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Page 1 of 21907 · PDF PAGE 89
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS WHICH IS HIDDEN IN THE MOUNTAIN OF ABIEGNUS “And a certain woman cast a piece of a mill stone upon Abimelech, and all to brake his Skull.”——ANON. “Whosoever shall fall upon this stone shall be broken; but upon whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.”-~ANON. “ Qu’est-ce donc, en verité, que ce pierre? C’est le fondement de la philosophie absolue, c’est le supréme et inébranlable raison.”—LEVI. “One day when I was all alone I found a wondrous little stone. It lay forgotten on the road Far from the ways…
1907 · PDF PAGE 11
CONTENTS DEDICATION AND COUNTER-DEDICATION . THE WAKE WORLD Au SLOPER . . . . . . . . THIEN TAO . THE STONE OF Aamcnus . . . . . . . PAGE vii 25 53
1907 · PDF PAGE 107
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 87 Unveil the Pyramid of Stone! He simply wants to be alone. Women suspect it. Tell one that To change her to a frenzied cat! ’Tis the one cliflwhere all their waves Break back to spumed and shattered graves. A man (at heart they’re well aware) May love, maybe! can never care. I bore you with an old fool’s prosing? No? I was right, then, in supposing Modern conditions hamper youths Who seek to grasp these simple Truths. But to my yarn. Carlotta lay So sleepy-soft one summer’s day That really I could not resist it. I…
1907 · PDF PAGE 95
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 75 A sight as lovely to the wise As maggots in a maiden’s eyes. From chapel, church, and meeting-room, From brothel, hospital, and tomb, From palace, gin-shop, workhouse, prison, Factory, slum, their slime is risen. The Devil said “ Bestir thy wits! Spew out these dysenteric—" “ It ’s A pity " (thus I cut him short) “ Your boyhood was so badly taught. The riddle ’s simple—here ’s the key! There is none other God than He.” He conjures up the Universe, Men bitter bad, and women worse. The whole disgusting Pan is show…
1907 · PDF PAGE 113
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 93 —Christ and the Church, and that stuff—faughl—I should certainly have thought he was trying to palm off his purulence under the guise of religion. An Oriental Kensitl cried the scholar. Just so, and the pious prurient would buy it and taboo “Dolores,” added Arthur Gray. Well, judge thisl concluded Basil. It’s a pretty free adaptation from the Arabic—or what passes for Arabic in Marocco! he con temptuously added. And diving into his shooting-jacket, he produced and read: INSPIRATION O DESERT sand! how still and p…
1907 · PDF PAGE 99
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 79 OVARIOTOMY I LOVE you, lass, and you alone. What shall I say now death and life Wrangle before the jasper throne And cry to God to end the strife? Kind words? a little good advice? Patience, and fortitude, and prayer? Tracts are so suitable, and nice? “ Dear chyild, there’ll be no parting there ! "P O bourgeoisie! you read no doubt, But still you have a lot to learn. I am a lover, not a lout. My thoughts take quite another turn. I who have bitten through your skin Envy the surgeon who could dip His deft and cons…
1907 · PDF PAGE 101
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 81 Which of us likes his house the best? You who find filth on every floor? I, in the privy who attest A something worthy to adore? The end is—you are always sick; You always quarrel with your meat. My raptures follow fast and thick: I even tend to overeat. You would not daily with Doreen Because her fairness was to fade, Because you know the things unclean That go to make a mortal maid. I, if her rotten corpse were mine, Would take it as my natural food, Denying all but the Divine Alike in evil and in good. Aspasia m…
1907 · PDF PAGE 103
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 83 THE WIFE-BEATER I BRUISED your body with the whip: Its wheals stand out in ridgéd azure. The savage blood upon your lip Images hurt, and hurt’s erasure. The pain transmuted into passion; And passion’s min was not pain; But my pain wears another fashion; My dead men do not rise again. You hurt me, and the silent skin Whispers no word of bleeding bruises; Your subtle hate, your cunning sin Brands and corrodes me where it chooses. I fear not them that kill the body, But rather them that hurt the soul: My soul with …
1907 · PDF PAGE 123
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 103 To cut the story short, we skip A year or two, and in we chip (lnvigorated by our rest) Just where the jury at the ’Quest At the Asylum duly find “Suicide while of Unsound Mind.” This time we skip from earth to heaven God stands among the Spirits Seven. The Seven Lamps about Him flame. Myriad archangels cry His name. Millions of elders, prophets, preachers, Saints, martyrs, virgins, hermits, teachers, Angels, evangelists, apostles All singing like a lot of throstles All out of tune with one another, And every one…
1907 · PDF PAGE 105
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 85 Dear old chap! responded Basil, with a warm pressure of the hand. Open the whisky, and you’ll feel better! Which being gone about, the irrepressible doctor broke in with a story of his youth. I will never assent to murder, said he. It’s inartistic. I dined forty years ago in the Apennines with an Italian Prince, and he entirely converted me. I put down his words in verse. They are being pub lished by the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. If a supreme aesthete like the Prince botches it (this is th…
1907 · PDF PAGE 93
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 73 It was only when the Man and the Socialist, invisiny seeking some pinnacle in the plains of Holbein House, as Sigiri springs from the flat table of the central province of Ceylon, came upon them, that their influence woke them into life. I will cause them to converse, said the Man (who was the Devil), as it were to take you upon an high mountain and show you all the king doms of the earth. I have seen them, said the Socialist. But, said the Man, things look very different from that height. Poverty and vice are the…
1907 · PDF PAGE 97
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 77 That all his malice should confine Itself to this one sin of mine And this alone, when neophytes (Confused by the excess of lights) Perceive not what they ought to see: “There is none other God than He." Oh how the good converted Fiend Worries those Postulants unweaned! Though now he dances deosil He pounds them many a purging pill. He cleans them from their piggish food; He brings them to beatitude. “ Hua is God!" quoth Asmodee: “ There is none other God than He.” A silence ensued. At last, from Denzil: You mean…
1907 · PDF PAGE 119
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 99 S.-M.-Du equalized with So'Do'My That transcends Short 0’ Face and Longnose both: This is the deepest den of the Qliphoth. Match theml the Tree of Life in Eden Bower Grows balanced perfectly from root to flower.” -—This may be why the Reverend Mrs. Grundy Called him a sodomite the other Sunday. Good! chuckled Basil, when they had done laughing. If he'd worked that out as a boy, his alleged character might have forced him to its own path. When I was in Marrakesh, they lynched a poor old man because their mosque ha…
1907 · PDF PAGE 125
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 105 I swear by their impending gleam, The Sierra’s snowy swords of light! By all the cruel and cold despair That Christ hath brought upon the land: By Mary and the false blind beastly Lies of the prudish and the priestly: By God and death and hate I swear That man shall rise, shall understand. I swear by this my lucid Eye, By all the freedom I have won, That men shall learn to love and doubt, Put faith and slavery to the rout, And eagle-pinioned even as I Soar to the splendour of the sun! All right! all right! said…
1907 · PDF PAGE 115
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 95 bestial. We are fairly trapped. Open the window, some one, and remember that He is God alone, and that there is none other God than He! Right as usual, said the scholar. It’s a true story, though, in a way. I’ve seen the mask myself, and I believe it. THE GILT MASK IN Florence in the days of old there dwelt a craftsman pale and grim. The Devil entered into him, and fanned his soul with plumes of gold. He offered all he chose to ask. “ O snatch this itching soul away, So that thou animate my clay and finish me thi…
1907 · PDF PAGE 109
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 89 Our best. You want a tender gray, Prepare your palette half the day, Take brush, and find to your surprise The snout of scarlet stab your eyes. Bad art, my boy! I never cared To try the piece again. —We’ve aired Our dinner. By the way, though, here You are. That ’s it! How smooth and clear The moonlight runs from point to hilt! Steel in the end beats silver-gilt! Well, there’s an end of my cigar: The girls will wonder where we are. Strange! how this question of motive deceives historians—and others! said the scho…
1907 · PDF PAGE 121
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS IOI What’s “Labbaik”? asked Denzil. The pious “ Adsum " of the Pilgrim when he reaches the holy ground of Mecca. So you may imagine the horror of the Muslim on hearing it float cheerfully up from Hell! Talking of Black Magic, said the big man, the belief in it is probably as strong as ever. I myself am inclined to laugh: “Who believes in Black Magic proves himself to be bewitchedl” I had a horrible case of it once—I shudder yet! I could imagine the time when my poor friend’s disease was epidemic; when the panic madn…
1907 · PDF PAGE 117
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 97 “With cooing laughter she shall press the monster to her golden teats, Feed its desire on all her sweets with many a masterful caress. “Its wisdom shall invigorate her soul to heights of hideous joy To match her with the equal boy that shall be master of her fate. “ She shall attain a man to excel her strong satanic womanhood: Their love shall break the mask of wood, reveal the authentic face of Hell." All this the craftsman heard with pride: he called: his sickness and his whore Together at his vitals tore, and…
1907 · PDF PAGE 111
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 9] Shall I wreck my life with roses, hurt my flesh with flames and rods? All is vain l—for I have conquered both the mortals and the Gods. In the garden of Priapus, in the land of lost desire, I have made myself a monster and my soul a snake of fire. Ho! it stings me! Ho! it poisons! all the flesh is branded through, Branded with the steel of Vulcan, with the lava’s deadly dew. All the kisses of the satyr, all the punishments of Pan, All Eros hath given of arrows to the eyes of maid and man, At their lips and lives I s…
1907 · PDF PAGE 127
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS 107 In the pleasaunce of the roses with the fountains and the yews Where the snowy Sierra soothed us with the breezes and the dews! In the starlight as we trembled from a laugh to a caress And the god came warm upon us in our pagan allegresse. Was the Baille de la Bona too seductive? Did you feel Through the silence and the softness all the tension of the steel? For your hair was full of roses, and my flesh was full of thorns, And the midnight came upon us worth a million crazy morns. Ah! my Gipsy, my Gitana, my Sal…