Oracles

TO EXPLAIN Written in the desert, near the Pyramids of Sakkarah. THESE are the very oracles of Cumæ.1 They are called so because of the quotation from Vergil which I dis- remember, but hope to find when I can borrow an Æneid.2 The sense is of old leaves swept into the dusty corners of the mind, no part of the main current of my thought ; yet curious, not altogether bad, in a sense worth saving. Maybe I had done better to entitle the book “ Resurrec- tion Pie ” ; but all’s one.3 They are not completed, and never will be, till they fall under the eyes of the literary heir of the Chicago Professor who rewrote Keats. I cannot complete them, for the men are verily dead who wrote them ;4 yet respect for their memory forbids me to destroy them.5 But they cumber the case of stout leather and royal vellum wherein they have long6 reposed, if writings can repose which evoke but disgust each time the master’s eye7 falls saturnine upon them. The devil take them !8 so, lest I should be thought to swear—never9 a habit of mine !—to the “ devil ” they shall go.10 ALEISTER CROWLEY. 1 Admitted on all hands to be worthless. 2 I can’t bother. 3 Cf. Spinoza, Haeckel, and others. 4 Sakkya-ditthi, Anatta. 5 First Precept. 6 More classically, good-bye. 7 My eye—all mine. 8 Excusez, madame ! 9 Well, hardly ever ! 10 Joke. v