The Vision and the Voice

THE VISION AND THE VOICE attacked, seemingly, by invisible people, for he is wounded now and again, here and there; little streams of fresh blood come out over the feathers of his breast. And the smoke of the blood is gradually filling the Aethyr with a crimson veil. There is a scroll over the top, saying: Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine; and there is another scroll below it in a language of which I do not know the sounds. The meaning is, Not as they have understood. The blood is thicker and darker now, and it is becoming clotted and black, so that everything is blotted out; because it coagulates, coagulates. And then at the top there steals a dawn of pure night-blue,—Oh, the stars, the stars in it deeply set!—and drives the blood down; so that all round the top of the oval gradually dawns the figure of our Lady Nuit, and beneath her is the flaming winged disk, and below the altar of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, even as it is upon the Stele of Revealing. But below is the supine figure of Seb, into whom is concentrated all that clotted blood. And there comes a voice: It is the dawn of the aeon. The aeons of cursing are passed away. Force and fire, strength and sight, these are for the servants of the Star and the Snake. And now I seem to be lying in the desert, exhausted. THE DESERT, NEAR SIDI AIssaA. November 25,1909. 1.10-2 p.m. Tue Cry OF THE 25TH AETHYR, WHICH IS CALLED VTI There is nothing in the stone but the pale gold of the Rosy Cross. Now there comes an Angel with bright wings, that is the Angel of the 25th Aire. And all the aire is a dark olive about 21