Volume I, Number VII

THE VOICE OF FIRE

 

 

The Glad Word illuminating the world.

Illustration by Barry Van-Asten.

 

 

 

Volume 1, Number 7. Winter Solstice An CIX ☉ in 29° Sagittarius, ☽ in 24° Sagittarius.

Sunday 21st December 2014 e.v.

 

 

  'Draw into naught

All life, death, hatred, love:

All self concentred in the sole desire -

Hear thou the Voice of Fire!'

Tannhauser. Aleister Crowley.

 

 

  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Love is the law, love under will.

 

 

Volume 1, Number 7 of the Voice of Fire is dedicated to Rose Edith Crowley [1874-1932]

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

                                                       Editorial

                                                       Rose Edith Kelly

                                                       Rosa Mundi

                                                       Sub Umbra Alarum Tuarum

                                                       Rosa Inferni
                                                       Dedication from Songs of the Groves

                                                       Walking from Foyers to Boleskine

                                                       Rosa Coeli

                                                       A few words on the subject of Sex Magick

                                                       Rosa Decidua

                                                       The Heather Garden

                                                       Good Saint Crowley

                                                       The Ape of God
                                                       The Wand of Silence
                                                       The Magic Book Worm
                                                       Pegamina parts seven and eight
 

 

EDITORIAL

 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

 

The editor, being otherwise disposed, performing his annual cursing of Christmas and tearing down mistletoe, has asked me to say a few words on the origin of The Voice of Fire. According to the diary of our gracious editor it was in the year 2010 e.v. on the day following the Feast of the First Night of the Prophet and His Bride, being Friday 13th August, that the notion of a magical periodical seemed to be delivered by means magical. The editor was busy with his daily invocations during a period of magical work. That night, as our humble editor sought a name for the publication, instantly, as if in answer to his question, came the booming reply from without, or so it appeared to him, and the thunderous male voice roared – ‘The Voice of Fire!’

It would be nearly three more years before the idea manifested in his mind once more on 10th May 2013 e.v. and from consulting his diaries again, we see it developed further between camping at Scafell (beginning of May) and a narrow escape from death in Yorkshire’s Whernside after a forty mile hike back to camp (end of May). The only real agenda or intended purpose was to introduce elements of Thelemic thought and concepts concerning Aleister Crowley without the gloss of occult intimidation or over-intellectual obscurity, to present basic ideas to provoke further research and interest with a small sprinkling of humour. The first edition of The Voice of Fire appeared at the Summer Solstice on Friday 21st June 2013 e.v.

 

Miranda Tempest

 

Love is the law, love under will.

 

 

The Voice of Fire welcomes submissions (poetry, short stories, articles and reviews etc). Please send all submissions to the editor at barryvanasten418@hotmail.com

ROSE EDITH KELLY

 

 

 

Rose on the breast of the world of spring,

I press my breast against thy bloom;

My subtle life drawn out to thee; to thee

its moods and meaning cling.

I pass from change and thought to peace,

woven on love's incredible loom,

Rose on the breast of the world of spring!

How shall the heart dissolved in joy take

form and harmony and sing?

How shall the ecstasy of light fall back to

music's magic gloom?

O China rose without a thorn, O honey-bee

without a sting!

The scent of all thy beauty burns upon the

wind. The deep perfume

Of our own love is hidden in our hearts,

the invulnerable ring.

No man shall know. I bear thee down unto

the tomb, beyond the tomb,

Rose on the breast of the world of spring!

 

[Aleister Crowley. 12th August 1903]

 

 

Thursday 23rd July 1874: Rose Edith Kelly is born in Paddington. Her father is the Rev. Frederic Festus Kelly (1838-1918) born St George, Bloomsbury and her mother is Blanche Bradford (1845-1935) born Hendon, Middlesex. Frederic and Blanche were married in Kensington in 1873. Rose was the eldest child followed by a sister Eleanor Constance Mary Kelly born 1877 and a brother Gerald Festus Kelly born 1880, both born in Paddington.

 

1880: The Kelly’s move to Camberwell Vicarage and Rev. Kelly is Vicar there until 1915.

 

1895: Rose travelled with her brother Gerald to Cape Town, South Africa.

 

Tuesday 31st August 1897: Rose Kelly (aged 21) married Major Frederick Thomas Skerrett (c. 1859-1899) of the Royal Army Medical Service and they lived in South Africa. Major Skerrett died two years later and Rose returned home to England.

 

1901: Rose joined her brother Gerald in Paris and stayed for six months.

 

Early August 1903: Aleister Crowley is at Boleskine House when he receives a letter from his old university friend Gerald Kelly who is staying at Strathpeffer with his mother, Blanche, who is there for the spa and his sister Rose. Also with the group is a man named Hill, an elderly solicitor who has proposed marriage to Rose [Rose has not yet accepted as she has another suitor arriving in a few weeks from the United States named Howell who is getting permission from his father to also marry Rose. Rose is in love with neither man, in fact she is in love with a married man named Frank Summers whom she has been seeing and he has the idea of fixing her up with a flat]. Crowley, with nothing much to do, accepts the invitation to Strathpeffer.

 

Tuesday 11th August 1903: Gerald Kelly and Mr Hill are playing golf at the Strathpeffer Spa and Golf Club. Rose is there and in attendance is Aleister Crowley who does not play as he did not have his clubs with him. At lunchtime, Aleister and Rose get into conversation:

‘So Rose confessed to me that she was in great trouble, as we wandered out over the links to walk the last few holes with Kelly and Hill.

She told me that she was being forced into the marriage with Howell by her family. She had been carrying on an intrigue with a married man named Frank Summers. This had got to the ears of her family because, being hard up for money, she had told her mother that she was pregnant and got forty pounds from her for the purpose of having an illegal operation. Naturally, this led to inquiries; and though the pregnancy was merely an ingenious pretext, and the operation consisted of dinners and dresses, the Kellys were determined to prevent further raids on their purse and there prestige by insisting on her remarriage.

The story awakened my Shelleyan indignation. We sat down on the links in silence while I thought out the situation. The solution was perfectly simple. "Don't upset yourself about such a trifle," said I, and told her something of my spiritual state and my plans for the future. "All you have to do," I said, "is marry me. I will go back to Boleskine and you need never hear of me again --- unless," I added with romantic grandiloquence, "I can be of any further assistance to you. That will knock your marriage with Howell on the head; you will be responsible for your conduct, not to your family, but to me (as in the case of an Indian dancing girl married to a dagger or a pipal tree); and you can go and live in the flat which Mr. Summers proposes to take for you, without interference."’ [Confessions. Chapter 45]

 

Wednesday 12th August 1903: Aleister, in highland dress, and Rose leave their hotel in Strathpeffer very early (not wanting to wake Gerald) and they take a train to Dingwall. They do not talk much during the journey.

‘We reached Dingwall in the clod damp dawn; we disinterred the sheriff's address from a sleepy policeman and arrived at his house only to be told by a dishevelled maid that we couldn't get at him till eight or nine or ten o'clock. I was piqued. The hint of obstacles roused me. I wasn't going to elope, whatever my reasons might be, and make a mess of it. I demanded the address of a lawyer and excavated him. He promised to be at his office at eight o'clock. With that we had to be content. There was no reason for apprehension. It wasn't likely that our disappearance would be discovered until breakfast time. We repaired to the hotel and ate and drank something in a state of suppressed nervous excitement. I confess to having been ashamed of myself. There I was, accoutred cap-a-pie from my bonnet to my claymore, and I had nothing at stake; and yet I was nervous! We were at the lawyer's on the stroke of eight, where we discovered that the sheriff was a mere flourish and that all we had to do was to consent to being married, and declare that we regarded ourselves as man and wife. A faint disgust at the prose of the proceedings induced me to elaborate them by taking out my dirk and kissing it, as a pledge of my faith. I never thought of kissing her!’ [Confessions. Chapter 46]

The lawyer [solicitor] who performed the marriage ceremony was named Alexander Ross and his office was at number 3 Tulloch Street, Dingwall.

‘It then transpired that the sheriff had to have his little whack, after all, no less than an Armenian pimp. The marriage had to be registered in his office. We were completely at a loose end. I was to go back to Boleskine, of course, but there were some hours before the train started. She was to go back to Strathpeffer: but --- at this moment, Gerald Kelly burst into the room, his pale face drawn with insane passion. He was probably annoyed at his stupidity in not having realized that the announcement of our engagement, nineteen hours earlier, had been serious. On learning that we were already married, he aimed a violent blow at me. It missed me by about a yard. I am ashamed to say that I could not repress a quiet smile. If he had not been out of his mind, his action would have been truly courageous, for compared with me he was a shrimp; and while I was one of the most athletic men in the country, his strength had been impaired by his sedentary stupor and loose living in Paris.

When he felt better, we decided to carry out the original programme. I went off to Boleskine and she went back to Strathpeffer.’ [Confessions. Chapter 46] Mr Hill then arrived proclaiming that the marriage was not legal and so Aleister left them to argue the matter.

Following this, Aleister went to Strathpeffer to speak to Mrs Kelly before he and Rose went to the Sheriff’s office to register the marriage.

‘At the sheriff's door we found the vehicle which was to take us to the wayside station. Rose and I got in, feeling as if we had been through a mangle; but the sense of humour came most opportunely to our rescue. The vehicle chanced to resemble a prison van, and the circumstance tickled our imagination and helped to break down our embarrassment. But it was a frightfully long drive to the wayside station and a frightfully long wait when we got there. I don't know whether it was part of the arrangement or not that we should take tickets to the end of the line, some place on the west coast of Scotland, the name of which I have entirely forgotten. But we did. We sat opposite to each other in an empty first-class carriage.

I only remember on scrap of conversation, and I do not remember what it was except that it was a sort of little joke. We were enjoying a species of triumph at having "got away with it", but we were in exquisite embarrassment as to what to do --- at least, I was. I have reasoned to suspect that Rose did not share my pathetic puerility. It never occurred to me that the programme I had planned had been in any way altered. Had we not carried it out with the most punctilious precision?

We arrived at our destination a little before dinner time. My embarrassment reached an acute point. It was simply impossible for me to register at the hotel. I confess to the most abject cowardice. I made some excuse and left Rose to confront a clerk, while I went to look at the sea and wish it weren't too cold to drown myself. I returned to find that she had booked a double room. I thought it was hardly playing the game; but I couldn't be rude to a lady and, at the worst, it was only a matter of a day or so. I could decently dispatch her from Boleskine to the embraces of Mr. Summers [.]’ [Confessions. Chapter 46]

‘we drank a lot of champagne for dinner. We had been married on August 12th and could give God glory for his good gift of grouse, and then --- What's champagne for, anyhow? Rose retired immediately after dinner; I sat in the smoking-room and pole-axed a stranger by making mysterious remarks until he thought I was mad, and fled. I had some more champagne and remembered that I was a poet.’ [Confessions. Chapter 46] He then writes the beautiful love lyric for Rose which begins ‘Rose on the breast of the world of spring’. [see above]

 

Friday 14th August 1903: Aleister and Rose return to Boleskine House following their short ‘honeymoon’ in Western Scotland and they fall passionately in love with each other.

 

November 1903: Aleister and Rose spend a night in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid in Egypt and Aleister attempts to show Rose the Sylphs.

 

Tuesday 15th December 1903: Rose is ill.

 

Thursday 7th January 1904: Rose had an attack of fever and Aleister writes a love poem to her – ‘Rosa Mundi’, the first in a sequence of four poems.

 

Thursday 28th January 1904: Aleister and Rose leave Colombo and embark for Suez arriving there on Sunday 7th February. The next day [Monday 8th February] they arrive at Port Said. On 9th February they journey to Cairo.

 

Friday 19th February 1904: The Crowley’s journey to Helwan which they leave for Cairo on either Friday 11th or Sunday 13th March.

 

Wednesday 16th March 1904: Rose and Aleister take an apartment in Cairo. Aleister begins his Invocation [The Bornless One Ritual: the ‘preliminary invocation’ in the Goetia] to show Rose, whom Aleister refers to as ‘Ouarda’ [Arabic for ‘Rose’] the sylphs and Rose enters a trance state in which she repeats ‘They are waiting for you!’

 

Thursday 17th March 1904: Rose once again enters a trance state and repeats that it is ‘all about the child’ and ‘all Osiris’. Aleister invokes Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and magick who ‘indwells’ them, with great success.

 

Friday 18th March 1904: Rose, the seer reveals that the ‘waiter’ was Horus, whom Aleister had offended and should invoke him. Rose also gives the basis for a ritual working with the promise of success and of ‘samadhi’. Aleister is unsure as it is a new technique which goes against his ceremonial understandings.

 

Saturday 19th March 1904: Aleister writes out the ritual and performs the invocation at 12.30 pm with little success.

 

Sunday 20th March 1904: Aleister probably cross-examined Rose on this day as to certain qualities of the god Horus. Aleister begins the ritual at 10 pm and Rose reveals that the ‘Equinox of the Gods’ has come and Horus is taking his Throne in the East. They end around midnight for Aleister writes in his ‘Book of Results’: ‘Great success in midnight invocation’.

 

Monday 21st March 1904: Sun enters Aries [Spring Equinox]. Aleister probably took Rose to the Boulak Museum in Cairo on this day and she identified an image of Horus on the Stele of Revealing, exhibit number 666.

 

Tuesday 22nd March 1904: This was designated a ‘day of rest’ in the ‘Book of Results’. He writes ‘Wednesday is to be the great day of invocation’.

 

Wednesday 23rd March 1904: Aleister uses the Tarot in his divination and the following days are spent having the inscriptions on the Stele translated and Aleister composed a series of verse from the translations.

 

Thursday 7th April 1904: Probably the day in which Rose prompted Aleister to sit at noon in the ‘temple’ for one hour on three consecutive days [8th, 9th and 10th April] and to write down what he hears.

 

Friday 8th April 1904: Noon to 1.00 pm – Aleister writes the first chapter of Liber Al vel Legis [The Book of the Law] as dictated to him by ‘Aiwaz’ the ‘minister of Hoor-paar-Kraat’. The second chapter is received in the same way on Saturday 9th and the third chapter on Sunday 10th April.

 

Thursday 28th July 1904: The Crowley’s first child is born at Boleskine House, Scotland named Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley., five days after Rose’s thirtieth birthday. At the house along with Aleister and Rose are Dr Percival Bott (1877-1953) who is taking care of Rose; Ivor Back (1879-1951), Aleister’s Aunt Annie and Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Andrew Gormley (1849-1925). Gormley had spent many years in India, Burma and South Africa and Rose had known Gormley previous to her marriage to Frederick Thomas Skerrett. Gormley was in love with the beautiful Rose and regularly proposed to her. In 1912 she would accept.

 

End of October 1904: Aleister goes to St Moritz in Switzerland and Rose joined him there in November leaving the baby with her parents.

 

October-November 1904: Aleister writes the second in a sequence of four poems to Rose – ‘Rosa Inferni’.

 

Saturday 29th April 1905: Aleister and Rose are at Boleskine entertaining their guest Doctor Jacot-Guillarmod (1868-1925). Their ghillie and piper Hugh Gillies joins in the revels as they all pursue the fearsome haggis in the rain, crossing the Italian garden to the artificial trout lake and wading through it and up the hill in search of the beast.

 

Sunday 25th October 1905: Rose and their child join Aleister in Calcutta. The following day they decide to travel to China.

 

Friday 3rd November 1905: Rose and Aleister arrive in Rangoon. They left on Wednesday 15th November on the steamship Java.

 

Thursday 22nd March 1906: The Crowley’s arrive in Hong Kong and the ‘walk across China’ ends.

 

Spring 1906: Nuit Ma Ahathoor Hecate Sappho Jezebel Lilith Crowley dies in Rangoon.

 

Friday 8th June 1906: Rose arrives in Plymouth onboard the SS Himalaya and she meets Aleister and they break down in their grief and loss of their daughter.

 

1907: A second child is born whom they name Lola Zaza Crowley. She is born in Paddington and she later marries Frank Hill on Saturday 9th June 1934 in Paddington. Lola died in 1990. Also in 1907 Rose becomes more and more dependent on alcohol.

 

Autumn 1907: Rose spends two months in Leicester as part of her cure for her alcoholism.

 

January/February 1908: Rose is treated for her alcoholism.

 

1909: ‘early in 1909, the doctor threw up the sponge. He told her [Rose] that she must agree to be sequestrated for two years. She refused: I insisted upon a divorce. I loved her as passionately as ever --- more so than ever, perhaps, since it was the passion of uttermost despair. I insisted on a divorce. I would not be responsible for her. I would not stand by and see her commit suicide. It was agreed that I should be defendant as a matter of chivalry, and the necessary evidence was manufactured. I continued, however, to look after her as before; we even stayed together as much as we dared, and I saw her almost every day, either in our house or at my rooms. Directly the divorce was pronounced I returned from Algeria, whither I had gone to be out of the way during the trial, and we were photographed together, with the baby, at the Dover Street studios.’ [Confessions. Chapter 60]

 

Wednesday 21st July 1909: Rose leaves Aleister two days before her thirty-fifth birthday and she goes to live at 21 Warwick Road, Earls Court, London.

 

Wednesday 24th November 1909: The beginning of Rose and Aleister’s divorce case in Edinburgh.

 

Wednesday 27th September 1911: Aleister commits Rose to Colney Hatch Asylum, near Southgate for her alcoholism.

 

October 1912: Rose marries Dr. also Lieutenant Colonel, Joseph Andrew Gormley (1849-1925), a Roman Catholic at Kensington.

 

Thursday 11th February 1932: Rose Edith Gormley dies in London aged 57.

 

 

ROSA MUNDI

1905

                                     

1. ROSE of the World!

Red glory of the secret heart of Love!

Red flame, rose-red, most subtly curled

Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above!

Its flower in its own perfumed passion,

Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled

In flower fashion;

And my deep spirit taking its pure part

Of that voluptuous heart

Of hidden happiness!

 

2. Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros!

(While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress

Stolen of the scented rose

Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!)

Bend into an agony of art

Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears

For their own purity's undivided sake

Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves

Sliver-coiled in the Sun

Into green girdled spheres

Purer than all a maiden's dream enweaves,

Lies the unutterable beauty of

The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove

Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings

And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine

Of that most softly-spoken one,

Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings,

Oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon!

Inspire a holy tune

Lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine

Offered in gracious gardens unto Pan

By any soul of man!

 

3. In vain the solemn stars pour their pale dews

Upon my trembling spirit; their caress

Leaves me moon-rapt in waves of loveliness

All thine, O rose, O wrought of many a muse

In Music, O thou strength of ecstasy

Incarnate in a woman-form, create

Of her own rapture, infinite, ultimate,

Not to be seen, not grasped, not even imaginable,

But known of one, by virtue of that spell

Of thy sweet will toward him: thou, unknown,

Untouched, grave mistress of the sunlight throne

Of thine own nature; known not even of me,

But of some spark of woven eternity

Immortal in this bosom. Phosphor paled

And in the grey upstarted the dread veiled

Rose light of dawn. Sun-shapen shone thy spears

Of love forth darting into myriad spheres,

Which I the poet called this light, that flower,

This knowledge, that illumination, power

This and love that, in vain, in vain, until

Thy beauty dawned, all beauty to distil

Into one drop of utmost dew, one name

Choral as floral, one thin, subtle flame

Fitted to a shaft of love, to pierce, to endue

My trance-rapt spirit with the avenue

Of perfect pleasures, radiating far

Up and up yet to where thy sacred star

Burned in its brilliance: thence the storm was shed

A passion of great calm about this head,

This head no more a poet's; since the dream

Of beauty gathered close into a stream

Of tingling light, and, gathering ever force

From thine own love, its unextended source,

Became the magic utterance that makes Me,

Dissolving self into the starless sea

That makes one lake of molten joy, one pond

Steady as light and hard as diamond;

One drop, one atom of constraint intense,

Of elemental passion scorning sense,

All the concentred music that is I.

O! hear me not! I die;

I am borne away in misery of dumb life

That would in words flash forth the holiest heaven

That to the immortal God of Gods is given,

And, tongue-tied, stammers forth -- my wife!

 

4. I am dumb with rapture of thy loveliness.

All metres match and mingle; all words tire;

All lights, all sounds, all perfumes, all gold stress

Of the honey-palate, all soft strokes expire

In abject agony of broken sense

To hymn the emotion tense

Of somewhat higher -- O! how highest! -- than all

Their mystery: fall, O fall,

Ye unavailing eagle-flights of song!

O wife! these do thee wrong.

 

5. Thou knowest how I was blind;

How for mere minutes thy pure presence

Was nought; was ill-defined;

A smudge across the mind,

Drivelling in its brutal essence,

Hog-wallowing in poetry,

Incapable of thee.

 

6. Ah! when the minutes grew to hours,

And yet the beast, the fool, saw flowers

And loved them, watched the moon rise, took delight

In perfumes of the summer night,

Caught in the glamour of the sun,

Thought all the woe well won.

How hours were days, and all the misery

Abode, all mine: O thou! didst thou regret?

Wast thou asleep as I?

Didst thou not love me yet?

For, know! the moon is not the moon until

She hath the knowledge to fulfil

Her music, till she know herself the moon.

So thou, so I! The stone unhewn,

Foursquare, the sphere, of human hands immune,

Was not yet chosen for the corner-piece

And key-stone of the Royal Arch of Sex;

Unsolved the ultimate "x";

The virginal breeding breeze

Was yet of either unstirred;

Unspoken the Great Word.

 

7. Then on a sudden, we knew. From deep to deep

Reverberating, lightning unto lightning

Across the sundering brightening

Abyss of sorrow's sleep,

There shone the sword of love, and stuck, and clove

The intolerable veil,

The woven chain of mail

Prudence self-called, and folly known to who

May know. Then, O sweet drop of dew,

Thy limpid light rolled over and was lost

In mine, and mine in thine.

Peace, ye who praise! ye but disturb the shrine!

This voice is evil over against the peace

Here in the West, the holiest. Shaken and crossed

The threads Lachesis wove fell from her hands.

The pale divided strands

Where taken by thy master-hand, Eros!

Her evil thinkings cease,

Thy miracles begin.

Eros! Eros! -- Be silent! It is sin

Thus to invoke the oracles of orde.

Their iron gates to unclose.

The gross, inhospitable warder

Of Love's green garden of spice is well awake.

Hell hath enough of Her three-headed hound;

But Love's severer bound

Knows for His watcher a more fearful shape,

A formidable ape

Skilled by black art to mock the Gods profound

In their abyss of under ground.

Beware! Who hath entered hath no boast to make,

And conscious Eden surelier breeds the snake.

Be silent! O! for silence' sake!

 

8. That asks the impossible. Smite! Smite!

Profaned adytum of pure light.

Smite! but I must sing on.

Nay! can the orison

Of myriad fools provoke the Crowned-with-Night

Hidden beyond sound and sight

In the mystery of his own high essence?

Lo, Rose of all the gardens of the world,

Did thy most sacred presence

Not fill the Real, then this voice were whirled

Away in the wind of its own folly, thrown

Into forgotten places and unknown.

So I sing on!

                Sister and wife, dear wife,

Light of my love and lady of my life,

Answer if thou canst from the unsullied place,

Unveiling for one star-wink thy bright face!

Did we leave then, once cognisant,

Time for some Fear to implant

His poison? Did we hesitate?

Leave but one little chance to Fate?

For one swift second did we wait?

There is no need to answer: God is God,

A jealous God and evil; with His rod

He smiteth fair and foul, and with His sword

Divideth tiniest atoms of intangible time,

That men may know he is the Lord.

Then, with that sharp division,

Did He divide our wit sublime?

Our knowledge bring to nought?

We had no need of thought.

We brought His malice in derision.

So thine eternal petals shall enclose

Me, O most wonderful lady of delight,

Immaculate, indivisible circle of night,

Inviolate, invulnerable Rose!

 

9. The sound of my own voice carries me on.

I am as a ship whose anchors are all gone.

Whose rudder is held by Love the indomitable –

Purposeful helmsman! Were his port high Hell,

Who should be fool enough to care? Suppose

Hell's waters wash the memory of this rose

Out of my mind, what misery matters then?

Or, if they leave it, all the woes of men

Are as pale shadows in the glory of

That passionate splendour of Love.

 

10. Ay! my own voice, my own thoughts. These, then, must be

The mutiny of some worm's misery,

Some chained despair knotted into my flesh,

Some chance companion, some soul damned afresh

Since my redemption, that is vocal at all,

For I am wrapt away from light and call

In the sweet heart of the red rose.

My spirit only knows

This woman and no more; who would know more?

I, I am concentrate

In the unshakable state

Of constant rapture. Who should pour

His ravings in the air for winds to whirl,

Far from the central pearl

Of all the diadem of the universe?

Let God take pen, rehearse

Dull nursery tales; then, not before, O rose,

Red rose! shall the beloved of thee,

Infinite rose! pen puerile poetry

That turns in writing to vile prose.

 

11. Were this the quintessential plume of Keats

And Shelley and Swinburne and Verlaine,

Could I outsoar them, all their lyric feats,

Excel their utterance vain

With one convincing rapture, beat them hollow

As an ass's skin; wert thou, Apollo,

Mere slave to me, not Lord -- thy fieriest flight

And stateliest shaft of light

Thyself thyself surpassing: all were dull,

And thou, O rose, sole, sacred, wonderful,

Single in love and aim,

Double in form and name,

Triple in energy of radiant flame,

Informing all, in all most beautiful,

Circle and sphere, perfect in every part,

High above hope of Art:

Though, be it said! thou art nowhere now,

Save in the secret chamber of my heart.

Behind the brass of my anonymous brow. (1)
 

(1). This poem was issued under the pseudonym of H. D. Carr.

 

12. Ay! let the coward and slave who writes write on!

He is no more harm to Love than the grey snake

Who lurks in the dusk brake

For the bare-legged village-boy, is to the Sun,

The Sire of Life.

The Lover and the Wife,

Immune, intact, ignore. The people hear;

Then, be the people smitten of grey Fear,

It is no odds!

 

13. I have seen the eternal Gods

Sit, star-wed, in old Egypt by the Nile;

The same calm pose, the inscrutable, wan smile,

On every lip alike.

Time hath not had his will to strike

At them; they abide, they pass through all.

Though their most ancient names may fall,

They stir not nor are weary of

Life, for with them, even as with us, Life is but Love.

They know, we know; let, then, the writing go!

That, in the very deed, we do not know.

 

14. It may be in the centuries of our life

Since we were man and wife

There stirs some incarnation of that love.

Some rosebud in the garden of spices blows,

Some offshoot from the Rose

Of the World, the Rose of all Delight,

The Rose of Dew, the Rose of Love and Night,

The Rose of Silence, covering as with a vesture

The solemn unity of things

Beheld in the mirror of truth,

The Rose indifferent to God's gesture,

The Rose on moonlight wings

That flies to the House of Fire,

The Rose of Honey-in-Youth!

Ah! No dim mystery of desire

Fathoms this gulf! No light invades

The mystical musical shades

"Of a faith in the future, a dream of the day"

"When athwart the dim glades"

"Of the forest a ray"

"Of sunlight shall flash and the dew die away!"

 

15. Let there then be obscurity in this!

There is an after rapture in the kiss.

The fire, flesh, perfume, music, that outpaced

All time, fly off; they are subtle: there abides

A secret and most maiden taste;

Salt, as of the invisible tides

Of the molten sea of gold

Men may at times behold

In the rayless scarab of the sinking sun;

And out of that is won

Hardly, with labour and pain that are as pleasure,

The first flower of the garden the stored treasure

That lies at the heart's heart of eternity.

This treasure is for thee.

 

16. O! but shall hope arise in happiness?

That may not be.

My love is like a golden grape, the veins

Peep through the ecstasy

Of the essence of ivory and silk,

Pearl, moonlight, mother-milk

That is her skin;

Its swift caress

Flits like an angel's kiss in a dream; remains

The healing virtue; from all sin,

All ill, one touch sets free.

My love is like a star -- oh fool! oh fool!

Is not thy back yet tender from the rod?

Is there no learning in the poet's school?

Wilt thou achieve what were too hard for God?

I call Him to the battle; ask of me

When the hinds calve? What of eternity

When he built chaos? Shall Leviathan

Be drawn out with a hook? Enough; I see

This I can answer -- or Ernst Haeckel can!

Now, God Almighty, rede this mystery!

What of the love that is the heart of man?

Take stars and airs, and write it down!

Fill all the interstices of space

With myriad verse -- own Thy disgrace!

Diminish Thy renown!

Approve my riddle! This Thou canst not do.

 

17. O living Rose! O dowered with subtle dew

Of love, the tiny eternities of time,

Caught between flying seconds, are well filled

With these futilities of fragrant rhyme:

In Love's retort distilled,

In sunrays of fierce loathing purified,

In moonrays of pure longing tried,

And gathered after many moons of labour

Into the compass of a single day,

And wrought into continuous tune,

One laughter with one langour for its neighbour.

One thought of winter with one word of June,

Muddled and mixed in mere dismay,

Chiselled with the cunning chisel of despair,

Found wanting, well aware

Of its own fault, even insistent

Thereon: some fragrance rare

Stolen from my lady's hair

Perchance redeeming now and then the distant

Fugitive tunes.

 

18. Ah! Love! the hour is over!

The moon is up, the vigil overpast.

Call me to thee at last,

O Rose, O perfect miracle lover,

Call me! I hear thee though it be across

The abyss of the whole universe,

Though not a sign escape, delicious loss!

Though hardly a wish rehearse

The imperfection underlying ever

The perfect happiness.

Thou knowest that not in flesh

Lies the fair fresh

Delight of Love; not in mere lips and eyes

The secret of these bridal ecstasies,

Since thou art everywhere,

Rose of the World, Rose of the Uttermost

Abode of glory, Rose of the High Host

Of heaven, mystic, rapturous Rose!

The extreme passion glows

Deep in this breast; thou knowest (and love knows)

How every word awakes its own reward

In a thought akin to thee, a shadow of thee;

And every tune evokes its musical Lord;

And every rhyme tingles and shakes in me

The filaments of the great web of Love.

 

19. O Rose all roses far above

In the garden of God's roses,

Sorrowless, thornless, passionate Rose, that lies

Full in the flood of its own sympathies

And makes my life one tune that curls and closes

On its own self delight;

A circle, never a line! Safe from all wind,

Secure in its own pleasure-house confined,

Mistress of all its moods,

Matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes

Of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind

To aught but its own mastery of song

And light, shown ever as silence and deep night

Secret as death and final. Let me long

Never again for aught! This great delight

Involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss,

Seals me with its own kiss,

Draws me to thee with every dream that glows,

Poet, each word! Maiden, each burden of snows

Extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn!

O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn

In the truth: -- for this is truth: Love knows!

Ah! Rose of the World! Rose! Rose!

 

 

 

SUB UMBRA ALARUM TUARUM (1)
by
AUDRAREP


Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

Very Illustrious and Illuminated Brethren! Before the Lord, our Father, the Sun, we Honour those who have gone before us; those who have delighted in the Joy and the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and those who have crossed the Abyss to reside in the City of the Pyramids, in the Night of Pan. We celebrate the lives and especially the works of these Great Lights of our Law of Liberty and Love; to Feast at their remembrance and to Honour those Great Ones who by their Devotion, Dedication and Strength have established the Law of Thelema upon Earth and assisted in the Sacred Work of the Prophet – the Priest of the Princes: Ankh-f-n-Khonsu, our Greatly Honoured and Most Holy (who didst attain in the spring of the year 1921 e.v. the grade of Ipsissimus 10 = 1 )

To Mega Therion: The Beast 666; Magus 9 = 2 A . A . on 12th October 1915 e.v. who is the Word of the Aeon THELEMA; whose name is called Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici (V.V.V.V.V.) 8 = 3 A . A . in the City of the Pyramids on 3rd December 1909 e.v. OU MH 7 = 4 A . A . in 1909 e.v. OL SONUF VAORESAGI 6 = 5 A . A . in April 1904 e.v. and Christeos Luciftias 5 = 6 A . A . on 16th January 1900 e.v. in the Mountain of Abiegnus: but FRATER PERDURABO in the Outer Order on 18th November 1898 e.v. and in the world of men upon the Earth, Aleister Crowley, who entered the world on 12th October 1875 e.v. of Trinity College, Cambridge, who celebrated His Greater Feast on 1st December 1947 e.v. and thus also shall He be known as
 

 

BAPHOMET XI

The O.H.O.

And the Secret Master. Rex Summus Sanctissimus X O.T.O. of Ireland, Iona and all the Britains that are in the Sanctuary of the Gnosis, Lieutenant Commander of the Holy Order of the Temple unto the Very Illustrious Sir Knights Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the Ancient and Accepted Rite and of the 95 of the Royal Rite of Memphis, Perfectly Illuminated of our sublime IX .
 

 

1. Sub Umbra Alarum Tuarum (Latin) ‘under the shadow of thy wings’. CCCXVI=316. Taking the initial letters SUAT which add to 316 we receive ‘to worship’ and ‘to bow down’.
 

 

  Flowers and fruits I bring to bless you,

Cakes of corn, and wealth of wine;

With my crown will I caress you,

With my music make you mine.

Though I perish, I preserve you;

Through my fall, ye rise above;

Ruling you, your priest, I serve you,

Being life, and being love.

 

[‘The Ship’ – Saint Edward Aleister Crowley 33 , 90 , 96 , X]

 

and let us remember

 

IEHI AOUR

Greatly Honoured Brother, Charles Henry Allan Bennett 1872-1923 e.v.

A member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn since 1894 e.v. and

Greatly Honoured Friend and Teacher of our Prophet!

His Buddhist name is Bhikku Ananda Metteya.
 

 

Frater D.D.S.

VOLO NOSCERE

Greatly Honoured Brother, George Cecil Jones.

He introduced our Prophet to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and

In 1906 e.v. founded the A . A . with our beloved Prophet the Beast 666

and became Praemonstrator.
 

 

DEO DUCE COMITE FERRO (D.D.C.F.) 7 = 4 G . D .

‘S Rhiogail Mo Dhream (S.R.M.D.)

Greatly Honoured Brother, Samual Liddell ‘MacGregor’ Mathers

8th January 1854-1918 e.v.

Cofounder and Head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
 

 

OMNIA VINCAM LAMPADA TRADAM 2 = 9 A .. A .. & VI O.T.O.

Greatly Honoured Brother, Victor Benjamin Neuburg 6th May 1883-30th May 1940 e..v. Of Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a Neophyte in 1909 e.v. after His Great Magical Retirement with the Prophet at Boleskine House, and is remembered for His works with the Prophet: Liber CCCXXV ‘The Bartzabel Working’ of 1910 e.v. Liber CDXV, Opus Lutertianum (The Paris Working) of 1914 e.v. and Liber CDXVIII The Vision and the Voice. Also for His work in The Rites of Eleusis at Caxton Hall, London in 1910 e.v.
 

 

OMNIA PRO VERITATE

Greatly Honoured Brother, Norman Mudd M.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 1889-1934 e.v. Mathematician and Lecturer on Mathematics at Grays University, Bloemfontein, South Africa. He arrived at the Prophet’s Abbey of Thelema on 22nd April 1923 e.v. and on the Beast’s expulsion on 1st May 1923 e.v. O.P.V. was left to continue the Great Work there. His work done His light was extinguished and He took His own life on 15th June 1934 e.v. at Guernsey where

His Earthly remains rest in plot No. 8, grave No. 1, New Cemetery, Forest.

 

OUARDA

Greatly Honoured Sister, Rose Edith Crowley (nee Kelly) 23rd July 1874-1932 e.v.

She became the Bride of the Prophet on 12th August 1903 e.v. at Dingwall in Scotland.

She was instrumental in the Cairo Working of 1904 e.v. whereby was delivered The Book of the Law unto our Prophet on April 8, 9 & 10th. She was thus given the office of the first Scarlet Woman. They were divorced in 1909 e.v.

 

ALOSTRAEL

31-666-31

The Ape of Thoth

Greatly Honoured Sister, Leah Hirsig 9th April 1883-22nd February 1975 e.v.

She became Scarlet Woman number seven and helped our Prophet found the Abbey of Thelema in the spring of 1921 e.v. She also witnessed and assisted the Beast in His acceptance of the grade of Ipsissimus 10 = 1 .

 

UNUS IN OMNIBUS (VIO)

ACHAD

ARTEON

OIVVIO VIOOIV

PARSIVAL 5 = 6 & IX O.T.O.

TANTALUS LEUCOCEPHALUS X O.T.O.

Greatly Honoured Brother, Charles Stansfeld Jones 2nd April 1886-1950 e.v.

He became a Probationer of the A . A . on 24th December 1909 e.v. taking the motto VIO. As a Neophyte He took the name ACHAD. He was the Magical Child between the Prophet and Soror Hilarion when ACHAD was born as a Babe of the Abyss – He is the Child predicted in The Book of the Law I. 55-56 who verily discovered the ‘key of it All’.

 

SISTER AGATHA

SISTER CYBELE

LAYLAH 4 = 7 A . A .

& Grand Secretary General IX O.T.O.

Greatly Honoured Sister, Leila Ida Nerrissa Waddell (nee Bathurst) 10th August 1880-13th September 1932 e.v. She became a Probationer of the A . A . on 1st April 1910 e.v. as Sister Agatha and was a founding member of The Rites of Eleusis.

 

AUD ADONIS

Greatly Honoured Brother, Frederick Charles ‘Raoul’ Loveday 13th July 1900-16th February 1923 e.v. of St John’s College, Oxford. He arrived at The Abbey of Thelema on 26th November 1922 e.v. with His wife Betty May. His Greater Feast took place at The Abbey of Thelema.

 

PER ARDUA AD ASTRA

Greatly Honoured Brother, John Frederick Charles Fuller CB. CBE. DSO. 1st September 1878-10th February 1966 e.v. He is chiefly remember for His critical study of the Prophet’s collected works – ‘A Star in the West’ of 1907 e.v. and for His work on The Equinox.
 

 

PROGRADIOR

Frater 176

Greatly Honoured Brother, Sir Frank Bennett VII O.T.O. 1868-23rd November 1930.

He became a Neophyte of A . A . on 25th February 1919 e.v. and arrived at The Abbey of Thelema on 17th July 1921 e.v. and thus received the grades of Zelator on 22nd July 1921 e.v. Practicus on 9th October 1921 e.v. Philosophus on 13th October 1921 e.v. Dominus Liminis on 15th October 1921 e.v. & Adeptus Minor on 23rd October 1921 e.v.

 

MERLIN

Greatly Honoured Brother, Theodor Reuss 28th June 1855-28th October 1923 e.v.

Founder and Grand Master of The O.T.O. and its O.H.O. – The Supreme and Holy King of Germany until 1922 e.v. when the Prophet became O.H.O. He helped the Prophet realise the Supreme Secret of The O.T.O. and therefore admitted the Prophet to the IX .
 

 

SATURNIS

Greatly Honoured Brother, Karl Johannes Germer 22nd January 1885-25th October 1962 e.v. He became an Adeptus Minor 5 = 6 in1927 e.v. and 8 = 3 in 1938 e.v. He became the Prophet’s successor as O.H.O. of The O.T.O. 1947-1962 e.v. He is also the Rich Man from the West as predicted in The Book of the Law.

 

VIRAKAM

Greatly Honoured Sister, Mary d’Este Sturges (nee Dempsey).

She became the second Scarlet Woman and was instrumental in Liber LX The Ab-ul-Diz Working of 1911 e.v. and thus helped with Book 4.

 

HILARION

Greatly Honoured Sister, Jean Robert Foster (nee Olivier).

She became the third Scarlet Woman and bore the ‘Child’ (ACHAD) referred to in The Book of the Law.

 

ACHITHA

The Camel

Greatly Honoured Sister, Roddie Minor.

She became the fourth Scarlet Woman and was instrumental in the Amalantrah Working of 14th January 1918 e.v.
 

 

METONITH ESTAI

Greatly Honoured Sister, Jane Wolfe 21st March 1875-29th March 1958 e.v.

She was admitted as a Probationer of the A . A . by the Prophet at The Abbey of Thelema on 11th June 1921 e.v. She later helped found the AGAPE Lodge of The O.T.O. in South California where She became Lodge Master.

 

MERAL

IX O.T.O.

Greatly Honoured Sister, Phyllis Evalina Seckler 18th June 1917-31st May 2004 e.v.

She took the aspirational name TENAX PROPOSTI and was admitted as a Probationer of the A .. A .. by Jane Wolfe on 3rd June 1940 e.v. and later attained The Knowledge and Conversation of Her Holy Guardian Angel on 1st July 1952 e.v. with the grade of Adeptus Minor 5 = 6 . She became the Master of 418 Lodge of The O.T.O. from its inception in 1979-2004 e.v. and was also the founder of The College of Thelema and co-founder of The Temple of Thelema in North California.

 

RHODON

Greatly Honoured Sister, Mary Francis Butts 13th December 1890-1937 e.v.

For Her assistance in Book 4.

 

ASTRID

Greatly Honoured Sister, Dorothy Olsen.

She became the eighth Scarlet Woman in 1924 e.v.

 

GENESTHAI

Frater 143

FIAT LUX

Greatly Honoured Brother, Cecil Frederick Russell.

In June 1918 e.v. He received IX & XI from the Prophet in New York City. He arrived at The Abbey of Thelema on 21st November 1920 e.v. and was initiated into the A . A . on 11th May 1921 e.v. by the Prophet Himself.

 

HYMENAEUS ALPHA

777 IX & X O.T.O.

Greatly Honoured Brother, Grady Louis McMurtry 18th October 1918-12th July 1985 e.v.

A member of The O.T.O. from 1971 e.v. The Propher Himself gave Him the name HYMENAEUS ALPHA in November 1943 e.v.

 

Frater 210

BELARION ARMILUSS AL DAJJAL ANTICHRIST

Greatly Honoured Brother, Marvel ‘John’ Whiteside Parsons 2nd October 1914-17th June 1952 e.v. He was initiated into The O.T.O. on 15th February 1941 e.v. and He was initiated into the A . A . by Jane Wolfe on 15th April 1942 e.v. and He is chiefly remembered for The Babalon Working of 1946 e.v.
 

 

GRIMAUD

Greatly Honoured Sister, Helen Parsons Smith 1910- 27th July 2003 e.v.

She was initiated into The O.T.O. on 15th February 1941 e.v. and the A . A . on the same day as Soror Grimaud.

 

 

There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times.

A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride!

A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law.

A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet – secret, O Prophet!

A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the gods.

A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death!

A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture!

A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!

 

A.L. II. 36-43.

 

Some stars fell from the orbit of the Prophet and some remained to shine bright unto the end – it is well that they are remembered purely for their devotion towards the Great Work. The list of Illuminated Brothers and Sisters may be reduced or extended in accordance to thy will.

Audrarep

 

Love is the law, love under will.

ROSA INFERNI (1)

 

(1). Being the necessary sequal to Rosa Mundi. -- A. C.

 

"Ha ha! John plucketh now at his rose

      To rid himself of a sorrow at heart.

    Lo,-- petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;

      Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;

    And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;

      And a gust of sulphur is all its smell:

    And lo, he is horribly in the toils

      Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!"

              -- BROWNING, "Heretic's Tragedy," ix.

 

 

I.

 

    ROSE of the world! Ay, love, in that warm hour

    Wet with your kisses, the bewitching bud

    Flamed in the starlight; then our bed your bower

    Heaved like the breast of some alluring flood

    Whereon a man might sleep for ever, until

    Death should surprise him, kiss his weary will

    Into the last repose, profounder power

    Than life could compass. Now I tax my skill

    To find another holier name, some flower

    Still red, but red with the ecstasy of blood.

    Dear love, dear wife, dear mother of the child

    Whose fair faint features are a match for mine,

    Lurks there no secret where your body smiled,

    No serpent in the generous draught of wine?

    Did I guess all, who guessed your life well given

    Up to my kiss? Aha! the veil is riven!

    Beneath the smiling mask of a young bride

    Languorous, luscious, melancholy-eyed;

    Beneath the gentle raptures, hints celestial

    Of holy secrets, kisses like soft dew,

    Beneath the amorous mystery, I view

    The surer shape, a visage grim and bestial,

    A purpose sly and deadly, a black shape,

    A tiger snarling, or a grinning ape

    Resolved by every devilish device

    Upon my murder. This I clearly see

    Now you are -- for an hour -- away from me.

    I see it once; no need to tell me twice!

 

 

II.

 

    Some Yankee yelled -- I tag it to a rime --

    "You can't fool all the people all the time."

    So he of politics; so I of love.

    I am a-many folk (let Buddha prove!)

    And many a month you fooled the lot of us --

    Your spell is cracked within the ring! Behold

    How Christ with clay worth more than any gold

    Cleared the man's eyes! So the blind amorous

    Is blinded with the horror of the truth

    He sees this moment. Foolish prostitute!

    You slacked you kiss upon the sodden youth

    In some excess of confidence, decay

    Of care to hold him -- can I tell you which?

    Down goes the moon -- one sees the howling bitch!

    The salmon you had hooked in fin and gill

    You reel unskilfully -- he darts away.

    Alas! you devil, but you hold me still!

 

 

III.

 

    O first and fairest of Earth's darling daughters!

    How could I sing you? -- you have always seemed

    Unto the saucy driveller as he dreamed

    Like a rich sunset seen on tropic waters --

    (Your eyes effulgent from a thousand slaughters

    Looked tenderly upon me!) all the red

    Raving round you like a glory shed

    Upon the excellent wonder of your head;

    The blue all massed within your marvellous eyes;

    The gold a curtain of their harmonies

    As in a master canvas of de Ryn;(2)

    But ever central glowed the royal sun,

    A miracle cartouche upon the edge

    Of the opalescent waters slantwise seen.

    This oval sealed with grave magnificence

    Stamped you my queen. Thus looked your lips to one

Who stood a casual on life's slippery ledge,

    A blind bat hanging from the tree of sense

    Head downward, gorged with sweet banana juice,

    Indifferent to -- incapable of -- aught

    Beyond these simple reflexes. Is thought,

    Even the highest thought, of any use?

(2) Rembrandt.

 

 

IV.

 

    We are not discussing metaphysics now.

    I see below the beautiful low brow

    (Low too for cunning, like enough!) your lips,

    A scarlet splash of murder. From them drips

    This heart's blood; you have fed your fill on me.

    I am exhaust, a pale, wan phantom floating

    Aimless in air, than which I am thinner. You

    I see, more brilliant, of that sanguine hue

    (If anything be true that I can see)

    Full fed; you smile, a smile obscenely gloating

    On the voluptuous wreck your lust hath wrought.

    See the loose languor of precipitate thought

    These versicles exhale! How rude the rime!

    There is no melody; the tune and time

    Are broken. Thirteen centuries ago

    They would have said, "Alas! the youth! We know

    This devil hath from him plucked the immortal soul."

    "I" say: you have dulled my centres of control!

 

 

V.

 

    If you were with me, I were blind to this:

    Ready to drain my arteries for your kiss,

    Feel your grasp tighten round my ribs until

    You crush me in the ecstasies that kill.

    Being away and breathing icy air

    I am half love, caring not to care;

    Half-man again -- a mere terrestrial ball

    Thus breaking up a spiritual thrall --

    Eh, my philosophers? -- half-man may yet determine

    To get back manhood, shake the tree from bats:

    To change the trope a shade -- get rid of vermin

    By using William Shakespeare's "Rough on Rats."(3)

(3). Meaning that by study of Shakespeare he would resume higher interests,

and baffle the sensual seductions of this siren.

 

 

VI.

 

    Ah, love, dear love, sole queen of my affection,

    Guess you not yet what wheel of thought is spun?

    How out of dawn's tumultuous dejection

    And not from noon springs up the splendid sun?

    Not till the house is swept and garnished well

    Rises seven other devils out of hell.

 

 

VII.

 

    This is the circle; as the manhood rises

    And laughter and rude rhyme engage my pen;

    As I stalk forth, a Man among mere men,

    The balance changes; all my wit surprises

    That I who saw the goblins in your face,

    That I who cursed you for the murderous whore

    Licking up life as a cat laps its milk,

    Now see you for a dream of youth and grace,

    Relume the magic aura that begirt you,

    Bless you for purity and life -- a store!

    An ever-running fountain-head of virtue

    To heal my soul and buckler it and harden!

    Your body is like ivory and silk!

    Your lips are like the poppies in the garden!

    Your face is like a wreath of flowers to crown me!

    Your eyes are wells wherein I long to drown me!

    Your hair is like a waterfall above me,

    A waterfall of sunset! In your bosom

    I hear the racing of a heart to love me.

    Your blood is beating like a wind-blown blossom

    With rapture that you mingle it in mine!

    Your breath is fresh as foam and keen as wine!

    Intoxicating glories are your glances!

    Your bodily beauty grips my soul and dances

Its maddening measures in my heart and brain!

    Is it that so the wheel may whirl again,

    That some dull devil in my ear may show me:

    "For John the Baptist's head -- so danced Salome!"?

 

 

VIII.

 

    Then, in God's name forbear! It does not matter.

    Life, death, strength, weakness, are but idle chatter.

    Nothing is lost or gained, we know too well.

    For heaven thy balance as an equal hell.

    We discard both; an infinite Universe

    Remains; we sum it up -- an infinite curse.

    So -- am I man? I lack my wife's embrace.

    Am I outworn? I see the harlot's face.

    Is the love better and the knowledge worse?

    Shall I seek knowledge and count love disgrace?

    Where is the profit in so idle a strife?

    The love of knowledge is the hate of life.

‘Dedication’ from Songs of the Groves

 by Victor Neuburg. 1921 

 

The breathless night is dark and blue

Sleeping without a stir or stain

And underneath her dream peeps through

Dawn, like a silver vein.

 

The water at our feet is still,

The air is still; she reigns supreme

A lyric rapture of the Will –

Night, the eternal Dream.

 

There is no barque upon the stream,

No single footfall goes or comes,

But all the world glides by, a dream

Of dimly muffled drums.

 

So, curtained in her lucent blue,

She sleeps without a stir or stain;

And underneath her dream peeps through

Dawn, like a silver vein.

WALKING FROM FOYERS TO BOLESKINE 

 

 

 

 

 

Falls of Foyers sign at the beginning of the walk

 

 

 

 

Walking down to the Falls

 

 

 

 

The impressive Falls of Foyers from the upper viewpoint

 

 

 

 

 

The Falls seen from the lower path

 

 

 

 

 

Stone inscribed with a poem by Robert Burns

'Lines on the Fall of Foyers near Loch Ness' (1787)

 

 

 

 

 

 The stone Bridge over the Foyers Gorge

 

 

 

 

The Foyers Bay Hotel built in the 1890's

 

 

 

 

Trees engulf the pathway!

 

 

 

 

 Foyers Lodge built in the 1800's

 

 

 

 

 Some of the many fungi mounds

 

 

 

 

Boleskine Graveyard

 

 

 

 

The old grave-watchers hut

 

 

 

 

 Towards Boleskine House from the graveyard

 

 

 

 

 

 A view of the stone hut

 

 

 

 

 Ancient graves

 

 

 

 

 'Blessed are the dead...'

 

 

 

 

 One of the many Fraser monuments

 

 

 

 

 A view from the roadside towards Loch Ness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Looking towards the driveway gates of Boleskine House

 

 

 

 

 

 The 'elegant' Boleskine Gatehouse complete with traffic cone!

 

 

 Barry Van-Asten.

 

 

ROSA COELI

 

 

I

 

ROSE of the World!

Ruby with blood from the bright veins of God

Caught in the chalice of your heart, and pearled

With dew at many a melting period

When the amethyst lustre of your eyes dissolves

The veil that hides your naked splendour

From these inform resolves

And halting loves of your poor poet's soul

With Radiance mild and tender,

So that I see awhile the golden goal!

Yea! all your light involves

Me, me tenebrous, me too cold and base

Ever to kindle to the maiden face

(Three years my wife, three years of me unwon!)

That would be mine, be mine,

Were I but man enough

To endure the rapture of that sudden sun

The knowledge of your love,

The assumption of me into that sweet shrine

Whose godhead duly knows

Only the one wind of the utmost heaven

Through hyacinthine deeps

Down from the sapphirine steeps

And azure abyss that blows;

Only the one sun on the stepped snows;

Only the one star of the sister seven;

Only the one moon in the orchard close

In the one hour that unto love is given

Of all the hours of bliss;

Only the one joy in a world of woes;

Only the one spark in the storm-cloud riven;

Only the one shaft through the rose-dawn driven,

Thy shaft, Eros!

Not as Apollo or as Artemis

Loosing gray death from golden thong

To slay the poet in a song,

The lover in a kiss;

But to divide the inmost marrow

With that ensanguine arrow;

But to unite each bleeding part

Of that most universal heart;

Leaving us slaves, and kings;

Bound, and with eagle's wings;

One soul, comprising all that may be thought,

One soul, conscious of naught.

 

 

II

 

ROSE of the World! Your mystic petals spread

Like wings over my head.

The tide of burning blood upon my face

Drowns all the floating images

That danced their spectre saraband

In Bacchic race, phantastical embrace,

Upon the sepulchres, the dizzy seas

Of this my mind, Sabbatic rout that spanned

These straits my soul! Ay, they are dead and drowned

(And damned, I doubt!) Ah God! I am exhaust

In the red moon’s holocaust!

God! God! The chasms secret and profound

Suck down the porphyry flood

Of your maniacal, ensorcelled blood

That maddens and bewitches.

My life is suffocated—now I swoon—

I die! I am in hell, red hell, red hell,

Circles me closer; all the soul’s afire

As if the boreal moon

With all the icy Lapland hags

That shiver on ‘s hibernal crags

Were but a thin white shell

Hoarding the seed of many a million suns,

Giving its life up unto its desire—

Out bursts the womb of my unguessed-at godhead;

The rose flames out in the flood; and all at once,

A brilliance disembodied,

I am shattered like the dew upon your leaves;

So that the lampless hour

Strikes, and an unborn universe perceives

Its lonely mother-flower,

Us, in our love’s arcane Briatic bower.

We scatter light, a music-tingling shower;

We breathe out life, a crimson whisper;

We radiate love, a velvet-soft complaint,

Most like the echo of a chime at vesper

Rung far across narcissus-haunted leas,

Lilied lagoons, and moon-enchanted seas,

By the high-bosomed boy, large-eyed, with fasting faint

That shares an hermitage with some devoutest saint.

 

 

III

 

AS, in our life, I passed the awful gate

Where like a Cerberus sate

The triform silence, Fate,

And bade the red blood bloom

Within that Palace of untasted gloom;

As, in our life, confronting the black forms—

Colossal ghosts, like storms!—

I did abide in the most holy hall

And let the dread word fall,

Nor bade the red axe falter

There as I bowed mine head

Upon the amber altar,

And shed my life out there before ye all,

Careless if I had summoned from the skies

Some young true God, or spoiled the sacrifice,

And were but dead as any man is dead!

So I have given up my inmost life

Even unto you, sweet wife,

Careless—yet conscious of the babe-stirred womb

Of some dread Mother older than the Tomb,

Wiser than Life, more pitiful than Death.

 

 

IV

 

YOUR wine-stained and wine-coloured hair unloosing,

Mingle your wine-wise breath,

Spiritual siren! with the scent seducing

Your body sheds, scarred with the bleeding kisses

My tenderness bit in,

Like to a lion feeding in wild white wildernesses,

My spirit sensible to your skin:

Mingle them to a crescent character

That shall set shimmering all the parchment fine

And send a steam like wine

Laden with ecstasy and pain

Choral through all the passion-stained and passion-trembling air.

Inspire a closer strain

Such as strange orchids give, and hyacinths,

Among the broken pedestals and plinths

Where the gray Lords of Time, of Time forgotten,

Lie in the herbage rotten

Of the unpeopled forest.

 

 

V

 

O SONG! O amorous and seducing,

I see thee as thou soarest,

So that, the girders of the soul unloosing,

That Child of you and me, O rose of roses,

That Child whose life encloses

Our lives, is therefore I, may wander ever

By the fritillary-fringéd river,

Through lotus gardens of the sleepy gods,

On hills where every timid oread tries

Blue gentian as disguise

From holier (though she think profaner) eyes,

On seas where, it may be, (to even the odds!)

Each nymph and undine issues from the foam

Armed with a pearly mirror and with a coral comb

To tire her beauty, lure me to the lakes

Of light where strikes the day to hyaline floors

Whereon blithe fish and emerald water snakes

Play all the day, and all their innocence adores

Is some old anchor with its rusty flakes

Fallen from God knows what forgotten ship.

No! not in Fancy’s palace will I play,

Nor in imagination’s deep will dip

The timid foot; but rather will I strip

Each rag of thought, and leap

Into the sunset deep

Still glowing with the glamour

Of your life’s blood, and ashen gold

With floating gossamer your hair, that might enfold

A giant god, and strangle him anon

With starry serpents like Laocoon,

A stoic god that might enamour

And draw him with its tendrils into time.

 

 

VI

 

MY mouth was wet with the delicious crime

Of kissing you, one night, when in a vision

Your hair was like a forest of tall pines

In winter; black strange dwarfs with crooked spines

And elfin eyes, and bleating mouths that worked

All manner of grimace and bleak derision

Bore them away; hollow-eyed ghosts that lurked

About the sea made thereof masts; they fitted

Tall ships and goodly, furrowing the deep

To harvest merchandise; strong and keen-witted

The mariners; oho! the breezes leap

Like lovers on them; lo! they faréd forth

To South, East, West and North,

Iceland, the Indies, Sicily, and Spain. . . .

Lo! men have heard of all these ships not one, not one for ever more again.

 

 

VII

 

SEEING your naked body in the bed

Against the jetty silk, I thought you lay

Just as the Milky Way

Lies in the unkenned hollows of the sky.

One swarthy ray of red

Leapt from your hither eye,

And straight my dream began

To map that heaven—your eye, Aldeboran!

I launched the magic boat, and early found

The Pirate’s cave and the Enchaunted Ground;

The cedared Lebanon,

The Wizard’s Grot, the well of spice,

The Hanging Gardens of great Babylon:—

All these then did I visit in a trice,

And even did confirm the Bible tale

By playing Jonah to your Jonah’s whale.

So, to the stars!

 

 

VIII

 

A POET is at ease

In all such voyages:

Why, as a boy, I steered

Up to the Scorpion and tweaked his tail,

Plucked foolish Capricornus by the beard

And kissed the Blessed Damozel that leaned upon the golden rail,

Drank from the glad rim of the grail

Or soothed the squally Twins (for they could weep!)

And while I smiled “In Heaven how safe I am!”

Found myself in my little bed asleep

Having been butted thither by the Ram.

 

 

IX

 

BUT in the dream of you, my starry sweet,

It is my earth I lose six times in seven.

I have the Freedom of the City of Heaven’

But strange (though fair) are all the stars I meet.

The dull familiar and the homely drear

Are lost for ever. Being asleep, I fear.

Wake! Let me cut the cable of my mind!

My harbour lies before, and not behind.

Dreams are all lies; those jetty shadows lie

When the full moon doth crown the midnight sky;

But shadows image truth, and dreams come true,

For when I wake my arms are full of you.

 

 

X

 

ANOTHER time, through tides from chaos rolled

I was upborne by this my scarabee

With scales like plates of porphyry and gold

And wings like flakes of the green light that pours

Through the blue heart of the Hawaian sea.

So to the hollow shore

We came, and did behold a silver avenue

That wound through cypress groves and woods of yew

Unto the hills; hideous hyaenas laughed,

Mean jackals snarled and screamed, and wild dogs bayed:

Bayed at the waning moon that lapsed above

Out of all light (had I not been in love,

And drunken on the quintessential draught)

So that the forest folk were sore afraid.

But when I came upon the open space

I might perceive my lady’s face,

And knew she waned because that I was late.

Twin hills like ivory glinted; on their slopes

Blue rivers coursed, and many a nightingale

Told all its tremulous tale

To viewless dryads, or elate

Trilled out its bleeding hopes

Into the mist of light that hid (I know)

Bassarids, Bassarids Dionysus-mad.

Then, in that vision glad,

I saw twin towers of crimson ruby rise

Into the scented snow

That fell like dew from the heart-hungry skies.

But when I came between the hills, behold

The moon’s silver and gold

Stood in the zenith, that I lost my guide.

There stood I passion-pale

Like a lost lamb that seeks the starry fold

Within that warm and scented vale

Clothed with narcissus, hyacinth, tuberose,

Snowdrop and lily, all white, all cream, all gold,

With never a blush like dawn’s to flush or fail

Upon their garden-close.

O wide is the world, wide, wide! Be sure that I was lost,

Lost, lost for ever; are there palimpsests

Wherein a man might study at great cost

His journey thence? O Rose of gramarye,

My riddle you shall ree.

My head was happy, laid betwixt your breasts.

 

 

XI

 

ANOTHER time I passed the holy well

And plunged (as Phoebus in the western ocean)

Into a forest of fine flame that crowned

The holy hill; all was enchanted ground,

The flames like scented tendrils of a vine

Or sensitive rays that spell

Strange curves to match their master-god’s emotion,

And ever nearer to the scarlet slash

I clomb, where the strange perfumes struck me like a lash

And the dread fires scorched up my life.

There, O insufferable delight

I mock with the weak word of wife,

I was sucked down into the crater rim,

Into the crimson damask dim

Candescent cave of night—

O then I mock myself with words!

They are like cardinal-coloured birds

And honey-coloured doves:

Yet one thing mortal serves to name another

As mortal as itself.

Why must our deathless loves

Be stained by the black-hearted mother

That called things by dead names?

The sunny elf

Language shall play with the ethereal flames

But never dare approach

The central and volcanic fire,

The inmost Force, nor, like a glittering army

Send forth its scouts to encroach

Upon our citadel desire.

Ay! though these flaming sentences

Eat like strong acid in my vitals, char me,

Blast me like lightning, smash me like black seas

Towering above the lofty ship

Whose masts did menace to the skies,

They are but plaisters of cool leaves that dip

In pleasant water to the white-hot wise

Terrible flames of hell that would devour me,

Did not the raptures of they love embower me

In meads Elysian, fields of foamless fire,

Nights of invincible desire,

Things beyond words, beyond the want of them

Beyond the pauses and the ecstasies . . . .

Where should my dream get such a diadem

Of voiceless thoughts as these?

 

 

XII

 

THESE dreams reform

Themselves into a rainbow to the storm

Of simple passion; let me from the string

Take many-coloured wing

As a swift-thoughted arrow

Vertically shot against the sun!

I would you were a sow

And these my verses were your squealing farrow,

That they might suck the milk of your perfection

Unto them, that the world’s ear might be won,

The world’s heart melted now,

The world’s mind drawn from its dejection,

By the sure fact that not in idle dream

But sole in sense supreme

Certainly visible and tangible

Were you, O Rose, whose root remotest hell

Nourishes, and whose top flowers higher than the Throne

Of the Eternal one.

Thou shouldst not leave me alone

To gaze upon the sun

And take the glory of his excellence—

Not unto me close curled,

And on my body’s beauty crucified

In silver spirit clad with god of sense,

But sending forth thy rays life-pearled

As a bridegroom squandering his strength upon the bride

—Thou art sufficient to redeem the world.

 

 

XIII

 

O! IS the secret of the starry deep

Nothing but pain and pleasure, grief and joy?

Is God a wanton boy To play with us so bitter cheap

By such a jewelled light? Be thine the power,

Rose of the Stars, in this thy tortured hour

When the wee lips that clung to thee are cold,

To give the world a light of other gold

From that men hoard, from that the suns afford

In their implacable cars

As they roll on impassive; bid thy Lord

(O Rose, Rose of the Stars!)

And slave make known they beauty and thy passion

In his imperfect fashion,

So that thy wisdom and they strength are sold

In every mart of earth;

So that thine eyes enfold

The universe in one great look of love

Bring this, bring this to birth!

And neither hate below, nor hate above,

Nor chance, nor force, nor cunning shall deprive

Man of thy gift, a love alive

With more than men to-day can understand.

 

 

XIV

 

GIVE me thine hand,

Rose of the Stars, and we will soar above

Wisdom and Strength and Love,

Into the sphere where all delight retires

In azure flames and silver-edged fires.

Now through the veil we shoot

Like snaky lightning through a thundercloud

Up to the awful precipice-skirted place

Where deaf, blind, palsied, mute

There sits the leprous God; we laugh aloud

Seeing him face to face,

Blowing him like a shaken sheaf of snow

With a brief gust of wind

Over the cliffs of his ensanguine throne;

Seating ourselves thereon, as men shall know,

Above soul, spirit, heart, thought, being, mind,

All—but most irrevocably entwined

And irrevocably alone.

 

 

XV

 

THERE was a boy with O! the face of dawn,

The mother-of-pearl that shimmered on his skin.

The breasts like golden roses circling red,

The limbs like limbs of a young fawn

For litheness—O! for innocence of sin

His eyes burned wondrous bright, his sun-crowned head

Danced with its sweet and sacred hopes,

So that he paced the enamelled slopes

Laughing upon the laughing lake below,

Expectant of some strange experience

Worth all the woes of sense,

Some drop of nectar worth a world of wine,

Some grace of One divine

Worth more than all life’s grace, and more than life intense.

Was there a wonder if the silken boy

Found her a-playing on the bluebell marge

And drank from golden vats the wine of joy;

Hot, eager, overcoming in her breath,

As she would draw him to those large

And firm white breasts and mix her liquid life

With his in pagan strife?

Or with a grace like God, a stealth like love,

Pour on him from above

Wine from the purple vats of death?

Nay! ‘tis no wonder—shall they wonder then,

These bat-eyed newspaper-besotted men,

If thou and I have found the Elixir rater

That giveth Life to those whoso drinketh it,

The Stone beyond compare,

The harmony of the Circle and the Square,

All that surpasseth mortal wit

Even to imagine? we have found it,

Rose, Rose of the Stars, Rose of the utmost snows!

Where? Where Love knows.

 

 

Ceremonio Daemone Sperma.

Illustration by Barry Van-Asten.

 

A FEW WORDS ON THE SUBJECT OF

SEX MAGICK

By AUDRAREP

 

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

 

 

'Our love is like a glittering sabre bloodied

With lives of men; upsoared the sudden sun;

The choral heaven woke; the aethyr flooded

All space with joy that you and I were one.'

 

[Clouds without Water. Aleister Crowley. 1909]

 

 

ENFLAME THYSELF IN PRAYER

 

The secrets of sex magick have long been revealed by various authors and so there is no longer any great fear or taboo attached to them concerning their ‘secrecy’.

All systems have a theory, a sense that reconstitution can take place between the primordial spiritual unity through the ecstasy of sexual activity and the consumption of the combined fluids intercourse produces. These secretions represent the god and the goddess, in the Thelemic tradition Hadit and Nuit, and the act of ritual consumption as a sacrament heightens the sacred awareness of the celebrants.

‘And Her concoction shall be sweet in our mixed mouths, the Sacrament that giveth thanks to Aiwaz, our Lord God the Devil, that He hath fused His Beast’s soul with His Scarlet Whore’s, to be One Soul completed, that It may set His image in the Temple of Man, and thrust His Will’s rod over them and rule them. And that imperled Sea, dark with that oozy shore-mud which it washed, shall wash us, body and mind, of all that is not He, moisten our throats and loosen our loud Song of Praise, Thanksgiving unto Him.’ [Aleister Crowley’s diary entry 22nd July 1920. The Magical Records of the Beast 666. John Symonds and Kenneth Grant]

Contrary to the usual understanding of the nature of sex magick, Kenneth Grant in his ‘The Magical Revival’ (1972) suggested that the texts and rituals of the Art were merely ‘exoteric’ and the actual physical phenomena contained the true ‘esoteric’ secret.

Aleister Crowley made many experiments as to the practical use of the sexual current and the student should make a thorough study of Crowley’s works, particularly his monumental ‘Magick in Theory and Practice’ and ‘The Magical Records of the Beast 666’ by Symonds and Grant. ‘Crowley’s diaries contain numerous examples of this current – for magical creation in male-female union, IX°, for the consecration of talismans in auto-erotic workings, VIII°, for the revitalization of the body in the secret Sacrament of the Gnosis of the XI°, and for the materialization of desired objects through the use of the lunar or periodic female current.’ [Kenneth Grant. Introduction. The Magical Records of the Beast 666]

The magical attitude towards sex is that the divine union between participants is a sacred act, a celebratory ceremony in which an alchemical process occurs within the physical temple of the celebrants, and ‘at the moment of discharge a physical ecstasy occurs, a spasm analogous to the mental spasm which meditation gives. And further, in the sacramental and ceremonial use of the sexual act, the divine consciousness may be attained.’ [Energised Enthusiasm. The Equinox. Volume I, number IX]

 

ALCHEMY

 

Because of the secret nature of these rituals, Crowley and his higher initiated followers used alchemical terms and symbols to describe various acts of sex magick.

 

THE PHALLUS

 

The male sexual organ is known as the Athanor, from the Arabic ‘at-tannur’ which means ‘furnace’. The Phallus, or Lingam, is symbolically and functionally the microcosmic human manifestation of the power of divine creation. It represents the True Will and the freeing of desires from the subconscious mind and from the strictures of the conscious mind. Symbolically, the Phallus is also shown as the Sacred Lance, the Wand, the Cross and the Rood; it is the salvation or the Redeeming Force. The Athanor, the furnace, contains the Fire which is the pure male element. Also ASAR.

 

The Sword and Balances (also the Judge and the two witnesses): Sword= The Phallus: Yod. Yesod.

Balances= The Testes: Netzach and Hod.

Phallus – P – Pe (mouth) =80

 

THE KTEIS

 

The female sexual organ is known as the Cucurbite, from the Latin ‘cucurbita’ which means ‘a gourd’, an alchemist’s vessel or retort (container) used in distillation. The Kteis, or the Yoni, is symbolically represented by the Cup, the Holy Graal, and also the Dove. Also ASI.

 

Kteis – K – Kaph (palm of the hand) =20

K P [20+80] +100

 

THE LION AND THE EAGLE

 

The semen is called the ‘Blood of the Red Lion’, from the fixed sign for Fire, the purest male element, Leo. It is also known as the ‘Serpent’ or the old Gnostic symbol of the ‘Lion-Serpent’.

The female secretion which lubricated the vagina during sexual arousal and intercourse is called the ‘Gluten of the White Eagle’, the eagle being a symbol for the fixed sign for Water, the purest female element, Scorpio. This ‘eagle’ also contains the ‘egg’ which is ‘laid’.

 

THE ELIXIR

 

The mixing of the male and female fluids during sexual intercourse produces what is known as the ‘First Matter’, which can then be magically transformed by ritual and controlled mental power into the sacred ‘elixir’ which is then either consumed by absorption by the participants as a sacrament to restore energy or administered onto the body for its healing properties.

‘Ask of our brethren the alchemists, and of the Adepts of the Rosy Cross. The first answer: It is nothing but the Lion with his coagulated blood, and the gluten of the White Eagle; it is the Ocean wherein both Sun and Moon have bathed. The others: it is the Dew upon the Rose that hath concealed the Cross. Ask of the Ancients: they reply that the oldest of the Gods is Saturn. Beware lest thou also be deceived!

Blessed be He that hath discovered unto us the Arcanum Arcanorum! This is the Dissolved Stone; this is the Elixir of Life, this is the Universal Medicine, this is the Tincture, this is the Potable Gold. Take an Athanor and Cucurbite, and prepare a flask for this Wine of the Holy Ghost.

Thou needest also a flame for the distillation. In the Athanor is thy Lion, in the Cucurbite thine Eagle. Use first a gentle heat, increasing at last to full flame until the Lion passeth over. Pour immediately thy distillation into the flask prepared for it.’ [Agape vel Liber C vel Azoth. ‘Of the sacrifice of the Eucharist’]

‘in the preparation of the Sacrament, and in its consumption also, the mind of the initiate must be concerned absolutely in one rushing flame of will upon the determined object of his operation.’ [De Arte Magica, iii]

The Sacrament is also used in the working of talismans which are specifically prepared and consecrated to a magical task. The word ‘elixir’ is from the Arabic ‘al-iksir’ which means ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ and in alchemy suggests the transmutation of base metals into gold.

‘The Elixir being then prepared solemnly and in silence, do thou consume it utterly. And in all this thou shalt direct thy whole will unwavering to the particular purpose of the Operation.’ [Agape vel Liber C vel Azoth. ‘Of the Elixir’]

During the consumption of the elixir, or ‘Quintessence’, as a Sacrament, the male uses his mouth to suck the elixir from the female’s vagina and he then shares it with her orally during kissing. The elixir is ‘absorbed’ in this way in the mouth and savoured.

‘It is said that the second party is useless, even dangerous, when the influence of the Moon first shews itself. [Yet the motion of the Earth implying great causes in Briah and Yetzirah, must be difficult to check, unless by Briatic forces of much intensity.] But on the second day and after, though perhaps not on the last day, the Sacrament is more efficacious than at any other time, as is figured by our ancient Brethren the Alchemists in their preference of the Red Tincture to the White.’ [De Arte Magica. ix ‘Of the course of the Moon, and her influence’]

 

  THE HOLY HEXAGRAM

 

THE WAY TO SUCCEED – AND THE WAY TO SUCK EGGS!

 

This is the Holy Hexagram.

Plunge from the height, O God, and interlock with Man!

Plunge from the height, O Man, and interlock with Beast!

The Red Triangle is the descending tongue of grace; the Blue Triangle is the ascending tongue of prayer.

This Interchange, the Double Gift of Tongues, the Word of Double Power – ABRAHADABRA! – is the sign of the GREAT WORK, for the GREAT WORK is accomplished in Silence. And behold is not that Word equal to Cheth, that is Cancer, whose sigil is (astrological sign for Cancer)  ?

This Work also eats up itself, accomplishes its own end, nourishes the worker, leaves no seed, is perfect in itself.

Little children, love one another!

[The Book of Lies. Aleister Crowley. Chapter 69]

 

 

DE ARTE MAGICA

 

The secret sex magick techniques as taught in the Ordo Templi Orientis [OTO] were incorporated into various instructional papers which initiates received upon attaining the higher degrees. Crowley’s treatise ‘De Arte Magica’ written in 1914 at the outbreak of war contains the essential theory and key of sex magick.

‘the act of love causes a magical disturbance in the Aether of Akasa of such a nature as to attract or create a discarnate human spirit.’ [De Arte Magica. xiii. ‘Of certain Jewish Theories’]

‘it is said by the O.H.O. [Outer Head of the Order] that of this perfect medicine a single dewdrop sufficeth, and this may be true. Yet it is humbly and with all deference and worship Our opinion that every drop generated (so far as may be possible) should be consumed. Firstly, that this most precious of all gifts of Nature be not lost or profaned – indeed the Roman heresy hath appointed most excellent instructions for the treatment in all repects of the consecrated Host.’ [De Arte Magica. xiv. ‘Of the Consumation of the Element diune, whether Quantity be as important as Quality, and whether its waste be Sacrilege’]

 

TETRAGRAMMATON

 

YOD: the Father. Fire. HADIT. ‘Thou hast formulated thy Father and made fertile thy Mother’. The formulation of the first creative force.

 

HE: the Mother. Water. NUIT. The Children who are the ‘living Elixir’:

 

VAU: the Son. Air. Lion [Sperm]

 

HE: the Daughter (twin sister of Vau and his daughter). Earth. The throne of Spirit. Eagle [Gluten]

 

Vau (the son) must redeem He (the sister/daughter) and make her his bride. She then sits on the throne of her Mother. She must then awaken the ‘eld’ of the All-father. These children are sacrificed.

 

THE BOOK OF THE LAW

 

Upon Crowley’s rise through the ranks of the OTO to reach a position of influence he re-wrote the rituals, incorporating his own magical system in accordance with Liber Al vel Legis. ‘The elixir’ can also be used as an ingredient in the Cakes of Light:

‘For perfume mix meal & honey & thick leavings of red wine: then oil of Abramelin and olive oil, and afterward soften and smooth down with rich fresh blood.’ [AL. III. 23]

‘the best blood is of the moon, monthly: then the fresh blood of a child, or dropping from the host of heaven: then of enemies; then of the priest or of the worshippers: last of some beast, no matter what.’ [AL. III. 24]

‘Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given. They shall gather my children into their fold: they shall bring the glory of the stars into the hearts of men.’ [AL. I. 15]

‘For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight.’ [AL. I. 16]

‘take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.’ [Al. I. 51]

 

MAGICAL CHASTITY

 

Magical chastity is not self-imposed celibacy. The Phallus and Kteis are considered to be sacred instruments of art, consecrated to the Great Work, just as the wand and the cup are ‘sacred’ and as such they should be treated with the same reverence and importance and used only with spiritual and magical intention. Another form of magical chastity is the retention of the bindu (semen).

 

THE SACRIFICE

 

The elixir is composed of the male and female essence which reflects the material form of the participants. It has the potential to produce life on the earth plane and its sacrifice is the death of that child on the magical plane. See Magick in Theory and Practice: ‘Of the Bloody Sacrifice: and Matters Cognate’ – ‘matters cognate’ refers to bodily fluids and substances which are sources of energy. The ‘bloody sacrifice’ is not a literal sacrifice, it is the sexual sacrifice of one’s self, spiritually. ‘

’For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.’ [‘Of the Bloody Sacrifice’. Magick in Theory and Practice]

 

MOONCHILD

 

There is no sacrifice in this working, instead a specific spirit is drawn by invocation into the child (foetus) which is then born. ‘ The homunculus is a living being in form resembling man, and possessing those qualities of man which distinguish him from beasts, namely intellect and power of speech, but neither begotten and born after the manner of human generation, nor inhabited by a human soul.’ [Liber CCCLXVII. ‘De Homunculo Epistola’. Capitulum Primum. 1]

 

BAPHOMET

 

The image of Baphomet, the horned god which displays the characteristics of both sexes, was worshipped by the Knights Templars. It was venerated for its wealth-giving and its fertility of the earth aspects. It is also believed that the Knights Templars held secret rituals which involved certain sex rites.

Upon becoming the Head of the English branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the Oriental Templars) in 1912, Aleister Crowley took the magical name Baphomet.

Karl Kellner (1851-1905), a wealthy German business man and high-ranking Freemason, formed the OTO in Germany in 1902 along with three fellow occultists and Freemasons: Theodore Reuss (1855-1923), Franz Hartmann (1838-1912) and Heinrich Klein (1842-1913).

Kellner insisted that three oriental adepts gave him the secret sexual teachings upon which the OTO was founded.

The sex secrets were said to be those used by the Knights templars, which had been guarded and protected by them. The rituals were based on the lines of Freemasonry and the sex rites were said to ‘explain all the symbolism of Freemasonry and of all systems of religion’.

 

ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS

 

The initiatory degrees of the OTO are in dramatic form representing the life cycle of the candidate. (see The Equinox. Volime III. Number I).

 

VII° - The adoration of the Phallus as Baphomet.

 

VIII° - Auto-sexual acts of magic (masturbation) for the consecration of talismans. Also known as the Lesser Work of Sol. Crowley gave VII° ritual instruction in his ‘De Nuptiis Secretis Deorum cum Hominibus’ (On the Secret Marriages of Gods and Men) which contains secret methods of evoking a ‘familiar spirit’ or Elemental. Following orgasm, the ‘elemental’ is absorbed into the magical aura, or human principle. It is in such a way that consecration is possible as in the consecration of a talisman with semen.

 

IX° - The ninth degree is performed by the male and female and it also refers to the ninth sephira on the Cabbalistic Tree of Life which is Yesod (Foundation). Yesod is associated with the genitals and the moon rules over the sexual fluids. The breasts are associated with Chesed and Geburah. The heart is Tipherath and the mouth is Venus, but also Mercury through the power of speech.

Another aspect of the IX° is the lunar current, the Elixir Rubaeus (Red Elixir); intercourse during menstruation.

‘it is, indeed, of the first importance for the celebrant in any phallic rite to be able to complete the act without even once allowing a sexual or sensual thought to invade his mind. The mind must be as absolutely detached from one’s own body as it is from another person’s.’ [Energised Enthusiasm. X]

Nine= Yod (the secret Fire). Nine is the number of creation (the Phallus erect and creative). Nine in the Tarot (IX) is the Hermit (sperm) and the Hermit gestates in Binah.

 

X° - The tenth degree is merely honorary, conferring status on the Head of the Order.

 

XI° - The eleventh degree involves homosexual or anal sex. The elixir, much as in the ninth degree is treated with the same reverence and a small portion is consumed following penetration and orgasm. Crowley indicated the eleventh degree in his writings as ‘P.V.N. – per vas nefandum [Latin]: ‘by the unmentionable vessel’ and the anus is also known as the ‘Eye of Horus’, the Fundament, the Tau, Malkuth.
'If the semen is safely bestowed in mouth or anus of the beloved one, the temptation is to begin all over again; bar the trifle of fatigue, one is in the same position as at first; its loss between the legs or in the hand rouses a sentiment of disgust which is fatal to passion.' [The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz. Aleister Crowley. 1910]

Eleven in the Tarot (XI) is Lust or Strength. Teth (the Serpent or the Sacrament). Sign of Leo (the Lion); Leo is the kerub of Fire, ruled by the Sun.

‘It is said by certain Initiates that to obtain Spiritual gifts, and to aid Nature, the sacrament should be as it were a Nuptial of the Folk of Earth; but that Magick is of the Demon, and that by a certain Perversion of the Office, may be created Elementals fit to perform the Will of the Magician.

Now herein is a difficulty, since in this case the Matter of the Sacrament cannot exist, for that there is no White Eagle to generate the Gluten. Howbeit, We hold that in this rite is great efficacy; it may be that for certain operations it is equal or superior to that explained to initiates of the IX°.’ [De Arte Magica. xi. ‘Of certain Rites analogous to that of the IX°’]

‘I tell thee, man, that the first kiss of man to man is more than the most elaborately manipulated orgasm that the most accomplished and most passionate courtesan can devise. That is, it is not a physical, but a spiritual pleasure.’ [The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz. Aleister Crowley. 1910]

 

Love is the law, love under will.

 

 

FURTHER READING:

 

The Secret Rituals of the OTO. Edited and introduced by Francis King (C.W. Daniel Co. London. 1973)

The Magical Records of the Beast 666. Edited by John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (Duckworth. London. 1972)

The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz. Aleister Crowley. (Probsthain & Co. Paris. 1910)

Magick in Theory and Practice. Aleister Crowley. (Lecram Press. Paris. 1929)

Liber CCCXXXIII. The Book of Lies. Aleister Crowley. (Wieland & Co. London. 1913)

The Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley. Tunisia 1923. Stephen Skinner. (Weiser. USA. 1996)

Liber CDXV Opus Lutetianum: The Paris Working. Aleister Crowley. 1914.

Sexuality, Magic and Perversion. Francis King (New English Library. London. 1972)

A Manual of Sex Magick. Louis T. Culling (Llewellyn Publications. USA. 1971)

Energised Enthusiasm. The Equinox. Volume I, number IX. (Wieland & Co. London. 1913)

Liber CCCLXX A’ash vel Capricorni Pneumatici. The Equinox. Volume I, number VI. (Wieland & Co. London. 1911)

 

 

 

ROSA DECIDUA

Rose of the World!

If so, then what a world!

What worm at its red heart lay curled

From the beginning? Plucked and torn and trampled

And utterly corrupt is she

That was the queen-flower unexampled

In gardens goodlier than Arcady.

 

O Thou! whose body was my lyre, whose soul

Lay on my mouth like a live coal!

This time thou hearest not my song; thine ears

Are stopped with worse than death;

And all this wasted breath

Of mine – those songs of six most memorable years

Of ecstasy and agony – may not attain

To charm thy being into love again...

 

This is no tragedy of little tears.

My brain is hard and cold; there is no beat

Of its blood; there is no heat

Of sacred fire upon my lips to sing.

My heart is dead; I say that name thrice over;

Rose! – Rose! – Rose! –

Even as lover should call to lover;

There is no quickening,

No flood, no fount that flows;

No water wells from the dead spring.

My thoughts come singly, dry, contemptuous,

Too cold for hate; all I can say is that they come

From some dead sphere without me;

Singly they come, beats of a senseless drum

Jarred by a fool, harsh, unharmonious.

There is no sense within me or about me;

Yet each thought is most surely known

For a catastrophe.

No climax of a well-wrought tragedy!

Single and sterile.

I am here for nought.

I have no memory of the rose-red hours.

No fragrance of those days amid the flowers

Lingers; all’s drowned in the accursed stench

Of this damned present. The past years abort,

And this is found. Foul waters drench

My earth. All’s filth. With what cold eye one scans

This body that was – so long since – two years! I wrench

My soul to say it – all a man’s

Delight. Come, look at it! This leaden skin

With ochre staining its amorphous grey;

All that elastic brilliance passed away;

Minute invading wrinkles where the flesh

Is soaked away by the foul thing within

Her soul; the bloom so faint and fresh

Smudged to a smoky glow as one may see

At sunset in the Factory lands; the lips

Thinned and their colour sickened into slate;

The eyes like common glass; the hair’s gloss dull;

The muscles gone, all pendulous with fat;

The breath that was more sweet than Lebanon

And all the flowers and honey and spice thereof,

Ripe for my soul’s kiss eagerly to cull,

Now like a corpse three weeks drowned, swollen by sup

And water and vermin. There she sways and stares,

And with the jaw dropped all awry – first swears,

Then lurches; then she slobbers unctuously:

“I am not old; I am quite beautiful;

Pitiful! Pitiful! Most Pitiful!

 

This is no tragedy of little tears.

This worm was in her blood

Lurking for thrice five years.

And now I see him – that old slime that leers

Where Bacchus smiles, that evil and averse

God that is wholly curse,

As he is wholly blessing to the wise.

This thing invertebrate, this sewer-flood,

Compact of treacheries, meannesses, and lies,

Horrible thirst, infamous beastliness,

Dirt and disease, so sottish wallowing,

Yet sensitive to pain so hideous

That sometimes he appears all pain, all fear,

All hate – so slavish yet so fierce a king,

A tyrant to himself, insidious

And cunning as some sordid sorceress;

Incapable of action or control,

Yet a black gulph to drown so strong a soul!...

 

He lay close curled within my rose’s heart.

There is no blame; yet what avails all art?

See! I reel back beneath the blow of her breath

As she come smiling to me: that disgust

Changes her drunken lust

Into a shriek of hate – half conscious still

(Beneath the obsession of the will)

Of all she was – before her death, her death!

So she boils over her, and she rages –

It seems through countless ages –

With all the vile abuse,

That had degraded Glasgow’s grimiest stews,

With all the knowledge of despair

Striking me cunningly, striking everywhere,

Mutilating the corpse of my dead love

With such a savagery,

Intensity above

All understanding, that it bleeds again –

As a corpse should bleed at the murderer’s touch!

Then, not content, she must needs smutch

All my past purifying pain,

Turning all life to a thing fouler than

Aught yet imaginable to man!

 

Who asks me for my tears?

She flings the body of our sweet dead child

Into my face with hell’s own epitaph,

Profanes that shrine

Of infinite love and infinite loss,

My empty shrine, the one shrine undefiled,

My one close-clasped cross –

And hers as much as mine!

Profanes it with a hideous laugh

And a lie flung with a curse; and I must hear,

And must not stamp on the snake, because, forsooth,

This was my love, my peace, my faith, my truth,

The rosebud of my youth!

It was – it is not – it can never be.

This would corrupt God’s body with a breath.

I see Him sicken and swoon; I see Him rot

Through, though His tabernacle be Eternity.

This makes a man catch hold of death

Greedily like a harlot in the street

That plucks by the arm some sot.

Death shakes me off with a hoarse curse.

Tied to this woman, his beneficence

Were too like heaven – and heaven’s somehow to earn,

No doubt – no way that I know! Hell’s enough,

If hell would only burn

And silence the one devil-word of love.

 

Ay! death slinks off.

I have a child that claims my life

To keep from knowledge of her mother’s fate,

To keep from heritage thereof,

To shield from the world’s scoff,

To watch, stamp out the seeds of madness in her.

God! that has held me back from hate,

Be merciful to me a sinner,

And ward me, warding her! As it is written:

Excepting Adonai build the house, they labour

In vain that build it. And again:

Excepting Adonai keep the city,

The watchman watcheth but in vain.

God, if there be a God, be Thou my Neighbour;

And if that God have pity, have Thou pity!

For never man was smitten as I am smitten;

Nor from Time’s yesterday to Time’s to-morrow

Was there a sorrow like unto this sorrow!

How many hours was Christ upon the cross?

How many days in hell? But I have hung

From the day of infinite loss,

Watching her degradation into dung

Three years.

Three years!

And now who asks me to shed tears?

Let a man pierce my side,

I warrant him nor blood nor water flows,

But such a poison as Locusta never

Distilled from toad, asp, viper, scorpion,

Nightshade, gall, orpiment, Jew’s hearts,

Old woman’s tongues, by monstrous arts;

But this my poison drips, without endeavour,

From the mere soul of the world’s rose!

What alchemy of hell this ronyon

Venus has skill of!

Wonder that I live!

This has been like a bag-pipe drone to wail

Its monotone through high, low, fast and slow.

It has been like a secret cancer,

Forcing all servants of the life to give

Their work to the usurper; all its themes assail

The main word Life; they build their archipelago

Of poison in each sea where life was holy,

Their questions have no answer,

But all’s converted to the abominable

Soul-sickening thing that one is tied to. This is I

Just as God is His Nature, wholly

Involved therein, its tune, its motive, its quintessence.

There were no meaning in Spring’s aspen spell,

Were man’s soul treasury, the sky,

Made bankrupt of His presence.

Only, this God is a black fiend;

Of blood, the babe’s drink, weaned

And fattened on – what liquor and meat? Unnameable

By all the giant horrors that haunt hell!

 

These years I have watched her fade, my masterful love

And all-embracing pity strove

Like athletes in an amorous bout to make

Some child to tread upon that snake.

But ever the worm slipped, escaped; its spires

Here crushed, there rose the stronger for the pressure

That gave it purchase; keener flamed the fires

In its eye triumphant. Now its soul asserts

Its master-pleasure;

The worm exerts

Its adult might, and in one bout

The spine snaps of that child of Love and Pity,

And mangled he falls out

Of the fight. Just so child Hercules

Strangled two serpents in his pretty

Red fists, achieved twelve labours, won to ease,

And was done down to death and madness by

The subtle poison that himself distilled.

So all the God in life is chilled

To a corpse. The informing one? God’s cast clout

Of a leper! Leave me here, corruptest of earth’s whores,

To scrape my sores!

 

Cry like a dog and run about the city!

There is no word left, now the deed is dead!

No thought of her is in me; I am a stranger

To all that dream of danger

And bliss that Rose was. The green shoots

Of life that spring in me are fed

Not even on the mire of her decay.

They spring from other roots.

Now I am cleansed of her, I am so to say

A man part paralysed. One limb is dead

In feeling as in motion. This remains

To ask: Will all catch death – how soon? This head

Excites its miserable brains

To think the word it knows by intellect

To be the right word – pity! Then reflect:

‘Pitiful! Pitiful! Most Pitiful!

The pity of it! Think of the love past,

Blossoms too beautiful!

Think of the hardships conquered comrade-wise!

Think of the babe and its most piteous end!’ –

All these things sound like lies.

I do not comprehend

Anything of them – ‘Pity! pity! pity!’

‘Tis like the dripping of some stagnant rain

From the housetops of a ruined city

Upon the flagstones. Not one petal clings

Upon the stalk of life or memory. Stain

Not one pale thought with blushes; my soul’s dead

As a corpse flung out of the tideway on

The stinking flats of London mud. The springs

Are dry beyond appeal; dull grey like lead

(And heavier) is my soul’s carrion.

If she came pleading now, pure, passionate, and sane,

I would not take her back again.

I am warned – that’s one word.

Let my own back feel the lash!

All power of love is burnt right through to ash.

Bray it in a mortar, mix with gall and ink,

And give it to the children for a drink!

 

I’ll wait till she is dead, to bring those tears.

I doubt not in the garden of my heart

Whence she is torn that flowers will bloom again.

May those be flowers of weeping, flowers of art.

Flowers of great tenderness and pain.

Broad lilied meers

Lying in a lonely leafless forest

Silent and motionless beneath the moon.

I feel my weakness, O thou soul that soarest

Into a heaven beyond imagining

On the unfaltering wing

Of the magic swan! I know this tune

Should swell to a strong note, a triumph note

Blared through a trumpet’s throat

To tell the world I am no coward, or else

Sob in sweet minor, soft as Asmodel’s

Chant to the nightingale. I am so wrecked, so rent,

That one seems brag, the other sentiment.

 

I cannot leave the present; I will not pose.

There lies the rotten rose

And stinks. That is the truth; the rest is gloss.

My loss was total loss.

So close that rose lay to my heart, its fall

Was the catastrophe of all.

Now call me callous! Pass me, prigs, and sneer

At the base soul that could not bear its cross!

I say that infinite loss is infinite loss,

That tears are trivial, tears are happiness,

That this blind ache is God’s last punishment

Are damned, that had I loved her less

I could have prated in some honeyed strain,

Taking a subtle pleasure in my pain.

It is my bulk, the mass of my intent,

That makes the ruin abject. I had sung

Some partial earthquake; here the universe

Crashes with one great curse,

Whelming the singer and the song. My tongue

Is palsied; only this chaotic clash

Of curses echoes the dire crash.

 

And after all the roar, there steals a strain

At last of tuneless, infinite pain;

And all my being is one throb

Of anguish, and one inarticulate sob

Catches my throat. All these vain voices die,

And all these thunders venomously hurled

Stop. My head strikes the floor; one cry, the old cry,

Strikes at the sky its exquisite agony:

Rose! Rose o’ th’ world.

 

 

THE HEATHER GARDEN

by Barry Van-Asten

 

I dream of a garden I don't know,

Its mystery blossoms through the seasons.

And here, I wander where the unknown root grows;

Where pathways are words written over hills and streams.

 

 

I
 

DARK JOURNEY

 

 

O dark witch of my heart, retreat

Into your fabled land of dreams,

Where I await your icy mythology

Galloping through this emptiness of skin.

Come out and speak of your Northern past

And the tales that have been handed down.

Come out and weave for me, my love,

For here in the heartland I don't want

To be folded away by the garden gate

And unable to see beyond the glass

Where a roomful of cat-magic lies within,

Undisturbed in a grey-powdered mist.

 

I know her and she will not wait;

She has promises that she cannot keep.

But I imagine her always close to me,

Thinking in secrets while she weeps.

Veiled Aurora - unfathomable,

And changeless where sorcery sleeps.

With hair as dark as the dreamless grave

And crystal orbs glowing from the seventh sphere

Show shades of an incredible past. I know

We will embrace in the fiery red planet's wake

For the first time and the last;

We will walk through the midnight garden,

Through its silhouettes and shades

Till our voices no longer strain to utter

All the hurt that love no longer hides.

 

But unknowable in her lamplit gloom,

She desires the forceful sway of the sea:

Perhaps she was born of its foamy spray

Somewhere in a Northern bay? But

Winter brings new ordeals and sadness

Like a visitor, flowerless and unwelcome,

With a fist pushed firm into your mouth.

 

And from her dark room she gazes out

To the broken railings round the pond;

To the black remains of the mill, and beyond,

To the sunlight on the silver stream

That reveals the mayflies breaking free:

How I envy their short lives, she said,

Dreams on Neptune's weary wave...

A trout twists and spins in the pools of shade,

Drawn to a dry-fly in the sun's haze;

Magnified by a ghostly fish eye,

Snatched from dimensions of black sanctuary, again.

 

Two figures stood gazing into the pond:

He loved her once...long ago, one said,

Like something beyond the living and the dead.

And now, she won't leave the house, she won't leave,

And death has become a recurring theme

Now that there is blood in words once again.

A white mist has descended upon the house

Like a blanket spread over its awful hold,

And I can't see beyond the smoky glass.

But I imagine her cocooned inside, somehow,

Wrapt up tightly as a moth,

Awaiting the end of her labyrinth of sleep

And the end of her wordless universe.

 

Yet the garden remains to her tender touch;

Full of love, though dark as the night.

She is the whispered wind in the swaying boughs

And the autumn leaves upon my face.

She's there in the gentle air that soothes

And sweeps across this lonesome place.

But no memory of sleep nor its release

Can give these pale bones what they need.

For I am lost because I cannot keep

The one that I desire inside, the most.

 

Come and embrace the darkling wound

That you have wrought upon my flesh.

It glows in the interminable shame of night,

In the brightness of these sufferings.

Yet who is it that walks in the garden

By night and remains unseen?

Who is it that hurts my endless heart

When each night I awake to find

That love has walked with nothing more to say?

 

Seen from the mill pond, nothing moves;

The old gate hangs on its rusty hinge.

Yet the dark windows speak of lives

Falling away...forever away, inside.

And a presence lingers to be loved

Where the riddle of the garden soothes.

A tree grows across its dim threshold,

And here will be an eternity, I thought,

Now that the spell is cast.

 

 

II
 

CONIFER DREAMING

 

 

Black witch of all my days, afraid

To come out of the house again.

Trapped between the threshold and

The surface of the skin.

A darkness through which we cannot pass,

Closes around and over us;

An immense mass, pushing forwards,

Separating our frontiers into afterlife,

Where nameless, we shuffle closer to the grave.

 

Heel me into the disused summerhouse

Where I can become part of its genealogy,

Living among the dry seeds that hang

From the wooden struts like rococo beams.

There, amongst the old papers and rusting tools

With the smell of sawdust, oil and wood preserver

Rushing like alchemy through my nostrils.

I shall see the house from this dwelling place;

See when lights go on in rooms:

Is that your spectre descending the stair

Like a mannequin in tears?

 

Behind the fence, I'll stretch and sigh

And straighten my crooked, mossy fingers

Upon the cracked glass of the window pane,

Warmed by the early morning sun.

But here, I won't grow beyond the glass,

I'll dissolve into new constellations

That are forever looking back.

 

Alone, I'll lie beside the lavender path

Where you will forget me in time, I know...

But still I'll listen for the sweep of your dress

Brushing past in the night like a great lunar wing.

In the long summer evenings, I will sigh

Because I will not hear you come,

Saddened by the drone of bees

Blundering through the undergrowth,

To map the last regions of heart and brain,

Soon honeycombed into a perfect chamber

That makes a snug home for a fat queen.

 

Hidden in my breast is a black root

That spears through my heart and shoots,

To spiral ever downwards, through

Spine and soil, where blood becomes clay.

Trapped in the watery wheelbarrow tracks:

My life flows in these rivers of rain,

Where the garden has held me, spellbound,

But there are things in this place I cannot say.

 

In the woods as the sun went down,

I came here to remember her:

 

A July day...

Walking through the dark rooms

Where other worlds come close and listen.

Inside, the atmosphere's electric,

It crackles under my inspection.

And so I slipped out, unable to turn

Those pages filled with thunder.

I thought: Am I an invisible intruder here?

Does no one see I have come to this place?

They sit so close, yet do not see.

They don't see me. There is no answer.

But I have come here often, yes,

Many times I have come here before death,

And so I almost think it a shrine for my pilgrimage.

 

Nearby the buried monks in the playing field ache

To hear the close woods call to them;

I know that call and I know that ache

And it's insufferable.

 

As the years pass

I am wrapt in the wild ways;

Streams cut through my inside

And I become part of its flow.

Nettle and laurel seed from my palms

Towards the sunlight I fear now.

The rain, with its ancient anger, stirs

And hammers on my brow again.

For here, no one can know the ache of the grave

And the crime that lies so deep within.

I hear the wind whisper and I wake,

Thinking your soft lips are near;

I call out and suddenly I remember

Only sad things whisper here.

 

A winter night and in the wood

A fire is burning down below

The steep bank that meets the road.

Figures are flickering in the flames

And far-away voices, laugh and shout.

Smoke is rising up the bank,

Winding through the broken fence,

And the air is damp with woodland smells.

 

Do you look at me and think of the wild places?

I am as ancient as all the world and all its sorceries.

 

Beneath the rolling acres - beyond,

Corpses have no time to command;

They listen to the crumbling hearts, like mine,

And laugh beneath the decaying woodland.

But your face looks out from the window pane

With its ghostly mask, devoid of life.

Those eyes are afraid to look on the world again,

Or perhaps they just died too long ago.

 

In the green pools of the bog

Those corpses gasp and remember death,

As the sunlight shifts above their heads,

Skimming over the water's surface.

At night between the trunks, they walk,

Crisp, to the snapping of twigs;

Between the submerged mass of roots,

Caught in the striking yellow light

Upon the shallow water's shoots:

A story is unfolding of my youth.

I opened my heart's sadness, and thought:

Here I will wander for eternity.

There are no names, there are no stones,

But lives have fallen to the wayside woods.

 

 

III

 

WALKING THROUGH THE WHITE WIRE

 

 

Witch of all the world, awake,

The woods have rung, but it's too late

To rid me of this elegiacal imprint

That reduces me to the furniture of the grave.

There's a dance of death between the boughs

That calls her name and winds away...

You're here, and you're here now, to stay,

Not even my silence will turn your heart

From loving me for all eternity.

And I saw all the centuries and celebrations pass,

Marching before me, yet I turned away,

Wanting only to see the one who leaves me

In the final moments of the year.

 

I did not summon you, yet you came,

And all those dreams...I let them go,

Like afterthoughts weaving through my veins

Only to glimpse - Ullysses, in female form.

I remember those long, sleepless nights

When through my tears I ached for you:

Nothing seemed impossible, I thought,

I'll weave my flame into your heart

And make a universe of your name.

 

Seen in the garden is spectacled Death,

Not quite whole, but sure to manifest

His loathsome shape in the nothingness.

In the space of his predatory motions

His vaporous step is incomplete.

Between thumb and forefinger, I measure his pace:

Four days to reach the end of the fence.

While in the woods a darkness grows

Around the limitations of my heart.

 

My intestines drop from the trees in coils,

Bronzing in the morning sun.

And here I have widened the margin of love

To include the garden that's wrapt in death.

My insides are clay, and I am dumb;

My lungs are ballooning in my breast.

My eyes which once sparkled, are now dull

And lie at the bottom of a dry well,

Inside a half-buried porcelain pot:

Its cracked spout is my telescope

Where I'm blinded by the language of the stars.

 

Come to me, this dark evening,

Now that December's ghost is near;

I have fallen to pieces inside with thinking

Of your soft flesh and this divide,

In the garden's winter beauty, where

I weep in the place where love has died.

But love is a ghastly business,

It corrodes one's soul from the inside,

Depriving one's self of the entity within.

 

My body shall yield to spring blossoms,

To cover acres in its wide search.

But my sick heart will always remain

Locked in the sentences of your dreams.

But your heart is darker than buried bones,

And I can do no more than pass through time

Singing of the name I love.

 

This is how I imagined the end:

You cannot cross and I cannot leave;

Between shadow and light, unable to release

Our hold upon the worlds we know.

Still, the wind tells me of all you used to be,

And the dark house hides what you are now.

 

Perhaps she won't stay, but the garden remains

True to her identity, and I can never leave

This place where we were parallel in our make-believe.

But how can she not say what's in her heart

When I am sick with thinking of love?

While passion's ghost is fleeting, I know,

To be near her now is all of my world.

 

Across the water, words pass

Down the silent waves of change,

But I am beyond reason, and less of man,

Drilled into the hillside once again -

I am nothing in nature's infinite way.

And Death has won his timeless reign,

But I turn to the dark secrets of the house

Where the whispered heart has turned to stone

And the love it held has turned to dust.

 

I hear the voices that I dread,

Speaking of the past again -

They are a bridge to worlds unknown.

And here, the white lines of death are near,

Constant and caged by the twilight oaks;

A storm is gathering with cathedral fear

As the intricacies of sleep unfolds

The stages of our lives, retold.

 

Embrace me in the confusion of white death;

I linger on in after-worlds,

Bound only by the starry perimeters

And its soliloquy of dreams, that yields

A space for dying. I heave with seasons:

You are part of my world,

And I, yours, for always.

 

 

 

GOOD SAINT CROWLEY

To be sung to the tune of Good King Wenceslas

 

Good Saint Crowley, yea was born

The twelfth day of October,

Unto mysticism drawn

Yet science kept him sober.

The Plymouth Brethren nailed him to

A cross of misery –

‘I am the Captain and the crew

Of my own destiny!’

 

Good Saint Crowley set up home

But found to his dismay

Unbounded love meant that Jerome

Saw Crowley’s wizard’s way

As something quite detestable

And dull and not quite right;

His verse was so unmentionable

In society and circles polite!

 

Good Saint Crowley woke one morn

In an awful state,

He swore and cursed the Golden Dawn

And Arthur Edward Waite!

He raised his fist aloft, and said:

‘I damn you all to Hell!

Mother! Mathers! Yeats! – all dead!

And the Alpine Club as well!’

 

Good Saint Crowley stood and swore

And gazed across Loch Ness:

‘Oh my Kingdom for a whore

Or some Highland hag’s caress!’

He took the matter in his hands

And whispered ‘Oh Saint Me,

That I must rub my Godly Glans –

A College man of Trinity!’

 

Good Saint Crowley took a wife,

A fine young thing named Rose –

Declared his love and kissed his knife

At the ceremony’s close;

He did not think to kiss his bride,

Who was it then who said

The days of honour now have died

And chivalry is dead?

 

Good Saint Crowley yea praised few:

Eckenstein and Baker;

Pollitt, Jones and Bennett too,

But ‘charlatan’ and ‘faker’

Were accusations daily dealt

To cause him great distress;

And infamy often smelt

Of the British Press!

 

Good Saint Crowley died upon

The first day of December;

Sixty-seven years have gone

Yet here we still remember –

‘Do what thou wilt, without, within,

Hail from abodes of Night!

All restriction is a sin –

Thine Liberty and Love and Light!’

Barry Van-Asten

THE APE OF GOD

 

Priest, let thee rest a while;

Let wisdom be the burden of man!

Choose trouble truly as thy toil...

To fortunes run! No doubt you must

Relinquish responsibility for your lust,

When you discover the lie of your religion!

And as truth in beauty and idleness grow,

So doth it leave its owner wretched.

Let us to the dark arms of Satan go

And match him, tooth for tooth, eye for eye;

Robed in Royal red: life must lie

In the sunburnt slumbers of the dead!

 

To no longer mouth the c__k and the c__t;

To rid oneself from the fear inside;

To spill one's seed into the font

And curse God damned in priestly rape

Of whatever size and whatever shape:

Disgusting the shame that he must hide!

In whispers, they will speak his name

Between the Holy Water and the Wine!

And in doorways shall his filth be fame!

This lie he lives and this he knows

From his priestly head to his priestly toes:

On matters of love he must decline!

 

Rev. Augustus Faversham.

 

 

 

 

 

THE WAND OF SILENCE
Excerpts from the Magickal Diaries

OF AUDRAREP

PART SEVEN

Thursday 18th January 2001 e.v. 04.00 a.m. Dream: (dream within a dream) – in dream a) I dreamt I was asleep, in dream b) dreaming of something terrible. I shouted out ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ and I woke from dream b) into dream a), where I suddenly yelled out and awoke in reality. Perhaps there are multi-layers to consciousness and reality is not a starting point but a mid point in the scale (perhaps there is also an overlapping?):

Death, womb and birth (un-dream b)

?

 

Un-dream a and un-sleep

Pre-consciousness.

 

Reality

Consciousness

 

Sleep: dream a and dream b

Un-consciousness

 

Death, tomb and birth (re-birth)

?

Thursday 25th January. 03.00 a.m. I was a young boy and I lay in bed. ____ in the room too. I was afraid of a female entity. With my eyes closed, I appeared in another part of the room (like astral travelling). As I tried to establish where I was, I found myself sitting on the floor, with the bed to my left. I sensed the female presence in my bed and she spoke. I flew into a frightened rage, then [this being dream a)] I entered into dream b) where I was shaken violently by _____ asking why I shouted out and awoke. Her face was red and contorted. I screamed ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ and I left dream b) and entered reality screaming. [I have acquired a good technique for escaping these night terrors by a signal to ‘Wake up!’ which is easy to control in these multi-layered dreams].
Friday 26th January. I feel the black devil creeping upon me once more [666].
Sunday 28th January. In bed, my astral was outside of my body and would not return! My feet (were they my feet?) seemed incomprehensible. I tried using a mantra which was quite effective. I did not want to be loose; it automatically happened and continued into sleep.
Monday 29th January. My astral became lost in ecstasy at 06.00 a.m. and thus it was thrown into vision – city after city – cities of the past and of the future. People I had never seen in this life. It was easy to control, like viewing the scene from a hovering position; I could guide my vision with accurate precision, and select details etc, no matter what the distance was. There were office towers of the future (Babel/garden of Babylon). Large windows that can control the light and black coloured plastic material were used inside for furnishing, e.g. lamps. View screens which rose from the floor on stalks! I saw the whole universe as if it was in a single acorn and it was immense! Time evaporated! Yet I was Proustian, and could not escape it!
Tuesday 6th February. Slight uncontrollable floating of the astral at 03.00 a.m.
Tuesday 13th February. I must transform once again, the only way I know how – by dark means!

Tuesday 6th March. What use has been all this Magic?
Wednesday 7th March. My brain was dead with images of nothing. No future, no present, only the past!
Friday 9th March. I got ‘Do what thou wilt – A Life of Aleister Crowley’ by Lawrence Sutin from the library. It seemed to draw me to it! The sign has appeared for my new direction!
Saturday 10th March. 01.00 a.m. Asana: legs crossed, hands making the sign for ‘water’ (over solar plexus to form the downward triangle). Mantra: A.M.P.H. [Aum mani padme hum]. Formulate R.C. [Rose Cross] in Ajna. Success in discarding thoughts as they arrive! I became aware that my body seemed to be glowing when asana intensified, and that breathing was forgotten completely, and on remembering – did I breathe: have I inhaled/exhaled? It became a little jerky, probably due to the presence of food in my stomach. But a good start! I shall interpret all foreseeable phenomena as manifestations purely relative to myself! I began to feel ill. An immense pain in my head and felt awful all night!
Sunday 11th March. I woke early (06.00 a.m.) and was compelled to write, in a single sitting straight through, the following poem:

The World’s Light

 

Who, at the ragged mountains weep

When the earth turns in to sleep?

With nought for all inside my breast:

I have wondered at you, east and west!

And a vision of the stones will tell

Which way Heaven, which way Hell;

But love in death is long and deep

With nought to keep me from its sleep!

Still, some will turn their heads in shame

At the utterance of its name!

But I have kept the secret dear:

I know no shame and fear no fear!

And its touch was gentle long ago

Till many seasons changed it so.

And I found that only pain can give

Life to death that love shall live!

This morning at 08.30 a.m. – Mantra: A.M.P.H. Dharana on R.C. Its colours were brilliant and vibrant against a pale sky. I felt myself grow distant from it and I appeared to be in a long and dark corridor. Suddenly, I heard the voice of a small boy, cry out into the darkness – ‘You little thief!’ on which I returned to reality.
Note: On Saturday 10th March I made a magical ring from a single strip of platinum, which I consecrated and dedicated to Nuit. The ring was worn on the little finger of the right hand on Sunday 11th March.

A magical operation beginning Sunday 11th March And ending Monday 12th March 2001 e.v.

Because of the nature of this operation I shall remain silent [thus was born the sins of the Christian Church]. Yet it did prove beyond all possible doubt the existence of powers and intelligences which are not a part of me. Upon request the master was merciful and gave water to the chela who had the thirst of the world upon him, and upon the chalice which contained the water of life, were depictions of the ancient Gods of Khem. The young adept spoke their names aloud and upon realising the significance of the sign, as if to confirm in the heart of the young neophyte the reward of Nu, the heavens burst forth with a single thunder clap which echoed in the soul of the young warrior upon the path of the wise.
Tuesday 13th March. 12.30 a.m. R.C. in Ajna with mantra: A.M.P.H. Began well and experienced the true meaning of R.C. symbolically, but became difficult to continue due to outside distractions.

Friday 16th March. 12.15 a.m. mantra: A.M.P.H. tatwa: Prithivi (water). Invoke the God names and entered in the sign of Horus (the enterer). Tatwa vibrant in the mist beyond the portal. Partial success! I came upon the triple formula of ASNIA – LASNIAL [ASNIA framed within 31 – LA and AL of Liber Legis].

ASNIA                         LASNIAL                   AShNIA         LAShNIAL
a)1 60 50/10 1           c) 30 1 60 50 10 30        362                   422
b) 700                        d) 700 3+6+2=11

.........................................

a) 122. (see earlier record of this number) 1+2+2= 5 (Pent) 1+2X2= 6 (Hex) 5+6=11 122 V’’’=11.0453610171 [Sunday 18th March 2001 e.v.]
b) 822. 82 divided by 2=42 (4+1=5) Pent. 8 divided by 2 =4 (+2) = 6 hex. 5+6=11. 8X22= 176 (17-6=11).
c) 182. 1X8X2=16 (6-1=5) Pent. 1X8-2=6 Hex. 5+6=11. 1+8+2=11.
d) 882. 8+8-2=14 (1+4=5) Pent. 8+8X2=32 (3X2=6) Hex. 5+6=11. 88X2=176 (17-6=11).

Also:
b) 8X22=176 =17-6=11
d) 88X2=176 =17-6=11


Saturday 17th March. 02.00 a.m. Open T. [Temple]. Kabbalistic Cross. L.B.R’s (pent and hex). Tatwa: Prithivi. Very good transference of consciousness, but I somehow lost direction in the work.

Monday 19th March. 01.00 a.m. Open T. I held it wonderful and vivid. Mantra: A.M.P.H. – I spoke the invocation through the mantra, clearly, as if both were running parallel: one automatic like breathing [a) mantra] and the other willed and concentrated [b) invocation]. Quite a new breakthrough!

b) __________________________________________________

a) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Tuesday 20th March. 12.15 a.m. Open T. Mantra: A.M.P.H. Good visualisation again! Destruction:
Only the necessary shall remain to one far superior than I!
Wednesday 21st March. 01.00 a.m. Open T. Mantra: A.M.P.H. Tatwa: Prithivi (in Ajna). I expel it using the sign of the enterer (Horus) and begin the invocation. Good, though not excellent.
Thursday 22nd March. 01.00 a.m. Open T. Very good. Tatwa: Prithivi. Invocation. Almost a complete breakthrough! Loss of consciousness. In terrible pain later that day which did not ease until 9.30 p.m.
Friday 23rd March. I have found I have been making a terrible error in my invocations! (during Prithivi Tatwa). I must rectify this immediately. It is related to the Divine Names! 12.30 a.m. Open T. Kabbalistic Cross. L.B.R’s. Prithivi Tatwa. In asana. Too many outside distractions!
Saturday 24th March. 02.00 a.m. Tatwa: Prithivi. On the threshold of a breakthrough! Too many outside distractions! Yet again! Visualisation of a very high standard. But getting beyond proved difficult.
Sunday 25th March. 02.20 a.m. (BST) Open T. Prithivi Tatwa. Quite good but I intend doing a new direction with it. At 04.30 a.m. I returned to consciousness after hearing something heavy fall and crash behind me onto the floor – but there is nothing behind me except for the wall next to the bed! It was such a loud noise that it thundered like the slamming of a door in Hell! Was it the Nada? I rose and smoked. Later, I had a dream about a violet ball of light whose touch means certain death! I was running away from it. On waking, I felt a tremendous surge of energy/force within me. As if some sort of transformation had occurred. It is with me now!
Monday 26th March. 01.30 a.m. Open T. Asana: Left leg under anus. Tatwa: Prithivi. Invocation. Excellent transference of the Tatwa from Ajna, and passing in the ‘enterer’. Rising on the planes good and almost across the threshold!
Tuesday 27th March. 01.00 a.m. Open T. Prithivi Tatwa. Mantra: A.M.P.H. The transfer of the Tatwa I have found that it works better when it is just outside one’s direct vision (in the peripheral vision) which induces a feeling of separateness, especially with the Tatwa in contrasting colours, e.g. Square – not yellow but its complementary colour: mauve. Invocation of God Names which I also used as a mantra, once through in the ‘enterer’. Almost got a scent of it!

The Vision of Hands

Friday 30th March. 12.50 a.m. I decided against the Prithivi Tatwa and did the Tejas Tatwa (air). Asana: body fully stretched horizontal, hands (palms down) beneath anus. Mantra: A.M.P.H. Focused on the Tejas in Ajna and transposed it outwards in its complementary colour (turquoise-mauve). I entered in the sign of Horus – the Darkness of the Veil. I vibrate the God Names: Yhuh Tzabaoth, Michael, Aral. I also kept the image of the Tatwa below the line of my direct vision (peripheral) while I repeated the mantra which gave an automatic feeling of euphoria. I transferred the Tatwa to Tiphereth (heart) and I became conscious that my spiritual body or astral had moved forwards out from my physical body, into a sitting position. I tried again with the Tatwa in Ajna and the astral body resumed its horizontal position to emerge with my physical body. I transferred the Tatwa once again to Tiphereth and again the astral sat up automatically. I repeated the God Names as a new mantra for fifteen or twenty minutes I guess. When the mantra was repeated quickly, I found myself in the astral body wearing the robe of a neophyte with my hands making the sign of air. I rose higher and higher and looked down upon my physical body and felt immense disgust for it at ever having been imprisoned in such a thing. It became abhorrent to me and to be restricted within it seemed incomprehensible. I could not return even if I wanted to which I did not! My astral soared thirty or forty metres above the earth still repeating the mantra and still wearing the robe of the neophyte. Eventually I found myself at a temple, inside near the entrance. There was a congregation who were about to begin some sort of worship. A loud bell rang as someone wished to gain entrance to the temple. The Priest was on his way to the door to let whoever it was in and as he passed me I heard him say, gleefully: ‘Now we’ll raise Typhon!’ He then signalled to a junior to take over the proceedings, in his absence. I walked to the front of the congregation, down the aisle, facing the lectern (or altar), where the junior Priest stood. I felt terribly strong and invisible! Just then, as I was preparing to fill my lungs and burst into ‘Yhuh Tzabaoth, Michael, Aral’ the junior began some different chant, which seemed to offend me in its ‘Catholic’ nature. I turned to the first man I saw sitting in the congregation, of dark skin (they were all seated like some hidden school of initiates) and I quietly said to him: ‘Are you with us?’ he said ‘Yes’ and shook my hand. He introduced me to many there and all shook my hand joyously. Then it became dark (I assume that whoever was outside had now entered with the Priest). Someone grabbed my hand and lead me to a beautiful foreign Lady with large dark eyes and vibrant red lips. My hand was suddenly thrust into her hand and we said something and laughed. As I moved on, I felt a great force from behind me, as if a pair of hands had grabbed me forcibly by the head and were pulling me with my feet in the air as if floating. It was ecstatic and immensely celebratory. The feeling was almost Samadhic, if one could comprehend such things. Then I was face to face with the beautiful dark-eyed Lady once more. We danced, a peculiar dance, my left hand on her shoulder and my right hand in her outstretched hand. She said ‘You Tango very well’ – I replied that I had never done it before and she seemed surprised. After it ended I walked towards a glass cabinet and I admired the miniature ceramic houses inside, like gnomic cottages, many hundreds of them. I sat down, back to the wall. I made some silly disturbance and had to apologise to the congregation (who were all seated). I noticed now that I was no longer wearing my neophyte robe, but ordinary clothing. We listened to someone speak and I felt ashamed because I had not shaved, but looking round, I saw that none of the men had shaved also! I returned to consciousness at 02.20 a.m. and thus ended the Vision of Hands. [see tarot IX Hermit, also note Kaph=Hand=Yod etc – Isis/Virgo and Tejas=Fire the upward pointing triangle].
I felt terribly exhilarated and made notes, then I immediately resumed my mantra: Yhuh tzabaoth, Michael, Aral’ but nothing more occurred.
Monday 2nd April. 12.30 a.m. open T. In a seated asana. Tatwa: Tejas. Tejas in Tiphereth. I automatically rose into the air again and looked upon the physical body. It became spontaneous, even quite easy to do (it seemed). Mantra (vibrating of God Names) as before: 45 minutes to 1 hour. Very difficult and tiring! There was no sleep!
03.30 a.m. I was aware that some ‘dog-like’ animal was in my arms and trying to get at my face. Then my astral body returned to the physical body to find that I was in bed, being pulled from the bed by some magnificent ‘outer’ force! I recognised it at once (these nightly attacks have occurred many time before) as the old demon who still trails me. It almost succeeded, but I yelled out very loud ‘Stop it!’ and having power once again in my muscles I foiled the demon! I got about three hours sleep afterwards.
Tuesday 3rd April. 12.45 a.m. Open T. (very good). Tejas in Ajna, then in Tiphereth. Automatic rising in my astral body. Mantra: Yhuh Tzabaoth, Michael, Aral. Making the sign of Fire after entering in the sign of Horus. Instead of the usual ‘taking the astral to the Temple’ I placed the Temple about the astral by the force of my will upon the earth plane! A few breaks in this due to tiredness, but quite good.
Thursday 5th April. 12.50 a.m. Open T. Tatwa: Tejas. Invoke God Names. Some good astral displacement but no real results to record.
Friday 6th April. 12.45 a.m. Open T. Tatwa: Tejas. My mind is too distracted for serious work!

Saturday 7th April. 12.30 a.m. Open T. Tejas – Not Good!
Sunday 8th April – The Holy Day of the writing of the Book of the Law! 01.00 a.m. Open T. Tejas. Began well but could not get past the damn veil!

ΑΓΙΟΣ

Liber Legis – chapter one. The Reading. Phenomena occurs. 9.30 p.m. I renewed my oath cutting the + into the flesh [Tiphereth: the breast/heart] to symbolise the Great Work. At midnight I opened the T. Tatwa: Akasa (spirit). Began well. Vibration of Names: Eheieh, Agla, Yeheshuah, but too fatigued for serious work!
Monday 9th April. Holy Day. Reading of Liber Legis chapter two. Midnight. Tatwa: Akasa – useless – I am so tired!
Tuesday 10th April. Holy Day. Reading of Liber legis chapter three.
Wednesday 11th April. 12.45 a.m. Tatwa: Vayu (Air). Invocation: Shaddai El Chai, Raphael,Chassan. Very disappointing. I seem to have lost the initial impetus. Hard to concentrate. Onwards!
Thursday 12th April. 12.40 a.m. Open T. Tatwa: Vayu. Invocation. Nothing to speak of!
Friday 13th April. 01.25 a.m. Open T. Tatwa: Apas (Water). Good. God Names: Elohim Tzabaoth, Gabriel, Taliahad. Vibrated the Names into sleep. After entering in the sign of Horus there was an automatic rising of the astral body. I returned to consciousness at 06.11 a.m. and resumed the mantra (God Names). The visions were all of a watery nature – I saw a fortune beneath water (gold and gem stones) but I did not take it at first. I went back for it but it was gone. I also received encouragement for the ‘destruction’ – a new force to do thy will: destruction!
Saturday 14th April. 01.00 a.m. Open T. Tatwa: Prithivi. Spontaneous rising. I met Frater ____ at the Atlantis Bookshop. We talked about Gerald Gardner and Gerald Suster; also K. Grant, D. Fortune, Mathers and the Golden Dawn; the Watch Towers etc. I realised my vision of Hands of the 30th March concerns an Adept Master I have been in contact with.
Sunday 15th April. A little after midnight. Open T. Tatwa: Prithivi. Vibration of God Names into sleep. Consciousness regained at 04.30 a.m. when I resumed the invocation. Phenomena.
Monday 16th April 01.00 a.m. Open T. Tatwa: Prithiva. Minor success but I have exhausted it for now. Tatwa in Kether [ above the head, the crown], quite successful. Good visualisation.
Wednesday 18th April. 12.45 a.m. Open T. Tatwa: Vayu (Air). Audible invocation as before: A strange tall man (about eleven feet tall) wearing an elegant robe that seemed to flare out at the feet like a dress, appeared to me. He seemed to be cast in bronze; he was of a dull gold in colour (his flesh and his dress). Words were exchanged but nothing that seemed of great importance to me. Later, a Master spoke to me (Secret Chief) in respect of the ‘destruction’. I held my ‘____’ in my hands and he was ordering me to destroy it! I had great doubts and could not do it!
Thursday 19th April. 12.30 a.m. Tatwa: Vayu. Tree of Life. I went through the signs of the grades and their importance upon the Tree etc.
Friday 20th April. 12.30 a.m. Open T. Asana: Osiris Risen (from LVX). Tatwa: Vayu. In the sign of the Enterer (Horus) with breathing calm and steady, deep and full. 15-20 minutes in I felt I was holding something between my thumb and forefinger of the right hand which was crossed upon my breast (Osiris Risen). I had to check that nothing was in my hand! But the feeling was distinct and it continued, almost as if a disembodied hand had gripped my own. Invoke God Names. Good but I was too conscious of my own breathing. I examined the Tree of Life in this state. 05.30 a.m. consciousness returned and I resumed the mantra. 12.40 p.m. Formulate Pentagram and invoke Fire in cardinal. Some ‘Probationary’ notes on Magick.
Saturday 21st April. 12.30 a.m. Open T. Hands on Yesod. Invoke Earth Pentagram. Vibration of the Holy Names. Pentagram in Ajna, then forcibly thrust outwards. Vibrate Names slowly, breathing good. Kundalini force, like a thunderbolt, travelled up the Sushumna from Mulhadara to Kether (base of the spine to the head), like a mighty wave and all was bathed in soft blue light that had an electric quality (LVX).Then the force travelled back along Sushumna and down the legs to Malkuth. My legs trembled as if an electric current had passed down them. Then my body, which seemed to be floating in blue energy, practically disintegrated from my legs upwards – existence, time etc were unperceivable to me! Many waves travelled up and down in this way – the slow mantra of the Holy vibrations is the key! This was a great revelation and it ended at 03.30 a.m.
Monday 23rd April. Unstoppable fabric visions – confronted by Choronzon! Myself, deformed and demonic! I tried to strangle myself (doppelganger) and I was so afraid. I had to say to myself: ‘I love you! I love you!’ as a mantra. I woke but it was a long time before ‘he’ went away. Then ‘he’ became the ‘me’ I know, how others see me, and I was quite pleased – there was no longer any fear! But the struggle with my ‘self’ seemed endless!
Tuesday 24th April. 12.30 a.m. Open T. Invocation of Earth pentagram. Difficult as my mind was too active.
Wednesday 25th April. I was contacted by the Scarlet Woman: Soror Lylan.
Friday 27th April. The Book of Thoth.
Saturday 28th April. 12.30 a.m. Open T. Invocation of Fire pentagram [Yhuh Tzabaoth, Michael, Aral]. I saw the Hierophant seated at his throne; all very misty, a murky gold colour. About him were smaller figures, difficult to see, but Egyptian in aspect. [next day Sunday 29th I remembered I had invoked incorrectly, I invoked the Fire pentagram with an invocation of Air so I had actually invoked Air of Fire. I checked the correspondences: Hierophant V of the Tarot, vau, 6, Tiphereth, Trial and ordeal, Taurus, sign of Air! It represents the Aeon of Horus!]
Tuesday 1st May. 12.30 a.m. open T. Invocation of Fire. The flaming pentagram.
Wednesday 2nd May. 12.45 a.m. Open T. Breathing good. Invocation of Spirit active pentagram. Invoke the Goddess of the Stars [Nuit]. A golden pentagram in the azure blue sky. Rising on the planes with swift disembodiment. Then suddenly I threw my mantra to the wind: ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will’. I began using the symbol [Tatwa] of Spirit in the centre of an active pentagram. Partial success! Vibration=automatic rising and piercing of the veil which I was unable to sustain.
Thursday 3rd May. 02.30 a.m. Invocation of Spirit active pentagram with ‘Do what thou wilt’ as a mantra. Close again! This is the hour of the dying God, though no earthly hour!
Friday 4th May. 02.10 a.m. Open T. Invocation of Fire and Spirit pentagrams with ‘Do what thou wilt’ as a mantra.
Monday 7th May. 01.20 a.m. Open T. Invoke Fire pentagram. Quite good, but too tired for any real success!
Wednesday 9th May. 12.45 a.m. Open T. Invoke Fire pentagram. Used the Tatwa, also. I began well but was overcome by sleep.
Thursday 10th May. 12.30 a.m. Open T. Invocation of Fire pentagram. Sign of the enterer [Horus]. Vibration of Holy Names and Fire Tatwa. A good rising on the planes. Beyond the veil was a golden Hexagram relative to Fire [see the Hexagram Ritual with the two interlocking downward facing triangles]. I was standing in the South, the cardinal point of Fire. About the Hexagram were names or correspondences which I was unable to make out. It was like a representation of a part of the Tarot on the Tree of Life – Chokhmah, Geburah, Netzach. It was thundering and lightning. Later, I was seduced by the ‘faceless Nuit’ her flesh was voluptuous and soft. Later still, I was in the dark and I saw strange white fragments on the carpet, like snowflake crystals. I got up and tried to disperse them, but they only vanished to re-appear. _____ also in this room. I became fearful and told him I’ve been seeing strange things all day. He became afraid and said: ‘this is what’s sucking the night from the room!’ He didn’t have to say anymore, I knew what he meant – Abramelin! I resumed consciousness at 04.00 a.m. and continued with my mantra. [Various Fabric visions followed].
Saturday 12th May. 01.15 a.m. open T. Invocation of Fire pentagram. Strong. I used the Middle Pillar Exercise. I found myself in a landscape, lush and green, formal but a little wild. Vibrant blue sky. I could move and determine my actions completely. 6.10 p.m. Asana: left leg under anus, right over left leg. I could have done an hour quite easily or more, but ended at 6.40 p.m. 6.50 p.m. Asana: Right leg over left. I ended asana at 7.30 p.m.
Sunday 13th May. 01.30 a.m. Open T. Holy Names, breathing good. Invocation of Fire pentagram. I used the Fire Tatwa also. It burst before me, into a brilliant white pyramid under the starlit sky. I was walking up the pyramid with the Fire Tatwa in my Ajna, my eyes raised to the apex. Posture: sign of Fire. It became difficult to sustain. Mantra good and vibration of Holy Names. 03.30 a.m. I continued with the mantra A.M.P.H. using the Fire Tatwa. I invoked again and used the Fire pentagram. A dark landscape appeared, iron roots like black sooty chimneys [I had also used Adonai Ha-Aretz as a mantra]. Very earthy and definitely below. I got very close and instead of making the Fire [triangle] the main focus, I put it to one side, as if it wasn’t important, objectively, but important subjectively. No sleep!
Monday 14th May. Terrible! Complete collapse of my body! Severe dehydration! Early morning, unending vision, it was unstoppable, not unlike Crowley’s ‘Star Sponge’ vision, brilliant white specks upon the veil, as if they were a part of God! Nuit manifested around Hadit!
Tuesday 15th May. 12.45 a.m. Open T. Invocation of Fire pentagram after the Middle Pillar Exercise. Still very close.

 



 

 

THE MAGIC BOOK WORM

REVIEWS BY BARRY VAN-ASTEN

Clouds without water – by Aleister Crowley.

‘Clouds without water’ is a series of erotic love poems by Aleister Crowley, under the pseudonym of the Rev. C. Verey. The title is taken from the Book of Jude: ‘clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever’ [Jude 12, 13.]
Crowley began writing the book in October 1907 and it is inspired by a beautiful, young actress by the name of Vera Blanche Neville Snepp (1888-1953), who acted under the name Vera Neville. Crowley met her at Coulsdon in Surrey and she called herself ‘Lola’ – ‘Lola! Now look me straight between the eyes. / Our fate is come upon us. Tell me now / Love still shall arbitrate our destinies, / And joy inform the swart Plutonic brow.’ [VIII The Initiation]. Lola inspired the first four sections of the poem: I The Augur, II The Alchemist, III The Hermit and IV The Thaumaturge. She also inspired and appeared in Crowley’s ‘The Wake World’ as ‘Lola Daydream’ in ‘Konx Om Pax’ (1907). Vera married Henry Algernon Claude Graves (1877-1963), 7th Lord Graves, Baron of Gravesend in 1909. They divorced in 1922. Another of Crowley’s mistresses, the sculptress Edith Agnes Kathleen Bruce (1878-1947) inspired sections V The Black Mass, VI The Adept and VII The Vampire. Also the first letters of the lines of ‘A Terzain’ spell out the name Kathleen Bruce. Kathleen had met Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the explorer in 1906 and they were married in 1908.
Another mistress inspired the final part of the book, VIII The Initiation, she was a friend of Oscar Wilde and although Crowley does not mention her by name, this is undoubtedly Ada Leverson, nee Beddington (1862-1933), known by Wilde as ‘The Sphinx’.
On 8th July 1908 Crowley worked on ‘Clouds without water’ in Paris and in the following year it was privately printed and ‘edited from a private MS. by the Rev. C. Verey, for circulation among ministers of religion’. With an interesting preface by the good Reverend Verey, ‘Clouds without water’ is a fascinating and passionate journey of poetic lust: ‘our love is like a glittering sabre bloodied / With lives of men; upsoared the sudden sun; / The choral heaven wake; the aethyr flooded / All space with joy that you and I were one’. Beautiful!


Amphora – by Aleister Crowley.

In 1908 Aleister Crowley sent his manuscript of Christian devotional verse in praise of the Virgin Mary, anonymously to the London publishers Burns and Oates, who subsequently published the work under the title ‘Amphora’. At the same time, Crowley issued a private printing for ‘the Authoress and her intimates’ by Arden Press, with the inclusion of an epilogue disclosing an obscene sentence when reading the first letter of each line downwards and the first letter of each last word, downwards! ‘I decided to write a series of hymns to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the simplest possible style’. [‘Confessions’]
When Messrs Burns and Oates discovered the true authorship, they reacted in typical Christian fashion when confronted with anything contrary or revealing free-thinking idealism and sexual expression: they closed their eyes and put their fingers in their ears, shouting ‘Repent!’ And so the remaining copies of ‘Amphora’ which had received mixed reviews, were withdrawn.
‘Amphora’ is divided into four books, each containing thirteen hymns and beginning with this short prologue: ‘Mother and maiden! on the natural night / Embowered in bliss of roses red and white, / To Him with gold and frankincense and myrrh.’ ... ‘Those Pagans gazing on the Heavenly Host / Were blest of Father, Son and Holy Ghost; / And me, though I be as an heathen Mage, / Thou wilt accept in this my pious page.’
Crowley later re-issued the book in 1912 under the title ‘Hail Mary’, and it is unlikely to appeal to anyone not interested in Crowley and his works. Nevertheless, there are moments of simple beauty in the hymns and granted, they do lack a certain ‘dark passion’ which can be found in other Crowley poems such as his ‘Hymn to Pan’, but ‘Amphora’ shows to what extent Crowley’s magnificent creative mind could be directed. Intriguing!


Not the Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam – by Aleister Crowley.

Written in the old French-Spanish quarter of New Orleans by Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) between 1916 and 1917, ‘Not the Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam’ is a very curious little book indeed! It is an extremely inventive piece of writing composed by Crowley when he was staying near to the old ‘Absinthe House’ and for those without any background knowledge of Crowley’s life, especially his intimacy with Jerome Pollitt, it will seem rather unintelligible. It is in parts a humorous, though veiled account of Crowley’s youthful ‘adventures’ and sexual relations, which focuses on his great love: Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt (1871-1942), whom he met at Trinity College, Cambridge as an undergraduate in the October term of 1897. The relationship was to last until the summer of 1898 because of differences in interests, much to the eternal regret of Crowley, who ended their passionate affair in favour of a spiritual life. Pollitt was a ‘female impersonator’ with beautiful golden hair who performed at the College’s ‘Footlights Dramatic Club’ (he was the club’s Vice President in 1894-5 and President from 1895-1897). The whole of the book is really a ‘paean to Pollitt, whom Crowley came to regard as the greatest love of his life.
Crowley says of the book on page 817 of his ‘Confessions’ that ‘I also began from the very depths of my spiritual misery a very strange book of an entirely new kind; so much so that I describe it as ‘’A Novelissim’’. Its title is Not the Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam. It remains unfinished to this day; in fact it is hardly theoretically possible to finish it, strictly speaking. I have indeed serious qualms as to whether I have not overstepped the limits of truth in saying that I began it. To be safe, I should be content to say I wrote a good deal of it.’
During his time in New Orleans, Crowley was experimenting with morphine, cocaine and absinthe, which may explain the work’s disjointed effect upon the reader. The character of Sir Roger Bloxam is obviously Crowley and Pollitt is ‘Hippolytus’. ‘Porphyria Poppoea’ is Crowley’s anus; ‘Cardinal Mentula di Carraco’ is the great man’s penis and his testes are ‘Signor Coglio the Florentine’ and ‘Don Cojone of Logorno’, and so the book is not so much the ‘adventures’ of Sir Roger Bloxam but also the exploits of Crowley’s sexual organs. This book is a misunderstood and often overlooked masterpiece that is well worth studying! Delightful!


The Star in the West: A Critical Essay upon the Works of Aleister Crowley – by J. F. C. Fuller.

The Star in the West was written by Captain (later Major-General) John Frederick Charles Fuller (1878-1966) who was born in Chichester, West Sussex, and it came to be written as an entry for a competition devised by the poet and occultist Aleister Crowley. The best entry would receive a winning prize of £100 and the competition was announced in the press of the time as ‘The Chance of the Year! The Chance of the Century!! The Chance of the Geologic Period!!!’
Crowley was in Darjeeling when he received a letter from the young Captain Fuller of the First Oxfordshire Light Infantry, stationed at Lucknow, informing him of the Army officer’s wish to enter the competition.
In the spring of 1906, Fuller, who had fought in the South African War of 1899-1902, contracted enteric fever and was invalided home. During the summer, he met Crowley and his wife Rose at the Hotel Cecil in the Strand. By October of that year Fuller had finished his essay on Crowley’s poetic works which he began writing at Lucknow, titled ‘The Star in the West’ (Crowley, of course being the ‘Star’) and it was posted to Crowley at his Highland home, Boleskine, on the shore of Loch Ness. As there were no other entrants in the competition the essay won hands down and it was published the following year in 1907. Fuller never received the prize money, Crowley flaunted his wealth but behind the pretence of riches he was actually quite financially disadvantaged! Fuller being a gentleman he would probably not have mentioned such things as prize money. Besides, he was becoming enamoured of the man!
And so Fuller and Crowley became great friends, seeing each other most days to work on some writing or other. Fuller helped with the editing of the great magical periodical ‘The Equinox’, producing works such as ‘The Temple of Solomon the King’ (first four parts), ‘The Treasure House of Images’ (The Equinox, vol I, number iii, supplement) and ‘The Chymical Jousting of Brother Perardua with the Seven Lances that he brake’ (The Equinox, vol I, number i). He was also a very good draughtsman producing the marvellous images for the Four Watch Towers in The Equinox, vol I, number vii.
Fuller subscribed to the Rationalist Press Association which is probably how he came upon the advert for the competition. He had previously contributed a few poems and articles to The Agnostic Journal and he agreed with Crowley that Christianity was ‘historically false, morally infamous, politically contemptible and socially pestilential’ [Confessions. p.539] Fuller became the loyal devotee of Crowley’s poetry and his high praise and gushing adoration for him flows throughout The Star in the West: ‘’’Behold the Lion... hath prevailed to open the Book and to loose the seven seals thereof.’’ For until now ‘’No man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the Book, neither to look thereon.’’ Yet through the astrolabe of his mind and in the alembic of his heart Aleister Crowley has opened the book, breaking not only the first six seals, but the seventh also.’ [Preface to The Star in the West]. And again:
‘And I for one take it that the prophecy has now been fulfilled: Aleister Crowley is the artist Elias, the marvellous being whom God has permitted to make a discovery of the highest importance in his illuminative philosophy of Crowleyanity, in the dazzling and flashing light of which there is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered’. [‘Crowleyanity’ in The Star in the West]. Even so, Crowley was not altogether happy:
‘I could have wished a more critical and less adoring study of my work; but his enthusiasm was genuine, and guaranteed our personal relations in such sort that my friendship with him is one of the dearest memories of my life.’ [Confessions. p. 543]
‘He (Fuller) had originally intended his essay to conclude with the sixth chapter, and he had scrupulously avoided any reference to the magical and mystical side of my work; nay, even to the philosophical side so far as that was concerned with transcendentalism. But I showed him that the study must be incomplete unless he added a chapter expounding my views on the subjects. Thus chapter seven came to be written’. [Confessions. p. 540-41]
And so the seven chapters came into being, representing the Book of the Seven Seals and the chapters are named: I. The Looking-Glass, II. The Virgin, III. The Harlot, IV. The Mother, V. The Old Bottle, VI. The Cup and VII. The New Wine. Fuller also writes in great detail on the concept of ‘Crowleyanity’ and he looks at various philosophical points in connection with such great thinkers as: Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, and wonders at such cosmological and religious notions as Time, Space, The Qabalah, Buddhism, Agnosticism, Yoga, Mysticism and Ceremonial Magic.
However, their friendship began to disintegrate following the Jones v the Looking Glass libel trial which concluded on 27th April 1911, in which Crowley’s friend George Cecil Jones (1873-1960) sued the racing journal for claiming that his association with Crowley brought his own reputation into disrepute, Crowley being known as a publisher of pornographic literature and a suspect homosexual at a time when it was illegal (he was in fact bisexual). Jones lost the case and Fuller, not wishing to suffer the same humiliation and loss of reputation; cut his ties with Crowley and went on to became a brilliant military strategist, especially in tank warfare during the First World War. But for a short time Fuller really did believe that Crowley the poet was the new messiah of the Aeon of Horus – ‘It has taken 100,000,000 years to produce Aleister Crowley. The world has indeed laboured, and has at last brought forth a man.’


The Simon Iff Stories and Other Works – by Aleister Crowley.

Published by Wordsworth Editions in 2012, this wonderful little book and accompaniment to the previous ‘The Drug and Other Stories’ contains the complete ‘Simple Simon’ stories featuring the wildly eccentric mystic detective Simon Iff. Crowley conceived the character of the hugely intellectual and cultured Iff as an idealised image of himself in old-age. Throughout these fascinating and engrossing stories, the great mystic applies his knowledge of philosophy, Taoism, logic and the principles of Thelemic wisdom in the art of solving the various crimes, like chess problems, that come his way. Not being a true devotee of the detective/crime novel, I thought perhaps I would lose interest, but my interest was sustained and of course, Crowley’s brilliant yet often dark wit and humour are an absolute delight, such as this from the story ‘Not good enough’, page 100 in The Scrutinies of Simon Iff:
‘In summer,’ he explained to them, after the first greetings, ‘meat heats the blood. I am therefore compelled to restrict my diet to foie gras and peaches.’
‘But foie gras is meat.’
‘The animal kingdom,’ said the mystic, ‘is distinguished, roughly speaking, from the vegetable, by the fact that animals have power to move freely in all directions. When therefore a goose is nailed to a board, as I understand is necessary to the production of foie gras, it becomes ipso facto a vegetable; as a strict vegetarian, I will therefore have some more.’ And he heaped his plate.’
The first six stories in ‘The Scrutinies of Simon Iff’ are set in England and France and features the marvellous ‘Hemlock Club’ to which Simon Iff is a member. The stories were published in a monthly periodical called ‘The International’ in New York, edited by George Sylvester Viereck; Crowley would become its contributing Editor from 1917-18, and thus in an act of self-promotion, added his own stories and magical essays within its pages. Crowley published the ‘Scrutinies’ under a pseudonym – Edward Kelly. The stories and their publication dates in The International are: ‘The Big Game’ (vol xi, 9. Sept 1917), ‘The Artistic Temperament’ (vol xi, 10. Oct 1917), ‘Outside the Bank’s Routine’ (vol xi, 11. Nov 1917), ‘The Conduct of John Briggs’ (vol xi, 12. Dec 1917), ‘Not Good Enough’ (vol xii, 1. Jan 1918) and ‘Ineligible’ (vol xii, 2. Feb 1918). Crowley says of the ‘Scrutinies’ and the Law of Thelema that:
‘The Scrutinies of Simon Iff are perfectly good detective stories, yet they not only show a master of the Law as competent to solve the subtlest problems by considerations based upon the Law, but the way in which crime and unhappiness of all sorts may be traced to a breach of the Law. I show that failure to comply with it involves an internal conflict. (Note that the fundamental principle of psychoanalysis is that neurosis is caused by failure to harmonize the elements of character). The essence of the Law is the establishment of right relations between any two things which come into contact; the essence of such relations being ‘’love under will’’. The only way to keep out of trouble is to understand and therefore to love every impression of which one becomes conscious.’ (Confessions. p 828)
The next collection of twelve stories is titled ‘Simon Iff in America’ and they were written, or at least ten of them were written, in December 1917. Crowley lived in America from 1914-1919 and it is a fascinating and magically productive period of his life. The stories are: 1) ‘What’s in a name?’ 2) ‘A sense of incongruity’. 3) ‘The ox and the wheel’. 4) ‘An old head on young shoulders’. 5) ‘The Pasquaney puzzle’. 6) ‘The monkey and the buzz-saw’. 7) ‘A dangerous safe trick’. 8) ‘The biter bit’. 9) ‘Nebuchadnazzer’. 10) ‘Suffer the little children’. 11) ‘Who gets the diamonds?’ 12) ‘The natural thing to do’.
In 1916, Crowley left New York for New Hampshire to stay at the home of his friend the astrologer Evangeline Adams, who owned a house she called ‘the Zodiac’ in the village of Hebron, near Pasquaney Lake (Newfound Lake). She had a small studio built near the house and Crowley stayed there from the summer to the autumn of 1916 and called it ‘Adam’s Cottage’ in his correspondence. Many of the stories have biographical details drawing upon descriptions of his friends and lovers which are ‘golden nuggets’ to the Crowley enthusiast.
The next collection, written around 1918, is titled ‘Simon Iff Abroad’ and the three surviving stories from the original four are: ‘Desert justice’; ‘In the swamp’ and ‘The haunted sea Captain’.
The following two stories, also from 1918, come under the title ‘Simon Iff, Psychoanalyst’: ‘Psychic compensation’ and ‘Sterilised Stephen’.
The character of Simon Iff appeared in Crowley’s first novel ‘The Butterfly-Net’ written in 1917 and published as ‘Moonchild’ by Mandrake Press in 1929.
As a departure from the ‘mystic detective’ series are a collection of eight stories which were mostly published in The International, called ‘Golden Twigs’. These stories of pagan belief were inspired by Sir J. G. Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion’. The stories and their publication dates are: ‘The king of the wood’ (written 30 Aug 1916. Published in The International under the pseudonym Mark Wells. Vol xii, 4. April 1918). ‘The stone of Cybele’ (written 6-7 Aug 1916. Published in The Equinox, vol iii, 10. 1986). ‘The Oracle of the Corcian Cave’ (written 3-4 Sept 1916. Published in ‘Golden Twigs’ ed. Martin P Starr. 1988). ‘The burning of Melcarth’ (written 2 Sept 1916. Published in The International under the pseudonym Mark Wells. Vol xi, 10. Oct 1917). ‘The hearth’ (written 13-14 Sept 1916. Published in The International under the pseudonym Mark Wells. Vol xi, 11. Nov 1917). ‘The old man of the Peepul-Tree’ (written 10-11 Sept 1916. Published in The International under the pseudonym James Grahame. Vol xii, 4. April 1918). ‘The Mass of Saint Secaire’ (written 31 Aug-1 Sept 1916. Published in The International under the pseudonym Barbery de Rochechouart [author] and Mark Wells [translator]. Vol xii, 2. Feb 1918). ‘The God of Ibreez’ (written 8-9 Sept 1916. Published in The International under the pseudonym Mark Wells. Vol xii, 1. Jan 1918).
With an Introduction by William Breeze and 560 pages including notes and sources, ‘The Simon Iff Stories and Other Works’ is an indispensible addition to any collection! Inspiring and definitely intriguing!

PEGAMINA

By BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

PART SEVEN

 

THE REMARKABLE NONSENSE BIRD

The sunlight fell through the trees like a beautiful river of golden beams as Pegamina awoke, and she could see through a clearing in the woods the distant shapes of the landscape, all grey and green and sad and lonely. She thought to herself how haunted it all seems, not in the frightening way, but in a strange and romantic sort of way that one often finds in dreams; where everything is so ancient and so full of sorrow. It seemed to go deep into her heart as she stood there at the edge of the wood, looking at the rolling fields and ruinous woodland before her.
While she was deep in these thoughts, she noticed a small bright object on top of a hill, not too far away, but she was unable to see quite what it was. After walking for some time, the light on the hill became brighter and brighter. ‘I wonder what it is?’ she thought to herself. Climbing up the hill she could suddenly see what the bright object was, for there, at the very top of the hill, was a small ball of fire, and it seemed very unhappy!
‘Who are you and why are you so sad?’ inquired Pegamina of the bright object.
‘I’m a star and I’m sad because I fell from the sky!’ it replied.
‘That was very careless of you, wasn’t it?’
‘I know! I’m not a very bright star, in fact, I’m rather dim and clumsy; I’m always bumping into things!’ the star said in some distress.
‘Silly little star. How I wonder what you are!’ laughed Pegamina.
‘Please don’t make fun of me, it hurts and when I’m hurt I lose a little of my twinkle!’ And the star sobbed.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Is there no way for you to return to where you came from?’
‘I’ve thought ever so hard about it, so hard that my light has grown dim, and now I don’t know what to do!’ said the poor star with tears in its eyes.
‘Don’t cry star. I will help you, I promise’. And with this the star stopped crying and said ‘you’re very kind, but I don’t know what anyone can do for me!’
Pegamina sat beside the star and thought a very long time over the problem. And every so often, the star would look to Pegamina, as if expecting some answer, but no answer would come. Pegamina felt sad for the star and all she could say was ‘it is so very far away, isn’t it?’
As the shadows lengthened and day was slowly turning into night, they were both startled to hear the sound of singing coming from the woods:

 

‘Have you ever seen such a marvellous fowl?

Have you ever heard such a fearsome growl?

Grrr! Grrr! Grrr! Grrr!

The greatest phenomena in feather and fur!

From the tip of my nose to the ring on my toe,

Talking nonsense wherever I go, don’t you know!’

Now, this odd-looking creature that had been singing was now walking backwards at a fantastic speed up the hill like a steam engine, towards Pegamina and the star. Not noticing the little star, the backwards-walking creature sat upon the poor star’s face and began to read its book!
‘I think you’re on my face!’ said the timid little star.
‘Your face?’ replied the odd-looking creature.
‘Yes, my face’.
‘Oh excuse me I thought it was someone else’s face!’
‘I can assure you it is my face!’
‘My apologies!’ and the strange backward-walking creature stood up only to sit back down with greater force upon the star!
‘Do you mind!’ said the star through its flattened mouth.
‘Oh, was that your face again? I thought it was a bit warm!’
‘Still my face!’
‘Then may I suggest that you remove it from my posterior at once sir, at once... my posterior, sir’ said the strange creature, pointing to its tail. ‘Your face, sir’ it said, pointing to the star. ‘Worlds apart, sir, worlds apart!’ It boomed, expressing the distance with its hands before returning to its book.
‘I think you’re very rude! Who do you think you are?’ said Pegamina quite defiantly. And the creature stood up, releasing the star, and said:
‘I am the remarkable nonsense bird. I have five legs, count them: one, two, three, four and five; and look, one toe. How do I know? Look again!’ and the bird raised one of its five legs to reveal a beautiful toe that was wearing a ring of gold with a sparkling emerald set into it.
‘That’s a beautiful ring!’ said Pegamina, admiring it.
‘Ah yes, but look at the toe, look at the toe; isn’t it the finest toe you have ever seen?’
Pegamina never answered, for as far as toes go, one looks much like another. And so the nonsense bird sat next to the star and returned to its book.
‘What is the book about?’ Pegamina asked, feeling a little awkward.
‘It’s about half-way through!’ answered the nonsense bird.
‘But there are no words in it!’ said the little star, feeling brave.
‘That’s because it has nothing to say!’ then the nonsense bird began to sing:

‘I will not reverse into a world

That is not prepared for me;

I go backwards to see where I have been

Don’t you see, don’t you see, don’t you see!’

‘I think you’re very noisy for such a small thing’ said Pegamina.
‘Nonsense! Don’t you know that noise is silence, only louder!’
‘What silly things you say!’ Peg said wearily.
‘Yes, but I can see in your eyes that you are head over toe in love with me. Oh say you’ll be mine and toe-gether in good and fowl weather, we’ll go to gather wild bluebells and heather, with sweet hand in fine feather, for ever and ever...’
‘No never! No never!’ screamed Peg.
‘Never? What never?’
‘Never! No never!’ And the nonsense bird swooned:
‘O heartless beauty, I die before you. My bruised heart crushed with a careless word; has not a nonsense bird feeling? Has he not two eyes, five legs and a toe? Ohhh, ohhh I am a broken-hearted bird, broken by a careless word! I offered her my love and the use of my toe, to hang pretty things on and still she said “no”. And in time, many will come to this hill and stare at where the remarkable nonsense bird gave his life for a beautiful girl who did not care to be the remarkable nonsense bird’s remarkable nonsense wife!’ And the nonsense bird fell, as if dead, to the ground in one of the greatest and longest performances ever seen in theatrical history, crying ‘I wash my hands of love!’
‘Birds don’t have hands!’ Pegamina said to the pitiful sight of feathers and tears lying on the ground before her, to which the nonsense bird sprang to his feet and said:
‘Oh yes, some handsome birds have some hands and some gruesome birds have yet to grow some!’
Pegamina looked at the nonsense bird and began to feel sorry for it. After all, it can’t help talking complete nonsense, it’s what it does. So Pegamina apologised for hurting its feelings and the nonsense bird said sorry to the star for sitting on its face. Now, surely between the three of them they would find some solution for returning the star to its proper place. And so Pegamina explained the star’s distressful situation to the nonsense bird.
‘How very perplexing, said the nonsense bird, walking backwards in a circle, ‘and how fortunate for you that I should happen to come this way! Now, I shall have to apply all my scientific knowledge to the problem, of course.’
‘Oh of course’ Peg said, letting the nonsense bird feel very important indeed.
‘Let us take the astronomical point of view. Now, our sad, spherical friend here, who has not the sufficient propulsion, nor I might add, the intelligence to return to his celestial orbit, wishes to do so, correct?’
‘Correct!’ answered the star and Pegamina together.
‘Now, if we apply the laws of physics, we can see that his mass is greater than gravity, and there is no way of changing his weight or his dimension for that matter, agreed?’
‘Agreed!’ answered Pegamina and the star.
‘Then let us take the mathematical stance. Logic tells us that by taking the locomotive radius and multiplying it, thus creating an arc of forty-five degrees, one is able, theoretically, of course, to predict the positive energy one needs to propel such an object into motion; and by subtracting the combined mass and adding the total to the molecular structure of the body, in its inert state, of course, the negative will, I calculate, be transformed into a positive flux and thus resolve itself in flight. Of course, one has to divide the horizontal factor by the vertical, that’s very important!’ And here the nonsense bird drew a line in the ground with its toe to demonstrate his theory.
‘That’s all very clever and we are not all blessed with your intelligence so could you make it a little clearer so that we can understand?’ asked Peg, a little bemused.
‘Well, to put it another way – upwards!’
‘Are you saying that it is possible?’ said the star with a faint smile.
‘Oh yes, it’s all a question of advanced mechanics and aeronautics. But let us not forget that it’s also necessary that the wind should be favourable and blowing in the right direction!’
‘And how will we know when we have the right direction?’ Peg said with a yawn.
‘Simple! I stick my toe in the air, thus!’ and the nonsense bird raised one of its five legs a wiggled his toe in the air.
‘It all seems very scientific; couldn’t you make it a little easier to understand?’ Peg said again.
‘Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said?’ the nonsense bird squawked.
‘Oh yes, but we don’t have your great learning, do we star?’ and the star giggled.
‘Well, to put it in simpler terms: what comes down, must inevitably, go up!’
‘How?’ cried the star.
‘How?’ yelled Pegamina.
‘Simple!’ replied the nonsense bird, ‘the star will climb upon my back and I will fly into the air!’
Pegamina clasped her hands and jumped into the air several times, shouting ‘nonsense bird, what a marvellous bird! Have you heard, have you heard of the nonsense bird? From the tip of his nose to the ring on his toe, talking nonsense wherever he goes, don’t you know!’ And the nonsense bird blushed and smiled at Pegamina as the star climbed upon his back with the biggest grin you ever did see!
‘Hold on tight, star!’ shouted Pegamina.
‘I will, and thank you so much! Remember, whenever you look up into the night sky and see my twinkle, you must know in your heart I am twinkling for you and you only!’ Pegamina flung her arms around the star and the nonsense bird and wished them a safe journey, and before she knew it they were both in the air. The star smiled at her as he became brighter and brighter and higher and higher they flew. And the nonsense bird turned his head towards Pegamina and shouted:
‘Look at the toe! Look at the toe! Look at the...’ and they were both gone.

 

Have you ever seen such a marvellous fowl?

 

PART EIGHT

 

GOBLIN AND GARGOYL – AN INTERLUDE

Deep in the forest of whispering oaks, by the shores of the Loveless Lake, stood an old monastery in which dwelt a very ancient order of monks whose labours were solely dedicated to the pursuit of love, for this was their God; the one true ideal of their worship. The devotion to which the monks gave to their God was more than just a divine belief in something which may or may not be. In fact, so intense was their devotion that sleep had been forbidden to them on account that it interferes with their holy obligations. And so many of the monks died before they reached adulthood, thus sustaining their pure and innocent beauty into the afterlife! But a short life was a little price to pay in the service of their supreme Lord of all things – Love.
That it was an industrious order there is no doubt, for every day began with a reading of the divine scriptures and a little time was given to artistic pursuits, which were wholly encouraged in the monastery, for art is a labour of love and the creation of beautiful things was seen as the purest manifestation in which love was present; for let us not forget that here, the artistic soul of man was born! In the evenings, the monks attended mass where beautiful songs are sung in praise of love, and where each monk partakes of the sacrament: a rose petal with a single teardrop upon it, to symbolise the pleasure and the pain of love. Then the mass ends with the raising of the bronze cup of love, and with the words of Our Love’s Prayer spoken aloud:

‘Love, be thy word

In sorrow, pity and regret,

For now, tomorrow and always –

Praise the Holy name of Love!’

After a light meal the night is spent in individual contemplation, endlessly turning the pages of long forgotten books in their search to discover the lost language of love, and to find long forgotten answers to questions they cannot forget, such as: what is love? Who is love? Why is love? Where is love? And when is love?
Because the monastery is a closed order the monks are strictly confined within its walls, having nothing whatsoever to do with the nearby villages of Woe and Despair, who think the monks a little sinister in their mysterious ways. It was a grand and ornate monster of a building, surrounded on three sides by woodland, with its remaining side bordering the chilly waters of the Loveless Lake, which sweeps right across to the edge of Despair. The walls of the monastery were taller than the oak trees beyond them and legend says that they were built by one man who lay down and died, having completed the task. Turrets and towers rise above the rooftops of the monastery, displaying fine examples of stone carvings. On one particular tower can be seen the carved figures of a goblin and a gargoyle, that seem to be more functional, in a peculiar sort of way, than decorative, for they were placed so high upon the tower to ward off all hateful thoughts emanating from those who do not believe in love. But it was purely superstition on behalf of the monks.
Each night, the stone goblin and the stone gargoyle would talk by the light of the moon, for as we all know, goblins and gargoyles know nothing of sleep.
‘How the moon becomes you, proud Goblin’.
‘Gargoyle, may I remind you that pride is an ugly word, especially in your mouth, and I will not be associated with ugliness!’ said the goblin.
‘I just meant how noble you look beside the moon, my dear Goblin’.
‘Then that is well, for what mere moon could contain such magnificence as you or I? It is a perfect fright to behold when placed so carelessly beside such handsome fellows as ourselves’.
‘We are beautiful in our gruesomeness, aren’t we Goblin?’
‘Indeed we are, for I believe there is not one soul who can say they have gazed upon our astonishing, and may I say distinguished features and not wept with admiration, when we are met by moonlight’.
‘Then you don’t believe it is the moon that draws tears of admiration?’
‘Of course not Gargoyle, if it were so, then why would those vulgar children from the village throw stones at it and shout ‘’monster!’’?’
‘But they always miss and hit you Goblin’.
‘Ahh, the price one pays for beauty. It is a cruel game that nature plays Gargoyle, to place our beauty before the moon, to shield it from those less fair than ourselves’.
‘Then you don’t believe, perhaps, that our beauty is a little misunderstood, and for some strange reason, those stones are not meant for the moon, but for us?’
‘Ahh, I see you have a heart of stone, dear Gargoyle, a heart of stone...’
It was a long time before another word was said, as both the goblin and the gargoyle were so pre-occupied with their own importance, that each forgot about the others existence. Eventually, the silence was broken by the gargoyle:
‘Goblin, what is love?’
And the goblin replied with genuine surprise – ‘Such a big question in so little words Gargoyle’.
‘But can it be answered Goblin?’
‘You know, everything has an answer Gargoyle, no matter how complex the question’.
‘Then can you answer my question dear Goblin?’
‘I can try Gargoyle, I can certainly try. Let me give you my own theories on love. But there is no one view on the subject, for its character is so perplexing. You have seen for yourself how the monks strive towards this same answer’.
‘I have seen Goblin, yet I have not seen, for they get no closer to knowing for all their words, books and art’.
‘And they will get no closer than you nor I, for love cannot be summoned by a cup, and it cannot be found within the pages of a book, for its name is sorrow and it dwells in the heart. You see, love has many ways and it strikes without warning, or so I have heard, and can depart just as quickly as it strikes’.
‘Then it is not eternal like the stars and the moon our poets have written about?’
‘It lasts but a short breath, and comes in many names, with only one true purpose – to destroy; weaving its charms into the heart only to suck the pitiful heart dry’.
'But does it not bring with it happiness? I was led to believe that love is joyful, is it not so Goblin?’
‘It is true that love is beyond all riches, I’m sure, for it cannot be bought or sold’.
‘Then love has no value?’
‘On the contrary dear Gargoyle, for the price of love is a broken heart’.
‘I should rather an unbroken heart than a broken one, I think. But tell me, why do so many willingly fall into its arms if it causes so much pain?’
‘Because love cannot speak and the awfulness of love, with all its pain, gives those who practice it, the false hope that life is beautiful, and that their existence really does mean something to someone, which of course, it doesn’t. For no matter how deeply one loves, one still cannot become two! We are all as stars in a lonely universe, pretending there is more... but why are your thoughts turned to love, dear Gargoyle?’
‘I have entertained no other thought, dear Goblin’.
‘Then let it be said that love is a bad lot of mischief and in surrendering to its ways a whole heap of despair will follow. For the fact is, love is a delusion, it makes one blind to the truth. Oh initially there is much to be said for it, of course, but nothing is as it appears when one is a victim of love’s arrows’. And here the goblin looked at the gargoyle and they both laughed.
‘Yes’, said the gargoyle, ‘I think I understand a little now, you say love makes one blind to the truth, I think it must be so also, for is it not true, that love makes those who are its slaves, want to give themselves completely and wholly to the object of their love in return for another love and devotion, only to find that it’s not worth having?’
‘You astound me dear Goblin in your lucid wisdom, you are indeed an intellectual sir, and I quite agree. It is better to remain ignorant of such things, than to be a fool under the spell of love’.
‘Yes, indeed’ said gargoyle, ‘it’s better for all who are concerned to live a lie than to die a hopeless liar, for they little know how they tear themselves to pieces’.
‘Never said a truer word dear Gargoyle, for I myself find the cold waters of the lake below more inviting than the warm arms of love, for the result is just the same: death!’
‘Exactly dear Goblin, for death conquers all in the end. And don’t you remember those many long winters ago, how we watched that poor boy build himself a snow maiden in the woods, and how he returned every day to sit with her. I don’t think we had ever seen such devotion before had we Goblin?’
‘No never, it was astonishing’.
‘But how sad it was when he returned one day to find that she had gone, and oh how he searched the woods for her’.
‘Love is cruel Gargoyle’.
‘Indeed it is. And do you remember how the boy returned in the summer and fell in love with the little bluebell at the edge of the wood, and how every day he came and watered it with his tears?’
‘Ahh, how dearly he loved his little bluebell and oh how he cried when he returned to find she had gone. I had never seen so many tears Gargoyle’.
‘And I had never seen such a fragile heart broken in two like that before’.
‘How love ruins the pure and gentle in all of us is truly a crime dear Gargoyle, truly a crime...’
Just then, the monks began to appear below for their midnight praise to the nature of love.
‘Here they come again’, said the gargoyle.
‘What fools they are!’ said the goblin.

 

The Goblin and the Gargoyle