Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1910 · PDF PAGE 17

Ambergris

8 AMBERGRIS Know not where frost has laid his iron hand Save only that it fastens on my heart ; Save only that it grips with icy fire These veins no fire of hell could satiate ; Save only that it quenches this desire. Let me pass out beyond the city gate.

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1910 · PDF PAGE 42

Ambergris

…gh fields of foam ungarnered sweeps The fury of the wind of dawn ; Through fiery desolation creeps The water of the wind withdrawn. With fire and water consecrate The foam and fire are recreate. With air uniting fire and water, The springtide’s unbegotten daughter Blossoms in oceans of blue air, Flowers of new spring to bear. The sorrowful twin fishes glide Silent and sacred into sleep ; The joyful Ram exalts his pride, Seeing the forehead of the deep Glow from his palace, as the sun Leaps to the spring, whose coursers run Flaming before their …

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1910 · PDF PAGE 38

Ambergris

…of the violate day, In the furious waves of the sea, wild world of tem- pestuous night, Our song is as light ! In the tumult of manifold fire, Multitudinous mutable feet That dance to an infinite lyre On the heart of the world as they beat, In the flowers of the bride of the flame, in the war- rior Lord of the Fire, There burns our desire !

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1910 · PDF PAGE 64

Ambergris

…the Great One, and the Nameless Name, Held in their grip the child, Eternity. Silence and Darkness in their womb withheld That spiritual fire, and brooded still : Nature and Time, their soleness undispelled, Ever awaiting the eternal Will. And Law was unbegotten : uttermost Night Dwelt, inaccessible to sound and sight Shielded from Voice, impervious to Light. Then grew within the barren womb of this The Breath of the Eternal and the Vast, Softer than dawn, and closer than a kiss— And lo ! the chaos and the darkness passed ! At the creative sigh…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 141

Ambergris

… house, Hera ! thy grim device against the sweet carouse ! Lo ! in red roar and flame Did Zeus descend ! What claim To feel the immortal fire had then the Theban dame ! Caught in that fiery wave Her love and life she gave With one last kissing cry the unborn child to save. And thou, O Zeus, the sire Of Bromius—hunter dire !— Didst snatch the unborn babe from that Olympian fire : In thine own thigh most holy That offspring melancholy Didst hide, didst feed, on light, ambrosia, and moly. Ay ! and with serpent hair And limbs divinely fair Didst th…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 65

Ambergris

… the firmament a vital glass, The waters as the vessel of the soul ; Thus earth, the mystic basis of the whole, Was smitten through with fire, as chrysopras, Blending, uniting and dividing it, Volcanic, airy, and celestial. I rose within the elemental ball, And lo ! the Ancient One of Days did sit ! His head and hair were white as wool, his eyes A flaming fire : and from the splended mouth Flashed the Eternal Sword ! Lo ! Lying at his feet as dead, I saw The leaping-forth of Law : Division of the North wind and the South, The lightning of the a…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 41

Ambergris

… lend A star of many summits to his head That rules his fate and compasses his end, And seeks the holy mountain of the dead To draw dead fire, and breathe, and give it life ! But thou, be strong for strife, And, as a god, cry out, and let there be The mark of many footsteps on the sea Of angels hastening to fulfil Thy supreme, single will ! Alone, intense, unmoved, not made for change, Let thy one godhead rise To move like morning, and like day to range, A furnace for the skies, That all men cry : The uncreated God ! Formless, ineffable, just, …

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1910 · PDF PAGE 75

Ambergris

…ar Crystalline, fixed, forgotten (as a star Forgets its nebulous virginity) Are set in all the sky and earth and sea. Shining with solar fire, The single-eyed desire Of scent and sound and sight and sense perfuses The still and lambent light Of the essential night ; And all the heart of me is fain, and muses, As if for ever doomed to dream Or pass in peace Lethean adown the grey Lethean stream. So deep the sense of beauty, and so keen ! The calm abiding holiness of love Reigns ; and so fallen from the heights above Immeasurable, the influence u…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 58

Ambergris

…o bring salvation unto Hell. O angel of my spiritual desire ! O luminous master of the silver feet ! O passionate rose of infinite white fire ! O cross of sacrifice made bitter-sweet ! O wide-wing, star-brow, veritable lord ! O mystic bearer of the flaming sword ! O brows half seen, O visionary star Seen in the fragrant breezes of the East ! O lover of my love, O avatar Of the All-One, O mystical High Priest ! O thou before whose eyes my weak eyes fail, Wonderful warden of the Holy Grail ! O thou, mine angel, whom these eyes have seen, These ha…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 67

Ambergris

58 AMBERGRIS Oh, mother, Oh, Demeter, in my burthen Let me assume my sorrow singular ; A branching temple and an altar earthen, A fire of herbs, a clayen water-jar ; An olive grove to bind the sacred girth in Lone woods afar. Let life burn gently thence, as when the ember In one faint incense-puff to shrineward dies. No care, no pain, no craving to remember, One leap toward the knees and destinies, Where shine Her lips like flames, Her breasts like amber, Like moons Her eyes. For my heart turns—ah still !—in Sorrow’s traces, Where sad chill foo…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 106

Ambergris

…y of things Beheld in the mirror of truth, The Rose indifferent to God’s gesture, The Rose on moonlight wings That flies to the House of Fire, The Rose of Honey in Youth ! Ah ! No dim mystery of desire Fathoms this gulf ! No light invades The mystical musical shades Of a faith in the future, a dream of the day When athwart the dim glades Of the forest a ray Of sunlight shall flash and the dew die away ! 15. Let there then be obscurity in this ! There is an after rapture in the kiss. The fire, flesh, perfume, music that outpaced All time, fly of…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 40

Ambergris

…se, Song of the morning, to the Southern skies ; And fling its wild chant higher at the fall Of eve, and of bright Hyperion ; To mix its fire with dew, to call The spirit of the limitless air, made one In the amazing essence of all light Limitless, emanation of the might Of the great Light above all gods, the fire Of our supreme desire. So out of grievous labyrinths of the mind The soul’s desire may find Some passionate thread, the clear note of a bird, To make the dark ways of the gods as light, To bring forth music from slow chants unheard, A…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 51

Ambergris

… Comes crowned and conquering. An angel stands on my right hand With strength of ocean’s wrath ; Upon my left the fiery brand, Charioted fire smites forth : Four great archangels to withstand The furies of the path. Flames on my front the fiery star, About me and around. Pillared, the sacred sun, afar, Six symphonies of sound ; Flames, as the Gods themselves that are ; Flames, in the abyss profound. The spread arms drop like thunder ! So Rings out the lordlier cry, Vibrating through the streams that flow In ether to the sky, The moving archipel…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 77

Ambergris

…er laugh most musical ? A sigh serenely deep ? She laughs in wordless swift desire A soft Thalassian tune ; Her eyelids glimmer with the fire That animates the moon :

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1910 · PDF PAGE 50

Ambergris

… I contemplate The unsubstantial space, Move with my lips the laws of Fate That bind earth’s carapace ? No angel, but the very light And fire and spirit of Her, Unmitigated, eremite, The unmanifested myrrh, Ocean, and night that is not night, The mother-mediator. O sacred spirit of the Gods ! O triple tongue ! Descend, Lapping the answering flame that nods, Kissing the brows that bend, Uniting all earth’s periods To one exalted end ! Still on the mystic Tree of Life My soul is crucified : Still strikes the sacrificial knife Where lurks some ser…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 90

Ambergris

…ia O Lover, I am lonely here ! O lover, I am weeping ! Each pearl of ocean is a tear Let fall while love was sleeping. A tear is made of fire and dew And saddened with a smile ; The sun’s laugh in the curving blue Lasts but a little while. The night-winds kiss the deep : the stars Shed laughter from above ; But night must pass dawn’s prison bars : Night hath not tasted love. With me the night is fallen in day ; The day swoons back to night ; The white and black are woven in gray, Faint sleep of silken light. A strange soft light about me shed D…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 81

Ambergris

…se of Nature’s dream And scent of Heaven Shown lin the glint and gleam Of the pure dawn’s first beam, With earth for leaven ; Moulded of fire and gold, Water and wine to fold Me in its life, and hold !— In all but seven ! I would not kiss thee, I ! Lest my lip’s charactery Ruin thy flower. Curve thou one maidenly Kiss, stooping from thy sky Of peace and power ! Thine only be the embrace !— I move not from my place, Feel the exultant face Mine for an hour !

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1910 · PDF PAGE 130

Ambergris

…e, exultant blade, life tempered by eternity. And I who witness am possessed by awe grown crimson with desire, Its iron image wrapped in fire and branded idly on my breast. Her face is bronze, her skin is green, as woods and suns would have it so.

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1910 · PDF PAGE 52

Ambergris

…M THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST The Rosicrucian I see the centuries wax and wane. I know their mystery of pain, The secrets of the living fire, The key of life : I live : I reign : For I am master of desire. Silent, I pass amid the folk Caught in its mesh, slaves to its yoke. Silent, unknown, I work and will Redemption, godhead’s master-stroke, And breaking of the wands of ill. No man hath seen beneath my brows Eternity’s exultant house. No man hath noted in my brain The knowledge of my mystic spouse. I wait the centuries wax and wane. Poor, in …

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1910 · PDF PAGE 20

Ambergris

…s. All the garb that gladness wears To a rent uncouth attire Changed with cares ; Happy songs our love had made Ere the sun had sunk his fire, In the moonrise fall and fade, And the dregs of our desire Fall away to death. Tears divide our labouring breath That of our sister—O our sister ! Moon and sun and stars have kissed her ! She must touch the lips of death, Touch the lips whose coldness saith : Thou art clay. Let us fare away, away To the ice whose ocean gray Tumbles on the beach of rock, Where the wheeling vultures mock Our distress with …

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