Jephthah and Other Mysteries

.PRELUDE. “I say fearlessly to the fanatics and bigots of the present day= You have cast down the Sublime and Infinite One from His throne, and in his stead have placed the demon of unbalanced force ; you have substituted a deity of disorder and jealousy for a God of order and of Love ; you have perverted the teachings. of the Crucified One !”"—McGregor Mathers. EFORE the darkness, earlier than being, When yet thought was not, shapeless and un-- - seeing, Made misbegotten of deity on death, There brooded on the waters the strange breath Of an incarnate hatred. Darkness fell And chaos, from prodigious gulphs of hell. Life, that rejoiced to travail with a man, Looked where the cohorts of destruction ran, Saw darkness visible, and was afraid, Seeing. There grew like Death a monster shade, Blind as the coffin, as the covering sod Damp, as the corpse obscene, the Christian God. So to the agony dirges of despair Man cleft the womb, and shook the icy air With bitter cries for light and life and love. But these, begotten of the world above, Withdrew their glory, and the iron world Rolled on its cruel way, and passion furled b