This is contrary to the feeling that one can get from For debates on similar issues within the context of historical studies, see, e. Davies ; Thompson References Abu el-Haj, N. Albright, W. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bagby, P. Baron, S. Ben-Shlomo, D.
Shai, A. Zukerman, and A. Ben-Yehuda, N. Davies, P. Davis, T. In Hoffmeier and Millard Dever, W. King, edited by M. Coogan, J. Exum and L. Finkelstein, I. Fritz, V. Gitin, S. Wright and J. Dessel eds. Grove, C. Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement 1: Handy, L. Haskell, T. Fay, P. Pomper and R. Vann Oxford: Blackwell : Hoffmeier, J. Millard eds. Kitchen, K. De-Groot Excavating to Excess? Implications of the Last Decade of Archaeology in Israel. Kohl, P. Annual Review of Anthropology Kristiansen, K.
Liwag, R. Lowenthal, D. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Malamat, A. Marcus, A. Marston, C.
Mazar, A. In Williamson Meitlis, Y. Meyers, E. In Gitin, Wright and Dessel Rohl, D. Shapira, A. The New Republic 29 November : Shavit, Y. Silberman, N. Smith, M. Stager, L. Supplement to Vetus Testamentum Thompson, T.
Ussishkin, D. Veen, P. Zerbst eds. The Equinoxes are important for marking the seasons. Fr bilder se respektive bildsida klicka p och. You can use any yarn of your own choice. Remap some patterns in Hard diff.
Full film med undertexter i Sverige. Over the past year Equinox which is backed by the Related Companies has been sued by multiple landlords for millions in unpaid rent. Trollstavagen 45 Sorunda Svensk Fastighetsformedling Hus Villa Svenska 20 r efter att Astrid sett en buss full av skolelever frsvinna stter hon p en man hon knner igen som ett av offren och hon brjar genast utreda fallet.
Use equinox svenska The ultimate guide to learn swedish for free foto s easter weekend witches vintage easter cards vintage easter vintage halloween robin miller bookhout rmbook simplicity 20 x14 watercolour autumn painting autumnal equinox autumn art midsummer lill hjelm sweden scandinavian art midsummer beltane trollstavagen 45 sorunda svensk fastighetsformedling hus villa svenska vad ar du sugen pa svenska jordgubbar swedish cottage swedish recipes midsummer.
The oyster gets no fun out of the rose. This state establishes a dualistic conception, such as Mansel was unable to transcend, and at the same time places the original rose in its cosmic place. The creative forces that have made the rose and the observer what they are, and established their relation to one another, are now the sole consciousness. Here lives the philosopher. The rose and the observer and their tendencies and relations have somehow vanished. One has somehow got behind the veil of the universe.
Here live the mystic and the true artist. The Buddhist, however, does not stop here, for he alleges that even this consciousness is false; that like all things it has the Three Characteristics of Sorrow, Change, and Unsubstantiality.
Now all this analysis is a purely intellectual one, though perhaps it may be admitted that few philosophers have been capable of so profound and acute a resolution of phenomena. It has nothing to do with mysticism as such, but its rational truth makes it a suitable basis for our proposed classification of the mystic states which result from the many religious and magical methods in use among men. Ye, ye are the leaders of air! In one sense we must here include all purely sensory phenomena, and the images which memory presents to the mind which is endeavouring to concentrate itself upon a single thought.
In other systems of mysticism we must include all astral phantoms, divine or demoniac, which are merely seen or heard without further reflection upon them. Imagine as strongly as possible your own figure standing in front of you. Transfer your consciousness to that figure, so that you look down upon your physical body in the chair. This is usually the one difficulty. Feeling perfectly at home in your imagined body, let that body rise through the air to a great height.
Look around you. It is sometimes difficult to open them. You will then perceive all sorts of forms, varying as you travel about. Their nature will depend almost entirely on your power of control. Some people may even perceive the phantoms of delirium and madness, and truly go mad from fear and horror. Closely unite the two: the experiment is over.
Practice makes perfect. The experiment is an easy one; with two pupils only of some dozens I have failed, and that completely; with the others the first experiment was a success. We must include, too, in this section the forms appearing in answer to the rites of ceremonial magic. Haddo's suggestions have been officially taken up and a book of careful instruction compiled. See Liber O. These forms are more solid and real, much more dange- rous, and are excessively difficult to obtain.
I have known very few successful practitioners. All these forms and names are almost infinitely varied. The grosser visual and auditory phenomena of hashish belong to the group. It is not just to suppose that a vision of a Divine being of ineffable splendour is necessarily of higher type than this shadowy form-world. Mistake on this point has led many a student astray. Highest among these things are the three visual and seven auditory phenomena of Yoga.
We omit consideration of the other senses; the subject requires a volume. These are referred to the Sun, the Moon, and Fire; and their appearance marks the attainment of Dhyana. As one would expect, such forms leave little impress upon the memory.
Yet they are seductive enough, and I am afraid that the very great majority of mystics live all their lives wandering about in this vain world of shadows and of shells.
All this, too, is the pleasant aspect of the affair. Here belong the awful shapes of delirium and madness, which obsess and destroy the soul that fails to control and dismiss them.
Yet on all the paths is He, ready to smite whoso falters or swerves, though he have attained almost the last height. One young, one brave, one pure—lost! What poignant agony, what moaning abjectness, what self- disgust! What vain folly of all true hope forlorn! The world of phantoms has no terror left; we can take the blood of the Black Dragon for our Red Tincture. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carried by the Eternal Will of the Father, and not for your sake alone.
Dismiss from your mind the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake.
The wide aerial flight of birds gives not true knowledge, nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud; flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety, where Virtue, Wisdom, and Equity are assembled.
The Ego is still opposed to the non-Ego; time is, if altered in rate, still there; so, too, is Space the sort of Space we are all conscious of. Again, the phenomena observed follow the usual laws of growth and decay. But all true mystical phenomena contradict these conditions. In the first place, the Ego and non-Ego unite explosively, their product having none of the qualities of either. It is precisely such a phenomenon as the direct combination of Hydrogen and Chlorine.
The first thing observed is the flash; in our analogy, the ecstasy of Ananda bliss attending the Dhyana. And as this flash does not aid us to analyse the Hydrochloric acid gas, so the Ananda prevents us by startling us from perceiving the true nature of the phenomenon. In higher mystic states, then, we find that the Yogi or Magician has learnt how to suppress it. But the combination of the elements will usually be a definite single act of catastrophic energy. This act, too, does not take place in time or space as we know them.
I think that for the first time of experiencing a Dhyana it is necessarily single. So for the matter of time and space. All time is filled; all space is filled; the phenomenon is infinite and eternal.
This is true even though its singleness makes the duration of the phenomenon but one minimum cogitabile. In short, it is experienced in some other kind of time, some other kind of space. There is nothing irrational about this. Non-Euclidean geometries, for example, are possible, and may be true. It is only necessary to a theory of the universe that it should be true to itself within itself; for there is no other thing outside by which we can check our calculations.
Nor is it inconceivable that many of these worlds may exist, interpenetrating. Assume four dimensions, and there is room for an infinite number of them. For though a plane fills a square completely, it must always leave a cube entirely empty. Concerning the laws which govern this new realm we can say nothing here. The most mystics have been led away from the proper line of research, usually by the baser i. One may add that the language difficulty is in some ways an essential one. Language begins with simple expression of the common needs of the most animal life.
Hence we see that all sciences have formulated a technical language of their own, not to be understanded of the common people. A paper at the Chemical Society is often completely intelligible only to some three or four of the odd hundred distinguished chemists in the room. More important and certain than the mere characteristics of mystic traces in themselves is the great and vital diagnostic that the result of a true trance is to inspire the Yogi with power to do first- rate work in his own department.
People who produce maudlin and hysterical gush, inane sentimentality, who are faddists, fools, drivellers, dodderers— these I refuse to accept as mystics. The true phenomena of mysticism can only occur in a high-class brain and a healthy brain; and their action on that brain is to repose it, to fortify it, to make it more capable of lofty and continuous thought. And you call yourself a sage? Take a key, a Bible, an elastic band. There insert the key, leaving the barrel and ring outside.
Put the elastic band round the book, so as to fix the key firmly in it. Balance the whole arrangement by putting your thumb and that of the Assistant Magus of Art under the ring, thumb against thumb. An important but, as I hold, heterodox school of adepts employ the forefinger.
The game is, however, much esteemed by charlatan clairvoyants; and I can well understand their indignation at finding that I do not recognise their proficiency in this game and that of swindling and blackmail as entitling them to a seat at the Round Table of the Adepts. Let us, however that may be, return to our classification. Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated with God. For she glorieth in the harmony under which the moral body sub- sisteth. The taking of pleasure in, or the endurance of pain from, the meditation itself is in particular to be dreaded.
Of mystic phenomena we may notice the immense class of devotional apparitions. Vishnu, Christ, Jehovah and other deities appear in response to long-continued and passionate love. The Virgin Mary is a favourite with many; it is all one phenomenon. These phenomena are nearly always tainted with sexuality, and are excessively dangerous from this cause.
The victim becomes a fanatic at the best, at the worst and most frequent a driveller. Of a lower type are the loves of Magi and invoked elementals. Higher again because more purely formless and for this reason truer to the Vedana type are the ecstasies of joy and agony experienced by such men as Luther, Fox, Molinos, and others. Such are fear, pride, love, laughter, anguish, and the rest. In the case of Vishvarupadarshana the vision of Vishnu and even of such results as those of St.
Francis and St. Yet in simpler souls this peculiar Grace condescends—may one say? XV "The Mind of the Father riding on the subtle guiders which glitter with the inflexible tracings of relentless fire. Harder to destroy are they than the others, since they come no longer from memory or physical conditions, but from the practice itself, so that they cannot be shut off, but must needs be faced and conquered directly. In the mystic world, we come to those strange metaphysical ecstasies which I am convinced lie behind many philosophical dogmas.
Athanasius had probably experienced something of this type when he penned his insane creed. For the stigma of this class of mystic experience is undoubtedly first its resolution of all concepts into purely formless and passionless perception, secondly and above this , its transcendence of the laws of thought, as we have been accustomed to understand them.
This is only in part true. The eminent professor is perhaps hardly aware of how his eagle-flights have brushed the sun with their fiery wings.
In the case of the god Osiris, for example, he will no longer express his vision by the name Osiris or by the green face, by the white robes starred with the three active colours, by the crown and by the crook and scourge; nor will he chant wondrous hymns of the descent into Amennti, the death and resurrection of the God; but he will express all this by some pure symbol, such as the cross, the hexagram, or even the number 6.
And those upon his plane will understand him. Here, too, we must class the revelations of the pure Qabalah, and the discovery of the relations between symbols. The hashish correspondences of this stage are the mental analyses which I have gone into so fully above, sections v. The methods for obtain success in this matter are far more formidable than those previously sufficient.
The whole mind must be intended for long unbroken periods, concen- trated absolutely upon its own working until this becomes normal to it, when the state called Pratyahara is attained.
The first result will be its resolution into disconnected impressions. Following this may occur a terrible experience; the consciousness of the disconnectedness of all phenomena, and of the units of consciousness of the observer. Both the Universe and the Self are insane. This agony, belonging to the lower stage of Vedana, is the drag, ever pulling back the mystic as he endeavours to break down the blackness of his insanity.
Yet the unity of its anguish is the proof of its Selfhood, and the earnest of its resurrection from the abyss. Such a mystic state may last through several days, perhaps through weeks.
I should not care to assert limitations. The slightest error in the process would almost certainly result in permanent and hopeless melancholia; suicide might be the most fortunate termination. At this point one almost desires to exclaim with Fichte that if it were only possible to start all over again, one would begin by inventing a totally new scheme of symbolism. Here in Sankhara, hashish-analogy is somewhat at fault.
Possibly the conviction of the irresistibility of the connection of cause and effect, the consciousness of the necessity of subject and object to each other through immutable glyphs may represent it. It may be that my experience of hashish is even more imperfect than I have supposed, and that more gifted experimenters might fill this gap. So that the good young Yogi finds himself thus awkwardly placed; that having created a mighty engine and removed all conceivable impediments to its smooth working, he is now confronted by the inertia of all that majesty and might.
The mystic states of Sankhara are more awful and tremendous than any we have yet noticed. Atmadarshana, for instance, is only to be described feebly yet I fear unintelligibly, even so by speaking of a consciousness of the entire Universe as One, and as All, in Its necessary relation to Itself in and out of Time and Space.
Here, too, is the result of Sammasati, a comprehension of one's own self and its relation to, and identity with, everything.
But I feel that I am drivelling. The effort to think of these things, to translate them into the language of philosophy, gives the feeling—I grope and find no other expression—that one's head is going to blow off. One feels inclined to get up and shout for very feebleness, and only the utter fatuity of that or any other method of obtaining relief keeps one quietly writing. Except, of course, that by this time one has abandoned meals for ever! The real key to the stage is Sammasati—Right Recollec- tion.
One considers all known factors which have gone to make one up such as one is, oneself and not another. Clearly the omission of a single minute item must alter the whole course of events. Consider then, why thus, and not thus. Why were my parents just who they were and not others? Why did I take to climbing, not to cricket? It must, for the Universe is not insane—that blackness has been passed. Who then am I? And why? Reaching ecstasy or Samadhi through this channel, the riddle of Kamma is answered, and one is able to enter the realm of pure consciousness.
The Universe, mastered long ere now in its effects, is at last mastered in its causes; and it is indeed a Magister of the Temple who can say: Vi Veri Vniversum Vivvs Vici. I must insert a short note on the word Samadhi, source of infinite misunderstanding. Etymologically it is composed of Sam Greek sun , together with, and Adhi Heb. The Hindus accordingly use it to name that state of mind in which subject and object, becoming One, have disappeared.
Just as H combines with Cl, and HCl results, so the Yogi combines with the object of his meditation perhaps his own heart and these disappearing, Vishnu appears. It is not that the Yogi perceives Vishnu. It is quite essential to change the subject of the sentence.
It is not that the Heart has become Vishnu, or that Vishnu has filled the heart. The heart is gone, just as the Chlorine is gone. There is the tube, and it is full of HCl out of all relation to its elements, through the result of their union. Samadhi is therefore with the Hindu a result, the result of results indeed. There are higher and lower forms. That called Nirvikalpa-Samadhi, when the trance results from banishing thought altogether, instead of concentrating on one thought, is the highest kind.
But, with the Buddhist, Samadhi, though the state of mind meant is the same, is not an end, but a means. The holy-man-of-the-East must keep this state of mind unimpaired during his whole life, using it as a weapon to attack the Three Characteristics the antithesis of Nibbana even as one uses one's normal dualistic consciousness to attack that dualism. But I must observe that this idea is so tremendous that I almost doubt its possibility, and tremble as to my own under- standing of it.
Samadhi twelve seconds in duration is a phenomenon to shake the soul of a man, to uproot his Kamma, to destroy his Identity—and Bhikku Ananda Metteyya cheer- fully talks of practically perpetual Samadhi as the first step to attainment! The Hindu, too, asks this question. When challenged, I merely retort by distinguishing between Atman and Paramat- man.
The Hindu probably mutters something about criticism of Nibbana having forced some Buddhists to a conception of Parinibbana, simply but neatly defined as That to which none of the criticisms apply! Yet Atman and Nibbana are defined in almost identical terms. It is clearly idle for us who know neither perfectly to attempt to arbitrate in so delicate an imbroglio. On the contrary, we had better set to and attain them both, and That which combines, denies, and transcends them both.
Words are cheap! Also there is the vision of the fire-flashing Courser of Light, or also a Child, borne aloft on the shoulders of the Celes- tial Steed, fiery, or clothed with gold, or naked, or shooting with the bow shafts of Light, and standing on the shoulders of the horse; then if thy meditation prolongeth itself, thou shalt unite all these Symbols into the form of a Lion.
One may doubt whether the drug alone ever does this. It is perhaps only the destined adept who, momentarily freed by the dissolving action of the drug from the chain of the four lower Skandhas, obtains this knowledge which is his by right, totally inept as he may be to do so by any ordinary methods. In the case of the aspirant to meditation, this stage is even more terrible than the last.
He has, to use our previous figures, suspended the law of gravitation; the stream is still, and the Sun of the soul is faithfully reflected in its brilliance; the mighty engine is stopped.
But—there it is! We have got rid of motion, but matter remains. Again must I apologise for taking so elementary a view of physics. And while there is a particle of matter, it must fill the Universe—there is no place for spirit.
His thought is controlled and smooth; his thought even! Immutable it abides, stronger than ever in its silence and vastness; and—O unhappy one! Thou hast taken thee the lies, those little foxes that spoil the grapes. Lie after lie thou has suppressed; and what hast thou achieved?
Thou hast smitten all the illusions—O miserable slave! All thou hast done is to harmonise and weld all the lies and illusions into one universal lie, one infinite illusion. It is one; there is nothing to oppose to it. Which is why adepts of this stage wear an eye as a badge. Of this vision what can one say, save that the Universe, as previously known through Atmadarshana, is annihilated? Yet the negation of this phrase is only apparent; the sense is that all that negative Atmadarshana is destroyed; it is only an illusion that goes.
Yet there is indeed Nothing in its place—and the only way to express the matter is to spell that Nothing with a capital N. If the rationalist reader has had the quite super-Stylite patience to read to this point, he will surely now at last throw down the book with an ethically justifiable curse.
Yet I beg him to believe that there is a shade of difference between me and a paradox-monger. I am not playing with words—Lord knows how I wish I could! I find that they play with me! Yet I fail utterly.
I have given my life to the study of the English language; I am supposed by my flatterers to have some little facility of expression, especially, one may agree, in conveying the extremes of thought of all kinds. If I persist, seeing that my little gift of language must be mine for some purpose, and therefore for this purpose, since no other purpose can there be, let my rationalist friends excuse me, as the agony of my impotence most terribly avenges them.
Plainly, we know so very little; so few ever attain this class of experience that one is perhaps hardly justified in maintaining as I always have maintained and that stoutly that the reward is according to the work. It may conceivably be that work does not affect the question, as it clearly does in the lower grades, it may be that an outsider may pull off the big thing—Agnosco!
Still, I advise people to work at it. The difficulty is of course to kill them without thinking of the killing, which thought is naturally just as bad as any other thought. I never got any good out of this method myself. It may, I believe, happen with fair frequency that in the course of any advanced meditation or invocation this particular type of spiritual experience may suddenly arise without apparent cause.
Anyway, let us hope so! As a matter of practical politics, I think that a judicious mixture of the methods of East and West is likely to give the best results. Let the young Adept, for example, master thoroughly the groundwork of the Hindu system. Let him master Asana, posture, so that he can sit motionless for hours without any message from his body reaching and so disturbing his brain. Let him include in his accomplishments Pranayama, control of the breath and of the vital nervous currents which react in sympathy with it.
Let him then exalt to the utmost his soul by the appropriate ritual of ceremonial magic; and when by this means he has most thoroughly identified himself with the Supreme, let him, as that Supreme One, continue to meditate with intense force upon Himself, until his sphere is entirely filled with the single Thought. Lastly, if this, the male energy, suffice not, let him transform it into a pure and perfect emptiness and passivity, as of one waiting for the Beloved One, with intense longing rendered passionless by the certainty that He will come.
It is impossible in a few words to explain thoroughly this eclectic system; for each act and thought of the ritual demands an expert teacher, and even a good pupil might study for years before mastering the method. By which time he might not impossibly have discovered one of his own. And that is where the joke comes in. For he is no nearer to Nibbana than when he started. Though he has stripped off all the husks of thought and touched Thought itself, even attaining to Negation of thought; yet he is still upon the plane of Thought.
And—that which can be thought is not true. All his righteousness is as filthy rags; even his eternity of Shivadarshana, his stored crores of Mahakalpas in the Arupa- Brahma-Lokas must pass; he must come back to his horses— and this time as a horse- fly. He may be all kinds of a black magician; but at least he has learnt to concentrate his mind. But what is he to aim at? Hashish-analogy is better than ever here; for Nibbana stands to the attainment of the Eight Jhanas, the Four Formless States k.
It has nothing whatever to do with it. He has done the medicine-man trick, and wasted a lot of maidens in the hope of making rain. So—one must suppose, for here I reach a point where, as Mr. Waite jeers, we are driven to take refuge in portentous darkness and irretrievable mystery because we don't know anything about it —he sits down and contemplates the Three Characteristics.
At last, as I imagine, probably without foundation, he succeeds in seeing first the truth and then the falsity of the Three Characteristics—and that is Nibbana. It would be easy to string up a paradox-scheme in which Change, not-Change, both-Change-and-not-Change, and neither-Change-nor-not-Change were all four perceived at once; and indeed some authors have done something very like this; but, between you and me, I don't believe they knew anything about it; and as I certainly don't know anything myself, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather leave the subject alone.
I have added this section for the sake of completeness; but it is all hearsay. Perhaps that which I now urge is indeed the Great Illusion. At least, having adopted the Buddhist Skandhas as the basis of my classification, I was bound in mere courtesy to give the Buddhist doctrine as I have heard it from the one man who really understands it, Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya.
If I could only understand Him. We are at the end of our little digression upon mystic states, and may cheerfully return to the consideration of Scientific Illuminism. We have had, you may say, a poor half- pennyworth of Science to an intolerable deal of Illuminism. Well, that is what I wanted you to say. Were it not so, I would not have spent these two nights over this paper, when I want to be fresh every morning to go to the Prado and gloat over Velasquez!
Here, gentlemen, are a number of genuine mystic states; some home-grown, some imported. Please tell us what they are!
You are fond of telling us what things are. It is useless to label the whole lot as insane: nor are they unimportant. In my view, most of the great men of the world have known them; themselves attributed their greatness to these experiences, and I really do not see why admittedly lesser men should contradict them.
I hope to argue this point at greater length when I am better documented; but at the very least, these states are of the most extraordinary interest. Even as insanities, they would demand the strictest investiga- tion from the light they throw upon the working of the brain. But as it is! All the sacred literature of the world is full of them; all the art and poetry of all time is inspired by them; and, by the Lord Harry!
Think of what we claim! That concentration and its results can open the Closed Palace of the King, and answer the Riddle of the Sphinx. All science only brings us up to a blind wall, the wall of Philosophy; here is your great Ram to batter a breach and let in the forlorn hope of the Children of the Curse to storm the heights of heaven.
One single trained observer with five years' work, less money than would build a bakehouse, and no more help than his dozen of volunteer students could give him, would earn himself a fame loftier than the stars, and set mankind on the royal road to the solution of the One great problem.
Scientific Illuminism would have deserved its name, or mysticism would have received a blow which would save another young fool like myself from wasting his whole life on so senseless a study and enable him to engage in the nobler career of cheating and duping his fellows in the accredited spheres of commerce and politics, to say nothing of the grosser knaveries of the liberal professions.
But I have no doubts. Let the investigator study his own brain on the lines I have laid down, possibly in the first place with the aid of hashish or some better physical expedient, to overcome the dull scepticism which is begotten of idleness upon ignorance; it is useless to study the no-brain of another, on the strength of a reputation for fraud, as the spiritualist investigators seem to do. Your own brain is the best; next, the trained and vigorous brains of clever and educated men, in perfect health, honest and wary.
All talk to the contrary is the merest froth; Mohammed was a great lawgiver and a great fighter; try your experiment with the sane, and not with the crazy! True, you will get hallucinations more easily with the unsound; but you will never, never, never find a woman or a degenerate who is capable of any trance of type higher than Vedana.
Take my word for it! Fisher Unwin, Third Impression, 5s. It is a splendid oasis in the desert of silly memoirs, this sturdy and valiant record of a very noble life. How surely and steadily has Mrs. Besant moved, urged by the one un- selfish thought, high-minded love for humanity, from her Eden through the hell of revolt to the Paradise that so few earn! And she is still fighting in the flesh, though her spirit has its peace.
Priceless and unenvied reward of suffering! True it is, that the chosen of the Masters must leave all. Though thou perish, let them be saved. And remember: there is not one single grain of dust that shall not attain to Buddhahood. Besant's story; yet surely they attack all of us alike who strive to those calm heights.
Is it that they are ultimately forgotten, like all lesser ills? Is the spectre, self, laid beyond remembrance, even, of its horror; that horror which seems branded into the brain of whoso has beheld it?
Long years are they through which Mrs. Besant fought with hardly a friend or a helper; must it be so for all of us? Yes, for we are all too blind to know our friends, our wardens, the Stones in the great Wall of Arhans that guards humanity.
We have been with James Thomson and watched the dreadful seeker go his unending round to the death-places of love and faith and hope; we have passed out of the doomed triangle into the infinite circle of emerald that girdles the Universe, the circle wherein stands he, the Master whose name is Octinomos.
II So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched; My brain's afloat with ecstasy of shame. That tearing pain is gone, enriched By his life-spasm; but he being gone, the same Myself is gone Sucked by the dragon down below death's horizon. III I woke from this.
IV All day my lover deigned to murder me, Linking his kisses in a chain About my neck; demon-embroidery! Bruises like far-ff mountains stain The valley of my body of ivory! Then last came sleep. I wake, and he is gone; what should I do but weep? V Nay, for I wept enough—more sacred tears! VII I rose to seek him. First my footsteps faint Pressed the starred moss; but soon I wandered, like some sweet sequestered saint, Into the wood, my mind.
The moon Was staggered by the trees; with fierce constraint Hardly one ray Pierced to the ragged earth about their roots that lay. I wandered Eagerly seeking everywhere. The stories of life that on my lips he squandered Grew into shrill cries of despair, Until the dryads frightened and dumfoundered Fled into space— Like to a demon-king's was grown my maiden face! IX At last I came unto the well, my soul.
Above my head there screams a flying scroll Whose word burnt through My being as when stars drop in black disastrous dew. X For in that scroll was written how the globe Of space became; of how the light Broke in that space and wrapped it in a robe Of glory; of how One most white Withdrew that Whole, and hid it in the lobe Of his right Ear, So that the Universe one dewdrop did appear.
XI Yea! XIII It matters not. Come, change! Come, Woe! Come, mask! Drive Light, Life, Love into the deep! In vain we labour at the loathsome task Not knowing if we wake or sleep; But in the end we lift the plumed casque Of the dead warrior; Find no chaste corpse therein, but a soft-smiling whore. I made me ink, and in a little book I wrote one word That God himself, the adder of Thought, had never heard. XV It detonated. XVI Vain was the toil.
So then I left the wood And came unto the still black sea, That oily monster of beatitude! There as I stood, a mask of solitude Hiding a face Wried as a satyr's, rolled that ocean into space. Thither a green flame I bore Of phosphor foam, and strewed the ground With dew-drops, children of my wand, whose core Was trembling steel Electric that made spin the universal Wheel. XIX So then I caught that goat up in a kiss.
And cried Io Pan! Io Pan! Then all this body's wealth of ambergris, Narcissus-scented flesh of man! I burnt before him in the sacrifice; For he was sure— Being the Doubt of Things, the one thing to endure! XX Wherefore, when madness took him at the end, He, doubt-goat, slew the goat of doubt; And that which inward did for ever tend Came at the last to have come out; And I who had the World and God to friend Found all three foes!
Drowned in that sea of changes, vacancies, and woes! Him then I strove to woo, to win, Kissing his curled lips, playing with his beard, Setting his brain a-shake, a-spin, By that strong wand, and muttering of the weird That only I Knew of all souls alive or dead beneath the sky. Yet still was beaten, for I knew Myself was He, Himself, the first and last; And as an unicorn drinks dew From under oak-leaves, so my strength was cast Into the mire; For all I did was dream, and all I dreamt desire.
XXV This child hath not one hair upon his head, But he hath wings instead of ears. No eyes hath he, but all his light is shed Within him on the ordered spheres Of nature that he hideth; and in stead Of mouth he hath One minute point of jet; silence, the lightning path! XXVI Also his nostrils are shut up; for he Hath not the need of any breath; Nor can the curtain of eternity Cover that head with life or death.
So all his body, a slim almond-tree, Knoweth no bough Nor branch nor twig nor bud, from never until now. Pile me the roses and the thorns, Upon this bed from which he hath withdrawn! He may return. XXIX So I am stretched out naked to the knife, My whole soul twitching with the stress Of the expected yet surprising strife, A martyrdom of blessedness.
Though Death came, I could kiss him into life; Though Life came, I Could kiss him into death, and yet nor live nor die! Mystical The night comes down, a soaring wedge of flame Woven therein To be a sign to them who yet have never been. The blacks were balanced with the whites; Satan dropped down even as up soared God; Whores prayed and danced with anchorites.
So in my book the even matched the odd: No word I wrote Therein, but sealed it with the signet of the goat. Read thou herein Whose eyes are blind! Thou may'st behold Within the wheel that alway seems to spin All ways a point of static gold.
Then may'st thou out therewith, and fit it in That extreme sphere Whose boundless farness makes it infinitely near. Monthly, 6d. Foremost in the attempt to rehabilitate astrology on modern lines is this well-known monthly magazine.
The method indicated is the sound one of accurate observation and deduction; but whether the ultimate proposition of astrology can be established is a question which your reviewer at present is disinclined to assert. It is quite easy to throw ridicule, or to demolish by inexorable logic; but such methods do not convince.
At least we believe that any person with a little experience can tell almost at a glance the sign rising at a stranger's birth, and that so frequently and certainly as to put chance and coincidence out of the question.
For our own part, we consider Astrology a valuable aid to concentration, and perhaps the best of the methods of determining the Sankhara-skanda of a man.
In your reviewer's own exper- ience she has found it more reliable than either Geomancy or the Tarot, in questions genethliacal, at least. A careful study of the characteristics of the signs and planets is, moreover, of the very greatest assistance in the use of the Book Swan Sonnenschein, 10s. This long and learned work is not exciting: The good translation shames the pedant's writing. The wise Professor reconstructs duality, Made of mentality and animality. His arguments are forcible and true, But yet his propositions will not do; For when the full circumference is run We can resolve them gaily into one.
0コメント