Readings for April 1st

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

1. O my beautiful God! I swim in Thy heart like a trout in the mountain torrent.
2. I leap from pool to pool in my joy; I am goodly with brown and gold and silver.
3. Why, I am lovelier than the russet autumn woods at the first snowfall.
4. And the crystal cave of my thought is lovelier than I.
5. Only one fish-hook can draw me out; it is a woman kneeling by the bank of the stream. It is she that pours the bright dew over herself, and into the sand so that the river gushes forth.
6. There is a bird on yonder myrtle; only the song of that bird can draw me out of the pool of Thy heart, O my God!
7. Who is this Neapolitan boy that laughs in his happiness? His lover is the mighty crater of the Mountain of Fire. I saw his charred limbs borne down the slopes in a stealthy tongue of liquid stone.
8. And Oh! the chirp of the cicada!
9. I remember the days when I was cacique in Mexico.
10. O my God, wast Thou then as now my beautiful lover?
11. Was my boyhood then as now Thy toy, Thy joy?
12. Verily, I remember those iron days.
13. I remember how we drenched the bitter lakes with our torrent of gold; how we sank the treasurable image in the crater of Citlaltepetl.
14. How the good flame lifted us even unto the lowlands, setting us down in the impenetrable forest.
15. Yea, Thou wast a strange scarlet bird with a bill of gold. I was Thy mate in the forests of the lowland; and ever we heard from afar the shrill chant of mutilated priests and the insane clamour of the Sacrifice of Maidens.
16. There was a weird winged God that told us of his wisdom.
17. We attained to be starry grains of gold dust in the sands of a slow river.
18. Yea, and that river was the river of space and time also.
19. We parted thence; ever to the smaller, ever to the greater, until now, O sweet God, we are ourselves, the same.
20. O God of mine, Thou art like a little white goat with lightning in his horns!
21. I love Thee, I love Thee.
22. Every breath, every word, every thought, every deed is an act of love with Thee.
23. The beat of my heart is the pendulum of love.
24. The songs of me are the soft sighs:
25. The thoughts of me are very rapture:
26. And my deeds are the myriads of Thy children, the stars and the atoms.
27. Let there be nothing!
28. Let all things drop into this ocean of love!
29. Be this devotion a potent spell to exorcize the demons of the Five!
30. Ah God, all is gone! Thou dost consummate Thy rapture. Falútli! Falútli!
31. There is a solemnity of the silence. There is no more voice at all.
32. So shall it be unto the end. We who were dust shall never fall away into the dust.
33. So shall it be.
34. Then, O my God, the breath of the Garden of Spices. All these have a savour averse.
35. The cone is cut with an infinite ray; the curve of hyperbolic life springs into being.
36. Farther and farther we float; yet we are still. It is the chain of systems that is falling away from us.
37. First falls the silly world; the world of the old grey land.
38. Falls it unthinkably far, with its sorrowful bearded face presiding over it; it fades to silence and woe.
39. We to silence and bliss, and the face is the laughing face of Eros.
40. Smiling we greet him with the secret signs.
41. He leads us into the Inverted Palace.
42. There is the Heart of Blood, a pyramid reaching its apex down beyond the Wrong of the Beginning.
43. Bury me unto Thy Glory, O beloved, O princely lover of this harlot maiden, within the Secretest Chamber of the Palace!
44. It is done quickly; yea, the seal is set upon the vault.
45. There is one that shall avail to open it.
46. Nor by memory, nor by imagination, nor by prayer, nor by fasting, nor by scourging, nor by drugs, nor by ritual, nor by meditation; only by passive love shall he avail.
47. He shall await the sword of the Beloved and bare his throat for the stroke.
48. Then shall his blood leap out and write me runes in the sky; yea, write me runes in the sky.

Reading 2: From The Tabula Smaragdina (The Emerald Tablet) of Saint Hermes Trismegistus.

1. True, without error, certain and most true: that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, to perform the miracles of the One Thing.
2. And as all things were from One, by the meditation of One, so from this One Thing come all things by adaptation. Its father is the Sun, its mother is the Moon, the wind carried it in its belly, the nurse thereof is the Earth.
3. It is the father of all perfection and the consummation of the whole world. Its power is integral if it be turned to Earth.
4. Thou shalt separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the coarse, gently and with much ingenuity. It ascends from Earth to heaven and descends again to Earth, and receives the power of the superiors and the inferiors.
5. Thus thou hast the glory of the whole world; therefore let all obscurity flee before thee. This is the strong fortitude of all fortitude, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing. Thus the world was created. Hence are all wonderful adaptations, of which this is the manner.
6. Therefore am I called Hermes the Thrice Great, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That is finished which I have to say concerning the operation of the Sun.