THE EQUINOX
down. And they avail not to sever the Kamailos. There is
one in green armour, with green eyes, whose sword is of
vegetable fire. That shall avail me. My son is he,—and how
shall I bear him that have not known man?
All this time intolerable rays are shooting forth to beat me
back or destroy me; but I am encased in an egg of blue-
violet, and my form is the form of a man with the head of a
golden hawk. While I have been observing this, the goddess
has kept up a continuous wail, like the baying of a thousand
hounds; and now her voice is deep and guttural and hoarse,
and she breathes very rapidly words that I cannot hear. I can
hear some of them now:
UNTU LA LA ULULA UMUNA TOFA LAMA LE
LI NA AHR IMA TAHARA ELULA ETFOMA
UNUNA ARPETI ULU ULU ULU MARABAN
ULULU MAHATA ULU ULU LAMASTANA.
And then her voice rises to a shriek, and there is a caul-
dron boiling in front of her; and the flames under the cauldron
are like unto zinc flames, and in the cauldron is the Rose, the
Rose of 49 petals, seething in it. Over the cauldron she has
arched her rainbow wings; and her face is bent over the
cauldron, and she is blowing opalescent silvery rings on to
the Rose; and each ring as it touches the water bursts into
flame, and the Rose takes new colours.
And now she lifts her head, and raises her hands to heaven,
and cries: O Mother, wilt thou never have compassion on the
children of earth? Was it not enough that the Rose should be
red with the blood of thine heart, and that its petals should
be by 7 and by 7?
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