The Star in the West

THE MOTHER 139 We have passed through many fields , many groves , many wildernesses ; we have crossed the pure snowy mountains of Chastity , and the boiling seas of Passion , losing ourselves in not a few of those intricate and unknown by-paths which lead to trackless wastes and gloomy abysms . Aleister Crowley has pointed us the way , twined round the Tree of Knowledge he has offered us fruit, and we have eaten of it with face smiling or awry ; we have become as gods knowing good and evil , and having become gods with much striving against adversity, may some day become men ; for -to become a god is but to become as the image created in the brain of man , but to become a man is to become a progenitor of gods ; and then perchance we may realize the sublimity of the Great Mother hood , whose children are as one , a flaming crown of glory twined and interwoven with roses both white and red . This mingling of the passionate and the chaste we find is the new ideal that Crowley flashes before our dazzled sight. Away with Mary, immaculate Mother of Christ : away with Messalina , incestuous prophetess of Lust . Away ! Away ! To the West , to the East , till they meet in some flaming region of equatorial fury, and flashing interfuse and interblend . Once again must a prophet of the Lord arise and wed a wife of whoredoms, who hath committed great whoredom , departing from the Lord . Once again must Hosea expire on the crimson lips of Gomer, and from the womb of a harlot must the Christ be reborn a woman , wise , beautiful, and young ; who is both Circe and Diana , Isis and Aphrodite, in whose veins course all the fury of Medea , all the abominations of Canidia , who revels in the infernal rites of Sagana and