[Dedicated to George Raffalovich]
In the Years of the Primal Course, in the dawn of terrestrial
birth,
Man mastered the mammoth and horse, and Man was the
Lord of the Earth.
He made him an hollow skin from the heart of an holy tree,
He compassed the earth therien, and Man was the Lord of
the Sea.
He controlled the vigour of steam, he harnessed the light-
ning for hire;
He drove the celestial team, and man was the Lord of the
Fire.
Deep-mouthed from their thrones deep-seated, the choirs
of the æeons declare
The last of the demons defeated, for Man is the Lord of
the Air.
Arise, O Man, in thy strength! the kingdom is thine to
inherit,
Till the high gods witness at lenght that Man is the Lord
of his spirit.
Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Monday, 12 July 2010
What the Thunder Said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain
Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Fact and Fancy
How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet’s mood!
Young Zeno, practic’d in the Stoic’s art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th’ effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an ic’d review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The graceful legends of the story’d past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th’ embellish’d page,
And scolds the comforts of a dreary age:
Would’st strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds Sylphs and Dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze;
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning’s woes,
Th’ ethereal life of body’d Nature knows:
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlit dreams!
H.P.Lovecraft,
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet’s mood!
Young Zeno, practic’d in the Stoic’s art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th’ effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an ic’d review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The graceful legends of the story’d past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th’ embellish’d page,
And scolds the comforts of a dreary age:
Would’st strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds Sylphs and Dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze;
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning’s woes,
Th’ ethereal life of body’d Nature knows:
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlit dreams!
H.P.Lovecraft,
Thursday, 8 July 2010
La Musique
La musique souvent me prend comme une mer!
Vers ma pâle étoile,
Sous un plafond de brume ou dans un vaste éther.
Je mets à la voile;
La poitrine en avant et les poumons gonflés
Comme de la toile.
J'escalade le dos des flots amoncelés
Que la nuit me voile;
Je sens vibrer en moi toutes les passions
D'un vaisseau qui souffre;
Le bon vent, la tempête et ses convulsions
Sur l'immense gouffre
Me bercent. D'autres fois, calme plat, grand miroir
De mon désespoir!
Oft schwemmt die Musik mich hinweg wie ein Meer!
Durch dichten Nebel
Zum blassen Gestirn im Äther weit fern
Setz ich die Segel;
Die Brust rausgestreckt und die Lungen gebläht
Wie Leinwand im Wind,
Erklimm ich die Berge der Wellen und sehe –
Von Nacht nicht mehr blind;
Ich fühle mich ganz wie ein leidendes Schiff,
Das schwankend sich quält;
Von Brisen getrieben, von Stürmen ergriffen
Im Abgrund, der gellt,
Wiegt es mich … – Bis Wasserspiegel windstill zeigt
Meine Hoffnungslosigkeit!
Charles Baudelaire
Vers ma pâle étoile,
Sous un plafond de brume ou dans un vaste éther.
Je mets à la voile;
La poitrine en avant et les poumons gonflés
Comme de la toile.
J'escalade le dos des flots amoncelés
Que la nuit me voile;
Je sens vibrer en moi toutes les passions
D'un vaisseau qui souffre;
Le bon vent, la tempête et ses convulsions
Sur l'immense gouffre
Me bercent. D'autres fois, calme plat, grand miroir
De mon désespoir!
Oft schwemmt die Musik mich hinweg wie ein Meer!
Durch dichten Nebel
Zum blassen Gestirn im Äther weit fern
Setz ich die Segel;
Die Brust rausgestreckt und die Lungen gebläht
Wie Leinwand im Wind,
Erklimm ich die Berge der Wellen und sehe –
Von Nacht nicht mehr blind;
Ich fühle mich ganz wie ein leidendes Schiff,
Das schwankend sich quält;
Von Brisen getrieben, von Stürmen ergriffen
Im Abgrund, der gellt,
Wiegt es mich … – Bis Wasserspiegel windstill zeigt
Meine Hoffnungslosigkeit!
Charles Baudelaire
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Diary Of A Madman
Screaming at the window
Watch me die another day
Hopeless situation
Endless price I'll have to pay
Diary of a madman
Walk the line again today
Entries of confusion
Dear diary, I'm here to stay.
Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.
There's no choice.
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm home again.
Voices in the darkness
Scream away my mental health
Can I ask a question
To help me save me from myself?
Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.
There's no choice.
I will always love you.
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm whole again
I will always love you
There's no choice
A Perfect Circle
Watch me die another day
Hopeless situation
Endless price I'll have to pay
Diary of a madman
Walk the line again today
Entries of confusion
Dear diary, I'm here to stay.
Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.
There's no choice.
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm home again.
Voices in the darkness
Scream away my mental health
Can I ask a question
To help me save me from myself?
Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.
There's no choice.
I will always love you.
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm whole again
I will always love you
There's no choice
A Perfect Circle
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
The Profits of Doom
Of this shape a star of five
Also applies to the one with six sides
Against the sun and against the moon
I warn you that these two combined
Will bring man's doom
Of ten horns and seven heads
Count your fingers and the continents
On your forehead or in your right hand
This new moral code that the media commands
Believe not in their clever words
Because faith inact(ed) are the loudest heard
All these things I say are true
Understood sadly by a chosen few
April 2029 the final time
The end my friend is not near
The hour in fact is quite hear
When the moon becomes red
To guide the living dead
This means God's turned his back on you
It's a Friday 13th of course
You won't live to see noon
I am a prophet of doom
So now the star has fallen
Washing away the seas
The seventh seal's been opened
It's raining your fears
Are you paranoid
The coming asteroid
Has got your name tattooed on it
This stone's called Apophis
It brings apocalypse
I am a prophet of doom
Speak the name of he
Created thee all to be
Which should not be spoken
No laws broken
Now life and love the stars above
Which fall upon the all that worship the beast
Influences ceased
My faith is an ember
Burning ever
Working towards a greater reward
Serving my lured
Built this home upon the rock
Not of the flock
But coming as a shepherd
Guarding his heard
My soul's on fire
Type O Negative
Also applies to the one with six sides
Against the sun and against the moon
I warn you that these two combined
Will bring man's doom
Of ten horns and seven heads
Count your fingers and the continents
On your forehead or in your right hand
This new moral code that the media commands
Believe not in their clever words
Because faith inact(ed) are the loudest heard
All these things I say are true
Understood sadly by a chosen few
April 2029 the final time
The end my friend is not near
The hour in fact is quite hear
When the moon becomes red
To guide the living dead
This means God's turned his back on you
It's a Friday 13th of course
You won't live to see noon
I am a prophet of doom
So now the star has fallen
Washing away the seas
The seventh seal's been opened
It's raining your fears
Are you paranoid
The coming asteroid
Has got your name tattooed on it
This stone's called Apophis
It brings apocalypse
I am a prophet of doom
Speak the name of he
Created thee all to be
Which should not be spoken
No laws broken
Now life and love the stars above
Which fall upon the all that worship the beast
Influences ceased
My faith is an ember
Burning ever
Working towards a greater reward
Serving my lured
Built this home upon the rock
Not of the flock
But coming as a shepherd
Guarding his heard
My soul's on fire
Type O Negative
Monday, 5 July 2010
Blowin in the wind....
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes 'n how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
Yes 'n how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes 'n how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes 'n how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
Yes 'n how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes 'n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes 'n how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
Bob Dylan (1962)
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes 'n how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
Yes 'n how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes 'n how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes 'n how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
Yes 'n how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes 'n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes 'n how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind
Bob Dylan (1962)
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