Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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Page 70 of 203
1910 · PDF PAGE 141

The World’s Tragedy

88 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY. Intolerabe stench ! Spasm on spasm of agony still goads My soul to get to God. GOVINDA The third should be the final period. What portent may we look for ? ALEXANDER By this dial We must wait yet a little, majesties ! CHAU I tell you of the Oracle. I took (So that it might be an exhaustive trial) A snow-white bird with purple tail-feathers Wherein pale flames of gold mingled and shook. Here, too, my wisest ministers Gathered to solve the riddle of the Star. But so the balky brute Crushed in this gnarled fist Maintained t…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 24

Collected Works (Vol. III)

18 THE STAR AND THE GARTER Ay ! God of scissors ! barber God ! My earlier mystery did you learn? Unshoe the aching pseudopod ! Mysterious donkey, chew or churn Your human-kindness-milk to butter ! I gave you gratis God's advice (Since God's responsible) to—mutter In gutter, pav your tithe to vice Since virtue kicks you down its stairs. So thus I clothed it in strange word To catch you thinking unawares. Think ? do you think ? Then, thinks a bird. Read your Descartes ! Nietzsche demurred? To you, who give yourself such airs, This riddle cannot o…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 229

Collected Works (Vol. III)

…he shall find himself in bed. Hear wisdom! the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, A man is almost obliged to be in com- munion with God when God is blowing his hat off, drenching him to the skin, whistling through his very bones, scaring him almost to death with a flash of lightning, and so on. When he gets time to think, he thinks just that. In a church all is too clearly the work of man: in the matter of man’s comfort man’s devices are so obviously superior to God’s: so that we compare hats and languidly discuss the preacher. Religion is…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 19

Jezebel

…locks and herds did get And took the poor man’s lamb.” Thou art the man ! Our love must lie beneath thy bitter ban ! Thou petty, envious God ! My king, be sure His brute force shall not to the end endure ; Some stronger soul than thine shall wrest his crown And thrust him from his own high heaven down To some obscure forgetful hell. For me Forsake thy hopes in him ! We worship, we, Rather the dear delights we know and hold ; The first cool kiss, within the water cold That draws its music from some bubbling well, Looks long, looks deadly, looks …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 54

Collected Works (Vol. I)

…lows hard behind, Fast, and too fast. The lightning heralds us ; the tron blast Lends us its splendour fora steedfrre-shod, The steed of God! From all the caverns of the hollow sea, And all the fortresses that guard the air, And all the fearful palaces of fire, And all the earth’s dwarf-ridden secrecy, They come, they gather, and they ride, to bear Destruction and disorder and desire ; They cling to him who braves the gale of night, And mock his might. They rush upon him like a wave, and break In fiery foam against him, and they shake Life in i…

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1903 · PDF PAGE 41

Alice: An Adultery

ALICE : AN ADULTERY “ Commit not with man’s sworn spouse.” King Lear. Against the fiat of that God discrowned, Unseated by Man’s justice, and replaced, By Law most bountiful and maiden-faced And mother-minded : passing the low bound Of man’s poor law we leapt at last and found Passion ; and passing the dim halls disgraced Found higher love and larger and more chaste, A calm sphinx waiting in secluded ground. Hear the sad rhyme of how love turned to lust, And lust invigorated love, and love Shone brighter for the stain it rose above, Gathering r…

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1906 · PDF PAGE 95

Gargoyles

…uman. ‘* Corpses have room, and men are jammed; Those offer food, and these are crammed :— And cheaper, too, is woman!” I, being neither God nor ghost, A mere caprice of matter, Hop idly in the hideous host, Content to chaff the uttermost, To cackle and to chatter. They bring their wreaths to deck the dead, As skipping-ropes the devils use them. One through the immortelles perks his head. [These sights to ghosties are as bread ; The luckless living lose them.] 87

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1909 · PDF PAGE 38

Clouds Without Water

…easance ? Yet ever as he went We stood behind him And conipassed her with Our continual presence? From the black whirlwind the most high God sayeth : Why did ye doubt, 0 ye of httle faith ?

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1910 · PDF PAGE 61

The Scented Garden

The Unity of God. 53 ken of in the Oracles of Zoroaster as “ Intelligibles ”, “ Empyrean Rulers ” ; in short, Viceroys of the De- miourgos. They are the Mahayana “ Dhyana- Buddhas ” and the modern planetary gods Arathron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, Hagith, Ophiel, Phul. The curious may consult Cornelius Agrippa for further details. 2. A common expression of surprise or shock. In such a connection it here becomes (to the Per- sian mind, at least) intensely ludicrious. As in the story of the King who climbed the wall (in the other “ Scented Garden ”. E…

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1912 · PDF PAGE 36

Sir Palamedes

… brazen towers, and here The sculptured rocks, the marble shrine Where to a tall black stone they rear The altars due to the divine. The God they deem in sensual joy Absorbed, and silken dalliance: To please his leisure hours a boy Compels an elephant to dance. So majesty to ridicule Is turned. To other climes and men Makes off that strong, persistent fool Sir Palamede the Saracen.

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1906 · PDF PAGE 28

Collected Works (Vol. II)

22 I am the Godhead manifest in flesh. I stand above, among the Holy Ones. I am all-purified through suffering, All-perfect in the mystic sacrifice, And in the knowledge of my Selfhood made One with the Everlasting Lords of Life. The Glorified through Trial is My Name. The Rescuer of Matter is My Name. I am the Heart of Jesus girt about With the Swift Serpent! I, Osirified, Stand in this Hall of Twofold Truth and say : Holy art Thou, Lord of the Universe! Holy art Thou, whom Nature hathnot formed! Holy art Thou, O Vast and Mighty One! O Lord of…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 218

Collected Works (Vol. III)

… ; Branded, and sad, without cheer; Year after ghastly year, And it endeth never. And this is the mystical stranger, The subtle Arcadian God That lurks as for sorrow and danger, Yet rules all the earth with his rod. Abiding in spirit and sense Through the manifold changes of man, This soul is alone and intense And one—He is Pan. More subtle than mass as ye deem it He abides in the strife that is dust. Than spirit more keen as ye dream it, He is laughter and loathing and lust. He is all. Nature’s agonies scream It ; Her joys quire it clear ; in …

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1909 · PDF PAGE 185

The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

A NOTE ON GENESIS IGNIS DEI: which is also the AGNUS DEI, or Lamb of God that destroyeth (literally devs out) the Sins of the World. As it is written in the Ordinary of the Mass: the Priest goeth unto the South of the Altar and prays: “O Agnus Dei! qui tollis—qui tollis Peccata Mundi—Dona Nobis Pacem!” And this Fire, this Lamb of God, is 4vies, Symbol of the Dawn- ing Year: whose colour also is as the Red Fire, and which is the head of the Fiery Triplicity in the Zodiac. So also in the Grade of Neophyte in the Order of the Golden Dawn the Hiero…

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1909 · PDF PAGE 185

The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

A NOTE ON GENESIS IGNIS DEI: which is also the AGNUS DEI, or Lamb of God that destroyeth (literally devs out) the Sins of the World. As it is written in the Ordinary of the Mass: the Priest goeth unto the South of the Altar and prays: “O Agnus Dei! qui tollis—qui tollis Peccata Mundi—Dona Nobis Pacem!” And this Fire, this Lamb of God, is 4vies, Symbol of the Dawn- ing Year: whose colour also is as the Red Fire, and which is the head of the Fiery Triplicity in the Zodiac. So also in the Grade of Neophyte in the Order of the Golden Dawn the Hiero…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 41

Songs of the Spirit

…y soul dismayed These voices their loud chant of terror sang : “ Thou hast not kept thy trust. To storm the gates Were to have found out God and all delight, Conquered for all thy fellow-men the fates, And found out Paradise in Hell’s despite.” I heard them laugh, the Harpies and the Hates . . . Then fell, like death, the intolerable night. 31

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1912 · PDF PAGE 12

Book 4 (Part I)

…me straight and unstirred Burn up thy being in one word! Next, still that ecstasy, prolong Thy meditation steep and strong, Slaying even God, should He distract Thy attention from the chosen act! Last, all these things in one o’erpowered, Time that the midnight blossom flowered! The oneness is. Yet even in this, My son, thou shalt not do amiss If thou restrain the expression, shoot Thy glance to rapture’s darkling root, Discarding name, form, sight, and stress Even of this high consciousness; Pierce to the heart! I leave thee here: Thou art the …

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1912 · PDF PAGE 10

Household Gods

…rassus. These faint and fearful shores Of time are beaten by the surge of sense, Love worn away—by love?—to indifference. Who knows what god—or demon—she adores? Or in what wood she shelters, or what grove Sees her profane our sacrament of love? Aurcta. I saw her follow ‘The stream in the hollow Where never Apollo Abides. So thick are the trees That never the breeze Stirs them, or sees ‘What satyr inhabits the glen, what nymph in the pools of it hides. Lighter of foot Than a syiph or a fairy, Sinuous, wary, T passed from the airy Lawns, where t…

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1912 · PDF PAGE 41

Sir Palamedes

XIII Sir PALAMEDE is come anon Into a blue delicious bay. A mountain towers thereupon, Wherein some fiend of ages gone Is whelmed by God, yet from his breast Spits up the flame, and ashes grey. Hereby Sir Palamede his quest Pursues withouten let or rest. Seeing the evil mountain be, Remembering all his evil years, He knows the Questing Beast runs free— Author of Evil, then, is he! Whereat immediate resounds The noise he hath sought so long: appears There quest a thirty couple hounds Within its belly as it bounds. Lifting his eyes, he sees at la…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 195

The Star in the West

…nd thy cup shall be as a triple flame set with sapphire , and beryl, and amethyst ; for it is the cup of Adepts , and of Heroes , and of Gods . Then all the absinthial bitterness of thine heart shall vanish midst the chaunting of souls lost in the ocean of understanding for ever and everlasting . From the filthy distillations of thy life , and the golden traffic of its quintessential lusts ; from the fantastic dews of thy death , and all the gibbous glitter of its mirific mirror , shalt thou be purified : and thy cup shall be as the cusps of th…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 8

Collected Works (Vol. I)

…e words! And the poor good old man tried all he could to calm me; he thought I was mad! The fool! I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered—now I have only one doubt left—which of the twain was God? I aspire ! ‘* And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out... . Insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say—the field of blood.”-—.ACTS i. 18, T9. Howbeit, ; The poet himself would be inclined A few other ea…

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