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.