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Page 1 of 41907 · PDF PAGE 66
…old of the narrative . The following rondel I choose for its simplicity and sweetness : Sing , little bird , it is dawn ; Cry ! with the day the woods ring ; Now in the blush of the morn , Sing ! Love doth enchain me and cling , Love , of the breeze that is born , Love , with the breeze that takes wing . Love that is lighter than scorn , Love that is strong as a king , Love , through the gate that is horn , Sing ! The anger of Zeus is aroused . Aphrodite bids Charicles flee , but his passion is too great , he defies the powers . ( They are only…
1907 · PDF PAGE 125
…an power , wealth , or dominion , and that is motherhood : Fiercer desires may cast away All things most good ; A people may forget to - day Their motherhood . 1 This is the condition of the England of to - day : “ O England ! England , mighty England falls !” because she no longer knows how to bear Englishmen . Wealth cries for luxury , and luxury sniffs at the hem of lust , and lust rises o’er us a vampire kite to drink dry the blood of our veins . The two great ideals of our country , as Geoffrey Mortimer rightly says , are the commercial , …
1907 · PDF PAGE 212
…ies the greatest of riddles . This question , this gigantic “ What ?" Crowley sets forth lucidly enough in “ Pentecost ” and “ Ascension Day ." He writes : To calculate one hour's result I find surpassing difficult ; One year's effect , one moment's cause ; What mind could estimate such laws ? Who then ( much more !) may act aright Judged by and in ten centuries ' sight ?! He shows us how utterly inadequate are our powers , how utterly absurd it is of us to hanker after infinite ideals with our finite minds . As a child cries for the moon , so …
1907 · PDF PAGE 171
…nd the head of this infallible and august body of swindlers mocked as a mountebank , and his power as a “ barren staff .' In “ Ascension Day ” the whole Christian Church as a lie , “ abortion and iniquity ,” ? whose soldiers are no ardent warriors in triple steel , but loathly and disgusting worms , who only show fight when cornered and not always then- “ speared wild cats bravely spit .". Neither does Crowley spare that anachronism , Present - day Christianity , which fondly imagines it has succeeded in solving the problem of how to sit on two…
1907 · PDF PAGE 163
…re form , a horror fed on the blood of children , the virility of youths , the chastity of maidens . Hardly a single evil of the present day , if traced back a few hundred years , and frequently not half so long as that , but finds its birth in some cor ruption practised by the Harlot of the seven hills , or the Monster of the six wives . It is only necessary to study such works as those of Buckle or Draper , of White or Stewart Ross , or better still , if time permits , those of ecclesiastical historians , written by the pens of divines , to b…
1907 · PDF PAGE 58
…ophy and mysticism , as a singer of lyrics and love -songs Aleister Crowley remains unsurpassed , unrivalled , among the host of present-day poets . His thoughts are as subtle , his imagination as gorgeous , his melodies as charming as those of Shelley himself ; soft as a summer breeze , fresh as the dawn in May, sunny as a June day , and then furious with burning passion and vitriolic lust . So closely interwoven in spirit are the true lyrics with the remainder of his amatory poetry , that it would be dangerous to attempt to separate them , an…
1907 · PDF PAGE 282
…mself the Agnostic declares is not given man to understand , much less to discuss , and this maxim finds full affirmation in “ Ascension Day, " when Crowley writes : I deny nothing —at the term It is just Nothing I affirm . Man is but an ephemeron : We float upon the blue Like sunlight specks in dew , And like the moonlight on the lake we lie .? Yet he rises : Golden , the electric spark of man is drawn Deep in the bosom of the world , to soar New - fledged , an eagle to the dazzling dawn With lidless eyes undazzled , to arise , Son of themorni…
1907 · PDF PAGE 92
…ust in evitably fail , as he knew his first kiss must inevitably lead to their great love and surrender . They spend the last melancholy day together : Strong kisses that had surfeited a score Of earthly bridals in an hour we squandered .? And at last : THE FIFTIETH DAY At noon she sailed for home , a weeping bride Widowed before the honeymoon was done . Always before the rising of the sun I swore to come in spirit to her side Alice , an Adultery , vol . ii, p . 79 . 2 Ibid . vol . ii, p . 84 .
1907 · PDF PAGE 166
…the goats , that the historical (?) Christ was to a great extent devoid of pity , and a little further on in the same poem , “ Ascension Day ,” that he was but a cantankerous divider and obstreperous upstart : Give me omnipotence ? To call me God I would exert That power to heal creation's hurt ; Not to divide my devotees From those who scorned me to the close : A worm , a fire , a thirst for these ; A harp - resounding heaven for those !4 Concerning the mother of the eternal God , Crowley has little to tell us , and the Blessed Virgin's affair…
1907 · PDF PAGE 90
…rls and boys , Her home , their lives : and yet my whisper stirs Into live flame her passion , and deters Her fear from spurning all the day's due joys ." The pudibonderie of the English would call this lust . Indeed , drunken on their own crapulous imagination , choked by their venomous vomit , they cannot see the divine form of Love through the mist of their steam ing sensuality . For what reason did man tie woman to him ? For what reason did he devise the horrors of indissoluble marriage ? And the answer is : that he might ever have at least…
1907 · PDF PAGE 168
THE OLD BOTTLE 161 But man the father of God did , for he was naturally bloodthirsty , avaricious , and cruel , and man to -day is but a veneered representative of his forefathers , still suppliant at the feet of the phallic Jahveh : That man to -day should not be weaned Of worshipping so foul a fiend In presence of the living Sun.2 66a But so it is , and so it will be for many a generation yet to come ; cause and effect are but replicas of each other , and if the cause be ignorance , it is useless to look for the wisdom of Solomon in the effec…
1907 · PDF PAGE 221
214 THE STAR IN THE WEST was opened . Or else again , like the present -day Rationalists , they have once more coaxed the Almighty back into his leaden casket , and heaved him out again into the black depths of that ocean of ignorance from which he had been drawn , a bottled “ succedaneum ." Thus Berkeley, by postulating a God , himself showed that reason was wanting ; so the scepticism of Pyrrho was once again applied to the defective mental ma chinery , which burst like a faulty boiler on due pres sure being brought to bear upon it by David H…
1907 · PDF PAGE 259
252 THE STAR IN THE WEST bleached bones , ' and salt encrusted heads, of those who have failed : So I press on . Fresh strength from day to day Girds up my loins and beckons me on high . So I depart upon the desert way , So I strive ever toward the copper sky , With lips burnt black and blind in either eye . I move for ever to my mystic goal Where I may drain a fountain never dry , And of Life's guerdon gather in the whole , And on celestial manna satisfy my soul.3 All the “ Unholy phantom faces ” . of self, and of sin , will be lost , and all …
1907 · PDF PAGE 42
…e last -named play , which , even more so than in “ The Mother's Tragedy " is , as we shall see later on , a subtle discount on present -day morality . What Beardsley and Whistler did for art , Crowley is now doing for poetry . Beardsley , especially , suc ceeded Rossetti just as Crowley is now superseding Swinburne . A poetic iconoclast to the very backbone , we find Crowley , especially in his later works , break ing away from every poetic convention and restraint . At first it makes itself apparent in “ The Star and the Garter ,” which was u…
1907 · PDF PAGE 164
THE OLD BOTTLE 157 The Lord's Day. The foolish bells with their discordant clang Summon the harlot -ridden Hell to pray : The vicar's snout is tuned ; the curates bray Long gabbled lessons , and their noisy twang Fills the foul worshippers with hate ; the fang Of boredom crushes out the holy day , Where whore and jobber sit and gloom , grown grey For hating of each other ; the hours hang .' And the pen of Crowley like that of Saladin , Swin burne , and Shelley , is but another douche of cold water to wake the frowsy sleepers of the night , and …
1907 · PDF PAGE 67
…fore the face . ? So beautiful was she , that “ the sun forgot his chariot , nor would set " ; and in this mystic hour , the marriage of Day and Night , she prayed fervently to Aphrodite , fond goddess of lovers , and there amidst the thunder -smitten stone , beautiful and piteous , she waited , longing for that strong desire of love that had been so rudely snatched from her. Again , Love in the form of Aphrodite listens to her prayer , but is helpless to help her till she has sought aid from the lewd city of Aphaca , where Lust in the grim sha…
1907 · PDF PAGE 20
…ers lave you In innermost lustral light. I lead you , lord of the maze , In the darkness free of the sun ; In spite of the spite that is day's , We are wed , we are wild , we are one !! I “ Orpheus ,” vol . iii , p . 207 .
1907 · PDF PAGE 207
…goria of the mind , found in the West a master - mind to mould it into shape , in the personality of Democritus of Abdera ; and from the day when that sage materialized the creations of his brain to that of Büchner and the present - day mud - larks , it has formed the stumbling - block to nearly every great thinker , and the veritable pus puriens of the common mind . However , out of the slough grew , as must always happen , a subtle plant ; and in the form of Newton , whose scientific demonstration ofauto - kinetic ism , many ages previously a…
1907 · PDF PAGE 157
150 THE STAR IN THE WEST fear of primitive man to the veneration of his present day offspring . Fear , the basal foundation of all gods , found a subtle soil in Ignorance ; Ignorance reacted on God , producing Superstition ; Superstition , Cruelty ; Cruelty , all the tigerish longings of the day and the hoggish gratifications of the night . Pessimism is necessarily the foundation of all re ligion ; for if man were normally optimistic he would not have conceived such a hierarchy of tyrants as that of his gods . The man who formerly cut himself w…
1907 · PDF PAGE 87
…and passing the dim halls disgraced Found higher love and larger and more chaste , A calm sphinx waiting in secluded ground .' The first day of meeting he gazes on her , and wonders whether Fate had found at last a woman's love for him ; hopelessly he turns away and sinks the dream of his soul in despair and “ Kindled a corpse light and proclaimed ' The day '!” Thither I fled , busied myself with these ; When - lo ! I saw her shadow following ! In every cosmic season - tide of spring She rose , being the spring : in utter peace She was with me …