The Vision and the Voice

THE VISION AND THE VOICE the seven breaths of God that move and thrill its excellence. And she hath tired her hair with seven combs, whereupon are written the seven secret names of God that are not known even of the Angels, or of the Archangels, or of the Leader of the armies of the Lord. Holy, Holy, Holy art thou, and blessed be Thy name for ever, unto whom the Aeons are but the pulsings of thy blood. Tam blind and deaf. My sight and hearing are exhausted. I know only by the sense of touch. And there is a trem- bling from within me. Images keep arising like clouds, or veils, exquisite Chinese ivories, and porcelains, and many other things of great and delicate beauty; for such things are informed by Her spirit, for they are cast off from her into the world of the Qliphoth, or shells of the dead, that is earth. For every world is the shell or excrement of the world above it. I cannot bear the Vision. A voice comes, I know not whence: Blessed art thou, who hast seen, and yet hast not believed. For therefore is it given unto thee to taste, and smell, and feel, and hear, and know by the inner sense, and by the inmost sense, so that sevenfold is thy rapture. (My brain is so exhausted that fatigue-images appear, by pure physical reflex action; they are not astral things at all. And now I have conquered the fatigue by will. And by placing the shew-stone upon my forehead, it sends cool electric thrills through my brain, so as to refresh it, and make it capable of more rapture. And now again I behold Her.) 107