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Page 1 of 51907 · PDF PAGE 329
…heed no man , to work out his own salvation , to see that his staff is stout , and that his lamp burns brightly , lest he fall into that great slough of rational dung -wallowing which besets his path . To voyage like our father Ambrose through thunder and lightning , past the sun , and the moon , and the stars , as Crowley most curiously depicts in “ Ambrosii Magi Hortus Rosarum ,” that mysteri ously symbolic progress through the Tarot , the ten numbers and the twenty -two letters . When along the shores of the Ægean sea a mys terious voice pro…
1907 · PDF PAGE 16
…us twanger of another man's lyre , but authentically a poet ." So writes the critic . The name I have omitted is that of the last of the great Victorian poets , Algernon Charles Swinburne . In the dying glory of this last great singer of the nineteenth century , the deepening twilight shows but few rising stars ; alone perhaps amid the younger generation of poets - alas , how many and yet how few --- Aleister Crowley stands forth with no little of the glory of the great Victorian cast o'er him ; enhancing our pleasures , and enchanting our sens…
1907 · PDF PAGE 292
…ly the shadow . The eagle alone can gaze at the dazzling light , likewise only the prepared soul can bear its lustre . Never theless the great Something which is the inmost of the Holy mysteries has never been hidden from the piercing gaze of him who can bear the light.2 The whole progress of the Adept is to speed out of this changing shadow - land into the full blaze of the sunlight ; in the words of the Qabalist , “ to attain to the Crown ," and those of the Christ , “ To be one with the Father .” Now a curious vista opens out before our gaze…
1907 · PDF PAGE 185
…son ; for drink , still poison ; for thy kiss , serpent's lips ! ... Then the verse continues , and we see if we may so ex press it, the great nuptials with the Lords of Lust : An agony is this That sweats out venom ; thy clenched hands , thy feet Ooze blood , thine eyes weep blood ; thine anguish is More keen than death . At last — there is no deeper vault of hell beneath ! Then comes the great reward . We have travelled knee deep through the mire of life , yet if our souls be spotless our abasement , “ ... bringeth back the sheaves ” XV . Of …
1907 · PDF PAGE 286
THE NEW WINE 279 How different is this agnosticism from the agnos ticism of Spencer ; which postulates as its first great principle , the unknowability of the Absolute , of whom we can conceive no proportion whatsoever , but whose relationship to us becomes closer and closer as we proceed along the way of the knowable — and perhaps actually becomes known when we ourselves become unknowable , i.e. , pure adepts . The second great principle is the Conservation of Matter and Energy , or in other words the law of Cause and Effect . A law we have go…
1907 · PDF PAGE 290
…d comets speed by , and suns embrace suns , and the moons melt shrieking through the firmament . Then all powers will dissolve , and the great golden dawn effulgent will flash through the portals of night , standing before us bride of our desire , robed in a million suns , the stars flaming in her hair , incarnate symbol of perpetual youth . So we feel with Crowley that : Time and again , in the History of Science , a period has arrived when , gorged with facts , she has sunk into a lethargy of reflection accompanied by appalling nightmares in …
1907 · PDF PAGE 268
THE NEW WINE 261 » 1 the one great law of Inertia ; so that the entire Uni verse lies before us , as Luther said of God , “ A blank sheet on which nothing is found , but what we our selves have written . ” Or again , in the words of the divine Spinoza : “final or first causes are only fig ments of the human mind , ” bubbles which must burst before the finite can once again dissolve into the in finite atmosphere of eternity. This seeming duality is that which Crowley infers when he states : “ In any category , infinity excludes finity , unless t…
1907 · PDF PAGE 181
174 THE STAR IN THE WEST darkness into light . “ The stone becomes a plant, the plant an animal , the animal a man , and man greatens into Deity ." I Nothing is absolutely evil , nothing is accursed for ever , not even the archangel of evil , for a time will come when his name and angelic nature will be restored to him .2 Thus we rise through the microprosopus of good and evil , to the great ethical macroprosopus which is equilibrated . Many are the tracks and by -paths of life which lead over the mountains , the swamps , the forests of existen…
1907 · PDF PAGE 252
…hat have we found ? A new religion ? No. An old religion ? Yes . Rejuvenated ? Yes. Man is too lazy to build if he can reconstruct . The great mass of the people yearn for something better than the existing concep tions of Faith ; leaderless , disunited , they fall an easy prey to the charlatans who ever keep their finger on the social pulse , and are ever as willing to pose , when opportunity is offered , as seer, clairvoyant , or palmist , as they are as trickster , tout , or quack . And the result ? A vast drift of earnest aspirations seethi…
1907 · PDF PAGE 332
…y impress upon our scornful men of science that the study of the bacillus , should give place to that of the baculum , the little to the great-how great , one only realises when one identifies the wand with the Mahalingam , up which Brahma flew at the rate of 84,000 yojanas a second for 84,000 mahakalpas , down which Vishnu flew at the rate of 84,000 crores of yojanas a second for 84,000 crores of mahakalpas - yet neither reached an end . This not only carries out the philosophy of Fichte , but also that of Paracelsus when he said , there is “ …
1907 · PDF PAGE 124
THE HARLOT 117 The following is Crowley's estimate of the greatest nation on earth : O England ! England , mighty England falls ! Her days of wealth and majesty are done : Men trample her for mire !! and for her eldest daughter , America , he also has but scant praise , Thou heart of coin beneath a brazen breast ! Rotten republic , prostitute of gain !? Wealth and luxury are her curse , as they are every where else : The politician and the millionaire Regain maternal dung.3 Nevertheless in a patriotic poem entitled “ An Appeal to the American R…
1907 · PDF PAGE 34
…s of the “ In Memoriam ” is “ The Nameless Quest, ” such lines as : I was wed Unto the part , and could not grasp the whole .? breathe a great and similar doubt . As in many respects the agnosticism of Tennyson's “ In Memoriam " re sembles the atheistic free thought of FitzGerald's “ Omar Khayyam ,” so do both the above -mentioned poems , and the first is of similar metre , its quatrains containing , as those of the poet of Khorassán , flights of great power of thought ; the following five quatrains are well worth quoting : We weep them as they…
1907 · PDF PAGE 213
…membered that the Infinite need not necessarily mean the boundless ; for there is the infinitely small , just as there is the infinitely great , as Crowley states in Aceldama : The inmost is the home of God . He moulds Infinity , The great within the small , one stainless unity !! The power of the small is grandly described in the following : Yet ants may move the mountain ; none is small But he who stretches out no arm at all ; Toadstools have wrecked fair cities in a night , One poet's song may bid a kingdom fall .? And that which is below is…
1907 · PDF PAGE 280
… Paul , midst the Greeks , the Egyptians , the Hebrews , the Chaldeans , the Aryans , and the Chinese , and its light is focussed in the greatest of the great : Socrates and Plato , Malebranche and Descartes , Locke and Spinoza , Hume and Berkeley , Swedenborg and Kant , Hegel and Comte , Tyndall , Spencer , and Huxley . Declining the mimetic , seeking the idiosyncratic , and standing by the eclectic , it has stood and grown a Colossus of Thought , ever young , ever virile , as age after age has gathered round it, and as the years have swept by…
1907 · PDF PAGE 269
…'am the Infinite , and if the illusionary ‘ I ' could only realize Who I'really am , how very happy we should all be !” Here we have the great law of re - birth operating nowhere in nothing . Thus the universe is laid open before us as some huge ledger , upon which each being is working as a clerk ; some are called directors , some accountants , some cashiers , yet great or small , high or low , from the amoeba to man , they are all scribbling , scribble , scribble , and counting , counting , counting , again and again , “ all the choir of heav…
1907 · PDF PAGE 44
THE LOOKING -GLASS 37 that a comic song would to a great oratorio . Why Jesus Wept " is a satiric farce, “ Rosa Mundi " a great love anthem , almost we might say a Wagnerian opera in rime, and comparable in many respects in its continuous though irregular symphony to the “ Lycidas " of Milton . Yet , nevertheless , “ Why Jesus Wept " is the more characteristic of the two , and certainly the most iconoclastic of any . In “ Orpheus , " Books I and II , we find a poetic regularity almost strictly adhered to , not so , how ever , in Book III , and …
1907 · PDF PAGE 102
… : There you make me laugh ! Remember-I have known such . But besides You ask hot snow and leaden feather - flights ! 1 Which contains a great truth , namely , that platonic love is no love at all . An affection it may be , but love it cannot be if it dare not see its form mirrored in the eyes of a loving woman . Its failure in the end is a certainty ; certain ascetics may compel their wills to conquer their natures , but men as a whole cannot . Certain maniacs such as Origen may emasculate themselves for the Kingdom of God , but the great huma…
1907 · PDF PAGE 42
…the “ Hudibras ” of Butler and the “ Endy mion ” of Keats . Though Crowley , as can be clearly seen throughout his works , is not only a great admirer but also a dis ciple of Browning's , he nevertheless vigorously attacks that great master's cacophony and wilful obscurity of meaning , in that eccentric curiosity of diction “ The Sword of Song ,” in which our ears are assailed by the most monstrous diversity of ‘ noises , following in a Rather than Sophocles or Aeschylus .
1907 · PDF PAGE 192
…and bad , are made one , lost in the depths of the Lethean sea. And what can all this lead us to , this progress through misery ? To the great archetype the Arahat ship of Buddha . It was by gazing on the sunken eyes of a corpse , so the legend runs , that Gautama forsook pleasure for a life of pity . Life is feodal to Death , and our ultimate sleep is greater than our first awakening . The womb was dark ; from out it sprang the thought less ; the tomb is darker still ; into it creeps the thoughtful . The dead are our gods , soon we shall strik…
1907 · PDF PAGE 207
…gar ap preciation , and when vulgar understanding has , swine like , trodden their pearls of wisdom back into the mud of its own sty , a great wave of materialism sweeps over the face of the globe . This system of thought , built on the illusive phantasmagoria 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 nearl…