Aleister Crowley - The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley

32 O white cat, the sparks fly from Thy fur! Thou dost crackle with splitting the worlds.

33 I have seen more of Thee in the white cat than I saw in the Vision of Aeons.

34 In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the visible Universe any being like unto Thee!

35 Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through eternity against the Lord of the Gods.

36 So still we race!

37 Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.

38 In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and the unlike.

39 But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard - and Thou wast He!

40 Also I read in a great book.

41 On ancient skin was written in letters of gold: Verbum fit Verbum.

42 Also Vitriol and the hierophant's name V.V.V.V.V.

43 All this wheeled in fire, in star-fire, rare and far and utterly lonely - even as Thou and I, O desolate soul my God!

44 Yea, and the writing (insert image here) It is well. This is the voice which shook the earth.

45 Eight times he cried aloud, and by eight and by eight shall I count Thy favours, Oh Thou Elevenfold God 418!

46 Yea, and by many more; by the ten in the twenty-two directions; even as the perpendicular of the Pyramid—so shall Thy favours be.

47 If I number them, they are One.

48 Excellent is Thy love, Oh Lord! Thou art revealed by the darkness, and he who gropeth in the horror of the groves shall haply catch Thee, even as a snake that seizeth on a little singing-bird.

49 I have caught Thee, O my soft thrush; I am like a hawk of mother-of-emerald; I catch Thee by instinct, though my eyes fail from Thy glory.

50 Yet they are but foolish folk yonder. I see them on the yellow sand, all clad in Tyrian purple.

51 They draw their shining God unto the land in nets; they build a fire to the Lord of Fire, and cry unhallowed words, even the dreadful curse Amri maratza, maratza, atman deona lastadza maratza maritza - maran!

52 Then do they cook the shining god, and gulp him whole.

53 These are evil folk, O beautiful boy! let us pass on to the Otherworld.

54 Let us make ourselves into a pleasant bait, into a seductive shape!

55 I will be like a splendid naked woman with ivory breasts and golden nipples; my whole body shall be like the milk of the stars. I will be lustrous and Greek, a courtesan of Delos, of the unstable Isle.

56 Thou shalt be like a little red worm on a hook.

57 But thou and I will catch our fish alike.

58 Then wilt thou be a shining fish with golden back and silver belly: I will be like a violent beautiful man, stronger than two score bulls, a man of the West bearing a great sack of precious jewels upon a staff that is greater than the axis of the all.

59 And the fish shall be sacrificed to Thee and the strong man crucified for Me, and Thou and I will kiss, and atone for the wrong of the Beginning; yea, for the wrong of the beginning.

Table of Contents

1 O my beautiful God! I swim in Thy heart like a trout in the mountain torrent.

2 I leap from pool to pool in my joy; I am goodly with brown and gold and silver.

3 Why, I am lovelier than the russet autumn woods at the first snowfall.

4 And the crystal cave of my thought is lovelier than I.

5 Only one fish-hook can draw me out; it is a woman kneeling by the bank of the stream. It is she that pours the bright dew over herself, and into the sand so that the river gushes forth.

6 There is a bird on yonder myrtle; only the song of that bird can draw me out of the pool of Thy heart, O my God!

7 Who is this Neapolitan boy that laughs in his happiness? His lover is the mighty crater of the Mountain of Fire. I saw his charred limbs borne down the slopes in a stealthy tongue of liquid stone.

8 And Oh! the chirp of the cicada!

9 I remember the days when I was cacique in Mexico.

10 O my God, wast Thou then as now my beautiful lover?

11 Was my boyhood then as now Thy toy, Thy joy?

12 Verily, I remember those iron days.

13 I remember how we drenched the bitter lakes with our torrent of gold; how we sank the treasurable image in the crater of Citlaltepetl.

14 How the good flame lifted us even unto the lowlands, setting us down in the impenetrable forest.

15 Yea, Thou wast a strange scarlet bird with a bill of gold. I was Thy mate in the forests of the lowland; and ever we heard from afar the shrill chant of mutilated priests and the insane clamour of the Sacrifice of Maidens.

16 There was a weird winged God that told us of his wisdom.

17 We attained to be starry grains of gold dust in the sands of a slow river.

18 Yea, and that river was the river of space and time also.

19 We parted thence; ever to the smaller, ever to the greater, until now, O sweet God, we are ourselves, the same.

20 O God of mine, Thou art like a little white goat with lightning in his horns!

21 I love Thee, I love Thee.

22 Every breath, every word, every thought, every deed is an act of love with Thee.

23 The beat of my heart is the pendulum of love.

24 The songs of me are the soft sighs:

25 The thoughts of me are very rapture:

26 And my deeds are the myriads of Thy children, the stars and the atoms.

27 Let there be nothing!

28 Let all things drop into this ocean of love!

29 Be this devotion a potent spell to exorcise the demons of the Five!

30 Ah God, all is gone! Thou dost consummate Thy rapture. Falutli! Falutli!

31 There is a solemnity of the silence. There is no more voice at all.

32 So shall it be unto the end. We who were dust shall never fall away into the dust.

33 So shall it be.

34 Then, O my God, the breath of the Garden of Spices. All these have a savour averse.

35 The cone is cut with an infinite ray; the curve of hyperbolic life springs into being.

36 Farther and farther we float; yet we are still. It is the chain of systems that is falling away from us.

37 First falls the silly world; the world of the old grey land.

38 Falls it unthinkably far, with its sorrowful bearded face presiding over it; it fades to silence and woe.

39 We to silence and bliss, and the face is the laughing face of Eros.

40 Smiling we greet him with the secret signs.

41 He leads us into the Inverted Palace.

42 There is the Heart of Blood, a pyramid reaching its apex down beyond the Wrong of the Beginning.

43 Bury me unto Thy Glory, O beloved, O princely lover of this harlot maiden, within the Secretest Chamber of the Palace!

44 It is done quickly; yea, the seal is set upon the vault.

45 There is one that shall avail to open it.

46 Nor by memory, nor by imagination, nor by prayer, nor by fasting, nor by scourging, nor by drugs, nor by ritual, nor by meditation; only by passive love shall he avail.

47 He shall await the sword of the Beloved and bare his throat for the stroke.

48 Then shall his blood leap out and write me runes in the sky; yea, write me runes in the sky.

Table of Contents

1 Thou wast a priestess, O my God, among the Druids; and we knew the powers of the oak.

2 We made us a temple of stones in the shape of the Universe, even as thou didst wear openly and I concealed.

3 There we performed many wonderful things by midnight.

4 By the waning moon did we work.

5 Over the plain came the atrocious cry of wolves.

6 We answered; we hunted with the pack.

7 We came even unto the new Chapel and Thou didst bear away the Holy Graal beneath Thy Druid vestments.

8 Secretly and by stealth did we drink of the informing sacrament.

9 Then a terrible disease seized upon the folk of the grey land; and we rejoiced.