Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1906 · PDF PAGE 17

Gargoyles

IX. So, be content! Should science cleave The veil of things and show us peace, ‘Well :—but by wild imagining Think not a golden robe to weave! Such moulder. By fantastic ease Ye come not well to anything. Work and be sober: dotage thinks By worth of words to slay the Sphinx. x. Things as they are—of these take hold, Their heart of wonder throb to thine! All things are matter and force and sense, No two alone. All’s one: the gold Of truth is no reward divine Of faith, but wage of evidence. The clod, the God, the spar, the star Mete in thy measu…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 56

Gargoyles

DIOGENES. ‘* ALL things are good,” exclaimed the boy. Who taste the sweetmeat find it cloy. ‘* All things are ill,” the dotard sang. Who stir the serpent feel the fang. ‘*All is a dream!” the wise man spake. Who grasp the bubble find it break. Aye, to all three the saga saith: There is no joy in life but death. There is this limit set to lust: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. O fools and blind that sickly strive To amass, to glut yourselves, to swive, 46

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1906 · PDF PAGE 69

Gargoyles

…es of love, they pass! They pass, and all the wonder-web Of thought and being is unrolled Like sombre tides there flow and ebb Wonderful things! not to be told: Beautiful things! and images of gold. The touch of brown Habiba’s breast, The brimming lip, the cheek of down, The dainty dovelet in its nest: These fade, as ever a palimpsest Like autumn vanishes from gold to brown. 61

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1906 · PDF PAGE 23

Gargoyles

‘* Nay,” said the barber, ‘‘ long ago he passed Where all delights are ’stinguished at the last, And all good things forgotten, wallahy! He died—aha now !—no—yes—let me see! Ten years, three months, four days, as I’m a sinner, Since Hassan let the—shame—at Ali’s dinner.” 15

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1906 · PDF PAGE 20

Gargoyles

XVI. Wisdom and Love, intenser glow! Beauty and Strength, increase and burn! Be brothers to the law of life! Things as they are—their nature know! Act! Nor for faith nor folly turn! The hour is nigh when man and wife, Knowing, shall worship face to face, Beget and bear the royal race. 12

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1906 · PDF PAGE 13

Gargoyles

PROLOGUE. VIA VITAE. I. My head is split. The crashing axe Of the agony of things shears through The stupid skull: out spurt the brains. The universe revolves, then cracks, Then roars in dissolution due; And I am counting up the gains And losses of a life afire With dust of thought and dulled desire. Il, So, all is over. I admit Futility the lord of will. Life was an episode, for me 5

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1906 · PDF PAGE 86

Gargoyles

… No breath went whispering, hushed or scared. Only that red incarnate hate Through pylon after pylon flared. As in the blood of murdered things The affrighted augur shaking skries Earthquake and ruinous fate of kings, Famine and desperate destinies, So in the eyes of Pharaoh shone The hate and loathing that compel 78

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1906 · PDF PAGE 117

Gargoyles

Therefore, I take it, now in Hades The funny side of things—and ladies— Engages my attention. Well! You know enough of life in Hell. I was an altruist, my brothers! My life one long kind thought for others: For me six maidens wear the willow :— Poisoning is a peccadillo. Hence I’m disposed to give advice, Simple, if possibly not nice; Shun life! an awkward task and deep. But if you cannot, then—shun sleeep! (Suppose I thus had prophesied, Gone to my wife to bed, and died !) 109

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1906 · PDF PAGE 54

Gargoyles

… heart of love, a crown of light, An infinite music of delight ;— This, but no more; let fancy sway But never fix the transient ray! All things are lawful, so they be At most a marshalled imagery. Dream of Earth's glories higher and higher, Mounting the minaret, desire; Never attaining to the sky, Realization—lest thou die. So dream, possessing all; so dream, Possessing nothing: I esteem These twain as one, since dreams they are. Thus mayst thou journey far and far And far! to climes unguessed, to seas Proud with seignorial argosies, 48

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1906 · PDF PAGE 57

Gargoyles

…den snows, To gardens green with many a rose, To secrets past the sense of sense, Skies virgin of experience, Untrodden avenues of mind, Things far from hurrying humankind. Thus spins out life its splendid charm :— Live, love, enjoy, yet do no harm. No rose of thought may bear or breed The poisonous thorn of word and deed. Call ** homo sapiens ” him who thinks ; Talkers and doers—missing links! Such songs are twilight’s, when I stretch My limbs, and wander down to fetch My water from the cool cascade, My wood from the enchanted glade, 49

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1906 · PDF PAGE 16

Gargoyles

…s, think well! Renounce the dream! Seek not some mystery in the kiss, Some virtue in the chrysopras, Some nymph or undine in the stream. Things as we know them should be enough To glut our misery and our love. VIII. Why must despair to madness drive The myriad fools that fear to die? God’s but a fervid phantom drawn Out of the hasty-ordered hive Of thoughts that battle agony In the melancholy hours of dawn. When vital force at lowest ebbs Anaemic nerves weave frailest webs.

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1906 · PDF PAGE 116

Gargoyles

…No sterile God balks ¢hime endeavour. This sort of thing goes on for ever.” XIII. I was a humorous youth enough On earth; I laughed when things were rough. 108

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1906 · PDF PAGE 65

Gargoyles

Of all the universe unalterable. We know too well How no one thing abides awhile at all, How all things fall, Fall from their seat, the lamentable place, Before their face, Weary and pass and are no more. So we, Since hope must be, Look to the future, to the chance minute That life may shoot Some flower at least to blossom in the night, Since vital light Is sure to fail us on the hideous way. What? Must we pray? Verily, O thou littlest babe, too weak To stir or speak, Capable hardly of a thought, yet seed Of word and.deed ! To thine assured fru…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 112

Gargoyles

The same fool’s problem. I explain The simple state of things in vain. He chose to study God, and die in it. He made his bed, and he must lie in it. VI. After my dinner I debate (Urged to the task by habit’s Fate) The project of a poisoning. In hell one finds that everything Is easy. Poison to my hand; A cunning potion cool and bland Fit to administer the draught :— How like old times! I nodded, laughed, Poisoned my neighbour, a young girl Sent here for marrying an earl. Of course she did not die. But then On earth I never killed my men; They o…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 72

Gargoyles

…nout, Some mother ripped, some baby slain, Let lust move silently about :— Soft laughter hid in all, song whispering out! Then let these things of form decay, Some subtler dream dissolve their form, As I have seen a cloudlet lay Its forehead on the sea, and pray Some idle prayer to sunset, or the storm ! Yea! as a cloud in worship-trance Swoons in invisible delight, Let slave and king, let death and dance Shake off their forms, and clothe their light In shrouds of sepulchre, the starless night ! Let song and cry leave tune and tone, Perish uncr…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 33

Gargoyles

Nay, let all light, all things, but cease! Sense is the seal of double rule. The million oracles that run Out of the mouth of God the fool are not myself. To nothing turn! To nothing look! Then, then !—discern Nothing, that one may one remain. So I am paid the horrible pain That these my brothers ordered me. I look upon their brows—I see Signs many and deep of torture past; A star, yon star, true peace at last. (There approach an aged man, riding upon an ass, with a led ass, and a Nubian servant.) The Adept. In the name of God, the One, the Gre…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 34

Gargoyles

…ght Made years the servants of its might. There is no soul. A. These stars thou seest Are but the figuring of thy brain. NV. Then of all things the soul were freest 4. Move then the centre of thy pain! XN. *Tis done. A. A trick to cheat a child. NV. It is the truth that I am naught. Hear what I have gathered in the wild, Flowers of imperishable thought With glory and with rapture clothed. This being, thinking, loved or loathed, 26

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1906 · PDF PAGE 107

Gargoyles

… heard and believe, I draw the following inferences :—Death, if I am right, is in the first place the separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else. And after they are separated they retain their several natures, as in life; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of treatment or accident are distinctly visible in it: for example, he who by nature or training or both was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he was, after he is dead; and the fat will remain fat; and soon; and the dead man who in life had …

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