Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli

LIBER LIBERI vel LAPIDIS LAZULI ADUMBRATIO KABBALÆ ÆGYPTORIUM SUB FIGURÂ VII
Being the Voluntary Emancipation of a certain Exempt Adept from his Adeptship. These are the Birth-Words of a Master of the Temple.

Prologue of the Unborn

 * 1) Into my loneliness comes -
 * 2) The sound of a flute in dim groves that haunt the uttermost hills.
 * 3) Even from the brave river they reach to the edge of the wilderness.
 * 4) And I behold Pan.
 * 5) The snows are eternal above, above -
 * 6) And their perfume smokes upward into the nostrils of the stars.
 * 7) But what have I to do with these?
 * 8) To me only the distant flute, the abiding vision of Pan.
 * 9) On all sides Pan to the eye, to the ear;
 * 10) The perfume of Pan pervading, the taste of him utterly filling my mouth, so that the tongue breaks forth into a weird and monstrous speech.
 * 11) The embrace of him intense on every centre of pain and pleasure.
 * 12) The sixth interior sense aflame with the inmost self of Him,
 * 13) Myself flung down the precipice of being
 * 14) Even to the abyss, annihilation.
 * 15) An end to loneliness, as to all.
 * 16) Pan! Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan!

I

 * 1) My God, how I love Thee!
 * 2) With the vehement appetite of a beast I hunt Thee through the Universe.
 * 3) Thou art standing as it were upon a pinnacle at the edge of some fortified city. I am a white bird, and perch upon  Thee.
 * 4) Thou art My Lover: I see Thee as a nymph with her white limbs stretched by the spring.
 * 5) She lies upon the moss; there is none other but she:
 * 6) Art Thou not Pan?
 * 7) I am He. Speak not, O my God! Let the work be accomplished in silence.
 * 8) Let my cry of pain be crystallized into a little white fawn to run away into the forest!
 * 9) Thou art a centaur, O my God, from the violet-blossoms that crown Thee to the hoofs of the horse.
 * 10) Thou art harder than tempered steel; there is no diamond beside Thee.
 * 11) Did I not yield this body and soul?
 * 12) I woo thee with a dagger drawn across my throat.
 * 13) Let the spout of blood quench Thy blood-thirst, O my God!
 * 14) Thou art a little white rabbit in the burrow Night.
 * 15) I am greater than the fox and the hole.
 * 16) Give me Thy kisses, O Lord God!
 * 17) The lightning came and licked up the little flock of sheep.
 * 18) There is a tongue and a flame; I see that trident walking over the sea.
 * 19) A phoenix hath it for its head; below are two prongs. They spear the wicked.
 * 20) I will spear Thee, O Thou little grey god, unless Thou beware!
 * 21) From the grey to the gold; from the gold to that which is beyond the gold of Ophir.
 * 22) My God! but I love Thee!
 * 23) Why hast Thou whispered so ambiguous things? Wast Thou afraid, O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning?
 * 24) From the lightning fall pearls; from the pearls black specks of nothing.
 * 25) I based all on one, one on naught.
 * 26) Afloat in the aether, O my God, my God!
 * 27) O Thou great hooded sun of glory, cut off these eyelids!
 * 28) Nature shall die out; she hideth me, closing mine eyelids with fear, she hideth me from My destruction, O Thou open eye.
 * 29) O ever-weeping One!
 * 30) Not Isis my mother, nor Osiris my self; but the incestuous Horus given over to Typhon, so may I be!
 * 31) There thought; and thought is evil.
 * 32) Pan! Pan! Io Pan! it is enough.
 * 33) Fall not into death, O my soul! Think that death is the bed into which you are falling!
 * 34) 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.
 * 35) I love Thee. I love Thee. I love Thee.
 * 36) Thou art a beautiful thing whiter than a woman in the column of this vibration.
 * 37) I shoot up vertically like an arrow, and become that Above.
 * 38) But it is death, and the flame of the pyre.
 * 39) 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.
 * 40) When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly expire in Thy great N. O. X.
 * 41) What shalt Thou be, my God, when I have ceased to love Thee?
 * 42) A worm, a nothing, a niddering knave!
 * 43) But Oh! I love Thee.
 * 44) 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.
 * 45) I have kindled Thy marble into life - ay! into death.
 * 46) I have been smitten with the reek of Thy mouth, that drinketh never wine but life.
 * 47) How the dew of the Universe whitens the lips!
 * 48) Ah! trickling flow of the stars of the mother Supernal, begone!
 * 49) I Am She that should come, the Virgin of all men.
 * 50) I am a boy before Thee, O Thou satyr God.
 * 51) Thou wilt inflict the punishment of pleasure - Now! Now! Now!
 * 52) Io Pan! Io Pan! I love Thee. I love Thee.
 * 53) O my God, spare me!
 * 54) Now! It is done! Death.
 * 55) 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.

II

 * 1) O my God! use Thou me again, alway. For ever! For ever!
 * 2) That which came fire from Thee cometh water from me; let therefore Thy Spirit lay hold on me, so that my right hand loose the lightning.
 * 3) Travelling through space, I saw the onrush of two galaxies, butting each other and goring like bulls upon earth. I was afraid.
 * 4) Thus they ceased fight, and turned upon me, and I was sorely crushed and torn.
 * 5) I had rather have been trampled by the World-Elephant.
 * 6) O my God! Thou art my little pet tortoise!
 * 7) Yet Thou sustainest the World-Elephant.
 * 8) I creep under Thy carapace, like a lover into the bed of his beautiful; I creep in, and sit in Thine heart, as cubby and cosy as may be.
 * 9) Thou shelterest me, that I hear not the trumpeting of that World-Elephant.
 * 10) Thou art not worth an obol in the agora; yet Thou art not to be bought at the ransom of the whole Universe.
 * 11) Thou art like a beautiful Nubian slave leaning her naked purple against the green pillars of marble that are above the bath.
 * 12) Wine jets from her black nipples.
 * 13) I drank wine awhile agone in the house of Pertinax. The cup-boy favoured me, and gave me of the right sweet Chian.
 * 14) There was a Doric boy, skilled in feats of strength, an athlete. The full moon fled away angrily down the wrack. Ah! but we laughed.
 * 15) I was pernicious drunk, O my God! Yet Pertinax brought me to the bridal.
 * 16) I had a crown of thorns for all my dower.
 * 17) Thou art like a goat's horn from Astor, O Thou God of mine, gnarl'd and crook'd and devilish strong.
 * 18) Colder than all the ice of all the glaciers of the Naked Mountain was the wine it poured for me.
 * 19) A wild country and a waning moon Clouds scudding over the sky. A circuit of pines, and of tall yews beyond. Thou in the midst!
 * 20) O all ye toads and cats, rejoice! Ye slimy things, come hither!
 * 21) Dance, dance to the Lord our God!
 * 22) He is he! He is he! He is he!
 * 23) Why should I go on?
 * 24) Why? Why? comes the sudden cackle of a million imps of hell.
 * 25) And the laughter runs.
 * 26) But sickens not the Universe; but shakes not the stars.
 * 27) God! how I love Thee!
 * 28) I am walking in an asylum; all the men and women about me are insane.
 * 29) Oh madness! madness! madness! desirable art thou!
 * 30) But I love Thee, O God!
 * 31) These men and women rave and howl; they froth out folly.
 * 32) I begin to be afraid. I have no check; I am alone. Alone. Alone.
 * 33) Think, O God, how I am happy in Thy love.
 * 34) O marble Pan! O false leering face! I love Thy dark kisses, bloody and stinking! O marble Pan! Thy kisses are like sunlight on the blue Aegean; their blood is the blood of the sunset over Athens; their stink is like a garden of Roses of Macedonia.
 * 35) I dreamt of sunset and roses and vines; Thou wast there, O my God, Thou didst habit Thyself as an Athenian courtesan, and I loved Thee.
 * 36) Thou art no dream, O Thou too beautiful alike for sleep and waking!
 * 37) I disperse the insane folk of the earth; I walk alone with my little puppets in the garden.
 * 38) I am Gargantuan great; yon galaxy is but the smoke-ring of mine incense.
 * 39) Burn Thou strange herbs, O God!
 * 40) Brew me a magic liquor, boys, with your glances!
 * 41) The very soul is drunken.
 * 42) Thou art drunken, O my God, upon my kisses.
 * 43) The Universe reels; Thou hast looked upon it.
 * 44) Twice, and all is done.
 * 45) Come, O my God, and let us embrace!
 * 46) Lazily, hungrily, ardently, patiently; so will I work.
 * 47) There shall be an End.
 * 48) O God! O God!
 * 49) I am a fool to love Thee; Thou art cruel, Thou withholdest Thyself.
 * 50) Come to me now! I love Thee! I love Thee!
 * 51) O my darling, my darling - Kiss me! Kiss me! Ah! but again.
 * 52) Sleep, take me! Death, take me! This life is too full; it pains, it slays, it suffices.
 * 53) Let me go back into the world; yea, back into the world.

III

 * 1) I was the priest of Ammon-Ra in the temple of Ammon-Ra at Thebai.
 * 2) But Bacchus came singing with his troops of vine-clad girls, of girls in dark mantles; and Bacchus in the midst like a fawn!
 * 3) God! how I ran out in my rage and scattered the chorus!
 * 4) But in my temple stood Bacchus as the priest of Ammon-Ra.
 * 5) Therefore I went wildly with the girls into Abyssinia; and there we abode and rejoiced.
 * 6) Exceedingly; yea, in good sooth!
 * 7) I will eat the ripe and the unripe fruit for the glory of Bacchus.
 * 8) Terraces of ilex, and tiers of onyx and opal and sardonyx leading up to the cool green porch of malachite.
 * 9) Within is a crystal shell, shaped like an oyster - O glory of Priapus! O beatitude of the Great Goddess!
 * 10) Therein is a pearl.
 * 11) O Pearl! thou hast come from the majesty of dread Ammon-Ra.
 * 12) Then I the priest beheld a steady glitter in the heart of the pearl.
 * 13) So bright we could not look! But behold! a blood-red rose upon a rood of glowing gold!
 * 14) So I adored the God. Bacchus! thou art the lover of my God!
 * 15) I who was priest of Ammon-Ra, who saw the Nile flow by for many moons, for many, many moons, am the young fawn of the grey land.
 * 16) I will set up my dance in your conventicles, and my secret loves shall be sweet among you.
 * 17) Thou shalt have a lover among the lords of the grey land.
 * 18) This shall he bring unto thee, without which all is in vain; a man's life spilt for thy love upon My Altars.
 * 19) Amen.
 * 20) Let it be soon, O God, my God! I ache for Thee, I wander very lonely among the mad folk, in the grey land of desolation.
 * 21) Thou shalt set up the abominable lonely Thing of wickedness. Oh joy! to lay that corner-stone!
 * 22) It shall stand erect upon the high mountain; only my God shall commune with it.
 * 23) I will build it of a single ruby; it shall be seen from afar off.
 * 24) Come! let us irritate the vessels of the earth: they shall distil strange wine.
 * 25) It grows under my hand: it shall cover the whole heaven.
 * 26) Thou art behind me: I scream with a mad joy.
 * 27) Then said Ithuriel the strong; let Us also worship this invisible marvel!
 * 28) So did they, and the archangels swept over the heaven.
 * 29) Strange and mystic, like a yellow priest invoking mighty flights of great grey birds from the North, so do I stand and invoke Thee!
 * 30) Let them obscure not the sun with their wings and their clamour!
 * 31) Take away form and its following!
 * 32) I am still.
 * 33) Thou art like an osprey among the rice, I am the great red pelican in the sunset waters.
 * 34) I am like a black eunuch; and Thou art the scimitar. I smite off the head of the light one, the breaker of bread and salt.
 * 35) Yea! I smite - and the blood makes as it were a sunset on the lapis lazuli of the King's Bedchamber.
 * 36) I smite! The whole world is broken up into a mighty wind, and a voice cries aloud in a tongue that men cannot speak.
 * 37) I know that awful sound of primal joy; let us follow on the wings of the gale even unto the holy house of Hathor; let us offer the five jewels of the cow upon her altar!
 * 38) Again the inhuman voice!
 * 39) I rear my Titan bulk into the teeth of the gale, and I smite and prevail, and swing me out over the sea.
 * 40) There is a strange pale God, a god of pain and deadly wickedness.
 * 41) My own soul bites into itself, like a scorpion ringed with fire.
 * 42) That pallid God with face averted, that God of subtlety and laughter, that young Doric God, him will I serve.
 * 43) For the end thereof is torment unspeakable.
 * 44) Better the loneliness of the great grey sea!
 * 45) But ill befall the folk of the grey land, my God!
 * 46) Let me smother them with my roses!
 * 47) Oh Thou delicious God, smile sinister!
 * 48) I pluck Thee, O my God, like a purple plum upon a sunny tree. How Thou dost melt in my mouth, Thou consecrated sugar of the Stars!
 * 49) The world is all grey before mine eyes; it is like an old worn wine-skin.
 * 50) All the wine of it is on these lips.
 * 51) Thou hast begotten me upon a marble Statue, O my God!
 * 52) The body is icy cold with the coldness of a million moons; it is harder than the adamant of eternity. How shall I come forth into the light?
 * 53) Thou art He, O God! O my darling! my child! my plaything! Thou art like a cluster of maidens, like a multitude of swans upon the lake.
 * 54) I feel the essence of softness.
 * 55) I am hard and strong and male; but come Thou! I shall be soft and weak and feminine.
 * 56) Thou shalt crush me in the wine-press of Thy love. My blood shall stain Thy fiery feet with litanies of Love in Anguish.
 * 57) There shall be a new flower in the fields, a new vintage in the vineyards.
 * 58) The bees shall gather a new honey; the poets shall sing a new song.
 * 59) I shall gain the Pain of the Goat for my prize; and the God that sitteth upon the shoulders of Time shall drowse.
 * 60) Then shall all this which is written be accomplished: yea, it shall be accomplished.

IV

 * 1) I am like a maiden bathing in a clear pool of fresh water.
 * 2) O my God! I see Thee dark and desirable, rising through the water as a golden smoke.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) Deep into Thine eyes that are golden my soul leaps, like an archangel menacing the sun.
 * 5) My sword passes through and through Thee; crystalline moons ooze out of Thy beautiful body that is hidden behind the ovals of Thine eyes.
 * 6) Deeper, ever deeper. I fall, even as the whole Universe falls down the abyss of Years.
 * 7) For Eternity calls; the Overworld calls; the world of the Word is awaiting us.
 * 8) Be done with speech, O God! Fasten the fangs of the hound Eternity in this my throat!
 * 9) I am like a wounded bird flapping in circles.
 * 10) Who knows where I shall fall?
 * 11) O blessed One! O God! O my devourer!
 * 12) Let me fall, fall down, fall away, afar, alone!
 * 13) Let me fall!
 * 14) Nor is there any rest, Sweet Heart, save in the cradle of royal Bacchus, the thigh of the most Holy One.
 * 15) There rest, under the canopy of night.
 * 16) Uranus chid Eros; Marsyas chid Olympas; I chid my beautiful lover with his sunray mane; shall I not sing?
 * 17) 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?
 * 18) Worshipful are ye, O my lovers; let us forward to the dimmest hollow!
 * 19) There we will feast upon mandrake and upon moly!
 * 20) 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.
 * 21) In the ruddy and awful cup of death we shall drink the blood of the world, and be drunken!
 * 22) Ohe! the song to Iao, the song to Iao!
 * 23) Come, let us sing to thee, Iacchus invisible, Iacchus triumphant, Iacchus indicible!
 * 24) Iacchus, O Iacchus, O Iacchus, be near us!
 * 25) Then was the countenance of all time darkened, and the true light shone forth.
 * 26) 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.
 * 1) This was the cry of Him: IIIOOShBThIO-IIIIAMAMThIBI-II.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) 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.
 * 5) O white cat, the sparks fly from Thy fur! Thou dost crackle with splitting the worlds.
 * 6) I have seen more of Thee in the white cat than I saw in the Vision of Aeons.
 * 7) In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the visible Universe any being like unto Thee!
 * 8) Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through eternity against the Lord of the Gods.
 * 9) So still we race!
 * 10) Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.
 * 11) In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and the unlike.
 * 12) But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard - and Thou wast He!
 * 13) Also I read in a great book.
 * 14) On ancient skin was written in letters of gold: Verbum fit Verbum.
 * 15) Also Vitriol and the hierophant's name V.V.V.V.V.
 * 16) 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 (insert image here) It is well. This is the voice which shook the earth.
 * 1) 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.
 * 1) If I number them, they are One.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) Yet they are but foolish folk yonder. I see them on the yellow sand, all clad in Tyrian purple.
 * 5) 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!
 * 6) Then do they cook the shining god, and gulp him whole.
 * 7) These are evil folk, O beautiful boy! let us pass on to the Otherworld.
 * 8) Let us make ourselves into a pleasant bait, into a seductive shape!
 * 9) 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.
 * 10) Thou shalt be like a little red worm on a hook.
 * 11) But thou and I will catch our fish alike.
 * 12) 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.
 * 13) 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.

V

 * 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.
 * Why, I am lovelier than the russet autumn woods at the first snowfall.
 * 1) And the crystal cave of my thought is lovelier than I.
 * 2) 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.
 * 3) 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!
 * 4) 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.
 * 5) And Oh! the chirp of the cicada!
 * 6) I remember the days when I was cacique in Mexico.
 * 7) O my God, wast Thou then as now my beautiful lover?
 * 8) Was my boyhood then as now Thy toy, Thy joy?
 * 9) Verily, I remember those iron days.
 * 10) I remember how we drenched the bitter lakes with our torrent of gold; how we sank the treasurable image in the crater of Citlaltepetl.
 * 11) How the good flame lifted us even unto the lowlands, setting us down in the impenetrable forest.
 * 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.
 * 1) There was a weird winged God that told us of his wisdom.
 * 2) We attained to be starry grains of gold dust in the sands of a slow river.
 * Yea, and that river was the river of space and time also.
 * 1) We parted thence; ever to the smaller, ever to the greater, until now, O sweet God, we are ourselves, the same.
 * 2) O God of mine, Thou art like a little white goat with lightning in his horns!
 * 3) I love Thee, I love Thee.
 * 4) Every breath, every word, every thought, every deed is an act of love with Thee.
 * 5) The beat of my heart is the pendulum of love.
 * 6) The songs of me are the soft sighs:
 * 7) The thoughts of me are very rapture:
 * 8) And my deeds are the myriads of Thy children, the stars and the atoms.
 * 9) Let there be nothing!
 * 10) Let all things drop into this ocean of love!
 * 11) Be this devotion a potent spell to exorcise the demons of the Five!
 * 12) Ah God, all is gone! Thou dost consummate Thy rapture. Falutli! Falutli!
 * 13) There is a solemnity of the silence. There is no more voice at all.
 * 14) So shall it be unto the end. We who were dust shall never fall away into the dust.
 * 15) So shall it be.
 * 16) Then, O my God, the breath of the Garden of Spices. All these have a savour averse.
 * 17) The cone is cut with an infinite ray; the curve of hyperbolic life springs into being.
 * 18) Farther and farther we float; yet we are still. It is the chain of systems that is falling away from us.
 * 19) First falls the silly world; the world of the old grey land.
 * 20) Falls it unthinkably far, with its sorrowful bearded face presiding over it; it fades to silence and woe.
 * 21) We to silence and bliss, and the face is the laughing face of Eros.
 * 22) Smiling we greet him with the secret signs.
 * 23) He leads us into the Inverted Palace.
 * 24) There is the Heart of Blood, a pyramid reaching its apex down beyond the Wrong of the Beginning.
 * 25) Bury me unto Thy Glory, O beloved, O princely lover of this harlot maiden, within the Secretest Chamber of the Palace!
 * 26) It is done quickly; yea, the seal is set upon the vault.
 * 27) There is one that shall avail to open it.
 * 28) 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.
 * 29) He shall await the sword of the Beloved and bare his throat for the stroke.
 * 30) Then shall his blood leap out and write me runes in the sky; yea, write me runes in the sky.

VI

 * 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.
 * 10) O my God, disguise Thy glory!
 * 11) Come as a thief, and let us steal away the Sacraments!
 * 12) In our groves, in our cloistral cells, in our honeycomb of happiness, let us drink, let us drink!
 * 13) It is the wine that tinges everything with the true tincture of infallible gold.
 * 14) There are deep secrets in these songs. It is not enough to hear the bird; to enjoy song he must be the bird.
 * 15) I am the bird, and Thou art my song, O my glorious galloping God!
 * 16) Thou reinest in the stars; thou drivest the constellations seven abreast through the circus of Nothingness.
 * 17) Thou Gladiator God!
 * 18) I play upon mine harp; Thou fightest the beasts and the flames.
 * 19) Thou takest Thy joy in the music, and I in the fighting.
 * 20) Thou and I are beloved of the Emperor.
 * 21) See! he has summoned us to the Imperial dais. The night falls; it is a great orgy of worship and bliss.
 * 22) The night falls like a spangled cloak from the shoulders of a prince upon a slave.
 * 23) He rises a free man!
 * 24) Cast thou, O prophet, the cloak upon these slaves!
 * 25) A great night, and scarce fires therein; but freedom for the slave that its glory shall encompass.
 * 26) So also I went down into the great sad city.
 * 27) There dead Messalina bartered her crown for poison from the dead Locusta; there stood Caligula, and smote the seas of forgetfulness.
 * 28) Who wast Thou, O Caesar, that Thou knewest God in an horse?
 * 29) For lo! we beheld the White Horse of the Saxon engraven upon the earth; and we beheld the Horses of the Sea that flame about the old grey land, and the foam from their nostrils enlightens us!
 * 30) Ah! but I love thee, God!
 * 31) Thou art like a moon upon the ice-world.
 * 32) Thou art like the dawn of the utmost snows upon the burnt-up flats of the tiger's land.
 * 33) By silence and by speech do I worship Thee.
 * 34) But all is in vain.
 * 35) Only Thy silence and Thy speech that worship me avail.
 * 36) Wail, O ye folk of the grey land, for we have drunk your wine, and left ye but the bitter dregs.
 * 37) Yet from these we will distil ye a liquor beyond the nectar of the Gods.
 * 38) There is value in our tincture for a world of Spice and gold.
 * 39) For our red powder of projection is beyond all possibilities.
 * 40) There are few men; there are enough.
 * 41) We shall be full of cup-bearers, and the wine is not stinted.
 * 42) O dear my God! what a feast Thou hast provided.
 * 43) Behold the lights and the flowers and the maidens!
 * 44) Taste of the wines and the cakes and the splendid meats!
 * 45) Breathe in the perfumes and the clouds of little gods like wood-nymphs that inhabit the nostrils!
 * 46) Feel with your whole body the glorious smoothness of the marble coolth and the generous warmth of the sun and the slaves!
 * 47) Let the Invisible inform all the devouring Light of its disruptive vigour!
 * 48) Yea! all the world is split apart, as an old grey tree by the lightning!
 * 49) Come, O ye gods, and let us feast.
 * 50) Thou, O my darling, O my ceaseless Sparrow-God, my delight, my desire, my deceiver, come Thou and chirp at my right hand!
 * 51) This was the tale of the memory of Al A'in the priest; yea, of Al A'in the priest.

VII

 * 1) By the burning of the incense was the Word revealed, and by the distant drug.
 * 2) O meal and honey and oil! O beautiful flag of the moon, that she hangs out in the centre of bliss!
 * 3) 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.
 * 4) But of pure black marble is the sorry statue, and the changeless pain of the eyes is bitter to the blind.
 * 5) We understand the rapture of that shaken marble, torn by the throes of the crowned child, the golden rod of the golden God.
 * 6) We know why all is hidden in the stone, within the coffin, within the mighty sepulchre, and we too answer Olalam! Imal! Tutulu! as it is written in the ancient book.
 * 7) Three words of that book are as life to a new aeon; no god has read the whole.
 * 8) But thou and I, O God, have written it page by page.
 * 9) Ours is the elevenfold reading of the Elevenfold word.
 * 10) These seven letters together make seven diverse words; each word is divine, and seven sentences are hidden therein.
 * 11) Thou art the Word, O my darling, my lord, my master!
 * 12) O come to me, mix the fire and the water, all shall dissolve.
 * 13) 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.
 * 14) Yet art Thou ever apart, even as I.
 * 15) 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.
 * 16) I remember Thy first kiss, even as a maiden should. Nor in the dark byways was there another: Thy kisses abide.
 * 17) There is none other beside Thee in the whole Universe of Love.
 * 18) My God, I love Thee, O Thou goat with gilded horns!
 * 19) Thou beautiful bull of Apis! Thou beautiful serpent of Apep! Thou beautiful child of the Pregnant Goddess!
 * 20) 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.
 * 21) An end to the letters of the words! An end to the sevenfold speech.
 * 22) Resolve me the wonder of it all into the figure of a gaunt swift camel striding over the sand.
 * 23) Lonely is he, and abominable; yet hath he gained the crown.
 * 24) Oh rejoice! rejoice!
 * 25) 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.
 * 26) I am the Revealer and the Preparer. Mine is the Sword - and the Mitre and the Winged Wand!
 * 27) I am the Initiator and the Destroyer. Mine is the Globe - and the Bennu bird and the Lotus of Isis my daughter!
 * 28) I am the One beyond these all; and I bear the symbols of the mighty darkness.
 * 29) 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.
 * 30) It shall swallow up that lesser darkness.
 * 31) But in that profound who shall answer: What is?
 * 32) Not I.
 * 33) Not Thou, O God!
 * 34) Come, let us no more reason together; let us enjoy! Let us be ourselves, silent, unique, apart.
 * 35) O lonely woods of the world! In what recesses will ye hide our love?
 * 36) 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.
 * 37) 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.
 * 1) Yet the music of my spears shall be a song of freedom.
 * 2) A great bird shall sweep from the abyss of Joy, and bear ye away to be my cup-bearers.
 * 3) Come, O my God, in one last rapture let us attain to the Union with the Many!
 * 4) In the silence of Things, in the Night of Forces, beyond the accursed domain of the Three, let us enjoy our love!
 * 5) My darling! My darling! away, away beyond the Assembly and the Law and the Enlightenment unto an Anarchy of solitude and Darkness!
 * 6) For even thus must we veil the brilliance of our Self.
 * 7) My darling! My darling!
 * 8) 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.
 * 9) My wine is poured out for them that never tasted wine.
 * 10) The fumes thereof shall intoxicate them and the vigour of my love shall breed mighty children from their maidens.
 * 11) Yea! without draught, without embrace: - and the Voice answered Yea! these things shall be.
 * 12) Then I sought a Word for Myself; nay, for myself.
 * 13) And the Word came: O Thou! it is well. Heed naught! I love Thee! I love Thee!
 * 14) Therefore had I faith unto the end of all; yea, unto the end of all.