THE SWORD OF SONG CALLED BY CHRISTIANS THE BOOK OF THE BEAST ALEISTER CROWLEY y h | a r h f s u r k h y h | w "Here is wisdom: let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the Beast. For it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred, three score, and six" The Apocalypse of John _____________________________________________________________________________________ First published Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth "Benares" [i.e. Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness] 1904 e.v. Reprinted in vol ii. of Crowley's Collected Works Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth 1906 e.v. (c) Ordo Templi Orientis JAF Box 7666 New York NY 10116 U.S.A. _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG CALLED BY CHRISTIANS THE BOOK OF THE BEAST 1904 TO MY OLD FRIEND AND COMRADE IN THE ART BHIKKU ANANDA METTEYA AND TO THOSE FOOLS WHO BY THEIR SHORT-SIGHTED STUPIDITY IN ATTEMPTING TO BOYCOTT THIS BOOK HAVE WITLESSLY AIDED THE CAUSE OF TRUTH I DEDICATE THESE MY BEST WORDS. [This book is so full of recondite knowledge of various kinds that it seems quite ineffective to annotate every obscure passage. Where references and explanations can be concisely given this has been done.] "YOU are sad!"! the Knight said, in an harder than ever!" she said to herself, and anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to then, looking determinedly intelligent: "So comfort you."* that's what the song is called. I see. But "Is it very long?" Alice asked. what is the song?" "It's long," said the Knight, but it's "You must be a perfect fool," said the very very beautiful. The name of the song is Knight, irritably. "The song is called called `The Book of the Beast.' " `Stout Doubt; or the Agnostic Anthology,' "Oh! how ugly" cried Alice. by the author of `Gas Manipulation,' `Solu- "Never mind," said the mild creature. tions,' `The Management of Retorts,' and "Some people call it `Reason in Rhyme.' " other physical works of the first order--but "But which is the name of the song?" that's only what it's called, you know." Alice said, trying not to seem too interested. "Well, what is the song then?" said "Ah, you don't understand," the Knight Alice, who was by this time completely be- said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the wildered. name is called. The name really is "If I wished to be obscure, child," said `Ascension Day and Pentecost; with some the Knight, rather contemptuously, "I should Prose Essays and an Epilogue,' just as the tell you that the Name of the Title was `What a title is `The Sword of Song' you know, just in man of 95 ought to know,' as endorsed by the same way, just in the same way, just in eminent divines, and that . . ." Seeing that the same way . . ." she only begin to cry, he broke off and con- Alice put her fingers in her ears and gave tinued in a gentler tone: "it means, my dear a little scream. "Oh, dear me! That's . . ." He stopped short, for she was taking no notice; but as her figure was bent by sobs * into something very like a note of in- This passage is a parody on one in "Alice terrogation: "You want to know what it is, through the Looking-Glass." 1 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG I suppose!" continued the Knight, in a INTRODUCTION TO "ASCENSION superior, but rather offended voice. DAY AND PENTECOST" "If you would, please, sir!" NOT a word to introduce my introduction! Let "Well, that," pronounced the Knight, with me instantly launch the Boat of Discourse on the air of having thoroughly studied the question the Sea of Religious Speculation, in danger of and reached a conclusion absolutely final and the Rocks of Authority and the Quicksands of irreversible, "that, Goodness only knows. But I Private Interpretation, Scylla and Charybdis. will sing it to you." Here is the strait; what God shall save us from shipwreck? If we choose to understand the PRELIMINARY INVOCATION Christian (or any other) religion literally, we NOTHUNG.* are at once overwhelmed by its inherent impossibility. Our credulity is outraged, our THE crowns of Gods and mortals wither ; moral sense shocked, the holiest foundations Moons fade where constellations shone ; of our inmost selves assailed by no ardent Numberless aeons brought us hither ; warrior in triple steel, but by a loathy and dis- gusting worm. That this is so, the apologists Numberless aeons beckon us on. for the religion in question, whichever it may The world is old, and I am strong-- be, sufficiently indicate (as a rule) by the very Awake, awake, O Sword of Song ! method of their apology. The alternative is to take the religion symbolically, esoterically; Here, in the Dusk of Gods, I linger ; but to move one step in this direction is to The world awaits a Word of Truth. start on a journey whose end cannot be Kindle, O lyre, beneath my finger ! determined. The religion, ceasing to be a tan- Evoke the age's awful youth ! gible thing, an object uniform for all sane To arms against the inveterate wrong ! eyes, becomes rather that mist whereon the Awake, awake, O Sword of Song ! sun of the soul casts up, like Brocken spec- tres, certain vast and vague images of the Sand-founded reels the House of Faith ; beholder himself, with or without a glory en- Up screams the howl of runing sect ; compassing them. The function of the facts is Out from the shrine flits the lost Wraith ; then quite passive: it matters little or nothing "God hath forsaken His elect !" whether the cloud be the red mist of Confusion sweeps upon the throng-- Christianity, or the glimmering silver-white of Awake, awake, O Sword of Song ! Celtic Paganism; the hard grey dim-gilded of Buddhism, the fleecy opacity of Islam, or the Awake to wound, awake to heal mysterious medium of those ancient faiths By wounding, thou resistless sword ! which come up in as many colours as their Raise the prone priestcrafts that appeal investigator has moods.* In agony to their prostrate Lord! * "In order to get over the ethical difficulties Raise the duped herd--they have suffered presented by the naïve naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of long which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Awake, awake, O Sword of Song ! Stoics (who had been in like straits in respect of Greek mythology) that great Excalibur which they My strength this agony of the age had forged with infinite pains and skill--the Win through; my music charm the old method of allegorical interpretation. This mighty `two handed engine at the door' of the theologian Sorrow of years: my warfare wage is warranted to make a speedy end of any and By iron to an age of gold :-- every moral or intellectual difficulty, by showing The world is old, and I am strong-- that, taken allegorically, or, as it is otherwise said Awake, awake, O Sword of Song ! "poetically' or `in a spiritual sense,' the plainest words mean whatever a pious interpreter desires they should mean." (Huxley, "Evolution of * The name of Siegfried's sword. Theology").--A.C. 2 _____________________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION If the student has advanced spiritually so This may be purgatory, but it sounds not that he can internally, infallibly perceive unlike reincarnation. what is Truth, he will find it equally well It is at least a denial of the doctrine of symbolised in most external faiths. eternal punishment. It is curious that Browning never turns his As for myself, I took the first step years wonderful faculty of analysis upon the ago, quite in ignorance of what the last would fundamental problems of religion, as it were lead to. God is indeed cut away--a cancer an axe laid to the root of the Tree of Life. It seems quite clear that he knew what would from the breast of truth. result if he did so. We cannot help fancying Of those philosophers, who from unas- that he was unwilling to do this. The proof of sailable premisses draw by righteous his knowledge I find in the following lines:-- deduction a conclusion against God, and then for His sake overturn their whole structure by "I have read much, thought much, experienced much, an act of will, like a child breaking an Yet would rather die than avow my fear ingenious toy, I take Mansel as my type.* The Naples' liquefaction may be false . . . Now, however, let us consider the esoteric I hear you recommend, I might at least idea-mongers of Christianity, Swedenborg, Eliminate, decrassify my faith Anna Kingsford, Deussen and the like, of Since I adopt it: keeping what I must whom I have taken Caird as my example. And leaving what I can ; such points as this . . . I wish to unmask these people : I perfectly Still, when you bid me purify the same, agree with nearly everything they say, but To such a process I discern no end . . . their claim to be Christians is utterly First cut the liquefaction, what comes last confusing, and lends a lustre to Christianity But Fichte's clever cut at God himself ? . . . which is quite foreign. Deussen, for example, I trust nor hand, nor eye, nor heart, nor brain coolly discards nearly all the Old Testament, To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike. and, picking a few New Testament passages, The first step, I am master not to take. often out of their context, claims his system as Christianity. Luther discards James. Kings- This is surely the apotheosis of wilful ford calls Paul the Arch Heretic. My friend ignorance! We may think, perhaps, that the "Christian Clergyman" accepted Mark and Browning is "hedging" when, in the last Acts--until pushed. Yet Deussen is honest paragraph, he says : "For Blougram, he enough to admit that Vedanta teaching is believed, say, half he spoke,"* and hints at identical, but clearer ! and he quite clearly some deeper ground. It is useless to say, and sensibly defines Faith--surely the most "This is Blougram and not Browning." essential quality for the adherent to Christian Browning could hardly have described the dogma--as "being convinced on insufficient dilemma without seeing it. What he really evidence." Similarly the dying-to-live idea of believes is, perhaps, a mystery. Hegel (and Schopenhauer) claimed by Caird That Browning, however, believes in as the central spirit of Christianity is far older, universal salvation, though he nowhere (so in the Osiris Myth of the Egyptians. These far as I know) gives his reasons, save as they ideas are all right, but they have no more to are summarised in the last lines of the do with Christianity than the Metric System below-quoted passage, is evident from the with the Great Pyramid. But see Piazzi last stanza of "Apparent Failure," and from Smyth! Henry Morley has even the audacity his final pronouncement of the Pope on to claim Shelley--Shelley !--as a Christian Guido, represented in Browning's master- "in spirit." piece as a Judas without the decency to Talking of Shelley :--With regard to my hang himself. open denial of the personal Christian God, "So (i.e., by suddenness of fate) may the may it not be laid to my charge that I have truth be flashed out by one blow, dared to voice in bald language what Shelley And Guido see one instant and be saved. Else I avert my face nor follow him * As represented by his Encylopædia article; Into that sad obscure sequestered state not in such works as "Limits of Religious Where God unmakes but to remake the soul Thought."--A.C. He else made first in vain: which must not be. An astronomer whose brain gave way. He * Probably a record for a bishop.--A.C. prophesied the end of the world in 1881, from measurements made in the Great Pyramid. 3 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG sang in words of surpassing beauty : for of I must apologise (perhaps) for the new note course the thought in one or two passages of of frivolity in my work : due doubtless to the this poem is practically identical with that in frivolity of my subject : these poems being certain parts of "Queen Mab" and "Prome- written when I was an Advaitist and could not theus unbound." But the very beauty of these see why--everything being an illusion--there poems (especially the latter) is its weakness : should be any particular object in doing or it is possible that the mind of the reader, lost thinking anything. How I have found the in the sensuous, nay ! even in the moral answer will be evident from my essay on the beauty of the words, may fail to be impressed subject.* I must indeed apologise to the by their most important meaning. Shelley illustrious Shade of Robert Browning for my himself recognised this later : hence the direct audacious parody in title, style, and matter of and simple vigour of the "Masque of his "Christmas Eve and Easter Day." The Anarchy." more I read it the eventual anticlimax of that It has often puzzled atheists that a man of wonderful poem irritated me only the more. Milton's genius could have written as he did of But there is hardly any poet living or dead Christianity. But we must not forget that Milton who so commands alike my personal affection lived immediately after the most important and moral admiration. My desire to find the Revolution in Religion and Politics of modern Truth will be my pardon with him, whose sole times : Shelley on the brink of such another life was spent in admiration of the Truth, Political upheaval. Shakespeare alone sat though he never turned its formidable engines enthroned above it all like a god, and is not lost against the Citadel of the Almighty. in the mire of controversy.* This, also, though If I be appealed of blasphemy of irreve- "I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable," I have rence in my treatment of these subjects, I will endeavoured to avoid : yet I cannot but take refuge in Browning's own apology, from express the hope that my own enquiries into the very poem I am attacking : religion may be the reflection of the spirit of the age ; and that plunged as we are in the "I have done: and if any blames me, midst of jingoism and religious revival, we Thinking that merely to touch in brevity may be standing on the edge of some gigantic The topics I dwell on were unlawful-- precipice, over which we may cast all our Or worse, that I trench with undue levity impedimenta of lies and trickeries, political, On the bounds of the holy and the awful-- I praise the heart and pity the head of him, social, moral and religious, and (ourselves) And refer myself to Thee, instead of him, take wings and fly. The comparison between Who head and heart alike discernest, myself and the masters of English thought I Looking below light speech we utter have named is unintentional though perhaps Where frothy spume and frequent splutter unavoidable ; and though the presumption is, Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest !" of course, absurd, yet a straw will show which way the wind blows as well as the most But I have after all little fear that I am beautiful and elaborate vane : and in this seriously wrong. That I show to my critics the sense it is my pmost eage hope that I may not open door to the above city of refuge my be unjustly draw a comparison between myself taken as merely another gesture of and the great reformers of eighty years ago. contemptuous pity, the last insult which may lead my antagonists to that surrender which is * So it is usually supposed. Maybe I shall one the truest victory. day find words to combat, perhaps to overthrow, this position. P.S. As, for example, the Note to PEACE TO ALL BEINGS this Introduction. As a promise-keeper I am the original eleven stone three Peacherine.--A.C. * Vide infra, "Berashith." 4 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY Curious posi- I FLUNG out of chapel1* and church, tion of poet. Temple and hall and meeting-room, Venus' Bower and Osiris' Tomb,2 And left the devil in the lurch, While God3 got lost in the crowd of gods,4 5 And soul went down5 in the turbid tide Of the metaphysical lotus-eyed,6 And I was--anyhow, what's the odds ? What is Truth? The life to live ? The thought to think ? Shall I take refuge said jesting In a tower like once Childe Roland found, blind, deaf, huge, 10 Pilate: but Or in that forest of two hundred thousand Crowley waits for an answer. Trees,8 fit alike to shelter man and mouse, and-- Shall I say God? Be patient, your Reverence,9 I warrant you'll journey a wiser man ever hence ! Let's tap (like the negro who gets a good juice of it, 15 Cares nought if that be, or be not, God's right use of it),10 In all that forest of verses one tree11 Yclept "Red Cotton Nightcap Country": How a goldsmith, between the Ravishing Virgin And a leman to rotten to put a purge in, 20 Day by day and hour by hour, In a Browningesque forest of thoughts having lost himself, Expecting a miracle, solemnly tossed himself Off from the top of tower. Moral: don't spoil such an excellent sport as an 25 Ample estate with a church and a courtesan! Alternative "Truth, that's the gold"12 But don't worry about it! theories of I, you, or Simpkin13 can get on without it! Greek authors. If life's task be work and love's (the soft-lippèd) ease, Browning's summary. Death be God's glory ? discuss with Euripides ! 30 * The numbered notes are given at p. 51 Bacon, "Essay on Truth," line 1. "Childe Roland to the dark Tower came."--BROWNING. 5 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG Or, cradle be hardship, and finally coffin, ease, Love being filth? let us ask Aristophanes ! Or, heaven's sun bake us, while Earth's bugs and fleas kill us, Love the God's scourge ? I refer you to Aeschylus ! (Nay ! that's a slip ! Say we "Earth's grim device, cool loss !--" 35 Better the old Greek orthography !--Aischulos !14) Or, love be God's champagne's foam; death in man's trough, hock lees, Pathos our port's beeswing ? what answers Sophocles ? Brief, with love's medicine let's draught, bolus, globule us ! Wise and succinct bids, I think, Aristobulus.15 40 Whether my Muse be Euterpe or Clio, Life, Death, and Love are all Batrachomyo16-- Machia, what ? ho ! old extinct Alcibiades ? For me, do ut--God true, be mannikin liar !--des ! Apology of poet. It's rather hard, isn't it, sir, to make sense of it ? 45 Skeleton of Mine of so many pounds--pouch even pence of it ?17 poem. Valuable Try something easier,18 where the bard seems to me fact for use of lovers. Seeking that light, which I find comes in dreams to me. Invocation. Even as he takes to feasts to enlarge upon, So will I do too to launch my old barge upon 50 Analyse, get hints from Newton19 or Faraday,20 Use every weapon--love, scorn, reason, parody ! Just where he worships ? Ah me ! shall his soul, Far in some glory, take hurt from a mole Grubbing i' th' ground ? Shall his spirit not see, 55 Lightning to lightning, the spirit in me ? Parody ? Shall not his spirit forgive Me, who shall love him as long as I live ? Love's at its height in pure love ? Nay, but after When the song's light dissolves gently in laughter ! 60 Then and then only the lovers may know Nothing can part them for ever. And so, Muse, hover o'er me ! Apollo, above her ! Imperfect I, of the Moderns, have let alone Greek.21 scholastic at- Out of the way Intuition shall shove her. 65 tainements of Spirit and Truth in my darkness I seek. author remedied by his great Little by little they bubble and leak; spiritual insight.Such as I have to the world I discover. His intention. Words--are they weak ones at best ? They shall speak ! 6 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY His achievement. Shields ? Be they paper, paint, lath ? They shall cover 70 Plan of poem. Well as they may, the big heart of a lover ! "Connspuez Swords ? Let the lightning of Truth strike the fortress Dieu!" Frowning of God ! I will sever one more tress Off the White Beard22 with his son's blood besprinkled, Carve one more gash in the forehead23 hate-wrinkled:-- 75 So, using little arms, earn one day better ones; Cutting the small chains,24 learn soon to unfetter one's Limbs from the large ones, walk forth and be free!-- So much for Browning ! and so much for me ! Apology for Pray do not ask me where I stand ! 80 manner of poem. "Who asks, doth err."25 At least demand A chance for No folly such as answer means ! Tibet. "But if" (you26 say) "your spirit weans Itself of milk-and-water pap, And one religion as another 85 O'erleaps itself and falls on the other;27 You'll tell me why at least, mayhap, Our Christianity excites Especially such petty spites As these you strew throughout your verse." 90 The chance of birth! I choose to curse (Writing in English28) just the yoke Of faith that tortures English folk. I cannot write29 a poem yet To please the people in Tibet; 95 But when I can, Christ shall not lack Peace, while their Buddha I attack.30 Hopes. Identity Yet by-and-by I hope to weave of poet. A song of Anti-Christmas Eve Attention drawn to my highly And First- and Second- Beast-er Day. 100 decorative cover.There's one*31 who loves me dearly (vrai !) Who yet believes me sprung from Tophet, Either the Beast or the False Prophet; And by all sorts of monkey tricks Adds up my name to Six Six Six. 105 Retire, good Gallup !32 In such strife her Superior skill makes you a cipher ! * Crowley's mother. 7 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG Ho ! I adopt the number. Look At the quaint wrapper of this book !* I will deserve it if I can: 110 It is the number of a Man.33 Necessity of So since in England Christ still stands poem. With iron nails in bloody hands Not pierced, but grasping ! to hoist high Children on cross of agony, 115 I find him real for English lives. Up with my pretty pair of fives !34 I fight no ghosts. Mysticism v. "But why revile" literal interpre- (You urge me) "in that vicious style 120 tation. Former The very faith whose truths you seem excused. (Elsewhere)35 to hold, to hymn supreme In your own soul ?" Perhaps you know How mystic doctrines melt the snow Of any faith: redeem it to 125 A fountain of reviving dew. So I with Christ: but few receive The Qabalistic Balm,36 believe Nothing--and choose to know instead. But, to that terror vague and dread, 130 External worship; all my life-- War to the knife ! War to the knife ! Buddha rebukes No ! on the other hand the Buddha poet. Detailed Says: "I'm surprised at you ! How could a scheme of Person accept my law and still 135 modified poem. Use hatred, the sole means of ill, In Truth's defence ? In praise of light ?" Well ! Well ! I guess Brer Buddha's right ! I am no brutal Cain37 to smash an Abel: I hear that blasphemy's unfashionable: 140 So in the quietest way we'll chat about it; No need to show teeth, claws of cat about it! With gentle words--fiat exordium; Exeat dolor, intret gaudium ! * It had a design of 666 and Crowley's name in Hebrew (which, like most names, adds up to that figure) on the reverse. 8 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY We'll have the ham to logic's sandwich 145 Of indignation: last bread bland, which After our scorn of God's lust, terror, hate, Prometheus-fired, we'll butter, perorate With oiled indifference, laughter's silver: "Omne hoc verbum valet nil, vir" ! 150 Aim of poet. Let me help Babu Chander Grish up ! Indignation of As by a posset of Hunyadi38 poet. Poet defies Clear mind! Was Soudan of the Mahdi his uncle. Not cleared by Kitchener ? Ah, Tchhup ! Such nonsense for sound truth you dish up, 155 Were I magician, no mere cadi, Not Samuel's ghost you'd make me wish up, Nor Saul's (the mighty son of Kish) up, But Ingersoll's or Bradlaugh's, pardie ! By spells and caldron stews that squish up, 160 Or purifying of the Nadi39 Till Stradivarius or Amati Shriek in my stomach ! Sarasate, Such strains ! Such music as once Sadi Made Persia ring with ! I who fish up 165 No such from soul may yet cry: Vade Retro, Satanas ! Tom Bond Bishop !40 Whip and spur. You old screw, Pegasus ! Gee (Swish !) up ! Sporting offer. (To any who correctly rhymes41 The Times Com- With Bishop more than seven times 170 petition outdone. I hereby offer as emolum- Ent, a bound copy of this volume.) Sub-species of These strictures must include the liar genus Christian Copleston,42 Reverend F. B. Meyer, included in (The cock of the Dissenter's midden, he !) 175 poet's strictures. And others of the self-same kidney:-- How different from Sir Philip Sidney ! But "cave os, et claude id, ne Vituperasse inventus sim." In English let me render him! 180 'Ware mug, and snap potato-trap! Or elsely it may haply hap 9 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG Panel* in libel I bewail me! (Funny how English seems to fail me!) So, as a surgeon to a man, sir, 185 Let me excise your Christian cancer Impersonally, without vanity, Just in pure love of poor humanity ! Ascension Day. Here's just the chance you'd have ! Behold Moral aspect of The warm sun tint with early gold 190 Christianity to Yon spire : to-day's event provide be discussed to prejudice of the My text of wrath--Ascension-tide ! metaphysical. Oh ! 'tis a worthy day to wrest Hate's diadem from Jesus' Crest ! Ascends he ? 'Tis the very test 195 By which we men may fairly judge, From the rough roads we mortals trudge Or God's paths paved with heliotrope, The morals of the crucified. (Both standpoints joined in one, I hope, 200 In metaphysic's stereoscope !) But for the moment be denied A metaphysical inspection-- Bring out the antiseptic soap !-- We'll judge the Christ by simple section, 205 And strictly on the moral side. Orthodoxy to be But first ; I must insist on taking our doxy. The ordinary substantial creed Gipsies barred. Your clergy preach from desk and pulpit Henrik Ibsen and H. G. Each Sunday ; all the Bible, shaking 210 Wells. Its boards with laughter as you read Each Sunday. Ibsen43 to a full pit May play in the moon. If (lunars they) They thought themselves to be the play, It's little the applause he'd get. 215 Parson and poet. I met a Christian clergyman, Fugitive nature The nicest man I ever met. of dogma in We argued of the Cosmic plan. these latter days. The Higher I was Lord Roberts, he De Wet.44 Criticism. * Scots legal term for defendant. A Romany word for woman. The Rev. J. Bowley. The conversation described actually occurred in Mr. Gerald Kelly's studio in Paris. 10 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY He tells me when I cite the "Fall" 220 "But those are legends after all." He has a hundred hills45 to lie in, But finds no final ditch46 to die in. "Samuel was man ; the Holy Spook Did not dictate the Pentateuch." 225 With cunning feint he lures me on To loose my pompoms on Saint John ; And, that hill being shelled, doth swear His forces never had been there. I got disgusted, called a parley, 230 (Here comes a white-flag treachery !) Asked : "Is there anything you value, Will hold to ?" He laughed, "Chase me, Charlie !" But seeing in his mind that I Would no be so converted, "Shall you," 235 He added, "grope in utter dark ? The Book of Acts and that of Mark Are now considered genuine." I snatch a Testament, begin Reading at random the first page ;-- 240 He stops me with a gesture sage : "You must not think, because I say St. Mark is genuine, I would lay Such stress unjust upon its text, As base thereon opinion. Next ?" 245 I gave it up. He escaped. Ah me ! But do did Christianity. Lord George As for a quiet talk on physics sane ac Sanger* on the Lente, I hear the British Don Unknowable. Spout sentiments more bovine than a sane yak 250 How the crea- tures talk. Ever would ruminate upon, Half Sabbatarian and halk Khakimaniac, Built up from Paul and John, With not a little tincture of Leviticus Gabbled pro formâ, jaldi, à la Psittacus 255 To aid the appalling hotch-potch ; lyre and lute Replaced by liar and loot, the harp and flute * Proprietor of a circus and menagerie. Hindustani : quickly. 11 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG Are dumb, the drum doth come and make as mute : The Englishman, half huckster and half brute, Raves through his silk hat of the Absolute. 260 The British Don, half pedant and half hermit, Begins: "The Ding an sich*--as Germans term it--" We stop him short ; he readjusts his glasses, Turns to his folio--'twill eclipse all precedent, Reveal God's nature, every dent a blessed dent ! 265 The Donkey : written by an ass, for asses. Basis of poem So, with permission, let us be to be that of Orthodox to our finger-ends; the Compro- What the bulk hold, High Church or Friends, mise of 1870. Or Hard-shall Baptists--and we'll see. 270 Non-medical I will not now invite attack nature of poem. By proving white a shade of black, Crowley J. Or Christ (as some47 have lately tried) An epileptic mania, Citing some case, "where a dose 275 Of Bromide duly given in time Drags a distemper so morose At last to visions less sublime ; Soft breezes stir the lyre Aeolian, No more the equinoctial gales ; 280 The patient reefs his mental sails ; His Panic din that shocked the Tmolian48 Admits a softer run of scales-- Seems no more God, but mere Napoleon Or possibly the Prince of Wales" :-- 285 Concluding such a half-cured case With the remark "where Bromide fails !-- But Bromide people did not know Those 1900 years ago." I think we may concede to Crowley an 290 Impartial attitude. No mention And so will be made I scorn the thousand subtle points of the Figs Wherein a man might find a fulcrum and the Pigs. (Ex utero Matris ad sepulcrum, 295 * Vide infra "Science and Buddhism", and the writings of Immanuel Kant and his successors. 12 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY Et præter--such as Huxley tells) I'll pierce your rotten harness-joints, Dissolve your diabolic spells, With the quick truth and nothing else. Christian pre- So not one word derogatory 300 misses accepted. To your own version of the story ! Severe mental I take your Christ, your God's creation, strain involved in reading poem. Just at their own sweet valuation, For by this culminating scene, Close of that wondrous life of woe 305 Before and after death, we know How to esteme the Nazarene. Where's the wet towel ? The Ascension Let us first at last ! This is Destroy the argument of fools, 310 a common feat. From Paul right downward to the Schools, Pranayama. That the Ascension's self rehearsed Christ's Godhead by its miracle. Grand !--but the power is mine as well ! In India levitation counts 315 No tithe of the immense amounts Of powers demanded by the wise From Chela ere the Chela rise To knowledge. Fairy-tales ? Well, first, Sit down a week and hold your breath 320 As masters teach49--until you burst, Or nearly--in a week, one saith, A month, perchance a year for you, Hard practice, and yourself may fly-- Yes ! I have done it ! you may too ! 325 Difference be- Thus, in Ascension, you and I tween David Stand as Christ's peers and therefore fit Douglas [sic] To judge him--"Stay, friend, wait a bit! " Home, Sri Swami (You cry) "Your Indian Yogis fall Sabapati Back to the planet after all, 330 Vamadeva Never attain to heaven and stand Bhaskarananda Saraswati and (Stephen) or sit (Paul)50 at the hand the Christ. Of the Most High !--And that alone Latter compared That question of the Great White Throne, to Madame Humbert. Is the sole point that we debate." 335 I answer, Here in India wait 13 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG Former com- Samadhi-Dak,51 convenient pared to Keru- To travel to Maha Meru,52 bim; as it is Or Gaurisankar's53 keen white wedge written, Running and Returning. Spearing the mighty dome of blue, 340 Or Chogo's54 mighty flying edge Shearing across the firmament,-- But, first, to that exact event You Christians celebrate to-day. We stand where the disciples stood 345 And see the Master float away Into that cloudlet heavenly-hued Receiving him from mortal sight. Which of his sayings prove the true, Lightning-bescrawled athwart the blue ? 350 I say not, Which in hearts aright Are treasured ? but, What after ages Engrave on history's iron pages ? This is the one word of "Our Lord" ; "I bring not peace ; I bring a sword." 355 In this the history of the West55 Bears him out well. How stands the test ? One-third a century's life of pain-- He lives, he dies, he lives again, And rises to eternal rest 360 Of bliss with Saints--an endless reign ! Leaving the world to centuries torn By every agony and scorn, And every wickedness and shame Taking their refuge in his Name. 365 Shri Parananda No Yogi shot his Chandra56 so. applauds Yogi. Will Christ return ? What ho ? What ho ! Gerald jeers at What ? What ? "He meditates above Jesus. Still with his Sire for mercy, love,--" And other trifles ! Far enough 370 That Father's purpose from such stuff ! John iii. 16.* You see, when I was young, they said : Its importance. "Whate'er you ponder in your head, Its implied Or make the rest of Scripture mean, meaning. You can't evade John iii. 16." 375 * "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 14 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY Exactly! Grown my mental stature, I ponder much: but never yet Can I get over or forget That bitter text's accurded nature, The subtle devilish omission,57 380 The cruel antithesis implied, The irony, the curse-fruition, The calm assumption of Hell's fevers As fit, as just, for unbelievers-- These are the things that stick beside 385 And hamper my quite serious wish To harbour kind thoughts of the "Fish."58 My own vague Here goes my arrow to the gold ! optimism. Im- I'll make no magpies ! Though I hold possibility of tracing cause Your Christianity a lie, 390 back or effect Abortion and iniquity, forward to the The most immoral and absurd ultimate. Ethics --(A priest's invention, in a word)-- individual. Of all religions, I have hope In the good Dhamma's59 wider scope, 395 Nay, certainty ! that all at last, However came they in the past, Move, up or down--who knows, my friend ?-- But yet with no uncertain trend Unto Nibbana in the end. 400 I do not even dare despise Your doctrines, prayers, and ceremonies ! Far from the word "you'll go to hell !" I dare not say "you do not well !" I must obey my mind's own laws 405 Accept its limits, seek its cause : My meat may be your poison ! I Hope to convert you by-and-by ? Never ! I cannot trace the chain60 That brought us here, shall part again 410 Our lives--perhance for aye ! I bring My hand down on this table-thing,61 And that commotion widens thus And shakes the nerves of Sirius ! To calculate one hour's result 415 I find surpassing difficult ; 15 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG One year's effect, one moment's cause; What mind could estimate such laws ? Who then (much more !) may act aright Judged by and in ten centuries' sight? 420 (Yet I believe, whate'er we do Is best for me and best for you And best for all : I line no brow With wrinkles, meditating how.) Caird's inter- Well, but another way remains. 425 pretation of Shall we expound the cosmic plan Hegel. His By symbolising God and man identification of it with Chris- And nature thus? As man contains tianity proved to Cells, nerves, grey matter in his brains, be mystical. His Each cell a life, self-centred, free 430 interpretation false. Yet self-subordinate to the whole For its own sake--expand !--so we Molecules of a central soul, Time's sons, judged by Eternity. Nature is gone--our joys, our pains, 435 Our little lives--and God remains. Were this the truth--why ! worship then Were not so imbecile for men! But that's no Christian faith ! For where Enters the dogma of despair ? 440 Despite his logic's silver flow I must count Caird62 a mystic ! No ! You Christians shall not maask me so The plain words of your sacred books Behind friend Swedenborg his spooks ! 445 Says Huxley63 in his works (q. v.) "The microcosmic lives change daily In state or body"--yet you gaily Arm a false Hegel cap-à-pie-- Your self, his weapons--make him wear 450 False favours of a ladye fayre (The scarlet woman !) bray and blare A false note on the trumpet, shout : "A champion ? Faith's defender ! Out ! Sceptic and sinner ! See me ! Quail I ?" 455 I cite the Little-go. You stare, And have no further use for Paley ! 16 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY Mysticism does But if you drink your mystic fill not need Christ. Under the good tree Igdrasil64 Krishna will Where is at all your use for Christ? 460 serve, or the Carpenter. The Hath Krishna not at all sufficed? Sacred Walrus. I hereby guarantee to pull God, some A faith as quaint and beautiful Vestments, and Lady Wimborne. As much attractive to an ass, And setting reason at defiance, 465 As Zionism, Christian Science, Or Ladies' Leage,65 "Keep off the Grass !" From "Alice through the Looking-Glass." Fearful aspect Hence I account no promise worse, of John iii. 16. Fail to conceive a fiercer curse 470 Than John's third chapter (sixteenth verse). Universalism. But now (you say) broad-minded folk Will God get the Think that those words the Master spoke bara* slam ? Should save all men at last. But mind ! The text says nothing of the kind ! 475 Read the next verses ! Eternal life. Then--one third Divergent Of all humanity are steady views of its desirability. In a belief in Buddha's word, Buddhist idea. Possess eternal life already, 480 And shun delights, laborious days Of labour living (Milton's phrase) In strenuous purpose to--? to cease ! "A fig for God's eternal peace ! True peace is to annihilate 485 The chain of causes men call Fate, So that no Sattva66 may renew Once death has run life's shuttle through." (Their dages put it somewhat thus) What's fun to them is death to us ! 490 That's clear at least. But never mind! Dogma of Belief. Call them idolaters and blind! We'll talk of Christ. As Shelley sang, "Shall an eternal issue hang 495 * Great slam--a term of Bridge-Whist. Bara is Hindustani for great. John iii. 18, "He that believeth not is condemned already." 17 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG On just belief or unbelief ; And an involuntary act Make difference infinite in fact Between the right and left-hand thief ? Belief is not an act of will !" 500 Free will. I think, Sir, that I have you still, Herbert Even allowing (much indeed !) Spencer. That any will at all is freed, And is not merely the result Of sex, environment, and cult, 505 Habit and climate, health and mind, And twenty thousand other things ! So many a metaphysic sings. (I wish they did indeed : I find Their prose the hardest of hard reading.) 510 If there is free "But if," you cry, "the world's designed will how can As a mere mirage in the mind, there be pain or Up jumps free will." But all I'm pleading damnation ? not-Self being Is against pain and hell. Freewill an illusion. Then can damn man ? No fearful mill, 515 Self or not-Self Grinding catastrophe, is speeding real? Chute d'Icare. Outside--some whence, some whither ? And67 I think we easier understand Where Schelling (to the Buddha leading) Calls real not-self. In any case 520 There is not, there can never be A soul, or sword or armour needing, Incapable in time or space Or to inflict or suffer. We I think are gradually weeding 525 The soil of dualism. Pheugh ! Drop to the common Christian's view ! I have pity : This is my point ; the world lies bleeding :-- had Christ (Result of sin ?)--I do not care ; any ? The I will admit you anywhere ! 530 Sheep and the Goats. I take your premises themselves And, like the droll deceitful elves They are, they yet outwit your plan. I will prove Christ a wicked man. 18 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY (Granting him Godhead) merciless 535 To all the anguish and distress About him--save to him it clung And prayed. Give me omnipotence? I am no fool that I should fence That power, demanding every tongue 540 To call me God--I would exert That power to heal creation's hurt ; Not to divide my devotees From those who scorned me to the close : A worm, a fire, a thirst for these ; 545 A harp-resounding heaven for those ! Will Satan be And though you claim Salvation sure saved ? Who For all the heathen68--there again pardons Judas? New Christians give the lie to plain Scripture, those words which must endure ! 550 (The Vedas say the same !) and though His mercy widens ever so, I never met a man (this shocks, What I now press, so heterdox, Anglican, Roman, Methodist, 555 Peculiar Person--all the list !-- I never met a man who called Himself a Christian, but appalled Shrank when I dared suggest the hope God's mercy could expand its scope, 560 Extend, or bend, or spread, or straighten So far as to encompass Satan Or even poor Iscariot. God's fore- Yet God created (did he not ?) knowledge of Both these. Omnisciently, we know ! 565 Satan's fall and Benevolently ? Even so ! eternal misery makes him re- Created from Himself distinct sponsible for it. (Note that !--it is not meet for you If he and To plead me Schelling and his crew) Judas are finally redeemed These souls, foreknowing how were linked 570 we might The chains in either's Destiny. perhaps look "You pose me the eternal Why ?" over the matter this once. Poet Not I ? Again, "Who asks doth err." books his seat. But this one thing I say. Perhance Creator in There lies a purpose in advance. 575 19 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG heaven suffers Tending to final bliss--to stir Hell's pangs, Some life to better life, this pain owing to re- Is needful : that I grant again. proaches of bard. Did they at last in glory live, Satan and Judas69 might forgive 580 The middle time of misery, Forgive the wrong creation first Or evolution's iron key Did them--provided they are passed Beyond all change and pain at last 585 Out of this universe accurst. But otherwise ! I lift my voice, Deliberately take my choice Promethean, eager to rejoice, In the grim protest's joy to revel 590 Betwixt Iscariot and the Devil, Throned in their midst ! No pain to feel, Tossed on some burning bed of steel, But theirs : my soul of love should swell And, on those piteous floors they trod, 595 Feel, and make God feel, out of Hell, Across the gulf impassable, That He was damned and I was God ! Ethical and Ay! Let him rise and answer me eloquent de- That false creative Deity, 600 nunciation of Whence came his right to rack the Earth Christian Cos- mogony. With pangs of death,70 disease, and birth : No joy unmarred by pain and grief : Insult on injury heaped high In that quack-doctor infamy 605 The Panacea of--Belief ! Only the selfish soul of man Could ever have conceived a plan Man only of all life to embrace, One planet of all stars to place 610 Alone before the Father's face ; Forgetful of creation's stain, Forgetful of creation's pain Not dumb !--forgetful of the pangs Whereby each life laments and hangs, 615 (Now as I speak a lizard71 lies In wait for light-bewildered flies) 20 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY Each life bound ever to the wheel72 Ay, and each being--we may guess Now that the very crystals feel !-- 620 For them no harp-reasounding court, No palm, no crown, but none the less A cross, be sure ! The worst man's thought In hell itself, bereft of bliss, Were less unmerciful than this ! 625 No ! for material things, I hear, Will burn away, and cease to be-- (Nibbanna ! Ah ! Thou shoreless Sea !) Man, man alone, is doomed to fear, To suffer the eternal woe, 630 Or else, to meet man's subtle foe, God--and oh ! infamy of terror ! Be like him--like him ! And for ever ! At least I make not such an error : My soul must utterly dissever 635 Its very silliest thought, belief, From such a God as possible, Its vilest from his worship. Never ! Avaunt, abominable chief Of Hate's grim legions ; let me well 640 Gird up my loins and make endeavour, And seek a refuge from my grief, O never in Heaven--but in Hell! Death-bed of "Oh, very well !" I think you say, poet. Effect "Wait only till your dying day ! 645 of body on See whether then you kiss the rod, mind. And bow that proud soul down to God !" I perfectly admit the fact ; Quite likely that I so shall act ! Here's why Creation jumps at prayer. 650 You Christians quote me in a breath This, that, the other atheist's death;73 How they sought God ! Of course ! Impair By just a touch of fever, chill, My health--where flies my vivid will? 655 My carcase with quinine is crammed; I wish South India were damned ; I wish I had my mother's nursing, Find precious little use in cursing, 21 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG And slide to leaning on another, 660 God, or the doctor, or my mother. But dare you quote my fevered word For better than my health averred ? The brainish fancies of a man Hovering on delerium's brink : Shall these be classed his utmost span ? 666 All that he can or ought to think ? No ! the strong man and self-reliant Is the true spiritual giant. I blame no weaklings, but decline 670 To take their maunderings for mine. Poem does not You see I do not base my thesis treat of Palæ- On your Book's being torn to pieces ontology : nor By knowledge : nor invoke the shade of poet's youth : nor of Christian Of my own boyhood's agony. 675 infamies. Poet Soul, shudder not ! Advance the blade forced to mystic Of fearless fact and probe the scar ! position. You know my first-class memory ? Well, in my life two years there are Twelve years back--not so very far ! 680 Two years whereof no memory stays. One ageless anguish filled my days So that no item, like a star Sole in the supreme night, above Stands up for hope, or joy, or love. 685 Nay, not one ignis fatuus glides Sole in that marsh, one agony To make the rest look light. Abides The thick sepulchral changeless shape Shapeless, continuous misery 690 Whereof no smoke-wreaths might escape To show me whither lay the end, Whence the beginning. All is black, Void of all cause, all aim ; unkenned, As if I had been dead indeed-- 695 All in Christ's name ! And I look back, And then and long time after lack Courage or strength to hurl the creed Down to the heaven it sprang from ! No ! Not this inspires the indignant blow 700 22 _____________________________________________________________________________________ ASCENSION DAY At the whole fabric--nor the seas Filled with those innocent agonies Of Pagan Martyrs that once bled, Of Christian Martyrs damned and dead In inter-Christian bickerings 705 Where hate exults and torture springs, A lion an anguished flesh and blood, A vulture on ill-omen wings, A cannibal74 on human food. Nor do I cry the scoffer's cry 710 That Christians live and look the lie Their faith has taught them : none of these Inspire my life, disturb my peace. I go beneath the outward faith Find it a devil or a wraith, 715 Just as my mood or temper tends ! Mystical mean- And thus to-day that "Christ ascends," ing of "Ascen- I take the symbol, leave the fact sion Day." Decline to make the smallest pact Futility of whole discus- With your creative Deity, 720 sion, in view of And say : The Christhood-soul in me, facts. Risen of late, is now quite clear Even of the smallest taint of Earth. Supplanting God, the Man has birth ("New Birth" you'll call the same, I fear,) 725 Transcends the ordinary sphere And flies in the direction "x." (There lies the fourth dimension.) Vex My soul no more with mistranslations From Genesis to Revelations, 730 But leave me with the Flaming Star,75 Jeheshua (See thou Zohar !)76 And thus our formidable Pigeon-77 Lamb-and-Old-Gentleman religion Fizzles in smoke, and I am found 735 Attacking nothing. Here's the ground, Pistols, and coffee--three in one, (Alas, O Rabbi Schimeon !) But never a duellist--no Son, No Father, and (to please us most) 740 Decency pleads--no Holy Ghost! All vanish at the touch of truth, A cobweb trio--like, in sooth, 23 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG That worthy Yankee millionaire, And wealthy nephews, young and fair, 745 The pleasing Crawfords ! Lost ! Lost ! Lost !78 "The Holy Spirit, friend ! beware !" The reader Ah ! ten days yet to Pentecost ! may hope. Come that, I promise you--but stay ! At present 'tis Ascension Day ! 750 Summary. At least your faith should be content. Reader dis- I quarrel not with this event. missed to The supernatural element ? chapel. I deny nothing--at the term It is just Nothing I affirm. 755 The fool (with whom is wisdom, deem The Scriptures--rightly !) in his heart Saith (silent, to himself, apart) This secret : "\yhla }ya"79 See the good Psalm ! And thus, my friend ! 760 My diatribes approach the end And find us hardly quarelling. And yet--you seem not satisfied ? The literal mistranslated thing Must not by sinners be denied. 765 Go to your Chapel then to pray ! (I promise Mr. Chesterton80 Before the Muse and I have done A grand ap-pre-ci-a-ti-on Of Brixton on Ascension Day.) 770 Future plans of He's gone--his belly filled enough ! poet. Jesus This Robert-Browning-manqué stuff ! dismissed with 'Twill serve--Mercutio's scratch !--to show a jest. Where God and I are disagreed. There ! I have let my feelings go 775 This once. Again ? I deem not so. Once for my fellow-creature's need ! The rest of life, for self-control,81 For liberation of the soul !82 This once, the truth ! In future, best 780 Dismissing Jesus with a jest. The Jest. Ah ! Christ ascends ?83 Ascension day ? Old wonders bear the bell84 away ? Santos-Dumont, though ! Who can say ? 24 _____________________________________________________________________________________ PENTECOST Poem dissimi- TO-DAY thrice halves the lunar week lar to its pre- Since you, indignant, heard me speak decessor. Will Indignant. Then I seemed to be it lead some- where this time? So far from Christianity ! Reflections on Now, other celebrations fit 5 the weather, The time, another song shall flit proper to be- ginning a con- Responsive to another tune. versation in September's shadow falls on June, English. But dull November's darkest day Is lighted by the sun of May. 10 Autobiography Here's now I got a better learning. of bard. It's a long lane that has no turning ! Lehrjahre. Mad as a woman-hunted Urning, Wanderjahre. "The magician The lie-chased alethephilist :* of Paris." Sorcery's maw gulps the beginner : 15 In Pain's mill neophytes are grist : Disciples ache upon the rack. Five years I sought : I miss and lack ; Agony hounds lagoan twist ; I peak and struggle and grow thinner, 20 And get to hate the sight of dinner. With sacred thirst, I, soul-hydroptic,1 Read Levi2 and the cryptic Coptic ;3 With ANET' HER-K UAA EN RA,4 How clever I And atwuynxd arps 25 am ! While good MacGregor5 (who taught freely us) Bade us investigate Cornelius Agrippa and the sorceries black Of grim Honorius and Abramelin ;6 While, fertile as the teeming spawn 30 Of pickled lax or stickleback, Came ancient rituals,7 whack ! whack ! Of Rosy Cross and Golden Dawn.8 * Truth-lover. 25 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG I lived, Elijah-like, Mt. Carmel in : All gave me nothing. I slid back 35 To common sense, as reason bids, And "hence," my friend, "the Pyramids." My Mahatma. At last I met a maniac What price With mild eyes full of love, and tresses Kut Humi ? Blanched in those lonely wildernesses 40 Where he found wisdom, and long hands Gentle, pale olive 'gainst the sand's Amber and gold. At sight, I knew him ; Swifter than light I flashed, ran to him, And at his holy feet prostrated 45 My head ; then, all my being sated With love, cried "Master ! I must know. Already I can love." E'en so. ? ? ? ? ? ? Oh, The sage saluted me ram, ram,9 how wise 50 Grampa must janI yh sb se m...zikl kam lmba p'av kI b'I dam , have been, Bobbie ! hE , vah zavaz , t...mhar nam istarae< me< sIne se iloa hE , hmare pas Aap cele , hm dva$ icÄa ke vaSte de (It matters nothing--you, I find, Are but a mode of my own mind.) 370 Mind's superior As far as normal reasoning goes, functions. I must admit my concepts close Exactly where my worthy friend, Great Mansel, says they ought to end. But here's the whole thing in a word : 375 Olympus in a nutshell ! I Have a superior faculty To reasoning, which makes absurd, Unthinkable and wicked too, A great deal that I know is true ! 380 In short, the mind is capable, Besides mere ratiocination, Of twenty other things as well, The first of which is concentration ! Does truth Here most philosohers agree ; 385 make itself in- Claim that the truth must so intend, stantly appa- Explain at once all agony rent ? Not reason. Of doubt, make people comprehend 34 _____________________________________________________________________________________ PENTECOST But the results As by a lightning flash, solve doubt of concentra- And turn all Nature inside out : 390 tion do so. And, if such potency of might Hath Truth, once state the truth aright, Whence came the use for all these pages Millions together--mighty sages Whom the least obstacle enrages ? 395 Condemn the mystic if he prove Thinking less valuable than love ? Well, let them try their various plans ! Do they resolve that doubt of man's ? How many are Hegelians ? 400 This, though I hold him mostly true. But, to teach others that same view ? Surely long years develop reason.45 After long years, too, in thy season Bloom, Concentration's midnight flower ! 405 After much practice to this end I gain at last the long sought power (Which you believe you have this hour, But certainly have not, my friend !) Of keeping close the mind to one 410 Thing at a time--suppose, the Sun. I gain this (Reverence to Ganesh' !)46 And at that instant comprehend (The past and future tenses vanish) What Fichte comprehends. Division, 415 Thought, wisdom, drop away. I see The absolute identity Of the beholder and the vision. Some poetry. There is a lake* amid the snows Wherein five glaciers merge and break. 420 Oh ! the deep brilliance of the lake ! The roar of ice that cracks and goes Crashing within the water ! Glows The pale pure water, shakes and slides The glittering sun through emerald tides, 425 So that faint ripples of young light Laugh on the green. Is there a night * This simile for the mind and its impressions, which must be stilled before the sun of the soul can be reflected, is common in Hindu literature. The five glaciers are, of course, the senses. 35 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG So still and cold, a frost so chill, That all the glaciers be still ? Yet in its peace no frost. 430 Arise ! Over the mountains steady stand, O sun of glory, in the skies Alone, above, unmoving ! Brand Thy sigil, thy resistless might, 435 The abundant imminence of light ! Ah ! O in the silence, in the dark, In the intangible, unperfumed, Ingust abyss, abide and mark 440 The mind's magnificence asssumed In the soul's splendour ! Hear is peace ; Here earnest of assured release. Here is the formless all-pervading Spirit of the World, rising, fading 445 Into a glory subtler still. Here the intense abode of Will Closes its gates, and in the hall Is solemn sleep of festival. Peace ! Peace ! Silence of peace ! 450 O visionless abode ! Cease ! Cease ! Through the dark veil press on ! The veil Is rent asunder, the stars pale, The suns vanish, the moon drops, The chorus of the spirit stops, 455 But one note swells. Mightiest souls Of bard and music maker, rolls Over your loftiest crowns the wheel Of that abiding bliss. Life flees Down corridors of centuries 460 Pillar by pillar, and is lost. Life after life in wild appeal Cries to the master ; he remains And thinks not. The polluting tides 465 Of sense roll shoreward. Arid plains Of wave-swept sea confront me. Nay ! Looms yet the glory through the grey, And in the darkest hours of youth I yet perceive the essential truth, 470 36 _____________________________________________________________________________________ PENTECOST Known as I know my consciousness, That all divisons hosts confess A master, for I know and see The absolute identity Of the beholder and the vision. 475 Fact replacing How easy to excite derision folklore, the In the man's mind ! Why, fool, I think Christian snig- I am as clever as yourself, gers. Let him beware. At least as skilled to wake the elf Of jest and mockery in a wink. 480 I can dismiss with sneers as cheap As your this fabric of mine own, One banner of my mind o'erthrown Just at my will. How true and deep Is Carroll47 when his Alice cries : 485 "It's nothing but a pack of cards !" There's the true refuge of the wise ; To overthrow the temple guards, Deny reality. For I speak And now 490 subtly. (I'll quote you scripture anyhow) What did the Sage mean when he wrote (I am the Devil when I quote) "The mere terrestrial-minded man Knows not the Things of God, nor can 495 Their subtle meaning understand ?" A sage, I say, although he mentions Perhaps the best of his inventions, God. Results of prac- For at first this practice tends 500 tice. The poet To holy thoughts (the holy deeds abandons all to Precede success) and reverent gaze find Truth. Upon the Ancient One of Days, Beyond which fancy lies the Truth. To find which I have left my youth, 505 All I held dear, and sit alone Still meditating, on my throne Of Kusha-grass,48 and count my beads, Murmer my mantra,49 till recedes The world of sense and thought--I sink 510 37 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG To--what abyss's dizzy brink ? And fall ! And I have ceased to think ! That is, have conquered and made still Mind's lower powers by utter Will. Nothing. The It may be that pure Nought will fail 515 Apotheosis of Quite to assuage the needs of thought ; Realism and But--who can tell me whether Nought Idealism alike Untried, will or will not avail ? Gayatri. Aum ! Let us meditate aright50 On that adorable One Light, 520 Divine Savitri ! So may She Illume our minds ! So mote it be ! Is "The Soul I find some folks think me (for one) of Osiris" a So great a fool that I disclaim Hymn Book ? Indeed Jehovah's hate for shame 525 How verse is written. That man to-day should not be weaned Prayer. Of worshipping so foul a fiend In presence of the living Sun, And yet replace him oiled and cleaned By the Egyptian Pantheon, 530 The same thing by another name. Thus when of late Egyptian Gods Evoked ecstatic periods In verse of mine, you thought I praised Or worshipped them--I stand amazed. 535 I merely wished to chant in verse Some aspects of the Universe, Summed up these subtle forces finely, And sang of them (I think divinely) In name and form : a fault perhaps-- 540 Reviewers are such funny chaps ! I think that ordinary folk, Though, understood the things I spoke. For Gods, and devils too, I find Are merely modes of my own mind ! 545 The poet needs enthusiasm ! Vese-making is a sort of spasm, Degeneration of the mind, And things of that unpleasant kind. 38 _____________________________________________________________________________________ PENTECOST So to the laws all bards obey 550 I bend, and seek in my own way By false things to expound the real. But never think I shall appeal To Gods. What folly can compare With such stupidity as prayer ? 555 Marvellous an- Some years ago I thought to try swer to prayer. Prayer51--tests its efficacity. Prayer and I fished by a Norwegian lake. averages. "O God," I prayed, "for Jesus' sake Grant thy poor servant all his wish ! 560 For every prayer produce a fish !" Nine times the prayer went up the spout, And eight times--what a thumping trout ! (This is the only true fish-story I ever heard--give God the glory !) 565 The things seems cruel now, of course. Still, it's a grand case of God's force ! But, modern Christians, do you dare With common prudence to compare The efficacity of prayer ? 570 Who will affirm of Christian sages That prayer can alter averages ? The individual case allows Some chance to operate, and thus Destroys its value quite for us. 575 So that is why I knit my brows And think--and find no thing to say Or do, so foolish as to pray. "So much for this absurd affair52 About" validity of prayer. 580 But back ! Let once again address Ourselves to super-consciusness ! Are the results You weary me with proof enough of meditation That all this meditation stuff due to auto- Is self-hypnosis. Be it so ! 585 hypnosis ? Do you suppose I did not know ? Still, to be accurate, I fear The symptoms are entirely strange. If I were hard, I'd make it clear That criticism must arrange 590 39 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG An explanation different For this particular events. Though surely I my find it queer That you should talk of self-hypnosis, When your own faith so very close is 595 To similar experience ; Lies, in a word, beneath suspicion To ordinary common sense And logic's emery attrition. I take, however, as before 600 Your own opinion, and demand Some test by which to understand Huxley's piano-talk,* and find If my hypnosis may not score A point against the normal mind. 605 (As you are please to term it, though ! I gather that you do not know ; Merely infer it.) A test. The Here's a test ! artist's concen- What in your whole life is the best 610 tration on his Of all your memories ? They say work. You paint--I think you should one day Take me to seek your Studio-- Tell me, when all your work goes right, Painted to match some inner light, 615 What of the outer world you know ! Surely, your best work always finds Itself sole object of the mind's. In vain you ply the brush, distracted By something you have heard or acted. 620 Expect some tedious visitor-- Your eye runs furtive to the door ; Your hand refuses to obey ; You throw the useless brush away. I think I hear the Word you say ! 625 Yogi but a more I practice then, with conscious power vigorous artist. Watching my mind, each thought controlling, Indignation of Hurling to nothingness, while rolling poet suppressed by Yogi and The thunders after lightning's flower. philosopher * See his remarks upon the Rational piano, the the conclusions to which the alike. evidence of its senses would lead it. 40 _____________________________________________________________________________________ PENTECOST Destroying passion, feeling, thought, 630 The very practice you have sought Unconscious, when you work the best, I carry on one step firm-pressed Further than you the path, and you For all my trouble, comment : "True ! 635 "Auto-hypnosis. Very quaint !"53 No one supposes me a Saint--54 Some Saints to wrath would be inclined With such a provocation pecked ! But I remember and reflect 640 That anger makes a person blind, And my own "Chittam" I'd neglect. Besides, it's you, and you, I find, Are but a mode of my own mind. Objectivity of But then you argue, and with sense; 645 universe not "I have this worthy evidence discussed. That things are real, since I cease The painter's ecstasy of peace, And find them all unchanged." To-day I cannot brush that doubt away ; 650 It leads to tedious argument Uncertain, in the best event : Unless, indeed, I should invoke The fourth dimension, clear the smoke Psychology still leaves. This question 655 Needs a more adequate digestion. Yet I may answer that the universe Of meditation suffers less From time's insufferable stress Than that of matter. On, thou puny verse ! 660 Weak tide of rhyme ! Another argument Will block the railway train of blague you meant To run me over with. This world Or that ? We'll keep the question furled. Preferability of But, surely, (let me corner you !) concentration- You wish the painter-mood were true! 666 state to the To leave the hateful world, and see normal. Perish the whole Academy ; So you remain for ever sated, On your own picture concentrated ! 670 41 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG Fifty years of But as for me I have a test Europe worth Of better than the very best. a cycle of Respice finem ! Judge the end ; Cathay. Method of The man, and not the child, my friend ! Christ. The First ecstasy of Pentecost, 675 poet a Chris- (You now perceive my sermon's text.) tian. First leap to Sunward flings you vexed By glory of its own riposte Back to your mind. But gathering strength And never, you come (ah light !) at length 680 To dwell awhile in the caress Of that strange super-consciousness. After one memory--O abide ! Vivid Savitri lightning-eyed !-- Nothing is worth a thought beside. 685 One hint of Amrita55 to taste And all earth's wine may run to waste ! For by this very means Christ gained56 His glimpse into that world above Which he denominated "Love." 690 Indeed I think the man attained By some such means--I have not strained Out mind by chance of sense or sex To find a way less iron-brained Determining direction x;57 695 I know not if these Hindu methods Be best ('tis no such life and death odds, Since suffering souls to save or damn Never existed). So I fall Confessing : Well, perhance I am 700 Myself a Christian after all ! With reserva- So far at least. I must concede tions. Deus in Christ did attain in every deed ; machinâ. Pon- Yet, being an illiterate man, tious Pilate as a Not his to balance or to scan, 705 Surry Magis- trate. To call God stupid or unjust ! He took the universe on trust : He reconciled the world below With that above ; rolled eloquence Steel-tired58 o'er reason's "why?" and "whence?" 710 Discarded all proportion just And thundered in our ears "I know," And bellowed in our brains "ye must." 42 _____________________________________________________________________________________ PENTECOST Such reservations--and I class Myself a Christian : let us pass 715 Back to the text whose thread we lost, And see what means this "Pentecost." Super-con- This, then, is what I seem occurred sciousness is According to our Saviour's word) the gift of the That all the Saints at Pentecost 720 Holy Ghost. Received the gift--the Holy Ghost ; Such gift implying, as I guess This very super-consciousness.59 Miracles follow as a dower ; But ah ! they used that fatal power 725 And lost the Spirit in the act. This may be fancy or a fact ; At least it squares with super-sense Or "spiritual experience." Poet not a You do not well to swell the list 730 materialist. Of horrid things to me imputed Mohammed's By calling me "materialist." ideas. At least this thought is better suited To Western minds than is embalmed Among the doctrines of Mohammed, 735 The dogma parthenogenetic * As told me by a fat ascetic. He said : "Your worthy friends may lack you late, But learn how Mary was immaculate !" I sat in vague expectant bliss. 740 Verbatim re- The story as it runs is thus : port of Moslem (I quote my Eastern friend60 verbatim !) account of the The Virgin, going to the bath, Annunciation. Found a young fellow in her path, And turned, prepared to scold and rate him ! 745 "How dare you be on me encroaching ?" The beautiful young gentleman, With perfect courtesy approaching, Bowed deeply, and at once began : "Fear nothing, Mary ! All is well ! 750 I am the angel Gabriel." She bared her right breast ; (query why ?) The angel Gabriel let fly * Concerning conception of a virgin. 43 _____________________________________________________________________________________ THE SWORD OF SONG Out of a silver Tube a Dart Shooting God's Spirt to her heart--61 755 This beats the orthodox Dove-Suitor ! What explanation could be cuter Than--Gabriel with a pea-shooter ? Degradation of In such a conflict I stand neuter. symbols. Es- But oh ! mistake not gold for pewter ! 760 sential identity The plain fact is : materialise of all forms of existence. What spiritual fact you choose, And all such turn to folly--lose The subtle splendour, and the wise Love and dear bliss of truth. Beware 765 Lest your lewd laughter set a snare For any ! Thus and only thus Will I admit a difference 'Twixt spirit and the things of sense. What is the quarrel between us ? 770 Why do our thoughts so idly clatter ? I do not care one jot for matter, One jot for spirit, while you say One is pure ether, one pure clay. Practical I've talked too long : you're very good-- 775 advice. I only hope you've understood ! Remember that "conversion" lurks Nowhere behind my words and works. Go home and think ! my talk refined To the sheer needs of your own mind. 780 You cannot bring God in the compass Of human thought ? Up stick and thump ass ! Let human thought itself expand-- Bright Sun of Knowledge, in me rise ! Lead me to these exalted skies 785 To live and love and understand ! Paying no price, accepting nought-- The Giver and the Gift are one With the Receiver--O thou Sun Of thought, of bliss transcending thought, 790 Rise where divison dies ! Absorb In glory of the glowing orb Self and its shadow ! 44 _____________________________________________________________________________________ PENTECOST Christian Now who dares mystics not Call me no Christian ? And, who cares ? 795 true Christians. Read ; you will find the Master of Balliol What think ye of Crowley ? Discarding Barkeley, Locke, and Paley'll His interlocuter Resume such thoughts and label clear dismissed, not "My Christianity lies here !" with a jest, but with a warning. With such religion who finds fault ? 800 Star, it seems foolish to exalt Religion to such heights as these Refine the mystic agonies To nothing, lest the mystic jeer "So logic bends its line severe 805 Back to my involuted curve !" These are my thoughts. I shall not swerve. Take them, and see what dooms deserve Their rugged grandeur--heaven or hell ? Mind the dark doorway there !62 Farewell ! 810 Poet yawns. How tedious I always find That special manner of my mind ! Aum ! Aum ! let us meditate aright On that adorable One Light, Divine Savitri ! So may She 815 Illume our minds ! So mote it be !" 45 _____________________________________________________________________________________ NOTES TO ASCENSION DAY AND PENTECOST. "Blind Chesterton is sure to err, And scan my work in vain; I am my own interpreter, And I will make it plain." NOTE TO INTRODUCTION 1 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE advanced views--an imperative necessity, if we consider the political situation, and the AN APPRECIATION virginal mask under which Queen Bess hid the BY ALEISTER CROWLEY.* grotesque and hideous features of a Messaline. Clearly so, since but for this concealment even our Shakespearian scholars would have dis- IT is a lamentable circumstance that so many covered so patent a fact. In some plays, too, of colossal brains (W. H. Mallock, &c.) have been course, the poet deals with less dangerous hitherto thrown away in attacking what is after topics. These are truly conventional, no doubt; all a problem of mere academic interest, the we may pass them by; they are foreign to our authorship of the plays our fathers accepted as purpose; but we will take that stupendous those of Shakespeare. To me it seems of example of literary subterfuge--King Lear. immediate and vital importance to do for Let my digress to the history of my own Shakespeare what Verrall has done so ably for conversion. Euripides. The third tabernacle must be filled; Syllogistically,--all great men (e.g. Shaw) Shaw and "the Human" must have their are agnostics and subverters of morals. Shake- Superhuman companion. (This is not a scale: speare was a great man. Therefore Shakespeare pithecanthropoid innuendo is to be deprecated.) was an agnostic and a subverter of morals. Till now--as I write the sun bursts forth À priori this is then certain. But-- suddenly from a cloud, as if heralding the literary somersault of the twentieth century-- Who killed Roussea? we have been content to accept Shakespeare as I, said Huxley orthodox, with common sense; moral to a fault, (Like Robinson Cruesoe), with certain Rabelasian leanings: a healthy tone With arguments true,--so (we say) pervades his work. Never believe it! I killed Rousseau! The sex problem is his Speciality; a morbid Beware of à priori! Let us find our facts, decadence (so-called) is hidden i' th' heart o' guided in the search by à priori methods, no th' rose. In other words, the divine William is doubt; but the result will this time justify us. the morning star to Ibsen's dawn and Bernard Where would a man naturally hide his greatest Shaw's effulgence. treasure? In his most perfect treasure-house. The superficial, the cynical, the misanthropic Where shall we look for the truest thought of will demand proof of such a statement. Let it a great poet? In his greatest poem. be our contemptuous indulgence to afford them What is Shakespeare's greatest play? King what they ask. Lear. May I premise that, mentally obsessed, mono- In King Lear, then, we may expect the final maniac indeed, as we must now consider statement of the poet's mind. The passage that Shakespeare to have been on these points, he first put me on the track of the amazing was yet artful enough to have concealed his discovery for which the world has to thank me is to be found in Act I. Sc. ii. ll. 132-149:-- *The lamented decease of the above gentleman "This is the excellent foppery of the world, forbids all hope (save through the courtesy of Sir that, when we are sick in fortune,--often the Oliver Lodge) of the appearance of the companion surfeit of our own behaviour,--we make guilty article.--A.C. 46 _____________________________________________________________________________________ NOTES of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the of-Paris, stick-in-the-mud our scholars have stars; as if we were villains by necessity, always made him. fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, Edmund being the hero, Regan and Goneril and treachers by spherical predominance, must be the heroines. So nearly equal are drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced their virtues and beauties that our poet cannot obedience of planetary influence ; and all that make up his mind which shall possess him-- we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on ; an besides which, he wishes to drive home his admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay arguments in favour of polygamy. his goatish disposition to the charge of a star ! But the great theme of the play is of course My father compounded with my mother under filial duty ; on this eve