The Sword of Song

AMBROSII MAGI HORTIS ROSARUM 81 and he went on. “Leave thine ox-goad,” 1 quoth he, “till I com e back an ox!” And she laughed and let him pass. Now is our Father come to the Unstable Lands, ’Od wot, for the Wheel whereon he poised was ever turning. Sworded was the Sphinx, but he out-dared her in riddling : deeper pierced his sword: he cut her into twain: her place was his. But that would he not, my Brethren; to the centre he clomb ever: and having won thither, he vanished. As a hermit ever he travelled and the lam p and wand were his. In his path a lion ro ared, but to it ran a maiden, strong as a young elephant, and held its cruel jaws. But force he ran to her : he freed the lion—one buffet of his hand dashed her back six paces ! —and with another blow smote its h ead from its body . And he ran to her and by force em braced her. Struggled she and fought him: savagely she bit, but it was of no avail: she lay ravished and exhausted on the Lybian plain. Across the mouth he sm ote her for a kiss, while she cried: “O ! thou hast begotten on me twins. And mine also is the Serpent, and thou shalt conquer it and it shall serve thee: and they, they also for a guide!” She ceased; and he, having com e to the world’s end, pre- pared his chariot. Foresquare he builded it, and that double: he har- nessed the two sphinxes that he had made from one, and sailed, crab- fashion, backwards, through the amber skies of even. Wherefore he attained to see his children. Lovers they were and lovely , those twins of rape. One was above them, joining th eir hands. “That is well,” said our Father, and for seven nights he s lept in s even starry palaces, and a sword to guard him. Note well also that these children, and those others, are two, being four. And on the sixt h day (for the seven day s were past) he rose and came into his ancient tem ple, a temple of our Holy Order, O my Brethren, wherein sat that Hierophant who had initiated him of old. Now read he well the riddle of the Goat (Blessed be his name among us for ever ! Nay, not for ever !), and therewith the Teacher m ade him a master of Sixfold Chamber, and an ardent Sufferer toward the Blazing Star. F or the S word, s aid the Teacher, is but the S tar unfurled. 2 And our Father being cunning to place Ale ph over Tau read this reverse, and so beheld Eden, even now and in the flesh. Whence he sojourned far, and cam e to a great Emperor, by whom he was well received, and from whom he gat great gifts . And the Emperor (who is Solomon) told him of Sheba’s Land and of one fairest of women there enthroned. So he journey ed thither, and for four years and seven months abode with her as paramour a nd light-of-love, for she was gracious to him and showed him those things that the Emperor had hidden ; even the cubical s tone and the cros s beneath the triangle that were his and un-revealed. And on the third day he left her and came to Her who had initiated him before he was initiated ; and with he he abode eight days and twenty days :3 and she gave him gifts. 1 Lamed means ox-goad; Aleph, an ox. Lamed Aleph means No, the denial of Aleph Lamed, El, God. 2 Read reverse, the Star [= the Will and the Great Work] is to fold up the Sephiroth; i.e. to attain Nirvana. 3 The houses of the Moon. All the gifts are lunar symbols. Sapientiae Lux Viris Baculum. Femina Rapta Inspirit Gaudium. Pleiades. Dignitates. Amicitia. Amor. Sophia.