"Isis am I" from Tannhauser
Summa Spes (Broadsheet circa 1903;
reprinted in The Sword of Song).
The invocation of Aphrodite
(from Orpheus book II).
The invocation of Hecate
(from Orpheus book III).
Dionysus
(from Orpheus book IV).
The invocation of Pan
(from Orpheus book IV).
Nuith
(finale from Orpheus).
La Gitana
(from Konx Om Pax).
The Poet
(from Konx Om Pax).
The Magician
(translated from the French of Eliphaz Levi).
The Wizard Way
(from Equinox vol. I).
The Five Adorations
(from Equinox vol. I).
The Priestess of Panormita
(from Equinox vol. I).
Pan to Artemis
(from Equinox vol. I).
The Interpreter
(from Equinox vol. I).
The Convert (a hundred years hence)
(from The Winged Beetle).
Stepney
(from Equinox vol. I).
The Disciples
(from Equinox vol. I).
One Star in Sight
(from Magick in Theory and Practice)
Bob Chanler
(from Temperance)
Hymn to Astarte
(from Temperance)
Happy Dust
(from Temperance)
Thanatos Basileos
(from Olla)
Isis am I, and from my life are fed
All showers and suns, all moons that wax and wane,
All stars and streams, the living and the dead,
The mystery of pleasure and of pain
I am the mother! I the speaking sea!
I am the earth and its fertility!
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness, return to me—
To me!Hathoör am I, and to my beauty drawn
All glories of the Universe bow down
The blossom and the mountain and the dawn,
Fruit's blush, and woman, our creation's crown.
I am the priest, the sacrifice, the shrine,
I am the love and life of the divine!
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness, are surely mine—
Are mine!Venus am I, the love and light of earth,
The wealth of kisses, the delight of tears.
The barren pleasure never comes to birth,
The endless, infinite desire of years.
I am the shrine at which thy long desire
Devoured thee with intolerable fire
I was song, music, passion, death, upon thy lyre—
Thy lyre!I am the Grail and I the Glory now:
I am the flame and fuel of thy breast;
I am the star of God upon thy brow;
I am thy queen, enraptured and possessed.
Hide thee, sweet river; welcome to the sea,
Ocean of love that shall encompass thee!
Life, death, love, hatred, life, darkness, return to me—
To me!Reprise
Isis am I, and from my life are fed
All stars and suns, all moons that wax and wane,
Create and uncreate, living and the dead,
The Mystery of Pain.
I am the Mother, I the silent sea,
The Earth, its travail, its fertility.
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness, return to me—
To me!
I.
Existence being sorrow,
The cause of it desire,
A merry tune I borrow
To light upon the lyre:
If death destroy me quite,
Then, I cannot lament it;
I've lived, kept life alight,
And—damned if I repent it!Let me die in in a ditch,
Damnably drunk,
Or lipping a punk,
Or in bed with a bitch!
I was ever a hog;
Muck? I am one with it!
Let me die like a dog;
Die, and be done with it!II.
As far as reason goes,
There's hope for mortals yet:
When nothing is that knows,
What is there to regret?
Our consciousness depends
On matter in the brain;
When that rots out, and ends,
There ends the hour of pain.III.
If we can trust to this,
Why, dance and drink and revel!
Great scarlet mouths to kiss,
And sorrow to the devil!
If pangs ataxic creep,
Or gout, or stone, annoy us,
Queen Morphia, rant thy sleep!
Let worms, the dears, enjoy us!IV.
But since a chance remains
That "I" survives the body
(So talk the men whose brains
Are made of smut and shoddy),
I'll stop it if I can.
(Ah Jesus, if Thou couldest!)
I'll go to Martaban
To make myself a Buddhist.V.
And yet: the bigger chance
Lies with annihilation.
Follow the lead of France,
Freedom's enlightened nation!
Off! sacredotal stealth
Of faith and fraud and gnosis!
Come, drink me: Here's thy health,
Arterio-sclerosis!Let me die in in a ditch,
Damnably drunk,
Or lipping a punk,
Or in bed with a bitch!
I was ever a hog;
Muck? I am one with it!
Let me die like a dog;
Die, and be done with it!
Daughter of Glory, child
Of Earth's Dione mild
By the Father of All, the Ægis-bearing King
Spouse, daughter, mother of God
Queen of the blest abode
In Cyprus' splendour singly glittering.
Sweet sister unto me
I cry alound to thee
I laugh upon thee laughing, O dew caught up from sea!Drawn by sharp sparrow and dove
And swan's wide plumes of love
And all the swallow's swifter vehemence
And, subtler than the Sphinx
The ineffable iynx
Heralds thy splendour blooming into sense
When from the bluest bowers
And greenest-hearted hours
Of Heaven thou smilest toward earth, a miracle of flowers!Down to the loveless sea
Where lay Persephone
Violate, where the shade of earth is black
Crystalline out of space
Flames the immortal face!
The glory of the comet-tailèd track
Blinds all black earth with tears
Silence awakes and hears
The music of thy moving come over the starry spheres.Wrapped in rose, green and gold
Blues many and manifold
A cloud of incense hides thy splendour of light;
Hides from the prayer's distress
Thy loftier loveliness
Till thy veil's glory shrouds the earth from night;
And silence speaks indeed
Seeing the sublter speed
Of its out thought than speech of the Pandean reed!There no voice may be heard!
No place for any word!
The heart's whole fervour silently speeds to thee
Immaculate! and craves
Thy kisses or the grave's
Till, knowing its unworthiness to woo thee
Remembers, grows content
With the old element
And asks the lowlier grace its earlier music meant.So, Lady of all power!
Kindle this firstling flower
The rainbow nymph above the waterfall
Into a mortal shade
Of thee, immortal maid,
That in her love I gather and recall
Some memory mighty and mute
In love's poor substitute
Of thee, thy Love too high, the impossible pursuit!
O triple form of darkness! Sombre splendour!
Thou moon unseen of men! Thou huntress dread!
Thou crownèd demon of the crownless dead!
O breast of blood, too bitter and too tended!
Unseen of gentle spring,
Let me the offering
Bring to thy shrine's sephulchral glittering
I slay the swart beast! I bestow the bloom
Sown in the dusk, and gathered in the gloom
Under the waning moon,
At midnight hardly lightening the East;
And the black lamb from the black ewe's dead womb
I bring, and stir the slow infernal tune
Fit for thy chosen priest.Here where the band of Ocean breaks the road
Black-trodden, deeply-stoopy, to the abyss,
I shall salute thee with the nameless kiss
Pronounced towards the uttermost abode
Of thy supreme desire.
I shall illume the fire
Whence thy wild stryges shall obey the lyre,
Whence thy Lemurs shall gather and spring round,
Girdling me in the sad funereal ground
With faces turnèd back,
My face averted! I shall consummate
The awful act of worship, O renowned
Fear upon earth, and fear in hell, and black
Fear in the sky beyond Fate!I hear the whining of thy wolves! I hear
The howling of the hounds about thy form,
Who comest in the terror of thy storm,
And night falls faster ere thine eyes appear
Glittering through the mist.
Of face of woman unkissed
Save by the dead whose love is taken ere they wist!
Thee, thee I call! O dire one! O divine!
I, the sole mortal, seek thy deadly shrine,
Pour the dark stream of blood,
A sleepy and reluctant river
Even as thou drawest, with thine eyes on mine,
To me across the sense-bewildering flood
That hold my soul for ever!
I bring ye wine from above,
From the vats of the storied sun;
For every one of ye love,
And life for every one.
Ye shall dance on hill and level;
Ye shall sing in hollow and height
In the festal mystical revel,
The rapturous Bacchanal rite!
The rocks and trees are yours,
And the waters under the hill,
By the might of that which endures,
The holy heaven of will!
I kindle a flame like a torrent
To rush from star to star;
Your hair as a comet's horrent,
Ye shall see things as they are!
I lift the mask of matter,
I open the heart of man;
For I am of force to shatter
The cast that hideth—Pan!
Your loves shall lap up slaughter,
And dabbled with roses of blood
Each desperate darling daughter
Shall swim in the fervid flood,
I bring ye laughter and tears,
The kisses that foam and bleed,
The joys of a million years,
The flowers that bear no seed.
My life is bitter and sterile,
Its flame is a wandering star.
Ye shall pass in pleasure and peril
Across the mystical bar
That is set for wrath and weeping
Against the children of earth;
But ye in singing and sleeping
Shall pass in measure and mirth!
I lift my wand and wave you
Through hill to hill of delight:
My rosy rivers lave you
In innermost lustral light.
I lead you, lord of the maze,
In the darkness free of the sun;
In spite of the spite that is day's
We are wed, we are wild, we are one!
In the spring, in the lost loud places.
In the groves of Arcadian green,
There are sounds and shadowy faces
And strange things dimly seen.
Though the face of the springtide as grace is,
The sown and the woodland demesne
Have a soul caught up in their spaces,
Unkenned, and unclean!
It takes up the cry of the wind.
Its eyes with weeping are blind.
A strong hate whirls it behind
As it flees for ever.
Mad, with the tokens of Fear;
Branded, and sad, without cheer;
Year after ghastly year,
And it endeth never.
And this is the mystical stranger,
The subtle Arcadian God
That lurks as for sorrow and danger,
Yet rules all the earth with his rod.
Abiding in spirit and sense
Through the manifold changes of man,
This soul is alone and intense
And one—He is Pan.
More subtle than mass as ye deem it
He abides in the strife that is dust.
Than spirit more keen as ye dream it,
He is laughter and loathing and lust.
He is all. Nature's agonies scream it;
Her joys quire it clear; in the must
Of the vat is His shape in the steam. It
Is Fear, and Disgust.
For the spirit of all that is,
The light in the lover's kiss,
The shame and sorrow and bliss;
They are all in Pan;
The inmost wheel of the wheels,
The feeling of all that feels,
The God and the knee that kneels,
And the foolish man.
For Pan is the world above
And the world that is hidden beneath;
He grins from the mask of love;
His sword has a jewelled sheath.
What boots it a maiden to gird her?
Her rape ere the æons began
Was sure; in one roar of red murder
She breaks: He is Pan.
He is strong to achieve, to forsake her;
He is death as it clings to desire,
Ah, woe to the Earth! If he wake her,
Air, water and spirit and fire
Rush in to uproot her and break her:—
Yet he is the broken; the pyre,
And the flame and the victim; the maker,
And master and sire!
And all that is, is force.
A fatal and witless course
It follows without remorse
With never an aim.
Caught in the net we strive;
We ruin, and think we thrive;
And we die—and remain alive:—
And Pan is our name!
For the misery catches and winds us
Deep, deep in the endless coil;
Ourself is the cord that binds us,
And ours is the selfsame toil.
We are; we are not; yet our date is
An age, though each life be a span;
And ourself and our state and our fate is
The Spirit of Pan.
O wild is the maiden that dances
In the dim waned light of the moon!
Black stars are her myriad glances:
Blue night is the infinite swoon!
But in other array advances
The car of the holier tune;
And our one one chance is in mystical trances;—
Thessalian boon!
For swift as the wheels may turn,
And fierce as the flames may burn,
The spirit of man may discern
In the wheel of Will
A drag on the wheels of Fate,
A water the fires to abate,
A soul the soul to make straight.
And bid "be still!"
But ye, ye invoke in your city
And call on his name on the hill
The God who is born without pity,
The horrible heart that is chill;
The secret corruption of ages
Ye cling to, and hold as ye can,
And abandon the songs of the sages
For Passion—and Pan!
O thou heart of hate and inmost terror!
O thou soul of subtle fear and lust!
Loathsome shape of infamy, thy mirror
Shown as spirit or displayed as dust!
O thou worm in every soul of matter
Crawling, feasting, rotting; slime of hell!
Beat and batter! shear and shatter!
Break the egg that hides thee well!
Pan! I call thee! Pan! I see thee in thy whirling citadel.
I alone of all men may unveil thee,
Show the ghastly soul of all that is
Unto them, that they themselves may hail thee,
Festering corruption of thy kiss!
Thou the soul of God! the soul of demon!
Soul of matter, soul of man!
Show the gross fools, thine, that think them freemen,
What thou art, and what thy heart,
And what they are, that they are thee,
All creation, whole and part,
Thine and thee, near and far:—
Come! I call thee, I who can.
Pan! I know thee! Pan! I show thee! Burst thy coffin open, Pan!
CALLIOPE
Silence. I hear a voice
That biddeth me rejoice
I know the whole wise plan
Of Fate regarding Man.
THE LESBIAN SHORE
It is the sun's dark bride
Nuith, the azure-eyed.
No longer Sappho sings her spell
His heart divorced, her heart insatiable.
There is deep silence. Earth hath passed
To a new kingdom. In a purpose vast
Her horoscope is cast.
NUITH
Enough. It is ended, the story
Of magial æons of song;
The sun is gone down in his glory
To the Houses of Hate and of Wrong.
Would ye see if he rise?
In Hesperian skies
Ye may look for his rising for long.The magical æon beginneth
Of song in the heart of desire,
That smiteth and striveth and sinneth
But burns up the soul of the lyre:—
There is pain in the note:—
In the sorcerer's throat
Is a sword, and his brain is afire!Long after (to men: but a moment
To me in my mansion of rest)
Is a sundawn to blaze what the glow meant
Seen long after death in the west;
A magical æon!
Nor love-song nor pæan,
But a flame with a silvery crest.There shall rise a sweet song of the soul
Far deeper than love or distress;
Beyond mortals and gods shall it roll;
It shall find me, and crave, and caress.
Ah! me it shall capture
In torrents of rapture
It shall flood me, and fill, and possess.For brighter from age unto age
The weary old world shall renew
Its life at the lips of the sage,
Its love at the lips of the dew.
With kisses and tears
The return of the years
Is as sure as the starlight is true.Yet the drift of the stars is to beauty,
To strength, and to infinite pleasure.
The toil and the worship and duty
Shall turn them to laughter and leisure.
Were the world understood
Ye would see it was good,
A dance to a delicate measure.Ye fools, interweaving in passion
The lyrical light of the mind!
Go on, in your drivelling fashion!
Ye shall surely seek long and not find.
From without ye may see
All the beauty of me,
And my lips, that their kisses are kind.For Eurydice once I lamented;
For Orpheus I do not lament:
Her days were a span, and demented;
His days are for aye, and content.
Mere love is as nought
To the love that is Thought,
And idea is more than event.O lovers! O poets! O masters
Of me, ye may ravish my frown!
Aloof from my shocks and disasters!
Impatient to kiss me, and crown!
I am eager to yield.
In the warrior field
Ye shall fight me, and fasten me down.O poets! O masters! O lovers!
Sweet souls of the strength of the sun!
The couch of eternity covers
Our loves, and our dreams are as done.
Reality closes
Our life into roses;
We are infinite space: we are one.There is one that hath sought me and found me
In the heart of the sand and the snow;
He hath caught me, and held me, and bound me,
In the land where no flower may grow.
His voice is a spell,
Hath enchanted me well!
I am his, did I will it or no.But I will it, I will it, I will it!
His speck of a soul in its cars
Shall lift up immensity! fill it
With light of his lyrical bars.
His soul shall concentre
All space; he shall enter
The beautiful land of the stars.He shall know me eternally wedded
To the splendid and subtle of mind;
For the pious, the arrogant-headed,
He shall know they nor seek me nor find.
O afloat in me curled!
Cry aloud to the world
That I and my kisses are kind!O lover! O poet! O maiden
To me in my magical way!
Be thy songs with the wilderness laden!
Thy lyre be adrift and astray:—
So to me thou shalt cling!
So to me thou shalt sing
Of the beautiful law of the day!I forbid thee to weep or to worship;
I forbid thee to sing or to write!
The Star-Goddess guideth us her ship;
The sails belly out with the light.
Beautiful head!
We will sing on our bed
Of the beautiful law of the Night!We are lulled by the whirr of the stars;
We are fanned by the whisper, the wind;
We are locked in unbreakable bars,
The love of the spirit and mind.
The infinite powers
Of rapture are ours;
We are one, and our kisses are kind.
Your hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced,
The sorceress enchanting and the paladin entranced,
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil,
In the pleasaunce of the roses with the fountains and the yews
Where the snowy Sierra soothed us with the breezes and the dews!
In the starlight as we trembled from a laugh to a caress
And the god came warm upon us in our pagan allegresse.
Was the Baile de la Bona too seductive? Did you feel
Through the silence and the softness all the tension of the steel?
For your hair was full of roses, and my flesh was full of thorns,
And the midnight came upon us worth a million crazy morns.
Ah! my Gipsy, my Gitana, my Saliya! were you fain
For the dance to turn to earnest?—O the sunny land of Spain!
My Gitana, my Saliya! more delicious than a dove!
With your hair aflame with roses and your lips alight with love!
Shall I see you, shall I kiss you once again? I wander far
From the sunny land of summer to the icy Polar Star.
I shall find you, I shall have you! I am coming back again
From the filth and fog to seek you in the sunny land of Spain.
I shall find you, my Gitana, my Saliya! as of old
With your hair aflame with roses and your body gay with gold.
I shall find you, I shall have you, in the summer and the south
With our passion in your body and our love upon your mouth—
With our wonder and our worship be the world aflame anew!
My Gitana, my Saliya! I am coming back to you!
Bury me in a nameless grave!
I came from God the world to save.
I brought them wisdom from above:
Worship, and liberty, and love.
They slew me for I did disparage
Therefore Religion, Law and Marriage.
So be my grave without a name
That earth may swallow up my shame!
O Lord, deliver me from Hell’s great fear and gloom!
Loose thou my spirit from the larvæ of the tomb!
I seek them in their dread abodes without affright:
On them will I impose my will, the law of light.I bid the night conceive the glittering hemisphere.
Arise, O Sun, arise! O Moon shine white and clear!
I seek them in their dread abodes without affright:
On them will I impose my will, the law of light.Their faces and their shapes are terrible and strange.
These devils by my might to angels I will change.
These nameless horrors I address without affright
On them will I impose my will, the law of light.These are the phantoms pale of mine astonied view,
Yet none but I their blasted beauty can renew;
For to the abyss of hell I plunge without affright:
On them will I impose my will, the law of light.
Velvet soft the night-star glowed
Over the untrodden road,
Through the giant glades of yew
Where its ray fell light as dew,
Lighting up the shimmering veil
Maiden pure and aery frail
That the spiders wove to hide
Blushes of the sylvan bride
Earth, that trembled with delight
At the male caress of Night.Velvet soft the wizard trod
To the Sabbath of his God.
With his naked feet he made
Starry blossoms in the glade,
Softly, softly, as he went
To the sombre sacrament,
Stealthy stepping to the tryst
In his gown of amethyst.Earlier yet his soul had come
To the Hill of Martyrdom,
Where the charred and crookèd stake
Like a black envenomed snake
By the hangman's hands is thrust
Through the wet and writhing dust,
Never black and never dried
Heart's blood of a suicide.He had plucked the hazel rod
From the rude and goatish god,
Even as the curved moon's waning ray
Stolen from the King of Day.
He had learnt the elvish sign;
Given the Token of the Nine:
Once to rave, and once to revel,
Once to bow before the devil,
Once to swing the thurible,
Once to kiss the goat of hell,
Once to dance the aspen spring,
Once to croak, and once to sing,
Once to oil the savoury thighs
Of the witch with sea-green eyes
With the unguents magical.
Oh the honey and the gall
Of that black enchanter's lips
As he croons to the eclipse,
Mingling that most puissant spell
Of the giant gods of hell
With the four ingrediants
Of the evil elements;
Ambergris from golden spar,
Musk of ox from Mongol jar,
Civet from a box of jade,
Mixed with fat of many a maid
Slain by the inchauntments cold
Of the witches wild and old.He had crucified a toad
In the basilisk abode,
Muttering the Runes averse
Mad with many a mocking curse.He had traced the serpent sigil
In his ghastly virgin vigil
Sursum cor! the elfin hill,
Where the wind blows deadly chill
From the world that waits beneath
Death's black throat and lipless teeth.
There he had stood—his bosom bare—
Tracing life upon the Air
With the crook and with the flail
Lashing forward on the gale,
Till its blade that wavereth
Like the flickering of Death
Sank before his subtle fence
To the starless sea of sense.Now at last the man is come
Haply to his halidom.
Surely as he waves his rod
In a circle on the sod
Springs the emerald chaste and clean
From the duller paler green.
Surely in the circle millions
Of immaculate pavilions
Flash upon the trembling turf
Like the sea-stars in the surf—
Millions of bejewelled tents
For the warrior sacraments.
Vaster, vaster, vaster, vaster,
Grows the stature of the master;
All the ringed encampment vies
With the infinite galaxies.
In the midst a cubic stone
With the Devil set thereon;
'Hath a lamb's virginal throat;
'Hath the body of a stoat;
'Hath the buttocks of a goat;
'Hath the sanguine face and rod
Of a goddess and a god!Spell by spell and pace by pace!
Mystic flashes swing and trace
Velvet soft the sigils stepped
By the silver-starred adept.
Back and front, and to and fro,
Soul and body sway and flow
In vertiginous caresses
To imponderable recesses,
Till at least the spell is woven,
And the faery veil is cloven
That was Sequence, Space, and Stress
Of the soul-sick consciousness."Give thy body to the beasts!
Give thy spirit to the priests!
Break in twain the hazel rod
On the virgin lips of God!
Tear the Rosy Cross asunder!
Shatter the black bolt of thunder!
Sick the swart ensanguine kiss
Of the resolute abyss!"
Wonder-weft the wizard heard
This intolerable word.'Smote the blasting hazel rod
On the scarlet lips of God;
Trampled Cross and rosy core;
Brake the thunder-tool of Thor;
Meek and holy acolyte
Of the priestly hells of spite,
Sleek and shameless catamite
Of the beasts that prowl by night!Like a star that streams from heaven
Through the virgin airs light-riven,
From the lift there shot and fell
An admirable miracle.
Carved minute and clean, a key
Of purest lapis-lazuli
More blue than the blind sky that aches
(Wreathed with the stars, her torturing snakes),
For the dead god's kiss that never wakes;
Shot with golden specks of fire
Like a virgin with desire.
Look, the levers! fern-frail fronds
Of fantastic diamonds,
Glimmering with ethereal azure
In each exquisite embrasure.
On the shaft the latters laced,
As if dryads lunar-chaste
With the satyrs were embraced,
Spelled the secret of the key:
Sic pervenias. And he
Went his wizard way, inweaving
Dreams of things beyond believing.When he will, the weary world
Of the senses closely curlded
Like a serpent round his heart
Shakes herself and stands apart.
So the heart's blood flames expanding,
Strenuous, urgent, and commanding;
And the key unlocks the door
Where his love lies evermore.She is of the faery blood
All smaragdine flows its flood.
Glowing in the amber sky
To ensorcelled porphyry
She hath eyes of glittering flake
Like a cold grey water-snake.
She hath naked breasts of amber
Jetting wine in her bed-chamber,
Whereof whoso stops and drinks
Rees the riddle of the Sphinx.She hath naked limbs of amber
Whereupon her children clamber.
She hath five navels rosy-red
From the five wounds of God that bled;
Each wound that mothered her still bleeding,
And on that blood her bades are feeding.
Oh! like a rose-winged pelican
She hath bred blessed babes to Pan!
Oh! like a lion-hued nightingale
She hath torn her breast on thorns to avail
The barren rose-tree to renew
Her life with that disastrous dew,
Building the rose o' the world alight
With music out of the pale moonlight!
O She is like the river of blood
That broke from the lips of the bastard god
When he saw the sacred mother smile
On the ibis that flew up the foam of the Nile
Bearing the limbs unblessed, unborn,
That the lurking beast of Nile had torn!
So (for the world is weary) I
These dreadful souls of sense lay by.
I sacrifice these impure shoon
To the cold ray of the waning moon.
I take the forkèd hazel staff,
And the rose of terrene graff,
And the lamp of no olive oil
With heart's blood that alone my boil.
With naked breast and feet unshod
I follow the wizard way to God.Wherever he leads my foot shall follow;
Over the height, into the hollow,
Up to the caves of pure cold breath,
Down to the deeps of foul hot death,
Across the seas, through the fires,
Past the palace of desires;
Where he will, whether he will or no,
If I go, I care not whither I go.For in me is the taint of the faery blood.
Fast, fast, its emerald flood
Leaps within me, violent rude
Like a bestial faun's beatitude.
In me the faery blood runs hard;
My sires were a druid, a devil, a bard,
A beast, a wizard, a snake and a satyr;
For—as my mother said—what does it matter?
She was a fay, pure of the faery;
Queen Morgan's daughter by an aery
Demon that came to Orkney once
To pay the Beetle his orisons.So, it is I that writhe with the twitch
Of the faery blood, and the wizard itch
To attain a matter one may not utter
Rather than sink in the greasy splutter
Of Britons munching their bread and butter;
Ailing boys and coarse-grained girls
Grown to sloppy women and brutal chruls.
So, I am off with staff in hand
To the endless light of the nameless land.Darkness spreads its sombre streams,
Blotting out the elfin dreams.
I might haply be afraid,
Were it not that the Feather-maid
Leads me softly by the hand,
Whispers me to understand.
Now (when through the world of weeping
Light at last starrily keeping
Steals upon my babe-new sight,
Light—O Light that is not light!)
On my mouth the lips of her
Like a stone on my sephulchre
Seal my speech with ecstasy,
Till a babe is born of me
That is silent more than I;
For its inarticulate cry
Hushes as its mouth is pressed
To the pearl, her honey breast;
While its breath divinely ripples
The rose-petals of her nipples,
And the jetted milk he laps
From the soft delicious paps,
Sweeter than the bee-sweet showers
In the chalice of the flowers,
More intoxicating than
All the purple grapes of Pan.Ah! my proper lips are stilled.
Only, all the world is filled
With the echo, that drips over
Like the honey from the clover.
Passion, penitence, and pain
Seek their mother's womb again,
And are born the triple treasure,
Peace and purity and pleasure.—Hush, my child, and come aloft
Where the stars are velvet soft!
I praise Thee, God, whose rays upstart beneath the Bright and Morning Star:
Nowit asili fardh salat assobhi allahu akbarI praise Thee, God, the fierce and swart; at noon Thou ridest forth to war!
Nowit asili fardh salat assohri allahu akbarI praise Thee, God, whose arrows dart their royal radiance o'er the scar:
Nowit asili fardh salat asasri allahu akbarI praise Thee, God, whose fires depart, who drivest down the sky thy car:
Nowit asili fardh salat al maghrab allahu akbarI praise Thee, God, whose purple heart is hidden in the abyss afar:
Nowit asili fardh salat al ashafs allahu akbar
Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lilywhite goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed it with blood for dew!
After the orange bars
That ribbed the green west dying
Are dead, O Lord of the Stars,
I come to Thee, come to Thee crying.The ambrosial moon that arose
With breasts slow heaving in splendour
Drops wine from her infinite snows
Ineffably, utterly tend.
O moon! ambrosial moon!
Arise on my desert of sorrow
That the magical eyes of me swoon
With lust of rain to-morrow!Ages and ages ago
I stood on the bank of a river—
Holy and holy and holy, I know,
For ever and ever and ever!
A priest in the mystical shrine,
I muttered a redeless rune,
Till the waters were redder than wine
In the blush of the harlot moon.I and my brother priests
Worshipped a wonderful woman
With a body lithe as a beast's,
Subtly, horribly human.
Deep in the pit of her eyes
I saw the image of death,
And I drew the water of sighs
From the well of her lullaby breath.She sitteth veiled for ever
Brooding over the waste.
She that stirred or spoken never,
She is fiercely, manly chaste!
What madness made me awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her poisonous body held?By night I ravished a maid
From her father's camp to the cave.
I bared the beautiful blade;
I dipped her thrice i' the wave;
I slit her throat as a lamb's,
That the fount of blood leapt high
With my clamorous dithyrambs
Like a stain on the shield of the sky.With blood and censer and song
I rent the mysterious veil:
My eyes gaze long and long
On the deep of that blissful bale.
By cold grey kisses awake
From the silence of utmost eld
The grey cold slime of the snake
That her beautiful body held.But—God! I was not content
With the blasphemous secret of years,
The veil is hardly rent
While the eyes rain stones for tears.
So I clung to the lips and laughed
As the storms of death abated,
The storms of the grievous graft
By the swing of her soul unsated.Wherefore reborn as I am
By a stream profane and foul,
In the reign of a Tortured Lamb,
In the realm of a sexless Owl,
I am set apart from the rest
By meed of the mystic rune
That reads in peril and pest
The ambrosial moon—the moon!For under the tawny star
That shines in the Bull above
I can rein the riotous car
Of galloping, galloping Love;
And straight to the steady ray
Of the Lion-heart Lord I career,
Pointing my flaming way
With the spasm of night for a spear!O moon! O secret sweet!
Chalcedony clouds of caresses
About the flame of our feet,
The night of our terrible tresses!
Is it a wonder, then,
If the people are mad with blindness,
And nothing is stranger to men
Than silence, and wisdom, and kindness?Nay! let him fashion an arrow
Whose heart is sober and stout!
Let him pierce his God to the marrow!
Let the soul of his God flow out!
Whether a snake or a sun
In his horoscope Heaven hath cast,
It is nothing; every one
Shall win to the moon at last.The mage hath wrought by his art
A billion shapes in the sun.
Look through to the heart of his heart,
And the many are shapes of one!
An end to the art of the mage,
And the cold grey blank of the prison!
An end to the adamant age!
The ambrosial moon is arisen.I have bought a lilywhite goat
For the price of a crown of thornes,
A collar of gold for its throat,
A scarlet bow for its horns.
I have bought a lark in the lift
For the price of a butt of sherry:
With these, and God for a gift,
It needs no wine to be merry!I have bought for a wafer of bread
A garden of poppies and clover;
For a water bitter and dead
A foam of fire flowing over.
From the Lamb and his prison fare
And the Owl's blind stupor arise!
Be ye wise, and strong, and fair
And the nectar afloat in your eyes!Arise, O ambrosial moon,
By the strong immemorial spell,
By the subtle veridical run
That is mighty in heaven and hell!
Drip thy mystical dews
On the tongues of the tender fauns
In the shade of initiate yews
Remote from the desert dawns!Satyrs and Fauns, I call.
Bring your beauty to man!
I am the mate for ye all;
I am the passionate Pan.
Come, O come to the dance
Leaping with wonderful whips,
Life on the stroke of a glance,
Death in the stroke of the lips!I am hidden beyond
Shed in a secret sinew
Smitten through by the fond
Folly of wisdom in you!
Come while the moon (the moon!)
Sheds her ambrosial splendour,
Reels in the redeless rune,
Ineffably, utterly tender!Hark! the appealing cry
Of deadly hurt in the hollow—
Hyacinth! Hyacinth! Ay!
Smitten to death by Apollo.
Swift, O maiden moon,
Send thy ray-dews after;
Turn the doloruos tune
To soft ambiguous laughter!Mourn, O Maenads, mourn!
Surely your comfort is over.
All we laught at you lorn.
Ours are the poppies and clover!
O that mouth and eyes,
Mischievous, male, alluring!
O that twitch of the thighs
Dorian past enduring!Where is wisdom now?
Where the sage and his doubt?
Surely the sweat of the brow
Hath driven the demon out.
Surely the scented sleep
That crowns the equal war
Is wiser than only to weep—
To weep for evermore!Now, at the crown of the year,
The decadent days of October,
I come to thee God, without fear;
Pious, chaste, and sober,
I solemnly sacrfice
This first-fruit flower of wine
For a vehicle of thy vice
As I am Thine to be mine.For five in the year gone by
I pray Thee give to me one;
A lover stronger than I,
A moon to swallow the sun!
May he be like a lilywhite goat
Crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for his throat,
A scarlet bow for his horns!
Uncharmable charmer
Of Bacchus and Mars
In the sounding rebounding
Abyss of the stars!
O virgin in armour,
Thine arrows unsling
In the brilliant resilient
First rays of the spring!By the force of the fashion
Of love, when I broke
Through the shroud, through the cloud,
Trough the storm, through the smoke,
To the mountain of passion
Volcanic that woke—
By the rage of the mage
I invoke, I invoke!By the midnight of madness:—
The lone-lying sea
The swoon of the moon,
Your swoon unto me;
The sentinel sadness
Of cliff-clinging pine,
That night of delight
You were mine, you were mine!You were mine, O my saint,
My maiden, my mate,
By the might of the right
Of the night of our fate
Though I fall, though I faint,
Though I char, though I choke,
By the hour of our power
I invoke, I invoke!By the mystical union
Of fairy and faun
Unspoken, unbroken—
The dusk to the dawn!—
A secret communion
Unmeasured, unsung,
The listless resistless
Tumultuous tounge!O virgin in armour,
Thine arrows unsling,
In the brilliant resilient
First rays of the spring!
No Godhead could charm her,
But manhood awoke—
O fiery Valkyrie,
I invoke, I invoke!
Mother of Light and the Gods! Mother of Music, awake!
Silence and Speech are at odds; Heaven and Hell are at stake.
By the Rose and the Cross I conjure; I constrain by the Snake and the Sword;
I am he that is sworn to endure—Bring us the word of the Lord!By the brood of the Bysses of Brightening, whose God was my sire;
By the Lord of the Flame and the Lightening, the King of the Spirits of Fire;
By the Lord of the Waves and the Waters, the King of the Hosts of the Sea,
The fairest of all of whose daughters was mother to me;By the Lord of the Winds and the Breezes, the King of the Spirits of Air,
In whose bosom the infinite ease is that cradled me there;
By the Lord of the Fields and the Mountains, the King of the Spirits of Earth
That nurtured my life at his fountains from the hour of my birth;By the Wand and the Cup I conjure; by the Dagger and Disk I constrain;
I am he that is sworn to endure; make thy music again!
I am Lord of the Star and the Seal; I am Lord of the Snake and the Sword;
Reveal us the riddle, reveal! Bring us the word of the Lord;As the flame of the sun, as the roar of the sea, as the storm of the air,
As the quake of the earth—let it soar for a boon, for a bane, for a snare,
For a lure, for a light, for a kiss, for a rod, for a scourge, for a sword—
Bring us thy burden of bliss—Bring us the word of the Lord!
There met one eve in a sylan glade
A horrible Man and a beautiful maid.
"Where are you going, so meek and holy?"
"I'm going to temple to worship Crowley."
"Crowley is God, then? How did you know?"
"Why, it's Captain Fuller that told us so."
"And how do you know that Fuller was right?"
"I'm afraid you're a wicked man; Good-night."While this sort of thing is styled success
I shall not count failure bitterness.
(Audi alteram partem)
Leonidas had hundreds to hold Thermopylæ
So had good Sir Richard Grenville, the tiger of the sea.
Horatius had two comrades, and Rome and all its gods.
We are worth the three together, if you come to talk of odds!
For a day we held up London, and the cursèd robber crew,
Though they were fifteen hundred, and we were only two.All day we fought the cowards, that dared not break the door.
They had soldiers and policemen, all the tools of modern war,
With their field-gun and their Maxim and the rifle and the shell;
But they skulked with Winston Churchill, or we'd send a few to hell!
They hid themselves and volleyed, did the braves of Waterloo,
They were fifteen hundred, and Fritz and I were two.All day we fought the cowards, the Saxon and the Scot;
We gave them Hell and Tommy, as we answered shot for shot,
Till a bullet found its billet, and poor Fritz lay dead at last.
Then I lit the pile of shavings, nailed our colours to the mast.
Ay! we left the red flag flying, the red flag of fire that flew,
Though they were fifteen hundred, and we were only two.And beneath that glorious banner, in its folds of gold and red,
I fought on (the lonely battle!) by the body of my dead.
And the cowards still hung trembling, and the smoke poured hot and high,
The brave black flag of Anarchy, a portent in the sky!
Ay! we left the black flag flying, as behoves a man to do,
For they were fifteen hundred, and we were only two.And the banner of destruction wraps me round with glory and awe—
Here's a last clip of brave bullets for the bastard hounds of law!
And here's a health to Freedom, and may man defend the right!
And the red flag folds me closer—I have fought the last good fight.
We died, we died unconquered—'tis the triumph of the true:
Though they were fifteen hundred, and we were only two.
(A slightly altered version appeared in Olla as "The Secret")
Beneath the vine tree and the fig
Where mortal cares may not intrude
On melon and on sucking pig
Although their brains are bright and big
Banquet the Great White Brotherhood.Among the fountains and the trees
That fringed his garden's glowing border,
At sunset walked, and, in the breeze
With his disciples, took his ease
An Adept of the Holy Order."My children," said the holy man,
"Once more I'm willing to unmask me.
This is my birthday; and my plan
Is to bestow on you (I can)
Whatever favour you may ask me."Nor curiousity nor greed
Brought these disciples to disaster;
For, being very wise indeed,
The adolescents all agreed
To ask His Secret of the Master.With the aplomb and savoir faire
Peculiar to the Eastern races,
He took the secret then and there
(What, is not lawful to declare),
And thrust it rudely in their faces."A filthy insult!" screamed the first;
The second smiled, "Ingenious blind!"
The youngest neither blessed nor cursed,
Contented to believe the worst—
That He had spoken all his mind!The second earned the name of prig,
The first the epithet of prude;
The third, as merry as a grig,
On melon and on sucking pig
Feasts with the Great White Brotherhood.
Thy feet in mire, thine head in murk,
O man, how piteous thy plight,
The doubts that daunt, the ills that irk,
Thou hast nor wit nor will to fight—
How hope in heart, or worth in work?
No star in sight!Thy gods proved puppets of the priest.
"Truth? All's relation!" science sighed.
In bondage with thy brother beast,
Love tortured thee, as Love's hope died
And Love's faith rotted. Life no least
Dim star descried.Thy cringing carrion cowered and crawled
To find itself a chance-cast clod
Whose Pain was purposeless; appalled
That aimless accident that trod
Its agony, that void skies sprawled
On the vain sod!All souls eternally exist,
Each individual, ultimate,
Perfect—each makes itself a mist
Of mind and flesh to celebrate
With some twin mask their tender tryst
Insatiate.Some drunkards, dotingg on the dream,
Despair that it should die, mistake
Themselves for their own shadow-scheme.
One star can summon them to wake
To self—star-souls serene that gleam
On life's calm lake.That shall end never that began.
All things endure because they are.
Do what thou wilt, for every man
And every woman is a star.
Pan is not dead; he liveth, Pan!
Break down the bar!To man I come, the number of
A man my number, Lion of Light;
I am The Beast whose Law is Love.
Love under will, his royal right—
Behold within, and not above,
One star in sight!
"TRINC."
Alcofribas NasierOh let us bathe and crown our hair
And drink untempered wine!
Let ever greater cups ensnare
Our souls in traps divine.Soon calms the season of love's rage,
And joy grows short of breath;
Birth shoots a shaft, weighed down by age,
That strikes the target, death.Then come, thou golden goblet brimmed
With lust! Though all be vain,
There's hope for us, the lion-limbed,
In hashish and cocaine.Though death should hale us by the scruff
Of neck to's mouldy portal,
To-night let us get drunk enough
To know we are immortal!
Serene are the stars, and serene my soul, ablaze in the Night.
Then how shall I worship Astarte sea-born, how invoke her aright?
I am free from the fire and the foam, I have conquered the dragons and doves;
I have gotten me Love as the gold from the furnace that melted my loves.
Love is not bound to the body, not sparese and adrift with the mind,
Not secret with soul, though the soul seem one and alone of its kind.
The body is naught but a corpse, its growth but a name of decay,
A delirious dream of sick gods—where the Shadow hath sway.
Concocted of offal and mire, putrescent with cancer of breath,
A knot that unravels to naught, a riddle whose answer is Death?
The mind is the reek of the fame of the body's corruption, the mime
Of its magotty moods as it rots from its worm-eaten egg to its slime.
The mind hath not even a mist to excuse philosophic pretence
Of a substance; at most it distorts some few of the phantoms of sense.
Its reason is ever astray, its ignorance straitens its span;
It ends in the mystery-night whence its clumsy creation began.
It observes, it reflects, it decides as the slave of unconscious desires,
Knows neither the world nor itself, nor stands for an hour but it tires.
It struts in its pageant of pride, yet at heart is aware it is vain,
And its summit of proof is to prove nothing proven, and itself but insane.
The soul, ah the flame! Ah, the star! The God in us shining above!
The soul, beyond being and form! Then is not the name of it Love?
Nay, darker and deeper the curse, more dread the abyss never plumbed,
The horror ineffably huge, the agony not to be summed;
For the soul in itself is division, is separate, worse that its wings
Were fledged of the essence of truth at the evil beginning of things,
When the All broke its peace with the thought of itself, and the schism began
That ended in chaos of crime, in the crazy catastrophe, man.
The soul is no chose to conjure with the spell of: "Illusion, begone!"
It is true, and hath might to endure, unassailable, travelling on,
None hinders, commands or deflects; none alters its course by a jot;
Space cannot constrain it, and time the waster erodeth it not.
How should I love such a soul, my like, and like me the accurst
From the hour when the Second was struck a spark from the forge of the First?
How should I love such a soul, though fierce and afar I may range
In my passionate pilgramage, Love, for Love is the Will toward change.
Love is a lust and a prayer, and the soul of its act as its word
Is of them that were Two to make One, and to seal the Event with a Third.
Oh, Love, Astarte sea-born, oh Star blue bright in the West,
I invoke thee, thy priest in the shrine that is built of my blood of my breast!
Since thou art in me and of me, since thou art the heart of my heart,
The soul of my sou, nay the skin of the skin, not a being apart,
I am thou, I accept the intent, acquiesce in the nature implied;
If change be the purpose of Love, I am launched and afloat on the tide.
I accept every phantom of Mind, vain dreams in fatuity curled;
I accept the corruption of Body, delight to bring Death to the world.
In measureless madness I bask, I gloat upon carrion flesh,
I wallow with God in the mire, and of mire I create Him afresh,
There is naught, nor shall be, that my love cannot gnaw with insatiate tooth:
I will wring forth the Truth from the lies as I once found the lies in the Truth.
Astarte, I know thee for rotten as others have seen thee for pure;
I tear off the mask that smiled false on the slaves who would have them endure.
But Thou and Thy maskes are but one, Thy corruption the Essence of Thee,
It is all of the nature of things, their virtue whereby they may be.
So therefore I hail Thee divine, All-one with the substance of Truth.
Mine age holds thee naked, the hem of whose garment bewildered my youth.
My soul being thus with thy soul, shall not soul win at last to the wit
That its changeless perfection is death, itself the assassin of it?
Love under will is the law; all that exists, from the dust
To the Gods, is but jetsam of Love, cast up by the side of Her lust.
So I hail thee, Astarte, and hymn thee in brothel and temple the same,
Who art seed of all change, being Love, by Corruption Thine innermost Name!
I know Thy device to deceive Thy servants thine image that hailed
How none, being mortal, might learn Thy name, or behold Thee unveiled.
For Thy secret is this, that immortals are crowned with the virtue to die;
And I, oh Astarte, bear death in my body—Of ye am I.
Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings,
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or matter, the fold
Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense nor delusion nor dream,
No spirit that wantons or weeps, no thought in its silence supreme.
I sit, and am utterly still; in mine eyes is my fathomless lust
Ablaze to annihilate Will, to crumble my being to dust,
To calcine the dust to an ash, to burn up the ash to an air,
To abolish the air with the flash of the final, the fulminant flare.
All this I have done, and dissolved the primordial germ of my thought;
I have rolled myself up, and revolved the wheel of my being to Naught.
Is there even the memory left? That I was, that I am? It is lost.
As I utter the Word, I am cleft by the last swift spear of the frost.
Snow! I am nothing at last; I sit, and am utterly still;
They are perished, the phantoms, and past; they were born of my weariness-will
When I craved, craved being and form, when the consciousness-cloud was a mist
Precurser of stupor and storm, when I and my shadow had kissed,
And brought into life all the shapes that confused the clear space with their marks,
Vain spectres whose vapour escapes, a whirlwind of ruinous sparks,
No substance have any of these; I have dreamed them in sickness of lust,
Delerium born of disease—ah, whence was the master, the "must"
Imposed on the All?—is it true, is it true, then, that something in me
Is subject to fate? Are there two, are there two, after all, that can be?
I have brought all that is to an end; for myself am sufficient and sole.
Do I trick myself now? Shall I rend once again this homologous Whole?
I have stripped every garment from space; I have strangled the secret of Time,
All being is fled from my face, with Motion's inhibited rime.
Stiller and stiller I sit, till even Infinity fades;
'Tis an idol—'tis weakness of wit that breeds, in inanity, shades!
Yet the fullness of Naught I become, the deepest and steadiest Naught,
Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being and thought
Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past,
All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the last,
It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the seed of a name;
Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible Aim.
I am Necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate!
And Fate determines me "I"; and I have the Will to create.
Vast is the sphere but it turns on itself like the pettiest star.
And I am the looby that learns that all things equally are.
Inscrutable Nothing, the Gods, the cosmos of Fire and of Mist.
Suns, atoms, the clouds and the clods ineluctably dare to exist—
I have made the Voyage of Thought; the Voyage of Vision I swam
To the heart of the Ocean of Naught from the source of the Spring of I am:
I know myself wholly the brother alike of the All and the One;
I know that all things are each other, that their sum and their substance is None;
But the knowledge itself can excel, its fulness hath broken its bond;
All's Truth, and all's falsehood as well, and—what of the region beyond?
So, still though I sit, as for ever, I stab to the heart of my spine;
I destroy the last seed of endeavour to seal up my soul in the shrine
Of Silence, Eternity, Peace; I abandon the Here and the Now;
I cease from the effort to cease, I absolve the dead I from its Vow,
I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote or a star,
To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem for what are,
Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go, how I thrive,
If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive.
What I am, that I am, 'tis enough. I am part of a glorious game.
Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them the same.
Am I only a dream in the sleep of some butterfly? Phantom of fright
Conceived, who knows how, or how deep, in the measureless womb of the night?
I imagine impossible thought, metaphysical voids that beget
Ideas intangible wrought to things less conceivable yet.
It may be. Little I reck—but, assume the existence of earth,
Am I born to be hanged by the neck, a curse from the hour of my birth?
Am I born to abolish man's guilt? His horrible heritage, awe?
Or a seed in his wantonness split by a jester? I care not a straw,
For I understand Do what thou wilt; and that is the whole of the Law.
The Serpent dips his head beneath the sea
His mother, source of all his energy
Eternal, thence to draw the strength he needs
On earth to do indomitable deeds
Once more; and they, who saw but understood
Naught of his nature of beatitude
Were awed: they murmered with abated breath;
Alas the Master; so he sinks in death.
But whoso knows the mystery of man
Sees life and death as curves of one same plan. Netherwood, The Ridge, Hastings. 1946.
Text © Ordo Templi Orientis.
Selection, key entry and HTML coding by Frater T.S. I am open to suggestions for additions, but any requests for Leah Sublime will be ignored.
More long-winded poetry, by the person who taught Crowley how to do it.