The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

LIBER CORDIS CINCTI SERPENTE 44. I have sucked out the blood with my lips; I have drained Her beauty of its sustenance; I have abased Her be- fore me, I have mastered Her, I have possessed Her, and Her life is within me. In Her blood I inscribe the secret riddles of the Sphinx of the Gods, that none shall understand,—save only the pure and voluptuous, the chaste and obscene, the androgyne and the gynander that have passed beyond the bars of the prison that the old Slime of Khem set up in the Gates of Amennti. 45. O my adorable, my delicious one, all night will I pour out the libation on Thine altars; all night will I burn the sac- rifice of blood; all night will I swing the thurible of my de- light before Thee, and the fervour of the orisons shall in- toxicate Thy nostrils. 46. O Thou who camest from the land of the Elephant, girt about with the tiger’s pell, and garlanded with the lotus of the spirit, do Thou inebriate my life with Thy madness, that She leap at my passing. 47. Bid Thy maidens who follow Thee bestrew us a bed of flowers immortal, that we may take our pleasure there- upon. Bid Thy satyrs heap thorns among the flowers, that we may take our pain thereupon. Let the pleasure and pain be mingled in one supreme offering unto the Lord Adonai! 48. Also I heard the voice of Adonai the Lord the de- sirable one concerning that which is beyond. 49. Let not the dwellers in Thebai and the temples thereof prate ever of the Pillars of Hercules and the Ocean of the West. Is not the Nile a beautiful water? 50. Let not the priest of Isis uncover the nakedness of Nuit, for every step is a death and a birth. The priest of Isis lifted the veil of Isis, and was slain by the kisses of her 95