The Star in the West

72 THE STAR IN THE WEST laws of the dead , but through the needs and wants of the living , on the solid foundation of the truest possible morality , based on Nature , and manifested to us through our divine powers of reason . And much of this new morality do we find in the love-gospel of Aleister Crowley . First turning to the love incarnate in motherhood , we find a touching case in the picture of Cora in “ The Mother's Tragedy." Cora Vavasour , late of the halls , yet as true and noble a woman as ever lived , a type of woman that , thank Heaven , is not so uncommon among those whom the prudes call fallen classes . Cora was scarcely , however , one of these ; living in luxury she tried to bury the recurring past , “ Old hours of horror ,” and she trusted that “ God hath made smooth the road beneath the hearse ” of her “ forgetful age.” Let me not shrink ! Truth always purifies. One night I stepped up tremulous on the stage, Sang something , found my senses afterward Only to that intolerable sound Of terrible applause. They shook the sky With calling me to answer . And I lay A storm of weeping swept across my frame Till the polite, the hateful Manager Led me to face a nation's lunatic Roar of delight ! ? That was the beginning , but she soon got over that “and over - yes ! the other thing . ' She fell sacrificed before Mammon , loved opulence , was quoted on the Stock Exchange , became the toy of the “ prurient licksores of society " till her bastard child was born . 1 The Mother's Tragedy , vol . i, p. 157.