The Vision and the Voice

THE VISION AND THE VOICE crystallized it into a pure sapphire-stone, who hath taken the gold of the sun, and beaten it into an infinite ring, and hath set the sapphire therein, and put it upon his finger. (Refrain.) (v. VI.) Open wide your gates, O City of God, for I bring No-one with me. Sink your swords and your spears in salutation, for the Mother and the Babe are my com- panions. Let the banquet be prepared in the palace of the King’s daughter. Let the lights be kindled; Are not we the children of the light? (Refrain.) (v. VII.) For this is the key-stone of the palace of the King’s daughter. This is the Stone of the Philosophers. This is the Stone that is hidden in the walls of the ramparts. Peace, Peace, Peace unto Him that is throned therein! (Refrain.) Now then we are passed within the lines of the army, and we are come unto a palace of which every stone is a separate jewel, and is set with millions of moons. And this palace is nothing but the body of a woman, proud and delicate, and beyond imagination fair. She is like a child of twelve years old. She has very deep eye-lids, and long lashes. Her eyes are closed, or nearly closed. It is impossible to say anything about her. She is naked; her whole body is covered with fine gold hairs, that are the electric flames that are the spears of mighty and terrible Angels whose breast- plates are the scales of her skin. And the hair of her head, that flows down to her feet, is the very light of God himself. Of all the glories beheld by the seer in the Aethyrs, there is 105