Readings for March 22nd

Reading 1: Liber Lapidis Lazuli (VII), Chapter IV, by Saint Aleister Crowley

1. I am like a maiden bathing in a clear pool of fresh water.
2. O my God! I see Thee dark and desirable, rising through the water as a golden smoke.
3. Thou art altogether golden, the hair and the eyebrows and the brilliant face; even into the finger-tips and toe-tips Thou art one rosy dream of gold.
4. Deep into Thine eyes that are golden my soul leaps, like an archangel menacing the sun.
5. My sword passes through and through Thee; crystalline moons ooze out of Thy beautiful body that is hidden behind the ovals of Thine eyes.
6. Deeper, ever deeper. I fall, even as the whole Universe falls down the abyss of Years.
7. For Eternity calls; the Overworld calls; the world of the Word is awaiting us.
8. Be done with speech, O God! Fasten the fangs of the hound Eternity in this my throat!
9. I am like a wounded bird flapping in circles.
10. Who knows where I shall fall?
11. O blessed One! O God! O my devourer!
12. Let me fall, fall down, fall away, afar, alone!
13. Let me fall!
14. Nor is there any rest, Sweet Heart, save in the cradle of royal Bacchus, the thigh of the most Holy One.
15. There rest, under the canopy of night.
16. Uranus chid Eros; Marsyas chid Olympas; I chid my beautiful lover with his sunray mane; shall I not sing?
17. Shall not mine incantations bring around me the wonderful company of the wood-gods, their bodies glistening with the ointment of moonlight and honey and myrrh?
18. Worshipful are ye, O my lovers; let us forward to the dimmest hollow!
19. There we will feast upon mandrake and upon moly!
20. There the lovely One shall spread us His holy banquet. In the brown cakes of corn we shall taste the food of the world, and be strong.
21. In the ruddy and awful cup of death we shall drink the blood of the world, and be drunken!
22. Ohe! the song to Iao, the song to Iao!
23. Come, let us sing to thee, Iacchus invisible, Iacchus triumphant, Iacchus indicible!
24. Iacchus, O Iacchus, O Iacchus, be near us!
25. Then was the countenance of all time darkened, and the true light shone forth.
26. There was also a certain cry in an unknown tongue, whose stridency troubled the still waters of my soul, so that my mind and my body were healed of their disease, self-knowledge.
27. Yea, an angel troubled the waters.
28. This was the cry of Him: IIIOOShBThIO-IIIIAMAMThIBI-II.
29. Nor did I sing this for a thousand times a night for a thousand nights before Thou camest, O my flaming God, and pierced me with Thy spear. Thy scarlet robe unfolded the whole heavens, so that the Gods said: All is burning: it is the end.
30. Also Thou didst set Thy lips to the wound and suck out a million eggs. And Thy mother sat upon them, and lo! stars and stars and ultimate Things whereof stars are the atoms.
31. Then I perceived Thee, O my God, sitting like a white cat upon the trellis-work of the arbour; and the hum of the spinning worlds was but Thy pleasure.
32. O white cat, the sparks fly from Thy fur! Thou dost crackle with splitting the worlds.
33. I have seen more of Thee in the white cat than I saw in the Vision of Æons.
34. In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the visible Universe any being like unto Thee!
35. Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through eternity against the Lord of the Gods.
36. So still we race!
37. Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.
38. In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and the unlike.
39. But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard -- and Thou wast He!
40. Also I read in a great book.
41. On ancient skin was written in letters of gold: Verbum fit Verbum.
42. Also Vitriol and the hierophant's name V.V.V.V.V.
43. All this wheeled in fire, in star-fire, rare and far and utterly lonely -- even as Thou and I, O desolate soul my God!
44. Yea, and the writing.
It is well.
This is the voice which shook the earth.
45. Eight times he cried aloud, and by eight and by eight shall I count Thy favours, Oh Thou Elevenfold God 418!
46. Yea, and by many more; by the ten in the twenty-two directions; even as the perpendicular of the Pyramid -- so shall Thy favours be.
47. If I number them, they are One.
48. Excellent is Thy love, Oh Lord! Thou art revealed by the darkness, and he who gropeth in the horror of the groves shall haply catch Thee, even as a snake that seizeth on a little singing-bird.
49. I have caught Thee, O my soft thrush; I am like a hawk of mother-of-emerald; I catch Thee by instinct, though my eyes fail from Thy glory.
50. Yet they are but foolish folk yonder. I see them on the yellow sand, all clad in Tyrian purple.
51. They draw their shining God unto the land in nets; they build a fire to the Lord of Fire, and cry unhallowed words, even the dreadful curse Amri maratza, maratza, atman deona lastadza maratza maritza – marán!
52. Then do they cook the shining god, and gulp him whole.
53. These are evil folk, O beautiful boy! let us pass on to the Otherworld.
54. Let us make ourselves into a pleasant bait, into a seductive shape!
55. I will be like a splendid naked woman with ivory breasts and golden nipples; my whole body shall be like the milk of the stars. I will be lustrous and Greek, a courtesan of Delos, of the unstable Isle.
56. Thou shalt be like a little red worm on a hook.
57. But thou and I will catch our fish alike.
58. Then wilt thou be a shining fish with golden back and silver belly: I will be like a violent beautiful man, stronger than two score bulls, a man of the West bearing a great sack of precious jewels upon a staff that is greater than the axis of the all.
59. And the fish shall be sacrificed to Thee and the strong man crucified for Me, and Thou and I will kiss, and atone for the wrong of the Beginning; yea, for the wrong of the beginning.

Reading 2: From A Mithraic Ritual Translated by GRS Mead

[THE FATHER'S PRAYER.]

O Providence, O Fortune, bestow on me Thy Grace - which Sun Mithras, the Great God, commanded me to be endowed by His Archangel; so that I, Eagle [as I am, by mine own self] alone, may soar to Heaven, and contemplate all things.

[THE INVOCATORY UTTERANCE (LOGOS).]

1. O Primal Origin of my origination; Thou Primal Substance of my substance; First Breath of breath, the breath that is in me; First Fire, God-given for the Blending of the blendings in me, [First Fire] of fire in me; First Water of [my] water. the water in me; Primal Earth-essence of the earthy essence in me; Thou Perfect Body of me - fashioned by Honoured Arm and Incorruptible Right Hand, in World that's lightless, yet radiant with Light, [in World] that's soulless, yet filled full of Soul!

2. If, verity, it may seem good to you, translate me, now held by my lower nature, unto the Generation that is free from Death; in order that, beyond the insistent Need that presses on me, I may have Vision of the Deathless Source, by virtue of the Deathless Spirit, by virtue of the Deathless Water, by virtue of the [Deathless] Solid, and [by virtue of] the [Deathless] Air; in order that 1 may become re-born in Mind; in order that 1 may become initiate, and that the Holy Breath may breathe in me; in order that 1 may admire the Holy Fire; that 1 may see the Deep of the [New] Dawn, the Water that doth cause [the Soul] to thrill; and that the, Life-bestowing Æther which surrounds [all things] may give me, Hearing.

3. For 1 am to behold to-day with Deathless Eyes - I, mortal, born of mortal womb, but [now] made better by the Might of Mighty Power, yea, by the Incorruptible Right Hand - [I am to see to-day] by virtue of the Deathless Spirit the Deathless Æon, the master of the Diadeins of Fire - I with pure purities [now] Purified, the human soul-power of me subsisting for a little while in purity; which [power] I shall again receive transmitted unto me beyond the insistent Bitterness that presses on me, Necessity whose debts can never go unpaid - I, according to the Ordinance of God that naught can ever change.

4. For that it is beyond my reach that, born beneath the sway of Death, I should [unaided] soar into the Height, together with the golden sparklings of the Brilliancy that knows no Death.

5. Stay still, O nature doomed to Perish, [nature] of men subject to Death! And straightway let me pass beyond the Need implacable that presses on me; for that I am His Son; I breathe; I am!

...

[THE TENTH UTTERANCE.]

Hail Lord, Thou Master of the Water! Hail, Founder of the Earth! Hail, Prince of Breath!

O Lord, being born again, I Pass away in being made Great, and, having been made Great, I die.