The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

ILLUSION D’AMOUREUX in some mysterious orison that was subtler and stronger than prayer. “O beautiful, adorable, wonderful! O soul of wicked- ness! Supreme abomination, I invoke Thee! I worship Thee! I love Thee! Body and soul, I invoke Thee! Awake! Arise! Move! Manifest thy bliss to me, the soul that hungers for thy wisdom, as my body aches for thy kisses! “ Have not I wooed Thee and awaited Thee? But Thou comest not. By what spell may I conjure Thee? AmI the mock of Thy majesty? Ah, my god, my master, my lover— nay, that Thou art not. “But I love Thee! I worship Thee!” With supreme force she cried out upon the God ; she tore at her beautiful flesh with her fingers; she writhed upon the fur; words of dreadful passion bubbled at her lips; her mouth was like a raging sea of blasphemy ; she moaned and struggled, torn by some internal force even as a woman in childbirth; she sank back into black silence, exhausted, numb. But now the words came back like echoes from the infinite —I love thee! I worship thee! The lights went out; the black god gathered himself together; his mighty form outran the limits of space. He gathered himself in force and fire; he concentrated himself ; as a black cloud he wrapped her round—body and soul. He ate her up with his first kiss; his arms crushed her into his mouth as a boy might crush some golden grape; the majesty of his passion clove her with white-hot steel; her life rushed headlong down the steeps of annihilation. Yet in her rose the awful dawn of a new life, vast and 189