The Twins

Have pity, show no pity.

Those eyes that send such shivers
Into my brain and spine: oh let them
Flame like the ancient city
Swallowed up by the sulphurous rivers
When men let angels fret them.

Yea. Let the south wind blow,
And the Turkish banner advance,
And the word go out: No quarter.
But I shall hod thee so.
While the boys and maidens dance
About the shambles of slaughter.

I know thee who thou art,
The inmost fiend that curlest
Thy vampire tounge about
Earth's corybantic heart,
Hell's warrior that whirlest
The darts of horror and doubt.

Thou knowest me who I am
The inmost soul and saviour
Of man; what hieroglyph
Of the dragon and the lamb
Shall thou and I engrave here
On Time's inscandescable cliff.

Look, in the plished granite,
Black as thy cartouche is with sins,
I read the searing sentence
That blasts the eyes that scan it,
Hoor and Set be twins.
A fico for repentance.

Ay, O Son of my mother
That snarled and clawed in her womb
As now we rave in our rapture,
I know thee, I love thee, brother,
Incestuous males that consumes
The light and the life that we capture.

Starve thou the soul of the world,
Brother, as I the body,
Shall we not glut our lust
On these wretches whom fate hath hurled
To a hell of Jesus and shoddy,
Dung and ethics and dust?

Thou as I art fate.
Coe then, conquer and kiss me,
Come, what hinders? Believe me :
This is the thought we await.
The mark is fair; can you miss me?

See, how subtly I writhe,
Strange runes and unknown sigils
I trace in the trance that thrills us.
Death, how lithe, how blithe
Are these male incestuous vigils,
Ah, this is the spasm that kills us.

Wherefore I solemnly affirm
This twofold Oneness at the term.
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk ; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.

This weird is of the tongue of Khem,
The Conjuration used of them.
Whoso shall speak it, let him die,
His bowels rotting inwardly,
Save he uncover and caress
The God that lighteth his liesse.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Hermit

At last an end of all I hoped and feared!

Muttered the hermit through his elfin beard.

Then what art thou? the evil whisper whirred.
I doubt me soerly if the hermit heard.

To all God's questions never a word he said,
But simply shook his venerable head.

God sent all plagues; he laughed and heeded not,
Till people certified him insane.

But somehow all his fellow lunatics
Began to imitate his silly ticks.

And stranger still, their prospects so enlarged
That one by one the patients were discharged.

God asked him by what right he interfered;
He only laughed and into his elfin beard.

When God revealed Himself to mortal prayer
He gave a fatal opening to Voltaire.

Our Hermit had dispensed with Sinai's thunder,
But on the other hand he made no blunder;

He knew no doubt that any axiom
Would furnish bricks to build some donkeydom.

But all who urged that hermit to confess
Caught the infection of his happiness.

I would it were my fate to dree his weird;
I think that I will grow an elfin beard.

(Aleister Crowley)

Spiced With Sorrow

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.

(Aleister Crowley)

Mystic Rose

Out of the seething cauldron of my woes,

Where sweets and salt and bitterness I flung;
Where charmed music gathered from my tongue,
And where I chained strange archipelagoes
Of fallen stars; where fiery passion flows
A curious bitumen; where among
The glowing medley moved the tune unsung
Of perfect love: thence grew the Mystic Rose.

Its myriad petals of divided light;
Its leaves of the most radiant emerald;
Its heart of fire like rubies. At the sight,
I lifted up my heart to God and called:
How shall I pluck this dream of my desire?
And lo! there shaped itself the Cross of Fire.

(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)

Logos

Out of the night forth flamed a star  mine own.

Now seventy light years nearer as I urge,
Constant my heart through the abyss unknown,
Its glory my sole guide while space surge,
About me. Seventy light years, As I near
that gate of light that men call death, its cold
Pale gleam begins to pulse, a throbbing sphere,
Systole and diastole of eager gold,
New life immortal, warmth of passion bleed,
Till night's black velvet burn to crimson. Hark,
It is thy voice, Thy word, the secret seed
Of rapture that admonishes the dark.
Swift by necessity most righteous drawn,
Hermes, authentic augur of the dawn.

(Aleister Crowley)

Of Love to Leah

Come, my darling, let us dance

To the moon that beckons us.
To dissolve our love in trance,
Heedless of the hideous
Heat and hate of Sirius.
Shun his baneful brilliance.

Let us dance beneath the palm,
Moving in the moonlight, frond
Wooing frond above the calm
Of the ocean diamond,
Sparkling to the sky beyond,
The enchantment of our psalm.

Let us dance, my mirror of
Perfect passion won to peace,
Let us dance, my treasure trove,
On the marble terraces
Carven in pallid embroideries
For the vestal veil of love.

Heaven awakes to encompass us,
Hell awakes its jubilance
In our hearts mysterious
Marriage of the azure expanse,
With the scarlet brilliance
Of the moon with sirius.

Velvet swatches our lissome limbs,
Languid lapped by sky and sea,
Soul through sense and spirit swims,
Through the pregnant porphyry
Dome of lapis lazuli,
Heart of silence, hush our hymns.

Come my darling; let us dance
Through the golden galaxies,
Rhythmic swell of circumstance,
Beaming passion’s argosies,
Ecstasy entwined with ease,
Terrene joy transcending trance.

Thou my scarlet concubine,
Draining heart’s blood to the lees,
To empurple those divine
Lips with living luxuries,
Life importunate to appease,
Drought insatiable of wine.


Tunis in the tremendous trance, 

Rests from day’s incestuous
Traffic with the radiance
Of her sire, and over us,
Gleams the intoxicating glance

Of the moon and sirius.

Take the ardour of my impearled
Essence that my shoulders seek,
To intensify the curled
Candour of the eyes oblique,
Eyes that see the seraphic sleek,
Lust bewitch the wanton world.

Affric sands ensorcel us,
Affric seas and skies entrance,
Velvet lewd and luminous,
Night surveys our soul askance,
Come my love, and let us dance,
To the moon and sirius.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Atheist

Nor thou, Habib, nor I are glad, 

when rosy limbs and sweat entwine;
But rapture drowns the sense and self,
the wine the drawer of the wine.

And Him that planted first the grape
o podex, in thy vault there dwells
A charm to make the member mad,
And shake the marrow of the spine.

O member, in thy stubborn strength
a power avails on podex sense
To boil the blood in breast and brain;
shudder the nerves incarnadine.

From me thou drawest pearly drink
and in its pouring’s both are drunk.
The Iman drives forth the drunken man
from out the marble prayer shrine.

Blue Mushtari strove with red Mirrikh
which should be master of the night
But where is Mushtari, where Mirrikh
when in the sky the sun doth shine?

Now El Qahar to Hazif gives
the worship unto poets due
But songs are nought and Music all
what poet music may define?

Allah's the atheist he owns
no Allah. Sneer, thou dullard churl,
The Sufi worships not, but drinks,
being himself the all-divine.

Come, my Habib, the roses blush,
the waters gleam, the bulbul sings
To pierce thy podex El Quahar's
urgent and and imminent design.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Titanic

Forth flashed the serpent streak of steel, 

consummate crown of man's device;
Down crashed upon an immobile
And brainless barrier of ice.
Courage.
The grey gods shoot a laughing lip:
Let not faith founder with the ship.

We reel before the blows of fate;
Our stout souls stagger at the shock.
Oh, there is something ultimate
Fixed faster than the living rock.
Courage.
Catastrophe beyond belief
Harden our hearts to fear and grief.

The gods upon the Titans shower
Their high intolerable scorn;
But no god knoweth in what hour
A new Prometheus may be born.
Courage.
Man to his doom goes driving down;
A crown of thorns is still a crown.   

No power of nature shall withstand
At last the spirit of mankind:
It is not built upon the sand;
It is not wastrel to the wind.
Courage.
Disaster and destruction tend
To taller triumph in the end.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Tent

Only the stars endome the lonely camp, 

Only the desert leagues encompass it;
Waterless wastes, a wilderness of wit,
Embattled cold, imagination's cramp.
Now were the desolation fain to stamp
The congealed spirit of man into the pit,
Save that, unquenchable because unlit,
The Love of God burns steady, like a Lamp.

It burns, beyond the sands, beyond the stars.
It burns, beyond the bands, beyond the bars.
And so the expanse of mystery, veil by veil,
Burns inward, plume on plume still folding over
The dissolved heart of the amazed lover
The angel wings upon the Holy Grail.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Pentagram

In the Years of the Primal Course,

In the dawn of terrestrial birth,
Man mastered the mammoth and horse,

And Man was the Lord of the Earth.
He made him a hollow skin,

From the heart of a holy tree,
He compassed the earth therein,

and Man was the Lord of the Sea,
He controlled the vigour of steam,

He harnessed the lightning for hire,
He drove the celestial team,

And man was the Lord of the fire,
Deep mouthed their thrones deep seated,

The choirs of the aeons declare,
The last of the demons defeated,

For Man is the Lord of the Air,
Arise, O Man, in thy strength,

The kingdom is thine to inherit,
Till the high gods witness at length,

That Man is the Lord of his spirit.

(Aleister Crowley)

Optimist

Kill off mankind

And give the Earth a chance
Nature might find
In her inheritance
The seedlings of a race
Less infinitely base.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Mantra Yoga

How should I seek to make a song for thee

When all my music is to moan thy name?
That long sad monotone the same the same
Matching the mute insatiable sea
That throbs with life's bewitching agony,
Too long to measure and too fierce to tame
An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame
Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.

Even as a cancer, so this passion gnaws
Away my soul, and will not ease its jaws
Till I am dead. Then let me die Who knows
But that this corpse committed to the earth
May be the occasion of some happier birth?
Spring's earliest snowdrop? Summer's latest rose?

Thou knowest what asp hath fixed its lethal tooth
In the white breast that trembled like a flower
At thy name whispered. thou hast marked how hour
By hour its poison hath dissolved my youth,            
Half skilled to agonise, half skilled to soothe
This passion ineluctable, this power
Slave to its single end, to storm the tower
That holdeth thee, who art authentic truth.

O golden hawk, O lidless eye, Behold
How the grey creeps upon the shuddering gold,
Still I will strive, That thou mayst sweep
Swift on the dead from thine all seeing steep
And the unutterable word by spoken.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Interpreter

Mother of Light, and the Gods,

Mother of Music, awake,
Silence and speech are at odds;

Heaven and Hell are at stake.
By the Rose and the Cross-I conjure;

I constrain by the Snake and the Sword;
I am he that is sworn to endure,

Bring us the word of the Lord.

By the brood of the Bysses of Brightening,

Whose God was my sire;
By the Lord of the Flame and Lightning,

The King of the Spirits of Fire;
By the Lord of the Waves and the Waters,

The King of the hosts of the Sea,
The fairest of all was mother to me.

By the Lord of the Winds and the Breezes,

The king of the Spirits of Air,
In whose bosom the infinite ease,

Is that cradled me there,
By the Lord of the Fields and the Mountains,

The King of the Spirits of Earth,
That nurtured my life at his fountains,

From the hour of my birth.
                                                           
By the Wand and the Cup, I conjure;

By the Dagger and Disk I constrain;
I am he that is sworn to endure;

Make thy music again;
I am Lord of the Star and the Seal;

I am Lord of the Snake and the Sword;
Reveal us the riddle, reveal,

Bring us the word of the Lord.

As the flame of the sun,

As the roar of the sea,

As the storm of the air,

For a bane, for a snare,
For a lure, for a light,

For a kiss, for a rod,

For a scourge, for a sword,
Bring us thy burden of bliss

Bring us the word of the Lord.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Hawk and the Babe

I am that hawk of gold

Proud in adamantine poise
On the pillars of turquoise,
See, beyond the starry fold,
Where a darkling orb is rolled.

There, beneath a grove of yew,
Plays a babe. Should I despise
Such foam of gold, and eyes
Burning beryline, so blue
That the sun seems peeping through?

Did I swoop, were Heaven amazed?
With my beak I strike but once;
Out there leap a million suns.
Through the universe that blazed
Screams theit light, and death is dazed.

In my womb the babe may leap;
Seek him not within my eye,
Nor demand thou of me why
I should plunge from crystal steep
Like a plummet to the deep.

See yon solitary star
What a world of blackness wraps
Round it! Unimagined gaps.
Let it be. Content thy car
With the voyage to things that are.

Nor, an thou perchance behold
How I plunge and batten on
Earth's exentrate carrion,
Deem turquoise match midden mould
Or deny the Hawk of Gold.

(Aleister Crowley)

The Four Winds

The South wind said to the palms: 

My lovers sing me psalms;
But are they as warm as those
That Laylah's lover knows.

The North wind said to the firs:
I have my worshippers;
But are they as keen as hers.

The East wind said to the cedars:
My friends are no seceders;
But is their faith to me
As firm as his faith must be.

The West wind said to the yews:
My children are pure as dews;
But what of her lover's muse?

So to spite the summer weather
The four winds howled together.
But a great Voice from above
Cried: What do you know of love?

Do you think all nature worth
The littlest life upon earth?
I made the germ and the ant,

The tiger and elephant.

In the least of these, there is more
Than your elemental war.
And the lovers whom ye slight
Are precious in my sight.

Peace to your mischief brewing,
I love to watch their wooing.
Of all this Laylah heard
Never a word.

She lay beneath the trees
With her lover at her knees.
He sang of God above
And of love.

She lay at his side
Well satisfied.
And at set of sun
They were one.

Before they slept her pure smile curled;

God bless all lovers in the World
And so say I the self-same word;
Nor doubt God heard.

(Aleister Crowley)