Liber Liberi
vel Lapidis Lazuli
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Prologue of the Unborn
- 1.
- Into my loneliness comes --
- 2.
- The sound of a flute in dim groves that haunt the uttermost hills.
- 3.
- Even from the brave river they reach to the edge of the wilderness.
- 4.
- And I behold Pan.
- 5.
- The snows are eternal above, above --
- 6.
- And their perfume smokes upward into the nostrils of the stars.
- 7.
- But what have I to do with these?
- 8.
- To me only the distant flute, the abiding vision of Pan.
- 9.
- On all sides Pan to the eye, to the ear;
- 10.
- 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.
- 11.
- The embrace of him intense on every centre of pain and pleasure.
- 12.
- The sixth interior sense aflame with the inmost self of Him,
- 13.
- Myself flung down the precipice of being
- 14.
- Even to the abyss, annihilation.
- 15.
- An end to loneliness, as to all.
- 16.
- Pan! Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan!
Chapter I
- 1.
- My God, how I love Thee!
- 2.
- With the vehement appetite of a beast I hunt Thee through the Universe.
- 3.
- 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.
- 4.
- Thou art My Lover: I see Thee as a nymph with her white limbs stretched by the spring.
- 5.
- She lies upon the moss; there is none other but she:
- 6.
- Art Thou not Pan?
- 7.
- I am He. Speak not, O my God! Let the work be accomplished in silence.
- 8.
- Let my cry of pain be crystallized into a little white fawn to run away into the forest!
- 9.
- Thou art a centaur, O my God, from the violet-blossoms that crown Thee to the hoofs of the horse.
- 10.
- Thou art harder than tempered steel; there is no diamond beside Thee.
- 11.
- Did I not yield this body and soul?
- 12.
- I woo thee with a dagger drawn across my throat.
- 13.
- Let the spout of blood quench Thy blood-thirst, O my God!
- 14.
- Thou art a little white rabbit in the burrow Night.
- 15.
- I am greater than the fox and the hole.
- 16.
- Give me Thy kisses, O Lord God!
- 17.
- The lightning came and licked up the little flock of sheep.
- 18.
- There is a tongue and a flame; I see that trident walking over the sea.
- 19.
- A phoenix hath it for its head; below are two prongs. They spear the wicked.
- 20.
- I will spear Thee, O Thou little grey god, unless Thou beware!
- 21.
- From the grey to the gold; from the gold to that which is beyond the gold of Ophir.
- 22.
- My God! but I love Thee!
- 23.
- Why hast Thou whispered so ambiguous things? Wast Thou afraid, O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning?
- 24.
- From the lightning fall pearls; from the pearls black specks of nothing.
- 25.
- I based all on one, one on naught.
- 26.
- Afloat in the fther, O my God, my God!
- 27.
- O Thou great hooded sun of glory, cut off these eyelids!
- 28.
- Nature shall die out; she hideth me, closing mine eyelids with fear, she hideth me from My destruction, O Thou open eye.
- 29.
- O ever-weeping One!
- 30.
- Not Isis my mother, nor Osiris my self; but the incestuous Horus given over to Typhon, so may I be!
- 31.
- There thought; and thought is evil.
- 32.
- Pan! Pan! Io Pan! it is enough.
- 33.
- Fall not into death, O my soul! Think that death is the bed into which you are falling!
- 34.
- 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.
- 35.
- I love Thee.
I love Thee.
I love Thee.
- 36.
- Thou art a beautiful thing whiter than a woman in the column of this vibration.
- 37.
- I shoot up vertically like an arrow, and become that Above.
- 38.
- But it is death, and the flame of the pyre.
- 39.
- 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.
- 40.
- When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly expire in Thy great N.O.X.
- 41.
- What shalt Thou be, my God, when I have ceased to love Thee?
- 42.
- A worm, a nothing, a niddering knave!
- 43.
- But Oh! I love Thee.
- 44.
- 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.
- 45.
- I have kindled Thy marble into life -- ay! into death.
- 46.
- I have been smitten with the reek of Thy mouth, that drinketh never wine but life.
- 47.
- How the dew of the Universe whitens the lips!
- 48.
- Ah! trickling flow of the stars of the mother Supernal, begone!
- 49.
- I Am She that should come, the Virgin of all men.
- 50.
- I am a boy before Thee, O Thou satyr God.
- 51.
- Thou wilt inflict the punishment of pleasure -- Now! Now! Now!
- 52.
- Io Pan! Io Pan! I love Thee. I love Thee.
- 53.
- O my God, spare me!
- 54.
- Now!
It is done! Death.
- 55.
- 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
- 1.
- O my God! use Thou me again, alway. For ever! For ever!
- 2.
- 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.
- 3.
- Travelling through space, I saw the onrush of two galaxies, butting each other and goring like bulls upon earth. I was afraid.
- 4.
- Thus they ceased fight, and turned upon me, and I was sorely crushed and torn.
- 5.
- I had rather have been trampled by the World-Elephant.
- 6.
- O my God! Thou art my little pet tortoise!
- 7.
- Yet Thou sustainest the World-Elephant.
- 8.
- 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.
- 9.
- Thou shelterest me, that I hear not the trumpeting of that World-Elephant.
- 10.
- Thou art not worth an obol in the agora; yet Thou art not to be bought at the ransom of the whole Universe.
- 11.
- Thou art like a beautiful Nubian slave leaning her naked purple against the green pillars of marble that are above the bath.
- 12.
- Wine jets from her black nipples.
- 13.
- I drank wine awhile agone in the house of Pertinax. The cup-boy favoured me, and gave me of the right sweet Chian.
- 14.
- 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.
- 15.
- I was pernicious drunk, O my God! Yet Pertinax brought me to the bridal.
- 16.
- I had a crown of thorns for all my dower.
- 17.
- Thou art like a goat's horn from Astor, O Thou God of mine, gnarl'd and crook'd and devilish strong.
- 18.
- Colder than all the ice of all the glaciers of the Naked Mountain was the wine it poured for me.
- 19.
- 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!
- 20.
- O all ye toads and cats, rejoice! Ye slimy things, come hither!
- 21.
- Dance, dance to the Lord our God!
- 22.
- He is he! He is he! He is he!
- 23.
- Why should I go on?
- 24.
- Why? Why? comes the sudden cackle of a million imps of hell.
- 25.
- And the laughter runs.
- 26.
- But sickens not the Universe; but shakes not the stars.
- 27.
- God! how I love Thee!
- 28.
- I am walking in an asylum; all the men and women about me are insane.
- 29.
- Oh madness! madness! madness! desirable art thou! 30. But I love Thee, O God!
- 31.
- These men and women rave and howl; they froth out folly.
- 32.
- I begin to be afraid. I have no check; I am alone. Alone. Alone.
- 33.
- Think, O God, how I am happy in Thy love.
- 34.
- 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.
- 35.
- 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.
- 36.
- Thou art no dream, O Thou too beautiful alike for sleep and waking!
- 37.
- I disperse the insane folk of the earth; I walk alone with my little puppets in the garden.
- 38.
- I am Gargantuan great; yon galaxy is but the smoke-ring of mine incense.
- 39.
- Burn Thou strange herbs, O God!
- 40.
- Brew me a magic liquor, boys, with your glances!
- 41.
- The very soul is drunken.
- 42.
- Thou art drunken, O my God, upon my kisses.
- 43.
- The Universe reels; Thou hast looked upon it.
- 44.
- Twice, and all is done.
- 45.
- Come, O my God, and let us embrace!
- 46.
- Lazily, hungrily, ardently, patiently; so will I work.
- 47.
- There shall be an End.
- 48.
- O God! O God!
- 49.
- I am a fool to love Thee; Thou art cruel, Thou withholdest Thyself.
- 50.
- Come to me now! I love Thee! I love Thee!
- 51.
- O my darling, my darling -- Kiss me! Kiss me! Ah! but again.
- 52.
- Sleep, take me! Death, take me! This life is too full; it pains, it slays, it suffices.
- 53.
- Let me go back into the world; yea, back into the world.
Chapter III
- 1.
- I was the priest of Ammon-Ra in the temple of Ammon-Ra at Thebai.
- 2.
- But Bacchus came singing with his troops of vine-clad girls, of girls in dark mantles; and Bacchus in the midst like a fawn!
- 3.
- God! how I ran out in my rage and scattered the chorus!
- 4.
- But in my temple stood Bacchus as the priest of Ammon-Ra.
- 5.
- Therefore I went wildly with the girls into Abyssinia; and there we abode and rejoiced.
- 6.
- Exceedingly; yea, in good sooth!
- 7.
- I will eat the ripe and the unripe fruit for the glory of Bacchus.
- 8.
- Terraces of ilex, and tiers of onyx and opal and sardonyx leading up to the cool green porch of malachite.
- 9.
- Within is a crystal shell, shaped like an oyster -- O glory of Priapus! O beatitude of the Great Goddess!
- 10.
- Therein is a pearl.
- 11.
- O Pearl! thou hast come from the majesty of dread Ammon-Ra.
- 12.
- Then I the priest beheld a steady glitter in the heart of the pearl.
- 13.
- So bright we could not look! But behold! a blood-red rose upon a rood of glowing gold!
- 14.
- So I adored the God. Bacchus! thou art the lover of my God!
- 15.
- 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.
- 17.
- Thou shalt have a lover among the lords of the grey land.
- 18.
- 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.
- 24.
- Come! let us irritate the vessels of the earth: they shall distil strange wine.
- 25.
- It grows under my hand: it shall cover the whole heaven.
- 26.
- Thou art behind me: I scream with a mad joy.
- 27.
- Then said Ithuriel the strong; let Us also worship this invisible marvel!
- 28.
- So did they, and the archangels swept over the heaven.
- 29.
- Strange and mystic, like a yellow priest invoking mighty flights of great grey birds from the North, so do I stand and invoke Thee!
- 30.
- Let them obscure not the sun with their wings and their clamour!
- 31.
- Take away form and its following!
- 32.
- I am still.
- 33.
- Thou art like an osprey among the rice, I am the great red pelican in the sunset waters.
- 34.
- 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.
- 35.
- Yea! I smite -- and the blood makes as it were a sunset on the lapis lazuli of the King's Bedchamber.
- 36.
- I smite. The whole world is broken up into a mighty wind, and a voice cries aloud in a tongue that men cannot speak.
- 37.
- 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!
- 38.
- Again the inhuman voice!
- 39.
- I rear my Titan bulk into the teeth of the gale, and I smite and prevail, and swing me out over the sea.
- 40.
- There is a strange pale God, a god of pain and deadly wickedness.
- 41.
- My own soul bites into itself, like a scorpion ringed with fire.
- 42.
- That pallid God with face averted, that God of subtlety and laughter, that young Doric God, him will I serve.
- 43.
- For the end thereof is torment unspeakable.
- 44.
- Better the loneliness of the great grey sea!
- 45.
- But ill befall the folk of the grey land, my God!
- 46.
- Let me smother them with my roses!
- 47.
- Oh Thou delicious God, smile sinister!
- 48.
- 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.
- 49.
- The world is all grey before mine eyes; it is like an old worn wine-skin.
- 50.
- All the wine of it is on these lips.
- 51.
- Thou hast begotten me upon a marble Statue, O my God!
- 52.
- 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?
- 53.
- 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.
- 54.
- I feel the essence of softness.
- 55.
- I am hard and strong and male; but come Thou! I shall be soft and weak and feminine.
- 56.
- Thou shalt crush me in the wine-press of Thy love. My blood shall stain Thy fiery feet with litanies of Love in Anguish.
- 57.
- There shall be a new flower in the fields, a new vintage in the vineyards.
- 58.
- The bees shall gather a new honey; the poets shall sing a new song.
- 59.
- I shall gain the Pain of the Goat for my prize; and the God that sitteth upon the shoulders of Time shall drowse.
- 60.
- Then shall all this which is written be accomplished: yea, it shall be accomplished.
Chapter IV
- 1.
- I am like a maiden bathing in a clear pool of fresh water.
- 2.
- O my God! I see Thee dark and desirable, rising through the water as a golden smoke.
- 3.
- 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.
- 4.
- Deep into Thine eyes that are golden my soul leaps, like an archangel menacing the sun.
- 5.
- My sword passes through and through Thee; crystalline moons ooze out of Thy beautiful body that is hidden behind the ovals of Thine eyes.
- 6.
- Deeper, ever deeper. I fall, even as the whole Universe falls down the abyss of Years.
- 7.
- For Eternity calls; the Overworld calls; the world of the Word is awaiting us.
- 8.
- Be done with speech, O God! Fasten the fangs of the hound Eternity in this my throat!
- 9.
- I am like a wounded bird flapping in circles.
- 10.
- Who knows where I shall fall?
- 11.
- O blessid One! O God! O my devourer!
- 12.
- Let me fall, fall down, fall away, afar, alone!
- 13.
- Let me fall!
- 14.
- Nor is there any rest, Sweet Heart, save in the cradle of royal Bacchus, the thigh of the most Holy One.
- 15.
- There rest, under the canopy of night.
- 16.
- Uranus chid Eros; Marsyas chid Olympas; I chid my beautiful lover with his sunray mane; shall I not sing?
- 17.
- 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?
- 18.
- Worshipful are ye, O my lovers; let us forward to the dimmest hollow!
- 19.
- There we will feast upon mandrake and upon moly!
- 20.
- 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.
- 21.
- In the ruddy and awful cup of death we shall drink the blood of the world, and be drunken!
- 22.
- Ohi! the song to Iao, the song to Iao!
- 23.
- Come, let us sing to thee, Iacchus invisible, Iacchus triumphant, Iacchus indicible!
- 24.
- Iacchus, O Iacchus, O Iacchus, be near us!
- 25.
- Then was the countenance of all time darkened, and the true light shone forth.
- 26.
- 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.
- 27.
- Yea, an angel troubled the waters.
- 28.
- This was the cry of Him: IIIOOShBTh-IO-IIIIAMAMThIBI-II.
- 29.
- 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.
- 30.
- 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.
- 31.
- 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.
- 32.
- O white cat, the sparks fly from Thy fur! Thou dost crackle with splitting the worlds.
- 33.
- I have seen more of Thee in the white cat than I saw in the Vision of Fons.
- 34.
- In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the visible Universe any being like unto Thee!
- 35.
- Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through eternity against the Lord of the Gods.
- 36.
- So still we race!
- 37.
- Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.
- 38.
- In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and the unlike.
- 39.
- But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard -- and Thou wast He!
- 40.
- Also I read in a great Book.
- 41.
- On ancient skin was written in letters of gold: Verbum fit Verbum.
- 42.
- Also Vitriol and the hierophant's name
V.V.V.V.V.
- 43.
- All this wheeled in fire, in star-fire, rare and far and utterly lonely -- even as Thou and I, O desolate soul my God!
- 44.
- Yea, and the writing
It is well.
This is the voice which shook the earth.
- 45.
- Eight times he cried aloud, and by eight and by eight shall I count Thy favours, Oh Thou Elevenfold God 418!
- 46.
- 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.
- 47.
- If I number them, they are One.
- 48.
- 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.
- 49.
- 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.
- 50.
- Yet they are but foolish folk yonder. I see them on the yellow sand, all clad in Tyrian purple.
- 51.
- 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!
- 52.
- Then do they cook the shining god, and gulp him whole.
- 53.
- These are evil folk, O beautiful boy! let us pass on to the Otherworld.
- 54.
- Let us make ourselves into a pleasant bait, into a seductive shape!
- 55.
- 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.
- 56.
- Thou shalt be like a little red worm on a hook.
- 57.
- But thou and I will catch fish alike.
- 58.
- 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.
- 59.
- 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
- 1.
- O my beautiful God! I swim in Thy heart like a trout in the mountain torrent.
- 2.
- I leap from pool to pool in my joy; I am goodly with brown and gold and silver.
- 3.
- Why, I am lovelier than the russet autumn woods at the first snowfall.
- 4.
- And the crystal cave of my thought is lovelier than I.
- 5.
- 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.
- 6.
- 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!
- 7.
- 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.
- 8.
- And Oh! the chirp of the cicada!
- 9.
- I remember the days when I was cacique in Mexico.
- 10.
- O my God, wast Thou then as now my beautiful lover?
- 11.
- Was my boyhood then as now Thy toy, Thy joy?
- 12.
- Verily, I remember those iron days.
- 13.
- I remember how we drenched the bitter lakes with our torrent of gold; how we sank the treasurable image in the crater of Citlaltepetl.
- 14.
- How the good flame lifted us even unto the lowlands, setting us down in the impenetrable forest.
- 15.
- 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.
- 16.
- There was a weird winged God that told us of his wisdom.
- 17.
- We attained to be starry grains of gold dust in the sands of a slow river.
- 18.
- Yea, and that river was the river of space and time also.
- 19.
- We parted thence; ever to the smaller, ever to the greater, until now, O sweet God, we are ourselves, the same.
- 20.
- O God of mine, Thou art like a little white goat with lightning in his horns!
- 21.
- I love Thee, I love Thee.
- 22.
- Every breath, every word, every thought, every deed is an act of love with Thee.
- 23.
- The beat of my heart is the pendulum of love.
- 24.
- The songs of me are the soft sighs:
- 25.
- The thoughts of me are very rapture:
- 26.
- And my deeds are the myriads of Thy children, the stars and the atoms.
- 27.
- Let there be nothing!
- 28.
- Let all things drop into this ocean of love!
- 29.
- Be this devotion a potent spell to exorcise the demons of the Five!
- 30.
- Ah God, all is gone! Thou dost consummate Thy rapture. Falutli! Falutli!
- 31.
- There is a solemnity of the silence. There is no more voice at all.
- 32.
- So shall it be unto the end. We who were dust shall never fall away into the dust.
- 33.
- So shall it be.
- 34.
- Then, O my God, the breath of the Garden of Spices. All these have a savour averse.
- 35.
- The cone is cut with an infinite ray; the curve of hyperbolic life springs into being.
- 36.
- Farther and farther we float; yet we are still. It is the chain of systems that is falling away from us.
- 37.
- First falls the silly world; the world of the old grey land.
- 38.
- Falls it unthinkably far, with its sorrowful bearded face presiding over it; it fades to silence and woe.
- 39.
- We to silence and bliss, and the face is the laughing face of Eros.
- 40.
- Smiling we greet him with the secret signs.
- 41.
- He leads us into the Inverted Palace.
- 42.
- There is the Heart of Blood, a pyramid reaching its apex down beyond the Wrong of the Beginning.
- 43.
- Bury me unto Thy Glory, O beloved, O princely lover of this harlot maiden, within the Secretest Chamber of the Palace!
- 44.
- It is done quickly; yea, the seal is set upon the vault.
- 45.
- There is one that shall avail to open it.
- 46.
- 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.
- 47.
- He shall await the sword of the Beloved and bare his throat for the stroke.
- 48.
- Then shall his blood leap out and write me runes in the sky; yea, write me runes in the sky.
Chapter VI
- 1.
- Thou wast a priestess, O my God, among the Druids; and we knew the powers of the oak.
- 2.
- We made us a temple of stones in the shape of the Universe, even as thou didst wear openly and I concealed.
- 3.
- There we performed many wonderful things by midnight.
- 4.
- By the waning moon did we work.
- 5.
- Over the plain came the atrocious cry of wolves.
- 6.
- We answered; we hunted with the pack.
- 7.
- We came even unto the new Chapel and Thou didst bear away the Holy Graal beneath Thy Druid vestments.
- 8.
- Secretly and by stealth did we drink of the informing sacrament.
- 9.
- Then a terrible disease seized upon the folk of the grey land; and we rejoiced.
- 10.
- O my God, disguise Thy glory!
- 11.
- Come as a thief, and let us steal away the Sacraments!
- 12.
- In our groves, in our cloistral cells, in our honeycomb of happiness, let us drink, let us drink!
- 13.
- It is the wine that tinges everything with the true tincture of infallible gold.
- 14.
- There are deep secrets in these songs. It is not enough to hear the bird; to enjoy song he must be the bird.
- 15.
- I am the bird, and Thou art my song, O my glorious galloping God!
- 16.
- Thou reinest in the stars; thou drivest the constellations seven abreast through the circus of Nothingness.
- 17.
- Thou Gladiator God!
- 18.
- I play upon mine harp; Thou fightest the beasts and the flames.
- 19.
- Thou takest Thy joy in the music, and I in the fighting.
- 20.
- Thou and I are beloved of the Emperor.
- 21.
- See! he has summoned us to the Imperial dais.
The night falls; it is a great orgy of worship and bliss.
- 22.
- The night falls like a spangled cloak from the shoulders of a prince upon a slave.
- 23.
- He rises a free man!
- 24.
- Cast thou, O prophet, the cloak upon these slaves!
- 25.
- A great night, and scarce fires therein; but freedom for the slave that its glory shall encompass.
- 26.
- So also I went down into the great sad city.
- 27.
- There dead Messalina bartered her crown for poison from the dead Locusta; there stood Caligula, and smote the seas of forgetfulness.
- 28.
- Who wast Thou, O Caesar, that Thou knewest God in an horse?
- 29.
- 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!
- 30.
- Ah! but I love thee, God!
- 31.
- Thou art like a moon upon the ice-world.
- 32.
- Thou art like the dawn of the utmost snows upon the burnt-up flats of the tiger's land.
- 33.
- By silence and by speech do I worship Thee.
- 34.
- But all is in vain.
- 35.
- Only Thy silence and Thy speech that worship me avail.
- 36.
- Wail, O ye folk of the grey land, for we have drunk your wine, and left ye but the bitter dregs.
- 37.
- Yet from these we will distil ye a liquor beyond the nectar of the Gods.
- 38.
- There is value in our tincture for a world of Spice and gold.
- 39.
- For our red powder of projection is beyond all possibilities.
- 40.
- There are few men; there are enough.
- 41.
- We shall be full of cup-bearers, and the wine is not stinted.
- 42.
- O dear my God! what a feast Thou hast provided.
- 43.
- Behold the lights and the flowers and the maidens!
- 44.
- Taste of the wines and the cates and the splendid meats!
- 45.
- Breathe in the perfumes and the clouds of little gods like wood-nymphs that inhabit the nostrils!
- 46.
- Feel with your whole body the glorious smoothness of the marble coolth and the generous warmth of the sun and the slaves!
- 47.
- Let the Invisible inform all the devouring Light of its disruptive vigour!
- 48.
- Yea! all the world is split apart, as an old grey tree by the lightning!
- 49.
- Come, O ye gods, and let us feast.
- 50.
- Thou, O my darling, O my ceaseless Sparrow-God, my delight, my desire, my deceiver, come Thou and chirp at my right hand!
- 51.
- This was the tale of the memory of Al A'in the priest; yea, of Al A'in the priest.
Chapter VII
- 1.
- By the burning of the incense was the Word revealed, and by the distant drug.
- 2.
- O meal and honey and oil! O beautiful flag of the moon, that she hangs out in the center of bliss!
- 3.
- 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.
- 4.
- But of pure black marble is the sorry statue, and the changeless pain of the eyes is bitter to the blind.
- 5.
- We understand the rapture of that shaken marble, torn by the throes of the crowned child, the golden rod of the golden God.
- 6.
- 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.
- 7.
- Three words of that book are as life to a new fon; no god has read the whole.
- 8.
- But thou and I, O God, have written it page by page.
- 9.
- Ours is the elevenfold reading of the Elevenfold word.
- 10.
- These seven letters together make seven diverse words; each word is divine, and seven sentences are hidden therein.
- 11.
- Thou art the Word, O my darling, my lord, my master!
- 12.
- O come to me, mix the fire and the water, all shall disolve.
- 13.
- 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.
- 14.
- Yet art Thou ever apart, even as I.
- 15.
- 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.
- 16.
- I remember Thy first kiss, even as a maiden should. Nor in the dark byways was there another: Thy kisses abide.
- 17.
- There is none other beside Thee in the whole Universe of Love.
- 18.
- My God, I love Thee, O Thou goat with gilded horns!
- 19.
- Thou beautiful bull of Apis! Thou beautiful serpent of Apep! Thou beautiful child of the Pregnant Goddess!
- 20.
- 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.
- 21.
- An end to the letters of the words! An end to the sevenfold speech.
- 22.
- Resolve me the wonder of it all into the figure of a gaunt swift camel, striding over the sand.
- 23.
- Lonely is he, and abominable; yet hath he gained the crown.
- 24.
- Oh rejoice! rejoice!
- 25.
- 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.
- 26.
- I am the Revealer and the Preparer. Mine is the Sword -- and the Mitre and the Winged Wand!
- 27.
- I am the Initiator and the Destroyer. Mine is the Globe -- and the Bennu Bird and the Lotus of Isis my daughter!
- 28.
- I am the One beyond these all; and I bear the symbols of the mighty darkness.
- 29.
- 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.
- 30.
- It shall swallow up that lesser darkness.
- 31.
- But in that profound who shall answer: What is?
- 32.
- Not I.
- 33.
- Not Thou, Oh God!
- 34.
- Come, let us no more reason together; let us enjoy! Let us be ourselves, silent, unique, apart.
- 35.
- O lonely woods of the world! In what recesses will ye hide our love?
- 36.
- 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.
- 37.
- Fear me not with my spearmen! They shall slay the demons with their petty prongs. Ye shall be free.
- 38.
- Ah, slaves! ye will not -- ye know not how to will.
- 39.
- Yet the music of my spears shall be a song of freedom.
- 40.
- A great bird shall sweep from the Abyss of Joy, and bear ye away to be my cup-bearers.
- 41.
- Come, O my God, in one last rapture let us attain to the Union with the Many!
- 42.
- In the silence of Things, in the Night of Forces, beyond the accursed domain of the Three, let us enjoy our love!
- 43.
- My darling! My darling! away, away beyond the Assembly and the Law and the Enlightenment unto an Anarchy of Solitude and Darkness!
- 44.
- For even thus must we veil the brilliance of our Self.
- 45.
- My darling! My darling!
- 46.
- 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.
- 47.
- My wine is poured out for them that never tasted wine.
- 48.
- The fumes thereof shall intoxicate them and the vigour of my love shall breed mighty children from their maidens.
- 49.
- Yea! without draught, without embrace: and the Voice answered Yea! these things shall be.
- 50.
- Then I sought a Word for Myself; nay, for myself.
- 51.
- And the Word came: O Thou! it is well. Heed naught! I love Thee! I love Thee!
- 52.
- Therefore had I faith unto the end of all; yea, unto the end of all.
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