The Star in the West

The Looking -Glass N surveying the works of Aleister Crowley the two essential facts that grip our understanding are : firstly , the superabundance of his genius ; and secondly , the diversity of his form . “ My womb is pregnant with mad moons and suns,” he writes , and though we could hardly agree to endow so virile a master with so feminine an organ , yet we can attribute something very like it to his brain . Pregnant it certainly is , and more , being already the mother of a large family , a family as diverse as the offspring of Uranus , father of the Gods , born to him by Earth , earthy and celestial . Sweet lyrics are crushed cheek by jowl with the most corrosive satire , sonorous heroics and blank verse at times merge into the most raucous of Hudibrasian doggerel , rimes of the sweet est and the most perverse character ring in our aston ished ear , tragedy and farce , ever extremes : Paul and Virginie sitting on the knees of Pantagruel , blowing kisses through the Sephirotic circle of eternity . At times we listen to the yearning hopes of a Paracelsus, or the noble words of a Tannhäuser ; at times warm arms are flung around us , and the hot kisses of some Messaline suffocate our very breath , leading us into the mansions of a de Sade and through the gardens of an Aretino , horrid with the frenzy of Eros . Or , again , we are treading with the sages of philosophy , " The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p. 166.