The Vision and the Voice

THE VISION AND THE VOICE: And there is a voice: Is not this bird the bird of Juno, that is an hundred, and thirty, and six? And therefore is she the mate of Jupiter.* And now the peacock’s head is again changed into a woman’s head sparkling and coruscating with its own light of gems. But I look upwards, seeing that she is called the footstool of the Holy One, even as Binah is called His throne. And the whole Aethyr is full of the most wonderful bands of light,—a thousand different curves and whorls, even as it was before, when I spake mysteries of the Holy Qabalah, and so could not describe it. Oh, I see vast plains beneath her feet, enormous deserts studded with great rocks; and I see little lonely souls, running helplessly about, minute black creatures like men. And they keep up a very curious howling, that I can compare to nothing that I have ever heard; yet it is strangely human. And the voice says: These are they that grasped love and clung thereto, praying ever at the knees of the great goddess. These are they that have shut themselves up in fortresses of Love. Each plume of the peacock is full of eyes, that are at the same time 4x 7. And for this is the number 28 reflected down into Netzach; and that 28 is Kaph Cheth (Kach), power. For she is Sakti, the eternal energy of the Concealed One. And it is her eternal energy that hath made this eternal change. And this explaineth the call of the Aethyrs, the curse that was pronounced in the beginning being but the creation of Sakti. And this mystery is reflected in the legend of the * The fourth of the mystic numbers of Jupiter, is 136. 119