Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1901 · PDF PAGE 40

The Mother’s Tragedy

… worthy to be loved. Ah Fate! if thou hadst cast the dies Whence no appeal, in any other wise! I am the soul of the grim face of things; Mine are the Sphinx’s wings; Mine own life lives with this event! Yet even I, its very self, lament The execrable tyranny, The rayless misery Of this wild whirlpool sea of circumstance. Mine old eyes look askance: It is my punishment to dwell In mine own self-created hell. [CORA vushes in. MADELINE. What curse of God hath smitten you? I see Exceeding horror in abiding shape, Blasting the countenance of peace a…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 30

The Mother’s Tragedy

…the host of devil forms That eat my soul up, many torturing, And one—ah! one accurséd beyond all— Soothing! O heart of Jesus, bleed with mine! [Kuneels towards East. See, see! I seek Thee on maternal knees ! Conceive Her pangs that bore Thee, when her shame Devoured Her, with no memory of love— As mine, as mine! O bitter memories! [4 fause. ULRIC. Tell me, dear friend! anxiety and love Are like to kill me. Tell me in three words. CORA, slowly and deliberately. I am a dancer and a prostitute! ULRIC smiles contemptuously. Why trick me with so pit…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 125

The Mother’s Tragedy

EPILOGUE lil Some forty years this earth knew song and passion Pour from my lips, saw gladness in mine eyes! Some forty shall I sing some other fashion, Dance in strange measures, change the key of sighs. Then rise in Thessaly again, Thalassian! Only, more wise.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 47

The Mother’s Tragedy

…ul love, And be the sun to ripen and the rain To water it. My soul became the bride To its own body, and my body leapt With passion from mine own Imperial loins Begotten, and made strong from my own soul To answer it. I hail thee, son of mine, _ Cc

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1901 · PDF PAGE 33

The Mother’s Tragedy

…ell me why I loved you as a child, and why I dare Now take your head between my hands and kiss Your forehead with these shameful lips of mine, These harlot lips, and kiss you unashamed ? ULRIC. Strange are these words, and this emotion strange! CORA. Strange is the truth, and deadly as an asp. ULRIC. Wear me no more with this anxiety. CORA. How can I speak? For this will ruin us. ULRIC. Unspoken, I demand thy heart of thee. CORA. My heart is broken. This will murder thine. ULRIC. Kill, but not torture! Let me know the truth.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 77

The Mother’s Tragedy

…er slips on the marble floor, and lies groaning. AMENHATEP. See that due silence greets catastrophe! No word from now without command of mine. [Szlence. Then grows a nowse of men fighting, &c.; above this after a while rises a shrill laughter, terrifying to hear. Then cries of victory and the triumphant laugh of a great conqueror. Fis heavy step, and that of his staff, &c., 7s mext heard coming masterfully down the corridor. The soldier gives a shriek. THE LEPER. The Syrian must not see a cur like this Cower at death. For Egypt’s honour, then !

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1901 · PDF PAGE 38

The Mother’s Tragedy

…ghten Madeline! [ He vatses her to lead her from the room. CORA. Where would you lead me? I am blind with tears. ULRIC. I have no tears. Mine eyes are hard and cold As my intention. Help me, Madeline. CORA. God will avenge me bitterly on you If you stretch hand to aid this infamy. ULRIC. You shall not wreck her life. Be silent now! Believe me, it 1s nothing, Madeline! She often falls into a fit like this. Excess is danger, equally in prayer (Her vice is prayer) as in debauchery. [He ts again going mad. fe drags CORA from the room. MADELINE. It …

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1901 · PDF PAGE 57

The Mother’s Tragedy

…rror, let thy mouth Frame from its charnel-house some pregnant word Intelligible. THE LEPER. I am king; thy mother’s limbs Clung fast to mine when I begot thy father. PACHAD. He died in battle; thou art not the king.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 10

The Mother’s Tragedy

… the Holy One: Seek out the secret of the inmost shrine, Strong in the might and spirit of the sun. Arise, arise, arise, Give passage to mine eyes, Ye airs, ye veils; ye bucklers of the Snake! I knew the deepest cells, Where the foul spirit dwells; Called to the dead, the drowsed, arise ! awake! Their dark profoundest thought Was less than She I sought, It was as nought! I drew my soul, I dived beneath the burning lake. Thrice, in the vault of Hell, my Word was born, Abortive, in the empty wilderness. False echoes, made malicious, turn to scorn…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 60

The Mother’s Tragedy

… THE FATAL FORCE Or nerve set shrieking, all these ruinous deeds And dissolution of the royal house. I see this grey unnatural mother of mine Now, as she is, disrobed of deity, And like some reeling procuress grown wolf By infamous bewitchment, haunt the stairs, And pluck the young men by the robe, and take The maidens for her sacrifice, and burn With great unquenchable dead lustrous eyes Toward impossible things grown possible In Egypt. I will cleanse the land of this. Let me remember I am yet a god! Re-enter LEPER. THE LEPER. Thou must be bro…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 59

The Mother’s Tragedy

…he secret ones; and we— See where our heritage is made; I, king, A leper, and thyself, the hideous fruit Of what strange poisons? But in mine own self I am the king and chief of all the priests; And thou, in thine own eyes, art a young god, Strong, beautiful, and lithe, a leaping fawn Upon the mountains. PACHAD. Yea, I am a god. I am fire against the fountain of my birth, The storm upon the earth that nurtured me! Leave me: we twain have no more words to speak. THE LEPER. Neither in heaven nor in hell. I go, The dead king, worshipping the livin…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 21

The Mother’s Tragedy

…yet appeased, To join together in imagination The ship—the wreck! And yet I stand at last Secure in my unselfish love to them, Repaid in mine own currency. I trust God hath made smooth the road beneath the hearse Of my forgetful age. All must be well. SPIRIT OF TRAGEDY. Mortals never learn from stories How catastrophe becomes; How above the victor’s glories In the trumpets and the drums, And the cry of millions “ Master !”’ Looms the shadow of disaster. Every hour a man hath said ‘‘That at least is scotched and dead.” Some one circumstance: “At…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 37

The Mother’s Tragedy

…y the living God, To be my mistress. If I fail in this, Or falter in this counsel of despair, May God’s own curses dog me into hell, And mine own life perpetuate itself Through all the ages of eternity. Amen! Amen! Come, Cora, to my heart! [He stoops to embrace her. Horror and madness catch him, and he runs about the room wildly, crying for CORA, whom he cannot see. MADELINE enters. MADELINE. O Cora! Cora! Ulric! Help! Help! Help! ULRIC regains his self-control. Hush! Allis well! I cannot tell you now. Some news—a letter—it has frightened her. …

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1901 · PDF PAGE 29

The Mother’s Tragedy

…c, Ulric! bear with me awhile! Speak no more words—each syllable strikes here, [Hand to heart. A cloud of wingéd scorpions, that rage In mine own deepest self; for there I know Tame harpies that had ceased to torture me; And this more ghastly brood renews their sting, Adding a triple poison! O my soul Is torn with pangs more horrible than hell, Scorching the very marrow of my bones, Corrupting me—corrupting me, I say—

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1901 · PDF PAGE 23

The Mother’s Tragedy

…im My child, my child! And now my selfishness Is shamed, and I have made the sacrifice To give this pure heart to that maidenly, And let mine old age grow upon my hair, Finding my happiness in seeing him The all-devoted, and in God’s good pleasure Have little children playing at my knees, That I may listen, in their innocent prayers, For Jesus’ voice. And I will never break The secret of his being to my boy Lest he despise me. This one reticence I think my long-drawn agony may earn, For I will do without a mother’s name If only I may keep a son…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 85

The Mother’s Tragedy

…Her first shy glance! This woman I desired, And sealed my own for ever by this keen Death that crowns her Death’s queen. Death’s and not mine: I was a fool to kiss Her dead lips—aye, her living lips for that ! I cannot bid her rise and live again. I would not. Nay, I know not; for is this My triumph or my ruin, satiate Of death, insatiate alway of pain ? What have I done? In vain, in vain!

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1901 · PDF PAGE 55

The Mother’s Tragedy

…A holy habitation for the shrine Solitary, ’mid the night of broken brine That foamed like starlight round the desolate shore. So to the mine of that crystalline ore 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 the morning, to the Southern skies; And fling its wild chant higher at the fall Of even, and of bright Hyperion; To mix its fire with dew, to call The spirit of the limitless air, made one In the amazing essence …

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1901 · PDF PAGE 61

The Mother’s Tragedy

… strong limbs And supple loins and splendid bosom bare Full of bright milk, the breast of all the world. This lesser mastery I have made mine own By strange devices, by unheard-of ways Of wisdom, by strong sins, and magical Rituals made righteous of their own excess Of horror; but I have not made myself So absolute as I shall do to-day In this new infamy. For I must pass Desolate into the dusk of things again, Having risen so far to fall to the abyss, Deeper for exaltation; I must go Wailing and naked into the inane Cavernous shrineless place o…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 36

The Mother’s Tragedy

… lives to save your modesty From my incestuous embrace! O God! My love is nobler—to defy the past, Deny !—-your love is merely natural ; Mine, against Nature, is the love Divine! What crime is this? Thy pale Son’s martyrdom Cleansed earth from no such vile hypocrisy As this my mother’s. And I call thee, God,

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