READING
From Liber A'ash.
- 0. Gnarled Oak of God! In thy branches is the lightning nested!
Above thee hangs the Eyeless Hawk.
- Thou art blasted and black! Supremely solitary in that heath
of scrub.
- Up! The ruddy clouds hang over thee! It is the storm.
- There is a flaming gash in the sky.
- Up.
- Thou art tossed about in the grip of the storm for an aeon
and an aeon and an aeon. But thou givest not thy sap; thou fallest
not.
- Only in the end shalt thou give up thy sap when the great
God F. I. A. T. is enthroned on the day of Be-with-Us.
- For two things are done and a third thing is begun. Isis
and Osiris are given over to incest and adultery. Horus leaps
up thrice armed from the womb of his mother. Harpocrates his
twin is hidden within him. Set is his holy covenant, that he
shall display in the great day of M. A. A. T., that is being
interpreted the Master of the Temple of A.'.A.'., whose name
is Truth.
- Now in this is the magical power known.
- It is like the oak that hardens itself and bears up against
the storm. It is weather-beaten and scarred and confident like
a sea-captain.
- Also it straineth like a hound in the leash.
- It hath pride and great subtlety. Yea, and glee also!
- Let the magus act thus in his conjuration.
- Let him sit and conjure; let him draw himself together in
that forcefulness; let him rise next swollen and straining; let
him dash back the hood from his head and fix his basilisk eye
upon the sigil of the demon. Then let him sway the force of him
to and fro like a satyr in silence, until the Word burst from
his throat.
- Then let him not fall exhausted, although the might have
been ten thousandfold the human; but that which floodeth him
is the infinite mercy of the Genitor-Genetrix of the Universe,
whereof he is the Vessel.
- Nor do thou deceive thyself. It is easy to tell the live
force from the dead matter. It is no easier to tell the live
snake from the dead snake.
- Also concerning vows. Be obstinate, and be not obstinate.
Understand that the yielding of the Yoni is one with the lengthening
of the Lingam. Thou art both these; and thy vow is but the rustling
of the wind on Mount Meru.
- Now shalt thou adore me who am the Eye and the Tooth, the
Goat of the Spirit, the Lord of Creation. I am the Eye in the
Triangle, the Silver Star that ye adore.
- I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall be equilibrated
with the Three.
- There is no act or passion that shall not be a hymn in mine
honour.
- All holy things and all symbolic things shall be my sacraments.
- These animals are sacred unto me; the goat, and the duck,
and the ass, and the gazelle, the man, the woman and the child.
- All corpses are sacred unto me; they shall not be touched
save in mine eucharist. All lonely places are sacred unto me;
where one man gathereth himself together in my name, there will
I leap forth in the midst of him.
- I am the hideous god; and who mastereth me is uglier than
I.
- Yet I give more than Bacchus and Apollo; my gifts exceed
the olive and the horse.
- Who worshippeth me must worship me with many rites.
- I am concealed with all concealments; when the Most Holy
Ancient One is stripped and driven through the marketplace I
am still secret and apart.
- Whom I love I chastise with many rods.
- All things are sacred to me; no thing is sacred from me.
- For there is no holiness where I am not.
- Fear not when I fall in the fury of the storm; for mine acorns
are blown afar by the wind; and verily I shall rise again, and
my children about me, so that we shall uplift our forest in Eternity.
- Eternity is the storm that covereth me.
- I am Existence, the Existence that existeth not save through
its own Existence, that is beyond the Existence of Existences,
and rooted deeper than the No-Thing-Tree in the Land of No-Thing.
- Now therefore thou knowest when I am within thee, when my
hood is spread over thy skull, when my might is more than the
penned Indus, and resistless as the Giant Glacier.
- For as thou art before a lewd woman in Thy nakedness in the
bazaar, sucked up by her slyness and smiles, so art thou wholly
and no more in part before the symbol of the beloved, though
it be but a Pisacha or a Yantra or a Deva.
- And in all shalt thou create the Infinite Bliss, and the
next link of the Infinite Chain.
- This chain reaches from Eternity to Eternity, ever in triangles
-- is not my symbol a triangle? -- ever in circles -- is not
the symbol of the Beloved a circle? Therein is all progress base
illusion, for every circle is alike and every triangle alike!
- But the progress is progress, and progress is rapture, constant,
dazzling, showers of light, waves of dew, flames of the hair
of the Great Goddess, flowers of the roses that are about her
neck, Amen!
- Therefore lift up thyself as I am lifted up. Hold thyself
in as I am master to accomplish. At the end, be the end far distant
as the stars that lie in the navel of Nuit, do thou slay thyself
as I at the end am slain, in the death that is life, in the peace
that is mother of war, in the darkness that holds light in his
hand as a harlot that plucks a jewel from her nostrils.
- So therefore the beginning is delight, and the End is delight,
and delight is in the midst, even as the Indus is water in the
cavern of the glacier, and water among the greater hills and
the lesser hills and through the ramparts of the hills and through
the plains, and water at the mouth thereof when it leaps forth
into the mighty sea, yea, into the mighty sea.
RESPONSORY
- Who worshippeth me must worship me with many rites.
- --- Come, O my God, and let
us embrace!
- There is no act or passion that shall not be a hymn in mine
honour.
- --- Come, O my God...