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.

44 matching pages

Page 1 of 3
1899 · PDF PAGE 17

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…ling spirits stumble to your sty: The worm that was your lie—our heel its head Bruises, that bruised us once ; the snake is dead. Who of mankind that honours man discerns That man of all men, whose high spirit burns, Crowned over life, and conqueror of death, The godhood that was Christ of Nazareth— Who of all men, that will not gird his brand And purge from priestcraft the uxorious land? Christ, who lived, died, and lived, that man might be Tameless and tranquil as the summer sea, That laughs with love of the broad skies of noon, And dreams of…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 31

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…ands to us. CHORUS. Toward what end? For present help is much, But uttermost destruction more, for we Have no strong hope in any hand of man: God is our refuge and our tower of strength. In Him if any man abide; but if He put his faith in horsemen, or the sword, The sword he trusted shall be for an end. ELEAZAR. But evils fall like rain upon the land. CHORUS. Let us not call the hail to give us peace. ELEAZAR. Nor on the sun, lest he too eat us up. CHORUS. The heart of a man as the sea Beats hither and thither to find Ease for the limbs long fr…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 178

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…ath— Vet their worst shades are tinged with dawning beams! I have dreamed life a circle or a line, Called God, and Fate, and Chance, and Man, divine. I know not all I say, but through it all Mark the dim hint of ultimate sunshine ! Remember me for this! And when I go To sleep the last sleep in the slumberous snow, Let child and man and woman yet recall One little moment that I loved you so! Let some high pinnacle my tombstone be, My epitaph the murmur of the sea, The clouds of heaven be fleeces for my pall, My grave one thought within the heart…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 186

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…ared the stallion wind? Whose foaling flings The billows starward? Whose the steeds fire-shod That sweep throughout the world? What spearman sings The fearful chant of war That fires, and spurs, and maddens all the kings That rule o’er earth, and air, and ocean? Whose hand excites the star | To shatter into fiery flakes? No man,. No petty god, but One who governs all, Slips the sun’s leash, perceives the sparrow’s fall, Too high for man to fear, too near for man to call. O virgin Poesy, the link is thine To bring us near ; the suffering of thy …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 125

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

SCENE I. Shaftesbury Avenue, 8.30 p.m. A gentleman walking witha friend, both in evening dress. A little ragged girl, A youngman. The gentleman stops and gives the lstile girl a halfpenny. The young man smiles. The gentleman notices the smile, and sees how great a sadness underlies it. VAUGHAN. [Durning to the young man.] ND you—what are you doing here? Excuse my rudeness—you seem so sad. PERCY. I am sad to-night. I am very lonely in this place. VAUGHAN. There are plenty of people about. PERCY. People—mere shells, husks of the golden wheat that…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 163

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…hought with brass Is all a silver path my feet beneath, And o’er its level sward Of sea-reflecting white flowers and fresh grass I walk. Man’s darkness is a leathern sheath, Myself the sun-bright sword ! I have no fear, nor doubt, nor sorrow now, For I give Self to God—I give my best Of soul and blood and brain To my poor Art—there comes to me somehow This fact: Man’s work is God made manifest; Life is all Peace again. And Dreams are beyond life. Their wider scope, Limitless Empire o’er the world of thought, Help my desires to press Beyond all …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 158

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…deliver Men’s spirits with thy song. Ah, chainless, distant, fleeting, To lands that know no sea, Where ocean’s stormy greeting Fills no man’s heart with glee ; Where lovers die or sever, And death destroys for ever And God bears slavery. Fly thither, so thou leave us That no man’s hand may reave us Of this—that we are free. Free all men that may heed thee, On freemen’s praises feed thee, Who chorus full, “ God speed thee, Live lyre of Liberty !” And me, ah! float above me Unseen in limpid air, Sing ever, “ Love me, love me,” Or ever I despair.…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 58

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…, As the string of a harp that intenses The note that its fire may not find. For here in the tumult and labour And blindness of cowering man, _ The spirit has God for a neighbour, And the wheels unreturning that ran Return to the heart of the roses, And curl in the new blossom now, As the holiest fire that encloses Gray flame on the holiest brow. So midnight with magic reposes, And slumbers to visions bow. For the soul of man, being free, shall pass the gates of God, And the spirit find the Sea by the feet of Him untrod, | And the flesh, a life…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 15

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…he strange breath Of an incarnate hatred. Darkness fell And chaos, from prodigious gulphs of hell. Life, that rejoiced to travail with a man, Looked where the cohorts of destruction ran, Saw darkness visible, and was afraid, Seeing. There grew like Death a monster shade, Blind as the coffin, as the covering sod Damp, as the corpse obscene, the Christian God. So to the agony dirges of despair Man cleft the womb, and shook the icy air With bitter cries for light and life and love. But these, begotten of the world above, Withdrew their glory, and …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 171

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…mb! Time would all men within the grave inter— For Time himself shall no god find a tomb? Glory and love and work precipitate The end of man’s desire—so sayeth Fate. Man answers: Love is stronger, work more sure, Glory more fadeless than his shafts abate. Though «all worlds fail, the pulse of Life be still, God fall, all darken, he hath not his will Of deeds beyond recall, that shall endure : For us, these three divinest glasses fill,

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 93

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…nds for the impotent spite of the Evil One, venting itself in personal malice. In short, I have ventured (I trust that in so doing the human pathos of the story has lost nothing, even from the merely legendary point of view), behind the veil of man’s blindness, and the inexorable Até, to hint at the cloudy conflict of the mysterious forces that rule beyond our vision or our comprehension ; and if, at the end, I have dared to lift that veil, and to put in the mouths of uninitiates words appreciative of those glorious destinies that overrule the …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 8

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…and wave And spirit of the unimagined fire, Begotten on the dishonourable grave Of fallen tyranny, may seek her sire In the pure soul of Man, her lips may lave In the pure waters of her soul’s desire, Truth: and deep eyes behold thine eyes as deep, Fresh lips kiss thine that kissed her soul from sleep. See Italy, the eagle of all time, Triumphant, from her coffin’s leaden prison, Soar into freedom, seek the heights sublime Of self-reliance, from those depths new-risen, Stirred by the passion of thy mighty rhyme: Eagle, and phoenix: shrill, shar…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 9

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

… stee] and music, wrath god-worded, Consuming with immeasurable heat, The styes and kennels of priest and king, that girded The loins of many peoples, till the seat Of Hell was shaken to its deep, and herded Hosts of the tyrant trembled, faltered, fled, When none pursued but curses of men dead :— See, from the Calvary of the Son of Man, Where all the hopes of France were trodden under; See, from the crucifixion of Sedan, Thy thought the lightning,and thy word the thunder! See her supreme, kingly, republican, New France arisen, with her heart in…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 20

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

xx PRELUDE. _Completing Truth in its amazing span :— “ Godhead is made the Spirit that is Man.” To whose white mountains, and their arduous ways, Turn we our purpose, till the faith that slays Yield up its place to faith that gives us life, The faith to conquer in the higher strife ; Our single purpose, and sublime intent, With their spilt blood to seal our sacrament, Who stand among the martyrs of the Light; Our single purpose, by incarnate might Begotten after travail unto death, To live within the light that quickeneth ; To tread base though…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 18

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…ak love’s heart pitiful, and reach the strong Through stricken children, and a mother’s wrong. Day after darkness, life beyond the tomb! Manhood reluctant from religion’s womb Leaps, and sweet laughters flash for freedom’s birth That thrills the old bosom of maternal earth. The dawn has broken; yet the impure fierce fire Kindles the grievous furnace of desire Still for the harpy brood of king and priest, Slave, harlot, coward, that make human feast Before the desecrated god, in hells Of darkness, where the mitred vampire dwells, Where still dea…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 200

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

178 MYSTERIES: MAN’S HOPE. kK * fades the last red glimmer of the sun, Ere day is night, when on the glittering bar The waves are foaming rubies, and afar Streaks of red water, gold on th’ horizon, On summer ripples rhythmically run, Ere dusk is weaned, there sails on silver car From the expectant East, the Evening Star, And all the threads of sorrow are unspun. So He who ordered this shall still work thus, And ere life’s lamp shall flicker into death, And Time lose all his empire over us, A gleam of Hope, of Knowledge, shall arise, A star to s…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 167

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…ove to love; He wandered through the woods above The river, and came suddenly Where he lay sleeping. Purity And joy beyond the speech of man Dwelt on his face, divinely wan. “ How beautiful is sleep!” he saith. Bends over him. There is no breath, No sound, no motion: it is death. And gazing on the happy head “ How beautiful is Death!” he said. 145

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 14

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

XiV Mysteries: LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC—continued. SONNETS TO THE AUTHOR OF THE PHRASE: ‘ST am NOT A GENTLEMAN, AND I HAVE CONTENTS. NO FRIENDS” Sonnet: A DREAM . THe Eve or Love . THe MORNING OF DISILLUSIONMENT . BESIDE THE RIVER . . Man’s Hope .. . . SONNET FOR G. F. KELLy’s DRAWING |OF AN HERMAPHRODITE ... ‘PERFECT LOVE CASTETH OUT Fear”” A Wooptanp IDYLL PERDURABO. On GARRET Hoste. BRIDGE LOVE . . . SONNET TO CLyTiE . A VALENTINE, ’98 PENELOPE ; : LOVE ON THE ISLAND . A SONNET OF BLASPHEMY. THe Rape or DEATH . IN THE WooDS WITH SHELLEY . A VISI…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 225

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC. 203 A SONNET OF BLASPHEMY. XALTED over earth, from hell arisen, There sits a woman, ruddy with the flame Of men’s blood spilt, and her uncleanly shame, And the thrice-venomous vomit of her prison. She sits as one long dead: infernal calm, Chill hatred, wrap her in their poisonous cold. She careth not, but doth disdainly hold Three scourges for man’s soul, that know no balm. They know not any cure. The first is Life, A well of poison. Sowing dust and dung Over men’s hearts, the second scourge, above All shameful deeds, is L…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1899 · PDF PAGE 198

Jephthah and Other Mysteries

…th death. Death, death ere dawn. The night is over dark, Trees are grown terrible, the shadows wan Make shudder all the tense desires of man ; No gleam of moonlight bears the golden mark Of sunny lips, nor shines upon Our sleep—Love’s birchen bark.

original embedded textRead original & transcription →