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Page 1 of 31907 · PDF PAGE 165
…olden locks are burning on my eyes , And he with rosy finger points the way , The blood -wrought mystic path of Paradise , That leads at last through yonder icy spray Of Death to the blue vault of the undying day . In the last verse of “ A Spring Snow Storm in Wastdale ," there grows a wavering doubt , which leaps out furiously in the “Preliminary Invocation " in “ Jephthah ,” addressed to A. C. S. , breaking the shackles of the “ improving idea " of Christ : Let there be light !-the desecrated tomb Gaped as thy fury smote the Galilean .4 Almos…
1907 · PDF PAGE 16
…n or melodious twanger of another man's lyre , but authentically a poet ." So writes the critic . The name I have omitted is that of the last of the great Victorian poets , Algernon Charles Swinburne . In the dying glory of this last great singer of the nineteenth century , the deepening twilight shows but few rising stars ; alone perhaps amid the younger generation of poets - alas , how many and yet how few --- Aleister Crowley stands forth with no little of the glory of the great Victorian cast o'er him ; enhancing our pleasures , and enchant…
1907 · PDF PAGE 32
… women fleet : Whose empty fruitlessness assails the night With hollow repercussion , like dim tombs Wherein some vampire glooms .3 This last line is one of the most expressive ever written by Crowley , and in the last word " glooms " is concentrated more than terror or fear , a brooding unnameable horror , comparable to the word " crowd " that Blake makes use of in his “ Mad Song ”: Like a fiend in a cloud With howling woe After night I do crowd And with night will go . 1 Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic , vol . i, pp . 106 , 107 . 2 The Tale …
1907 · PDF PAGE 92
…ut he knows he must in evitably fail , as he knew his first kiss must inevitably lead to their great love and surrender . They spend the last melancholy day together : Strong kisses that had surfeited a score Of earthly bridals in an hour we squandered .? And at last : THE FIFTIETH DAY At noon she sailed for home , a weeping bride Widowed before the honeymoon was done . Always before the rising of the sun I swore to come in spirit to her side Alice , an Adultery , vol . ii, p . 79 . 2 Ibid . vol . ii, p . 84 .
1907 · PDF PAGE 281
…f Tannhäuser : I say , then “ I ”; and yet it is not “ I ” Distinct , but “ I " incorporate in All.3 It further finds development in the last four lines of “ Ode to Poesy ”: No man, No petty god , but One who governs all , Slips the sun's leash , perceives the sparrow's fall , Too high for me to fear , too near for man to call .* And arrives at full manhood in such fine lines as the following : God is the Complex as the Protoplast : He is the First ( not “ was "), and is the Last . ( Not “ will be ") ... 6 God slips you , He is Undefinable . No…
1907 · PDF PAGE 218
… which shall not be discovered . It has taken 100,000,000 years to produce Aleister Crowley . The world has indeed laboured , and has at last brought forth a man . Bacon blames the ancient and scholastic philosophers for spinning webs , like spiders out of their own entrails ; the reproach is perhaps unjust , but out of the web of these spiders , Crowley has himself twisted a subtle cord , on which he has suspended the universe , and swinging it round has sent the whole fickle world conception of these excogitating spiders into those realms whi…
1907 · PDF PAGE 87
…ustice , and replaced By Law most bountiful and maiden - faced And Mother - minded : passing the low bound Of Man's poor law we leapt at last and found Passion ; and passing the dim halls disgraced Found higher love and larger and more chaste , A calm sphinx waiting in secluded ground .' The first day of meeting he gazes on her , and wonders whether Fate had found at last a woman's love for him ; hopelessly he turns away and sinks the dream of his soul in despair and “ Kindled a corpse light and proclaimed ' The day '!” Thither I fled , busied …
1907 · PDF PAGE 93
… Swore to seek me and gather one by one The threads of labyrinthine love new spun , Cretan for monstrous shadows serpent - eyed . So the last kiss passed like a poison - pain , Knowing we might not ever kiss again . Mad tears fell fast : “ Next year !" in cruel distress We sobbed and stretched our arms out , and despaired , And - parted . Out the brute - side of truth flared ; “ Thank God I've finished with that foolishness !"1 all my This last line is almost staggering , but such a cruel truth is soon given the lie : “ I am a fool , tossing a …
1907 · PDF PAGE 63
…und to bless the hour , Comes men know not what false flower : Ere the cup is drained , the wine Grows unsweet , that was divine . These last two lines contain the whole secret of this story . The beauty of the clinging love of childhood is tinged with a glowing desire , the pink desire of the bud bursts into the passionate crimson of the rose , and 1 The Tale of Archais , vol . i, p . 9. 2 Ibid . vol .i, pp . 9, 10 .
1907 · PDF PAGE 176
The Cup N the last line of “ The Star and Garter " is con centrated the whole of the ethical philosophy of Aleister Crowley . It reads as follows : But—had it not been for the Garter , I might never have seen the Star . In it we find the sublime maxim , almost universal , which has been postulated by all the greatest ethical codes of the world . It is the moral prototype , the Favashi of the Zoroastrian , the Tree of Knowledge of Babylonia and Genesis , the Light and Darkness of Isaiah , the Yakheen and Boaz of Solomon , the Unique Athanor of t…
1907 · PDF PAGE 46
… call and climb ; Faces , half - formed , arise ; and He Looked from the shadow of His throne , The curtain of Eternity ;: whilst in the last verse of “ The Palace of the World " the sudden dropping of a whole foot produces with it a sudden sense of finality : | The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p . 183 . 2 Jezebel , vol . i, p . 131 . 3 Tannhäuser , vol . I, p . 251. ( The italics are mine .)
1907 · PDF PAGE 303
…ings as well , The first of which is concentration ! Bloom , Concentration's midnight flower ! After much practice to this end I gain at last the long -sought power (Which you believe you have this hour, But certainly have not , my friend !), Of keeping close the mind to one Thing at a time - suppose , the Sun. I gain this (Reverence to Ganesh '!) And at that instant comprehend (That past and future tenses vanish ) What Fichte comprehends. Division , Thought , wisdom , drop away . I see The absolute identity Of the beholder and the vision.? The…
1907 · PDF PAGE 136
THE MOTHER 129 And kisses and mad movements of quick love Burnt up his being , and his life was lost In woman's love at last ! 1 This was the love , or rather lust , of “ that filthy sorceress . We are now rapidly approaching the realms of the abnormal ; for good and evil are the toys of love as well as those of fate . The nymph and the satyr , the fair and the faulty alike are the guests of these amorous shades.2 The virility of lust is vividly illustrated in “ The Blood -Lotus " : Foam whips their reeking lips , and still the flower -witch ne…
1907 · PDF PAGE 266
…m , space and causality , the conditions limiting and involving them all .” Thus from the Hegelian abstraction of the non ens we have at last touched bottom , and have come down to the facts of real life . Empty space is the postulate of all metaphysics , but all absolute quantities finally must be beyond the finitely reasoning mind . 1 SPACE This assertion of the Absolute Zero may truly at first sight appear to be a somewhat exaggerated statement ; but on due consideration it will be dis closed , that not only do all physics and metaphysics re…
1907 · PDF PAGE 48
…teries musical , And all stringed instruments , to indite 4 The first two of the above are quoted from poems published in 1898 , and the last from those published a year later . I will not say that they are the only im perfections to be found throughout these works , but I will say that there are very few others . And con sidering that Aleister Crowley has written about one hundred thousand lines in the space of ten years , or half the quantity produced by Robert Browning in fifty - six , the fewness of imperfections in his work is truly remark…
1907 · PDF PAGE 47
…ng I should : Many the spirits broken for one man ; Many the men that perish to create One God the more ; many the weary and wan5 In the last line of the succeeding verse the metre ( I should say) is not unimpeachable : 1 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p. 205. Ibid . vol . i, p. 209. : Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic , vol . i, p. 107. 4 Ibid . vol . i, p. 98. 5 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p. 210.
1907 · PDF PAGE 274
…hat cast their trammels off , and spring On eager wing , Immaculate , new born , toward the sky , And shall not die Until they cleave at last the lampless dome , And lose their tent because they find their home .“ 21 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p . 189 . Why Jesus Wept , vol . iii, p . 41 . 3 Songs of the Spirit , vol . i, p . 43 . 4 Ibid . vol . I, p . 55 .
1907 · PDF PAGE 300
…d eight stages of perfection have to be accomplished : Yama , Niyama, Asana , Prânâ yâma, Pratyâhâra, Dharanâ, Dhyâna , and Samâdhi, the last being that state of super -knowledge in which Self and its shadow become one , an extended form of Kant's à priori . Existence is change , and change is sorrow , there fore we must overcome existence . Existence , as we know it, spins A fatal warp , a woof of woe . There is no place for God or soul . Works , hopes , prayers , sacrifices , sins Are jokes . The cosmos happened so : Innocent all of guide or …
1907 · PDF PAGE 185
…is That sweats out venom ; thy clenched hands , thy feet Ooze blood , thine eyes weep blood ; thine anguish is More keen than death . At last — there is no deeper vault of hell beneath ! Then comes the great reward . We have travelled knee deep through the mire of life , yet if our souls be spotless our abasement , “ ... bringeth back the sheaves ” XV . Of golden corn of exaltation , With strange intoxications mad and manifold . It is this curious phase , yearning towards Perfection , which forms the great stumbling - block to all progress in t…
1907 · PDF PAGE 188
…s , caressed by every purple lip . XXIX . Choked with their reek and fume and bitter sweat His body perishes ; his life is drained ; The last sweet drop of nectar has not stained Another life ; his lips and limbs are wet With death - dews ! Ha ! The painter has attaine As high a meed As his who first begot sweet music on a reed .