammon-Ra.
Therefore I went wildly with the girls into Abyssinia; and there we abode and rejoiced.
Exceedingly; yea, in good sooth!
I will eat the ripe and the unripe fruit for the glory of Bacchus.
Terraces of ilex, and tiers of onyx and opal and sardonyx leading up to the cool green porch of malachite.
Within is a crystal shell, shaped like an oyster -- O glory of Priapus! O beatitude of the Great Goddess!
Therein is a pearl.
O Pearl! thou hast come from the majesty of dread Ammon-Ra.
Then I the priest beheld a steady glitter in the heart of the pearl.
So bright we could not look! But behold! a blood-red rose upon a rood of glowing gold!
So I adored the God. Bacchus! thou art the lover of my God!
I who was priest of Ammon-Ra, who saw the Nile flow by for many moons, for many, many moons, am the young fawn of the grey land.
16.
I will set up my dance in your conventicles, and my secret loves shall be sweet among you.
Thou shalt have a lover among the lords of the grey land.
This shall he bring unto thee, without which all is in vain; a man's life spilt for thy love upon Mine Altars.
19.
Amen.
20.
Let it be soon, O God, my God! I ache for Thee, I wander very lonely among the mad folk, in the grey land of desolation.
21.
Thou shalt set up the abominable lonely Thing of wickedness. Oh joy! to lay that corner-stone!
22.
It shall stand erect upon the high mountain; only my God shall commune with it.
23.
I will build it of a single ruby; it shall be seen from afar off.
Come! let us irritate the vessels of the earth: they shall distil strange wine.
It grows under my hand: it shall cover the whole heaven.
Thou art behind me: I scream with a mad joy.
Then said Ithuriel the strong; let Us also worship this invisible marvel!
So did they, and the archangels swept over the heaven.
Strange and mystic, like a yellow priest invoking mighty flights of great grey birds from the North, so do I stand and invoke Thee!
Let them obscure not the sun with their wings and their clamour!
Take away form and its following!
I am still.
Thou art like an osprey among the rice, I am the great red pelican in the sunset waters.
I am like a black eunuch; and Thou art the scimitar. I smite off the head of the light one, the breaker of bread and salt.
Yea! I smite -- and the blood makes as it were a sunset on the lapis lazuli of the King's Bedchamber.
I smite. The whole world is broken up into a mighty wind, and a voice cries aloud in a tongue that men cannot speak.
I know that awful sound of primal joy; let us follow on the wings of the gale even unto the holy house of Hathor; let us offer the five jewels of the cow upon her altar!
Again the inhuman voice!
I rear my Titan bulk into the teeth of the gale, and I smite and prevail, and swing me out over the sea.
There is a strange pale God, a god of pain and deadly wickedness.
My own soul bites into itself, like a scorpion ringed with fire.
That pallid God with face averted, that God of subtlety and laughter, that young Doric God, him will I serve.
For the end thereof is torment unspeakable.
Better the loneliness of the great grey sea!
But ill befall the folk of the grey land, my God!
Let me smother them with my roses!
Oh Thou delicious God, smile sinister!
I pluck Thee, O my God, like a purple plum upon a sunny tree. How Thou dost melt in my mouth, Thou consecrated sugar of the Stars.
The world is all grey before mine eyes; it is like an old worn wine-skin.
All the wine of it is on these lips.
Thou hast begotten me upon a marble Statue, O my God!
The body is icy cold with the coldness of a million moons; it is harder than the adamant of eternity. How shall I come forth into the light?
Thou art He, O God! O my darling! my child! my plaything! Thou art like a cluster of maidens, like a multitude of swans upon the lake.
I feel the essence of softness.
I am hard and strong and male; but come Thou! I shall be soft and weak and feminine.
Thou shalt crush me in the wine-press of Thy love. My blood shall stain Thy fiery feet with litanies of Love in Anguish.
There shall be a new flower in the fields, a new vintage in the vineyards.
The bees shall gather a new honey; the poets shall sing a new song.
I shall gain the Pain of the Goat for my prize; and the God that sitteth upon the shoulders of Time shall drowse.
Then shall all this which is written be accomplished: yea, it shall be accomplished.
Chapter IV
I am like a maiden bathing in a clear pool of fresh water.
O my God! I see Thee dark and desirable, rising through the water as a golden smoke.
Thou art altogether golden, the hair and the eyebrows and the brilliant face; even into the finger-tips and toe-tips Thou art one rosy dream of gold.
Deep into Thine eyes that are golden my soul leaps, like an archangel menacing the sun.
My sword passes through and through Thee; crystalline moons ooze out of Thy beautiful body that is hidden behind the ovals of Thine eyes.
Deeper, ever deeper. I fall, even as the whole Universe falls down the abyss of Years.
For Eternity calls; the Overworld calls; the world of the Word is awaiting us.
Be done with speech, O God! Fasten the fangs of the hound Eternity in this my throat!
I am like a wounded bird flapping in circles.
Who knows where I shall fall?
O blessed One! O God! O my devourer!
Let me fall, fall down, fall away, afar, alone!
Let me fall!
Nor is there any rest, Sweet Heart, save in the cradle of royal Bacchus, the thigh of the most Holy One.
There rest, under the canopy of night.
Uranus chid Eros; Marsyas chid Olympas; I chid my beautiful lover with his sunray mane; shall I not sing?
Shall not mine incantations bring around me the wonderful company of the wood-gods, their bodies glistening with the ointment of moonlight and honey and myrrh?
Worshipful are ye, O my lovers; let us forward to the dimmest hollow!
There we will feast upon mandrake and upon moly!
There the lovely One shall spread us His holy banquet. In the brown cakes of corn we shall taste the food of the world, and be strong.
In the ruddy and awful cup of death we shall drink the blood of the world, and be drunken!
Ohi! the song to Iao, the song to Iao!
Come, let us sing to thee, Iacchus invisible, Iacchus triumphant, Iacchus indicible!
Iacchus, O Iacchus, O Iacchus, be near us!
Then was the countenance of all time darkened, and the true light shone forth.
There was also a certain cry in an unknown tongue, whose stridency troubled the still waters of my soul, so that my mind and my body were healed of their disease, self-knowledge.
Yea, an angel troubled the waters.
This was the cry of Him: IIIOOShBTh-IO-IIIIAMAMThIBI-II.
Nor did I sing this for a thousand times a night for a thousand nights before Thou camest, O my flaming God, and pierced me with Thy spear. Thy scarlet robe unfolded the whole heavens, so that the Gods said: All is burning: it is the end.
Also Thou didst set Thy lips to the wound and suck out a million eggs. And Thy mother sat upon them, and lo! stars and stars and ultimate Things whereof stars are the atoms.
Then I perceived Thee, O my God, sitting like a white cat upon the trellis-work of the arbour; and the hum of the spinning worlds was but Thy pleasure.
O white cat, the sparks fly from Thy fur! Thou dost crackle with splitting the worlds.
I have seen more of Thee in the white cat than I saw in the Vision of Fons.
In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the visible Universe any being like unto Thee!
Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through eternity against the Lord of the Gods.
So still we race!
Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.
In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and the unlike.
But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard -- and Thou wast He!
Also I read in a great Book.
On ancient skin was written in letters of gold: Verbum fit Verbum.
Also Vitriol and the hierophant's name
V.V.V.V.V.
All this wheeled in fire, in star-fire, rare and far and utterly lonely -- even as Thou and I, O desolate soul my God!
Yea, and the writing
It is well.
This is the voice which shook the earth.
Eight times he cried aloud, and by eight and by eight shall I count Thy favours, Oh Thou Elevenfold God 418!
Yea, and by many more; by the ten in the twenty-two directions; even as the perpendicular of the Pyramid -- so shall Thy favours be.
If I number them, they are One.
Excellent is Thy love, Oh Lord! Thou art revealed by the darkness, and he who gropeth in the horror of the groves shall haply catch Thee, even as a snake that seizeth on a little singing-bird.
I have caught Thee, O my soft thrush; I am like a hawk of mother-of-emerald; I catch Thee by instinct, though my eyes fail from Thy glory.
Yet they are but foolish folk yonder. I see them on the yellow sand, all clad in Tyrian purple.
They draw their shining God unto the land in nets; they build a fire to the Lord of Fire, and cry unhallowed words, even the dreadful curse Amri maratza, maratza, atman deona lastadza maratza maritza -- maran!
Then do they cook the shining god, and gulp him whole.
These are evil folk, O beautiful boy! let us pass on to the Otherworld.
Let us make ourselves into a pleasant bait, into a seductive shape!
I will be like a splendid naked woman with ivory breasts and golden nipples; my whole body shall be like the milk of the stars. I will be lustrous and Greek, a courtesan of Delos, of the unstable Isle.
Thou shalt be like a little red worm on a hook.
But thou and I will catch fish alike.
Then wilt thou be a shining fish with golden back and silver belly: I will be like a violent beautiful man, stronger than two score bulls, a man of the West bearing a great sack of precious jewels upon a staff that is greater than the axis of the all.
And the fish shall be sacrificed to Thee and the strong man crucified for Me, and Thou and I will kiss, and atone for the wrong of the Beginning; yea, for the wrong of the beginning.
Chapter V
O my beautiful God! I swim in Thy heart like a trout in the mountain torrent.
I leap from pool to pool in my joy; I am goodly with brown and gold and silver.
Why, I am lovelier than the russet autumn woods at the first snowfall.
And the crystal cave of my thought is lovelier than I.
Only one fish-hook can draw me out; it is a woman kneeling by the bank of the stream. It is she that pours the bright dew over herself, and into the sand so that the river gushes forth.
There is a bird on yonder myrtle; only the song of that bird can draw me out of the pool of Thy heart, O my God!
Who is this Neapolitan boy that laughs in his happiness? His lover is the mighty crater of the Mountain of Fire. I saw his charred limbs borne down the slopes in a stealthy tongue of liquid stone.
And Oh! the chirp of the cicada!
I remember the days when I was cacique in Mexico.
O my God, wast Thou then as now my beautiful lover?
Was my boyhood then as now Thy toy, Thy joy?
Verily, I remember those iron days.
I remember how we drenched the bitter lakes with our torrent of gold; how we sank the treasurable image in the crater of Citlaltepetl.
How the good flame lifted us even unto the lowlands, setting us down in the impenetrable forest.
Yea, Thou wast a strange scarlet bird with a bill of gold. I was Thy mate in the forests of the lowland; and ever we heard from afar the shrill chant of mutilated priests and the insane clamour of the Sacrifice of Maidens.
There was a weird winged God that told us of his wisdom.
We attained to be starry grains of gold dust in the sands of a slow river.
Yea, and that river was the river of space and time also.
We parted thence; ever to the smaller, ever to the greater, until now, O sweet God, we are ourselves, the same.
O God of mine, Thou art like a little white goat with lightning in his horns!
I love Thee, I love Thee.
Every breath, every word, every thought, every deed is an act of love with Thee.
The beat of my heart is the pendulum of love.
The songs of me are the soft sighs:
The thoughts of me are very rapture:
And my deeds are the myriads of Thy children, the stars and the atoms.
Let there be nothing!
Let all things drop into this ocean of love!
Be this devotion a potent spell to exorcise the demons of the Five!
Ah God, all is gone! Thou dost consummate Thy rapture. Falutli! Falutli!
There is a solemnity of the silence. There is no more voice at all.
So shall it be unto the end. We who were dust shall never fall away into the dust.
So shall it be.
Then, O my God, the breath of the Garden of Spices. All these have a savour averse.
The cone is cut with an infinite ray; the curve of hyperbolic life springs into being.
Farther and farther we float; yet we are still. It is the chain of systems that is falling away from us.
First falls the silly world; the world of the old grey land.
Falls it unthinkably far, with its sorrowful bearded face presiding over it; it fades to silence and woe.
We to silence and bliss, and the face is the laughing face of Eros.
Smiling we greet him with the secret signs.
He leads us into the Inverted Palace.
There is the Heart of Blood, a pyramid reaching its apex down beyond the Wrong of the Beginning.
Bury me unto Thy Glory, O beloved, O princely lover of this harlot maiden, within the Secretest Chamber of the Palace!
It is done quickly; yea, the seal is set upon the vault.
There is one that shall avail to open it.
Nor by memory, nor by imagination, nor by prayer, nor by fasting, nor by scourging, nor by drugs, nor by ritual, nor by meditation; only by passive love shall he avail.
He shall await the sword of the Beloved and bare his throat for the stroke.
Then shall his blood leap out and write me runes in the sky; yea, write me runes in the sky.
Chapter VI
Thou wast a priestess, O my God, among the Druids; and we knew the powers of the oak.
We made us a temple of stones in the shape of the Universe, even as thou didst wear openly and I concealed.
There we performed many wonderful things by midnight.
By the waning moon did we work.
Over the plain came the atrocious cry of wolves.
We answered; we hunted with the pack.
We came even unto the new Chapel and Thou didst bear away the Holy Graal beneath Thy Druid vestments.
Secretly and by stealth did we drink of the informing sacrament.
Then a terrible disease seized upon the folk of the grey land; and we rejoiced.
O my God, disguise Thy glory!
Come as a thief, and let us steal away the Sacraments!
In our groves, in our cloistral cells, in our honeycomb of happiness, let us drink, let us drink!
It is the wine that tinges everything with the true tincture of infallible gold.
There are deep secrets in these songs. It is not enough to hear the bird; to enjoy song he must be the bird.
I am the bird, and Thou art my song, O my glorious galloping God!
Thou reinest in the stars; thou drivest the constellations seven abreast through the circus of Nothingness.
Thou Gladiator God!
I play upon mine harp; Thou fightest the beasts and the flames.
Thou takest Thy joy in the music, and I in the fighting.
Thou and I are beloved of the Emperor.
See! he has summoned us to the Imperial dais.
The night falls; it is a great orgy of worship and bliss.
The night falls like a spangled cloak from the shoulders of a prince upon a slave.
He rises a free man!
Cast thou, O prophet, the cloak upon these slaves!
A great night, and scarce fires therein; but freedom for the slave that its glory shall encompass.
So also I went down into the great sad city.
There dead Messalina bartered her crown for poison from the dead Locusta; there stood Caligula, and smote the seas of forgetfulness.
Who wast Thou, O Caesar, that Thou knewest God in an horse?
For lo! we beheld the White Horse of the Saxon engraven upon the earth; and we beheld the Horses of the Sea that flame about the old grey land, and the foam from their nostrils enlightens us!
Ah! but I love thee, God!
Thou art like a moon upon the ice-world.
Thou art like the dawn of the utmost snows upon the burnt-up flats of the tiger's land.
By silence and by speech do I worship Thee.
But all is in vain.
Only Thy silence and Thy speech that worship me avail.
Wail, O ye folk of the grey land, for we have drunk your wine, and left ye but the bitter dregs.
Yet from these we will distil ye a liquor beyond the nectar of the Gods.
There is value in our tincture for a world of Spice and gold.
For our red powder of projection is beyond all possibilities.
There are few men; there are enough.
We shall be full of cup-bearers, and the wine is not stinted.
O dear my God! what a feast Thou hast provided.
Behold the lights and the flowers and the maidens!
Taste of the wines and the cates and the splendid meats!
Breathe in the perfumes and the clouds of little gods like wood-nymphs that inhabit the nostrils!
Feel with your whole body the glorious smoothness of the marble coolth and the generous warmth of the sun and the slaves!
Let the Invisible inform all the devouring Light of its disruptive vigour!
Yea! all the world is split apart, as an old grey tree by the lightning!
Come, O ye gods, and let us feast.
Thou, O my darling, O my ceaseless Sparrow-God, my delight, my desire, my deceiver, come Thou and chirp at my right hand!
This was the tale of the memory of Al A'in the priest; yea, of Al A'in the priest.
Chapter VII
By the burning of the incense was the Word revealed, and by the distant drug.
O meal and honey and oil! O beautiful flag of the moon, that she hangs out in the center of bliss!
These loosen the swathings of the corpse; these unbind the feet of Osiris, so that the flaming God may rage through the firmament with his fantastic spear.
But of pure black marble is the sorry statue, and the changeless pain of the eyes is bitter to the blind.
We understand the rapture of that shaken marble, torn by the throes of the crowned child, the golden rod of the golden God.
We know why all is hidden in the stone, within the coffin, within the mighty sepulchre, and we too answer Olalam! Imal! Tutzlu! as it is written in the ancient book.
Three words of that book are as life to a new fon; no god has read the whole.
But thou and I, O God, have written it page by page.
Ours is the elevenfold reading of the Elevenfold word.
These seven letters together make seven diverse words; each word is divine, and seven sentences are hidden therein.
Thou art the Word, O my darling, my lord, my master!
O come to me, mix the fire and the water, all shall disolve.
I await Thee in sleeping, in waking. I invoke Thee no more; for Thou art in me, O Thou who hast made me a beautiful instrument tuned to Thy rapture.
Yet art Thou ever apart, even as I.
I remember a certain holy day in the dusk of the year, in the dusk of the Equinox of Osiris, when first I beheld Thee visibly; when first the dreadful issue was fought out; when the Ibis-headed One charmed away the strife.
I remember Thy first kiss, even as a maiden should. Nor in the dark byways was there another: Thy kisses abide.
There is none other beside Thee in the whole Universe of Love.
My God, I love Thee, O Thou goat with gilded horns!
Thou beautiful bull of Apis! Thou beautiful serpent of Apep! Thou beautiful child of the Pregnant Goddess!
Thou hast stirred in Thy sleep, O ancient sorrow of years! Thou hast raised Thine head to strike, and all is dissolved into the Abyss of Glory.
An end to the letters of the words! An end to the sevenfold speech.
Resolve me the wonder of it all into the figure of a gaunt swift camel, striding over the sand.
Lonely is he, and abominable; yet hath he gained the crown.
Oh rejoice! rejoice!
My God! Oh my God! I am but a speck in the star-dust of ages; I am the Master of the Secret of Things.
I am the Revealer and the Preparer. Mine is the Sword -- and the Mitre and the Winged Wand!
I am the Initiator and the Destroyer. Mine is the Globe -- and the Bennu Bird and the Lotus of Isis my daughter!
I am the One beyond these all; and I bear the symbols of the mighty darkness.
There shall be a sigil as of a vast black brooding ocean of death and the central blaze of darkness, radiating its night upon all.
It shall swallow up that lesser darkness.
But in that profound who shall answer: What is?
Not I.
Not Thou, Oh God!
Come, let us no more reason together; let us enjoy! Let us be ourselves, silent, unique, apart.
O lonely woods of the world! In what recesses will ye hide our love?
The forest of the spears of the Most High is called Night, and Hades, and the Day of Wrath; but I am His captain, and I bear His cup.
Fear me not with my spearmen! They shall slay the demons with their petty prongs. Ye shall be free.
Ah, slaves! ye will not -- ye know not how to will.
Yet the music of my spears shall be a song of freedom.
A great bird shall sweep from the Abyss of Joy, and bear ye away to be my cup-bearers.
Come, O my God, in one last rapture let us attain to the Union with the Many!
In the silence of Things, in the Night of Forces, beyond the accursed domain of the Three, let us enjoy our love!
My darling! My darling! away, away beyond the Assembly and the Law and the Enlightenment unto an Anarchy of Solitude and Darkness!
For even thus must we veil the brilliance of our Self.
My darling! My darling!
O my God, but the love in Me bursts over the bonds of Space and Time; my love is spilt among them that love not love.
My wine is poured out for them that never tasted wine.
The fumes thereof shall intoxicate them and the vigour of my love shall breed mighty children from their maidens.
Yea! without draught, without embrace: and the Voice answered Yea! these things shall be.
Then I sought a Word for Myself; nay, for myself.
And the Word came: O Thou! it is well. Heed naught! I love Thee! I love Thee!
Therefore had I faith unto the end of all; yea, unto the end of all.
