lib 0148

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short, one must abandon the reality of religion for a sham, so that the religion may be
universal enough for those few who are capable of its reality to nestle in its breast,
and nurse their nature on its starry milk. But we anticipate!
My message is then twofold; to the greasy bourgeois I preach discontent; I shock
him, I stagger him, I cut away earth from under his feet, I turn him upside down, I
give him hashish and make him run amok, I twitch his buttocks with the red-hot
tongs of my Sadistic fancy until he feels uncomfortable.
But to the man who is already as uneasy as St. Lawrence on his silver grill, who feels
the Spirit stir in him, even as a woman feels, and sickens at, the first leap of the babe
in her womb, to him I bring the splendid vision, the perfume and the glory, the
Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. And to whosoever hath
attained that height will I put a further Question, announce an further Glory.
It is my misfortune and not my fault that I am bound to deliver this elementary Message.
Man has two sides; one to face the world with,
One to show a woman that he loves her.
13
THE SOLDIER AND THE HUNCHBACK
We must pardon Browning his bawdy jest; for his truth is ower true! But it is your
own fault if you are the world instead of the beloved; and only see of me what Moses
saw of God!
It is disgusting to have to spend one s life jetting dirt in the face of the British public
in the hope that in washing it they may wash off the acrid grease of their
commercialism, the saline streaks of their hypocritical tears, the putrid perspiration
of their morality, the dribbling slobber of their sentimentality and their religion. And
they don t wash it! . . .
But let us take a less unpleasing metaphor, the whip! As some schoolboy poet
repeatedly wrote, his rimes as poor as Edwin Arnold, his metre as erratic and as good
as Francis Thompson, his good sense and frank indecency a match for Browning!
Can t be helped; must be done
So . . .
Nay! tis a bad, bad rime.
And only after the scourge that smites shall come the rod that consoles, if I may borrow a
somewhat daring simile from Abdullah Haji of Shiraz and the twenty-third Psalm.
Well, I would much prefer to spend my life at the rod; it is wearisome and loathsome
to be constantly flogging the tough hide of Britons, whom after all I love. Whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son that He receiveth. I shall
really be glad if a few of you will get it over, and come and sit on daddy s knee!
The first step is the hardest; make a start, and I will soon set the hunchback lion and
the soldier unicorn fighting for your crown. And they shall lie down together at the
end, equally glad, equally weary; while sole and sublime that crown of thine
(brother!) shall glitter in the frosty Void of the abyss, its twelve stars filling that
silence and solitude with a music and a motion that are more silent and invisible than
they; thou shalt sit throned on the Invisible, thine eyes fixed upon That which we call
Nothing, because it is beyond Everything attainable by thought, or trance, thy right
hand gripping the azure rod of Light, thy left hand clasped upon the scarlet scourge
of Death; thy body girdled with a snake more brilliant than the Sun, its name
Eternity; thy mouth curved moonlike in a smile, in the invisible kiss of Nuit, our
Lady of the Starry Abodes; the body s electric flesh stilled by sheer might to a
movement closed upon itself in the controlled fury of Her love nay, beyond all these
Images art thou (little brother!) who art passed from I and Thou, and He unto That
which hath no Name, no Image. . . .
Little brother, give me thy hand; for the first step is hard.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
14 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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