0.
Gnarled Oak of God! In thy branches is the lightning nested!
Above thee hangs the Eyeless Hawk.
1.
Thou art blasted and black! Supremely solitary in that heath of
scrub.
2.
Up! The ruddy clouds hang over thee! It is the storm.
3.
There is a flaming gash in the sky.
4.
Up.
5.
Thou art tossed about in the grip of the storm for an fon and an
fon and an fon. But thou givest not thy sap; thou fallest not.
6.
Only in the end shalt thou give up thy sap when the great God F.I.A.T. is enthroned on the day of Be-with-Us.
7.
For two things are done and a third thing is begun. Isis and
Osiris are given over to incest and adultery. Horus leaps up
thrice armed from the womb of his mother. Harpocrates his twin is
hidden within him. Set is his holy covenant, that he shall
display in the great day of M.A.A.T., that is being interpreted
the Master of the Temple of A\A\, whose name is Truth.
8.
Now in this is the magical power known.
9.
It is like the oak that hardens itself and bears up against the
storm. It is weather-beaten and scarred and confident like a
sea-captain.
10.
Also it straineth like a hound in the leash. 11) It hath pride
and great subtlety. Yea, and glee also!
12.
Let the magus act thus in his conjuration.
13.
Let him sit and conjure; let him draw himself together in that
forcefulness; let him rise next swollen and straining; let him
dash back the hood from his head and fix his basilisk eye upon
the sigil of the demon. Then let him sway the force of him to and
fro like a satyr in silence, until the Word burst from his
throat.
14.
Then let him not fall exhausted, although the might have been ten
thousandfold the human; but that which floodeth him is the
infinite mercy of the Genitor-Genetrix of the Universe, whereof
he is the Vessel.
15.
Nor do thou deceive thyself. It is easy to tell the live force
from the dead matter. It is no easier to tell the live snake from
the dead snake.
16.
Also concerning vows. Be obstinate, and be not obstinate.
Understand that the yielding of the Yoni is one with the
lengthening of the Lingam. Thou art both these; and thy vow is
but the rustling of the wind on Mount Meru.
17.
Now shalt thou adore me who am the Eye and the Tooth, the Goat of
the Spirit, the Lord of Creation. I am the Eye in the Triangle,
the Silver Star that ye adore.
18.
I am Baphomet, that is the Eightfold Word that shall be
equilibrated with the Three.
19.
There is no act or passion that shall not be a hymn in mine honour.
20.
All holy things and all symbolic things shall be my sacraments.
21.
These animals are sacred unto me; the goat, and the duck, and the
ass, and the gazelle, the man, the woman and the child.
22.
All corpses are sacred unto me; they shall not be touched save in
mine eucharist. All lonely places are sacred unto me; where one
man gathereth himself together in my name, there will I leap
forth in the midst of him.
23.
I am the hideous god; and who mastereth me is uglier than I.
24.
Yet I give more than Bacchus and Apollo; my gifts exceed the
olive and the horse.
25.
Who worshippeth me must worship me with many rites.
26.
I am concealed with all concealments; when the Most Holy Ancient
One is stripped and driven through the marketplace I am still
secret and apart.
27.
Whom I love I chastise with many rods.
28.
All things are sacred to me; no thing is sacred from me.
29.
For there is no holiness where I am not.
30.
Fear not when I fall in the fury of the storm; for mine acorns
are blown afar by the wind; and verily I shall rise again, and my
children about me, so that we shall uplift our forest in
Eternity.
31.
Eternity is the storm that covereth me.
32.
I am Existence, the Existence that existeth not save through its
own Existence, that is beyond the Existence of Existences, and
rooted deeper than the No-Thing-Tree in the Land of No-Thing.
33.
Now therefore thou knowest when I am within thee, when my hood is
spread over thy skull, when my might is more than the penned
Indus, and resistless as the Giant Glacier.
34.
For as thou art before a lewd woman in Thy nakedness in the
bazaar, sucked up by her slyness and smiles, so art thou wholly
and no more in part before the symbol of the beloved, though it
be but a Pisacha or a Yantra or a Deva.
35.
And in all shalt thou create the Infinite Bliss, and the next
link of the Infinite Chain.
36.
This chain reaches from Eternity to Eternity, ever in triangles
-- is not my symbol a triangle? -- ever in circles -- is not the
symbol of the Beloved a circle? Therein is all progress base
illusion, for every circle is alike and every triangle alike!
37.
But the progress is progress, and progress is rapture, constant,
dazzling, showers of light, waves of dew, flames of the hair of
the Great Goddess, flowers of the roses that are about her neck,
Amen!
38.
Therefore lift up thyself as I am lifted up. Hold thyself in as I
am master to accomplish. At the end, be the end far distant as
the stars that lie in the navel of Nuit, do thou slay thyself as
I at the end am slain, in the death that is life, in the peace
that is mother of war, in the darkness that holds light in his
hand as a harlot that plucks a jewel from her nostrils.
39.
So therefore the beginning is delight, and the End is delight,
and delight is in the midst, even as the Indus is water in the
cavern of the glacier, and water among the greater hills and the
lesser hills and through the ramparts of the hills and through
the plains, and water at the mouth thereof when it leaps forth
into the mighty sea, yea, into the mighty sea.
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