Confessions of Aleister Crowley

319 The King-Ghost wears a crown of hopes forgotten: ....Dead loves are woven in his ghastly robe; Bewildered wills and faiths grown old and rotten ....And deeds undared his sceptre, sword and globe. ........Keep us, O Mary maid, ........What time the King-Ghost goes arrayed! The Hell-Wind whistles through his plumeless pinions; ....Clanks all that melancholy host of bones; Fate's principalities and Death's dominions ....Echo the drear discord, the tuneless tones. ........Keep us, dear God, from ill, ........What time the Hell-Wind whistles shrill. The King-Ghost hath no music but their rattling; ....No scent but death's grown faint and fugitive; No fight but this their leprous pallor battling ....Weakly with night. Lord, shall these dry bones live? ........O keep us in the hour ........Wherein the King-Ghost hath his power! The King-Ghost girds me with his gibbering creatures, ....My dreams of old that never saw the sun. He shows me, in a mocking glass, their features, ....The twin fiends "Might-have-been" and "Should-have-done". ........Keep us, by Jesu's ruth, ........What time the King-Ghost grins the truth! The King-Ghost boasts eternal usurpature; ....For in this pool of tears his fingers fret I had imagined, by enduring nature, ....The twin gods "Thus-will-I" and "May-be-yet". ........God, keep us most from ill, ........What time the King-Ghost grips the will! Silver and rose and gold what flame resurges? ....What living light pours forth in emerald waves? What inmost Music drowns the clamorous dirges? {520} Shrieking they fly, the King-Ghost and his slaves. Lord, let Thy Ghost indwell, And keep us from the power of Hell! Amen. The triumphant answer is simply the mystic's affirmation of interior certainty. No doubt this expresses my attitude at the time: I was still a little child. But as I grew, so did the doubt. I saw that the answer given in the "King-Ghost" was insufficient. I realized subconsciously what is the hardest thing of all for any of us to realize; that we are each "one, eternal and individual", that there is no one on whom we should rely, that such doubts should be destroyed, neither by the rational method of refuting them nor by taking refuge with external power --- one must perform an arbitrary act of manhood. Nay! I deliberate deep and long, Yet find no answer fit to make To thee. The weak beats down the strong.