Liber Aleph

LIBER ALEPH VEL CXI 200 Z% De Caecitia Philosophorum Antiquorum (Of the Blindness of the Ancient Philosophers) EHOLD, how comfortable is this thy Wisdom, wherein I have resolved every Conflict soever that is or that can be, even in all dimensions, that Antagonism of Things no less than their Limitations. I have said: Evil be thou my Good; for it is the Magical Mirror of Our Astarte and the Caduceus of our Hermes. Now this was the Error of Elder Philosophers, that perceiving Changeful Duality as the Cause of Sorrow, they sought the Recon- cilement in Unity and in Stability. But I shew thee the Universe as the Body of Our Lady Nuith, who is None and Two, with Hadith Her Lord as the Alternator of those Phases. This Universe is then a perpetual By-coming, the Vessel of every Permutation of infinity, wherein every Phen- omenon is a Sacrament, Change being the act of Love, and Duality the Condition prodromal to that Act even as an Axe must be taken back from a Cedar that it may deliver its Stroke. The Error therefore of these Philosophers lay in their false Assumption that Bliss, Knowledge and Being (the Qualities of their Changeless Unity) could be States. O my Son, how pitiful is their Beggary, these Paupers of Sense and of Experience and of Observation! The Emptiness of their Bellies was it that bred Phantoms of Ideal, so that they sought Joy by a crude Denial of what Truth (or rather, Fact) they had perceived concerning he Universe, so that they set up an Idol of Death for their God, in very Rage of Hatred against the Sum of their own Selves. b