The Vision and the Voice

THE EQUINOX Love, and her love is one, and she hath divided the one love into infinite loves, and each love is one, and equal with The One, and therefore is she passed “from the assembly and the law and the enlightenment unto the anarchy of solitude and darkness. For ever thus must she veil the brilliance of Her Self.” O Babylon, Babylon, thou mighty Mother, that ridest upon the crownéd beast, let me be drunken upon the wine of thy fornications; let thy kisses wanton me unto death, that even I, thy cup-bearer, may understand. Now, through the ruddy glow of the cup, I may perceive far above, and infinitely great, the vision of Babylon. And the Beast whereon she rideth is the Lord of the City of the Pyramids, that I beheld in the fourteenth Aethyr. Now that is gone in the glow of the cup, and the Angel saith: Not as yet mayest thou understand the mystery of the Beast, for it pertaineth not unto the mystery of this Aire, and few that are new-born unto Understanding are capable thereof. The cup glows ever brighter and fierier. All my sense is unsteady, being smitten with ecstasy. And the Angel sayeth: Blessed are the saints, that their blood is mingled in the cup, and can never be separate any more. For Babylon the Beautiful, the Mother of abomina- tions, hath sworn by her holy cteis, whereof every point is a pang, that she will not rest from her adulteries until the blood of everything that liveth is gathered therein, and the wine thereof laid up and matured and consecrated, and worthy to gladden the heart of my Father. For my Father is weary with the stress of eld, and cometh not to her bed. Yet shall 84