The Star in the West

THE MOTHER 133 kiss , then is it also good to know where kisses may lead to . We have already seen them rising upward from youth through the passion of maturity , concrete and abstract , earthly and spiritual ; now let us turn about and descend the slippery road of lust , so essential to the basic knowledge of the good . Among the extraordinary antipathies and sym pathies of the human mind , few are so startling as the frequent attraction of contraries . Good attracts bad , and bad good , in the love - history of life over and over again shall we find this : Have they divined This simplest spirit - bond , The joy of some bad woman's deadly kiss ;? In the “ Lesbian Hell ” we see those white unsated women , and in “ The Fatal Force ” one so flushed with lust , that she has become blind to reality : Then said the goddess : “ I indeed am pure In my impurity ; immaculate In misconception ; maiden in my whoredom ; Chaste in my incest , being made a god Through my own strength .? Thus she spoke to the assembled princes and peoples of Egypt , when sixteen seasons past she sat crowned , naked , exultant , pregnant with the child of her own son's begetting . Awed by the enormity of her lust , the multitudes worship their Phædrian queen : But the mood passed , and we see A lecherous woman whose magician power Is broken , and the balance of her mind Made one with the fool's bauble , and her wand That was of steel and fire , like a reed , snapped !3 Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic , vol . I, p . 104 . 2 The Fatal Force , vol . i, p . 143 . 3 Ibid .