READING
From Liber Lapidis Lazuli: Chapter IV.
- I am like a maiden bathing in a clear pool of fresh water.
- O my God! I see Thee dark and desirable, rising through the
water as a golden smoke.
- Thou art altogether golden, the hair and the eyebrows and
the brilliant face; even into the finger-tips and toe-tips Thou
art one rosy dream of gold.
- Deep into Thine eyes that are golden my soul leaps, like
an archangel menacing the sun.
- My sword passes through and through Thee; crystalline moons
ooze out of Thy beautiful body that is hidden behind the ovals
of Thine eyes.
- Deeper, ever deeper. I fall, even as the whole Universe falls
down the abyss of Years.
- For Eternity calls; the Overworld calls; the world of the
Word is awaiting us.
- Be done with speech, O God! Fasten the fangs of the hound
Eternity in this my throat!
- I am like a wounded bird flapping in circles.
- Who knows where I shall fall?
- O blessed One! O God! O my devourer!
- Let me fall, fall down, fall away, afar, alone!
- Let me fall!
- Nor is there any rest, Sweet Heart, save in the cradle of
royal Bacchus, the thigh of the most Holy One.
- There rest, under the canopy of night.
- Uranus chid Eros; Marsyas chid Olympas; I chid my beautiful
lover with his sunray mane; shall I not sing?
- Shall not mine incantations bring around me the wonderful
company of the wood-gods, their bodies glistening with the ointment
of moonlight and honey and myrrh?
- Worshipful are ye, O my lovers; let us forward to the dimmest
hollow!
- There we will feast upon mandrake and upon moly!
- There the lovely One shall spread us His holy banquet. In
the brown cakes of corn we shall taste the food of the world,
and be strong.
- In the ruddy and awful cup of death we shall drink the blood
of the world, and be drunken!
- Ohe! the song to Iao, the song to Iao!
- Come, let us sing to thee, Iacchus invisible, Iacchus triumphant,
Iacchus indicible!
- Iacchus, O Iacchus, O Iacchus, be near us!
- Then was the countenance of all time darkened, and the true
light shone forth.
- There was also a certain cry in an unknown tongue, whose
stridency troubled the still waters of my soul, so that my mind
and my body were healed of their disease, self-knowledge.
- Yea, an angel troubled the waters.
- This was the cry of Him: IIIOOShBThIO-IIIIAMAMThIBI-II.
- Nor did I sing this for a thousand times a night for a thousand
nights before Thou camest, O my flaming God, and pierced me with
Thy spear. Thy scarlet robe unfolded the whole heavens, so that
the Gods said: All is burning: it is the end.
- Also Thou didst set Thy lips to the wound and suck out a
million eggs. And Thy mother sat upon them, and lo! stars and
stars and ultimate Things whereof stars are the atoms.
- Then I perceived Thee, O my God, sitting like a white cat
upon the trellis-work of the arbour; and the hum of the spinning
worlds was but Thy pleasure.
- O white cat, the sparks fly from Thy fur! Thou dost crackle
with splitting the worlds.
- I have seen more of Thee in the white cat than I saw in the
Vision of Æons.
- In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the
visible Universe any being like unto Thee!
- Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through
eternity against the Lord of the Gods.
- So still we race!
- Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.
- In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and
the unlike.
- But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard
-- and Thou wast He!
- Also I read in a great book.
- On ancient skin was written in letters of gold: Verbum fit
Verbum.
- Also Vitriol and the hierophant's name V.V.V.V.V.
- All this wheeled in fire, in star-fire, rare and far and
utterly lonely -- even as Thou and I, O desolate soul my God!
- Yea, and the writing.
It is well.
This is the voice which shook the earth.
- Eight times he cried aloud, and by eight and by eight shall
I count Thy favours, Oh Thou Elevenfold God 418!
- 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.
- If I number them, they are One.
- 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.
- 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.
- Yet they are but foolish folk yonder. I see them on the yellow
sand, all clad in Tyrian purple.
- 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 -- marán!
- Then do they cook the shining god, and gulp him whole.
- These are evil folk, O beautiful boy! let us pass on to the
Otherworld.
- Let us make ourselves into a pleasant bait, into a seductive
shape!
- 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.
- Thou shalt be like a little red worm on a hook.
- But thou and I will catch our fish alike.
- 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.
- 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.
RESPONSORY
- Blow, all ye trumpets, for the Angel will loose his hands
from the mouth of the lion
- --- And his roaring shall enkindle
the worlds.
- Then was the countenance of all time darkened, and the true
light shone forth.
- --- And his roaring shall enkindle
the worlds.