Sacred texts
Thelema
Liber Liberi vel Lapdis Lazuli
Adumbratio Kabbalae Aegyptiorum
Sub Figura VII
Being the Voluntary Emancipation of a certain
Exempt Adept from his Adeptship. These are the Birth-Words of a Master of the
Temple.
A...A...
Publication in Class A.
Imprimatur:
N. Fra A... 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.
- 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!
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 aether, 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.
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!
- 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.
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.
- 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 My Altars.
- Amen.
- 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.
- Thou shalt set up the abominable lonely Thing of wickedness. Oh joy! to
lay that corner-stone!
- It shall stand erect upon the high mountain; only my God shall commune with
it.
- 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.
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!
- Ohe! 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: IIIOOShBThIO-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 Aeons.
- 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 our 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.
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.
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 cakes 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.
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 centre 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! Tutulu! as it is written in the
ancient book.
- Three words of that book are as life to a new aeon; 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 dissolve.
- 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! O 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, O 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.
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