Confessions of Aleister Crowley

346 I did not see why I should be confined to one life. How can one hope to understand the world if one persists in regarding it from the conning tower of one's own personality? One can increase one's knowledge and nature by {559} travelling and reading; but that does not tell one how things look to other people. It is all very well to visit St. Peter's and the Vatican, but what would be really interesting would be to know how they look to the Pope. The greatness of a poet consists, to a considerable extent, in his ability to see the world through another man's eyes; and my training in science is always suggesting to me that I should invent a technique for doing anything that I want to do. My technique for borrowing other people's spectacles was to put myself in the place altogether, either by actually adopting a suitable alias or by writing a book in their names. It is a common and legitimate literary device. When in Holland in '97, I had written a Christmas hymn in which the Nativity was treated realistically. I now found that Christian piety had taken away the entire poetic beauty of Bethlehem by declaring that the Virgin suffered no pain. (It is really astonishing how these idiots managed to remove any touch of sublimity from this stupid story!) I therefore had to change "her bitter anguish hath sufficed" into "her joyful ardour hath sufficed", and otherwise degrade my poem to a blasphemous imbecility, in order to comply with the conventions of the Church. Apart from that, what I had written in a spirit not far removed from ribaldry was found wholly satisfactory. I had written, in 1899, while staying with Mathers in Paris, a hymn to Isis to be used in the ceremonies of Isis worship which he was at that time proposing to revive in Paris. I changed the word "Sistron" to "cymbal" and the word "Isis" to "Mary". The hymn required no further alteration. I think that rather significant. Once more, I made a translation of the Fatihah, the most sacred chapter of the Koran, I replaced the name of God by that of Mary, and once again found favour with the Vatican. I quote a few isolated stanzas: The red sun scorches up our veins; The white moon makes us mad; Pitiless stars insult our pains With clamour glad. At the foot of the Cross is the Mother of God, And Her tears are like rain to enliven the sod, While the Blood of the Lord from his Body that runs Is the heat of the summer, the fire of its suns. See where the cherubim pallid and plumed Swing with their thuribles praises perfumed! Jesus is risen and Mary assumed: Ave Maria! {560} O sorrow of pure eyes beneath The heavy-fringed estatic lids, Seeing for maiden song and wreath Sphinxes and pagan pyramids! O Mary, like a pure perfume Do thou receive this failing breath,