The Vision and the Voice

THE EQUINOX down. And they avail not to sever the Kamailos. There is one in green armour, with green eyes, whose sword is of vegetable fire. That shall avail me. My son is he,—and how shall I bear him that have not known man? All this time intolerable rays are shooting forth to beat me back or destroy me; but I am encased in an egg of blue- violet, and my form is the form of a man with the head of a golden hawk. While I have been observing this, the goddess has kept up a continuous wail, like the baying of a thousand hounds; and now her voice is deep and guttural and hoarse, and she breathes very rapidly words that I cannot hear. I can hear some of them now: UNTU LA LA ULULA UMUNA TOFA LAMA LE LI NA AHR IMA TAHARA ELULA ETFOMA UNUNA ARPETI ULU ULU ULU MARABAN ULULU MAHATA ULU ULU LAMASTANA. And then her voice rises to a shriek, and there is a caul- dron boiling in front of her; and the flames under the cauldron are like unto zinc flames, and in the cauldron is the Rose, the Rose of 49 petals, seething in it. Over the cauldron she has arched her rainbow wings; and her face is bent over the cauldron, and she is blowing opalescent silvery rings on to the Rose; and each ring as it touches the water bursts into flame, and the Rose takes new colours. And now she lifts her head, and raises her hands to heaven, and cries: O Mother, wilt thou never have compassion on the children of earth? Was it not enough that the Rose should be red with the blood of thine heart, and that its petals should be by 7 and by 7? 16