The Star in the West

186 THE STAR IN THE WEST I died the moment when you tore away The bleeding veil of my virginity. The pain was sudden — and the joy was long . Persists that triumph , keenly , utterly ! Write , then , in thy mysterious book of song : “ Death chisels marble where life moulded clay. ” 1 And again : Dim winds shall whisper echoes of Our slow ecstatic breath , Telling all worlds how sweet is love , How beautiful is Death.2 Thus in this cup which Aleister Crowley offers us , we find that to sip the honey of Virtue is to quaff the wormwood of Vice ; they are one , and there must be no comparison . Outside our minds exists neither one nor the other , alone there is Power , Eastwards it verges towards Virtue , Westwards towards Vice-Heaven and Hell - yet in neither is there vitality , for absolutes are without change . Our lives are vital because of the mingling of many dregs ; and as in the death of these we can alone check vitality or change , so also in that greater Death can we alone solve the mystery of pure being . Virtue and Vice they are one , being formless and eternal without time or number ; for whilst we live death is not , and the purities of state cannot be . We live in a land of mingled cloud and flame , on the marge of the kingdoms of the Positive and the Trans cendent , all is as a seething cauldron of finalities ; ever boiling up to vanish in the inane . Optimism and Pessimism , the former proffering to us the golden chalice filled with the vanities of life , the latter a leaden cup replete with the excretum of existence . · The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p . 182 . 2 The Argonauts , iv, vol . ii, p . 110 .