READING
From Liber Lapidis Lazuli: Chapter I.
- My God, how I love Thee!
- With the vehement appetite of a beast I hunt Thee through
the Universe.
- Thou art standing as it were upon a pinnacle at the edge
of some fortifed city. I am a white bird, and perch upon Thee.
- Thou art My Lover: I see Thee as a nymph with her white limbs
stretched by the spring.
- She lies upon the moss; there is none other but she:
- Art Thou not Pan?
- I am He. Speak not, O my God! Let the work be accomplished
in silence.
- Let my cry of pain be crystallized into a little white fawn
to run away into the forest!
- Thou art a centaur, O my God, from the violet-blossoms that
crown Thee to the hoofs of the horse.
- Thou art harder than tempered steel; there is no diamond
beside Thee.
- Did I not yield this body and soul?
- I woo thee with a dagger drawn across my throat.
- Let the spout of blood quench Thy blood-thirst, O my God!
- Thou art a little white rabbit in the burrow Night.
- I am greater than the fox and the hole.
- Give me Thy kisses, O Lord God!
- The lightning came and licked up the little flock of sheep.
- There is a tongue and a flame; I see that trident walking
over the sea.
- A phoenix hath it for its head; below are two prongs. They
spear the wicked.
- I will spear Thee, O Thou little grey god, unless Thou beware!
- From the grey to the gold; from the gold to that which is
beyond the gold of Ophir.
- My God! but I love Thee!
- Why hast Thou whispered so ambiguous things? Wast Thou afraid,
O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning?
- From the lightning fall pearls; from the pearls black specks
of nothing.
- I based all on one, one on naught.
- Afloat in the aether, O my God, my God!
- O Thou great hooded sun of glory, cut off these eyelids!
- Nature shall die out; she hideth me, closing mine eyelids
with fear, she hideth me from My destruction, O Thou open eye.
- O ever-weeping One!
- Not Isis my mother, nor Osiris my self; but the incestuous
Horus given over to Typhon, so may I be!
- There thought; and thought is evil.
- Pan! Pan! Io Pan! it is enough.
- Fall not into death, O my soul! Think that death is the bed
into which you are falling!
- O how I love Thee, O my God! Especially is there a vehement
parallel light from infinity, vilely diffracted in the haze of
this mind.
- I love Thee. I love Thee. I love Thee.
- Thou art a beautiful thing whiter than a woman in the column
of this vibration.
- I shoot up vertically like an arrow, and become that Above.
- But it is death, and the flame of the pyre.
- Ascend in the flame of the pyre, O my soul! Thy God is like
the cold emptiness of the utmost heaven, into which thou radiatest
thy little light.
- When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly
expire in Thy great N.O.X.
- What shalt Thou be, my God, when I have ceased to love Thee?
- A worm, a nothing, a niddering knave!
- But Oh! I love Thee.
- I have thrown a million flowers from the basket of the Beyond
at Thy feet, I have anointed Thee and Thy Staff with oil and
blood and kisses.
- I have kindled Thy marble into life -- ay! into death.
- I have been smitten with the reek of Thy mouth, that drinketh
never wine but life.
- How the dew of the Universe whitens the lips!
- Ah! trickling flow of the stars of the mother Supernal, begone!
- I Am She that should come, the Virgin of all men.
- I am a boy before Thee, O Thou satyr God.
- Thou wilt inflict the punishment of pleasure -- Now! Now!
Now!
- Io Pan! Io Pan! I love Thee. I love Thee.
- O my God, spare me!
- Now!
It is done! Death.
- I cried aloud the word -- and it was a mighty spell to bind
the
Invisible, an enchantment to unbind the bound; yea, to unbind
the bound.
RESPONSORY
- Violent and vivid smote the levin flash. Once the tower rocked
and cracked beneath its lash, caught inextinguishable fire; was
ash.
- --- Ascend in the flame of the
pyre, O my soul!
- Up! The ruddy clouds hang over thee! It is the storm. There
is a flaming gash in the sky.
- --- Ascend...