Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION

Search the corpus.

Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.

5 matching pages

Page 1 of 1
1939 · PDF PAGE 5

Temperance: A Tract for the Times

…t of breath; Birth shoots a shaft, weighed down by age, That strikes the target, death. Then come, thou golden goblet brimmed With lust! Though all be vain, There’s hope for us, the lion-limbed, In hashish and cocaine. Though death should hale us by the scruff Of neck to’s mouldy portal, To-night let us get drunk enough To know we are immortal!

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1939 · PDF PAGE 6

Temperance: A Tract for the Times

…the gold from the furnace that melted my loves. Love is not bound to the body, not sparse and adrift with the mind Not secret with soul, though the soul seem one and alone of its kind. The body is naught but a corpse, its growth but a name of decay, A delirious dream of sick gods—where the Shadow hath sway. Concocted of offal and mire, putrescent with cancer of breath, A knot that unravels to naught, a riddle whose answer is Death? The mind is the reek of the fume of the body’s corruption, the mime Of its magotty moods as it rots from its worm-…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1939 · PDF PAGE 9

Temperance: A Tract for the Times

On bread alone though a man can’t thrive, Saint Luke says nothing of brandy; It may be the thing to keep us alive, And I see there’s a bottle handy. Open it Bill! There’s only Five. It may be the thing to keep us alive. The Road of Excess, said William Blake, To the Palace of Wisdom leads one; Open a bottle for Wisdom’s sake! And I am the boy that needs one. It’s a long, long way, but it’s good to take— Open a bottle for Mishter Blake! At the door of Burgess’ Fish Sauce Shop She stood, oh, how does it go, boys? Well, “truly rural” will do for t…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1939 · PDF PAGE 8

Temperance: A Tract for the Times

…d me a hut of wattle. The corkscrew seems to have got mislaid? Then smash the neck of the bottle! Courage and will and a whack will aid, Though the corkscrew seem to have got mislaid. Anatomists say that a single wing Isn’t much for a bird to fly on. There’s not much ginger about the spring Of the fiercest one-legged lion. Another bottle’s the obvious thing To get the ginger into our spring. Beloved brethren, listen to me! If there’s one truth of divinity Clear, it’s the virtue there is in Three, And I myself was at Trinity. The least we can do…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1939 · PDF PAGE 11

Temperance: A Tract for the Times

Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being and thought. Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past, All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the last, It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the seed of a name: Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible Aim. I am Necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate! And Fate determines me “I”; and I have the Will to create. Vast is the sphere, but it turns on itself like the prettiest star, And I am the looby that learns that all thi…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →