The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

LIBER CORDIS CINCTI SERPENTE 39. Before I saw Thee Thou wast already with me; I was smitten through by Thy marvellous spear. 40. I was stricken as a bird by the bolt of the thunderer; I was pierced as the thief by the Lord of the Garden. 41. O my Lord, let us sail upon the sea of blood! 42. There is a deep taint beneath the ineffable bliss; it is the taint of generation. 43. Yea, though the flower wave bright in the sunshine, the root is deep in the darkness of earth. 44. Praise to thee, O beautiful dark earth, thou art the mother of a million myriads of myriads of flowers. 45. Also I beheld my God, and the countenance of Him was a thousandfold brighter than the lightning. Yet in his heart I beheld the slow and dark One, the ancient one, the devourer of His children. 46. In the height and the abyss, O my beautiful, there is no thing, verily, there is no thing at all, that is not altogether and perfectly fashioned for Thy delight. 47. Light cleaveth unto Light, and filth to filth; with pride one contemneth another. But not Thou, who art all, and beyond it; who art absolved from the Division of the Shadows. 48. O day of Eternity, let Thy wave break in foamless glory of sapphire upon the laborious coral of our making! 49. We have made us a ring of glistening white sand, strewn wisely in the midst of the Delightful Ocean. 50. Let the palms of brilliance flower upon our island; we shall eat of their fruit, and be glad. 51. But for me the lustral water, the great ablution, the dissolving of the soul in that resounding abyss. 52. [havea little son like a wanton goat; my daughter is 87