READING
From Liber Lapidis Lazuli: Chapter VII.
- By the burning of the incense was the Word revealed, and
by the distant drug.
- O meal and honey and oil! O beautiful flag of the moon,
that she hangs out in the centre of bliss!
- These loosen the swathings of the corpse; these unbind the
feet of Osiris, so that the flaming God may rage through the
firmament with his fantastic spear.
- But of pure black marble is the sorry statue, and the changeless
pain of the eyes is bitter to the blind.
- We understand the rapture of that shaken marble, torn by
the throes of the crowned child, the golden rod of the golden
God.
- We know why all is hidden in the stone, within the coffin,
within the mighty sepulchre, and we too answer Olalám!
Imál! Tutúlu! as it is written
in the ancient book.
- Three words of that book are as life to a new æon;
no god has read the
whole.
- But thou and I, O God, have written it page by page.
- Ours is the elevenfold reading of the Elevenfold word.
- These seven letters together make seven diverse words; each
word is divine, and seven sentences are hidden therein.
- Thou art the Word, O my darling, my lord, my master!
- O come to me, mix the fire and the water, all shall dissolve.
- I await Thee in sleeping, in waking. I invoke Thee no more;
for Thou art in me, O Thou who hast made me a beautiful instrument
tuned to Thy rapture.
- Yet art Thou ever apart, even as I.
- I remember a certain holy day in the dusk of the year, in
the dusk of the Equinox of Osiris, when first I beheld Thee visibly;
when first the dreadful issue was fought out; when the Ibis-headed
One charmed away the strife.
- I remember Thy first kiss, even as a maiden should. Nor
in the dark byways was there another: Thy kisses abide.
- There is none other beside Thee in the whole Universe of
Love.
- My God, I love Thee, O Thou goat with gilded horns!
- Thou beautiful bull of Apis! Thou beautiful serpent of Apep!
Thou beautiful child of the Pregnant Goddess!
- Thou hast stirred in Thy sleep, O ancient sorrow of years!
Thou hast raised Thine head to strike, and all is dissolved
into the Abyss of Glory.
- An end to the letters of the words! An end to the sevenfold
speech.
- Resolve me the wonder of it all into the figure of a gaunt
swift camel striding over the sand.
- Lonely is he, and abominable; yet hath he gained the crown.
- Oh rejoice! rejoice!
- My God! O my God! I am but a speck in the star-dust of
ages; I am the Master of the Secret of Things.
- I am the Revealer and the Preparer. Mine is the Sword --
and the Mitre and the Wingèd Wand!
- I am the Initiator and the Destroyer. Mine is the Globe
-- and the Bennu bird and the Lotus of Isis my daughter!
- I am the One beyond these all; and I bear the symbols of
the mighty darkness.
- There shall be a sigil as of a vast black brooding ocean
of death and the central blaze of darkness, radiating its night
upon all.
- It shall swallow up that lesser darkness.
- But in that profound who shall answer: What is?
- Not I.
- Not Thou, O God!
- Come, let us no more reason together; let us enjoy! Let
us be ourselves, silent, unique, apart.
- O lonely woods of the world! In what recesses will ye hide
our love?
- The forest of the spears of the Most High is called Night,
and Hades, and the Day of Wrath; but I am His captain, and I
bear His cup.
- Fear me not with my spearmen! They shall slay the demons
with their petty prongs. Ye shall be free.
- Ah, slaves! ye will not -- ye know not how to will.
- Yet the music of my spears shall be a song of freedom.
- A great bird shall sweep from the abyss of Joy, and bear
ye away to be my cup-bearers.
- Come, O my God, in one last rapture let us attain to the
Union with the Many!
- In the silence of Things, in the Night of Forces, beyond
the accursed domain of the Three, let us enjoy our love!
- My darling! My darling! away, away beyond the Assembly and
the Law and the Enlightenment unto an Anarchy of solitude and
Darkness!
- For even thus must we veil the brilliance of our Self.
- My darling! My darling!
- O my God, but the love in Me bursts over the bonds of Space
and Time; my love is spilt among them that love not love.
- My wine is poured out for them that never tasted wine.
- The fumes thereof shall intoxicate them and the vigour of
my love shall breed mighty children from their maidens.
- Yea! without draught, without embrace: -- and the Voice answered
Yea! these things shall be.
- Then I sought a Word for Myself; nay, for myself.
- And the Word came: O Thou! it is well. Heed naught! I love
Thee! I love Thee!
- Therefore had I faith unto the end of all; yea, unto the
end of all.
RESPONSORY
- Then at the end appointed her body was whiter than the milk
of the stars, and her lips red and warm as the sunset, and her
life of a white heat like the heat of the midmost sun.
- --- Glorious, glorious, glorious
art Thou, O my lover supernal, O Self of myself.
- They that ever desired Thee shall obtain Thee, even at the
End of their Desire.
- --- Glorious...