THE SPENDTHRIFT
~Aleister Crowley~
“ARCADIA, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon.” What words
to conjure with, what five shouts to slay the five senses, and
set a leaping flame of emerald and silver dancing about us as
we yell them forth under the oaks and over the rocks and
myrtle of the hill-side. “Bruised to the breast of Pan”—
let us flee church, and chapel, and meeting-room; let us
abandon this mantle of order, and leap back to the heaths,
and the marshes, and the hills; back to the woods, and the
glades of night! back to the old gods, and the ruddy lips
of Pan!
How the torches splutter in the storm, pressing warm
kisses of gold on the gnarled and knotted trunks of the beech
trees! How the fumigation from musk and myrrh whirls
up in anaromatic cloud from the glowing censer!—how for a
time it greedily clings to the branches, and then is wafted to
the stars! Look!—as we invoke them, how they gather
round us, these Spirit of Love and of Life, of Passion, of
Strength, and of Abandon—these sinews of the manhood of
the World!
O mystery of mysteries! “For each one of the Gods is in
all, and all are in each, being ineffably united to each other
and to God; because each, being a super-essential unity, their
conjunction with each other is a union of unities.” Hence
each is all; thus Nature squanders the gold and silver of our
understanding, till in panic frenzy we beat our head on the
storm-washed boulders and the blasted trunks, and shout
forth, “Io … Io … Io … Evoe! Io … Io!” till the glades
thrill as with the music of syrinx an sistrum, and our souls are
rent asunder on the flaming horns of Pan.
from THE SCORPION: A TRAGEDY IN THREE ACTS
BY ALEISTER CROWLEY
LAYLAH.
From the heart of the sand
The water wells up
Purer than the rain.
So in my heart
Love springs
Chaster than the grace of heaven itself.
Earth purifies
More subtly than the sea.
Only through matter
Can spirit understand itself,
Justify itself, become itself.
This mystery I heard
From the holy man of Bassu.
His beard was whiter than snow
Because it had once been blacker than burnt wood.So will I cherish my love,
The love which I owe,
Which I give, to my husband
The noblest of the Emirs;
For I and my love and my service
And my duty
All are his.
I have no duty to God
But to obey my husband.
So my heart is freer
That all other hearts, {74}
As the dweller among the palms
Is freer than the wanderer in the desert.
The wanderer must find the palms;
The dweller is at ease.My heart is a young gazelle
Leaping with love toward my husband.
He is black-bearded and bold and magnificent.
Even on the morn of the wedding he rode forth
Against the infidel.
He is so strong and brave:
God must look favourably upon him,
Bidding him return a conqueror
To the flower of his garden
That awaits his hand to pluck.
Hymn to Lucifer
Aleister Crowley
Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.
His body a bloody-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden’s imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breathed life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.
The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without.
― Aleister Crowley
Every Star has its own Nature, which is “Right” for it. We are not to be missionaries, with ideal standards of dress and morals, and such hard-ideas. We are to do what we will, and leave others to do what they will. We are infinitely tolerant, save of intolerance.
Aleister Crowley
New Commentary, II:57
At Bordj-an-Nus
El Arabi! El Arabi! Burn in thy brilliance, mine own!
O Beautiful! O Barbarous! Seductive as a serpent is
That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to the drone
Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love’s assassin sorceries!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
The moon is down; we are alone;
May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight of a kiss?
El Arabi!
There by the palms, the desert’s edge, I drew thee to my heart and held
Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell moaning back,
Smitten by Love’s forked flashing rod -as if the uprooted mandrake yelled!
As if I had seen God, and died! I thirst! I writhe upon the rack!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
It is not love! I am compelled
By some fierce fate, a vulture poised, heaven’s single ominous speck of black.
El Arabi!
There in the lonely bordj across the dreadful lines of sleeping men,
Swart sons of the Sahara, thou didst writhe slim, sinuous and swift,
Warning me with a viper’s hiss -and was not death upon us then,
No bastard of thy maiden kiss? God’s grace, the all-surpassing gift!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
Yea, death is man’s Elixir when
Life’s pale wine foams and splashes over his imagination’s rim!
El Arabi!
El Arabi! El Arabi! witch-amber and obsidian
Thine eyes are, to ensorcell me, and leonine thy male caress.
Will not God grant us Paradise to end the music Earth began?
We play with loaded dice! He cannot choose but raise right hand to bless.
El Arabi! El Arabi!
Great is the love of God and man
While I am trembling in thine arms, wild wanderer of the wilderness!
El Arabi!
Aleister Crowley
Independence
Come to my arms —- is it eve? is it morn?
Is Apollo awake? Is Diana reborn?
Are the streams in full song? Do the woods whisper hush
Is it the nightingale? Is it the thrush?
Is it the smile of the autumn, the blush
Of the spring? Is the world full of peace or alarms?
Come to my arms, Laylah, come to my arms!
Come to my arms, though the hurricane blow.
Thunder and summer, or winter and snow,
It is one to us, one, while our spirits are curled
In the crimson caress: we are fond, we are furled
Like lilies away from the war of the world.
Are there spells beyond ours? Are there alien charms?
Come to my arms, Laylah, come to my arms!
Come to my arms! is it life? is it death?
Is not all immortality born of your breath?
Are not heaven and hell but as handmaids of yours
Who are all that enflames, who are all that allures,
Who are all that destroys, who are all that endures?
I am yours, do I care if it heals me or harms?
Come to my arms, Laylah, come to my arms!
Aleister Crowley
The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego—or what not.
~Aleister Crowley~
-Magick Without Tears, Letter C
Venus art thou, the love and light of earth,
The wealth of kisses, the delight of tears
The barren pleasures never came to birth,
The endless infinite delight of years.
Thou art the shrine at which my long desire
Devoured me with intolerable fire.
Thou wert song, music, passion, death upon my lyre—
My lyre.
I am the Grail and I the glory now;
I am the flame and fuel of thy breast
I am the star of God upon thy brow;
I am the queen, enraptured and possessed,
Hide thee sweet river, welcome to thee, sea
Ocean of love that shall encompass thee
Life, death, love, hatred, light, darkness return to me—
To me!
(from Tannhauser by A. Crowley)
Art of Michael Newberry
